[Leica] Berlin exhibitions

[Christer Almqvist <christer@almqvist.net>]

While on a trip to Berlin last week-end I went and had a look at two 
exhibitions.

The Neue Nationalgalerie  shows Helmuth Newton's "Work"  (that's what 
the exhibition is called) until 7th January. His wife Alice Springs 
is the curator, and they show pictures covering his whole career. He 
is 80 now so there are a lot of pictures. Some of the 1970 pictures 
look quite dated now, although they were the cutting edge of that 
type of photography at the time. Some of the very large prints are 
'high density laser prints' and I could not tell the difference from 
a silver RC print. Looking at them at a close distance, the grain 
structure is exactly like on a large conventional format silver print 
looked at through as strong loupe. Tri-X and D-76 that is. Newton has 
probably influenced photography a lot, but I do not get excited over 
the pictures any more. Actually I found it more interesting to look 
at the audience, both the way they dressed (this obviously is the 
'in' exhibition that attracts a lot of the artistic snobs) and to 
hear and see how they reacted to the pictures. Photography is 
permitted inside the exhibition (no flash, but I don't have one 
anyway) and I hope I got a few good photos there.

Camera Art (or Camera Work) is a commercial gallery in the 
Kantstrasse and they had (yes, had: last day was Sunday) a Will 
McBride exhibition. A wealth of pictures, many of them with his 
personal remarks written in pencil on the passe partout. There were 
pictures of JFK in the Oval Office, of Adenauer in the garden, but 
also many of those pictures that redefined photo journalism in 
Germany in the sixties and seventies ('twen' magazine to mention just 
one example). Many of the latter photos are time-less although they 
picture hippie generation type people that are less common today - 
but may be with us again sometime. The prints were priced between two 
and five thousand Deutschmarks, and, judging from the little red 
dots, turnover was good. While I was there, there was this tall, 
thin,  gentleman with glasses and an hearing aid complaining that 
some red dots had fallen off and that  that was not good for sales, 
because if people saw a lot of red dots they would want to buy even 
more. That was Will himself, and I had an opportunity to say hello, 
shake his hand and take a photograph.

Chris
- -- 
Christer Almqvist
D-20255 Hamburg, Germany and/or
F-50590 Regnéville-sur-Mer, France