The Universal Photographer

Sunday 4 November 2018, 13:31 by Michelle Peeters | 3,755 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Shortly after U. was born, U. began taking photographs. These photographs are characterised by a frog's-eye view, which makes sense as U. spent most of the time lying on his back. This is how the first chapter of The Universal Photographer begins, a book about the remarkable life and work of the universal photographer U. (1955-2016).

It is the latest publication by artists Anne Geene (1983) & Arjan de Nooy (1965), who use their pseudoscientific and humorous work to make the public look at the world in a new way. In the project room of Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, they are presenting The Universal Photographer as an exhibition from 13 October to 17 March 2019.

Encyclopaedia of photography

Using U. as their starting point, Geene and De Nooy create an 'encyclopaedia' of photography. This fictional person took more photographs of more different subjects in more different styles than all the photographers before him.

In U., countless characteristics of other photographers, philosophers, scientists and collectors can be recognised. As a photographer, he relates to a fundamental quality of photography in an extreme way: copying.

Anne Geene & Arjan de Nooy loosely base The Universal Photographer on Gustave Flaubert's unfinished 1881 novel Bouvard et Pécuchet. In it, two men in their fifties study the state of affairs in a wide range of fields, from chemistry and psychology to religion and agriculture.

Systematically documenting

Like these characters, U. had an urge to study, copy, collect, combine and investigate, and, like them, he lacked common sense. This resulted in unusual methods, remarkable preferences and naive solutions to self-created problems.

The way Anne Geene & Arjan de Nooy systematically document things is reminiscent, among other things, of the work of Christian Boltanski, such as his Archives du Cœur, an ever-growing archive of people's heartbeats from all over the world.

Like Mariken Wessels, who had a solo exhibition at Fotomuseum Den Haag last year, Geene & De Nooy create a fictional story based on their own and found photographs. A comparison with Hans Eijkelboom also comes to mind, through their use of photography as a conceptual medium and, not least, their generous dose of dry humour.

Exhibition The Universal Photographer

Based on the chapters in the book, the exhibition explores successive periods from U.'s body of work, for which Geene & De Nooy in turn draw on a multitude of sources.

U.'s work reflects the artists' view of the art of photography, characterised by relativity and absurdism.

Surrounded by a dizzying inventory of quotations about photography, Geene & De Nooy use U. to construct a pseudoscientific overview of the medium. Above all, The Universal Photographer is a celebration of photography.

Anne Geene & Arjan de Nooy met while studying at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Together, they previously produced the award-winning publication Ornithology, an alternative birdwatcher's bible.

Anne Geene won the Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize for her solo work this year, as well as the audience prize. The exhibition The Universal Photographer can be seen for the first time at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. The accompanying publication is being released at the same time as the exhibition (HEF Publishers, 39.90 euros).

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