05.09. - 26.10.2003 Frankfurt am Main
 

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Brian McKee
*1977 Kansas City - USA

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About the work

For the past four years I have traveled throughout America and Eastern Europe photographing sites that represent important political and social events in contemporary world history. My most recent project in Afghanistan is a continuation of this larger conceptual body of work. Acting as a kind of visual historian I seek to create images that convey a unique and important view of select aspects of World History. Within architecture and landscapes I find my true subject, the detritus of civilization, and seek to explore the way we define and relate to its existence. Although creating precisely composed and executed images I carefully chose projects that have a conceptual meaning and importance beyond their visual interest or beauty. These images from Afghanistan encompass and express the intents of my vision as an artist.

All images are photographed with a Deardorff 8x10 inch camera on Fuji negative film. Final print sizes vary from 30x40 inches to 50x60 inches and are in an edition of 5.

[DETRITUS: Loose fragments that nature or carving has worn away from rock. Often, by extension, the material or debris resulting from the making of any work of art; the disintegrated or eroded material left behind by past civilizations. (pr. de-try'tes) ]

Biography

Born 1977 in Kansas City, Missouri, attended the Interlochen Arts Academy and Bard College studying photography with Stephen Shore, Larry Fink and Barbara Ess. Worked as assistant and studio manger to Lynn Davis 1996-2001. Currently lives and works in New York City.

Solo Exhibitions

2006 - URBANUS, Galerie Stefan Röpke, Köln
2005 - Re-Build-Ings, Galería Arnés y Röpke, Madrid, Spain
2005 - URBANUS, Mitchell-Innes&Nash, New York
2005 - URBANUS, Hilger Contemporary, Wien
2004 - DETRITUS, Valentina Bonomo Artecontemporanea, Roma
2004 - DETRITUS, Nusser & Baumgart Contemporary, München
2003 - DETRITUS, Galerie Hilger, Wien
2003 - DETRITUS, Galerie Poller, Frankfurt am Main
2002 - Fotografie aus New York, Gallery KunstRaum, Essen, Germany

2001 - The Soviet Military Bases, KunstMarkt , Krefeld, Germany

1999 - SITES, Olin Gallery, Annandale, New York

Group Exhibitions
2005 - Asthetik des Dokumentarischen, Galerie der Stadt Wels, Austria
2004 - New Artists, Galerie Poller, Frankfurt, Germany
2004 - 25 Under 25, Tisch Gallery, New York City
2002 - Mudai, Gallery Christa Schubbe, Dusseldorf, Germany

2002 - October Report, The Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, Tel Aviv University

2002 - The Blue Square, Gallery Viehofer Strasse 26, Essen, Germany

2002 - International Young Art, Sotheby’s Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York

2000 - Annual New Images Exhibition, New Images Gallery, James Madison University, Virginia

Collections
Silvana Facchini Collection, Miami, Florida (USA)
Martin Z. Margulies Collection, Miami, Florida (USA)
Sammlung Schoeller, Germany

Sammlung Quandt, Bad Homburg v.d.H. (Germany)
Sagamore Collection, Miami, Florida (USA)

Awards

1999 - The Eugene Atget Prize for Photography presented by Bard College

2001- International Emerging Young Artist, Sponsored by ArtLink and Sotheby’s and followed by a series of group shows with Sotheby’s Auction House

2001- 25 Under 25, Sponsored by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and followed by the publication of 25 Under 25

Upcoming Publications

March 2003: Featured Artist Portfolio: Bardian Magazine

Fall 2003: Artist Portfolio: Eikon

September 2003: 25 Under 25: sponsored by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and published by Powerhouse Books



Brian McKee - DETRITUS
48 pages, 34 images of photographs, preface by Carl Aigner, texts by Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, Inge Nevole (all texts in German and English), Wien 2003, EIKON Verlag Wien - Sonderdruck #9, ISBN 3-902250-06-2
25,00 Euro + postage

Brian McKee - URBANUS
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, 2005, with interview with Ian Dunlop, 52pp., 26 color ill., 21,5 x 28 cm / 8,5"x11", ISBN 0-9749607-3-X

25 Under 25, sponsored by Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies and published by Powerhouse Books, New York, 2003

Catalogues sold out

BRIAN McKEE '99
PORTFOLIO
It is a landscape mottled by ruins - some dating back to the seventh century, some to last winter. Nor is it always easy, as Brian McKee discovered during his sojourn in Afghanistan in September 2002, to tell the difference between ancient ruins and recent ones.
"The history of Afghanistan is told through its own destruction," says McKee, who was moved by the events of 9/11 - which he witnessed from a studio near the Brooklyn Bridge - to make the trip that resulted in this portfolio of photographs. "Some of these ruins looked like they could be a thousand years old, but might have been 10 years old, or a few months old ... it was very sad being in the interiors; here were these once grandiose palaces reduced to rubble, a perfect metaphor for what's happened to the country and its culture."
Shortly after Afghanistan's new leader, Hamid Karzai, reopened his country's lone commercial airline, McKee secured a visa with the help of a humanitarian nongovernmental organization and flew to Kabul. Upon arrival, he immediately hired a driver and a guide, neither of whom spoke more than a few words of English. "I was there for three and a half weeks, and we worked about 12 hours a day, shooting from six in the morning till six in the evening, when curfew began," says McKee, who used a Deardorff 8 x 10 view camera with a very slow film speed. Although he had no contact with women - not, he claims, due to any Taliban-like restrictions, but "mostly on account of their own shyness" - he was welcomed by the men and thronged wherever he went by hordes of curious children. "The men were the friendliest I've ever met, offering smokes, tea, what little food they had; it's a real culture of openness," he says.

Afghanistan, September 2002   >>> more images



> Scroll down for all images of DETRITUS

re-build-ings

Uzbekistan, October 2003   >>> more images



> See following page for all images of re-build-ings

urbanus
>>> more images

His shoots in and around Kabul were without incident, but when he ventured north of the city, McKee was very much at risk. At one point he made a pit stop on the Salang Highway; after he'd finished photographing a panoramic view of the road, "some military guy" drew his attention to his footprint in the dirt, three inches from an unexploded mine. In Balkh, believed to be one of the oldest cities in the world, he was deterred from photographing a site by an outbreak of gunfire.
At Bard, McKee completed Senior Projects in photography with Stephen Shore and poetry with John Ashbery. His "architectural landscapes," of which these Afghanistan photographs are a continuation (he has previously photographed ruined buildings and monuments in post-Soviet Eastern Europe), are an eloquent synthesis of both mediums. In the fall of 2002 he applied for a Fulbright fellowship to go to Uzbekistan, where he plans to continue his lyrical documentation of desolate terrain and its detritus of civilization, which stubbornly refuses to crumble entirely away.

By Mikhail Horowitz, 2003
'Bardian' – Publication of Bard College, Spring 2003, page 10–21, 11 color ill. www.bard.edu, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000, USA
 

28 - North Kabul #2, Afghanistan #28, 2002
Edition 5, C-Print on Aluminum, 126 x 162 cm / 49.5" x 64"

29 - North Kabul #3, Afghanistan #29, 2002
Edition 5, C-Print on Aluminum, 126 x 162 cm / 49.5" x 64"

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