FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Through October 30, 2004

Cameraless Photographs 1950 – 2004
Organized by Lisa Kurzner
Marco Breuer
Hanno Otten
Heinz Hajek-Halke

September 18 – October 30, 2004
Opening Reception: September 18, 7 – 10 p.m.
Curator’s Talk: Friday, October 8th at 7:30 pm.

Marcia Wood Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of photographs made without a camera by three German photographers well known for their work in this particular aspect of the medium. Each artist uses the form to make direct abstracted images that recall the most radical experiments by the Surrealists and Bauhaus artists, among others. This exhibition brings together the work of two contemporary German photographers, Hanno Otten and Marco Breuer, with vintage prints by Heinz Hajek-Halke, a leading practitioner of cameraless work in Germany from the wartime era through the 1950s and 60s. Although cameraless work has been increasingly prevalent among contemporary photographers, this exhibition will examine how the continued celebration of abstract photography in postwar Germany has affected the work of these younger artists.

Heinz Hajek-Halke (1898-1983) was very active in the development of experimental photography in Germany from the 1920s until his death in 1983. Although he studied art in both classical and experimental venues, Hajek-Halke spent most of his professional and artistic career in photography. Picture editor, press photographer and graphic designer, he also made important experimental photocollages and photographs inspired by film, abstract art, and biological forms that were reproduced in several photographic journals. In the 1950s, he taught photography and actively exhibited in important exhibitions, including Otto Steinert’s Subjective Photography. In 1957, he published a book on his techniques for cameraless photography.

Hanno Otten (born 1954) has been photographing since the 1980s. His early work included black and white abstractions, but for many years, color has been at the heart of his art. He has been making color studies, in sculpture and straight photographic prints since the 1990s. The more recent photograms, large abstract compositions of rectangular forms in panorama format, are the purest form of color study. By manipulating large blocks of pure color and geometric form in his ever more complex compositions, Otten reconsiders basic tenets of modernism, allowing color and light to suggest musical themes or monumental architecture. Otten has exhibited widely in Europe and in New York. He lives in London and Cologne.

Marco Breuer (born 1966) has several degrees in photography and has made cameraless photographs since the early 1990s. His current images result from direct physical contact with the photographic paper itself and record performance-like rituals in the darkroom. In his abstract images of striated patterns from the Tilt and Pan series, based on film techniques, Breuer embraces experimental practice in the spirit of his mid 19th century forbearers. He teaches in the MFA program at Bard College. He has published and exhibited widely in the United States and Germany and is represented in widely represented museum collections. Breuer currently lives in upstate New York.

This exhibition has been curated/organized by Lisa Kurzner for Marcia Wood Gallery. Lisa Kurzner is a freelance curator and critic who recently relocated to Atlanta from Europe. She organized Under Different Circumstances at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center last winter. Previously she was the Newhall Curatorial Fellow in the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Photography, and has worked with several international agencies supporting contemporary art.. There will be a curator’s talk at the Marcia Wood Gallery on Friday, October 8th at 7:30 pm.