Peter Funch’s Babel Tales Redux

Please join us on Tuesday Sept. 6th to celebrate the opening of Peter Funch‘s Babel Tales Redux.

From the press release:

Babel Tales Redux marks an end and a beginning. Peter Funch’s 5 year long exploration of the streets of New York has reached its conclusion and the exhibition unveils the result: 40 monumental panoramic works. This is the first time the complete Babel Tales series will be shown in the city, in which the series is rooted.

We invite you to view this remarkable series with us at V1 gallery hosted by KWPF Space at 558 West 21st St, New York.  The show opens on Tuesday, September 6th.

You can see more work by Peter Funch on the Levine/Leavitt site.

S Magazine shoot by Peter Funch

Photographer Peter Funch worked with stylist Luke Langsdale to create these racy images for the Volume 12 issue of S Magazine.

We caught up with Peter for a few words about the shoot:

“I came up with the idea about girls in the these old scenes where nudity really is not seen  I have always loved old photos from the unknown photographers, so I went to the New York Historic Library to look at old books with photos from NYC from the 20′s and 30′s.  I used these photos as the background and then shot the girls in my studio posing as if they were there with the people back then.  I then super imposed it in post production.  Luke Langsdale the stylist had found vintage clothing that fit into that time period.

“It was great to do something very cheerful, a bit naughty and cabaret inspired for a change.  Also working with something that had a whole other look than I’m used to working with.  The response to the shoot has been that it looks very believable and did not look like anything I’ve shot.  I have good responses from the models saying that it was great to see the final images after running around naked in the studio.”

You can see more work by Peter Funch on the Levine/Leavitt site.

New York Lottery campaign shot by Peter Funch

Peter Funch worked with the team at DDB Needham to shoot the new campaign for NY State Lottery, a very successful adaptation of Peter’s signature style from his Babel Tales series.

You can see more of Peter Funch’s work on the Levine/Leavitt site.

Peter Funch’s Babel Tales book launch at Invisible Exports

On Tuesday March 29th, from 7 to 9 PM, Invisible Exports in NYC will be hosting a book launch and exhibition of Peter Funch’s Babel Tales.  Join Peter and the team from Levine/Leavitt for this special display of Mr. Funch’s renowned body of work.

The book is for sale, signed and numbered editions, for $120 available at the gallery and through Levine/Leavitt.

You can see more of Peter Funch’s work on the Levine/Leavitt site.

New Direction, a fashion story shot for V Magazine by Peter Funch

Peter Funch was asked by V Magazine to photograph work by up and coming designers for their first issue of 2011. The designers collections have a bold aesthetic and statement-making style, which Peter photographed in visually dynamic areas of Manhattan, including the Financial District, Midtown and the Meatpacking District.

Styling Catherine Newell-Hanson.  Check it out here at www.vmagazine.com

You can see more of Peter Funch’s work on the Levine/Leavitt site.

Peter Funch’s Babel Tales opening/book signing at Colette in Paris

Colette in Paris is now showing Peter Funch’s Babel Tales series for the month of November, with an opening reception and book signing on November 18th.

A few images from the gallery at Colette:

Babel Tales is a series of works that focus on human relations (or lack thereof) in big cities.  Peter’s project is a junction between documentary photography and manipulated photography.  Through repetition and juxtaposition he zooms in on human similarities and collective behavior and ends up creating a strange poetic and detailed picture of our presence as both individuals and community in the public sphere.  His uncanny work raises questions of reality contra fiction and challenges our notion of photography as being a depiction of a certain moment in time.

Peter Funch’s work are documents of moments that never existed as they are composed of several hundred moments taken over the duration of several weeks for each piece.  By shooting in the exact same position over a period of time, he is able to superimpose images on top of each other and create a fictional work base on documentary photography.

Babel Tales was published this year with a limited run of 500 copies and has 41 color photos printed on 250 G silk tint paper.

Babel Tales is available for sale from the following:

V1 GALLERY COPENHAGEN
DASHWOOD BOOKS NEW YORK
Clic Bookstore & Gallery NYC
COLETTE PARIS
POLITIKENS BOGHANDEL COPENHAGEN
SPOONBILL & SUGARTOWN, BOOKSELLERS, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

You can see more of Peter Funch’s work on the Levine/Leavitt site.

Peter Funch’s Street Photography

Photographer Peter Funch is part of a book by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren titled Street Photography Now. Published by Thames and Hudson, the book presents 52 contemporary image-makers noted for their candid depictions of everyday life in our streets, subways, beaches and parks.

Opening reception will be Saturday, September 18th, 6-8 PM, at The Photographers Gallery in London, England.  16-18 Ramillies Street, London, W1F 7LW.

See more of Peter Funch’s work on the Levine/Leavitt site.

Peter Funch in Juxtapoz Magazine

The June 2010 issue of Juxtapoz magazine features an article about the work of Peter Funch.  Copies are currently on newsstands around the country.

To see more of Peter’s work, visit the Levine/Leavitt site.

Peter Funch’s “Babel Tales” at the V1 Gallery, Copenhagen

Peter Funch’s Babel Tales project culminates this month in a solo exhibition with all 41 pieces from the completed series, as well as work from his project, Addendum, at the V1 Gallery in Copenhagen.

The entire collection of Babel Tales (many of which have never been displayed in the 4 years since Peter began the project), has been published in a limited edition book in conjunction with the opening, and a small sum of the 500 published will be available at Dashwood Books in Soho, NY.

We spoke with Peter, and asked him to tell us more about Adendum, a project in conjunction with Babel Tales involving abstract photographs displayed as light boxes:

“Addendum is a word to describe an addition or supplement to a main work.  For these pieces I wanted to show what is behind the image, so I created these studies wherein all the contact sheets from my shooting are laid on top of one another.  There are over 10,000 frames in each of these pieces, and when you look closely you can racognize a corner of a frame or a face, but from afar they simply represent the chaos or randomness you find in the streets.”

Wrapping up the exhibition is an installation, wherein Peter collected objects he found on the streets over the years of shooting Babel Tales, ground them into dust, and placed them in bags displayed on a table alongside the photographic work.

“The piece consisting of 72 bags is a similar concept as Babel Tales being about how we categorize our behavior or our interests. The objects I found all represented a personal story–from a lottery ticket symbolizing lost dreams to a broken plastic nail–they are a physical representation of life’s stories.  I would find the object and grind it down until it simply became a color or a texture, like a raw material.  I then categorized and named them in bags. The piece is named after all 72 objects, from bottles to brooms to dolls.”

You can see more of Peter’s work at llreps.com

Peter Funch “Babel Tales” in Wired UK and Art World Magazines

Peter Funch’s “Babel Tales” project has been met with critical acclaim from the international art community, and is now the center of two pieces for both Wired UK as well as Art World Magazine.

Peter’s technique is to capture thousands of frames from the same position on street corners in major cities. His objective is to discover the human patterns that emerge from the passage of time in one place. Each person in every image is from a different frame.

Included in these articles are interviews with Peter explaining more about his intention of this work, and the way it was conceived.