Lutz Dille
Canadian, 1922 - 2008
Lutz Dille arrived in Toronto in 1951 and worked in a variety of odd jobs until the late fifties, when CBC television producer Ted Pope saw Dille's Paris photos and decided to animate them into a short film for television. Following this Dille started to receive assignments and was able to turn freelance. Apart from his commissioned work, whenever time and money allowed, he set out without any particular social message in mind or preconceived ideas, simply to photograph people. The personal assignments took him across Europe, the United States and Latin America. Three more films featuring his photographs were produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Speakers Corner, London 1961, Ring of Time, Mexico 1960, New York Live In, New York City, 1962.
In 1967, the National Film Board of Canada organized an Exhibition, "The Many Worlds of Lutz Dille". A catalogue of the same title was published by the NFB at this time, the first of their IMAGE series. In the same year at the Bytown International Exhibition he received the Yousuf Karsh award for the best collection of photographs in the exhibition.
Dille was by this time working in film as well as photography. In the early 1960s he'd bought his first movie camera and had started to work freelance for television, particularly in the area of Social Documentary. As an independent filmmaker he produced a number of documentaries and experimental films in which he often utilised both still and the moving images. In photography he began to experiment with colour printing, texture and form. He explored these aspects in his series "Lanes" which he photographed in the back alleys of downtown Toronto. He exhibited this work at the Arnolfini Centre for Contemporary Art, Bristol, England in 1982.
In 1975 and again in 1977 he visited Salford, an industrial town in the North of England, which was going through a period of drastic social change. Whole neighbourhoods were being demolished and people being uprooted and re-housed in high rises. Dille chose to photograph for the main part in colour. In fact, the only time he has chosen to photograph people in colour.
Dille went back to Europe in 1980, accompanied by his wife, Mary, and son, Oliver. Dille was sorely missed by a legion of Toronto friends and colleagues who had grown accustomed to his dominant social presence. He lived in Wales from 1980 until 1985 where he taught a course in Film making at the Newport College of Art, Gwent. He was awarded a British Arts Council Film Grant to make a documentary on the potter, Walter Keeler, titled "The Mudspinner". From 1985 until the time of his death, Lutz Dille lived in the south of France, where in recent years his photography has been widely exhibited. In 1990 his Paris photo series "1951" was edited and distributed by the Griffelkunst in Hamburg, Germany. Between 1993 and 1995 the FNAC Photo Galleries, Paris, organized a retrospective "Lutz Dille, Street Photography" 1951-1968. This Exhibition toured major cities in France, also Antwerp, Belgium and Berlin, Germany.
In 1995 the "Centre de la Photographie" Lecture, France organised an exhibition "Lutz Dille Photographies"; in 2004 a retrospective exhibition curated by Martin Eberle for Stadtisches Museum, Braunschweig, Germany which also published the catalogue On the Street : Photographs of the 1950s and 1960s by Lutz Dille.
Education
1947-51 Photographic studies at Kunstschule in Hamburg
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2004 Auf der Strasse: Fotografien der 1950er und 1960er jahre von Lutz Dille. Stadtisches Museum,
Braunschweig, Germany
2002 AMuseum Gohliser Schlosschen, Leipzig Germany
2001 The Argus Fotokunst Gallerie, Berlin, Germany
2000 Contact Photography Festival, Toronto, Canada
1998 “Lutz Dille, Photographies (1943-1977)”, La Filature, Mulhouse, France
1995 Retrospective Exhibition, Centre de la Photographie
Lutz Dille Street Photography. La Fnac, Forum des Halles, Paris
Retrospective, Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto, Canada
1992-95 Lutz Dille: Street Photography 1951-1968. Traveling Exhibition
Fnac Photo Galeries, Antwerp, Berlin, France
1982 Lanes, Arnolfini Centre for Contemporary Art, Bristol, England
1967 The Many World’s of Lutz Dille, National Film Board of Canada
Selected Group Exhibitions
2005 The Sixties: Photography in Question. Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa
2004 Faces, Places, Traces. The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
2002 Life of a City. MoMA, New York
1999 The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect, MoMA, New York
Grants and Awards
1983 British Arts Council Film Grant
1967 Yousef Karsh Award
Selected Permanent Collections
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa, Canada
The National Collection of Photography: The Public Archives of Canada
The Museum Of Modern Art (MoMA) New York
The Museum of the City of New York
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
Bibliotheque Historique de la Ville de Paris
Griffelkunst-Vereinigung, Hamburg, Germany
The Museum of London, England
http://www.bulgergallery.com/dynamic/fr_artist_cv.asp?ArtistID=23
Person TypeIndividual
Canadian, 1917 - 2005