Untitled, from the series Best Before End, 2011-2013

Stephen Gill 

Chronicler, visual poet, anthropologist, sociologist, alchemist and conceptual artist: Stephen Gill is a unique maker of images who is constantly putting the photographic medium to the test and is able to create a visual language where documentary photography, coincidence, experiment and interventions are closely linked.
 

Stephen Gill

Created by Stephen Gill. The artwork is a pigment print on Canson Platine Fiber Rag and displayed at 78,6 x 60,8 cm.

Waves from the Web, 2009

Visible in

What do you experience when you look at the colours and textures in this photograph? Since there is no clear subject, the viewer is drawn into an interplay of warm colours and abstract shapes. Instead of telling a story, this photograph seems intended to convey a feeling. 

, in which Gill attempts to visualise the intensity of urban life in the London borough of Hackney. For this series, artist Stephen Gill experimented with the photographic process by soaking the negatives in energy drink. The result is a dreamy image, where virtually all traces of the original image have disappeared. 

 is like a visual poem, in which the message lies beneath the surface.  

 was introduced to the public during Foam’s first major retrospective devoted to the English photographer Stephen Gill.  In addition to 

, the exhibition showed work from his series 

Untitled from the series Best Before End

Untitled 3 from the series Best Before End

In analogue photography, a ‘negative’ image (in which the colours are inverted) is converted in the dark room into a so-called positive image, which is the resulting photograph. This is a technical procedure that requires a series of steps. Artist Stephen Gill likes to play with this process by introducing different steps. For his series 

, he does so by submerging the negative in energy drink. This not only causes a beautiful colour palette to emerge on the photo-negative, but also allows Gill to distort the photo. The sweet drink causes the light-sensitive layer of the photo film to let go, after which Gill can manipulate it with a fine brush. In this case, the process has resulted in an almost spooky portrait with unique colours and a fascinating texture. The final image is a photograph of the manipulated negative.  

Untitled 2 from the series Best Before End

After having documented the London district of Hackney for fourteen years, artist Stephen Gill felt that there was something lacking in his work. How can you capture the intensity of busy city life in an image? By experimenting with the process of making as well as of printing his analogue photographs, he found new ways to capture this feeling in images. For example, in his series 

 Gill experimented with energy drink: by letting the negatives soak in the sweet fluid for a while, the light-sensitive layer of the film softened. The result is an abstract image with wonderfully warm colours, as this picture shows. What feelings does this photograph evoke in you?  

 was introduced to the public during Foam’s first major retrospective devoted to the English photographer Stephen Gill. In addition to 

Untitled 1 from the series Best Before End

Created by Stephen Gill. The artwork is a pigment print on Canson Platine Fiber Rag and displayed at 111,76 x 111,76 cm.

What innovative approaches do photographers take towards the medium? Numerous artists like to experiment with photographic techniques in order to transcend the limitations of the medium and thereby to push its boundaries. 

, by the English artist Stephen Gill. By combining different perspectives – such as large versus small, far away versus nearby – Gill plays with the scale of the subjects of his photographs. Adding a measuring tape further enhances this effect by suggesting that the branches in the background are similar in size to the woodlouse in the corner. By highlighting details, Gill invites the viewer to reflect on the relationship between humans and nature and how other organisms understand the world around. 

Untitled from the series Talking to Ants

Untitled 2 from the series Talking to Ants

Look at this work for ten seconds – what strikes you most? The river landscape, the smiling girl, or perhaps the abstract shapes in the foreground? Stephen Gill’s work requires time to sink in. By layering multiple negatives while printing photographs, a collage of different images results.  

But another layer lies across the serene landscape and smiling girl: abstract shapes that resemble the things you see through a microscope. These traces are the result of objects that Gill deliberately places inside his camera, prior to taking photographs. In this way he attempts to create confusion in the scale relations between the different images. This unique approach emphasises the refined and disquieting beauty of Gill’s photography, in which every detail is cast in a new light, in surprising ways. 

Untitled 1 from the series Talking to Ants

Foam is proud to present Reflected &ndash; Works from the Foam Collection at The Atelier N&eacute;erlandais, Paris, an exhibition of works selected from its own collection.

Foam has been collecting photography actively since 2007, and now comprises around 550 works. Films and photography-related installations are also well represented. The collection is an active and dynamic part of Foam and a reflection of its exhibition programme, in which the emphasis is placed on the support, signalling and presentation of young talents. Foam follows the careers of these young talents, which may also result in further acquisitions. This policy ensures that Foam&rsquo;s collection provides an accurate image of the most recent developments within the expansive field of photography. The works that have been selected for this collection exhibition clearly do justice to this policy.
In an early stage of their career, Foam has acquired photographs by now internationally acclaimed artists such as JH Engstr&ouml;m, Stephen Gill, Pieter Hugo, &nbsp;Alex Prager and Taryn Simon plus of important Dutch photographers such as Blommers &amp; Schumm &nbsp;and Viviane Sassen. Considered second and third purchases provide depth and weight to the collection. Therefore it is an outspoken contemporary collection that pays tribute to the work of young and promising photographers and that clearly focuses on the future, and not, like many other collections, on the past.
<img src="https://a.storyblok.com/f/113697/2283x3425/5ab6182877/photo_sculpture_pink_1_from_the_series_dalston_anatomy_2013_c_lorenzo_vitturi.jpg" alt="" width="583" height="875" /> Photo-sculpture Pink #1, from the series Dalston Anatomy, 2013 &copy; Lorenzo Vitturi
Furthermore the exhibition will feature work by young photographers and artists as well as those whose names have now become well-known, such as Juno Calypso, Rapha&euml;l Dallaporta, Lara D&rsquo;Hondt, Mayumi Hosokura, Ina Jang, Joris Jansen, Katja Mater, Sarah Palmer, Peter Puklus, Lieko Shiga, Lorenzo Vitturi and Anne de Vries.
Reflected &ndash; Works from the Foam Collection&nbsp;is supported by The Netherlands Embassy in Paris. The exhibition is part of the PhotoSaintGermain exhibition programme.
Foam is supported by the BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, the City of Amsterdam, Olympus and the VandenEnde Foundation.

<div class="sidebar__content">REFLECTED 
5 - 18 November 2018 Open daily: 12.00 - 18.00 hrs.
&nbsp;
ATELIER N&Eacute;ERLANDAIS 121 Rue de Lille,&nbsp;75007 Paris, France <a href="https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Atelier+N%C3%A9erlandais/@48.8613086,2.3175168,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x47e66fd4870ecbb5:0x75eef4324b8215ea!8m2!3d48.8613086!4d2.3197055">Directions</a>
&nbsp;</div>

Reflected | Paris

Bertien van Manen's solo exhibition Let's sit down before we go chronicles 18 years of travels through Eastern Europe. 

Let&rsquo;s Sit Down Before We Go by Bertien van Manen (1942)&nbsp;consists of more than&nbsp;60 photos, created between 1991 and 2009. During that time, Van Manen regularly and extensively travelled with a small 35mm camera through Russia, Moldavia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Tatarstan and Georgia.&nbsp; She stayed for long periods with the people she met on her travels, learned their language and usually became friends with them.&nbsp; This produced intimate and sometimes tender photos resulting from a personal and sincere relationship.
The title of the exhibition, Let&rsquo;s Sit Down Before We Go, refers to an old Russian custom: before you leave on a journey, take a moment to think about where you come from, where you are going and why. This was also the case for Bertien van Manen. Since 2010 she has been traveling far less due to personal circumstances. with English photographer Stephen Gill, she sorted through more than 15,000 negatives.&nbsp;
Van Manen&rsquo;s photos are intimate. The personal atmosphere of the photos is reinforced by the soft, nearly flat palette of colours. Take Pjotr and his family. They look relaxed standing there in the snow in their pyjamas and bare feet: posing for a photographer they have confidence in. You can see that in Pjotr&rsquo;s smile as well as in the two men peering from the porch in an easy way. Or look at Vlada, sitting in her kitchen, surrounded by her possessions: the teapot she&rsquo;s just poured from, the flowers she loves, her painting that she gazes at every day. The slight absurdity is not something Van Manen directs; it&rsquo;s something she just happens to encounter.&nbsp;
<img src="https://a.storyblok.com/f/113697/595x396/175308185a/595_pjotr_and_his_family__apanas__siberia__from_the_series_lets_sit_down_before_we_go_c_bertien_van_manen.jpg" alt="" width="595" height="396" />Pjotr and his family, Apanas, Siberia, from the series Let's sit down before we go &copy; Bertien van Manen
Foam is supported by the BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, City of Amsterdam, Delta Lloyd, Olympus and the VandenEnde Foundation. 
ABOUT BERTIEN VAN MANEN Bertien van Manen started out as a fashion photographer &ndash; and she still has an eye for detail and pattern &ndash; but inspired by Robert Frank&rsquo;s book The Americans (1958), she decided on a more documentary approach. For a time she photographed in black-and-white, but she changed her style radically in the early 1990s. From that point on, she travelled with great regularity through Eastern Europe and Asia. Her many travels and intensive contact with the people she met resulted in the book A Hundred Summers, a Hundred Winters in 1994.
A logical follow-up was East Wind West Wind (2001), which was shot in China. In 2005 Van Manen published Give Me Your Image, comprised of photos of interiors in which the residents had placed a private photo of their own. Let&rsquo;s Sit Down Before We Go (2010) is her most recent photo book. The character of this book is less documentary than her earlier books and therefore allows more room for the viewers&rsquo; imagination.
The work of Bertien van Manen was in numerous solo and group exhibitions including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Photographers Gallery (London) and Photo Museum Winterthur. Her work is included in major international collections such as Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Maison Europ&eacute;enne de la Photographie (Paris) and The Metropolitan Museum of Photographie (Tokyo). Bertien van Manen lives and works in Amsterdam.

Bertien van Manen

Foam is supported by the VriendenLoterij, Foam Members, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, the VandenEnde Foundation and the City of Amsterdam.

In 2021 Foam receives additional support from the Mondriaan Fund and Kickstart Cultuurfonds.

Foam is proud to present Reflected - Works from the Foam Collection, an exhibition consisting of works selected from its own collection.

Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara Ogere-Remo, 2007

Balancing Orange, Pink and Yellow, 2008

Deborah, 2009

Dees, 2011

Extract from Talking to Ants series published as a book in May 2014

Papergirl 2, 2010

Tree #1, 2007

Reflected 

The National Opera celebrates its fiftieth anniversary at the Opera Forward Festival. Foam presents a selection of works from its own collection during the festival, which runs 15 March &ndash; 10 April. 

FOAM EXHIBITION: THE SPIRIT IN PHOTOGRAPHY Part of Opera Forward Festival
During and after Opera Forward Festival, Foam Photography Museum presents a selection of photographic works from its own collection. The exhibition focuses on the theme of the spirit&nbsp;in photography.&nbsp;
Foam exhibits photographs of young talents and follows them through the course of their careers. Foam's collection is therefore representative of photography of the 21st century in which relevant developments in contemporary photography are visible. The collection now has more than 450 works and reflects the complexity of contemporary photography; many of the works sit on the boundary of the medium and show interactions&nbsp;with video art and sculpture.
With work from:&nbsp;Raph&auml;el Dallaporta, Luke Gilford, <a href="http://shop.foam.org/en/foam-editions-stephen-gill-pussy-2013.html">Stephen Gill</a>, Leonie Hampton, Moyumi Hosokura, Joris Jansen, <a href="http://shop.foam.org/en/foam-editions-sjoerd-knibbeler-unfold-fb-22-2015.html">Sjoerd Knibbeler</a>, Richard Mosse, <a href="http://shop.foam.org/en/foam-editions-sanne-peper-great-smokey-mountains-t.html">Sanne Peper</a>, Regine Petersen, Marike Schuurman, Lieko Shiga, Esther Vonplon, Anne de Vries, <a href="http://shop.foam.org/en/foam-editions-daisuke-yokota-untitled-2012.html">Daisuke Yokota</a>, <a href="http://shop.foam.org/en/foam-editions-danielle-van-ark-untitled-21-2009.html">Dani&euml;lle van Ark</a>.
<img src="https://a.storyblok.com/f/113697/711x960/958190d641/moyumi_hosokura_1.jpg" alt="" width="595" height="803" />From the series KAZAN&nbsp;&copy; Moyumi Hosokura
<img src="https://a.storyblok.com/f/113697/307x407/1b682560d3/moyumi_hosokura_2.jpg" alt="" width="595" height="789" />From the series KAZAN&nbsp;&copy; Moyumi Hosokura
<div>&gt;&gt; <a href="/museum/programme/foam-talk-show-image-soul">FOAM TALK SHOW: IMAGE &amp; SOUL</a><a href="/museum/programme/foam-talk-show-image-soul"> </a></div>

<div class="sidebar__content">EXHIBITION INFO 
15 March - 10 April&nbsp; Dutch National Opera &amp; Ballet Price:&nbsp;Free access
&nbsp;</div>

stephen gill

Stephen Gill

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Reflected | Paris

Bertien van Manen

Reflected Works from the Foam Collection

Opera Forward Festival x Foam