For this exhibition, Lisa Oppenheim (1975, New York) has been invited to create a new body of work in response to the multifaceted oeuvre of one of the most renowned yet enigmatic figures in twentieth century’s photography: the Luxembourg-born, American photographer and curator Edward Steichen (1879–1973). Through photo-graphic, textile and floral works, Oppenheim unveils an unexpected portrait of ‘Monsieur Steichen’. For two decades, Lisa Oppenheim has been exploring photography’s history and its latent possibilities. In this exhibition, she focuses on little-known aspects of Edward Steichen’s practice, including his lifelong passion for flowers, his textile designs and his experimentations in the field of colour photography. The works produced for the exhibition build upon what she describes as Steichen’s ‘lost threads’ and ‘discarded ideas’, which are reimagined through her own artistic approach.
The exhibition opens with a series of photographic prints in which Oppenheim revives a now-extinct variety of iris named ‘Monsieur Steichen’, which was created in 1910 by a French amateur botanist as a tribute to Steichen. Oppenheim’s prints bring this flower back to life using two photographic techniques from different epochs: dye transfer, used by Steichen in his 1930–1940s colour experiments, and artificial intelligence. Go to Website
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