Absence of Subject

Galerie Brigitte Schenk is pleased to announce the first complete presentation of Michael Somoroff’s series of photographs titled Absence of Subject. The exhibition will be on view from May 31st to July 15th at 153 A Calle Del Cappello, located on Piazza San Marco during the 54th Venice Biennale. An opening reception for the artist will be held on May 31st from 7 – 9 pm.

The exhibition “Absence of Subject”, which has been curated by Diana Edkins and with an illustrated book organized by Norma Stevens, includes forty silver prints, ten platinum-palladiumprints and seven videos by Michael Somoroff as well as the August Sander photographs that inspired them. As homage to People of the Twentieth Century, the legendary German photographer’s fascinating and renowned collective portrait of German society, first publicly shown in 1927, Somoroff has digitally erased the subject of Sander’s photographs, retaining only the background. Conceptually and humanistically oriented, each of Somoroff’s images demonstrates the persuasive power and esthetic of Sander’s oeuvre even without the human subject.

This body of Somoroff’s work, previously titled The Absence of the Subject, was acquired for the permanent photography collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston under the direction of Anne Wilkes Tucker.

For detailed information on the Absence of Subject exhibition, please visitwww.absenceofsubject.com Absence of Subject: The Images of Michael Somoroff and August Sander, an exhibition catalogue designed by Mary Shannahan and written by Diana Edkins, with a foreword by Anne Wilkes Tucker and additional texts by Julian Sander and Michael Somoroff, will be distributed by Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln.

About Michael Somoroff
Michael Somoroff, the son of the eminent commercial photographer Ben Somoroff, was born in New York City in 1957. Somoroff studied art and photography at the New School for Social Research as well as assisting his father in his studio on the set, on location and in the darkroom.

In 1978, at the age of twenty-one, Somoroff opened his own photography studio and shortly there after began working for virtually every major magazine in New York and Europe. Since returning to New York at the end of the 1980’s, Michael Somoroff has thoroughly devoted himself to the research of his ideas and his artistic production. His work is represented important collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; and The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

About Diana Edkins (Curator) Diana Edkins joined The Aperture Foundation in October 2002 as Traveling Exhibitions Coordinator and was appointed Director of Special Projects in March 2003. Ms. Edkins has been seriously and actively involved with fine art photography since 1969.

About Norma Stevens (Representative)
For more than three decades, Norma Stevens worked in close collaboration with renowned photographer Richard Avedon in the Richard Avedon Studio, New York City. As CEO, she was responsible for his editorial projects for Vogue, (American, French and Italian), Rolling Stone and The New Yorker. She worked on Avedon’s worldwide museum exhibitions and publications.

Her advertising work included clients Mercedes, Calvin Klein, Revlon, Chanel, Dior, Versace. She was the founding Executive Director of The Richard Avedon Foundation in 2002.

About Mary Shanahan (Art Director) Mary Shanahan has art directed exhibitions and publications for Richard Avedon, and booksfor Mary Ellen Mark, Christopher Baker and Francois Halard. Previously, she was the art director at French Vogue, GQ and Rolling Stone.