Last summer (2022) the Westons booked an AirBnB in the north-west corner of Paris, in the 16th arrondissement, and spent a week pounding the Parisien streets. It was the first time for the boys so we took in some of the must-sees, including the Pompidou Centre. As luck would have it, the Nouvelle Objectivitié exhibition was running.
If, like me, you weren't familiar with this movement, it's worth looking up. Briefly: Germany, early twentieth century, a reaction to Expressionism, a call for rationalism. It began as an art movement then widened to cover architecture, product design, commercial art and photography.
If you know a bit of design history you'll probably have come across some of the work, like Otto Neurath's Isotype pictograms.
I was buzzing. It was such an exciting exhibition to come across. So much amazing work that I'd never seen and many pieces I had seen in books. And many things that surprised me.
I was particularly taken by a wall of photos, taken by the German public, of airships. This was when Zepplins were flying scheduled flights over Europe and the Atlantic. There were around 1,500 flights before the devastating Hindenburg disaster of 1937 that put an end to the enterprise.
The photos give an insight into what an incredible sight airships must have been when human engineered flight was still very new.
At odds with the principles of Nouvelle Objectivité, I appropriated these images, photographing the photographs then getting new prints made for my own evil artistic and expressionistic ends.
Testimony I and Testimony II are ThreadForms that celebrate these weird sightings.