Alfred Seiland

The ALBERTINA Museum is devoting a retrospective presentation to photographer Alfred Seiland (*1952) that will show around 80 works. Seiland was one of Austria’s first artistic photographers to work exclusively in color, deliberately following in the footsteps of the originators of New American Color Photography—Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, and William Eggleston. Seiland’s staged depictions of famous personalities for a campaign by the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung made international waves.

In his documentary work, Seiland deals with cultural landscapes, in the process developing his own independent aesthetic. And to this day, he photographs his motifs—always meticulously composed in terms of colors and lighting—using an analog camera. For his earliest series, East Coast – West Coast, he traveled to the USA and created atmospherically dense photographs of sweeping landscapes, streets, and neon signs. His travels have also taken him to places including Syria, Iran, and Turkey, as well as to Egypt and Greece. The territory of ancient Rome is the focus of the series Imperium Romanum, which sheds light upon the tension between antiquity and the modern era. And the works from the group Österreich are characterized by his characteristic perspective on his own home country.

The exhibition is on view from 13 June until 7 October 2018.

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