WUNDERCAMERA PROJECTS:
I have long used the umbrella title WUNDERCAMERA for my own numerable projects and image series exploring museum and collecting culture. Please see Some notes about the MUSEUM CLAUSUM and also the introduction to the series: Temporarly Removed for some more information and thoughts on my own approach to museum photography. A further part my preoccupation in this field is the exhibition series:WUNDERCAMERA EXHIBITIONS:
This is a curatorial project around the same theme which is the interpretation of museum spaces through the medium of photography. Artists included in the exhibitions were Mark Dion, Jonathan Faiers, Patrick and Tristram Fetherstonhaugh, Andy Freeberg, Andrew Grassie, Karl Grimes, Vid Ingelevics, Valery Katsuba, Karen Knorr, Louise Lawler, Stuart Leech/Dulwich Picture Gallery, Matthew Pillsbury, Richard Ross, Traer Scott, Matt Stuart and Hiroshi Sugimoto.The initial exhibition, Wundercamera: Pitzhanger Manor was funded through an artist's grant by the Arts Council of England. Here, a special feature was the site specific installation of Now and Then, photographed at Sir John Soane's Museum in London and exhibited in the interiors of Pitzhanger Manor, which was Soane's former country house, threrby photographically 'returning' parts of the collection to its previous home.
The exhibition subsequently became Wundercamera: Holden Gallery at the Manchester Metropolitan University, where a special feature was that the hang was partially re-curated during the exhibition period by students of the M.A. Curation course.
Wundercamera: Savannah: The third exhibition, at the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia, US, followed the invitation of the curator Tania Sammons and included a commission for me to make new work at the Telfair Museums to be included in the exhibition. Four prints went into the museum's permanent collection. the exhibition received funding by the national Endowment of the Arts.
The exhibitions themselves are extensively documented in the section: Wundercamera Exhibitions. The text below is adapted from the press releases:
The exhibitions brought together the works of different artists that use photography to reflect on museum culture. The curatorial approach focused on the immediate hall of mirrors effect that is inherent in any photograph of a museum space, as the museum is a form of re-presentation that is then re-presented in the photograph.
When inside a museum, viewers usually focus on individual exhibits whereby the artificial curated set-up of the museum remains in a certain transparency. When looking at a photograph of a museum space we look at the whole space –as an image– and the artificiality of the set-up is immediately exposed. This can work in different ways and to different effects.
For example ‘perfect’ reproductions of dioramas (such as some by Karl Grimes or Hiroshi Sugimoto) produce images that make the photographed set-up look more ‘realistic’ than it would appear when viewed in situ. Condition for this effect is to photograph the exhibits in a manner that excludes all museum background. The selection of Richard Ross’ images works directly opposed to that. Here, museum space -including its ‘imperfections’- is deliberately included in the frame. In a similar way, the works of Louise Lawler usually include museum space whereby Lawler uses the camera to deliberately fragment re-presented spaces as well as photographed exhibits, which are sometimes shown during the time of set-up, partially wrapped, resting on the floor. In both Ross’ and Lawler’s works, the increased attention to the actual exhibition spaces and also emphasizes the raw object character or the materiality of the artworks. A similar effect is also found in ‘documentary’ photographs that show a set up in progress, possibly with active museum workers in the frame.
Another effective case of fragmentation through crop and point of view is to be found in many of Vid Ingelevics photographs. His images combine fragmented ‘peeks’ into different adjacent spaces drawing attention to –and somewhat estranging– the architectural spaces themselves. Equally the frozen moments that ‘glue’ into stasis humorous correspondences between objects and visitors in a visual pun such as Matt Stuart’s images or also Traer Scott’s that preserve fleeting superimpositions of the in-front-of and the behind the glass caused by reflections can be seen as interventions of the camera.
Another way of intervention is found in the photographs of Karen Knorr who sets up juxtapositions in exhibition spaces –in order to be photographed– which result in images that thus reflect in a redoubled way on the cultural space that is the museum.
The hall of mirrors effect inherent in this project must also reflect on the medium of photography. It becomes evident, that any of the above approaches ‘curates’ com-positions of different elements that are seen in the image. This shows that these photographically curated compositions are as artificial as the curatorial object compositions that are seen in the photographs. This is most directly addressed through Andrew Grassie’s contribution, which appears to be a small photograph of a gallery space. Yet close inspection, together with the information supplied by the label, informs us that we are faced with a photo realist painting – of an exhibition set up that never existed.
Klaus Wehner, 2013, revised 2021