Thursday, February 21, 2008

NOT The Sartorialist



Earlier this month I received this e-mail:

Dear members of the gallery,
Im an German photographer. I've seen your currend exhibition, and it could be, that you are interested in my work. Please have a moment to check out: www.tubke.info. If you want, I can send my book to you, or I can come over to see you, which would be great. Last year I was in an group exhibition at the Tate Britain "How we are, photographing Britain", curated by Val Williams. I attached one of my portraits for you in this email. I'm looking forward hearing from you,
best wishes,
Albrecht Tübke


As I usually do when people send me a link, I took a look. My immediate reaction was that the pictures were way too close to The Sartorialist’s work to be of any interest to me, but the surprising thing was the pictures were pretty good!

I e-mailed back to that effect in reply to which Mr Tubke then followed up with a phone call where we had an interesting conversation. Tubke’s process is quite the opposite of Sart’s. He chooses a location and waits endlessly for the “right” person to come by and inspire him. (Sart’s a hunter, Tubke’s a gatherer.) Tubke works thematically shooting specific series one at a time and he's much more of a traditionalist - shooting on film, engaging with the traditional gallery/museum axis, and dealing much more with archetypical typologies (city folk, country folk, twins) whereas one of the great elements of Sart’s work is how much and in how many ways it deals with the here and now.

Anyway, I told Tubke I would be happy to post something about his work and see what response we got from the blog. So please enter a comment. And dealers, feel free to contact Mr. Tubke if you would like to show his work.