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Obituary – Harold Chapman, Photographer
Posted on August 28, 2022
With sadness The OMC Gallery shares the news, that English photographer Harold Chapman has died on August 19, at the age of 95. Since 1999 we cooperated with Harold, became friends and presented his magnificent oeuvre at international art fairs and at our Gallery in Duesseldorf (Germany), later also in Huntington Beach, California and up to this day on our gallery website.
Harold Chapman has been a remarkable photographer, whose oeuvre documents many facets of people’s life, especially in Great Britain and France from the late 1940-s until today. He provided an endless stream of images, with one purpose described by him in an interview in December 1968: “…there is no need for the contrived shot. Pictures are everywhere. So why set up a photograph when the natural one is infinitely better?” He added: “I am photographing for the future, not for the present… All I aim for is to record the trivial things that ordinary people use and consider unimportant.”
In April 2000, Booker Prize-winning British novelist, Ian McEwan, who had met Harold Chapman in 1974, wrote an article about the photographer entitled ‘A Spy in the Name of Art’, which was published in the Saturday Review of the Guardian. Summing up Harold Chapman’s work, he concluded: “If Chapman were merely a chronicler in a great documentary tradition, his achievement would be impressive enough. His lustrous landscapes of the Herault valley in the Languedoc, his priceless record of the Beat Hotel, his omnivorous, year-on-year transcription of daily life and its little undercurrents, would ensure his reputation as a photographer of the first rank. But it was constructive paranoia that made him an artist.”
Rest in Peace, Harold.
Rolf Goellnitz and RoxAnn Madera
Find here more about Harold Chapman.
Good-bye United Kingdom
Posted on January 30, 2020
In the late 1950s the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan dramatically changed its attitude and appointed Edward Heath to submit an application and lead negotiations for Britain to enter the Common Market.
Britain joined the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) in 1961 and worked towards the reduction of trade restrictions between members. Britain was suspicious of the French Schumann plan to establish a supranational body regulating the production and sale of coal and steel.
The United Kingdom European Communities membership referendum was a public vote that took place on 5 June 1975, on whether the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Communities which was principally the European Economic Community (the Common Market) as it was known at the time.
The electorate expressed significant support for EC membership, with 67% in favor on a national turnout of 64%.
45 years later the UK is leaving the EU – for better or worse – time will tell.
The photograph above was taken by Harold Chapman, (*1927), a renown English photographer, whose work is reflecting life in the UK and France from the early 1950-s until today.
The woman looking outside the window, has obviously an opinion, firm enough to state it also publicly. While her wish came not true at the time(1975), it does now 45 years later, as the UK leaves the EU on January 31, 2020.
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