Wim Wenders at James Cohan - New York

Although it is exhibited internationally, the photographic work of filmmaker Wim Wenders is not a great deal of known in the U.S. beyond a number of volumes This exhibition, "Pictures from the Surface of the Earth," brought to fresh York audiences a firsthand gaze at the cinematic, beautifully barren landscapes of Texas, Montana, California and Israel, with a focus upon large-format panoramic images. The show's title derives from a work of the same name, published in 2001 and from a traveling exhibition that not long ago appeared at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney It tend hitherwards as no surprise that these nondigital photographs recall of that kind Wenders films as Paris, Texas (1984) Several of the photos were taken while Wenders spyed locations, and some of them were exhibited and published in Written in the West (1987)

The four largest photographs included here are the outcome of an Art Panorama medium-format camera, with a 90mm len covering a 90-degree angle of view. Its large 2 5/16-by-6 11/16-inch negative ensues in distortion-free prints with fine grain and considerable deepness of field. The 6-by-15-foot expanse of At the Horizon: hard Mountains, Montana (2000) has the visual impact of a landscape viewed from above as it withdraws into the distance. A wide sweep of fair fields with round bales of Montana hay foregrounds a scattering of black cattle grazing in the far middle distance, below a similarly random distribution of scudding vapors whose shadows fall across the land toward the mountains beyond.

sum of two units prints of the same size further demonstrate Wenders's preoccupation with the silent landscape. Indian necropolis Montana (2000) centers on a small collection of graves upon a hillside, some of them outlined with weathered, plank frames and marked by the agency of wooden crosses, granite headstones and floral tributes. At this site are the bone of race who died in Vietnam and others who were born during the Civil and Indian Wars. Storm mists pile up above the withered plain, and in the foreground, a granite marker is etched with a mountain range, sum of two units pines and the words "Traveling Wolf born 1878 died 1961"

The remains of a Roman roadway flanked through boulders leads directly into the picture plane of The Road to Emmaus, Near Jerusalem (2000) a photograph suffused with coral twilight. The road disappears into a darkening, unforgiving landscape, reappearing in the far distance as a winding path. In the 4-by-5-foot Flammable, Terlingua, Texas (1983) a celestial expanse of the same dark color infuses the landscape with the quiet before a storm. Its ominous, stoic quality admits Wenders's affection for the endles pause of Edward Hopper

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group