I Nizozemac Erwin Olaf je komercijalan modni fotograf i filmaš, kaže da je u modi naravno riječ o nedostižnim tijelima, o žudnji i fikciji, i da vas roditelji trebaju upozoriti na razliku između fikcije i stvarnosti, a ne modna industrija. Njegove zasićeno artificijelne i filmične rekonstrukcije povijesnih, građanskih i psiholoških epoha reklamnom sublimnošću pokazuju da je i sam život nedohvatna fikcija, da nikad ne živite, nego samo žudite za životom. Otuđenje je ok, ajmo ga pretvoriti u nešto nostalgično i avangardno-cool i mrvicu bizarno, pa na njemu i zaraditi, kao da kaže u sebi.
Filmići:
Keyhole ovdje
Dusk & Dawn ovdje
Vente privee desire:
Annoyed Bedroom ovdje
Wet:
Rouge:
Spanking Clowns ovdje
La tristesse riche:
Black Tea Party:
Erwin Olaf - Views on Vermeer:
Studio Erwin Olaf
The photo series was presented with two corresponding short films, that were played in unison, to mirror each other. I was once again blown away by his work. The contrast of period detail with his modern, glossy style is perfect, and seems to run parallel with a lot of contemporary tv shows that adopt that 50′s/ 60′s aesthetic – Desperate Housewives, Twin Peaks, and Mad Men being three examples, but you can also see the style in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours (2002) and Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven (2002). Like these examples, Olaf’s photography uses the veneer of super-glossy perfection to explore the reality of human loneliness and social alienation. Olaf’s characters are either lost in the frame, dwarved by their surroundings, or staring vacantly at the audience or into space. Each of his photos seems to tell a little story (it’s understable why he’s also a film director, as he’s clearly fascinated by people and stories). Though Olaf seems to set a lot of his work in the past, there’s a timelessness to his work, a stillness of emotion and frame, that is quite perfect.
The series below are from the exhibition at the Hermitage, called ‘Dusk’ and ‘Dawn’. For a comprehensive look at his photos, check out his website:
- bettyswallow.wordpress.com/
Hope Exhibition:
Rain Exhibition:
The Siege of Leiden:
Erwin Olaf's art visualizes implicitly the unspoken, the overlooked, that typically resist easy documentation. Olaf's trademark is to address social issues, taboos, and bourgeois conventions in a highly stylized and cunning mode of image making. With his razor-sharp aesthetic intuition, Olaf purposely conceals his themes, so that the viewer has to accept the initial concealment in Olaf's photo series. Yet in the end, his unconventional style never misses to deliver dramatic visual and emotional impact.By taking care of the scenic and lightning design, and the utmost perfect composition in his typical, immaculate Olafian way, together with his passion for flawlessly conceiving scenarios, Olaf vividly captures the essence of contemporary life.
Mixing photojournalism with studio photography, Olaf emerged on the international art scene in 1988, when his series Chessmen was awarded the first prize in the Young European Photographer competition. This award was followed by an exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany in the same year. Deliberately disturbing and intended to raise awareness, Olaf committed himself in his earlier work on the subject of social exclusion in which he explored issues of class, race, sexual taste, beliefs, habits and grace. In his recent series Rain (2004), Hope (2005), Grief (2007) and Fall (2008) Olaf challenges the notion of domestic bliss. Dusk (2009) and Dawn (2010) show how culture can become repression, despite a beautiful appearance. A similar disengagement takes place in Olaf's Hotel (2010) series in which he explores the subtle range of detached melancholic emotions in dimly-lit exquisitely furnished 1950s hotel rooms.
In 1991 he began working with film which has since continued to be an important medium for his art. Often these movies provide a parallel history to his color photography. Olaf's visually sophisticated and conceptually provocative style has been embraced by the advertising world. His worldwide campaigns for Diesel Jeans and Heineken won him the coveted Silver Lion at the Cannes Lions Festival for Advertising. In 2010 Louis Vuitton commissioned Olaf for a portrait series in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. He also won numerous other international art and media prizes, such as Photographer of the Year in the International Colour Awards in 2006, and Kunstbeeld magazine's Artist of the Year of the Netherlands in 2007. Recently he received a Lucie Award for his entire oeuvre. Recent monographs are Erwin Olaf, Aperture Foundation, New York, (2008) and Vite Private, Contrasto, Milan (2010). - www.ba-reps.com/
Royal Blood Portraits:
Hope Exhibition:
Rain Exhibition:
The Siege of Leiden:
Erwin Olaf's art visualizes implicitly the unspoken, the overlooked, that typically resist easy documentation. Olaf's trademark is to address social issues, taboos, and bourgeois conventions in a highly stylized and cunning mode of image making. With his razor-sharp aesthetic intuition, Olaf purposely conceals his themes, so that the viewer has to accept the initial concealment in Olaf's photo series. Yet in the end, his unconventional style never misses to deliver dramatic visual and emotional impact.By taking care of the scenic and lightning design, and the utmost perfect composition in his typical, immaculate Olafian way, together with his passion for flawlessly conceiving scenarios, Olaf vividly captures the essence of contemporary life.
Mixing photojournalism with studio photography, Olaf emerged on the international art scene in 1988, when his series Chessmen was awarded the first prize in the Young European Photographer competition. This award was followed by an exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany in the same year. Deliberately disturbing and intended to raise awareness, Olaf committed himself in his earlier work on the subject of social exclusion in which he explored issues of class, race, sexual taste, beliefs, habits and grace. In his recent series Rain (2004), Hope (2005), Grief (2007) and Fall (2008) Olaf challenges the notion of domestic bliss. Dusk (2009) and Dawn (2010) show how culture can become repression, despite a beautiful appearance. A similar disengagement takes place in Olaf's Hotel (2010) series in which he explores the subtle range of detached melancholic emotions in dimly-lit exquisitely furnished 1950s hotel rooms.
In 1991 he began working with film which has since continued to be an important medium for his art. Often these movies provide a parallel history to his color photography. Olaf's visually sophisticated and conceptually provocative style has been embraced by the advertising world. His worldwide campaigns for Diesel Jeans and Heineken won him the coveted Silver Lion at the Cannes Lions Festival for Advertising. In 2010 Louis Vuitton commissioned Olaf for a portrait series in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. He also won numerous other international art and media prizes, such as Photographer of the Year in the International Colour Awards in 2006, and Kunstbeeld magazine's Artist of the Year of the Netherlands in 2007. Recently he received a Lucie Award for his entire oeuvre. Recent monographs are Erwin Olaf, Aperture Foundation, New York, (2008) and Vite Private, Contrasto, Milan (2010). - www.ba-reps.com/
Royal Blood Portraits:
Hotel Series:
Laboral Escena Gijon:
De la Mar Thetre:
Keyhole:
Erwin Olaf: Recent Work
The avant-garde fashion photographer talks about the genesis of his haunting investigation into human loneliness
Text by John-Paul Pryor
The fashion photography of Erwin Olaf has always displayed a taste for the mysterious, unsettling and surreal. Whether he is mutilating aristocratic beauty in his Royal Blood series, creating scenes of sexual tension in iconic works such as Schoolgirl or shooting androgynous models puking up clutches of pearls, he never fails to challenge notions of beauty and evoke a universe of moody, air-brushed perfection that is one-part Edward Hopper and two-parts David Lynch. In the exhibition Recent Work, currently being exhibited at London's Hamiltons Gallery, Olaf explores existential angst and isolation against the backdrop of dimly-lit and slightly sinister 1950s hotel rooms in his Hotel series, and investigates race and fashion in Dusk and Dawn. Dazed stepped into the half-light to find out more…
Dazed Digital: You certainly seem to be reaching for the cinematic in the Hotel series. What led you in that direction with your work? Did you feel disillusioned with mainstream fashion photography?
Erwin Olaf: It's not so much a question of me being disillusioned with mainstream fashion photography, I enjoy and love good avant-garde fashion photography. It is more about the influence that cinema has had on me, and still has. I am very much influenced by 70s movies by the likes of Pasolini, Visconti, Fellini. I love their slow, precise look at human emotion, and I aim to translate that into my photography, and combine it with the aesthetics of the 50s and 60s Those decades are very interesting periods in design, fashion, hair and make-up… It’s not really the nostalgia of that time that catches me, but more the aesthetic.
Dazed Digital: Is the Hotel series an expression of loneliness?
Erwin Olaf: The Hotel series is about alienation and the subtle range of dark emotions that they can give a person. The hotel rooms that I sleep in when I am travelling are all different but the feeling that they give is the same, there is a certain disengagement that takes place.
Dazed Digital: What does the term beauty mean to you?
Erwin Olaf: Beauty is a term that is always in development, it's not a fixed thing and is very much subjective, so to me it’s a perception. In my own life, I seek beauty in nature, for instance the noise of sparrows in the morning, fresh flowers or beautiful design.
Dazed Digital: Can you talk to us about your process?
Erwin Olaf: It differs from project to project, but usually I have a certain feeling or emotion that I want to explore. For instance, with the Grief series I wanted to explore the geography of sadness, so I tried to find out what the range of sadness is. Most of the time, I get ideas when I am lying on the couch, and am just relaxed enough to catch and remember the thought. You never know if the final image is perfect, but I am really happy with an idea when it fulfills the quest that I had in mind.
Dazed Digital: What did you want to communicate about the African-American experience in the Dusk series?
Erwin Olaf: I was intrigued by the fact that there are few African Americans featured very in fine art. Recently, I had a show in North Carolina, and the people of an African-American background had a very strong positive reaction to the works that had black people in them. After being back in Amsterdam, I came across The Hamptons photo albums, and somehow the idea came together.
Dazed Digital: Would you agree that there is a tendency in fashion photography to create an almost aryan vision of the human animal?
Erwin Olaf: In my eyes, the tendency in fashion photography to create an aryan vision of the human animal, as you say, comes from the fact that most fashion photography is created in countries with a mostly white population, or where the lighter population has a strong economic power. In the end, magazines try to sell copies. This is not my opinion, but I think this is one of the things that drive what you call the aryan ideal in fashion photography.
Dazed Digital: What do you think of the argument that fashion creates unattainable images of beauty that perpetuate depression and body dysmorphia?
Erwin Olaf: Fashion does create unattainable images of beauty, and I think that that is the charm of fashion – it is all about desire, about wanting something that is just out of reach. I do think the industry has a responsibility to make people aware that they are served with illusions, but mostly I think it is a parent's responsibility to bring up their children, and make them aware of the fact that magazines are not reality.
Erwin Olaf na stranici Bernstein & Andriulli
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