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Throughout history, documentary photographers have succeeded in making images which have since achieved the status of an icon. Czech Paul Ickovic, French Marc Riboud, Italian Nino Migliori and Slovenian Stojan Kerbler have each shaped the way in which we understand events that happened in their time and place. As we dive into their worlds of black & white photography, we are immersed in the beauty of iconic historic imagery.
Marc Riboud (19232016) took his first photograph at the age of 14 when his father gave him a Kodak Vest-Pocket camera as a present. In 1951 he met Magnum agency photographers like Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Capa and Chim (David Seymour) and joined them at the agency. In 1953 he published his first photograph – of the well-known house-painter on Eiffel tower – in Life magazine and was officially accepted as a Magnum photographer. Between 1955 and 1968 Riboud travelled the globe: he went to the Near and Far East, to Nepal, China (in 1957 he was one of the first European photographers to go to China), the Soviet Union, and travelled by motorcycle all the way from Alaska to Mexico. Between 1960 and 1970 he documented Africa, China, North and South Vietnam and Cambodia. Between 1970 and 1980 he went back to the East, and also visited Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Paul Ickovic was thirteen when he emigrated with his family to the United States via Czechoslovakia, England and Colombia. He studied at Julliard School of Music and Goddard College. An assistant of Henri Cartier-Bresson, friend of Josef Koudelka, his lineage is among the great documentary and street photographers, yet what he sees expresses the daring and heart that is his alone. Using only his Leica, one lens and black and white film, he reveals the ineffable, the bizarre, tender and beautiful apparitions of life. His subject is the endless variation of relationship and femininity, depicted in his photographs as well as his playful drawings. His photographs have been widely exhibited and are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; La Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; National Gallery of Art, Prague; Minneapolis Art Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution.
Read MoreIn April ex retrospective of Ickovic's work will be on display at La Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris and in May at Galerija Fotografija Gallery.
Originally from Ptujska gora (Slovenia), Stojan Kerbler (1938) became recognizable for his intimate portraits of Haloze, where he was documenting the passing of time and the frugal lives of farmers. But in doing so he was not simply a documentary photographer – his extraordinary talent for capturing moments of grace, humour or pain shows a high sensibility for human emotion, which raises his practice to an artistic level. In the everyday motifs of rural life, he managed to capture something beyond the visual, which is deeper, more human, ontological. His black-and-white photographs are not only artistic but carry enormous ethnographic value. They are a document of the rural people of the sixties and seventies when Yugoslavia was emphasizing its industrialisation and development. In contrast, agrarian areas of Haloze (Slovenia) and Kozjansko (Slovenia) were subject to poverty and famine, yet full of tradition and old customs, now preserved in Kerbler's photographic material.
Nino Migliori has been developing some of the most articulated and interesting research in European image culture since 1948. From the very beginning he produced neorealist sequence-narration photographs as well as original and new experimentations in materials. Neorealismo, the style linked to the tradition of film-making, opposed the official images of the fascist period, the rhetoric of parades and formal portraits. The innovative new photography was also different from amateur images, and revealed a contemplative vision of the world associated with aesthetic tendencies. Migliori has discovered a different approach to photography, joining the aspects of filmography, civil tension, the strength of story-telling and a great sensitivity for what it means to be human.
From the series 'People'.
Kerbler's black-and-white photographs are not only artistic but carry enormous ethnographic value. They are a document of the rural people of the sixties and seventies when Yugoslavia was emphasising its industrialisation and development. In contrast, agrarian areas of Haloze and Kozjansko were subject to poverty and famine, yet full of tradition and old customs, now preserved in Kerbler's photographic material.
'Neorealism – the new image in Italy 1932-1960' analyses the existing relationship between photography and other fields of art, such as cinema and literature. The inspiration and reasons that drove the various authors are addressed in order to show the way they worked. Although they started from many diverse points of view and cultural approaches, their work led to an outcome which became coherent. This project also introduces a new interpretation of the phenomenon based upon the idea that the roots of neorealism can be found in the fascist period.
Different sizes available:
'Neorealism – the new image in Italy 1932-1960' analyses the existing relationship between photography and other fields of art, such as cinema and literature. The inspiration and reasons that drove the various authors are addressed in order to show the way they worked. Although they started from many diverse points of view and cultural approaches, their work led to an outcome which became coherent. This project also introduces a new interpretation of the phenomenon based upon the idea that the roots of neorealism can be found in the fascist period.
Different sizes available:
One Thing Leads to Another. I am a curious animal. Why photography? For one it gives me the excuse to be anywhere anytime. That's my job. The only continuous, consistent compass in my life. I am not interested in stories with a beginning and an end. I prefer the ambiguous terrain that sparks an emotion. I wonder what came before and after I enter the scene and trip the shutter. I don't want to be living on a chess board analyzing my every move. Spontaneity and impulse are everything. Poker is more my game. Risk and chance whet my appetite, and that is how I extract nourishment.
One Thing Leads to Another. I am a curious animal. Why photography? For one it gives me the excuse to be anywhere anytime. That's my job. The only continuous, consistent compass in my life. I am not interested in stories with a beginning and an end. I prefer the ambiguous terrain that sparks an emotion. I wonder what came before and after I enter the scene and trip the shutter. I don't want to be living on a chess board analyzing my every move. Spontaneity and impulse are everything. Poker is more my game. Risk and chance whet my appetite, and that is how I extract nourishment.
One Thing Leads to Another. I am a curious animal. Why photography? For one it gives me the excuse to be anywhere anytime. That's my job. The only continuous, consistent compass in my life. I am not interested in stories with a beginning and an end. I prefer the ambiguous terrain that sparks an emotion. I wonder what came before and after I enter the scene and trip the shutter. I don't want to be living on a chess board analyzing my every move. Spontaneity and impulse are everything. Poker is more my game. Risk and chance whet my appetite, and that is how I extract nourishment.
Riboud's photographs reveal and communicate a comprehension and understanding, interpretations of scenes and shots and go far beyond simple reported information. He is best known for his extensive reporting of the East: The Three Banners of China, Face of North Vietnam, Visions of China, In China. He also created a number of portraits of well-known artists, intellectuals and politicians.
Riboud's photographs reveal and communicate a comprehension and understanding, interpretations of scenes and shots and go far beyond simple reported information. He is best known for his extensive reporting of the East: The Three Banners of China, Face of North Vietnam, Visions of China, In China. He also created a number of portraits of well-known artists, intellectuals and politicians.
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