Other Arts 2008

artBabel

Walker Evans, Theo Frey - Tradurre la realtà
Kara Walker - 8 Possible Beginnings Or: The Creation of an African-America

Walker Evans, one of the fathers of contemporary photography, helped transform reportage photography into an art form. The museum Villa dei Cedri will host from the 20th of September to the 23rd of November various photographic series, including one of his most famous works, Let us Now Praise Famous Men, a collaborative work between himself and writer James Agee: a splendid union of words and photography and a fundamental moment in Babel’s research as the exposed works are a combination of original prints and digital enlargements, edited by John Hill and the Museo Alinari.
We also thank the collaboration with the Villa dei Cedri and Fotostiftung in Winterthur, Walker Evans photographs will be accompanied by the work of a great Swiss contemporary, Theo Frey, creating a discourse between the images taken from either side of the ocean.
The exhibition will open on Saturday 20th September at 18:00, a Villa dei Cedri. The opening will be followed by an aperitif in the garden of the villa, followed by the concert of the Tiger Lillies at the Teatro Sociale.



Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans' work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera. He wrote that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are "literate, authoritative, transcendent”. Many of his works are in the permanent collections of museums, and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as The Metropolitan Museum of Art. n the summer of 1936, while still working for the FSA, he and writer James Agee were sent by Fortune magazine on assignment to Hale County, Alabama, for a story the magazine subsequently opted not to run. In 1941, Evans' photographs and Agee's text detailing the duo's stay with three white tenant families in southern Alabama during the Great Depression were published as the groundbreaking book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Its detailed account of three farming families paints a deeply moving portrait of rural poverty. Evans, like such other photographers as Henri Cartier-Bresson, rarely spent time in the darkroom making prints from his own negatives. He only very loosely supervised the making of prints of most of his photographs, sometimes only attaching handwritten notes to negatives with instructions on some aspect of the printing procedure.

Theo Frey (1908-1997) is recognized along side of Hans Staub, Gotthard Schuh and Paul Senn, as one of the most important figures in Swiss reportage photography. His reportage photographs are accurately constructed, characterized by objectivity and interest in the modest and everyday conditions of human existence. Theo Frey’s photographs demonstrate social commitment and a profound sympathy for normal people and their every day existence: his work largely focuses on rural Switzerland during the 30’s and 40’s. From the 50’s, Frey started to focus more on working with humanitarian organizations, at this point his photography took second precedence.

Kara Walker
Teatro Sociale, first floor
8 Possible Beginnings Or: The Creation of an African-America, Parts 1-8, A Moving Picture By: Kara E. Walker (STILL), 2005, DVD Video.
Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Gallery New York