Deichtorhallen Hamburg | Hall for Contemporary Art: High Noon

From December 13, 2024 to May 4, 2025, the exhibition HIGH NOON at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg will highlight the groundbreaking works of Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Mark Morrisroe and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. In the political climate of the Reagan era of the 1980s, characterized by conservative values and neoliberalism, these photographers began to capture the life of New York's subculture in intense and often shockingly intimate images. Goldin, Armstrong and Morrisroe, close friends, documented their peer group with an unmistakable style and autobiographical approach.

Her works show intimate moments of love, friendship and decay against a backdrop of passion, addiction and AIDS. DiCorcia, on the other hand, stages fictions from everyday scenes in his surroundings, creates idealized archetypes and plays with the concept of the photographic document. Curated by Dr. Sabine Schnakenberg, the show presents around 150 works from the F.C. Gundlach Collection that continue to have an impact today - both on the art world and on society's perception of sexuality, relationships and identity.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Marilyn, 28 years old, Las Vegas, Nevada, $30, Las Vegas 1990/1992, Chromogenic Color Print, Haus der Photographie/Sammlung F.C. Gundlach, Hamburg © Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Courtesy of the artist, Sprüth Magers and David Zwirner

After studying photography at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the four photographers Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Mark Morrisroe and Philip-Lorca diCorcia began their work in the political fluid of the Ronald Reagan era. Goldin, Armstrong and Morrisroe are friends and concentrate on the photographic exploration of the subcultural bohemia in Boston and New York, of which they are an integral part. Camera, personal perspective and autobiographical aspects merge to form three distinctive visual identities, completely different in conception and style, that have revolutionized photography and continue to have a powerful impact into the present day. Caught between instability and fragility, constantly in search of themselves, they show the pleasure and horror of their peer group and open up intense insights into their emotional and social worlds. Like diaries, photographic sequences of affection, friendship, love, sex and liveliness collide with loneliness, violence, addiction, AIDS, decay and death. Philip-Lorca diCorcia, who very consciously distances himself from the three photographers, begins by artificially recreating everyday scenes with relatives and friends, ingeniously illuminating and photographing them, thus initially creating ideal archetypes. His work is always based on a precisely defined conceptual approach that consciously plays with the photographic medium as a possible document.
December 13, 2024 to May 4, 2025
www.deichtorhallen.de

Mark Morrisroe, Untitled [Sweet Raspberry/Lady Madonna], 1986, Color Print, Haus der Photographie/Sammlung F.C. Gundlach, Hamburg © The Estate of Mark Morrisroe