Galería Javier López presents Paraísos, a selection of landscape photographs from four of the most interesting international photographers today.
The landscape is the oldest of the photography genres. The first picture in history, by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826, was of a ‘landscape’ taken from the window of his house. Due to the low sensitivity of these early media, the exposure time of this first photo was eight hours. Until the arrival of new technical developments, landscape and still life were recurrent for the pioneers of photography.
Since then, landscape photography has received numerous treatments and modes of representation. The great diversity of natural and urban settings, the pictorial trends and even minimalism had inspired the creation of images. These images can reflect the space in a realistic way or can reinterpret it to create imaginary worlds.
JEAN MARC BUSTAMANTE (Toulouse, France, 1952)
He began in photography as assistant of William Klein. In the late 70s, Bustamante started a series of large format photographs on the outskirts of Barcelona, the Tableaux, a work that changed the perception of photography in French art, erasing the boundary between painting and photography. Back in the 80s, he worked several years with the sculptor Bernard Bazile, an experience that led him to develop his work in other media besides photography. Bustamante faces the man with the time when things happen, with "the slowness and movement of the earth", so that the work of art becomes "a powerful emotional and intellectual object." His work has a strong poetic content.
AXEL HÜTTE (Essen, Germany, 1951)
Member of the School of Dusseldorf along with Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky and Candida Höfer. Hütte is a tireless traveler who shows nature in its most natural and free state. He composes geometric structures that are almost abstract and without any handling, he selects the view to highlight the relationship between volumes, lines and colors that exist in nature. Hütte looks for the emotion, as he says, "I want to catch the reality between the lines, the one that has never been captured, I want to be the one to catch her first time as an image." This is why he is able to spend several days watching the reflection of a tree in the water, making apparent 'alterations' that traps the viewer. He wants each viewer to draw his own conclusions and endow his work with meaning.
THOMAS RUFF (Zell am Harmersbach, Germany, 1958)
Student of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Dusseldorf School, Ruff is one of the great innovators of contemporary photography. He began his career with portraits of 'psychological emptiness' that earned him fame and recognition, and as a result of his collaboration with the architects Herzog and Meuron he continued photographing buildings. Pioneer in the use of digital media, Ruff uses his pixilated images to question the veracity of photography, interrogating himself about the creative process and achieving a subversion of the final result. In his words, "most of the photographs that we find now are no longer authentic them selves, now they have the stamp of authenticity manipulated by the preconceived reality."
THOMAS STRUTH (Geldern, Germany, 1954)
Also formed under the teaching of Bernd and Hilla Becher, and the painter Gerhard Richter in Dusseldorf. From his early works in the 70s of black and white architectures, to his landscapes of romantic breath, Struth makes a work that revolves around the concept of contemplation from many different angles. He got a huge international impact thanks to his photographs of museums, streets, portraits and landscapes. Distancing himself from the documentary tradition, he has always tried to understand the socio-cultural links in relation to the individual unconscious, to synthesize what the act of looking means: the codes of perception, our position before the subject and how to apprehend it with the look. As he explained in one of his last visits to Spain, "I'm interested in the universal construction, I try to analyze and experience the drama of the time constraints." He is the first living artist to have been exposed in the Museo del Prado.