Dirk Braeckman at La Biennale

At La Biennale 2017
The very “different” and moving photography by Dirk Braeckman at the Belgian Pavilion at Giardini.

Here a little movie from Instagram – let’s follow each other!

… and a link also to his Venice homepage.

Déjà Vu, Syria And Multi-Media Photo Collages – The “Three In One” exhibit

This post is updated with new images, latest on October 19, 2017

This “Three-In-One” exhibition opened on the “Night Of Culture” in Lund, September 16 16-22, at Vegagatan 25.

Then I did a few new things and changed some of those presented – that’s one of the joys with collages… – and, so, this is also the collection of works that are on show when it was “Art Night” in Lund, Sweden, on October 21, 2017.

And here the poster:

The show has three categories:

• Déjà Vu.

Some earlier works that have been enhanced through re-editing and re-printing.
Here is one example, “Natalia And Gerhard Richter”:

• Hope and Suffering in Aleppo, Syria

Unique, strong images of the suffering people who came out from 4,5 years of occupation but were also expressing joy and hope.
You may get an impression of these documentary photos here.

• Multi-media photo collages.

The first is pretty self-explanatory. The second category will be explained by myself, in particular during an event 19:00-19:30 for those present.

The third is something new for me, a colourful, happy experiment contrasting the Syria series.

How did I do the latter?

I’ve taken some of my old and new photos and combined them with all kinds of stuff and media: Japanese fabrics and papers, very old calligraphy books on silk paper, old yellow newspapers, art magazines and Sotheby catalogues, cut some flee market paintings in pieces and combined it all into collages – mounted on papers, copper, steel and cardboard.

Here some of it…

On some I’ve also applied acrylic paint and oil sticks (oil colours that you paint with like crayons and not with brushes).

The “Victoria And Albert Multi-Exposure” Series

A series of five of a bust at the Victoria and Alberg Museum, experimenting with multi-exposure in order to achieve a sense of movement. I mean, how does one make marble sculptures come alive on a rainy Sunday afternoon in London?

Additionally, this short video is an example of what I am going to use more often in the future, both here on my blog and on my Instagram account.

It’s a photolution…

No other art form is going through so big and fast changes as is photography. We are witnesses to a photographic revolution, a “photolution”.

 

What is it?

It has many element coming together in synergy. Here are some:

• The smartphones, their ever smaller and lighter equipment with ever more imprssive camera performance. It belongs to the past that, say, iPhone photos had to be low quality. True you can’t do with them what you can with a ‘real’ camera, a digital SLR, but you get super quality pictures with which you can do other things such as using:

• Apps small and cheap tools helping you to do hitherto unimaginable things when taking and processing a shot. That you can’t do – yet – with a digital SLR, although I guess we shall soon get apps for them too – like you can now get extensions and accessories including lenses for the iPhone that make it come even closer to the DSLR.

• We can carry them with us permanently – “the best camera is the one you carry with you” and not the one you left at home, too bulky, heavy, expensive and thus risky to take along.

But of course the smartphone revolution is only one sub-revolution of the larger photolusion. Whether you use this or that type of digital camera, you become part of the very dynamic changes caused by:

• Digitalisation – the end of expensive films and darkroom processing. Digital formats are free and can be processed in millions of ways – even to the point where the original shot is hard to identify.

• Photoshopping – the immense possibilities embedded in that super complex software that makes your old darkroom look like a thing of the stone-age. While you can’t make a bad image better in Photoshop you can certain make a good one better – or turn it into something completely different such as a piece of abstract art, but still photography- based.

• We increasingly live in an age of images and communicate through images. still or video. It is very true that one image can say more than a thousand words – not because texts are not important or effective as means of communication or because they can not give more vivid information and details but because people, grosso modo and sadly so – don’t seem to think that they have the time to read but do take time to see.

The latter is often quite superficial, however, as any gallery owner or museum guard will tell you. Research done at art museums reveals that the average time people spend in front of an art work is 15-30 seconds.

• Social media and globalisation and

Creating “People Of Islam” and why the Iraq War made me a photographer

I opened this exhibition with the subtitle – Photos From Iran, Iraq, Somaliland and Marrakech – on April 3, 2015.

It has come about in a quite natural way. I have worked in some countries where Islam is of fundamental importance and so been exposed to the people living there as well as their problems – problems related to conflicts and war.

I did fact-finding in Iraq in 2002 and 2003, I do peace work and photography every year in Iran since 2012; I worked in Somalia between 1977 and 1981 and visited the self-proclaimed independent Somaliland in the Northern part in 2014 and I spent a week in Marrakech, Morocco, in February 2015.

But it wasn’t a planned project. I don’t do projects in the sense of saying to myself that, in the next few years, I shall concentrate on a certain theme, produce a number of works and then exhibit them. That is not part of my concept. My work and general curiousity takes me to places and, while there and in between having meetings or giving lecturing, I shoot pictures.

Ahmed, Baghdad 2003 – mild eyes indeed © Jan Oberg

This is perhaps not the way a professional would do it but

Oberg art photo concept

Nowadays one must have a mission statement up front and any business must have a core concept. And of course people ask me now and then what kind of idea(s) my works are based on.

Here is, in a nutshell what I can say:

Art and peace are basic to my photo concept and, thus, to my life.

Other elements are:

• diversity of themes, seeing the big and the small world where I go;
• photo graphics – meaning a graphic print-like appearance on matte fine art papers;
• variety of media – fine art papers, canvas, sometimes metal and mixed media;
• honouring the advice of my mentor, grand old man of Danish photography Viggo Rivad: it is you, not some expensive equipment, that create the good picture;
• caring for the entire process – from shooting to printing, framing and marketing;
• experimenting with the above, not aiming to find a niche or one style that can be repeated;
• inspired by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter and David Hockney as well as by classical art – e.g Vermeer in “Black Girl With A Pearl Earring” (2014);
• inspired by contemporary photographers – too many to mention; travel to art and photo fairs as much as I can;
• identifying my work mostly with art photography but also documentary;
• making extensive use of new technologies, the Internet and social media;
• always having my Nikon D7000 and/or iPhone at hand;
• exploring randomly what peace photography could be;
• open to commissioned work, portrait or others required tasks;
• offering clients quality and security, incl. a signed print documentation at purchase which guarantees the authenticity of the work, what paper it is printed on with which printer, size of edition, number and signature etc.;
• truly personal service – my works are for sale only by me and in my studio or via correspondence you’ll always deal directly with me.

Updated October 2016.

Black girl with a pearl earring

This post is about the pastiche I’ve made on Johannes Vermeer’s iconic painting from around 1665 of a Girl With A Pearl Earring. There is both an interesting discussion about how it was – perhaps – painted and a movie inspired by the painting.

And there is a discussion, of course, about who the girl is, or could have been – nobody seems to know. Was it Vermeer’s daughter Maria – who was likely also a gifted painter – was it a maid in the house, a lover?

It is a pastiche – defined by Wikipedia as “a work of visual art, literature, or music that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche celebrates, rather than mocks, the work it imitates.” So it neither reproduces in details, nor satirizes. It’s an inspiration, perhaps an homage and it is, above all, eclectic – using elements known from here and there and putting them together but, simultaneously, offering the viewer something that has references to another work of art. It borrows freely and can be see also as a hodgepodge.

It is a challenge you set yourself. The black woman in this series doesn’t want her name mentioned but was once a student of mine. I too have never done something “staged” like this before.

A peep into my photo studio

WELCOME to Oberg PhotoGraphics studio !
A quick “guided tour” – some impressions of what I do and how I do art photography.
So many who can’t come to Lund, Sweden, have asked me to make such a simple video.
I appreciate each and every comment you have!

© Jan Oberg 2013

Gemini G.E.L. – pionering print makers

For about 40 years I’ve followed the production of one of the world’s finest contemporary art printers – Gemini G.E. L. at Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. My father, F. W. Oberg (1913-1981) who founded gallery Ars Studeo in Aarhus and Copenhagen, Denmark, in the mid-1960s and was a keen long-time art collector bought many prints from Gemini G.E.L. – which means Graphic Editions Limited.

With six years only in school, he wasn’t good enough at writing English to artists, galleries and printers around the world; he asked me to work for him as his secretary and in that way I financed a large part of my studies.

Basel Flowers

A couple of years ago I took this iPhone image (with Hipstamatic app) at the central market square in Basel, Switzerland. I thought the colours around that yellow bucket were so crisp and a joyful and the Hipstamatic app created the frame, yellow to the left and pink to the right in amazing harmony with the flowers.

Basel Flowers # 1 © Jan Oberg 2013

The more I looked at it, I began to see something potentially abstract about this rather spontaneous shot. And, so, I began to work quite a bit with it in Photoshop and here is another “whiter” version of it that I actually ended up printing on aluminum.

Basel Flowers # 3 © Jan Oberg 2013

The interesting thing about printing on metal is that what is white in an image will become the colour of the metal since there is no white pigment in the printer. What is also interesting is that it is possible to make virtually unlimited colour combinations on a piece like this. You can decide that what is blue should become green, what is yellow should become pink etc. So if you love colours and enjoy experimenting with various options and expressions, you can in principle go on forever. So if this is called # 3 – it could be changed again and again and become # 333…

Now, I cut out the upper parts of this second version and used it for fun on my personal profile page on Facebook. I had no idea that these happy colours would cause many-more-than-usual and very positive reactions.  If a simple, everyday photographic shot can make people happy, I want to find out what that “it” is. I want a dialogue about my photos (even the “photoshopped” versions of them) with people on Facebook, LinkedIn and here on this blog.

And why not?

If I had had an exhibition at a gallery and talked with the visitors, they would have told me something – anything – and I would be able to learn more about how people perceive and interpret what I have created.

After all – is there anything more fascinating than discussing how we perceive reality and how images create associations of thoughts and emotions in us? My works of course exist whether nobody, one or thousands see them. But is is a “bonus” beyond words to dialogue with an image as point of departure.

When somebody says “it’s beautiful” I would be a fool if I didn’t appreciate it as a statement and also did not get curious about the cause. Because we have more than enough of bad quality, violent and boring images around us every day. Regrettably, to many – perhaps most – people it’s probably much more difficult to define what it is that expresses beauty and peace – whereas we also know violence and ugliness the moment we see it.

That said, look out for your little glimpse of beauty next time you go shopping vegetables at your market square! And imagine it as the same thing – but changed like # 3 above! A photo is a photo is a photo is a…