In Paris ? New York ? Shanghai (October 2007) Dutch conceptual artist Hans Eijkelboom creates a clever and witty comparative study of three major contemporary metropolises, each selected for having been (or promising to be) the cultural capital of its time?Paris during the nineteenth century; New York, the twentieth; and Shanghai, the twenty-first.
The concept, design, and packaging of Paris ? New York ? Shanghai are ingenious. The book is a uniquely bound three-volume set that unfolds to allow the reader not only to view each city individually, but also to compare simultaneously the three photographic studies of each metropolis and its citizens. The pictures combine traditional large-format cityscapes with snapshot-style grids in which the artist hones in like a laser beam on everyday people in the streets, broken down by type: men in stripped shirts, people wearing clothes with a camouflage print, people holding babies, men in taxi cabs, homeless people, people eating in restaurants, women carrying shopping bags, businessmen in suits, and so on. The images reveal how similar one city is to another today, though closer examination of each series reveals the differences.
Eijkelboom?s work is very much in line with the deadpan, seemingly mechanistic note-taking of Ed Ruscha and Hans-Peter Feldman. He spends up to two months in each city and about two hours shooting each category of subject. The shoot dates and locations are meticulously documented at the end of each volume. Eijkelboom?s work examines the impact of globalization on national and cultural traditions. He is interested in the idea that the people he photographs perceive themselves as very independent, but in fact, are very similar: within any two-hour period during which one person buys a blouse in a department store in one metropolis, ten other people will buy the same blouse, during the same time period, for the same reason. He is fascinated by the tension between the individual and the mass in a mass-market society. As Eijkelboom writes, ?Globalization, combined with the desire of cities for visually spectacular elements, is leading to the appearance everywhere of city centers that look the same and where identical products are sold.?
Hans Eijkelboom (born 1949, Arnhem, Holland) began his artistic career in 1971 with an installation that was part of a group show that included Joseph Beuys, Ed Ruscha, and Douglas Huebler. Since then, he has produced over twenty-five books, gaining renown in Europe for self-publishing many of them. His work has been exhibited internationally, including solo shows at the Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam; Museum of Modern Art, Arnhem, the Netherlands; Kr?ller-M?ller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands; Provincial Museum of Photography, Antwerp, Belgium; and Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim, Neuenhaus, Germany. Eijkelboom is based in Amsterdam.
Aperture?a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to advancing photography in all its forms?was founded in 1952 by six gifted individuals: photographers Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Barbara Morgan, and Minor White; historian Beaumont Newhall; and writer/curator Nancy Newhall. With scant resources, these visionary artists created a new periodical, Aperture magazine, to serve photographers and photography enthusiasts worldwide. As the medium flourished, so too did Aperture Foundation, expanding to include the subsequent publication of books (over four hundred to date); limited-edition photographs and portfolios; artist lectures and symposia; and a traveling exhibitions program that since its inception has presented over one hundred exhibitions at major museums and cultural institutions throughout the United States and abroad.
