Erwin Blumenfeld’s name is symbolic of the avant-garde movement in photography, especially in the field of fashion. Blumenfeld was born in Berlin in 1897 to a Jewish bourgeois family and was quick to align himself with the Dadaist movement, especially in his photographic practice. In his autobiography, “Eye to I,” Blumenfeld spoke of his conception as nonchalantly as he did of an imaginary account of his death. A new exhibition at Osborne Samuel Gallery, London, titled, “Erwin Blumenfeld: From Dada to Vogue,” will showcase his early works, some never before seen in the UK. Curated by Lou Proud, the exhibition recounts Blumenfeld’s journey from Europe to America with a marked focus on his Dadaist collages and experimental photography.Blumenfeld’s work in his formative years aren’t as well known as his magazine work, especially for Vogue. This exhibition puts out original black-and-white silver gelatin prints, collages, drawings and personal objects, thus aiming to understand the thought process behind Blumenfeld’s iconic photographs and pioneering technique. His most remembered ‘doe eye’ cover shot for Vogue is part of the show as curator Proud reveals the inspiration behind Blumenfeld’s wide practice as an avant-garde artist. Blumenfeld influenced several photographers, but he liked being spoken of as an amateur, even expressing an intention to remain an amateur so that his decision to make the kind of photographs he did was never questioned. He didn’t have the easiest personal life, losing his father and brother early on. However, that didn’t stop him from thinking outside of the events in his life. He experimented with self-portraits in his teens, even dressing up as other people. It was Man Ray’s photographs that influenced Blumenfeld enough to think about solarization and multiple exposures in his own darkroom experiments.These influences and techniques never left his work, as most obvious in “Manina (Solarized and Cut),” 1937 and “Shadowed Silhouettes,” 1953. The rare works in the show are a delight, especially the collage, “Madonna of War (Nun), Amsterdam,” 1923, where Blumenfeld juxtaposes a picture of a nun with an extended, colored sketch and fills up the frame on the sides with photographs of battlefields. In Amsterdam, many such collages were made under the pseudonym, “Jan Bloomfield” and eventually caught photographer Cecil Beaton’s attention, who further led him into the world of fashion photography. Speaking of Blumenfeld, curator Proud says, “It’s fascinating how someone who did everything possible to stretch, bend and break the existing boundaries of traditional photography, managed to create works that reach far beyond what we could ever dream that the medium of photography would and could deliver, leaving us in memoriam, with what only can be described as solidified magic.”“Erwin Blumenfeld: From Dada to Vogue” will open on October 5, 2016 and run through October 29, 2016 at Osborne Samuel Gallery, London
↧