Artist Talk: Donald Weber

Sep 212013

Following an exploratory trip to Chernobyl in 2005, Donald Weber soon returned to the abandoned site of the nuclear disaster and spent the next six years in Russia and Ukraine photographing the ruins of the unstoppable storm we call history. Traveling and living with ordinary people who had survived much, had survived everything, Weber began to see the modern State as a primitive and bloody sacrificial rite of unnamed Power.

Presenters: Donald Weber

Location: Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 5 Uplands

Presented by:

Following an exploratory trip to Chernobyl in 2005, Donald Weber soon returned to the abandoned site of the nuclear disaster and spent the next six years in Russia and Ukraine photographing the ruins of the unstoppable storm we call history. Traveling and living with ordinary people who had survived much, had survived everything, Weber began to see the modern State as a primitive and bloody sacrificial rite of unnamed Power.

Interrogations is the result of his personal quest to uncover the hidden meaning of the bloody 20th Century. Weber insistently and provocatively addresses his questions both to the living survivors and to the ghosts of the State’s innumerable victims, resurrecting their final hours by taking their point of view, and performing a kind of incantatory meditation over their private encounters with Power.

The policemen, working girls, thugs, dissidents and hustlers who inhabit this story are all orphans of a secret History; the outlines of our collective fate takes shape in Weber’s epic work, expanding our awareness of what it means to be an actor in today’s dark opera.

Presenter Bios

Donald Weber

Prior to pursuing photography, Donald Weber trained as an architect and worked with Rem Koolhaas’ Office for Metropolitan Architecture. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007), the Dorthea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize (2006) , the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography (2009), and first prize, portrait stories, at the World Press Photo contest (2012).

Weber is the author of Bastard Eden, Our Chernobyl, on daily life in a post-atomic world, and Interrogations, which examines authority and power in Russia and Ukraine. His work has appeared in the Guardian, Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine, Stern, and Time, and he has had solo exhibitions at the United Nations, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Alice Austen House (New York). He is a member of the VII Photo Agency. Weber’s photographs from Interrogations are currently showing in Open Society Foundations’ Moving Walls 20 exhibition.

Organizations

The Open Society Foundations

The Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, are the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights. George Soros opened his first international foundation in Hungary in 1984.

Today, the Open Society Foundations support a vast array of projects in more than 120 countries, providing thousands of grants every year through a network of national and regional foundations and offices.
VII

VII is a storied photo agency, founded a few days before 9/11 to challenge the convergence in the photography business, when the trend for giant companies swallowing smaller independent agencies started. VII went small and photographer-owned, believing in the power and energy of collective effort, when everyone else seemed to be going big and corporate.

VII remains a disruptive and innovative business, unafraid to swim against the prevailing currents. VII has turned its gaze far from the frontline of its foundation. It has earned a reputation for uncompromising photography immersed in the great issues of today. VII photographers and filmmakers are as likely to be found focusing on race, gender, and identity, as they are on migration or conflict.

Amplifying local voices and addressing the complex political, environmental, and social questions facing families everywhere, VII places great value in the power of images to tell important stories. The members of VII are motivated by issues, and are proud to elevate those issues above the cult of the image, or the cult of the photographer.