UNSEEN MUST BE SEEN. Check out the interview I did with Roderick van der Lee, Founding Partner at UN
UNSEEN MUST BE SEEN.Check out the interview I did with Roderick van der Lee, Founding Partner at UNSEEN, the ‘Photography Fair With A Festival Flair’, now at Westergas, AmsterdamCould you tell us about yourself and how Platform A came about?“I am currently the director of Platform A. Before this I’ve worked at Christies, Droog and FOAM. All three truly remarkable institutions and working there has been absolutely spectacular and invaluable as far as experience goes. But the call of the wild is too strong for me. I love building things up. Business wise, I love being able to go on my intuition and instincts without having to answer to anyone. I’m very lucky with my partner at Platform A, Frits Zanen, who trusts my instincts and experience. Together we founded Platform A to explore cultural business development and new forms for old values such a ‘the gallery’, ‘the art consultancy’ or ‘the art fair’. How did, in your opinion, photography become such a hit in the last few years?“One of my theories is that the importance of figurative techniques has been disappearing from art academies and thus art. It’s a lot of abstract and conceptual thinking nowadays, a legacy of the 20th century. I think people are longing for a certain pathos and atmosphere and photography is a perfect medium to provide this. But maybe it’s all simpler than this. Maybe it’s just because photography is fucking cool.”How would you define a good photo? Is subject more important than composition?“It depends. Sometimes a perfect composition in itself is sublime, regardless of the subject. Sometimes the subject is so powerful that it transcends itself, like for instance news photos of suffering that tap into our universal humanity and become iconic images against human suffering rather than a document of a certain time and place. Usually composition is secondary in such images. They’re both important in their own way. There are all sorts of technical qualifications, but for me a good photo is a photo that transports me somewhere when I look at it, when the world around me ceases to exist for a little while.”Check out UNSEEN, the 'Photography Fair With A Festival Flair.’ Now at Westergas, Amsterdam. -- source link
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