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‘Transatlantic Relations: Go West' Exhibition Opens in Brandenburg

A Photography Exhibition Showing the Influence of American Iconography in Europe is Now Being Showcased in Brandenburg.

August 27th, 2015
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The United States Embassy in Berlin is supporting a photography exhibition from Rainer Sioda. The artist has created an exhibition entitled Transatlantic Relations: Go West, with images from the “Wild West” of America juxtaposed against images from Brandenburg.

Sioda’s motivation is to look closely at the visual images of the U.S. and the emotional focus on U.S. culture, history, and landscape and how that has been deeply shaped by film, photography, and advertisement of the second half of the 20th century. He believes that after World War II, the U.S. seems to have invented itself through mystification and iconic imagery. Transatlantic Relations portraits how U.S. stereotypes are projected and adapted in Europe and how this myth is a theme in the U.S. itself. The systematic comparison of one image of the U.S. and one from Europe is a contextualisation and modification of the subtext of the images.

The exhibition draws on the theme of the ‘Wild West’ myth, and the U.S. is a wonderful example invoking images of deserts, highways, gas stations, freedom and cowboys and Indians. But it is surprising that the images of Brandenburg could be confused with rural America, for example there is a juxtaposed image of two gas stations, one in Teltow-Fläming, the other in Hartford, South Dakota. And it is exciting because Teltow-Fläming is almost undistinguishable to Hartford.

Sioda found his images on long bike rides in Brandenburg and the neighbouring regions of Berlin. His U.S. photography emerged from a six week trip through the U.S., which among other things, gave Sioda an unconventional insight: he doesn’t like taking photos of Brandenburg in the sunlight, because it always looks washed out, unlike in America. For more information, please visit: http://www.stk.brandenburg.de/cms/detail.php?gsid=bb1.c.387847.de .

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