Erwin Blumenfeld and the image of femininity
Erwin Blumenfeld, “Chasing Dreams – Experimental Nudes 1936 – 1955”, Chaussee 36, Berlin, 11 October to 30 November 2019.
Erwin Blumenfeld was born in Berlin in 1897. After emigrating to New York in 1941 he became a major photographer. He started in the field of fashion and then, freeing himself from commissions alone, he appears as an artist in his own right through his drawings, collages and especially his portrait and nude photographs.
There is a transgression of codes in order to express the femininity that enchants him. Master of “solarisation”, multi-exposure, shadow and mirror, the photographer is influenced by Dada, Surrealism and Man Ray whom he met in Paris between the two world wars.
This exhibition takes us back to his earliest works and translates his experiments into intimate studies of the feminine that have never before been exhibited. “The nude does not simply represent the body, but connects it, by analogy, to all the structures that are part of our imaginative experience,” said the man who said he never had time for reality and claimed to be a prisoner of his illusions. Or even… And to be seen.
Be the first to comment