The festival «Fashion and Style in Photography 2009» in the «New Manezh» open three exhibitions: «The Legendary Lee Miller», «Retrospective» Jean-Pierre and «The legacy of Bauhaus in Chicago» Nathan Lerner

As part of the recently opened in Moscow on the sixth international festival «Fashion and Style in Photography 2009» in the «New Manezh» now are three interesting exhibitions:

«Legendary Lee Miller»

She was a girl from the cover of Vogue, muzoy Manx Ray and Picasso recognized fashion photographer ... and a military photographer, withdrawing the release of Dachau and Buchenwald.

A lot of models to appear on the pages of magazines published by Condé Nast, but you can tell, none of them, Lee Miller could not say that by the father of open-founder of the company. One day in 1927, Mr. Nast vydernul a future star from the wheel just does not run her car.

For the first time she appeared on the cover of Vogue in the drawn form: Lepap Georges (Georges Lepape) depicted it as a fashionable flapper-girl on a background of skyscrapers in New York. Then the blonde Valkyrie photographing the best craftsmen, including Nicholas Murray (Nickolas Murray) and Edward Stayhen (Edward Steichen). For two years she shot for Vogue and regularly supplied with food for gossip philistine - appeared in the highest light in society Vanderbiltov, Charlie Chaplin, Fred Aster and not afraid to pull advertising hygienic tampons Kotex (such as advertising for the first time involved a real and not painted by a woman , the scandal turned out fine). Rented it for the advertising Edward Stayhen, it provided Lee Miller, reshivshuyu go to Paris to study photography, letters to the Menu Reyu.

Man Ray not to take apprentices, but when it was Lee Miller and announced that it will be his disciple, could not deny it - just as during the war it did not resolve disputes or soldiers nor the generals, and it has received access anywhere, such as in the former apartments of Hitler in Munich. (In these apartments, David Sherman made the photographs, then the whole world obletevshie: Lee Miller, bathing in Hitler's private bath.)

said that it was Lee Miller «invented» famous solarization, frightened mouse in proyavochnoy: hand trembled on the switch, and it was accidentally enhanced the light for a short time. This result, and like Lee, and her teacher, and they continue to improve this process. Until now, there is confusion about the authorship of many photographs that are officially attributed to Menu Reyu, but may well be the work Lee Miller.

Their relationship went beyond the scope of «teacher - student» and lasted a long time, but Man Ray - not the first nor the last celebrity to which it connects the rumors. In Paris, Miller met with other participants and surreal movement, as well as many representatives of French Bohemia. She took part in the first film, Jean Cocteau «Blood poet» in the form of armless Greek statues. American photojournalist John Phillips (John Phillips), once said about her that «Lee Miller - an American spirit of freedom in the body of a Greek goddess». Her image has inspired many artists, as well as some eccentric manufacturer who developed the production of glasses for champagne, made in the form of her breasts. From: Pablo Picasso, she made friends for life. Over 36 years of friendship that Lee Miller had made about a thousand photographs of Picasso.

In 1932, Miller returned to New York and opened his own photo, which is quite successfully lasted for two years. Studio was closed down in 1934-m, when Lee decided to marry Egyptian businessman Aziz Elui Bay (Aziz Eloui Bey) and went with him to Cairo. In Egypt, fled from her husband, in the Egyptian desert, it has continued to take photographs. Alarmingly ambiguous pictures of Egyptian-cycle (in particular, «Portrait of Space» /Portrait of Space) shows that it does not lose time for nothing in a society Surrealism.

In 1937, a trip to Paris changed everything: Lee met Roland Penrose (Roland Penrose), surrealist artist, later a writer-biographer (including Picasso, Manx Ray, Miro), who became her second - and last - my husband. Together they traveled to Europe - France, Romania, Greece.

World War II took her to London, but Lee Miller refused to obey orders to evacuate and remained in London to chronicle the wartime as an independent photojournalist. In the future, accredited correspondent of the U.S. Army, she rented the Allied landing, the use of napalm during the siege of Saint-Malo, the liberation of Paris, and then - the liberation of concentration camps, Buchenwald and Dachau. When these horrible images laid on the table editor, they accompanied the telegram from the photographer: «I beg you to believe me: it is the truth».

Friends say that after the war it has never been so before, - Lee has become a woman on the brink of depression and sometimes looking for oblivion in alcohol. She rarely told about the war, but the picture of the war, the witness which it was, did not leave her. She left the work of photojournalist, only occasionally performing small jobs for Vogue, and settled in a comfortable house in West Sussex (England), along with her husband, who had already become Sir Roland Penrose. There, she was born the son of Anthony.

In the hospitable house frequently visits friends and remember old times. On the walls of her kitchen with every visit, Picasso was added, and added all the pictures - he liked to go talk to draw mechanically.

Lee Miller died of cancer in 1977 at the age of 70 years. According to her last will, her body cremation and ashes dispelled over the garden.

Throughout life, she hardly paid attention to any promotion of their pictures, feeding aversion to self, and in the 1960's, few people remember that Lee Miller was once the well-known photographer.

We can get acquainted with her works largely through the efforts of her son, Anthony Penrose, who saved the archives of the mother (40 thousands of negatives stored in the attic of his father) and founded the Lee Miller Archive, which in Moscow's «New Manezh »and held the exhibition.

PIERRE ZHAAN Source: mdf.ru


PIERRE ZHAAN Source: mdf.ru

Pierre Zhaan. «Retrospective»

Pierre Zhaan was born on the wooded banks of the Loire. Very soon got acquainted with photography, he elected to his first photographic experiments undergrowth and the dark lanes and a large family home.

becoming a young man, he left his native city and the bank, which worked, and traveled to Paris in the well-known printing and advertising workshop Reymond Jew. At the time, every good photographer should possess not only the secrets of photography, but also the ability to print your photos - Pierre Zhaan has talent and so, and others, bringing their fingerprints to perfection in a dark laboratory.

This was Paris 1930's - a time when Surrealism grew up in the talent of such photographers as Man Ray, Brassay and Lothar and Kertes, Duano, Izis and Ronis photographed for newspapers and magazines - Illustration and Vu - the everyday lives of Parisians.

Pierre Zhaan showed keen interest to the «year mad» and to the study of society, to enjoy their lives in anticipation of World War II.

Talent Zhaana soon recognized art director, showed the highest brilliance in advertising catalogs large Parisian fashion stores Les Trois Quartiers: his photographs of objects and still life, with its attractive force, flirtatious women attracted to the store on the square Madeleine.

Pierre Zhaan - a man-Orchestra in the field of photography: he made the remarkable images of the World Fair, at the same time continuing to study the everyday life of its own capital.

But the war had suspended his photographic work, as well as the work of many of his colleagues: film became a scarce commodity, but, more importantly, Zhaan has refused to submit their photos of the German censors. In fact, he has persisted for several years, but in secret, working on moving his theme: the dismantling, removal and melting for the German front in copper and bronze statues and monuments of Paris. A few years later, he showed these precious images of his friend, the poet Jean Cocteau, who advised them to publish. Thus in 1946 a famous book «The Death and statues» Pierre Zhaana photos and text by Jean Cocteau.

However, during the occupation became paradoxically beneficial for Zhaana: he directed the photography for the fashion magazines and advertising campaigns Brigan spirits brands, has just launched the company Pige. These photos show the author succeeded in the country, economically enslaving war: photography in the streets of the city, daylight, historical sites in Paris, shooting people in full-length, often in the front, the elimination of complex scenery - sometimes just a dog or a jeep, a symbol of that never-ending war . In addition, the fashion that he showed, - «poor» fashion: a warm jacket, shoes tankette and short dresses. In these works Zhaan, usually with the skill of using artificial lighting, played on a neutral, natural light, showing that the military life is like for the staples of life to this.

Pierre Zhaan, the shy, pretty reticent person lyubivshy work on the conscience, with diligence and ingenuity, managed to join the atmosphere of the war years and became, in some ways, its history.

Guvon Agnes de Saint-Cyr

• NATHAN Lerner Sleep in the suitcase. Chicago. 1935
  Source: mdf.ru
  NATHAN Lerner Rotunda number 2. Chicago. 1936
  Source: mdf.ru

Nathan Lerner. «The legacy of Bauhaus in Chicago»

Nathan Lerner - an artist with many talents: painter, designer, teacher and part photographer. Art Lerner in the field of photography has received due recognition is not at once. His moving images of the working quarters of Maxwell Street and the formal experiments of the New Bauhaus located at the intersection of different traditions and formed the basis for cultural exchange between Europe and America.

Nathan Lerner was born in 1913 in Chicago, emigrated from Russia in a Jewish family. He began painting at an early age, attending classes at school Samuel Ostrofski Art Chicago. To improve its picturesque style Lerner in 1935, photographed working quarter Maxwell Street. In this quarter from the end of XIX century settled Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe, there is also a refuge, and other waves of immigrants, as well as blacks from the southern U.S. states. In 1930 Maxwell Street, is one of the poorest quarters of the city. Numerous photographs Lerner are not only an invaluable document the history of America, the Great Depression, but also evidence of his artistic experiments in the field of composition and kadrirovki.

In 1937, Lerner became one of the first painters that have come to the New Bauhaus, founded Mohoy-Nadem in Chicago. The entire staff of this school consisted of former students and teachers of the German Bauhaus. Nathan Lerner immediately felt at home there. Continuing its picturesque experiments, Lerner turned to study the possibility of light and built a light box to experiment with forms and materials. He did as «light pictures» (photogram), and created with the help of mirrors, what he called «the installation without scissors».

For the second course Lerner assisted György Kepeshu the Workshop Light, yet does not become in 1941 its head. At the end of 1945 Mohoy-Nagy invited him to give lessons in the school of design, and in 1946 appointed him as dean, and later head of the entire educational process. It gradually evolved Photographic School, which at different times included Henry Holmes Smith, Harry Callahan, and Arthur Bernard Siegel, Myron Kozman, Milton Halbershtadt Frank Levstik and Aaron Siskind.

Three years after the death of Mohoy, Nadia, 1949 Lerner resigned from the Bauhaus and photography classes ended. Together with Hinom Bredendikom, a former Bauhaus student, he founded a design studio that specializes in household items: containers, bubbles, toys, lamps, furniture team. He has created a modular home, which in 1951 built himself a 48 hours, and the famous plastic bear to honey - Honeybear - emblematic object of American marketing.

Lerner returned to photography in the early 1970's, and then used color film for the first time during his trip to Japan with his wife Kiyoko.

Exhibition Lee Miller, Jean-Pierre and Nathan Lerner can be seen until April 12, in «New Manezh» (St George's Lane., 3, p. 3) from 10.00 to 19.00 every day except Mondays.

Sources: mdf.ru , photographer.ru