Todi Circular Nº 2 - Ab uno disce omnes

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In this week’s Todi Circular:

Photographer Lucas Blalock, writing from New York, recalls how his year’s Todi Circle (2016), coincided with a turning point in the political landscapes of Europe and the US, with Brexit being voted followed by Trump’s election.
Author Vicki Goldberg reports from her home in New Hampshire, recounting a marvellous and luxurious European episode in her career, just getting in under the Covid wire, so to speak, and enough to make any curator envious.
Photographer and world traveller Ed Burtynsky tells how enforced rootedness at his country home north of Toronto led to a new project, which saw him coming full-circle back close reading of the land.
Hong Kong gallerist Mimi Chun forges ahead with her new Fall programme despite her city’s turmoil, and urges us all to rethink digital strategies.
Madrid-based curator Carlos Gollonet brings us good news about an expansion of the MAPFRE Foundation into Barcelona, while hoping to get his Lee Friedlander retrospective to other venues in Europe.
LACMA curator Britt Salvesen, despite all of California’s troubles, has been busy with essays and exhibitions, notably one being co-produced with the Musée d’Orsay on the visual culture of 19th-century Paris.
Swiss Museum director Tobia Bezzola shares his feelings of extreme uncertainty in the museum world, and its impact on planning for the future.
Historian Anne McCauley, writing from Princeton, looks back on several pockets of photographic history which she feels need closer examination, notably concerning Minor White, Coburn and Steichen.

LUCAS BLALOCK ARTIST NEW YORK

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Recently
Projects I’ve been most proud of in the last 18 months include Your Only Chance to Survive is to Leave with Us, a solo show at Milan’s Galleria Bianconi in the autumn of last year; I’m Not the Only One at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco this fall; Potential Worlds at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; and Countryside, The Future at the Guggenheim, New York.

The Milan show brought together lots of new work I’ve been making since 2017, focusing on real and imagined apocalypses told through photographs, picture discs, sculpture, and video works. I’m Not the Only One was the outcome of a 2015 studio visit from Fraenkel Gallery’s Frish Brandt; I’d completed the eponymously titled video work just a few nights before Frish landed in Manchester. Present circumstances have given the work new life and meaning, and it was thrilling for me to see it inspire a group show that included so many of the greats represented by the gallery.

If the catalogue was anything to go by, Potential Worlds in Zurich looked like a fascinating show. In events consistent with the themes covered, the exhibition was postponed just hours before it was set to open in March this year.

Rem Koolhaas’s current Guggenheim show opens with a sign that reads “This is not an art exhibition,” and it’s not inaccurate. In typical OMA style, the show is a sprawling infographic colliding masses of research materials with declarations and propositions. Rem has used my Feedlot pictures to illustrate his ideas in the past and despite the cacophony of this latest exhibition, seeing the series included in this context was another highlight of the year.

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Lucas Blalock, Little Factory, 2019, dye sublimation print on aluminum, 36″x 27.5

VICKI GOLDBERG CRITIC / CURATOR NEW HAMPSHIRE

Position
I am still working out of my photography studio in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The early days of quarantine were spent at my property, north of the city in Grey County, Ontario.

Recently
The Anthropocene Project, which I created in collaboration with Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier launched in Canada in 2018 with two simultaneous and complementary exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario and National Gallery of Canada, a feature documentary film, Anthropocene – The Human Epoch, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and an art book published by Steidl. The exhibition has since travelled to two international venues — Fondazione MAST in Bologna, Italy, and Malmo Museer in Malmo, Sweden where it closed on September 6, 2020. The film has similarly premiered internationally, including in over 115 theatres across the United States last September to coincide with U.N. Climate Week. The film began playing in select theatres across Germany on September 10, and will open in Austria on October 9. A Canada-wide education program was also recently launched in partnership with the Royal Canadian Geographical Society as part of the project.

theanthropocene.org

Currently
My visit to my property in Grey County, Ontario earlier this spring was only supposed to be a March Break getaway, but ended up being the place where I was quarantined after the government-mandated lockdown came into effect. The time there afforded me an opportunity to get out into the landscape and get to know a new camera. What unfolded was the creation of an entire new series, finding myself coming full circle and turning my lens once again to Nature.

The new series, Natural Order, was released this September with a 10-print portfolio in an edition of 20, proceeds from which will be donated to the Art Gallery of Ontario and Ryerson Image Centre for the establishment of the Canada Now Photography Acquisition Fund for 2020 which will be dedicated to acquiring the works of emerging to mid-career Canadian artists.

In addition to the portfolio release, a solo exhibition of the work opened at Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto on September 3, along with a virtual tour of the show for those who cannot be physically present. A book published by Steidl will also be available. I am also still working on my Africa series, which was previewed at Paris Photo in 2019. The Africa exhibition will be released at the end of 2022.

Life during the pandemic
If there is anything this pandemic has taught me on both the personal and professional level, it’s the need for resilience and flexibility in each of us. I’m not sure any of us could have been prepared for how quickly this virus would spread, and how deeply it would impact each of our lives — for better or for worse. But as I suggested in an oped for Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, published on Earth Day of this year, this situation feels like a test run for our inevitable fight against the climate crisis. It has hopefully acted as a wakeup call, that we are pushing the boundaries of our relationship with Nature too far, and that foundational change is needed if we wish to see a fruitful future for our next generations.

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MIMI CHUM GALLERIST HONG KONG

Position
I am the Founder and still Director of Blindspot Gallery. Hooray!

Recently
We just finished an eight-week video screening programme titled “Play & Loop II”, featuring works by 18 regional and international artists, such as Pilvi Takala, Isaac Julien, Ming Wong, Wang Bing, and etc.

Currently
We are getting ready to open our next exhibition for September. We have to keep the ball rolling!

Looking for help with
I always welcome collaborations and partnerships, and that seems even more meaningful and relevant now, that our physical movements are limited. Everyone is exploring the use of digital platforms to deliver their exhibitions and works, for example virtual exhibitions. I like to see more comprehensive digital strategy other than using a tool that was already available at least 10 years ago.

Life during the pandemic
“Is there something important you’d like to share with us about how you’re managing the epidemic situation in your personal or professional life?”. Spend more time with family and friends. During time like this when systems of health, security, and mutual trust are in serious collapse, it is important to seize what and who are important in one’s life. Don’t take things for granted.

I attache here two photos taken recently, one is an image of four wristbands, that I, my husband, and our two kids took off the day we finished our 14-day quarantine after visiting the UK. We counted everyday for the quarantine to finish, and couldn’t wait to take off the rather uncomfortable plastic wristband. It was liberating to cut if off on the final day, our kids just slide it off easily because the bands are quite loose for them. It was only then that I realised they were too afraid to take if off, as they heard the penalty for failure to comply with the quarantine policy is 6 months of jail and a HKD25,000 fine.
The other picture is a photo taken a park. I think the tied-up swings look rather like a piece of public art.

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CARLOS GOLLONET CURATOR MADRID

Position
Photography Chief Curator at Fundación MAPFRE.

Recently
Last two projects as curator have been retrospective shows on Nicholas Nixon and the Spanish photographer Carlos Perez Siquier (travelling internationally later).

Currently
Lee Friedlander retrospective show opening in Madrid at Fundación MAPFRE on 29 September 2020. Travelling to C/O Berlin on August 2021.

Would appreciate…
Would be nice have another European venue for Lee Friedlander.

Life during the pandemic
After 12 years working to build a photography program and collection with MAPFRE. We are ready to open a new space in Barcelona, a photography center: KBr Fundación Mapfre. Barcelona Photo Center. The opening date it was last June, unfortunately, we had to postpone this opening that will be on 8 October 2020. The building is located in the Olympic Port in Barcelona, and has two exhibition spaces, auditorium, educational activities rooms, photography book shop… We are opening with a retrospective show on Bill Brandt and another on Paul Strand from our collection.

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BRITT SALVESEN CURATOR LOS ANGELES

Position
Curator and Department Head, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and Prints & Drawings Department, LACMA (same as when I was at Todi)

Recently
Most recent project: exhibition and catalogue, 3D: Double Vision, LACMA, July 15, 2018 – April 1, 2019. I also wrote short essays for Acting Out: Cabinet Cards and the Making of Modern Photography, by John Rohrbach (Amon Carter Museum of American Art), and for Stephen Shore’s latest book, Transparencies, Small Camera Works, 1971–1979, published by Mack Books (both 2020).

Currently

“In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Collection,” co-organized with the Brooklyn Museum, opening at LACMA in November 2020
Exhibition (title TBD) about the visual culture of 19th-century Paris and the origins of cinema, co-organized with the Musée d’Orsay, opening in Paris in September 2021 and in Los Angeles in February 2022
Exhibition (title TBD) about digital image editing software, in conjunction with Getty Foundation PST: Art + Science, opening in 2024
Working with other LACMA curators on planning for new permanent collection galleries (Peter Zumthor designed building), scheduled to open in 2024

Would appreciate…
We’re looking for venues for the exhibition “In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Collection,” or advice about the feasibility of a European tour. The collection, formed by a Houston-based American collector and now jointly owned by LACMA and Brooklyn, comprises photo-based art made post-2000 by artists born or working in Europe. It’s available to tour from mid-2021 onward.

Life during the pandemic
Not for the first time, I’m realizing how crucial it is to digitize museum collections and to have a user-friendly search function. A curatorial team of 40+ over 13 departments, we were charged with envisioning entirely new ways of displaying LACMA’s permanent collection…during a time when we didn’t have access to our storage facilities and couldn’t meet in person. The advantage was everyone being homebound and able to focus on the task, but the partial digitization of the collection meant we were still just skimming the surface and it was difficult for me to convey the true depth of the photography

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Our 3D show in 2018, with Michael Govan, myself, and a sponsor.

TOBIA BEZZOLA DIRECTOR LUGANO

Position
When I participated in the Todi Circle IN 2012, I was actually just about to move from the Kunsthaus Zurich to the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, where I served as a director from 2013 until 2017. Since 2018 I have been the director of MASI, the Museo d’arte della Svizzera italians, in Lugano, Switzerland.

Recently
Photography is only a part of our program. In 2018 we hosted William Wegman’s fabulous exhibition “Being Human”. Currently two photography shows are on view: “Shunk-Kender. Art through the eye of the Camera”, which arrived from the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and a show with the Tyrolian photographer Lois Hechenblaikner, “Ischgl and more”.

Currently
As all of our colleagues, I am trying to make sense of the current and possible future situation in order to carry on programming, always knowing that changing everything yet all over again might get inevitable any day soon.

Life during the pandemic
Like all clichés the expression that “slowing down all activities, also has positive aspects”, does certainly have some truth in it.

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MASI Lugano

ANNE McCAULEY HISTORIAN PRINCETON

Position
I am the McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art at Princeton, currently teaching online this fall term from my home in Wellesley, MA.

Recently & Currently
Recent and forthcoming publications include an article on the 1865 comparison by a critic of Manet’s Olympiato a gorilla and what that meant at the time (not per se on photo but there are photos cited): “Beauty or Beast?: Manet’s Olympia in the Age of Comparative Anatomy,” Art History (Fall 2020), and an essay on photogravure and Stieglitz’s involvement with reprographic processes (based on a lot of close looking at his earliest reproductions of all sorts) for Bettina Goeckel, ed., Camera Work Inside/Out: History and Global Reach of an International Art Magazine (published in conjunction with the recent digitalization of Camera Work by Heidelberg University).

Currently I am writing an essay on British photographs of Italy in the 1890s – ca. 1914 for a book edited by Antonella Pelizzari and Scott Wilcox (originally an exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art). I also am working with Gary Van Zante (who is the curator for this project) on a book/exhibition on Minor White at MIT (1965-1975). If you are a White student or know White students/colleagues/friends from this period, please get in touch. We are trying to contextualize what White was doing, not write a hagiography; I am particularly interested in photographic teaching techniques from the 1950-70s. Furthermore, I am continuing my huge and longstanding project on American modernist photography during World War I, which may end up as multiple books (too much research probably for a single book) on Coburn and the Vortographs and Steichen during the war years.

Would appreciate….
As per above with the Minor White project, regarding his students. Also, I would appreciate suggestions for a publisher for the Coburn or Steichen projects (will be having leave time in 2021-22 to devote to these). Also, if you might be interested in the Minor White show itself, please contact me or Gary. Currently it is centered on the huge archives of ms. material and student work in the MIT Museum collection, but it is actually about photo pedagogy in the US and Gary himself is working on White’s curatorial work while at MIT (and the aftermath of the Creative Photography Laboratory after White’s death).

Life during the pandemic
My life is not so different during this pandemic, except that libraries remain closed and I have to buy any book I want to consult that’s not online. I can find the old 19^th c. material and some current publications, but works published from 1960-85 are really not online. Nor are any of the basic textbooks in photo (even those out of print, which means that students can’t read them because libraries refuse to scan whole books). Nor are most of the classic photo books (I used to assign students to write about photo books from the 1930s-40s). So we need a project to scan everything from Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment to Dorothea Lange’s American Exodus or even Robert Frank’s The Americans (pretty much the whole history of the photo book). It is actually shocking that these iconic combinations of texts and pictures are not available digitally.

Alfred Stieglitz, “Venezia,” halftone; and Unknown Photographer, Butterfly, color halftone, The American Amateur Photographer (December 1895).