Juergen Teller was born in Erlangen, Germany in 1964. He studied at Bayerische Staatslehranstalt Photographie in Munich, Germany before moving to London in the early 1980s. In England, Teller was introduced to the world of fashion photography and used his assignments at i-D, The Face, Index and W magazines as resources from which he could nurture his own photographic sensibility. His work is the subject of monographs by Taschen and Scalo and he has had solo exhibitions at the Mnchner Fotomuseum, Museum Folkwang, Essen, and Galleria d'Arte Moderna, among others, and has been included in exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London and Programa Centro de Arte in Mexico. This year, Teller received the Citibank Photography Prize. Juergen Teller continues to live and work in London.

Lehmann Maupin gallery online
Foundation Cartier current show

March 20 , 2006

Born July 27, 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee. William Eggleston is widely considered one of the most important color photographers in America. It was in the 1960s, in an effort to more accurately portray the tactile qualities of life in the rural south that Eggleston abandoned black and white photography to experiment with new color technology. Though sometimes the result of manipulation, Eggleston’s use of color is never pretty or functionless. It exists in his photographs because it exists in his world. That is not to say that all color is natural. The alien green glow which tints the light spewing from the window of the ambiguous structure in Untitled, 1992 seems most unnatural in fact. The seemingly careless method of cropping Untitled is typical of much of Eggleston’s work. With a casualness reminiscent of a snapshot, he portrays such idiosyncratic subject matter as parked cars, dogs lapping water from puddles and ceiling fixtures. But despite their apparent banality, Eggleston’s images are defiantly intelligent. Stripped of pretension and reduced to the facts, they are convincing substitutes for all that they endeavor to record.

William Eggleston Online

January 14, 2006

Loretta Lux makes pictures of children that are as charming as they are creepy—a sweet-and-sour combo that proves surprisingly hard to resist, even if you suspect the work is little more than kitsch of the most sophisticated and unnerving sort. Like Rineke Dijkstra crossed with Margaret Keane, Lux turns ordinary children into alluring aliens—icons of innocence so tainted by experience (or maybe just curdled nostalgia) they already feel antique. Because the work is strangely unmoored in place or time—drifting off into the idyllic past while hinting at a vacuous, sci-fi future—it manages to conflate memory and dread, sweetness and blight, in a dreamscape whose specificity reads as utterly imaginary.

Read more on Lorettalux.de

December 30, 2005

Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1948, and lives and works in New York and Tokyo. His interest in art began early. Central to Sugimoto’s work is the idea that photography is a time machine, a method of preserving and picturing memory and time. This theme provides the defining principle of his ongoing series including, among others, "Dioramas" (1976-); "Theaters" (1978-); and "Seascapes" (1980-). Sugimoto sees with the eye of the sculptor, painter, architect, and philosopher. He uses his camera in a myriad of ways to create images that seem to convey his subjects’ essence, whether architectural, sculptural, painterly, or of the natural world. He places extraordinary value on craftsmanship, printing his photographs with meticulous attention and a keen understanding of the nuances of silver-print making and its potential for tonal richness in his seemingly infinite palette of blacks, whites, and grays.

Sugimoto’s portrait series
Hiroshi Sugimoto online
Represented by Sonnabend Gallery
Cinema Screen Series
Interview
PBS Documentary

December 12, 2005