NOKS Independent Art Space is hosting British writer, curator and artist David Campany’s exhibition “Rich and Strange” from Saturday 5 May through Sunday 10 June.
From the organizer:
An old photograph, found in a London flea market. Photographer unknown. It shows a group of people, a mix of white Europeans and black maybe North Africans. They are standing on dry earth in front of a group of disheveled shacks. A man sitting by a rickshaw. Whitewashed walls. A bunch of bananas. A bicycle repair shop. A skinny man in a black suit, striding while biting his nails. Palm trees sticking up above the roofline. And in the distance, a row of very English semi-detached houses. Near the centre is Alfred Hitchcock. He is not difficult to recognise. Even as a young man he had those distinctive jowls and outline. Black hat, pressed trousers, white shirt and a short necktie resting on that cartoonish tummy. He looks young and old at the same time.
As the image world becomes electronic, paper photographs from the past drift about in search of new homes. Later on i turned the photograph into a book of the same name,Rich and Strange. Hitchcock was the master of suspense but photographs suspend in a very different way. They show but they don’t tell. They describe but they don’t explain. They are factual enigmas. Zooming in, the book picks out the seemingly endless details: African shacks, rickshaws, lily white movie stars from Europe, a nervous producer, a cameraman, scattered props. All in a field in Elstree, North London. Rich and Strange is a homage to the materiality of photographs, to filmmaking, to abandoned archives and to the photographer who shot this image but whose name is lost
About David Campany
David Campany is a writer, curator and artist, working mainly with photography.
David’s books include A Handful of Dust (2015), The Open Road: photography and the American road trip (2014), Walker Evans: the magazine work (2014), Gasoline (2013), Jeff Wall: Picture for Women (2010), Photography and Cinema (2008) and Art and Photography (2003). He has written over two hundred essays for museums and monographic books, and contributes to Frieze, Aperture, Source and Tate magazine.
Recent curatorial projects include The Still Point of the Turning World: Between Film and Photography, FoMu Antwerp, 2017; The Open Road: photography and the American road trip (various venues, USA, 2016-); A Handful Dust (Le Bal, Paris, 2015; Pratt Institute New York, 2016; the Whitechapel Gallery London, 2017; The California Museum of Photography, 2018; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2018); Walker Evans: the magazine work (various venues – France, Poland, Belgium, Italy, Australia and New Zealand), Lewis Baltz: Common Objects (Le Bal, Paris 2014); Victor Burgin: A Sense of Place (AmbikaP3 London, 2013); Mark Neville: Deeds Not Words (The Photographers’ Gallery London, 2013); and Anonymes: Unnamed America in Photography and Film (Le Bal Paris, 2010).
David has a Phd and teaches at the University of Westminster, London.
For his writing, David has received the ICP Infinity Award, the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award, the Alice Award, a Deutscher Fotobuchpreis, and the Royal Photographic Society’s award for writing.
“Rich and Strange” exhibition is held as a parallel event to the 3rd Istanbul Photobook Festival organized by FUAM. The Rich and Strange exhibition, which will be opened on May 4, 2018 at 19:00, can be seen on Saturdays and Sundays between May 5th and June 10th, 2018 within hours 14:00 and 19:00 at the venue of NOKS Independent Art Space in Yeldegirmeni, Kadıköy.
NOKS INDEPENDENT ART SPACE
NOKS Independent Art Space was founded in 2017 by artist and academician Elvan Ekren and Volkan Kızıltunç as an independent art space located in Kadıköy, Istanbul. NOKS, which aims to implement experimental exhibition projects with an autonomous stance against mainstream artistic orientations, mainly focuses on photography, photobooks and video projects. NOKS, which is a laboratory where the artists meet, discuss, and engage upon new experiments; is also a joint work, production, education and exhibition space aiming to establish an organic bond with young artists and art students.
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For more information, check out the official gallery page.
Email: noksartspace@gmail.com
Address: Talimhane Sokak No:19B Yeldeğirmeni, Kadıköy, İstanbul
Saturday and Sunday: 14:00 – 19:00
Featured image courtesy of organizer.
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