London’s Albumen Gallery heads out on tour. And it’s no accident, in an exhibition that celebrates the architectural, that its destination is a European city that perhaps represents the apogee of human relations with the built environment. Amsterdam has been showing us how to live well for centuries. Where better to reflect upon the process?
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This year, Albumen Gallery will host four artists, Robert Conrad, Steven Seidenberg, Robert Kemnitz and Edmund Sumner as part of Unseen Amsterdam’s photography fair (19-22 September).
Each artist’s work will depict the documentation and celebration of architecture, in particular, an exploration of abandoned buildings and their silent, often ghostly representation of urban decay and rural abandonment.
Robert Conrad’s photographs are cultural anchors, each photo a defiant act of preserving old things from disappearing – capturing dilapidated buildings as a form of protest against forgetting history.
For a large part of his life, Conrad was based in Berlin and his photographs of abandoned buildings have been recognised as a sharp socio-commentary on the life once lived within a totalitarian Communist state.
American photographer Steven Seidenberg, explores the landscapes, material culture, and remaining structures of the Italian government’s 1952 land reform policy known as the Riforma Fondiaria. The programme placed land in the possession of impoverished families, but did so without the infrastructure necessary to make the small holdings sustainable.
This selection of work portrays the stagnate silence and ghostly abandonment of areas left behind after the failed renovational program.
Thomas Kemnitz’s photographs of abandoned architecture are the end result of meticulously researched projects. In the first instance, they capture a building or site in the state it ceased to be used. At the same time the images are composed and structured as part of their location and surroundings, which invites the viewer to reflect on the historical and geographical context.
Targeted research and responsible publication are at the beginning of a process that does not lose sight of the context and ultimately contributes to the media preservation of the place through reflection and communication hand in hand.
Edmund Sumner is an international and highly regarded architecture photographer. For over 20 years his work has been commissioned by leading architects, publishers, editors and curators, who value the quality of his work distilling and conveying the character and essence of buildings and interior space and that his work transcends any functional and technical remit.
Sumner’s images set markers and milestones highlighting how humans, through cultural and industrial activities – for better and for worse – shape the landscape; and simultaneously are shaped by the landscape.
Unseen is the world’s premiere fair exclusively dedicated to new developments in contemporary photography and will take place in Amsterdam from 19-22 September 2024.
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle
