Albert Watson – I observe
20 may – 9 july 2011

Kahmann Gallery is proud to present an exhibition with the work of Albert Watson. We have made a selection of 30 black and white images, all icons in photography.

Albert Watson (1942) is a Scottish photographer, based in New York. He is well known for his fashion, celebrity and art photography and his work is featured in galleries and museums worldwide. He has shot over 100 covers of Vogue around the world and 40 covers of Rolling Stone magazine. Watson has won numerous honours and Photo District News named him one of the 20 most influential photographers of all time, along with Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. Last fall, he received the Centenary Medal, a lifetime achievement award, from the Royal Photographic Society.

Watson’s work is very diverse. Though the wide variety of his images reflects an effortless versatility, they are nevertheless identifiable as Albert Watson photographs by their visual impact and technical virtuosity. He simply observes, he captures what he sees. That is exactly the power of Watson; his timing, his interest in what he sees, no matter if the subject is fashion, nature or a movie star.

Watson has been photographing for more than 40 years and his oeuvre consists of black and white, colour, commercial and fashion photography. Throughout his career, Watson has also dedicated a big part of his time in producing a big collection of non-commissioned fine art.

Much of this work, along with his well-known portraits and fashion photographs, has been featured in museum and gallery shows around the world and have become highly sought after by collectors. In 2007, a large-format Watson print of a Kate Moss photograph taken in 1993 sold at Christie's in London for $108,000, five times the pre-sale estimate.
 


More about the photographer:

Though blind in one eye since birth, Watson also studied photography as part of his curriculum, next to graphic design, film and television. In 1970, Watson moved to the United States, Los Angeles, where he began shooting photos, mostly as a hobby. Watson photographed his first celebrity in 1973, a portrait of Alfred Hitchcock holding a dead goose with a ribbon around its neck for the Christmas issue of Harper's Bazaar. The shot has become one of Watson's most famous portraits on a list that now includes hundreds of well-known iconic photographs of movie stars, rock stars, rappers, supermodels, even President Clinton and Queen Elizabeth II. Watson moved to New York in 1976, the same year that his career took off.

In addition to shooting for the world's top magazines, Watson has created the photography for hundreds of successful advertising campaigns for major corporations, such as the Gap, Levi’s, Revlon and Chanel, has directed more than 500 TV commercials and has shot dozens of posters for major Hollywood movies such as "Kill Bill," "Memoirs of a Geisha," and "The Da Vinci Code". All the while, Watson spend much of his time working on personal projects, taking photographs from his travels and interests, from Marrakech to Las Vegas to the Orkney Islands. Since 2004, Watson has had solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in Milan, Italy; the KunstHausWien in Vienna, Austria; the City Art Centre in Edinburgh; the FotoMuseum in Antwerp, Belgium; the NRW Forum in Düsseldorf, Germany; and Fotografiska in Stockholm, Sweden. Watson’s photographs have also been featured in many group shows at museums, including the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, the International Center of Photography in New York, and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany. His photographs are included in the permanent collections at the National Portrait Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Watson has had several books published, including Cyclops (1994), Maroc (1998).,and "Albert Watson" (2007). Two books were released in the fall of 2010: "UFO: Unified Fashion Objectives," a look at 40 years of selected Watson fashion photographs, and "Strip Search," a two-volume set of hundreds of photographs Watson took in Las Vegas. In addition, many catalogs of Watson’s photographs have been published in conjunction with shows, including "The Vienna Album" (2005).