SPECIAL EDITION PARIS PHOTO | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2019 BY GALERIE JULIAN SANDER, COLOGNE, GERMANY BY JULIAN SANDER The more we know, the more we know what we do not know. There is a profound wisdom in this con- tradictory sounding truth. Our desire to know things is the insatiable urge that has and conti- nues to drive our kind to its grea- test heights and its darkest depths. As our knowledge of each other has grown we have also gained a larger understanding of just how large the world is in which we all live. The news, a natural product of our need to prioritize the granular aspects of our existence, has beco- me a common base line of know- ledge. As all things that develop out of a necessity, the news has be- come a tool kit for the movement of mass information be it true or false. Although chances are that it will be somewhere in between more often than at either extre- me, at least for most of us who’s access to information is limited to that which has passed through the filters of national security and poli- tical correctness. These well formulated truths serve to help us make sense of a world so much larger than the numbers any of us can actually digest. 7.7738.603.459 people populate the world as of 23:09 CET on Octo- ber 21,2019. By comparison an 80 Reaper Drone in Temporary Hangar, Holloman AFB, NM, 2012, by Sean Hemmerle year life consists of 2.524.608.000 seconds. born with. We forget the horrors of ant enough for you to see. The Oliver Abraham’s portraits with Our ability to know the world is a our youth and render that period reasons for why the work is shown their austerity confronted us with Imprint fallacy that we tell ourselves in or- of our lives in a warm nostalgic here will fade, what will remain the still physiognomy of the indi- Galerie Julian Sander GmbH der to make the sheer scale of this glow regardless of our understan- is the impact the image leaves on vidual sitters. Abraham has con- Cäcilienstraße 48 life we live in seem somehow con- ding that children are monsters, you. This is where the curation of densed a conversation with each 50667 Cologne | Germany tainable. and that we were all children. our personal experience begins, in of these individuals into the one Tel. +49 (0) 221 1705070 the selection of what we remem- resonating moment. It is a group [email protected] In an 80 year life a person could The truth is by nature, never ful- ber. of conversations that monument www.galeriejuliansander.de meet a maximum of 4.891.428 ly true. The parts we remember the profound impact of the people people if he/she/they start at 18 are particular to the meaning they The works I have chosen to show rendered. Circulation and did nothing but sleep and have for us. you here and now satiate a desire 500 copies meet, spending 5 minutes per soul. in me. This is a tribute to the news. Xu Yong shows us what an idea I could also have a 10-minute con- That is how memories becomes im- can become, even when the larger versation with every person living portant. We remember the things The reaper drone by Sean Hemm- news narrative tried to remove the Texts by Anna Budde, Lea Bussenius, in Paris if I spent 62 years doing through experience and repetition. erle is an image of mechanical per- events from the history books. “Ne- Noam Chomsky, Sean Hemmerle, nothing else. The more often we are reminded fection. A machine capable of pre- gatives” show people who are stan- Julian Sander This is all absurd of course. The of any given event or construct the servation or destruction of life as in ding for what they believe in. fact is that we do not want to meet deeper it will be engraved in our a computer game. Echoing the vi- every person. In fact, we prefer to memory. sion of Dan O’Bannon and Ronald What you take with you depends Editorial Coordination keep our world controllable. We Shusett as they wrote the ground on what you bring to the experien- Anna Budde, Tamara Könen trust the well formulated truths None the less it is important to breaking script for “Alien” in the ce. News is as little true as it is fal- Kristina Gell, Julian Sander that we consume based on our con- understand that what we see is late 1970’s, the physicality of this se. In the end we decide what the viction, like those presented by Fox brought to our attention in part by image reminds me of the Aliens truth is, both individually and as a Design und Layout News and/or CNN. It makes the the conviction of others. Indeed, head and the precision of their society. Marcus Cormann scale feel human. This is a funda- this whole fair is filled with images purpose. This is a personal associa- www.mwk-koeln.de mental survival tool that we are all that someone thought was import- tion of course as all art must be. JOHN COHEN NOAM CHOMSKY JULIAN ASSANGE + XU YONG ON PASSING INDEPENDENCE OF TELLING TRUTH NEGATIVES ACT AS SEP 16, 2019 JOURNALISM FIXING REALITY WITNESS PAGE 5 PAGE 6 PAGE 7 PAGE 9 2 | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2019 GALERIE JULIAN SANDER, COLOGNE, GERMANY “…as it was and as it was changing” Media Nodes by Sean Hemmerle BY SEAN HEMMERLE The Media Nodes series, which I began in 2002, was born from my desire to photograph the news media as it was and as it was changing. I wanted to photograph the nodes of production in order to visually articulate the activities and environments of “the media”. At that time, it was apparent to me that the news media was in transition. The few bloggers in operation were largely indepen- dent and not taken seriously. Magazines with previously stellar reputations for investigative news were sliding toward jingoism, celebrity, and financial instabili- ty. Fox News was overtaking CNN in the Nielsen ratings, and Ted Coppel’s numbers were slipping on Nightline. At that moment, it seemed that hard-core, investiga- tive journalism as we had known it was in peril. I set out to photograph the news business much like Eugéne Atget photo­ graphed Paris at the dawn of the twentieth Fox News | New York | 2005/2015 | Digital Chromogenic Print | Ed. of 5 | 62 x 74 cm | Sean Hemmerle century to preserve it in a visual medium for future generations. My grandfather was a newspaper man in the Bible Belt. My father worked as a cameraman at a Phoenix TV station. My first job was working as a paperboy for the Arizona Republic. I am ob- sessed with news coverage, what we call the media, the products of the airwaves, those who make the news, and how we decide what is been unprecedented turnover and worthy of reporting. evolution of the “Fourth Estate”. Journalism has been retooled and Artist Profile I considered each newsroom as a remains vital, but in new forums node of production, choosing to like Al Jazeera, Politico, propubli- photograph them architecturally, ca, Democracy Now, and a myri- industrially, and using long expo- ad of independent bloggers. This Sean Hemmerle sures. This approach illustrated leaner, more agile media is repor- the proxemics of each location ting on events happening every shows depictions of the citizens national Center for Photography, SEAN HEMMERLE via traffic flow and spatial arran- moment of every day. of the two war-torn countries in and the Martin Margulies Ware- gements. Without a caption or 1966 born in Tempe, Arizona, the Middle East. Each subject is house. Hemmerle's images have explanation, viewers can glean While the monolithic Tiffany Net- USA, now residing in Poughkeep- portrayed frontally with no direc- been featured in numerous pu- the functionality of these spaces work of Edward R. Murrow’s day sie, NY. tion from the artist, allowing the blications, including Metropolis, through elements such as the pla- has yielded to a multi-channel Sean Hemmerle is a New York-ba- individual photographed to (re-) Time, and the New York Times cement and type of furniture, le- chorus of decentralized contribu- sed photographer whose work present themselves. Magazine. vels of lighting, and the divisions tors, the decisions through which ranges from international conflict His conflict images span a tumul- of volumes. Each person working stories are prioritized and distri- zones to contemporary architectu- tuous decade, from the World SELECTED PROJECTS in these offices has his or her own buted is still a process practiced re. After serving in the U.S. Army Trade Center to Kabul, Baghdad, INCLUDE function, however, the organiza- regularly in newsrooms across the (1984-1988), he attended the Gaza, Juárez, and Beirut. Closer tion portrayed (whether indepen- nation. The character of the re- University of Miami and earned to home, Hemmerle has created THEM: Iraq and Afghanistan dent paper or media conglome- sulting news product varies from an MFA from the School of Visu- award-winning photographs that (2002-2003); Brutal Legacy: Paul rate) also has a unique mission, node to node, evolving into pat- al Arts in New York in 1997. He reflect the pathos and poetry of Rudolph’s Orange County Go- which becomes more discernible terns of bias unique to each insti- quickly established his reputation the American Rust Belt, including vernment Center, The Graham after studying its interior spaces.