Kunsthal KAdE presents a selection of 160 photographic works from the extensive Martin Z. Margulies Collection in Miami. Guest curator is Frenchman Régis Durand, former Director of the Jeu de Paume and France’s Centre National de la Photographie, both in Paris. Durand’s choice of exhibits is based on a phrase from a poem by the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), ‘Wenn in die Ferne geht der Menschen wonend Leben’. He translates this as ‘The Dwelling Life of Man’. The exhibition was on show in Spain earlier this year, at the Fundación Foto Colectania (Barcelona) and the Fundación Barrié (Coruña).

Human condition; ‘concerned’ or ‘documentary’ photography
Durand’s selection spotlights photographs that expose the ‘human condition’: both the physical built environment and the people who live and work in it and the characteristic ‘signs’ that occur in that environment. Durand has selected work by a range of world-famous photographers/artists of the twentieth century, including Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Lee Friedlander, Ed Ruscha, Helen Levitt, Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Andreas Gursky, Gillian Wearing, Gregory Crewdson, Joel Sternfeld and Roni Horn.

Triptych
Durand has divided the exhibition into three sections:
- ‘Building and exploring: mapping territories’,
- ‘Being in the world’ and
- ‘Flux, signs and symbols’.

Building and exploring: mapping territories (section 1)
‘Building and exploring: mapping territories’ focuses on the built environment: the homes and buildings that people have dreamt up and constructed in order to shape their lives and working activities. The environment that people have created for themselves tells you something about who they are. This section looks not just at architecture, but also at the physical condition of urban areas and other places where people live. Among the photographers represented here are Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore, Ed Ruscha, Bernd & Hilla Becher and James Casebere. The section also includes a life-size projection of a video documentary by Albanian artist Anri Sala concerning urban regeneration in a dreary suburb of the Albanian capital Tirana.

Being in the world (section 2)
‘Being in the world’ examines the social aspects of the way we inhabit the world. What are our living conditions and who lives and works in them? Exhibits range from the street photography of Bernice Abbott and Helen Levitt (for example, pictures taken in the African-American community of 1930s Harlem (NY)) to portraits of labourers and other people taken by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, August Sander and Zwelethu Mthethwa. The section also includes photographs of machinery taken by Albert Renger-Patzsch and Thomas Ruff which pay silent witness to the industrialization that was so crucial to life in the 20^th century. In addition, Indian film-maker Amar Kanwar’s video ‘A Season Outside’ exposes tensions on the frontier between India and Pakistan through images of a cross-border train journey – a trip charged with emotion because of the two countries’ historical relations (and shared history). Conflict is another factor that conditions our lives.  

Flux, signs and symbols (section 3)
This is the most complex of the three sections. It brings together a number of different themes. One of them is nature, which has such a heavy influence on life on earth. It can cause destruction, as Hurricane Katrina did at New Orleans in 2005 (portraits of ‘survivors’ by Jeff Brouws), but is also fragile (photo-series by Olafur Eliasson showing ‘untouched’ nature on Iceland). And then every culture has its own significant ‘icons’. Alec Soth, Joel Sternfeld and William Eggleston (represented by an extensive photo-series) use their sharp eye for characteristic scenes to delve deep into the American psyche. Gregory Crewdson likewise presents an ‘All-American Scene’, but with a strongly surreal twist. Finally, Luc Delahaye confronts us with a harsh fact of contemporary life: the impact of war (in Afghanistan) on everyday experience.

Man in his environment
The way people live and work mutates constantly in response to a changing world. Once, there were only agrarian communities, where life was lived in accordance with nature. Then, everyday life was transformed by the industrial revolution and the spread of electrical power. Now, our lives are influenced and sometimes ruled by the digital technology of today. Alongside these changes, the way we live is also conditioned by socio-economic structures. And finally, for good or ill, we are all subject to the forces of nature. This cocktail of influences – varying over both time and space – shapes the outward appearance of human societies.

But within the hotchpotch of images and influences, there is one eternal constant: Man himself. How do people manage – time and again – to adjust to changing circumstances? How do they negotiate this constantly changing social environment? Innumerable sociological and anthropological studies have sought to answer that question through scientific analysis. Of equal interest, however, is the work of artists and photographers who have brought their individual scrutiny to bear on the subject in an attempt to capture and comprehend human life and the contemporary zeitgeist.

For photographers, this is a particularly attractive subject. Photography is a direct reflection of what is going on before our very eyes. A photographic image carries a suggestion of ‘objective’ experience that is absent in visual arts like painting. The photographer’s lens holds up a mirror to everyday life – or so it seems; because, of course, photography is as subjective as the other visual arts. We all know how photographs can be manipulated. Even so, they have a much greater aura of ‘truth’. Within photography, the 20^th century saw the emergence of major movements focusing on the ‘human condition’: many great photographers worked in the fields of ‘concerned’ or ‘documentary’ photography. And at the end of the century a new group of photographers emerged who had initially worked in other – traditionally more autonomous and subjective – media but now turned to photography as a way of portraying the world. 
 
About the Martin Z. Margulies Collection
Over recent decades, the Martin Z. Margulies Collection in Miami, Florida, has come to include a vast array of photographic works (some 2000 in all) in which the ‘human condition’ is a major, ever-present theme. The collection embraces the entire twentieth century, with particular strengths in the areas of American and European photography.

About guest curator Régis Durand
French curator Régis Durand is a former Director of the Jeu de Paume exhibition centre and the Centre National de la Photographie, both in Paris. He originally devised this exhibition for two Spanish institutions, the Fundación Foto Collectania in Barcelona and the Fundación Barrié in Coruña. Selecting 160 photographs on the theme of ‘the human condition’ from the extensive Martin Z. Margulies Collection, Durand chose as the exhibition title ‘The Dwelling Life of Man’. The phrase derives from a poem by German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) that reflects on the way man lives in the world. Durand divided the exhibition into three sections: ‘Building and exploring: mapping territories’, ‘Being in the world’ and ‘Flux, signs and symbols’. In one of the texts he wrote to accompany the exhibition, Régis Durand says: “There is a way of seeing the world as one vast, slowly breathing organism that filters visions, thoughts and words in and out like a living membrane. If, as Hölderlin says, ‘man poetically dwells’, then this is how he does so: in this flexibility, this ability to observe the secret life of places and things and internalize it. Artists offer us an unusually intense experience of that ability.”

Explanation of the title 'The Dwelling Life of Man'
Durand’s choice of title is based on a phrase from a poem by the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), ‘Wenn in die Ferne geht der Menschen wonend Leben’. He translates this as ‘The Dwelling Life of Man’.