Helmut Newton and Patrick Mimran are the stars of the 2024 exhibitions at The Rooms of Photography

In Venice , two new exhibitions will enliven the 2024 Stanze della Fotografia, the joint initiative of Marsilio Arte and Fondazione Giorgio Cini. Both exhibitions will be held on theIsland of San Giorgio. Photographer Helmut Newton (Berlin, 1920 - Los Angeles), presents the most comprehensive exhibition of works spanning his entire human and working life. Running from March 28 to Nov. 24, 2024, the retrospective, entitled Helmut Newton. Legacy, is curated by Matthias Harder, director of the Helmut Newton Foundation, and Denis Curti, artistic director of Le Stanze della Fotografia in Venice. His Berlin birth name is Helmut Neustädter, but the world now knows him as Helmut Newton. The title of the exhibition evokes the immense legacy left to posterity that can be traced, step by step, in the space of the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, overlooking the Bacino di San Marco. The exhibition recounts the career of a twentieth-century protagonist who left his mark on fashion, as evidenced by his collaborations with Vogue magazine and with designers such as Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Thierry Mugler and Chanel, but also in the new way of approaching the female nude, evidenced in his famous Big Nudes. The 1981 cult book collects the 39 black-and-white shots, many featured in the exhibition, pioneering gigantography and human-sized shots. Suspended between water and sky, Newton’s shots in Venice further emphasize the photographer’s elegant and bold style. Newton’s legacy will be recounted in six chronological chapters: his beginnings in the 1940s and 1950s in Australia, the 1960s in France, the 1970s in the United States, the 1980s between Monte Carlo and Los Angeles, and the numerous shoots around the world in the 1990s.

“His passage through Laguna is documented several times, as will be seen in the 1966 Queen magazine shoot or the portrait to Anselm Kiefer, immortalized in a charming palace on the Grand Canal,” says Matthias Harder, head of the Helmut Newton Foundation. “After living in Australia and the United States, Newton settled in Europe, first in Paris and then in Monte Carlo, intensifying his visits to Venice.”

From March 28 to August 11, 2024, also in the spaces of Le Stanze della Fotografia, it will be possible to visit the exhibition Out of Focus, which presents the last ten years of photographic research of artist Patrick Mimran (Paris, 1956) through a series of unpublished works. The public will be able to admire his thirty-three large black-and-white photographs, most associated with three smaller, color photographs. Born in Paris in 1956, Patrick Mimran is a multidisciplinary artist. Since the 1980s he has created works and installations using almost every possible medium and media, ranging from photography to technology, music to multimedia. In Out of Focus, the artist has focused primarily on the blurring effect of the image. Initially, the image may seem abstract, but the more one dwells on it, the more details emerge that make it close to reality. This feature contrasts with the sharpness of the smaller format color images that accompany and outline the large photographs. Mimran seems to reverse the use of the photographic tool designed to reproduce reality as it is. For the artist, the most effective way to capture a subject is to move away from it until it becomes abstract.

“We find ourselves in the dimension of the unconscious, in a perpetual iconographic flow of indefinable figures that challenge the public eye to trace the original geometry,” explains Denis Curti, curator of Le Stanze della Fotografia. “It would be said to be a work constructed solely to leave room for ambiguity, because photography, contrary to its instrumental composure, is pure lie. Here, then, Mimran reaps the fruits of that illusion of truth and takes a fairy-tale dimension by the hand and makes it his own. On this uncontrollable limit, the sovereignty of freely interpreting this reworking of reality is restored to the viewer.”

The two exhibitions, Helmut Newton and Patrick Mimran, will be accompanied by works by photographers under 30 selected by the open call with a deadline of Feb. 29, 2024, promoted by Fondazione Le Stanze della Fotografia and supported by the Venice Foundation. Participation in the initiative is free of charge and requires the submission of three photographs that form a story inspired by Helmut Newton’s quote, “My job as a photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.” The goal of the contest is to enhance the talent of emerging photographers by providing them with support in their professional journey. The jury charged with selecting the most representative works consists of Matthias Harder, director of the Helmut Newton Foundation; Denis Curti, artistic director of Le Stanze della Fotografia; Francesca Malgara, artistic director of Mia Photo Fair; and renowned photographer Maurizio Galimberti.

Practical Information:

Ordinary Hours: Open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., closed Wednesdays. Admission: Full Ticket € 14.00 - Reduced Ticket € 12.00 Below is the link to the page for more detailed information: https://www.lestanzedellafotografia.it/

Helmut Newton and Patrick Mimran are the stars of the 2024 exhibitions at The Rooms of Photography

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