Walter Möbius’ archways

Walter Möbius :: Frauenstein (Erzgebirge). Burgruine. Blick durch einen Torbogen, 1929 | src Deutsche Fotothek
Walter Möbius :: Axenstraße, Galerie, Schweiz, vor 1959 | src Deutsche Fotothek
Walter Möbius :: Blick in den Burghof. Die Salzburg, Neustadt (Bayern), um 1934 | src Deutsche Fotothek

Blüten von Walter Möbius

Walter Möbius :: Birnenblüte bei Diesbar, um 1924 | src Deutsche Fotothek
Walter Möbius :: Echte Schlüsselblume (Primula veris), auch Himmelsschlüssel, im Weißeritztal, um 1924 | Deutsche Fotothek
Walter Möbius :: Birnenblüte, aufgenommen bei Cossebaude, um 1924 | Deutsche Fotothek
Walter Möbius :: Sumpfporst in Blüte (und Hände), um 1924 | src Deutsche Fotothek

Märzbecher von Walter Möbius

Walter Möbius :: Märzenbecher (Leucojum vernum) im Polenztal, Sächsische Schweiz, 1929 | src Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek
Walter Möbius :: Märzenbecher (Leucojum vernum) im Polenztal, Sächsische Schweiz, 1929 | src Deutsche Fotothek
Walter Möbius :: Frühlingsknotenblume (Leucojum vernum), auch Märzenbecher, Märzbecher, Märzglöckchen oder Großes Schneeglöckchen genannt, im Polenztal, um 1935 | src Deutsche Fotothek
Walter Möbius :: Frühlingsknotenblume (Leucojum vernum), auch Märzenbecher, Märzbecher, Märzglöckchen oder Großes Schneeglöckchen genannt, im Polenztal, um 1935 | src Deutsche Fotothek
Walter Möbius :: Märzenbecher (Leucojum vernum) im Polenztal, Sächsische Schweiz, 1929 | src Deutsche Fotothek

Katzen von d’Ora – Benda

Atelier d’Ora ~ Benda :: Katzen, Wiener Tierschutzverein (Cats, for the Benefit for the Vienna Animal Protection Society), ca. 1930

Northern noir · Kourtney Roy

Kourtney Roy :: Northern noir, 2015 | src Kourtney Roy
Kourtney Roy :: Northern noir, 2015 | src Kourtney Roy
Kourtney Roy :: Northern noir, 2015 | src Kourtney Roy

Northern noir

The world has a secret potential to transform itself at any moment into a film set.

Northern Noir was photographed during the summer and winter of 2015 in Northern Ontario and British Columbia, Canada. My intent was to create a series of film stills taken from an unknown and fictional film, more precisely, a crime film. I wanted to photograph the non-events that encircle the places where transgressive acts may have taken place. The banality of the scenes photographed both hides and yet hints at the presence of shady and malevolent happenings. These fragments capture unintentional and marginal details. Their mundane and anecdotal qualities are fetishized and magnified, adding a sense of dread to the otherwise indifferent and un-extraordinary decors. The series was realised over several road trips through the wilderness and towns of my youth. The facet of memory, my memory, real or imagined, links itself to the screen memories of the film still. The road is not only a physical space but also a space of the imagination, a state of mind where the past and present convene. These stills of a nameless film intertwine with the aura of a specific place and time, melding the impervious with the personal.

quoted from artist’s website

Kourtney Roy :: Northern noir, 2015 | src Kourtney Roy
Kourtney Roy :: Northern noir, 2015 | src Kourtney Roy

Roy has produced several series which all share the artist’s bold and cinematic aesthetic. Staged in laundrettes, motels, supermarkets and various other banal locations Roy creates hyper-realistic images that resemble film stills. Throughout her work Roy plays with ideas of the bizarre and the uncanny, whether it be a lone female figure walking along a deserted road in a vast landscape or a woman photographed through the wing mirror of a car, Roy’s photographs are permeated with an unsettling air. In her work Roy creates familiar still images of stereotyped heroines, using herself as the model Roy invents numerous characters for herself. This is a crucial element to her work, Roy has stated “It’s usually the male gaze, and the woman is the object to be looked at. So the idea was becoming the person who objectifies, but also objectifying myself. I just thought it was interesting to play the dual role.” quoted from Huxleyparlour Gallery

Kourtney Roy’s work is bound up in an ambiguous and cinematic image-making that borders the real and the fantastic. Her approach to photography provokes contemplation and reconfiguration of common place subjects via playful revelation of the bizarre and the uncanny. She is fascinated with exploring the boundaries of liminal spaces; whether spatial, temporal or psychological. By using herself as the principal subject in her work, the artist creates a compelling, intimate universe inhabited by a multitude of diverse characters that explore these enigmatic themes. (quoted from Kourtney Roy)

Kauffmann · Tall grass

John Kauffmann (1864 – 1942) :: Tall grass on the bank of a river, Melbourne (?), ca.1910 (?), toned carbon print. | src AGSA

Laurence Sackman · Insomnia

Laurence Sackman :: Insomnia, 1972 – courtesy in camera galerie. | src ODLP ~ l’œil de la photographie
Laurence Sackman :: Insomnia, 1972 – courtesy in camera galerie. | src ODLP ~ l’œil de la photographie
Laurence Sackman :: Insomnia, 1972 - courtesy in camera galerie. | src ODLP ~ l'œil de la photographie
Laurence Sackman :: Insomnia, 1972 – courtesy in camera galerie. | src ODLP ~ l’œil de la photographie
Laurence Sackman :: Insomnia, 1972 - courtesy in camera galerie. | src ODLP ~ l'œil de la photographie
Laurence Sackman :: Insomnia, 1972 – courtesy in camera galerie. | src ODLP ~ l’œil de la photographie
Laurence Sackman :: Insomnia, 1972 - courtesy in camera galerie. | src ODLP ~ l'œil de la photographie
Laurence Sackman :: Insomnia, 1972 – courtesy in camera galerie. | src ODLP ~ l’œil de la photographie

Laurence Sackman ~ 1

Laurence Sackman :: Untitled. Courtesy Galerie in camera. | src ODLP ~ l’œil de la photographie
Laurence Sackman :: Table girl, NY, 1976. Courtesy Galerie in camera. | src ODLP ~ l’œil de la photographie
Eija, Paris, 1973. Courtesy Galerie in camera. | src ODLP ~ l’œil de la photographie

Laurence Sackman (1948 – 2020) started his career at the early sixties in the sulfurous world of fashion and advertising. His photographs were published in every great magazines of that time, Vogue, Stern, Sunday Times, Elle, Marie-Claire… The off-the-wall spirit of his photographs made him one of the most iconic photographers of the 70s and 80s, assisted by Paolo Roversi, and by the side of Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton.

His photographs are powerful, explosive, and sometimes erotic, they witness the passion and craziness that inhabited him for decades. He had a great mastery of black and white and colors. Intense and raw, the use of these shades made his work singular.

Only a hundred prints are left from his career, most of them disappeared during his life. quoted from ODLP

London, 1971. Courtesy Galerie in camera. | src ODLP ~ l’œil de la photographie

In partnership with Fabienne Martin, the galerie in camera gallery lifts the veil on the work of Laurence Sackman, cult fashion photographer of the 1980s.

Laurence Sackman was born in 1948 in Wembley, a suburb of north London. He started out in photography at the age of 14, assisting still life photographer Sidney Pisan, who also practiced as a dentist. With Pisan, the young Sackman was initiated to the ring-flash that his mentor used in his medical practice and in his artistic activity. A few years later, Sackman was one of the first fashion photographers to use this type of shadow-reducing lighting.

Laurence Sackman’s contribution to photography cannot be reduced to pretty lights polished in the studio. His work, both poetic and subversive, strongly tinged with eroticism, had the imprint of a lively sensitivity. An era is reflected in it, where all daring was permitted.

His exceptional mastery and sharp gaze hatched on the cusp of the “swinging sixties”. London, the capital of pop culture, that blew a breath of freedom in art, music and fashion. Twenty years old in 1968, Sackman was part of this hedonistic youth, in full sexual liberation, eager to live in a more liberal and permissive society.

He began by photographing his relatives, his wife Rémi, his cousins. The star models of the decade posed in front of his lens: Anglo-Indian Chandrika Casali, muse of Guy Bourdin and David Bailey, the iconic Grace Jones, or Renate Zatsch, muse of Helmut Newton. Without forgetting Twiggy, emblematic model of the “swinging London”.

Laurence Sackman’s images are often transgressive. His signature was essential in magazines. He worked for Esquire, Stern, Queen, The Sunday Times, Nova, the New York Times. In Paris, the Jardin des Modes and Vogue Hommes requested him.

Friend of photographer Steve Hiett who introduced him in 1970 to Claude Brouet, editor-in-chief of Marie-Claire and to Emile Laugier, its talented artistic director, Sackman left no one indifferent. Emile Laugier remembers a young man with bright intelligent eyes, high standards, with very precise directing ideas, he knew exactly what he wanted. Alain Lekim, Laurence Sackman’s assistant for a few years, was so fascinated by the artist that he abandoned a very promising start to his career in photography to devote himself to him. The famous Paolo Roversi was his assistant. But then found Sackman “difficult to live with” but testifies “that he taught him everything”.

At that time, the name of Sackman was on everyone’s lips in the fashion microcosm. We only talked about his eccentricities, and, above all, his modernity, his inventiveness. Sackman carried out advertising campaigns for prominent brands: Saint-Laurent, Audi, De Beers.

One day, at the request of Yves Saint-Laurent himself, Sackman attended the preparatory meeting for a campaign where ideas were exchanged. What would he propose? To take pictures on the moon…

When asked about the posterity of his style, Helmut Newton saw himself with two heirs: Laurence Sackman and Chris von Wagenheim. In fact, Sackman was  the referent photographer of the 80s.

In 1983, he did his last opus, a series of nudes produced in room 65 of the Hotel La Louisiane, which became in a way his testament. According to him, the series constitutes his most successful work.

Suffering from psychiatric disorders, Laurence Sackman ended his photographic activity in 1984.

In this regard, he confided in 2017: “When I stopped photography, I felt like I had done everything I wanted to do. I had no regrets. I firmly believe that I would have repeated myself had I continued. ”

Such was Laurence Sackman, a celestial body, a comet that crossed the eighties.

Fabienne Martin (Galerie in camera)

Untitled nude by Wynn Bullock

Wynn Bullock :: Untitled, 1940s. Photogravure printed 1971. White Knight Auction via liveauctioneers

Theda Bara · A Fool There Was

Theda Bara (The Vampire) in her first starring role in A Fool There Was (1915). Private collection. | src Wikimedia Commons