“Color is bullshit,” the legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once told his younger colleague, William Eggleston. Less vulgar but equally dismissive, Ansel Adams once likened photographing in color (though he did plenty of it) to playing an out-of-tune piano, and claimed that he could get “a far greater sense of ‘color’ through a well-planned and executed black-and-white image than [he had] ever achieved with color photography.”
William Wegman, Ski Patrol (2017). Courtesy Galerie George-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois.
Indeed, color photography had a hard time of it after it was first developed in the mid-19th century, with critics and connoisseurs terming its seductive colors garish as opposed to the supposedly more dignified black and white. But that’s long since changed, and color photography is presently widely accepted, in fine art, fashion, journalism and other fields.
Walter Chandoha, New Jersey, 1962. ©️ Walter Chandoha Archive.
Now, multihyphenate artist Maurizio Cattelan has curated an exhibition on color photography along with Sam Stourdzé, director of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Médicis. It’s taking place at that Renaissance villa just moments away from the famed Spanish Steps in the heart of the Italian capital, which was once the residence of Cardinal Ferdinando I de’ Medici and home to the Academy since 1803.
The show presents the work of some 20 artists, broken up into what the curators call “chapters,” with titles like Early Birds, Raining Cats and Dogs, Femme Fatale, and Stranger Things. On the roster are Miles Aldridge, Erwin Blumenfeld, Guy Bourdin, Juno Calypso, Walter Chandoha, Harold Edgerton, Hassan Hajjaj, Hiro, Ouka Leele, Yevonde Middleton, Arnold Odermatt, Ruth Ossai, Martin Parr, Pierre et Gilles, Alex Prager, Adrienne Raquel, Sandy Skoglund, (the magazine established by Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari), and William Wegman.
Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, Toiiletpaper. Courtesy Toiletpaper.
“What if color could save us?” said Stourdzé in an email. “In a world of grey where the clouds seem to be pilling up, this exhibition invites you to a chromotherapy session featuring lemon yellow, limitless blue, vibrant red, and sunshine orange.”
Animals are frequent subjects. Wegman is perhaps best known for his photos of his Weimaraners in various poses, sometimes sporting human clothes. Chandoha, by contrast, is known as a cat photographer; of his archive of more than 225,000 photos, some 90,000 depict felines. “Cats are my favorite animal subject,” he said, “because of their unlimited range of attitude, posture, expression, and coloration.” A charming photo of his shows a furry specimen perched atop three stacked pillows; another shows a quartet in a loving embrace.
The back cover of Damiani’s catalogue for the exhibition “Chromotherapia: The Feel-Good Color Photography,” featuring a photo by Walter Chandoha.
Food also comes in for close study, for example in Martin Paar’s Common Sense [Donut, Ramsgate] (1999), a delightful shot of a child’s hands, poking out of brilliant red jacket cuffs, grasping a sugary treat, and Juno Calypso’s Chicken Dogs (2015), showing a model mysteriously lying face-down on a tile floor near a can of the titular food item, one dog tentatively poking out above the rim.
Juno Calypso, Chicken Dogs, 2015.
Can’t make it to the show? Villa Medici will publish a 224-page book with Damiani, priced at €55, that will be available in U.K. bookstores in March for £50 ($61) and in the States in May at $60.
“Chromotherapia: The Feel-Good Color Photography” will be on view at the French Academy in Rome – Villa Médicis, Viale della Trinità dei Monti, 1, February 28–June 9.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
