Noorderlicht

Material World

Religion without God

ancillary show / 16 sep 28 oct 2007

Mathieu Bernard-Reymond

• TV (Switzerland, 2004-2007)

  We often hear it said that the television is the idol of our times. We sit before it daily for hours, sometimes slavishly, sometimes in ecstasy. Thus there are countless religious connotations applied to the television. It often proclaims its own reality, it is a source of inspiration for many, and for others is the guiding light of their lives. The box in our living rooms symbolizes the influence of the whole medium on our daily lives, and on the world as a whole. In a city of his own creation Mathieu Bernard- Reymond has replaced all the windows by television screens. In doing so he emphasizes the omnipresence of the spiritual medium of our day: television.

  

• TV (Switzerland, 2004-2007)

  

• TV (Switzerland, 2004-2007)

  

Frank Breuer

• LOGOS (Germany, 1995-2006)

  Frank Breuer has noted that consumers increasingly identify with products. They identify their ideals, aims in life and wishes with brands, the logos for which are prominently present all around us. Like modern icons they decorate our façades, bags, clothing and billboards - everywhere, in all dimensions, because a logo has no predetermined size. That is a parallel with photography, where images can also be enlarged and reduced as one wishes. Here Frank Breuer reduces monumental commercial logos to the familiar dimensions of a newspaper advert. Moreover, by isolating the logos he reveals how alien they are to the natural environment.

  

• LOGOS (Germany, 1995-2006)

  

• LOGOS (Germany, 1995-2006)

  

• LOGOS (Germany, 1995-2006)

  

• LOGOS (Germany, 1995-2006)

  

Dennis Chamberlin

• SCREEN CULTURE (United States, 2005-2007)

  
  
  Technology has become a self-evident part of human existence. For instance, we cannot imagine life any more without the television or computer screen. If such media were originally developed in order to facilitate communication between people, practice currently reveals that the opposite has happened. While children are absorbed in computer games, their parents sit mesmerized by their favorite television programs. Dennis Chamberlin documented our profound relation with the viewing screen. Photographing his own family, among others, he came to the conclusion, "Once upon a time we talked with each other. Now we worship the screen."

  

• SCREEN CULTURE (United States, 2005-2007)

  

• SCREEN CULTURE (United States, 2005-2007)

  

• SCREEN CULTURE (United States, 2005-2007)

  

• SCREEN CULTURE (United States, 2005-2007)

  

Dirk Gebhard and David Klammer

• HEIMVORTEIL (Germany, 2006)

  In the summer of 2006, the World Cup football championships were held in Germany. The tournament brought 704 players and 32 teams together, drew 4 million football lovers from 32 countries, produced 147 goals, 75 yellow cards, and nine red cards. For 31 days there were massive expressions of joy, tension, sorrow, and almost religious devotion. Because football is emotion: everybody knows that. During the World Cup 2006 David Klammer and Dirk Gebhardt turned their cameras on the collective fascination with the object that for the moment overshadowed everything else: the ball.

  

• HEIMVORTEIL (Germany, 2006)

  

• HEIMVORTEIL (Germany, 2006)

  

• HEIMVORTEIL (Germany, 2006)

  

• HEIMVORTEIL (Germany, 2006)

  

• HEIMVORTEIL (Germany, 2006)

  

Lauren Greenfield

• THIN & GIRL CULTURE (United States, 1998-2006)

  It pains Lauren Greenfield to see how American girls and women increasingly confuse their appearance with their identity. She derives this observation in part from the book The Body Project by the social historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg. The book suggests that in the United States, girls are less protected by traditional institutions such as the family and religion. That makes them more vulnerable to advertising and media, in which the body and physical appearance play a prominent role. One consequence is that many girls and women regard their body as a project, in the belief that it is the most important expression of their personality.

  

• THIN & GIRL CULTURE (United States, 1998-2006)

  

• THIN & GIRL CULTURE (United States, 1998-2006)

  

• THIN & GIRL CULTURE (United States, 1998-2006)

  

• THIN & GIRL CULTURE (United States, 1998-2006)

  

Christopher Morris

• MY AMERICA (United States, 2006)

  For the past five years photojournalist Christopher Morris has reported on George Bush's term in office for Time Magazine. As a photographer with the right passes and privileges, he could easily penetrate the heart of political power in the United States. That gave him the chance to produce the personal series My America while on his official assignments, in which he shows us how patriotism, power, politics and religious devotion mix in what outside the country is experienced as a typically American cocktail.

  

• MY AMERICA (United States, 2006)

  

• MY AMERICA (United States, 2006)

  

• MY AMERICA (United States, 2006)

  

• MY AMERICA (United States, 2006)

  

Michael Najjar

• BIONIC ANGEL (Germany, 2006)

  With increasing frequency, man is playing God. Developments in genetics, robotics, computer science and nanotechnology intervene with our bodies, our minds, our identity and our offspring. All these sciences are directed toward improving mankind. Genetic and technological possibilities hold out the promise of a superior humanity, strikingly enough rooted as far back as in classical antiquity. The idealized image of man that was the norm there was rediscovered in the Renaissance as the perfect image of human control over body and mind. Michael Najjar unites this timeless ideal in a playful metamorphosis of old and new representations of the ideal human.

  

• BIONIC ANGEL (Germany, 2006)

  

Manit Sriwanichpoom

• PINK MAN IN PARADISE (Indonesia, 2003)

  Around midnight on October 12, 2002, a bomb exploded in front of a nightclub in Bali. More than 200 people, primarily Australian tourists, lost their lives. It was the largest attack ever committed on the Indonesian island, in the blink of an eye turning it from a tropical paradise into a hell. At the same moment it became clear that no one, anywhere, was safe from Islamic terrorism. That realization is also found in Pink Man, introduced by Manit Sriwanichpoom in a previous series as a critical commentary on the replacement of traditional culture by commercial ideals. As the archetypical tourist with a compulsive need for excitement and relaxation, he wanders across Bali, in search of the lost paradise.

  

• PINK MAN IN PARADISE (Indonesia, 2003)

  

• PINK MAN IN PARADISE (Indonesia, 2003)

  

Wang Tong

• MAO ON THE WALL (China, 1994-2003)

  In 1976, when news of the death of the Chinese leader Mao was released, the elementary school Wang Tong attended immediately began with memorial ceremonies. After seeing a tear on his teacher's face, Wang Tong himself cried uncontrollably. His grief was honest, he says now, although the result of indoctrination. Years later, when he saw a weathered portrait of Mao on a wall, the scene came back to his mind. Wang Tong decided to document the public worship of the Great Leader, so inseparable from his boyhood and China. It appeared to be a race against the clock, as the portraits were increasingly disappearing before rising modernity. After nine years Wang Tong called a halt to his project; he had had enough, and acknowledged that the future had indeed arrived.

  

• MAO ON THE WALL (China, 1994-2003)

  

• MAO ON THE WALL (China, 1994-2003)

  

• MAO ON THE WALL (China, 1994-2003)

  

• MAO ON THE WALL (China, 1994-2003)

  

Brian Ulrich

• COPIA (United States, 2001-2007)

  In 2001 the American government called on its citizens to stimulate the national economy by shopping as much as possible. Consumerism was equated with patriotism. Copia - literally 'plenty' - is a response to this. The series shows a consumer-dominated culture and the disastrous consequences this has in the form of overconsumption and the constant bombardment of advertising. Copia confronts the consumer with his or her rituals in order to raise consciousness of the commercial world in which they live, and the role they themselves play in it. Brian Ulrich particularly photographed how the traditional excitement about a purchase has been exchanged for listless consumption.

  

• COPIA (United States, 2001-2007)

  

• COPIA (United States, 2001-2007)

  

• COPIA (United States, 2001-2007)

  

• COPIA (United States, 2001-2007)