With the ubiquity of cheap digital cameras and advanced photo-editing software it's not hard to take a quality snap. Indeed it sometimes seems as though everyone's a 'photographer' of some sort - which is great for the cause of individual creative expression but makes the task of identifying truly exceptional work, work we might feel comfortable calling art, all the more challenging.
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A new exhibition of classic photography from the late 19th to the mid-20th century from the Marc Rich Collection at the Kunsthaus Zurich helps put things in perspective. It also offers a fascinating glimpse into past worlds, like the haunting image of a faded Flatiron building in New York, 1905, with the silhouetted figures in the foreground of men in top hats on horse-drawn carriages.
The exceptional vintage black-and-white prints, over 80 in total, span the gamut of classic photographic work and track its development. From the earliest compositions of Henry Fox Talbot and Charles Marville to the Americana of Ansel Adams and Robert Frank, the avant-garde experimentalism of Man Ray and Alfred Stieglitz, through to the modern, street-style of more recent figures like Henri Cartier-Bresson, the collection is essential viewing for any serious photographer.
INFORMATION
- Event dates
- 20 June 2008 to 3 August 2008
- Website
- http://www.kunsthaus.ch
- Telephone
- 41.(0)44 253 8484
