SANNE SANNES  Erotica

Laurence Miller Gallery is pleased to present twenty rare vintage prints by the late Dutch artist Sanne Sannes. This will be the first one-person exhibition of his work in the United States.  Sanne Sannes was born in 1937 in The Netherlands.  His brief career, ending abruptly when he died in a motorcycle accident at age 30, focused on his taste for the erotic and a fascination with women. His voyeuristic style reflects the morals and atmosphere of the sixties, which provided an inspiration for his models as well as himself.  Sannes exhibited an intensely poetic eye for women.  He explored aspects of sexual passion and human nature, and described his approach as follows:

There are many men who'll never see a woman in ecstasy. They change from one thing to something else completely different.  Human emotions are my subject matter. I photograph people.  They're what interest me, obsess me.  I want to know what pushes them to do what they do. I don't look for them in the street; I don't do random photography. I direct them and record the moment they open up and become naked. I chose the most emotionally charged moments, the point of no return. I'm fanatically zealous!

Sannes' work is most well-known through his publications, Sex a Gogo, published in 1969, two years after his death, and Oog om oog ('Eye for eye') which was published a few years prior.  A limited-edition monograph of 2000 copies was published in 1993 with extensive photographic and bibliographic information using Sannes' original photographs for the book's reproductions.  FOAM Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam will mount an exhibition of his photographs in 2009.