Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin
20 Jan - 12 Feb 2011
ADAM BROOMBERG & OLIVER CHANARIN
20 January - 12 February 2011
In a new exhibition at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg, South African born and UK based Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin bring together three powerful series produced in the past four years. People in trouble laughing pushed to the ground (2010), The Day Nobody Died (2008) and The Red House (2007) are all located within zones of conflict – Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq respectively.
At times hauntingly beautiful and engagingly uncanny, People in trouble laughing pushed to the ground was produced by Broomberg and Chanarin in response to an invitation to work with the Belfast Exposed photographic archive in Northern Ireland. The archive, established by photojournalists around the beginning of the Troubles in the early ’80s, is equally concerned with protests, funerals and acts of terrorism as it is with the more ordinary stuff of life – drinking tea, kissing girls, watching trains. In each instance, the presence of the archivist is discernable through a range of marks and incisions on the contact sheets. Broomberg and Chanarin acknowledge and thank the original photographers Mervyn Smith, Sean Mc Kernan, Gerry Casey, Seamus Loughran and all other contributing photographers to Belfast Exposed’s archive.
The Day Nobody Died was realised by Broomberg and Chanarin in June 2008 during a trip to Afghanistan, where they were embedded with British Army units on the front line in Helmand Province, arriving during the deadliest month of the war. On their first day a BBC fixer was dragged from his car and executed and nine Afghan soldiers were killed in a suicide attack. The following day the number of British combat fatalities was pushed to 100, with casualties continuing until the fifth day when nobody died. In response to these, as well as a series of more mundane occurrences, Broomberg and Chanarin turned an armoured vehicle into a temporary darkroom, producing a series of peculiar abstract forms modulated by the heat and light, presenting an alternative to the photographic documentation of war.
The Red House is a series of 27 photographs of wall drawings and graphic marks made by Kurdish prisoners held in the former headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist party in northern Iraq. After the 1991 Kurdish uprising this notorious place of incarceration, torture and sometimes death, remained as a monument to the cruelty of war. Cropped and isolated, there is no visual information other than these curious markings, revealing an unexpected bout of expression amidst the monotony, solitude and terror of captivity. “History presents itself as a palimpsest” writes author David Campany. ”The traces recorded by these photographs may relate to past events in the history of the Red House but nothing is settled in Iraq yet. While the photographs are fixed forever, these may not be the last marks made on these walls.”
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin have been collaborating for over a decade. They have produced six books, which in different ways examine the language of documentary photography; Trust (2000) accompanied their first solo-show at The Hasselblad Center; Ghetto (2003) a collection of their work as editors and principal photographers of Colors magazine, was exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum; Mr. Mkhize’s Portrait (2004) documented South Africa ten years after apartheid and accompanied a solo show at The Photographer’s Gallery; Chicago (2006), an exploration of contemporary Israel was published by SteidMACK in conjunction with a solo-show at The Stedelijk Museum; Fig which was published in Autumn 2007, also by Steidl, to accompany solo exhibitions at the John Hansard Gallery and Impressions Gallery, UK. The Red House (2007) is published by Steidl Editions. Broomberg and Chanarin regularly teach workshops and give master classes in photography, as well as teaching on the MA in Documentary Photography at LCC in London and the MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York. They are the recipients of numerous awards, including the Vic Odden Award from the Royal Photographic Society.
20 January - 12 February 2011
In a new exhibition at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg, South African born and UK based Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin bring together three powerful series produced in the past four years. People in trouble laughing pushed to the ground (2010), The Day Nobody Died (2008) and The Red House (2007) are all located within zones of conflict – Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq respectively.
At times hauntingly beautiful and engagingly uncanny, People in trouble laughing pushed to the ground was produced by Broomberg and Chanarin in response to an invitation to work with the Belfast Exposed photographic archive in Northern Ireland. The archive, established by photojournalists around the beginning of the Troubles in the early ’80s, is equally concerned with protests, funerals and acts of terrorism as it is with the more ordinary stuff of life – drinking tea, kissing girls, watching trains. In each instance, the presence of the archivist is discernable through a range of marks and incisions on the contact sheets. Broomberg and Chanarin acknowledge and thank the original photographers Mervyn Smith, Sean Mc Kernan, Gerry Casey, Seamus Loughran and all other contributing photographers to Belfast Exposed’s archive.
The Day Nobody Died was realised by Broomberg and Chanarin in June 2008 during a trip to Afghanistan, where they were embedded with British Army units on the front line in Helmand Province, arriving during the deadliest month of the war. On their first day a BBC fixer was dragged from his car and executed and nine Afghan soldiers were killed in a suicide attack. The following day the number of British combat fatalities was pushed to 100, with casualties continuing until the fifth day when nobody died. In response to these, as well as a series of more mundane occurrences, Broomberg and Chanarin turned an armoured vehicle into a temporary darkroom, producing a series of peculiar abstract forms modulated by the heat and light, presenting an alternative to the photographic documentation of war.
The Red House is a series of 27 photographs of wall drawings and graphic marks made by Kurdish prisoners held in the former headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist party in northern Iraq. After the 1991 Kurdish uprising this notorious place of incarceration, torture and sometimes death, remained as a monument to the cruelty of war. Cropped and isolated, there is no visual information other than these curious markings, revealing an unexpected bout of expression amidst the monotony, solitude and terror of captivity. “History presents itself as a palimpsest” writes author David Campany. ”The traces recorded by these photographs may relate to past events in the history of the Red House but nothing is settled in Iraq yet. While the photographs are fixed forever, these may not be the last marks made on these walls.”
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin have been collaborating for over a decade. They have produced six books, which in different ways examine the language of documentary photography; Trust (2000) accompanied their first solo-show at The Hasselblad Center; Ghetto (2003) a collection of their work as editors and principal photographers of Colors magazine, was exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum; Mr. Mkhize’s Portrait (2004) documented South Africa ten years after apartheid and accompanied a solo show at The Photographer’s Gallery; Chicago (2006), an exploration of contemporary Israel was published by SteidMACK in conjunction with a solo-show at The Stedelijk Museum; Fig which was published in Autumn 2007, also by Steidl, to accompany solo exhibitions at the John Hansard Gallery and Impressions Gallery, UK. The Red House (2007) is published by Steidl Editions. Broomberg and Chanarin regularly teach workshops and give master classes in photography, as well as teaching on the MA in Documentary Photography at LCC in London and the MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York. They are the recipients of numerous awards, including the Vic Odden Award from the Royal Photographic Society.