translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
131008: Deichtorhallen: Dreamwomen – Beauty in the 21st century
Deichtorhallen: Dreamwomen – Beauty in the 21st century
Slender women younger than thirty
Dreamwomen. The title of the exhibit at Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen is extremely naive. As if one did not know that dreamwomen, that beauty, is something very personal, individual. But that is exactly what the exhibit is trying to show – the individual visions of beauty, as seen by 50 photographers including Peter Lindbergh, Sheila Metzner, Bettina Rheims, and Albert Watson. An individual view, which the curators Nadine Barth and Ingo Taubhorn attempt to describe as “classic, glamorous, personal, lyrical, ironical, headstrong, and visionary”.
In the past, exhibitions at the Deichtorhallen have already tried to combine the world of fashion, glamour, and advertising with the world of art – and it is no different this time: many of the works shown here could be perfect advertisement photos. However, the exhibit and the book want to achieve more than that: they want to present women with personality, dreamwomen that are different.
But only very few of the photographs succeed in presenting the women as being unusually beautiful. And except for Vanessa Redgrave and Louise Bourgeois there are practically no elderly women among the exhibited works. In the eyes of the curators and photographers dreamwomen are mainly slender and younger than thirty. One does, however, wonder what the value of this show is meant to be. After all, the majority of the photographs can be found in nearly every fashion magazine.
The dreamwomen shown in this exhibit are all famous and rather boring. Similar to the statements made by the photographers: “I don’t like boring women. I don’t like beautiful women. I like unusual women, obsessive women, crazy women”. The exhibit was meant to discover “the reality of beauty”, but it got nowhere near its goal.
Deichtorhallen
20095 Hamburg, Deichtorstrasse 1 + 2, until 09. 11. 08
www.deichtorhallen.de
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131008
Deichtorhallen
20095 Hamburg, Deichtorstraße 1+2
http://www.deichtorhallen.de
Öffnungszeiten: Di-So 11-18 h
Deichtorhallen
20095 Hamburg, Deichtorstraße 1+2
http://www.deichtorhallen.de
Öffnungszeiten: Di-So 11-18 h