A former drug addict, a burns victim and a burly builder are hardly typical male models.
But these men – and around 100 more – are the subjects of an Auckland photographer’s latest exhibition.
Ilan Wittenberg began his project, Bare Truth, a year ago, with an idea to portray New Zealand men as they truly are.
Bare-chested, blemished, scarred, and tattooed, the men’s histories are etched on their skin. One of the men had received skin grafts as a child – a pot of boiling jelly had ended up on his chest. Another has a prayer inked onto his arm.
“It’s interesting where people find strength,” Wittenberg says.
At first, his subjects were friends and family (Wittenberg’s 21-year-old son is among the men featured in the exhibition).
But as his collection and his confidence grew, Wittenberg began approaching strangers on the street. Market-goers, roadworkers, hedge-trimmers – any man who looks like he might have a story to tell.
“Out of every 10, four say ‘no’, four say ‘maybe’, two say ‘yes’, and one shows up.”
Wittenberg spent an hour speaking with the men before they went in front of the camera, asking them about their families, jobs, and the tales behind their tattoos.
The first photograph was of a friend who’d resisted participating in the project until the day before he departed New Zealand forever.
“He wasn’t very tidy – not scruffy, but he didn’t take great care of himself,” Wittenberg says of the man.
“In the photograph, you will see he puts his hand up to chest and he touches his heart… he has a little bit of sadness in his eyes.
“I thought, ‘this is real’.”
Wittenberg has about 100 photographs in the Bare Truth collection. Each of his subjects received an A4 copy of their photo, as thanks.
Some of the men were happy with the result, others felt confronted by the image.
“They didn’t actually show it to their wives, because they never saw themselves that way,” Wittenberg says.
The series is inspired by the work of famed photographers Robert Mapplethorpe and Platon. Shot before a blank background and converted into monochrome, the photographs depict a stark spectrum of Kiwi masculinity.
“When people look straight into the camera they actually look at the person on the other side, they look at the person who views them, and you can read their eye, you can actually see their soul – that’s what I felt.”
Bare Truth is Wittenberg’s third exhibition this year, showing in Sydney earlier this month, and in Auckland in June.
While images of topless women have become cliches of Western society, there’s something about a photo of a shirtless man – unretouched – which makes observers take a closer look.
“We see thousands of photos every day – on social media, in magazines, on tv, on the internet, billboards – and we ignore…” Wittenberg says.
“If you go to an exhibition, it’s not like looking at something on the computer… you stand in front of a photograph… and you let it talk to you.”
Visitors to the Sydney exhibition offered a range of interpretations, Wittenberg says.
“They say this person is looking very confident, very strong. And that person looks a bit… shy, and that person looks dangerous like, I wouldn’t want to meet that guy down a dark alley or something like that.
“It’s so interesting how in a fraction of a second we judge other people, even when they’re not there, just based on their body language – their eyes, their shoulders.”
But Wittenberg hopes the exhibition will also raise awareness of men’s health issues. Without a shirt, it’s difficult to hide the hallmarks of past surgeries, or chemotherapy.
And the camera offers insight into the soul.
“When people look straight into the camera they actually look at the person on the other side, they look at the person who views them,” Wittenberg says.
“You can read their eye, you can see their soul – that’s what I felt.”
Wittenberg emigrated from Israel with his wife and two children in 2001. The North Shore resident had been working as a business analyst before he took up portrait photography full time in 2011.
While portraits pay the bills, the Bare Truth project was a labour done for love, not money.
Quoting business leader Stephen Covey, Wittenberg says: “We’re here to live, to laugh, to love and to leave a legacy.”
“We’re not getting any younger… my legacy is about pictures I do.”
Bare Truth will be exhibited at Northart gallery in Northcote, Auckland from June 5 – 22. Admission is free.
The exhibition will also feature in the 2016 Auckland Festival of Photography.
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Stuff Article: Ilan Wittenberg exposes the Bare Truth
Photographer Ilan Wittenberg exposes the Bare Truth in portrait exhibition
A former drug addict, a burns victim and a burly builder are hardly typical male models.
But these men – and around 100 more – are the subjects of an Auckland photographer’s latest exhibition.
Ilan Wittenberg began his project, Bare Truth, a year ago, with an idea to portray New Zealand men as they truly are.
Bare-chested, blemished, scarred, and tattooed, the men’s histories are etched on their skin. One of the men had received skin grafts as a child – a pot of boiling jelly had ended up on his chest. Another has a prayer inked onto his arm.
“It’s interesting where people find strength,” Wittenberg says.
At first, his subjects were friends and family (Wittenberg’s 21-year-old son is among the men featured in the exhibition).
But as his collection and his confidence grew, Wittenberg began approaching strangers on the street. Market-goers, roadworkers, hedge-trimmers – any man who looks like he might have a story to tell.
“Out of every 10, four say ‘no’, four say ‘maybe’, two say ‘yes’, and one shows up.”
Wittenberg spent an hour speaking with the men before they went in front of the camera, asking them about their families, jobs, and the tales behind their tattoos.
The first photograph was of a friend who’d resisted participating in the project until the day before he departed New Zealand forever.
“He wasn’t very tidy – not scruffy, but he didn’t take great care of himself,” Wittenberg says of the man.
“In the photograph, you will see he puts his hand up to chest and he touches his heart… he has a little bit of sadness in his eyes.
“I thought, ‘this is real’.”
Wittenberg has about 100 photographs in the Bare Truth collection. Each of his subjects received an A4 copy of their photo, as thanks.
Some of the men were happy with the result, others felt confronted by the image.
“They didn’t actually show it to their wives, because they never saw themselves that way,” Wittenberg says.
The series is inspired by the work of famed photographers Robert Mapplethorpe and Platon. Shot before a blank background and converted into monochrome, the photographs depict a stark spectrum of Kiwi masculinity.
“When people look straight into the camera they actually look at the person on the other side, they look at the person who views them, and you can read their eye, you can actually see their soul – that’s what I felt.”
Bare Truth is Wittenberg’s third exhibition this year, showing in Sydney earlier this month, and in Auckland in June.
While images of topless women have become cliches of Western society, there’s something about a photo of a shirtless man – unretouched – which makes observers take a closer look.
“We see thousands of photos every day – on social media, in magazines, on tv, on the internet, billboards – and we ignore…” Wittenberg says.
“If you go to an exhibition, it’s not like looking at something on the computer… you stand in front of a photograph… and you let it talk to you.”
Visitors to the Sydney exhibition offered a range of interpretations, Wittenberg says.
“They say this person is looking very confident, very strong. And that person looks a bit… shy, and that person looks dangerous like, I wouldn’t want to meet that guy down a dark alley or something like that.
“It’s so interesting how in a fraction of a second we judge other people, even when they’re not there, just based on their body language – their eyes, their shoulders.”
But Wittenberg hopes the exhibition will also raise awareness of men’s health issues. Without a shirt, it’s difficult to hide the hallmarks of past surgeries, or chemotherapy.
And the camera offers insight into the soul.
“When people look straight into the camera they actually look at the person on the other side, they look at the person who views them,” Wittenberg says.
“You can read their eye, you can see their soul – that’s what I felt.”
Wittenberg emigrated from Israel with his wife and two children in 2001. The North Shore resident had been working as a business analyst before he took up portrait photography full time in 2011.
While portraits pay the bills, the Bare Truth project was a labour done for love, not money.
Quoting business leader Stephen Covey, Wittenberg says: “We’re here to live, to laugh, to love and to leave a legacy.”
“We’re not getting any younger… my legacy is about pictures I do.”
Bare Truth will be exhibited at Northart gallery in Northcote, Auckland from June 5 – 22. Admission is free.
The exhibition will also feature in the 2016 Auckland Festival of Photography.
Beautiful Kemi
I received an email from beautiful Yemi with the title “Model from the USA”! It turned out that Yemi is also a fashion designer who was staying in Davenport for holiday and was looking to get a few editorial shots to add to her portfolio. Yemi was flying back to the States then next day so we quickly got together to create a series of beautiful portraits. During lunch, Yemi was very hungry and said she might be pregnant… We spoke about the possibility of her having an abortion when Yemi explained that her mom conceived her behind stage at the end of a rock concert and that her mom chose to keep her. Yemi is now a proud single mom.
Lest We Forget
New Zealand entered the Second World War by declaring war on Nazi Germany on September 3rd 1939. Around 140,000 New Zealand personnel served overseas for the Allied war effort. At its peak in July 1942, New Zealand had 154,549 men and women under arms. By the end of the war a total of 194,000 men and 10,000 women had served in the armed forces. On Anzac Day, April 25 2014, NZIPP members across the country combined their efforts for a project of national significance: to photograph New Zealand’s last surviving World War Two servicemen and women. These portraits are gifted to the Royal New Zealand Returned Services Association and to the National Archives, showing our veterans that they are remembered and that the sacrifices they made for our freedom is still honoured. This is the story of 21 World War Two veterans.
Final Touch Album
Julia-Ruth Smith
Emil Bilinski
Portrait Photographer Auckland
Austrian photographer Emil Bilinski lives and creates between Warsaw, Berlin and Vienna. His work is internationally recognised throughout Europe and Australia. A member of the Ilford masters, the Coloratti Pro and the Rotolight masters of light. His professional path started at the side of Andreas Bitesnich. Throughout 20 years of his career, Bilinski has collaborated with remarkable artists, including Anne Leibovitz, Peter Lindbergh and David La Chapelle. His editorial work featured in renowned publications, such as Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Matador, Diva, Women, Playboy, Schön, Sunday Times Perth and others. He is frequently a jury member at the tv modelling competition shows such as Top Model (Austria and Poland) and Supermodel. Emil Bilinski specialises in beauty, fashion and commercial photography. He created signature campaigns for L’oreal, Carlo Rossi, Timotei, Wella, Sebastian Professional, Samsung and Braun among many others. His photographs have continued to contribute to the Schwarzkopf Austrian hairdressing award for the last 11 years. His imagery inspires with subtlety of aesthetics, timeless vision, remarkable perception of reality and meticulous approach to the construction of light.
Boy with a Hammer
Beauty and the Beast
Silver with Distinction – NZIPP 2018 Iris Awards, Portrait In-Camera artistry
Not Another Family Portrait
Trellic Tower
Trellick Tower is located on the Cheltenham Estate in Kensal Town, London. Opened in 1972, it had been commissioned by the Greater London Council and designed in the Brutalist style by architect Ernő Goldfinger. The tower was planned to replace outdated social accommodation, and designed as a follow up to Goldfinger’s earlier Balfron Tower in East London. It was the last major project he worked on, and featured various space-saving designs, along with a separate access tower containing a plant room.
High-rise apartments and Brutalist architecture were falling out of favour by the time the tower was completed, and it became a magnet for crime, vandalism, drug abuse and prostitution. Its fortunes gradually improved in the 1980s after the establishment of a residents’ association. Security measures were put in place and a concierge was employed, which led to lower crime levels. By the 1990s the tower had become a desirable place to live, and although it still contains predominantly social housing, demand for private flats has remained high. A local landmark, it has retained its distinctive concrete facade as a result. A fire broke out in 2017, but the concrete structure meant damage was limited, unlike the nearby Grenfell Tower. Trellick Tower has featured on film and television several times. The tower is 98 metres tall. It has a long, thin profile, with a separate lift and service tower linked at every third storey to the access corridors in the main building, which overall has 31 floors. Flats above and below the corridor levels have internal stairs, while the 23rd and 24th floors are taken up by maisonettes split over the two floors.
The service tower has two additional floors higher than the main building, which includes a projecting plant room that holds the main heating system. It is fully linked by stairs in addition to the lifts, and also has a refuse chute mechanism. The majority of the plant and the hot water storage tank is located in the plant room, which reduces the need for pumps and reduces the amount of pipework needed. Shorter pipe runs also reduce heat loss. The oil-fired boilers originally used became obsolete due to the 1973 oil crisis, the year after the tower opened. The flats now have electric heaters and the plant room, although disused, still houses most of the now defunct mechanism.
Goldfinger designed the entire tower block freehand on butcher’s paper. He planned various communal areas, and purposefully put slight variations in the structure so that each apartment would look different. Throughout, quality materials were used in construction, including better fixtures and finishing the balconies with cedarwood. It it was intended to be a good example of social accommodation alongside modern design.
Goldfinger had been encouraged to construct Trellick Tower by the London County Council. He took his inspiration from Balfron, where he had moved into one of the apartments in order to experience what life would be like for the tenants, and invited residents round for regular cocktail parties to tell him their likes and dislikes. This feedback was incorporated into the design of Trellick Tower. Many immigrants from the West Indies and the Caribbean settled in Trellick Tower, as for them it was one of the few affordable places to live in London. Construction costs ran to £2.4 million.
By the time Trellick Tower opened, high-rise tower blocks were becoming unfashionable. Goldfinger had intended that tenants should to be vetted for suitability, and petitioned the Council for the building to have proper security and a concierge but to no avail. This meant that the building was open access, and rough sleepers and drug criminals took up residence in its corridors. Drying rooms on the ground floor, designed by Goldfinger to stop tenants hanging laundry on the balconies, were vandalised before the tower block opened.
By the late 1970s Trellick Tower was a scene of crime and anti-social behaviour, and many tenants were very reluctant to move in. On one occasion vandals set off a fire extinguisher on the 12th floor, with water from the sprinkler system flooding the lifts and leaving the tower without electricity, heat or running water over the Christmas period. A pensioner was forced to use the stairs after all the lifts were out of order, and subsequently collapsed and died. On the 15th floor, a 27-year-old woman was dragged from one of the lifts and raped. The tower became nicknamed “The Tower of Terror” and residents attempted to be re-housed. In 1982 a man was killed after jumping off the top of Trellick Tower when his parachute failed to open. He was a member of a group of dangerous sports enthusiasts who were interested in jumping off fixed objects.
With the introduction of the “right to buy” council homes, several of the flats were bought by their tenants. On 8 October 1984 a new residents’ association was formed. As a result of pressure from the occupants, several security improvements including a door entry intercom system were installed and a concierge was hired in 1987. In 1994 residents in the tower, along with other residents in Kensington & Chelsea council properties, elected to self-manage the properties, in order to avoid increased rents and the threat of eviction.
In 1991 Sand Helsel, Professor of Architecture at RMIT, made a BBC documentary praising Trellick Tower, which helped to change public opinion in its favour. The tower subsequently became more respectable owing to its location in Notting Hill and the gentrification of Golborne Road. Property prices rose and flats in the tower came to be regarded as highly desirable residences; requests to sell flats began to be posted on the tower’s communal noticeboard. By 1999 a flat in the tower could sell for £150,000 (£239,000 as of 2016). The tower itself has become something of a local cult landmark and was awarded a Grade II listing in 1998, which included the main building and the adjacent row of shops and amenities.
On 19 April 2017 the top floors of the tower caught fire, believed to have been started by a discarded cigarette. There were no injuries. The building’s listed status meant that the concrete facade could not be covered over, which is thought to have prevented a far worse fire similar to Grenfell Tower which happened a few months later.
Jesus Christ
Cracked
Cracked (c) Ilan Wittenberg 2018 Buy Now
Convergence
Charcoal Sky
Kristine
Sarah Jane
The power of two – when creative visions collide
When it comes to producing award winning photography, Ilan Wittenberg is the man to talk to. Recently adding the Sony Alpha Award 2018 (winning both the Portrait category and the Grand Prize) to his collection of industry accolades, Wittenberg says that the key to producing the award winning eerily beautiful portrait was collaboration with model Alicia.
The two found each other online and began brainstorming ideas for a portrait photograph that was ‘timeless’. “I loved the idea of applying a mask onto her face and extending it to her torso. The idea was to create a cracked earth background using drought as the theme”, Ilan says.
“We actually first discussed doing something quite elaborate but the more we talked the more it developed into more of a personal piece”, Alicia comments.
Collaborating with someone else is always a risk Ilan states, it may not always work out the way you envision it to. After finding a potential model, the next challenge is to ensure that there is a shared vision. “We plan, we talk, we think about the outfit, about the theme. We talk about what the model is comfortable doing etc. The stars have to align too… The model and I have to be on the same wavelength and if they bring an idea that I think works then together we’re a great team.”
Ilan and Alicia both stress the importance of having an open mind when it comes to collaborating with someone, particularly for a creative project. “It’s difficult to add anything new to the creative space without honesty because it allows our unique selves to come through”, Alicia says.
Ilan focuses on monochrome portraits that allow the subjects to really shine in their channel of storytelling. His portraits often involve “ordinary people”, posing nude, which opens them up to a new sense of vulnerability and allows the audience to focus on the bare elements.
Sony Alpha Awards – Winner of Grand Prize and Portrait Category
“Most people stay hidden behind technology these days and lose that special human connection with each other so it’s a real art to work with people and bring out that magic in them.”
Ilan has won a plethora of awards and also judges at competitions for the Photographic Society of NZ and the NZ Institute of Professional Photography.
In a world overloaded with information and sensationalistic “visual clutter” which are competing for our attention; Ilan states that his goal is to create pieces that distinguish themselves as “extraordinary” “Forgetting the technicality of the picture, you really need to ask yourself, ‘is there a visual statement? Does it have any emotional impact?’”
Alicia agrees, “There are plenty of photos out there, of women especially, who try to look how they think they should look when in front of a camera due to the huge pressure on us to look a certain way. So the idea of (the winning portrait) was to try and work against that”.
Ilan strongly encourages budding photographers to meet up with like-minded individuals such as through the NZ Photographic Society meetings, to have their work critiqued by professionals in order to grow, just like he does. “It’s a friendly environment for people to be critiqued and grow because you don’t know what you don’t know. Even listening to critiques of other photographs really helps”.
The Huntress
The Huntress © Ilan Wittenberg 2020 Limited Edition of 9 + 2AP Buy Now
Tania and Guy
Grand Prize at 2018 Sony Alpha Awards
Ilan Wittenberg wins Grand Prize at 2018 Sony Alpha Awards
/ D-Photo
If you follow D-Photo, you are no doubt familiar with the beautiful black-and-white portrait that graces the cover of issue 84. The image, taken by photographer Ilan Wittenberg in his Auckland studio, won the Portrait category at the 2018 Sony Alpha Awards, and went on to take out the Grand Prize.
The competition invited professional and enthusiast photographers alike to submit photographs captured with Sony Alpha cameras and lenses across seven categories. Each category winner received Sony Alpha gear valued at $2000, with Grand Prize winner Ilan receiving a trip to Tanzania and $3,000 of Sony Alpha Gear. Take a look at the winners and finalists over at the Sony Alpha Awards website.
Ilan came up with the idea for the winning image along with model, Alicia, covering her face and torso with a clay-paste mask. Ilan shot the image against a basic background to emphasize her form and her facial expression. “I love Alicia’s eyes,” says Ilan. “She looks so fragile and vulnerable.”
In issue 84 we talk to Ilan about how he captured his striking monochrome portraits on his latest overseas trip to Morocco. The way in which he captures the essence of the places he visits primarily through portraiture makes him relatively unique as a travel photographer, so we’re very excited to see what he comes up with on his trip to Tanzania.