HAMBURG.- The exhibition »High Noon« at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg highlights the groundbreaking works of Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Mark Morrisroe and Philip-Lorca diCorcia from December 13, 2024 to May 4, 2025.

Having studyied photography at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the four photographers Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Mark Morrisroe and Philip- Lorca diCorcia began their work in the political climate of the Ronald Reagan era. Goldin, Armstrong and Morrisroe are friends and concentrate on the photographic exploration of the subcultural bohemia in Boston and New York, of which they are an integral part.

The camera, personal perspective and autobiographical aspects merge together and shape three unmistakable visual identities, albeit completely different in conception and style, which have revolutionized photography and continue to have a powerful effect right up to the present day. Caught between instability and fragility, constantly in search of themselves, they show the pleasure and horror of their peer group and open up intense insights into their emotional and social worlds. Like diaries, photographic sequences of affection, friendship, love, sex and liveliness collide with loneliness, violence, addiction, AIDS, decay and death.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, who very consciously distances himself from the three photographers, begins by artificially recreating everyday scenes with relatives and friends, ingeniously illuminating and photographing them, initially conceiving ideal archetypes in this way. His work is always based on a precisely defined conceptual approach that consciously plays with the photographic medium as a possible document.

Curated by Dr. Sabine Schnakenberg, the show at Deichtorhallen Hamburg presents what is probably the most comprehensive collection of artistic works, both in terms of time and content, that the collector F.C. Gundlach continuously added to his photographic collection in the 1990s. On display are around 150 works, some of which are large-format. Fascinated by the content, intimacy, expressiveness and personal approach, F.C. Gundlach particularly had a personal relationship with Nan Goldin - from the early 1990s onwards, he supported her very specifically.

Simultaneously, the exhibition »Franz Gertsch. Blow-up. A Retrospective« will be presented in the Hall for Contemporary Art at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

For Nan Goldin (*1953), the camera functions as a second pair of eyes, carefully scanning her surroundings. Privacy and immediate proximity are inextricably intertwined in her work, as are aspects of familiarity and intimacy. Goldin captures the presence and absence of her numerous friends with raw, unadorned authenticity. The quality of artificial light in the nocturnal scenes of clubs, apartments and streets, combined with the dim and warm color tones, create an emotionally charged atmosphere in which Goldin approaches the inner landscape of her subjects. Similar to a visual chronicle of her immediate social environment, Goldin's works captivate the viewer with their snapshot aesthetic - the portrayed intensity of the personal relationship between Goldin and her friends seems to be transferred directly to the viewer.

The black and white works of Nan Goldin's soulmate David Armstrong (1954–2014), on the other hand, are characterized by great sensitivity, evenness, calm and an almost shy tenderness and restraint. His portraits are the result of long shoots in which he tries to encircle and capture the quintessence of a person, while at the same time subtly allowing their longings, desires and fears to shine through. Similar to the works of Alfred Stieglitz or Edward Steichen, they draw the viewer into a dreamlike, poetic sphere that plays with the medium and expands it softly and painterly. Armstrong's large-format cityscapes, on the other hand, dissolve into coarse-grained, muddy blurs and provide an insight into the artist's inner, emotional landscapes.

Mark Morrisroe (1959–1989) places his own self, his sexuality, but also his friends and lovers at the center of his photographic work. By using the »sandwich technique«, which is created by superimposing a black-and-white and a color negative, he experiments with the creative possibilities of photographic printing techniques. Like a nostalgic veil, a soft graininess is embedded in the prints; the gentle transitions of a limited color palette, combined with a carefully graded, reduced contour sharpness, initially contain reminiscences of Pictorialist techniques. In fact, however, the deliberate blurring within the production of the prints and their subsequent painting can be seen as a system of presentation deliberately and individually devised by Morrisroe.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia (*1951), on the other hand, makes use of photography’s special quality and ability to evoke emotions. His groups of works are all based on a precisely defined conceptual approach. Inspired by fashion and advertising photography as well as his commissioned work for various magazines, he is fascinated by the deliberate over-staging of everyday life. The inherent theatricality of his photographs is carefully and artificially created: Using a meticulously controlled and often intricately arranged lighting scheme with a meticulously arranged ambience, his works appear with a superordinate, stage-like character that only becomes perceptible at second glance. Deliberately staged, he prefers to move between truth and fiction, leaving possible narrative threads for the viewer’s own imagination.