| Art Profile |
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Zafer Baran was born in Turkey in 1955. He graduated from the State Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul in 1977. Leaving behind a promising career as a graphic designer, he moved to London to continue his art education, with two years of postgraduate study at Goldsmiths followed by a year at Christie’s. Baran held his first solo exhibition in London in 1985. He also took part in the major group show “New Horizons” at the Royal Festival Hall in 1985; both exhibitions featured his large-scale photographic constructions, both in color and black and white.
Zafer and Barbara Baran have been collaborating as photographic artists since 1981. Their first projects together included the extensive black-and-white landscape series “Boulderclough” (1983), which centered on the abandoned textile mills and quarries of northern England and documented the physical traces left by human beings on the land. Their another solo exhibitions include, first collaborative solo show, “Turkish Portraits,” (The Photographers’ Gallery, London in 1988), “Ephemera” (The Blue Gallery, London 2003), “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (Borusan Art Gallery, Istanbul 2005, in conjunction with 9th International Istanbul Biennial), and “Turner′s View / Star Drawings” (England & Co, London 2011).
In 2004, they participated in the exhibition “Rose c’est la vie: On Flowers” in Contemporary Art, at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, alongside artists including Marc Quinn, Jeff Koons, Fischli & Weiss, Wolfgang Tillmans, Robert Mapplethorpe, Nobuyoshi Araki, Anya Gallaccio, Andy Warhol and Thomas Struth. A selection from their “Ephemera” series was displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2005-08, as part of Camera-less Photography: Recent Gifts to the V&A Collection, alongside pieces by Susan Derges and Garry Fabian Miller. Further camera-less works have appeared in two more recent V&A exhibits: “A History of Camera-less Photography” (2010-11), and “Picturing Plants: Masterpieces of Botanical Illustration” (2011).
The Barans’ works can be seen in various public, corporate and private collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (which acquired nine of their Ephemera and Flower Cabinet pieces in 2005), Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the National Media Museum, Bradford (formerly National Museum of Photography, Film and Television). Barbara and Zafer Baran currently live and work in London.
Reference: b-baran.co.uk, englandgallery.com
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