22 June 2025  A Sunday for Seeing: Bruce Weber's My EducationOn Sundays, fashion.at slows the pace, diving into press releases and invitations that go unnoticed during the week. It's a routine that often leads to overlooked gems. The highlight of this weekend was receiving a pre-release copy of Bruce Weber's new book, My Education, which will be available from Taschen starting July 7. The title is shared with a retrospective exhibition held at Prague's Stone Bell House (Prague City Gallery) from September 20, 2024, to January 19, 2025.Browsing through My Education becomes an almost endless journey through Weber's creative biography. Unlike a chronological monograph, the book is structured like a thematic curriculum vitae—highlighting lesser-known yet deeply personal photographs alongside his iconic works. This is more than a showcase of portraits featuring names like DiCaprio and Kim Kardashian; it is a tribute to the spirit of collaboration, shaped by decades of friendships, fashion, and artistic risk-taking. Weber shares these moments with a narrative voice rich in anecdote and literary references—from Steinbeck to Bukowski—cementing his position not just as a visual chronicler, but as a storyteller of human complexity. Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Watcher Behind the MomentThe new photo museum in Vienna, Foto Arsenal Wien, opens two major exhibitions on June 27, 2025. The first, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Watch! Watch! Watch!, focuses on a photographer known for his precise timing. While Cartier-Bresson is often associated with portraits of figures like Coco Chanel or Matisse, this retrospective highlights his pivotal role in the development of modern photojournalism.The show includes over 240 works—iconic moments, unpublished reportage, surrealist early photography, and even films. Through scenes captured between the 1930s and 1970s, the exhibition explores Cartier-Bresson's street photography and humanist eye: refugees in Dessau, Gandhi's funeral, the fading Kuomintang in China. As the title suggests, Watch! is a call to see with intent. His photographs are not posed or polished; they reveal behavior, structure, and social realities in the fleeting moment where form and emotion converge. Christine de Grancy: Above the World and TimeAlso opening at Foto Arsenal Wien is Christine de Grancy. Über der Welt und den Zeiten. The Austrian photographer, who passed away earlier this year, is best known for capturing theater in motion—often during rehearsals—where raw emotion and drama intersect.Yet her broader photographic journey tells a different story. From Vienna's imperial rooftops to Sahrawi refugee camps and Roma communities in Central Europe, de Grancy sought out the tension between power and vulnerability. Her visual narratives resist exoticization; instead, they observe and preserve lives shaped by structural forces and cultural memory. Between the editorial commissions for Vogue or Stern and the portraits of Tuareg women, the throughline is a deeply ethical gaze. With over 200 works, the exhibition introduces the public to a quieter, more contemplative legacy—of a photographer who moved between glamour and geopolitics without losing sight of the individual. Realities Framed: A Shared Aesthetic of AttentionWhat unites Bruce Weber, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Christine de Grancy is not just their global recognition or stylistic range. All three, in different ways, have grounded their work in an acute awareness of social structures. Whether it's the sensual realism of Weber's portraits, the political immediacy of Cartier-Bresson's street scenes, or de Grancy's long-form narratives from theater to displacement—each artist uses photography as a medium of observation rather than decoration. They don't necessarily beautify what they see. But they do frame it—in light, form, and detail—so that we are asked to pause and witness. With aesthetic clarity and ethical awareness, they remind us that photography at its best does not simply capture—it understands.Images, from left to right: Left: The cover of Bruce Weber: My Education published by TASCHEN. This extensive photographic book will be released on July 7, 2025. It spans 564 pages and is available as a multilingual edition (English, German, French). Full details are available at taschen.com. Middle: Behind Saint-Lazare station, Place de l’Europe, Paris, France, 1932 by Henri Cartier-Bresson. © Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos. Right: Prater, Vienna, Austria, 1976 by Christine de Grancy. © Christine de Grancy / AnzenbergerGallery. Henri Cartier-Bresson and Christine de Grancy are the subjects of two parallel exhibitions at Foto Arsenal Wien: Henri Cartier-Bresson. Watch! Watch! Watch! and Christine de Grancy. Über der Welt und den Zeiten, on view from June 28 to September 21, 2025. Opening: June 27, 2025, 7:00 p.m. Location: Foto Arsenal Wien, Arsenal Objekt 19A, 1030 Vienna. More info: fotoarsenalwien.at |