Alex Neumann is the name of an artist group consisting of a married couple and their daughter. The artists mainly deal with the theme of identity and explore it in many different forms. Along with other Czech photographers, they have succeeded in precisely addressing topical creative tendencies and creating clear-cut, conceptually stable, unique, visually strong and technically perfect works that reach out to a wide audience. Similarly to other artists of the new generation, the Neumanns are not afraid to look for inspiration outside the ghetto of traditional photography in film, music, literature, visual art as well as in fashion or advertising. Like a growing number of young artists, they masterly handle possibilities offered by digital manipulation with photographic images. Instead of traditionally capturing the real world and its inhabitants which prevailed in photography for the first hundred and fifty years of its existence, they create pictures belonging to a non-existent world and artificially made people, a world in which reality and fiction can no longer be told apart.

They incorporate approximately 7 years of work on the theme of their attempt to assimilate in Germany and gradual integration into life in another country in their new project “Ich heisse Neumann”. Through their photographs they observe details which strike them as alien in the new environment, they attempt to depict various feelings of homesickness, longing for a familiar environment, familiar faces, language etc. But they not only observe themselves, but also the impact of the environment on their daughter, who deals with the change in childhood far faster. Before their very eyes she turns into a German, but also something of a foreigner for them as parents. But they also become foreigners to her…

The Neumann’s series have drawn attention to a number of exhibitions in the Czech Republic as well as abroad, for example, at a photography biennale in Lyon, France, at the Festival of Art Photography in Warsaw, Poland, or at the Budapest spring festival, Hungary. Their series The Replacement was chosen for a prestigious touring exhibition of the most talented young contemporary photographers called ReGeneration 2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today held by the ľElysée Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, and their work is presented in a book bearing the same title, released by a famous publishing house Thames and Hudson.

Prof. PhDr. Vladimir Birgus
director of Institute of Creative Photography, Silesian University, Opava / curator

 

SERIES:
2023 Collective Cry
2019 Siblings
2013 The River
2012 Riverside Paradise
2010 The Replacement
2009 Blind
2008 Descendant

OPEN PROJECT “Ich heiße Neumann”
Die Deutche (2018 – 2020)
Dritte Option (2018)
Drin (2017 – 2020)
Zwischen den Häusern (2014 – 2020)
Billige Ware (2014 – 2020)
Grafikfragmente (2014 – 2017)

SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
•  “The Replacement” Artitled-contemporary art, Herpen, 2010
•  “The Replacement” Galerie Heinz-Martin Weigand – Ettlingen, 2010
•  “The Replacement / Descendants” Opera Gallery in Ostrava, 2010
•  “The Replacement” Month of Photography – Bratislava, 2009
•  “Homeworks” Gallery FotoGrafic – Prague, 2009
•  “Descendants / The Blind” House of Arts in Opava, 2008

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selection):
•  Rencontres de la Photographie of Marrakech in Morocco 2019 (Festival Voies Off 2019)
•  Festival Voies Off – Award 2019 – Presence / Rencontres d’Arles 2019
•  The Inner Circle of Contemporary Czech Photography, Prague City Gallery, 2013
•  Lucky – Kindheit in zeitgenössischer Fotografie / Kunst galerie Fürth, 2011
•  ITF, Galerie Prospekto, Vilnius, 2011
•  Lab East / V8 Verlag GmbH, Cologne, 2011
•  Czech Press Photo, Prague, 2010
•  ReGeneration 2 – Tomorrow´s photographers today, 2010 – 2014 (Musée de l´Elysée Laussane; Les Rencontres d’Arles; Aperture Foundation, New York)
•  The Twentieth Year of ITF – University of Oxford, 2010
•  Fotofestiwal in Lodz – Factory of Photography, Lodz, 2010
•  The Twentieth Year of ITF – Galerie Gamu, Praha / National Theater, Brno, 2010
•  Prague Biennale 4 / Prague Biennale Photo 1, Real Unreal, Prague, 2009
•  The Young Czech Photography, Galeria Luksfera and Galeria Klimy Bocheskij – Warsaw Festival, Poland, 2009
•  Identity of Young Czech Women Photographers, The Hungarian House of Photography-Mai Manó House, Budapest, 2009
•  Czech Press Photo, Prague, 2008
•  9PH Identité 08 Lyon Septembre de la Photographie, 2008
•  “Czech Start” Fotobild BERLIN, Germany, 2007
•  Young Czech Women Photographers – Month Of Photography in Bratislava, 2007

AWARDS:
•  Voies Off Award (Presence / Rencontres d’Arles), 2019
•  Lab East – 30 photographic positions from Central and Eastern Europe – photeur.net, 2011
•  Czech Press Photo 2010 – 3rd place / Riverside Paradise (Environment)
•  ReGeneration 2 / Musée de l´Elysée, Lausanne, 2010
•  Czech Press Photo 2008 – Honorable Mention / The Blinds (Portrait)

COLLECTIONS:
• Musée de l’Elysée, Switzerland
• Michaelis School of Fine Art, South Africa
• Galerie Heinz-Martin Weigand, Germany
• Artitled-contemporary art, The Netherlands
• Private collections