— Curatorial —

AREA: Art on the Dancefloor

Warhol, Basquiat & Co by VOLKER HINZ

Volker Hinz was born 1947 in Hamburg and sold his first photographs to newspapers and magazines when he was just twenty. From 1974 onwards he was a staff photographer for renown German magazine “Stern” in Hamburg and became famous for his reportages from around the world. 1978 Volker Hinz moved to the USA, eventually taking the post as international correspondent for “Stern” in New York City, photographing extensively in North and South America. He worked exclusively on black and white or color negative film and in addition to his usual 35mm cameras, he photographed with various 6x6 medium format cameras, and produced extraordinary portraits and reportages such as ‘New York Nightlife’, ‘Hollywood’, Washington, and Mexico - many of which have become iconic images and are part of a collective visual memory. In 1986 he relocated back to Hamburg together with his wife Henriette and their children Flora and Theodor, continuing to travel the world with his vigilant gaze behind the camera. In addition to his highly acclaimed commission work, he also expanded his artistic body of work, undeterred and self-assured he refined his personal style as photographer.

Volker Hinz’s work has been published internationally in magazines such as GEO, Life, Look, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Photo or Paris Match. He has received the World Press Award, Lead Award and was repeatedly recognized by the Art Directors Club Germany. His photographic work has been featured in numerous photobooks, was exhibited nationally and internationally, and are found in private collections and museums. He died in 2019 in Hamburg. In 2022, his archive has been acquired by the Staaatsbibliothek München, Germany.

The Fotofestiwal Łódź was established in 2001 as one of the first photography
events in Poland. It was a spontaneous initiative of students and lecturers of the Sociology Department. Since then, photography and ways of organizing cultural events have transformed. Fotofestiwal remains a space for presenting various forms and types of
photography, a forum for discussion about art and society, a motivation to search for alternative methods of discussing and exhibiting photography. But first of all, invariably, it is a place where people meet.

The 22^nd edition of Fotofestiwal' motto "HOPE" was inspired by the words of American writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, who stated that “hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope". The international Fotofestiwal invited curators and artists to create works especially for the 22^nd Fotofestiwal, centred around the most topical social issues, climate change, wars, a growing wave of populism and nationalism, and the fight for the rights of minorities. Artists and their projects represent the modern visual language, within which photography is sometimes just an introduction to action or a summary of complex participatory processes and collaboration.

2023

Nina Venus was invited to bring the 'NYC nightclub' body of work by Volker Hinz to Łódź and curated the immersive exhbition "AREA: ART ON THE DANCEFLOOR", the most comprehensive exhibition of this part of his work to date. It included private snap shots from his archive never seen before, the complete collection of original AREA invitations (now considered artwork in and by itself) and numerous magazine and press clippings.

AREA was the name of a legendary, short-lived but spectacular nightclub in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Though short-lived, 1983-87, it impacted and transcended boundaries between art and life, interlinked music, fashion, performance, and installation, creating a realm for radical creative experimentation and transformed the cultural landscape, inspiring until today. AREA was also a place where everyone mixed and mingled accross the social and cultural spectrum: tparty people and the artists, regular people and high society, movie stars and musicians.

It connected people across the social spectrum. Looking back from today, those AREA years marked a hopeful time, though brutally undercut by the emergence of AIDS in 1981, society seemed less socially and politically divided, more liberal, and experimental than today with reduced women’s rights, racism rising, widening the gap in societies.

Back then, four Highschool friends from California moved to New York City and without much ado and little money, rented an old warehouse and opened AREA. Never primarily intended as a commercial success, always artistically driven and motivated, the only constant factor was permanent change: every six weeks AREA was spectacularly transformed into a new thematic and immersive installation: “Confinement “, “Food”, “Suburbia”, “Fashion”, or “Faith” wasn’t merely a motto, but a complete cosmos.

AREA elevated nightclubbing to an artform, celebrating creativity over commerce. “The criteria for entry were not based on wealth. If there was a limo, it was a bad thing”, remembers Eric Goode, one of the founders, in 2013.

The fantastic images by renowned German photographer Volker Hinz invite contemporary viewers to immerse themselves into the cosmos of AREA, suspended from time and space, and reminding us of the power and hope that Art can carry.

Installation process

AREA: the book

AREA, authors: Eric Goode, Jennifer Goode. Published 2013 by Abrams Books.
Dimensions: 12 x 9.5 x 2 inches. Drawing from an incredibly rich archive of material, most photographs by Volker Hinz, Eric and Jennifer Goode tell the behind-the-scenes story of the club and its people, creating an illustrated memoir of an exciting time and place in the annals of New York nightlife.