Kategorien / Themen

Werbung

Erich Hartmann: Ausstellung in München

Vor zehn Jahren verstarb Erich Hartmann in New York. Der 1922 in München geborene Fotograf war gerade von einer Europareise zurückgekehrt und bereitete eine Fotoausstellung vor. 50 Jahre lang hat Erich Hartmann mit Leidenschaft und Empathie das Leben und die Menschen um ihn herum fotografiert…

Ausstellung Erich Hartmann
München clair.me 03.12.2009 bis 30.01.2010

Nach der Flucht mit seiner Familie aus Nazi-Deutschland nach Amerika, arbeitete der 16-jährige Hartmann zuerst in einer Textilfabrik und besuchte die Abendschule am Siena College. Der junge jüdische Flüchtling aus München diente während des zweiten Weltkrieges in der US Armee.
Seine Laufbahn als Fotograf begann nach dem Krieg in New York. 1952 wurde er von Robert Capa eingeladen, sich Magnum, dem internationalen Verband selbständiger Fotojournalisten, anzuschliessen. Von 1967 bis 1986 war er Vorstandsmitglied von Magnum und 1985-1986 Präsident dieser renommierten Fotoagentur.

Ausstellungseröffnung am 03.12.2009 von 19.00 — 22.00 Uhr

Erich Hartmanns Blicke auf Menschen und Dinge, auf Fliessendes, wie auf Erstarrtes ist nie kühl oder distanziert, sondern immer äusserst persönlich und feinfühlig. Hartmann "belichtete" seine Umgebung nicht nur mit einem Instrument, der Kamera, sondern mit den Augen des Herzens, welche verborgene Details oft rascher und besser zu entdecken wissen.
Hartmann, der Humanist und Gentleman der Fotografie sprach mit leiser aber präziser Stimme. Seine Bilder sind Blicke, die uns die verborgene Eleganz des Lebens zeigen.

Zehn Jahre sind seit seinem Ableben vergangen und wir, Anna-Patricia Kahn und Markus Penth, sind stolz darauf, eine Auswahl von Originalabzügen von Erich Hartmanns Arbeiten ausstellen zu dürfen. Die Witwe des Fotografen, die Schriftstellerin Ruth Bains Hartmann wird bei der Vernissage am 3. Dezember anwesend sein.

A Selection of Vintage Photographs

Ruth Bains Hartmann

This exhibit is a reunion of old friends: Anna-Patricia Kahn, Ruth Hartmann and the spirit of Erich Hartmann, represented here by his photographs.

The story began more than a decade ago over lunch near the Viktualienmarkt in Munich. Whenever, in his travels as a photo-journalist, Erich came through Munich he met with Peter Ebel of FOCUS Magazine to discuss ideas for the magazine. This time they agreed on two subjects, both in New York City, Erich’s home: The Diamond District, centered on a block of West 47th Street and The Juilliard String Quartet.

We three, Erich, Anna-Patricia, assigned as writer for both stories, and I spent busy, pleasant days together in New York working and talking about diamonds and music. It was a happy collaboration that resulted in two successful stories. After Erich’s sudden and unexpected death in early 1999 there was a tearful telephone conversation between Anna-Patricia in Jerusalem where she was working and me in New York. Our paths then diverged and there was silence between us until the Spring of 2009 when Anna-Patricia phoned from Munich to ask if she and her partner Markus Penth could mount an exhibit of Erich’s Vintage prints in their Munich gallery, CLAIR.

This is not only a reunion but also a symbolic return to place. Erich Hartmann was born in Munich in a woman"™s hospital near Sendlinger Tor in 1922. His childhood was spent in the beautiful river city of Passau until his father’s business was appropriated by the Nazis whose young sons regularly beat up their Jewish schoolmates. The family fled to Munich, seeking invisibility in a big city until the political terror passed, a madness that seemed unthinkable in cultured Central Europe in the country of Beethoven, Bach and Goethe.
Yet the terror persisted and intensified and in 1938 the family – father, mother and three children, Erich at sixteen the eldest – fled once again via Berlin and Hamburg to the United States.

Erich returned briefly to Bavaria as an American soldier near the end of the Second World War, and in later years, as a successful photo-journalist, on many assignments.
Now his friends invite you to view these photographs which are here to say, „I am back and here is my work“.

ERICH HARTMANN
American, b. Germany 1922, d. USA 1999

Born in Munich, Germany, Erich Hartmann was sixteen when he came with his family in l938 to Albany, New York, refugees from Nazi Germany. The only English speaker in the family, he worked in a textile mill, attending evening high school and later taking night courses at Siena College.

When the U. S. entered the Second World War he enlisted in the U.S. Army, trained in Virginia and at Ohio State University, served in England, the invasion into Normandy and in the battles across Europe where, at the war"™s end, he was assigned as court interpreter at Nazi trials in Cologne.
In early 1946 he came to New York City where he worked as assistant to a portrait photographer and then as a free lance. His portrait subjects over the years included Walter Gropius, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Koestler, Rachel Carson, Marcel Marceau, Gidon Kremer and many other literary and musical personalities. Invited to join Magnum Photos in l952 he was for many years on the Board of Directors, becoming President in l985.

Hartmann first became known to the wider public through his work for „Fortune“ magazine in the 1950s. His poetic approach to science, industry and architecture shone through the photo essays „Shapes of Sound“, „The Building of Saint Lawrence Seaway“, and „The Deep North.“ He later did similar essays on the poetics of science and technology for French, German and American "Geo" and other magazines.

He traveled extensively, dividing his time between editorial assignments for publications world-wide, and annual reports for IBM, Boeing, RCA, Mead Paper Co., Ford Motor Company, Citroen, Citicorp, Schlumberger, Steuben Glass, All-Nippon Airways, Kimberly Clark, Pillsbury, The European Space Research Organization and numerous others. His editorial work included major features on Art, Travel, Architecture, Music, Technology, Science and Industry for magazines in the United States, Europe and Japan. During the Vietnam War he traveled to Saigon with representatives of the Fellowship of Reconciliation to meet with South Vietnamese Peace Activists.

Over the years he was Lecturer at the Summer Academy in Salzburg, Austria, taught at the Syracuse University School of Journalism, the University of Maryland, the "Design and Content" series at New York University and participated in many photographic symposia and workshops in the U.S. and Europe. He was the recipient of numerous prizes, awards and citations including the Photokina Award, Cologne, Germany, International Award from CRAF, Italy, the Newhouse Citation in Photography, medals and awards from Art Directors"™ Clubs.

His principal interest, in photography and in life, was the way in which people relate to their natural surroundings and to the environments that they have created. He documented not only industry and high technology — glass-making, aviation, agriculture and food production, scientific research, space exploration, construction, information processing — but also the human cultural and geographical context: Shakespeare"™s England; James Joyce"™s Dublin, Thomas Mann"™s Venice, a U. S. presidential election, train travel through Europe, musicians and music-making wherever he traveled.

His personal projects reveal a fascination with the beauty embodied in technology: the abstract patterns of ink drops in water, laser light in natural and man-made environments, intimate portraits of precision-manufactured components. His most penetrating and poignant work explores the emptiness that can lie within the world human beings make for themselves: a mannequin factory crowded with inanimate yet suffering faces; the alienation of the modern workplace; and the mute, horrifying remains of the Nazi concentration camps.

Erich Hartmann was married for 52 years to Ruth Bains; she, their son, Nicholas Hartmann, daughter, Celia Hartmann, and granddaughters Emily and Alice Garfield survive him.

Exhibitions

2008 "A Place in Maine"™ — Magnum Gallery, Paris
2008 "Music-Makers"™ — United World College of the Adriatic, Duino, Italy
2007 "Mannequin Factory" — Ikona Gallery, Venice, Italy
2006 "Writing with Light"™ — Atlas Gallery, London
2005 "Writing with Light"™ – Artefact Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland
2005 "Dublin 1964"™ – Robinson Gallery Memphis, Tennessee
2004 "Dublin 1964"™ – Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland
2004 "A 1960 Transatlantic Crossing on RMS Queen Elizabeth"™, South Street Seaport Museum, New York
2000 — 2002 "Where I Was "- Fotohof Salzburg, Austria ; Leica Gallery, New York ; Sankt Anna Kapelle, Passau, Germany ; Jewish Museum, Munich, Germany ; Leica Gallery, Tokyo
1995 – 2008 "In the Camps"™ : Arc de Triomphe, Paris ; Goethe House, New York ; Leica Gallery, New York ; NGBK Gallery, Berlin ; Kunsthaus, Hamburg ; St. Anna Kapelle, Passau, Germany ; National Monument , Camp Vught, Netherlands; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome ; Villa Cian, Spilimbergo, Italy ; Sala San Leonardo, Venice ; Lucca Festival ; Villa Manin, Italy and other venues.
1991 "High Technology"™ – Berlin, Bonn and elsewhere in Europe
1989 "Musicians at Work"™ – Lockenhaus Music Festival, Austria
1988 "Veritas"™ -Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York
1987 "Washington"™ — Magnum Gallery, Paris
1985 "The Heart of Technology"™ – Paris, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Tokyo
1984 "Erich Hartmann Slept Here"™ – Residenz Gallery, Salzburg
1983 "Macroworld," – Olympus Galleries in Paris, Hamburg, Tokyo, London
1982 "Train Journey" – New York Paris, Tokyo, Hamburg ; numerous other venues in the U.S.
1982 "Europe in Space"™ – Photographers"™ Gallery London ; also shown in Paris
1978 "A Play of Light"™ – Neikrug Gallery, New York
1977 "Photographs with a Laser"™ – AIGA Gallery, New York ; Fiolet Gallery, Amsterdam
1976 "Carnet de Route & Natures Mortes"™ – Photogalerie, Paris
1971 "Mannequin Factory"™ – Underground Gallery, New York, Fiolet Gallery Amsterdam, also shown in Paris
1962 "Our Daily Bread"™ – The Coliseum, New York, Department of Agriculture, Washington and other venues in the U.S.
1956 "Sunday with the Bridge"™ – Museum of the City of New York, New York, Brooklyn Museum

Books

2000 "Where I Was"™, Otto Müller Verlag, Austria
1995 "In The Camps"™, W.W. Norton Company USA ; also published in England, France, Germany and Italy
1972 "Au Clair de la Terre"™, European Space Research Organization and Arcade, (published in U.S. as "Space Focus Earth ")
1965 „About OXO,“ Spectator Publications, USA

Erich Hartmann: Ein verspäteter Liebesdienst

Comments are closed.