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Annemarie Heinrich photos at Arthur Ross Gallery
From Busby Berkeley to Evita
ANDREW MANGRAVITE
A moderate-sized but striking exhibition of the work of Annemarie Heinrich is currently on display at the Arthur Ross Gallery. Timed to coincide with the opening of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s great “Tesoros” exhibition, Heinrich’s work demonstrates a Latin American art form of modern times: the photograph. Heinrich, who died in 2005, aged 93, was long esteemed as a leading Argentine artist, unsurpassed in her chosen field of glamour photography.
Glamour photography is sometimes the victim of artistic snobbery. Connoisseurs who go into ecstasies over a Scheeler close-up of a gear or the weather-beaten side of a barn by Walker Evans deride photographers like Heinrich or George Hurrell as frivolous “lesser lights” for wasting their time on photographs of mere dancers or actors.
The Ross Gallery exhibition has a somewhat thematic organization. Images are grouped by the type of work they represent. Thus we have portraits of ballet dancers and some studies of the dancers in action. (I assume most of these found their way into a book Heinrich published in 1962 on Ballet in Argentina.) Although most of these photos are straightforward (albeit dramatically-lit) images, there are some experiments in multiple-exposure and one Busby Berkeley-ish overhead abstract of dancers.
Heinrich would most certainly have known about Busby Berkeley, as she was a confessed movie fan and executed many portrait assignments for various Argentine movie magazines. Some of this work is on display as well. But you will also see portraits of the singer Marian Anderson and the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. There are two different images of “Evita,” one as popular entertainer Eva Duarte, the other a formal portrait of the real-life Eva Peron, in which the legend confronts us with a knowing smirk.
“The Cabaret Series” is perhaps the most self-consciously frivolous work on display. These publicity images of popular female cabaret artistes are lovely, high-class cheesecake shots. One, a 1940 study, “Desire,” is a rather daring image of a nude, horned male (a devil, a satyr?) fondling a nude female. It would never have made the pages of an Anglo publication of the day— or at least not one sold over the counter.
There is a curiously abstract quality to Heinrich’s fashion work that gives it a timeless quality and makes it the most visually interesting of the works on display. The exhibit also includes anecdotal images and studies, some of which border on photojournalism. Especially engaging is the 1958 photograph, “Summer Vacation in the City,” in which a (clothed) young woman sunbathes atop a chimney. Annemarie Heinrich is a name that deserves to be better known north of the border. Fans of George Hurrell’s work should certainly be sure to catch this exhibition of the work of a South American disciple before it closes.
ANDREW MANGRAVITE
A moderate-sized but striking exhibition of the work of Annemarie Heinrich is currently on display at the Arthur Ross Gallery. Timed to coincide with the opening of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s great “Tesoros” exhibition, Heinrich’s work demonstrates a Latin American art form of modern times: the photograph. Heinrich, who died in 2005, aged 93, was long esteemed as a leading Argentine artist, unsurpassed in her chosen field of glamour photography.
Glamour photography is sometimes the victim of artistic snobbery. Connoisseurs who go into ecstasies over a Scheeler close-up of a gear or the weather-beaten side of a barn by Walker Evans deride photographers like Heinrich or George Hurrell as frivolous “lesser lights” for wasting their time on photographs of mere dancers or actors.
The Ross Gallery exhibition has a somewhat thematic organization. Images are grouped by the type of work they represent. Thus we have portraits of ballet dancers and some studies of the dancers in action. (I assume most of these found their way into a book Heinrich published in 1962 on Ballet in Argentina.) Although most of these photos are straightforward (albeit dramatically-lit) images, there are some experiments in multiple-exposure and one Busby Berkeley-ish overhead abstract of dancers.
Heinrich would most certainly have known about Busby Berkeley, as she was a confessed movie fan and executed many portrait assignments for various Argentine movie magazines. Some of this work is on display as well. But you will also see portraits of the singer Marian Anderson and the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. There are two different images of “Evita,” one as popular entertainer Eva Duarte, the other a formal portrait of the real-life Eva Peron, in which the legend confronts us with a knowing smirk.
“The Cabaret Series” is perhaps the most self-consciously frivolous work on display. These publicity images of popular female cabaret artistes are lovely, high-class cheesecake shots. One, a 1940 study, “Desire,” is a rather daring image of a nude, horned male (a devil, a satyr?) fondling a nude female. It would never have made the pages of an Anglo publication of the day— or at least not one sold over the counter.
There is a curiously abstract quality to Heinrich’s fashion work that gives it a timeless quality and makes it the most visually interesting of the works on display. The exhibit also includes anecdotal images and studies, some of which border on photojournalism. Especially engaging is the 1958 photograph, “Summer Vacation in the City,” in which a (clothed) young woman sunbathes atop a chimney. Annemarie Heinrich is a name that deserves to be better known north of the border. Fans of George Hurrell’s work should certainly be sure to catch this exhibition of the work of a South American disciple before it closes.
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