Gone To The Beach

I just updated my website and added my new project "Gone To The Beach". It is about the cemetery culture here in Europe and especially Germany. While I was traveling to France and Austria I found some very interesting sites there as well. So, whenever I go on a trip, cemeteries are on my list.

You can check the new project out here





© all images Michael Werner

Two Way Lens

My new project Two Way Lens is now officially launched, starting with the wonderful Deborah Hamon.

Two Way Lens is a project designed to inform and inspire emerging photographers wanting to focus their creative output in a way that enhances their chances of finding an audience, being included in exhibitions and ultimately achieving gallery representation. The journey from inspired artist to successful artist is one that is often difficult to negotiate and hard to control. On these pages, I will feature the experiences and opinions of other photographers who I have found inspiring, and hopefully the knowledge they have built in their own experiences will be valuable to all of us finding our own way to sharing our creativity with the wider world.

Thanks so much to Deborah for taking the time to answer my three questions. I am so happy that she is the first one to kick this project off and I look forward to many more fantastic photographers following her in informing and inspiring us with their knowledge, wisdom and success.

Salzburg

My mother in law arrives today. She is on a trip in Great Britain and comes for about one week to visit us. So tomorrow we are taking her for a trip to Salzburg. It is her birthday present and her big wish to see Salzburg and some things about Mozart and "The Sound Of Music". So a big family trip is in front of us, with mother in law and Blinky Bill our dog. It will be fun.

Random Photo No. 8

© Michael Werner

Paris

Here are some more impressions from Paris!





© all images Michael Werner

Back from Paris

The weekend in Paris was absolutely fantastic. The city is just amazing, magical and extraordinary. I saw the Alec Soth show "The Space Between Us" at the Musée Jeu de Paume and it was really worthwhile to go on this trip for it.

In the first room were photographs from his "Portraits" series, then came the room with works from his "Fashion Magazine" project (the third photo is taken in this room). The next room was "Dog days Bogota" then came "Sleeping by the Mississippi" and the last room was "Niagara"

The prints are so wonderful in different sizes from small to really big. I spent a long time there and could not get enough from this fantastic photographs. To see the works in the books is one thing (which I also love) but to see the big prints on the wall is a totally different experience.



© all images Michael Werner

I also was able to spent the rest of the Saturday taking photos in Paris and I am really excited about the results. I am already looking forward to going back to Paris in only a few weeks ( on the 4th of July for 4 days) and continuing my new project in the city I absolutely love.

Paris I'm coming

Only a few hours and I am heading of to Paris. I will stay till Sunday evening and on Saturday I am going to go to see Alec Soth's solo show at the Musée Jeu de Paume, Place de la Concorde, Paris. I am looking forward to seeing the show. Here are some impressions from this amazing city.

I love Paris!!!



© all images Michael Werner

The Sparky Show - Opening Tonight

Tonight is the night! The Sparky Show opens at Schroeder Romero / Winkleman Gallery Project Space, 637 West 27th Street (btw 11th and 12th Ave) NYC. The reception is from 6 - 8 pm, so if you are in NYC try to make it to the show. It's really worthwhile. Sparky and Nelson will welcome you!

Random Photo No. 7

© Michael Werner

Jason Hanasik

Jason Hanasik just updated his website and added new projects incl. video-work on it. His new work is just wonderful. I really love his new projects. Here are some examples from different projects

Jason is also back on the blogosphere. Check out his Blog here


From the series "I love you but I have no idea what to do with you"
Victor, 2007


From the series "Range"
Range 216, 2007


From the series "He opened up somewhere along the eastern shore"
Steven (dirt), 2008,
© all images Jason Hanasik

Christian Patterson Interview

Peter Feldhaus who writes The Sonic Blog made a wonderful interview with Christian Patterson. Christian has a solo show at Galerie Kaune Sudendorf in Cologne, the show runs till May 16th. Check the interview out here

Random Photo No. 6

© Michael Werner

Random Photo No. 5

© Michael Werner

Random Photo No. 4

© Michael Werner

The Sparky Show

© Nelson Santos and Sparky

Save this date: Thursday May 15, 6 - 8 p.m., opening reception
The Sparky Show at Schroeder Romero / Winkleman Gallery Project Space 637 West 27th Street (btw 11th and 12th Ave) NYC

An exhibition of over 100 portraits of Sparky by...
David B. Abbott • Derrick Adams • Alex Aleixo • Meredith Allen • Stephen Andrews • Marina Ancona • Dominick Avellino • Thomas Bellof • Barton Lidice Benes • Kermit Berg • Dennis Bergevin • Vanessa Boer • Elizabeth Bonaventura • Joseph Brajcki • AA Bronson • Mary Button • Mark Carter • Janice Caswell • Niccolo Cataldi • Cat Celebrezze • Mark Chamberlain • Vincent Cianni • Chris Clary • Jon Coffelt • Albert Crudo • Megan Cump • Erika deVries • Marta Dell’Angelo • Danielle Dimston • William Donovan • Angela Dufresne • Neil Farber • Rachel Farmer • Sarah Farsad • John Findysz • Teresa Fogard • Martin Freeman • Milton Garcia-Ninja • Joy Garnett • Paul LeRoy Gehres • Laura Gilbert • Eric Ginsburg • Jeffrey Graul • Max Greenberg • Magalie Guerin • Kim Hanson • Jan Harrison • Michael Harwood • Alex Hetherington • David Humphrey • Derek Jackson • James Jaxxa • David King • Scooter LaForge • Aldo Lanzini • Lou Laurita • Jennifer Lehe • Marc Lepson • Serge J-F. Levy • Tim Lonergan • Gina Lovoi • Preston McGovern • Reyez Melendez • Toma Miller • Joe Monroe • Michael Muller • Stefanie Nagorka • Jeanine Oleson • Laura Sue Phillips • Drew Pisarra • Catya Plate • Amy Jean Porter • William Powhida • Carol Radsprecher • Richard Renaldi • Eric Rhein • Daniel Roberts • Nelson Santos • Joel Seah • Emily Severance • Frank Sheehan • Ethan Shoshan • Oren Slor • Clifford Smith • Thomas Somervile • Clare Stein • Stanley Stellar • Sur Rodney (Sur) • JD Talasek • Sam Tan • Steed Taylor • Tom Teebe • George Towne • Alexander Vasiljev • Alberto Velasco • Glenn Walls • Barbara Weissberger • Michael Werner • Robin Willis • Noel Wynn • Rob Wynne

I am happy and excited to be part of this wonderful project together with my friend Jan Harrison and Richard Renaldi and many other great artists.

So, if you are in New York, try to make it to the opening!

The Exhibition runs from May 15-June 28, 2008

More information about the project here

Alec Soth in Paris

The museum Jeu de Paume in Paris presents Alec Soth - The Space Between Us. The exhibition features 71 photographs: a selection from Alec Soth’s two acclaimed bodies of work, Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004) and Niagara (2006) along with a selection of images from the series Dog Days, Bogotá (2007), Paris Minnesota (2007) and his ongoing project, Portraits.

I decided spontaneously that I would really love to see this show. So I am going to drive on Friday May 16th to Paris and see the show on Saturday. I am already looking forward to seeing all the original photographs from one of my favorite photographers. Cool, Paris I'm coming.


© Musee Jeu de Paume

Random Photo No. 2 and No.3

© Michael Werner

Petition to stop Guillermo Vargas Habacuc from starving another dog to death in the name of art

Today I received and email from Dan and I was truly shocked what I read. I signed the petition immediately. For me this is not art, this is a crime and an evil act of murderer.

The letter I received is as follows

In the 2007, the "artist" Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, took a dog from the street, tied him to a rope in an art gallery, starved him to death.

For several days, the "artist" and the visitors of the exhibition have watched emotionless the shameful installation based on the dog's agony, until eventually he died.

But this is not all... the prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American decided that the "installation" was actually art, and Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the biennial of 2008.

Click on the following link to help stop him:

Click here

It's free of charge, there is no need to register, and it will only take 10 seconds of your time to help save the life of an innocent creature.

Thank you for your time and please forward to as many as possible and post it on your blog to help prevent this from happening.

Random Photo No. 1

© Michael Werner

American Beauty

Here is a great video that shows Stephen Shore using his 8"x10" camera and much more. I love it.

Wolfgang Tillmans

The German Photographer and Turner Prize Award Winner in 2000, Wolfgang Tillmans has a spectacular show in Berlin. The exhibition is called "Lighter" and the venue is the Hamburger Bahnhof he in Berlin. The show begins with the early photocopy works, continues with a reconstruction of the multipart Turner Prize room and the politically oriented table installation “Truth Study Center.” The focus of the conclusion is the latest pieces. I love Tillmans' work and the show is really worth a travel. It runs from March 21st through August 24th at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Invalidenstraße 50- 51 · 10557 Berlin



© Wolfgang Tillmans, Freischwimmer55, 2004, c-print,

Working Worlds

© all images Mitch Epstein

Today I saw a small but fine exhibition with works of Richard Avedon, Barbara Klemm, Wouter Deruytter, Mitch Epstein, Ville Lenkkeri and Sebastião Salgado.

The DZ Bank in Frankfurt has one of the worlds biggest and finest collections of contemporary photography. In the foyer of one of their glamorous buildings in Frankfurt they have a small gallery where they show several exhibitions a year. Since I love the photographs of Mitch Epstein I was absolutely thrilled to see his original prints. I would have loved to just put the works in my car and then put them on my own walls.

Unfortunately the website of the bank with the collection is only in German. For everyone who can read German, check it out here

Is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey ........

Sunday the 6th of April is The Day when the show "Is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world" opens. The venue is Pierro Galleryin South Orange, New Jersey. The fabulous Laurel Ptak who also does a fantastic job with her must read blog I heart photograph curated a must see exhibition. So, if you are in New York or nearby make sure you go to the opening or if you can't make it on Sunday at least make a trip to New Jersey and see the show. The exhibition is open from April 6th through May 25th.

The exhibition catalogue is downloadable at Laurel's Blog, a link is placed on the right side of the Blog

Sarah Morris - 1972

© Sarah Morris, "1972", 2007, Filmstill, 35mm/MPEG


The Lenbachhaus in Munich is now premiering Sarah Morris’s seventh film. This is the second time (since /Robert Towne/, 2005) that Morris decided to shift her lens from the wide panoramic view of a city to an intimate portrait of an individual citizen of that city. Dr. Georg Sieber was the head psychologist of the Olympic Police and the Munich Police in 1972. Sieber was present on Connolly Street on the tragic morning of September 5th, 1972 when members of the terror group Black September attacked and took hostage of the visiting members of the Israeli Olympic Team.

The exhibition runs from April 26th - August 3rd 2008 at the Lenbachhaus in Munich. The link to the exhibition is here



© Rings, Sarah Morris

Paintings from Sarah Morris’ current series, Beijing, are symbolic of some of the architectural challenges that this city is facing in light of the upcoming Olympic Games in 2008. The Rings series not only connects to the Olympic rings and the event that will greatly affect Beijing, but also to the congested traffic arteries called the Ring Roads, emblematic of larger scale issues.

4th Triennial of Photography in Hamburg

From the 11th to the 20th of April, Hamburg will be the centre of photography in Germany for the fourth time. During ten days, exceptional ideas, enthusiasm and commitment for photography concentrate in lectures, films, lightshows, and encounters. Ten museums and various galleries complement the Triennial of Photography with exhibitions, which can also be seen after the festival. Ten days, during which people interested in photography and art, scientists, photographers, and experts for media and art have the possibility to meet and to have an intensive look at photography.

The triennial presents photographers from various countries throughout the world, who bring in their personal experiences and ideas and who show what is going on in the world. Aside from works of established artists, a forum is offered to new talents. Due to numerous photo exhibitions in museums, galleries, and other locations, round table talks as well as gallery tours and receptions, the 4th Triennial of Photography will become Hamburg’s cultural event of the year 2008.

The Haus der Photographie (House of Photography) marks the beginning of the triennial with its definite retrospective of F.C. Gundlach’s work, one of the most renowned German fashion photographers of the postwar era. The exhibition "Das fotografische Werk" (The Photographic Oeuvre) shows fashion photography of four decades, in which F.C. Gundlach staged fashion and therefore made fashion history - the history of clothing, but as well the history of poses and gestures, props and locations, and changing ideals of beauty.

Further exhibitions of the Triennial of Photography present photographs by Sharon Lockhart,Candida Höfer, Fischli-Weiss, Walter Schels, Karin Székessy, and Winston Link. In addition, Hamburg's galleries enrich the festival program.

A marquee at the Deichtorplatz in front of the Haus der Photographie will be the meeting point of the Triennial 2008. As a central information point and venue, evening lightshows as well as lectures on the motto of the triennial "Say Cheese – About Smiling in Photography" will take place there. Furthermore, visitors can get information about the Triennial of Photography at this place. For expert visitors and press a meeting point will be at their disposal.

The portfolio viewing on the second weekend of the triennial offers both young and established photographers the special opportunity of meeting the directors of international photo festivals and of having their work assessed.

In 1999, the first triennial took place in Hamburg in eight museums and instituions as well as forty galleries and other organizations. At the 3rd Triennial of Photography the number of organizers doubled and 250,000 guests visited the festival.

If you want to find out more about the festival or even come to Hamburg for a portfolio review or to see the many exhibitions and meet photographers from all over the world, check it out here

New Links Added

I also added more artists links in the section on the right side. Feel free to browse and visit the websites of great photographers and see fantastic work.

Skylines

I am working on a new series with the title "Skylines". The statement is as follows:

The white lines on a blue sky are fascinating to me. They appear for a short time and form beautiful lines on the sky, form patterns when there are more of them and then disappear as quickly as they were formed. The definition of these lines (contrails) is as follows:

A contrail, also known as a condensation trail, is a „cirrus-like“(High level cloud - Cirrus are thin, wispy clouds composed of ice crystals that originate from the freezing of super cooled water droplets and exist where temperatures are below -38 degrees Celsius) trail of condensed vapor (often resembling the tail of a kite) that is produced by jet aircraft flying at high altitudes. Contrails are produced at altitudes high enough for water droplets to freeze in a matter of seconds before they evaporate. Temperatures at such altitudes are typically below -38 degrees Celsius.

Contrails form through the injection of water vapor into the atmosphere by exhaust fumes from a jet engine. If there is sufficient mixing between the cold upper tropospheric air and the hot exhaust gases to produce a state of saturation, ice crystals will develop. Even tiny nuclei released in the exhaust fumes may be sufficient enough to generate ice crystals.

Contrails spread apart and evaporate with time. If the air in which the cloud develops has a low relative humidity, the cloud particles will quickly evaporate. However, even in the presence of higher relative humidities, upper level winds can spread contrails apart, forming a horizontal sheet-like cloud. For a contrail to remain in tact for a long period of time, the air must have high a relative humidity and light winds.

On the Internet you can also find theories like this:

The Chemtrail conspiracy theory claims that some trails left behind jet aircraft are different in appearance and quality from those of normal contrails, may be composed of harmful chemicals, and are being deliberately produced, and covered up by the government. These unusual trails are referred to as "chemtrails" (a portmanteau of "chemical trails").
The term "chemtrail" does not refer to common forms of aerial dumping (e.g. crop dusting, cloud seeding or aerial firefighting). It specifically refers to systematic, high-altitude dumping of unknown substances for undisclosed purposes, resulting in the appearance of these unusual contrails.

Suggested purposes of the chemtrails include:
Weather control (perhaps to counter the effects of global warming)
Military purposes
Wireless network system component
Sophisticated radar system
Scientific study
Biological warfare
Hegemonic mind control
Occult purposes

Here are some images from the series






©Michael Werner

Welcome Sparky

Super Sparky

Sparky has his own blog now. So welcome Sparky to the world of bloggers. He is an art star and his collection of artworks will be shown this spring at the Project Space @ Schroeder Romero/ Winkelman Gallery, 637 West 27th St, New York. Check out his blog here and if you want to be part of his fantastic project, you have to hurry, but there is still time till the 15th of April. More details are on his blog. You can also find Sparky on Flickr

Congratulations Sparky you are the next big thing in Chelsea and the world is waiting for you as well.

Tim Hailand

Tim Hailand is a New York and Berlin based photographer who‘s work I really like. He has many wonderful projects on his website and his photograph on Tracy Chapman's album Telling Stories is just amazing. His exhibition at Baldwin Gallery in Aspen Colorado in February / March 2008 was a huge success and his work is to find in collections as The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Guggenheim, New York and many more. And beside of all his success as an artist, he is a great guy as well.



Gilbert and George in New York City in Provincetown, 2005, from the series Photos Rephotographed



Berlin, 2007, from the series Statues


Bernd Becher, 2004, from the series Men

© all images Tim Hailand

Knees are weird - call for submissions

Ian Aleksander Adams started a new project called Knees are weird and wants to have your submissions. I think it's a cool and funny project.

This is what he writes about it:

This is about knees. Well, it's about art about knees.

Why knees?

They are an under-represented body part. I'm extremely self conscious about my knees, and I don't know why. In specific, I posted an image of my knees to a self portrait community, and was asked to censor it, because it was somehow offensive. This amazed me, because my knees are awkward, but it never occurred to me that they might be offensive. There is something about knees, and hopefully, by putting this together, we can figure out a little more about them.

They are also intended as a launching point. They can directly remind us of things: distance from our head, the idea of hiding a body part, feeling ashamed or amazed/confused/bored by our own bodies. They could more abstractly inspire ideas of supporting, joining, bending.

Work about how knees are weird. Or not weird. Photographs of knees. Or not photographs. Animal knees. Metaphysical knees. Start with the idea and run with it. Just follow the submission guidelines, and if you are chosen, I'll probably need a version of your image at a size I can print.

If you want to submit words, even, go ahead, but keep to the submission requirements. Each piece must stand on it's own inside a 600x600 image area, so if you write a poem, or even make a font to express the words knees, remember to save it as a jpg or gif image. The font and organization of words is a matter of your artistic expression, not mine.


So, drop your trousers, take a photo of your knees, or of other knees or get inspired by knees or whatever and get your submission to Ian

The link to the project is here

Deborah Hamon in Berlin

Deborah Hamon has her first solo show in Germany at the moment. To be more precise, she actually has two solo shows. One with her paintings and one with her photographs. If you are in Berlin make sure you go and see the shows at Galerie Schuster and at Galerie Schuster Photo. The link to the gallery's homepage is here The show runs through March 29.





Deborah Hamon, American Girl at Galerie Schuster, Berlin

Perfect Life -More Pure

To see more of this series, check it out here

Back To Basic II

Another series is back to basic. If you want to see "The Perfect Life - Pure", check it out here



© all images Michael Werner

Back To Basic

I just updated my website with a new or better say the original version of my series "Germantales". Here I went back to basic, which means the photographs without any digital enhancements, just pure. This is how I feel after I thought a lot about my work and where I want to go with. Of course the Germantales-Remixed" is what I still like, but I'm not sure whether I want to have it as my main portfolio. I rather go for pure. You can check the new series out here





© all images Michael Werner