Showers Gallery presents a new exhibition dedicated to Ernst Haas. Composed of around twenty color photographs, taken mainly in New York, it reveals the American photographer's most personal and poetic project, around abstraction. This astonishing series coincides with the publication this fall of a book, Ernst Haas Abstract, which will be a landmark in his bibliography.
Ernst Haas' Abstract project represents one of the most daring and personal stages of the work of this pioneer of color photography. Conceived in the 1970s in the form of an audiovisual slideshow, Abstract was inspired by images taken in all phases of the photographer's career, from 1952 to 1984. Little known to the general public, this complex project embodies the vision singularity of Haas, who saw photography as a fluid, poetic art, and in perpetual movement.
On the occasion of the release of the book Abstract and the exhibition at Douches la Galerie, Alexander Haas, son of the photographer, gives us his testimony on the genesis of this project. He evokes his father's passion for cinema, color, and music, central elements in his artistic practice which find their most accomplished expression in Abstract. For Ernst Haas, this project, matured over decades, represented the pinnacle of his career, a tireless quest for abstract images that he drew from nature as well as everyday scenes.
The Abstract project is certainly the most complex and least known of all those carried out by your father, Ernst Haas. For what reasons?
My father was a big movie buff. It was a project he had throughout his life: to make something of all these abstract photos he had taken. When he saw, in the 1970s, that the technology made it possible to have several slide projectors working at the same time and, thus, present the images in fade-out, he ended up obtaining what he had been looking for for a long time. moment. For him, these abstractions were found everywhere, in nature as in any subject. And from there, he really found his calling. I see him working at night on these abstractions, and I realized that it brought him enormous joy. My father was a music lover and the fact that he combined abstract music with this slideshow, in this case that of the Hungarian composer György Ligeti, allowed him to express himself differently and elevate his photographic work to a new level. superior.
Is this really the culmination of his work?
For him, yes, clearly. At the end of his life, when he participated in workshops, he primarily showed this slideshow, Abstract. It must be admitted, it was also, for him, a way of foreseeing his death. The book, which appears this fall (by Prestel) is quite dark. We feel that there is a reflection turned towards himself, and a great melancholy in his images.
Has color always been an obsession for your father?
He lived during the Second World War in Vienna, Austria, and it was a gray time for him, as he admitted. So he wanted to see color everywhere and he spent his life chasing it, even if, when he arrived in the United States, that didn't stop him from making black and white. But the majority of his work is in color and that's how he was recognized as an artist.
How do we go from a slideshow to a book project, which will be published this fall, accompanied by this exhibition at Douches la Galerie?
First of all, I always thought that this slideshow could lead to a book and I am delighted. This is not an easy book to understand, but it is truly an artistic project. As for the prints for the exhibition – C-prints and inkjet prints – they were made two or three years ago in two Parisian laboratories, Cyclope and Picto, and I am really amazed by the modernity of these images, thanks to current technology. It's really wonderful to see that these abstract photographs, which were taken in the 1950s, could ultimately have been taken today.
Interview conducted by Philippe Séclier.
Ernst Haas (1921-1986) is recognized as one of the great photographers of the 20th century, and is one of the pioneers of color photography. He was born in Vienna (Austria) in 1921 and began photographing during the Second World War. His work on the return of Austrian prisoners of war attracted the attention of Lifebut he declined the offer to become a staff photographer for the American magazine to maintain his independence. He joined the Magnum Photos agency in 1949, at the invitation of Robert Capa, and became friends with him as well as with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Werner Bischof.
Ernst Haas moved to New York in 1951 and quickly began using Kodachrome film, making his first color photos in Mexico. In 1953, Life published a twenty-four page photo report on his work in New York: it was the largest color report ever published by the magazine (Images of a magic city. Austrian photographer finds fresh wonder in New York’s familiar sights).
In 1962, just before retiring, Edward Steichen, director of the photo department at MoMA, devoted a major retrospective to him, Ernst Haas : Color Photographyfourteen years before the exhibition also devoted to color, William Eggleston’s Guideorganized by John Szarkowski who succeeded Steichen, at the famous New York museum.
Ernst Haas traveled extensively throughout his career, working for Lifebut also Vogue, Look or Esquire. He published several books throughout his life: The Creation (1971), In America (1975), In Germany (1976), et Himalayan Pilgrimage (1978). In 1986, the year of his death, he received the Hasselblad Prize.
Ernst Haas: The forces of abstraction
Until January 25, 2025
Showers Gallery
5, rue Legouvé
75010 Paris
01 78 94 03 00
www.lesdoucheslagalerie.com
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