Anka Dahlem – Vernissage
Event photography at a vernissage: the exhibition opening of the artist Anka Dahlem. Photographic coverage of Anka Dahlem’s private view. The white gallery…
Photographic coverage of Anka Dahlem’s private view. The white gallery is hung with her figurative painting — turquoise-grounded canvases, a sailing ship, figures and animals in a fast black line — and in front of it stands an audience holding wine. That is exactly the difficulty: the art is the real subject and is obscured all evening. The set works in the movement between the paintings, the guests and the details at the edges, down to the box of drawings beside the table.
At a private view two subjects compete for the same wall: the pictures and the people in front of them. Photograph only the art and you deliver a catalog; photograph only the guests and you deliver a reception — what is needed is both in one frame.
A white gallery is friendlier to photograph than it looks. The walls are one large fill, the light is even, and what gets in the way is not contrast but reflection on glass and varnish.
So the work happens at an angle. Head-on, every framed picture carries the ceiling light; from an angle it disappears and the canvas keeps its color — the price is an edge slightly out of true, and it is worth paying.
- Artist
- Anka Dahlem
