Monastiraki

Enforcers

Mets

Lunch Street Party, Plateia Koulouri

Eastern Inspirations Photography

Art of Photography - Subjective Photography

"Those commonplace and merely beautiful pictures, which thrive mainly thanks to the charm of some actual object, are thrust into the background in favor of experiments and fresh solutions. Adventures into the realm of optics are still for the most part unpopular. But only that photography which enlists the help of the experimental will be able to lay bare all the technical formation of the visual experience in our
times." Otto Steinert

"Art would perhaps be authentic only when it had totally rid itself of the idea of authenticity . . ." Theodor Adorno

Subjective Photography

Ever since the beginning, the camera has pointed to myself," confessed Minor White, espousing a self-reflexive attitude that also characterized Subjektive Fotografie, the postwar European photography movement founded by Dr. Otto Steinert.

Steinert defined Subjective photography as "humanized and individualized photography," which was meant "to capture from the individual object a picture compounding to its nature." A contemporary West German curator, Ute Eskildsen, explains the subjective thrust of this renewal of Modernism: "The viewing of reality changed after the war to a self-oriented need for expression."

The movement's exhibitions spanned the years 1951through 1958, serving not only the aesthetic but also the economic and ideological needs of postwar West Germany.

It was theory of a camerawork that may be explicated by examining its theoretical kinship with the Continental philosophies of Phenomenology and, particularly, Existentialism. The latter is in large part a development of the former in its Sartrean version, as James Edie observes: "Sartre is the person who more than any other has 'domesticated' the German Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and created what is now called the 'second school of Phenomenology'. . ."

Theoretically, Subjective Photography could draw from Phenomenology's positing of the mutual implication of subject and object, from the phenomenological method that involves intending, intuiting, reflecting upon, and describing phenomena. And existential zed Phenomenology (ŕ la Sartre), like Subjektive Fotografie, stressed how one subjectively intends and constitutes one's "life-world." Both espouse making a transition from a natural, non reflexive perception of things to an intensified, self-reflexive grasp of key aspects. Albeit without the transcendental ego, Sartre subjectifies this intentional grasping of things, putting an emphasis on subjective knowledge, knowledge constituted by feelings and desires, as well as thought, played out in specific "situations." Like Jean-Paul Sartre, Steinert stresses the constituting power of the gaze, and the importance of authenticity: a creative, personal individuality opposed to inauthenticity, "bad faith" or mauvaise foi in Sartre's terminology. Commenting on the existentialist aspect of modern photography in the 1950s, the editor of the periodical Magnum, Dr. Karl Pawek, observes in the 1959 German Photographic Annual: "Every modern photograph is . . . based on the momentary existence of an object which does not always exist in that form. . . . How did 'photography' come by this Existentialism which at the same time reveals the essence and the very substance of the subject? It is characteristic of the modern camera that it has discovered the third and fourth dimension for the two dimensional picture." Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Steinert's Subjektive Fotographie all converge on the ethic that one is "to make no use whatever of the testimony of others in confronting the given ness of experience." ...

From: "Subjektive Fotografie And the Existentialist Ethic"
Copyright 1988 by James R. Hugunin

Art of Photography - Grete Stern

"Grete Stern (born in Wuppertal, Germany in 1904) came to Argentina in 1935, in exile from the nazi regime. By then she was a graphic designer and an accomplished photographer, formed at the School for Applied Arts, in Stuttgart, and at Walter Peterhans's workshops privately at first, then at the Bauhaus in Dessau. Most of Grete's work in Germany was carried out at the ringl + pit studio she had set up with her friend Ellen Auerbach, and has recently been enthusiastically appraised by European and American critics, as well as by scholars. But the bulk of her production - both as to importance and quantity was carried out in our country over nearly fifty years of uninterrupted activity. Her work, remarkable in quality and variety of genres, had not previously been collected into book form nor described and reviewed, as undertaken in this volume. Grete Stern, formed in the refined, creative European vanguard of the twenties, is an essential artist in modern Argentine photography, and she has contributed decisively to founding it.
In 1948 she received an original proposal: supplying photographs to illustrate a section of Idilio magazine, published by Abril, entitled "El psicoanálisis le ayudara" (Psychoanalysis will help you). Edited by sociologist Gino Germani under de penname of Richard Rest, it conveyed psychoanalytical views on the dreams of its women correspondents. Grete proposed illustrating the dreams with photomontages. Her collaboration lasted around three years, in the course of which over one hundred and fifty pieces were published. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most important series of photomontages made in our country.
It is an acknowledged fact that modern photomontage, developed in Germany after the First World War, was applied to political propaganda, advertising, and experimental photography. Grete imbibed it first during her apprenticeship as a graphic designer and then as a photographer. As already mentioned, it was a creative procedure she found attractive and inspiring. Up to the time of her Idilio series, Grete's photomontages in Argentina had been few and occasional.
The texts describing the dreams to be illustrated by Grete were provided by Germani. Usually, they strictly reproduced the letters sent in by readers. Grete and Germani used to talk over the letter's intended interpretation, and he would request that the layout show certain characteristics, that flowers or animals be depicted, or unstable shapes, or some figures performing certain actions. Thence Grete would develop her combinative creation and her own point of view on the subject, which resulted in pieces of fairly free invention.
Each photomontage was published with a title:"Ambition dreams', "Mask dreams", "Dreams of discontent", and so on, plus a comment written by Germani. The comments referred to the image composed by Grete as though it were a literal illustration of the dream described by the reader; based on it Germani produced interpretations and recommendations.
The leading character in the photomontages was of course Idilio's reader - Germani's correspondent - who belonged to the lower classes in our country, especially the rising middle class of President Peron's first years in office. That female character is present in the images, either explicitly or implicitly: she takes part in her own dream or "looks on through the viewfinder, as happens in subjective movie footage.
The subject matter originated in the dreams Germani found to be the most interesting for his analyzing, and among these main lythe ones emphasizing anguish and conflict. Grete's idea of female independence was very strong, and her critical attitude with respect to dominant values constraining and limiting it was a part of her idiosyncrasy. The possibility of expressing her viewpoints on these issues through her photomontages therefore came natural to her.
...

Grete's dreams were for the first time presented as independent photographs by the end of the fifties at the Faculty of Psycho of La Plata University. They were first displayed in Buenos Aires in 1967, with the collaboration of poet Elva de Loizaga. From then up to 1982, when they hung at the great FotoFest show at Hous U.S.A., only art collector Jorge Helft took notice of them. FotoFest their prestige grew sharply, to the extent that they now rated at their original and true significance.
(Fragments from Luis Priamo at: Grete Stern: Obra fotográfica en la Argentina, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Argentina, 1995)."