From the Christmas season till Easter Monday the International House of Photography at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg presents photographic representations of Christ of three centuries in the exhibition „Corpus Christi“. Lenders like the Getty Museum and Sir Elton John lent appr. Approx. 150 works by 81 artists, featuring Fred Holland Day, Man Ray, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano.
That Christianity was a major influence and catalyst in the development of Western art is a widely acknowledged fact, particularly in the fields of painting and sculpture. But the more recent art of photography has also shown considerable interest in religion and, although inevitably influenced by other art forms, it has nevertheless offered its own thoroughly original interpretations of images relating the life of Jesus and events of the New Testament. This exibition is conceived and prepared by the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. It is one of the first exhibitions to be exclusively devoted to this subject.
Critical analysis with the myth of Christ covers a wide framework: The photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron, Anne Brigman, Andres Serrano and Rauf Mamedov have a clearly aesthetic expression. The works of Fred Holland Day and Oscar Gustav Rejlander have completely religious demands. Artists like John Heartfield, W. Eugene Smith and Manuel Alvarez Bravo pursue socio-political intentions with their photographs. In contemporary photography Christian symbolism is frequently used satirically and subversively or even for commercial purposes which contributes to a wide extent to the explosiveness of the exhibition.
Artists:
Marina Abramovic & Ulay - Freddy Alborta - Manuel Alvarez Bravo - Dieter Appelt - Deganit Berest - Charles I. Berg - A. Bert - Pierre Bonnard - Ariele Bonzon - Anne W.Brigman - Larry Burrows - Julia Margaret Cameron - Toni Catany - Fred Holland Day - John Demos - Frantisek Drtikol - John Dugdale - Max Dupain - Eugene Durieu - Jose Ortiz Echague - Giuseppe Enrie - Bill Eppridge - Evergon (Al Lunt) - Thérèse Frare - André Garban - Luis Gonzalez Palma - Gabriel Harrison - John Heartfield - Jürgen Hentschel - Lewis Hine - Noel Jabbour - Charles-Francois Jeandel - Joel Kantor - Micha Kirshner - Herlinde Koelbl - Miki Kratzman - Les Krims - Dinh Q. Le - Rudolf F. Lehnert & Ernst Landrock - Annie Leibovitz - Rauf Mamedov - Robert Mapplethorpe - Gaudenzio Marconi - Marinus - Kurt Markus - David McDermott & Peter McGough - Duane Michals - Boris Mikhailov - Ilan Mizrahi - Vik Muniz - Adi Nes - John O'Reilly - Orlan - Pierre et Gilles - Man Ray - Oscar Rejlander - Bettina Rheims - Humberto Rivas - Geno Rodriguez - J. Roseman - Jan Saudek - Andres Serrano - Jose Maria Sert - W.Eugene Smith - Paul Strand - Boaz Tal – Sam Taylor-Wood - E.C. Templier - Edmund Teske - Dean Tokuno - C.Tune - Jan Van Leeuwen - Raymond Voinquel - Joel-Peter Witkin - Pavel Wohlberg - David Wojnarowicz - Pat York - Kimiko Yoshida – Dana & Boas Zonshine - Natale Zoppis - Frederick T. Zugibe
A catalogue has been published by Edition Braus: "Corpus Christi", texts of Nissan N. Perez and Adele Reinhartz, 24,5 x 28 cm, 192 pages, 150 colour- and b/w-Photographs, price at the Deichtorhallen-Shop: 29,90 Euro
