*1965 / *1962
-
Falling Down (1996) Falling Down Artist: Hubbard / Birchler Dating: 1996 Type: Photography Material: Chromogenic print on Dibond Measures: 60 x 90 cm Acces / purchase date: 2012 Inventory number: 1206 Copyright: © Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler -
Falling Down (1996) Falling Down Artist: Hubbard / Birchler Dating: 1996 Type: Photography Material: Chromogenic print on Dibond Measures: 58,5 x 88,5 cm Acces / purchase date: 2012 Inventory number: 1210 Copyright: © Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler -
Falling Down (1996) Falling Down Artist: Hubbard / Birchler Dating: 1996 Type: Photography Material: Chromogenic print on Dibond Measures: 58,5 x 88,5 cm Acces / purchase date: 2012 Inventory number: 1211 Copyright: © Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler -
Filmstills, Tinseltown South (2002) Filmstills, Tinseltown South Artist: Hubbard / Birchler Dating: 2002 Type: Photography Material: Lightjet print on Fujicolor archive paper on Dibond Measures: 59 x 99,5 cm Acces / purchase date: 2002 Inventory number: 0816 Copyright: © Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler -
Filmstills, Tinseltown Twenty (2002) Filmstills, Tinseltown Twenty Artist: Hubbard / Birchler Dating: 2002 Type: Photography Material: Lightjet print on Fujicolor archive paper on Dibond Measures: 59 x 99,5 cm Acces / purchase date: 2002 Inventory number: 0817 Copyright: © Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler -
Falling Down (1996) Falling Down Artist: Hubbard / Birchler Dating: 1996 Type: Photography Material: Chromogenic print on Dibond Measures: 58,5 x 88,5 cm Acces / purchase date: 2012 Inventory number: 1208 Copyright: © Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler -
Stripping (1998) Stripping Artist: Hubbard / Birchler Dating: 1998 Type: Photography Material: Chromogenic print on Dibond Measures: 145 x 180 cm Acces / purchase date: 1998 Inventory number: 0788 Copyright: © Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler -
Falling Down (1996) Falling Down Artist: Hubbard / Birchler Dating: 1996 Type: Photography Material: Chromogenic print on Dibond Measures: 60 x 90 cm Acces / purchase date: 2012 Inventory number: 1207 Copyright: © Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler -
Falling Down (1996) Falling Down Artist: Hubbard / Birchler Dating: 1996 Type: Photography Material: Chromogenic print on Dibond Measures: 58,5 x 88,5 cm Acces / purchase date: 2012 Inventory number: 1209 Copyright: © Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler -
Eiffel Tower, Paris, Texas (2009) Eiffel Tower, Paris, Texas Artist: Hubbard / Birchler Dating: 2009 Type: Photography Material: Pigment print on archival paper on Dibond Measures: 101,7 x 81,3 cm Acces / purchase date: 2009 Inventory number: 1159 Copyright: © Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler
together as an artistic duo in the mediums of sculpture, photography,
and film, they have had a particular interest in giving their art a
narrative dimension. Yet their narrations are almost always fragmentary,
in suspended animation as it were, like the objects in the multipart
photographic series “Falling Down” (1996). Bank notes, ladies’ shoes, a
coffee cup, and a book all slipping from people’s grasp attest to the
loss of control by male and female protagonists. It is as if, by means of
meticulous stage direction, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive
moment”—the moment captured in a photograph that usually remains
hidden from the naked eye—were here being shown to be a myth.
Hubbard / Birchler’s staged scenarios are first and foremost analog
images constructed for the camera; utilizing an explicitly cinematographic
language they evoke specific mini-dramas—as in the case
of the young man who has just alighted from a Greyhound Bus with
all his worldly goods, seemingly ready to embark on a new life.
Hubbard / Birchler’s interest in an affirmative language of pop
culture is seen again in “Stripping” (1998), their next, large-format
photographic series, in which it seems we are given glimpses of the
female protagonist in a private, ambivalent moment. The artificiality of
the film set along with the vertical and horizontal bands dividing
particular images inevitably activate the potential for illusion associated
with cinema and moving pictures. Thus it hardly comes as a surprise
that not long afterward Hubbard / Birchler turned their attention
to cinema facades in their “Filmstills” (2002), and started to work on
video and film projects.
In so doing Hubbard / Birchler neither altered their pictorial
language, nor did they abandon their practice of staging images.
Right from the outset, through their photographs and films, their works
have always served them as a means to engage in an analytic
exploration of the limits of the medium in question. Hubbard / Birchler
have always been fascinated by the margins of photography, by the
lack of focus of this medium, which both produces meaning and
instigates a narrative moment, as do the objects suspended in mid-air
in “Falling Down. ” Hubbard / Birchler use the medium’s autonomy
to reinforce the suggestive powers of their cinematic language and, in
so doing, create mysterious, poetic images.
Philipp Kaiser