Michael Ackerman: End Time City
The first publication of End Time City listed Michael Ackerman as a major figure in photography. Twenty years later, this new edition, reimagined by the artist, presents a selection of his iconic photographs, enriched with many completely new images, taken during his recent trips to Benares, in 2018 and 2020. This new visual corpus allows us to see a greater presence of animals in Ackerman’s universe.
The latter takes us on a crazy stroll through the narrow streets of Benares, the most sacred city in Hinduism, which welcomes pilgrims who have come to die here to erase their sins and put an end to the cycle of rebirth. Saturated with dust, populated by ghostly presences with intense gazes, Ackerman’s photographs render a world bordering on daydreaming.
This new opus unfolds in a revised format and visual sequences, punctuated by new media, contact sheets, Polaroids, panoramics, leaflets, etc., which restore all the power and singularity of Ackerman’s photographic writing. Christian Caujolle, one of the first to discover this work in 1997 and author of an essay in the original edition of End Time City in 1999, wrote a special text for this new version of the book.
About the Author
American. Born in 1967 in Tel Aviv. He Lives in Berlin. Since his first exhibition, in 1999, Michael Ackerman has made his mark by bringing a new, radical and unique approach.
His work on Varanasi, entitled “End Time City,” breaks away from all sorts of exoticism or any anecdotal attempt at description, to question time and death with a freedom granted by a distance from the panoramic – whose usage he renewed – to squares or rectangles.
In black and white, with the permanent risk that led him to explore impossible lighting, he allowed the grainy images to create enigmatic and pregnant visions.
Michael Ackerman seeks – and finds – in the world he traverses, reflections of his personal malaise, doubts and anguish. He received the Nadar Award for his book “End Time City” in 1999, and the Infinity Award for Young Photographer by the International Center of Photography in 1998.
Michael Ackerman is represented by Agency VU’.
