Hannes Wallrafen: The Blind Photographer
Hannes Wallrafen is a highly acclaimed Dutch/German photographer who lost his eyesight 10 years ago at the height of his career. Wallrafen is famous for his staged photography through which he seeks to translate time into engineered images. His work can be regarded as personal interpretations of local history: storytelling at its core. In the seventies and eighties Wallrafen used his camera to denounce injustice. He travelled to Northern Ireland, Chile and India, and among others followed the Squatter movement. In the second half of the eighties he started searching for other ways of expression because, as society changed, so did his worldview. In his works the compelling message shifted to more direct images imbued with subtle criticism of society.
His artwork is characterised by themes such as transience, history and memory just as his idiosyncratic relationship with literature and delicate sense of humour make his work readily recognisable. The work of Hannes Wallrafen is included in many private and public art collections across the world, such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam. The iconic photo ‘De Schimmel’ was shot in the pre-Photoshop era and is an exemplary demonstration of Wallrafen’s talent and skill.
Born in 1951, Hannes Wallrafen's creative work was primarily influenced by the 1970s. Conceptualism is often perceived as a reaction to Minimalism, and the leading art movement of the 1970s, challenging the boundaries of art with its revolutionary features. The movements that succeeded were all characteristic of a strong desire to progress and consolidate the art world, in response to the tensions of the previous 1960s. Process art branched out from Conceptualism, including some of its most essential aspects, but going further in creating mysterious and experimental artistic journeys, while Land Art brought creation to the outsides, initiating early philosophies of environmentalism.
In Germany, Expressive figure painting was given a second chance for the first time since the weakening of Abstract Expressionism almost twenty years ago, the genre reclaimed its prominence through the brushstrokes of Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz. The majority of the critically acclaimed artists from the 1960s, who had gained success and fame, kept their status in the 1970s.
Andy Warhol was a key figure of those two decades, and in the 1970s started to experiment with film and magazine publishing, thus engaging in a cross-platform activity that no other visual artist of such standard had previously undertaken. By doing so, he secured his status as a celebrity. The multicultural and sophisticated position that New York city held in the 1960s remained just as influential in the 1970s. With multiple global renowned artists gravitating the galleries and downtown scene, the city once again strengthened its reputation as the artistic hub of the generation.
Street art started to emerge as a true and accepted form of art towards the end of the 1970s. Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring were pioneers in demonstrating that their artworks could subsist at the same time in art galleries and on city walls. Fuelled by graffiti art, street art from its earliest days showed that it could endure in a perpetual flux of self-transformation, endlessly shifting the limits of modern art, becoming a truly ground-breaking artistic genre. All over, numerous movements defined the 1970s.
Amongst others, feminism and the new radical ideologies it occasioned strongly influenced the visual culture. Photorealism, which had emerged in the 1960s, also gained critical and commercial success. The critical, leading artistic pillars of New York city started to embrace painters and sculptors from Latin America. The critically engaged Mono-Ha movement, composed of Japanese and Korean artists, blossomed in Tokyo in the 1970s.
Rejecting conventional ideas of representation, the artists favoured an interpretation of the world through an engagement with materials and an examination of their properties. The artworks would often consist of encounters between natural and industrial materials such as stone, glass, cotton, sponge, wood, oil and water, mostly left intact. The Arte Povera movement, which emerged in Italy, received global acknowledgement in the 1970s, and leading figures such as Jannis Kounnelis, Mario Merz, and Michelangelo Pistoletto were praised.
BIO
The photographer Hannes Wallrafen (1951) has lived since 1972 in Amsterdam. From 1972 he got a photographic training at the Rietveld-Academy (Artschool). From 1976 onwards he travelled the world extensively as a professional documentary photographer for magazines and third-world organisations:
Tanzania (1976), Northern Ireland (1977), India (1978). Iran (1979), Northern Ireland and Mining districts in England (1980), India, Malaysia and Singapore (1981), Vietnam (1982), Middle East, Chili, Peru, Spain (1983), Egypt (1984), Bolivia, Bangladesh (1985), Brazil (1986)(link), Haiti (1997), Mexico (1998) , Honduras ( 2000 and 2001)
His work is represented by his agent Hollandse Hoogte
All his work was done in the traditional documentary fashion but next to this work he starts, from 1986 onwards, to arrange his own pictures like a stage director, working with models, a set design and studio equipment. With this kind of work too he gets a host of assignments from magazines, trade and industry, government institutions and museums.
In 1988 he left for the first time to Colombia to start work on his Márquez-project which he had been preparing for several months. After his first successful journey he returned to Colombia in 1990 and finished the project in 1991.In 1993 his serie was published as a book in the Netherlands, Britain and Colombia. The introduction for his book" The World of Marquez" was written by García Márquez. As well with his documentary work and his staged projects he got prestigious assignments from the city of Amsterdam (1983) and the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam (1991+1995).
In 1992 he received a scholarship from the Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture.
In 1995 he got an assignment from the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam to visualize 'Tableaus Vivants' in the tradition of the early social-democracy movement. In november 1996 he published his second book. "De Dingen" (The Things). It is a series of still-life photographs in black and white accompanied by poems of the writer Jos van Hest.
In 1997 he visualised the six different sectors of the "SBA Stichting Beeldende Amateurkunst" an institution concerning amateur art.
In 1998 he realised his project "Past Imperfect" in which he captured the feeling of the'50s and'60s in Geldrop. This series was presented as a book during an exhibition in the NFI National Foto Institute in 1999.
In 1998 he received an assignment from the Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunsten. For the secondary school "Pieter Nieuwland" he created four different photo installations.
In 1999 he presented his project "Ode to the Red Family of the Zaanregion". With this subject Hannes Wallrafen received in 1997 a documentary foto assignment from the Province of North Holland. In 1999 he was asked by the Province of North Holland to participate with different artists in the project 'Fort Lux'.
In 2000 he received from the Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunsten an assignment to introduce students of a secondary school in Amsterdam Het Huygens College into the digital world. Under his auspices the students created videoclips. Next to that activity he produced in 2001 the digital video 'De Huygens Portretten'.
In 2000 he was asked to develop an idea about the Middle American country Honduras. After his first visit in september 2000 he found the theme for the new project ' Of Time and the Tropics ' . With the financial support of the Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, the Mondriaan foundation and the HIVOS Cultural Fund he finished this project during two journeys in 2001. The project was published as a book by KIT publishers and presented during the fotofestival NOORDERLICHT in september 2002.
In 2001 he was asked by the Province of North Holland to participate with different artists in the project 'Van IJ Tot Zee' to celebrate the 125th birthday of the North Sea channel.
SOURCE:
https://www.artland.com/artists/hannes-wallrafen
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