Three exhibitions devoted to war, threat, and destructionopen at museums in Dresden

DRESDEN.- The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden are presenting, at three separate venues,three exhibitions devoted to war, threat, and destruction in the medium of photography.

Photographs of military force, destruction, and devastation shape our cultural memory. They haveleft an indelible mark on the stock of epoch-defining images of the 20th and 21st century and range,for instance, from pictures of the protective measures taken by Venetians in WWI to protect themost important monuments of their suddenly vulnerable city against aerial attacks, to the stylizedshots taken in the thick of the action by Robert Capa, the �inventor� of modern war photography,and up to the short- and long-term effects of violence, revealed by photographers as in �Conflict,Time, Photography�.

Conflict, Time, Photography

Albertinum

Conceived by Tate Modern, this exhibition illustrates howthe events of war and their consequences have beencaptured and reflected in the medium of photographyfrom the 19th century onwards. Historical photo-stories,documentary photographs, and works by contemporaryphotographers highlight the traces � both momentary andpermanent, visible and obliterated � that each conflictleaves behind and which are inscribed, not only in thecollective memory, but also in the actual places that onceformed the backdrop for armed conflict. The images in theexhibition of people, places, and things stem from aroundthe globe and from various epochs � ranging from theAmerican Civil War to the Iraq War � and reveal theexistential effects of violence and destruction as the bedrock of our modern civilization. Thephotographs on display here were taken moments, days, weeks, months, years, even decades afterthe events they variously record. In keeping with this chronology from immediacy to aftermath, theexhibition covers a time span that starts, for instance, with images created just seconds after theexplosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, before moving on to photographic observations from thedivided city of Cold-War Berlin, and ending with photographs of former WWI battle sites, taken 100years after the fighting.

An exhibition presented by Tate Modern, London, in association with Museum Folkwang, Essen, andthe Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Curated by Simon Baker in collaboration with ShoairMavlian and David Alan Mellor.

Robert Capa. War Photographs 1943�1945

Kupferstich-Kabinett, Residenzschloss

Robert Capa�s war photographs have shaped the canon of the �spectacular image�, which came intobeing through the development of the mass media in the 20th century and continues to evolve. Hiswork established the image�s immediacy � both lived and staged � as the badge of authenticity inphotojournalism.

Featuring more than 110 photographs from the period 1943 to 1945 and the news magazines inwhich they were originally published, the exhibition traces the official war correspondent�sfootsteps as he accompanied Allied forces through Europe. The Allies� stated goal was to bringdown the National-Socialist regime. Capa was assigned the task of documenting this militarycampaign, which resulted in the United States becoming the leading superpower. With theirintention of documenting this �world history� as it unfolded, they fed off the public�s thirst forprying, sensational images that remains unabated to this today. Capa�s shots of the Allied landingsin Normandy on June 6th, 1944 � the day that would go down in history as D-Day � the liberation ofParis in September 1944, and the liberation of Leipzig in April 1945 were seen by millions aroundthe globe.

With his motto: �If your photographs aren�t good enough, you�re not close enough� Capa, who diedon May 25th, 1954 from stepping on a landmine in the First Indochina War, forged a photography ofparticipation, of risk, and of voyeurism.

An exhibition curated by Michael Hering.

A City at War. Venice 1915�1918

Japanisches Palais

For centuries, the waters of the Venetian Lagoon sheltered the city of Venice, serving as a protectivewall for the city�s inhabitants. In the early 20th century however, the development of new wartechnology brought with it an unfamiliar danger: aerial bombardment. This exhibition chroniclesVenice�s unusual predicament in defending itself for the first time against imminent destructionfrom the air.

The photographs from the Archivio Storico Fotografico of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Veneziareveal much about residents� pride and confidence, their will to defend themselves, and theirdetermination to prevent the destruction of their city. Furthermore, they document the struggle oflife during wartime: individuals� efforts to secure their own survival and the city�s attempts tomaintain public life through its institutions.

The civilian and military efforts to save Venice�s cultural artefacts from air-raid destruction arepoignant. One particularly moving scene shows men in dark suits witnessing, alongside women,children, sailors, and officers, the dismantling of the Horses of Saint Mark while helping to build thelarge sandbag barricades that lent the city such a strange appearance. Some of the photos ondisplay document the failure of these efforts, as seen through damaged sculptures and paintings,such as the bombed dome of the Church of the Scalzi with its destroyed ceiling fresco byGiambattista Tiepolo.

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