From Document mag 76

Here are some of the photographs from the installation art from Channel Four's programme, "The Human Footprint". This was a documentary that showed the viewers directly and shockingly what the average UK citizen will consume during their lifetime in a very visually and aesthetically pleasing way. This documentary really demonstrated how facts can sometimes not be hard hitting enough but if they are presented in a certain way visually they will make a strong impact on the viewer. The documentary also highlighted how Western consumerism uses up vast quantities of World resources and how one person can have such a huge impact

Have you ever wondered what it would look like if all the clothes, washing machines and toilet paper you ever used were piled up outside your front door? Or if you were to lay out all the bread you will ever eat or cups of tea you will drink? This beautiful, landmark film uses art and science to explore the impact each and every human has on the planet in an average lifetime, demonstrating the massive scale of everything consumed and produced in one lifetime.

Featuring a series of arresting art installations and mind-boggling statistics, Human Footprint follows the average life journey from the cradle to the grave, showing just how much, how often and for how long we will each consume. How much food and drink we will devour, how many tears we will cry, how much hair we will shed and how much waste matter we will process through our bodies – all within the 2 billion 475 million, 5,076 seconds that each of us will, on average, spend on earth.

Human Footprint also features several experts, who explain the science behind the installations and explore the profound effect our individual footprints will have on the planet. From our babyhood – when we get through a massive 3,796 nappies and produce 254 litres of urine – through to our old age and death – by which time we will have had sex 4,239 times, eaten 10,866 carrots, taken 7,163 baths and done an average of 15 farts a day – this extraordinary film tells the story of an average life, the story of our human footprint

"Hot on the heels of climate change, this documentary focuses on the impact each and every one of us has on the planet."
David Smith - The Sunday Times

Rodney Graham Born 1949, Vancouver, Canada.

Here is one of my photographs for which I got inspiration from Rodney's portraits of trees. I tried to produce a whole series of tree portraits comprising of similar compositions.
I think this works very well because of all the details you can see on the branches that are not covered in leaves. This may be taken as representing a family tree covering generations dating back hundreds of years.
This was taken with a medium format camera and a 37mm lens in order to get the entire tree in the photograph.

Here is one of the original prints that I saw in the Bahnhoff Gallery in Berlin
In my opinion, I feel that Rodney is trying to demonstrate how natural forms such as trees can outlive us and still have the same presence as when it was viewed by Napoleon Bonaparte centuries ago.


Napoleon Tree
The photograph Napoleon Tree portrays an aging form found by Rodney near Waterloo, Belgium in 1996 as part of a research project into trees of historical significance. It is said that Napoleon Bonaparte once lunched at it's base before continuing his quest to Waterloo. Rodney Graham's study of trees and the landscape have figured prominently in his work for decades as both portraits of nature and as icons of individualism. This lone tree, while playing with our point of view, has much character and is a striking composition of colour, texture and line all framed by the uneasy depiction of upside down space

Tree with Bench, Vancouver, B.C.

h: 52 x w: 26.5 in / h: 132.1 x w: 67.3 cm

Welsh Oaks (#1)

1998

48 x 36 inches / 121.9 x 91.4 cm49 1/2 x 37 1/2 / 125.7 x 95.3 cm inches framed

Rodney Graham

Rodney Graham is an internationally acclaimed Canadian artist working in a post-modern realm. He is known primarily as a performance artist whose conceptual forms span video, photography, music, sculpture, drawing and installation.
William Rodney Graham was born January 16, 1949 in Abbotsford, British Columbia. As a youngster, his creative interests included listening to Rock and Roll music, learning to play the guitar and always loving to make things in art while at school. Upon graduation from McGee Secondary School in Vancouver in 1967, he enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia and embarked upon the formal study of art history and studio art. Strongly influenced by early twentieth century Dada and Surrealism and, by instructors Ian Wallace and Tom Burrows, he was always keen to challenge preconceived notions of art and push boundaries of established forms of expression.
Following university he embarked upon an art career pursuing his unique and creative vision. He also nurtured his love of music and formed a New Wave rock group UJ3RK5 with fellow artists Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace and writer William Gibson. As a conceptual artist exploring the human experience he became fascinated by the optics of light and seeing. He explored pin-hole cameras and researched the Camera Obscura, an ancient scientific device which inverts imagery. His interest in this device continues to this day and has become the focus of much of his work in photography. While his art has taken many forms since the late 1970s, upside down imagery has become a personal metaphor to his view of the modern world.
Rodney's conceptual work reached a major turning point at the skulpturen projekte in Munster, Germany in 1987 and from that time, has received prominent recognition world wide. He is a prolific creator and has exhibited a wide range of art forms. His work can be found in numerous major private and public collections in North America and in Europe including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Van Abbe Museum in the Netherlands. He has received many honours including being selected to represent Canada in the prestigious Venice Biennale in 1997. He also received an honourary Doctorate from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2002. Rodney Graham currently lives and works in Vancouver, BC.

Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin21 March - 10 August 2008
Becoming Visible. Photographic works from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection
Sichtbarwerden. Fotografische Werke aus der Friedrich Christian Flick Collection
Alongside monographic exhibitions of works by Anna & Bernhard Blume and Wolfgang Tillmans, the collection presentation in the Rieckhallen features selected positions in artistic photography, and genre that has increasingly gained importance in the visual arts since the 1970s. Featured are works by artists who have elaborated their views of the world photographically in a variety of ways. Centrally significant are questions concerning the physiology and psychology of vision and those related to the social, economic, historical, and cultural contexts referred to by these photographicmotifs.In an era characterized by the mass production and distribution of photographic imagery, numerous questions are raised by views of locations, buildings, landscapes, and passersby that have been as seized by the camera: What precisely are we seeing when contemplating these images? What relationship do they have to the reality they represent? Does the reality seen in photographs become perceptible only through them, or do they instead render strange a putatively familiar reality?On display will be works by, among others, Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham and Stan Douglas, by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth, and by Peter Fischli & David Weiss and Beat Streuli.
Presented by:
National Gallery