Photos Alex Webb at the Helmond Museum

Alex Webb photos exhibited at the Helmond Museum from 25 to 03

From March 25 to September 24, Kunsthal Helmond presents a new photographic exhibition on the work of Magnum photographer Alex Webb (San Francisco, 1952). On March 25 there will also be an interview (in English) with Alex Webb at Helmond Castle.

Participate in the interview

The interview with Alex Webb, will be led by curator (contemporary art) Frank Hoenjet, and will take place from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at Kasteel Helmond. Interested? Registration is mandatory and can be done via Interview with Alex Webb (museumhelmond.nl). You can find more information about the interview, registration and participation costs here. Webb will also sign after the interview. There are also plenty of opportunities to ask the photographer questions and view the exhibition in the nearby Kunsthal.

Dynamic street photos

Alex Webb is world famous for his vibrant and dynamic street photography. The Helmond Museum is the first to show an overview of Webb’s oeuvre spanning over forty years of photography. In the exhibition Alex Webb Errand and Epiphany, photographs 1978-2022 Webb’s photographs show the world as a special place where the everyday sometimes reveals itself as something extraordinary. We see children catching soap bubbles at a street party, people in Haiti going about their daily lives despite all the misery, or a girl on the street who is almost juggling freshly colored cotton candy. prepared.

Rich, saturated colors

Alex Webb belongs to the second generation of color photography pioneers. His photos are characterized by rich, saturated colors. They are regularly interspersed with powerful shadows. His curiosity always leads him to border areas, the margins of societies: places where cultures intersect, sometimes clash, sometimes merge. Webb is constantly fascinated by the strangeness and complexity of this world.

Enigmatic places

The photographer regularly applies the principle of perspective, according to which depth is mainly suggested by deliberately placing the characters, objects or actions photographed one behind the other. The places photographed by Webb are sometimes confusing. He is a past master in the art of capturing a sudden staging of several characters in the same frame, an ephemeral moment where everything holds together. His photos are open to different interpretations.

Large format photographs

The exhibition features approximately 80 large format photographs taken in the Caribbean, Haiti, Mexico, Cuba, Latin America, Europe and the United States. Additionally, you can stream his short film on Istanbul“the city of a hundred names: Asian and European, ancient and modern, Islamic and secular,” says Webb.

“I only know how to approach a place by walking, because what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, then watch and wait again, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the ‘unknown or the secret heart of the known awaits you just around the corner’, says Alex Webb about his way of working as a street photographer.

Biography
Alex Webb (San Francisco, 1952) studied history and literature at Harvard University and also took photography lessons with American photographer Charles Harbutt. The main sources of inspiration for Alex Webb are Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand. He took something from each of them, like a feeling for the “decisive moment”, a visual rhyme and an antenna for daily and urban reality. But none of them practiced color photography. Webb moved there in 1978, when he discovered that black-and-white photography didn’t work in sun-drenched countries, like Haiti and Mexico.

Alex Webb lives in the United States and since 1979 has been a full member of the famous collective photo agency Magnum Photos, founded 75 years ago by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, among others. Webb has won several prizes and awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2007) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1990, USA). He has published in The New York Times Magazine, Stern, and National Geographic, among others. Webb has curated over 15 photobooks and collaborates regularly with partner and poet/photographer Rebecca Norris Webb. Together they have published several photo books, including city ​​of memory (2014) and Brooklyn: The Inner City (2019).

About the Helmond Museum

Kunsthal Helmond is part of the Helmond Museum, together with Helmond Castle. Both sites are located in central Helmond and are easily accessible by car and public transport. By train you get off at Helmond station, it’s about a 10-15 minute walk to Kunsthal Helmond. You can park in the Boscotondo car park, located under the Kunsthal. Go to www.museumhelmond.nl for up-to-date information on opening hours, prices, program of activities and exhibitions.

Photo: New York, USA, 2018 @ Alex Webb / Magnum Photos.