Exhibition: ‘This Is Britain: Photographs from the 1970s and 1980s’ at the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Exhibition dates: 29th January – 11th June 2023

Curator: The exhibition is curated by Kara Felt, assistant curator of art at the Denver Botanic Gardens and a former Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, with the organisational assistance of Diane Waggoner, Curator of Photographs, National Gallery of Art.

 

Gilles Peress (French, b. 1946) 'NORTHERN IRELAND. Belfast. Summer evening' 1989

 

Gilles Peress (French, b. 1946)
NORTHERN IRELAND. Belfast. Summer evening
1989
Gelatin silver print
Corcoran Collection
Museum Purchase with funds donated by the Marlin Miller, Jr. Family Foundation and by exchange: John Bryant and Patricia Bauman

 

 

I lived through these years in Britain.

Strikes, unemployment, high inflation and economic failure
New Right, monetarist ideas and the free market economy
The Troubles
The Winter of Discontent
The queens silver jubilee
Glam Rock, punk and then New Romantics; disco and then HiNRG
Aston Martin, Triumph TR7, two door Capri and MGB GT
Falklands War
Charles and Diana
1984-1985 miners’ strike
Recession
North-South divide
Gay Liberation, women’s liberation
Clause 28
HIV/AIDS
Brixton Riots (September 1985)
Racism and the National Front
Victorian values and moral behaviour vs the permissive society

and Margaret Thatcher

That one name still sends shivers down my spine.

The photographs in this posting capture the grittiness of those years… and the surreality of the lived experience. From my perspective, I worked really hard and partied even harder at clubs such as Scandals, Adams, Bang and Heaven. I spent as much as I earnt and careered around London in my beloved Mini 1275 GT as fast as I could, listening to David Bowie, Barry White and the Love Unlimited Orchestra, Pink Floyd, and the inimitable Grace Jones.

In black and white, Graham Smith’s Bennetts Corner (Giro Corner), the Erimus Club and Commercial Pub, South Bank, Middlesbrough (1982, below) perfectly encapsulates the depressive, dank mood of the country during these years. The meaning of “Giro corner” in the title references a place where people would go, in this case two pubs, to spend their Giro cheque: an unemployment or income support payment by giro cheque, posted fortnightly.

In colour, Martin Parr’s two photographs of New Brighton, Merseyside (1984, below) reference the absurdity of the British at play: leisure time in “new” Brighton on Mersyside in North West England (many miles from the affluent Brighton on the south coast of England) – eating surrounded by rubbish and relaxing on a hard concrete ramp with crying baby, while other artists capture the isolation of individuals, their working class lives and middle class pretensions.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the National Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Profound changes in British society in the 1970s and 1980s inspired a revolution in British photography. This Is Britain highlights the socially conscious photographers who captured this moment in time, among them Vanley Burke, Pogus Caesar, Anna Fox, Paul Graham, Sunil Gupta, Chris Killip, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, and Martin Parr. The exhibition features some 45 newly acquired prints in the National Gallery of Art’s collection. It brings together works by photographers who explored the national identity as Britain grappled with deindustrialisation, uprisings in inner cities, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the controversial policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The exhibition also includes Handsworth Songs (1986, below), a 59-minute film on the uprisings that rocked London and Birmingham in 1985. It was produced by the Black Audio Film Collective and directed by John Akomfrah. The exhibition is organised by the National Gallery of Art.

Text from the National Gallery of Art website

 

Anna Fox (British, b. 1961) 'Advertising Agency, Docklands Enterprise Zone' 1988

 

Anna Fox (British, b. 1961)
Advertising Agency, Docklands Enterprise Zone
1988
From the series Work Stations
Chromogenic print
Image (visible): 44.5 x 54.8 cm (17 1/2 x 21 9/16 in.)
Framed: 68.5 x 83.8 cm (26 15/16 x 33 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Anna Fox (British, b. 1961) 'Conference and Exhibitions Organiser, Euston. Personal Assistant to the Director' 1988, printed later

 

Anna Fox (British, b. 1961)
Conference and Exhibitions Organiser, Euston. Personal Assistant to the Director
1988, printed later
From the series Work Stations
Chromogenic print
Image (visible): 44.5 x 54.8cm (17 1/2 x 21 9/16 in.)
Framed: 68.5 x 83.8cm (26 15/16 x 33 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Anna Fox (British, b. 1961) 'Cafe, the City. Salesperson' 1988

 

Anna Fox (British, b. 1961)
Cafe, the City. Salesperson
1988
From the series Work Stations
Chromogenic print
Image (visible): 44.5 x 54.8cm (17 1/2 x 21 9/16 in.)
Framed: 68.5 x 83.8cm (26 15/16 x 33 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

 

Britain experienced profound changes in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was racked by deindustrialization, urban uprisings, the controversial policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Photography became a central form of creative expression during this period, supported and disseminated through new schools, galleries, artists’ collectives, magazines, and government funding.

This Is Britain brings together the work of a generation of photographers who were commenting on the deep unrest of these pivotal decades. Vanley Burke, Pogus Caesar, Anna Fox, Paul Graham, Sunil Gupta, Chris Killip, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Martin Parr, and others pictured communities, traditions, and landscapes affected by Britain’s shifting social and economic realities. Together, they photographed a nation redefining what it meant to be British and, ultimately, modern.

Text from the National Gallery of Art website

 

Profound changes in British society in the 1970s and 1980s inspired a revolution in British photography. This Is Britain: Photographs from the 1970s and 1980s highlights the work of socially conscious photographers who captured this period of unrest. The exhibition features some 45 newly acquired prints by Vanley Burke, Pogus Caesar, Anna Fox, Paul Graham, Sunil Gupta, Chris Killip, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Martin Parr, and others. It brings together photographers who examined national identity as Britain grappled with deindustrialisation, uprisings in inner cities, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the sometimes controversial policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. On view on the Ground Floor of the National Gallery’s West Building from January 29 through June 11, 2023, the exhibition also features the film Handsworth Songs (1986). The 59-minute film, produced by the Black Audio Film Collective and directed by John Akomfrah, explores uprisings in London and Birmingham in 1985. Reece Auguiste, a member of the Black Audio Film Collective, is the guest curator for an accompanying film program.

Beginning in the 1970s, photography gained its contemporary prominence in Britain, with a rapidly expanding network of galleries, artists’ collectives, schools, and magazines dedicated to promoting the medium. Immigrants and artists of colour, reflecting Britain’s growing multiculturalism, introduced fresh perspectives, as did the many women who entered the field. A generation of young photographers moved from largely black-and-white, documentary styles to more conceptual and often humorous projects in colour in the 1980s. As photographers forged new directions, they pictured a country redefining what it meant to be British and, ultimately, modern.

This Is Britain tells history on an intimate scale, highlighting stories we may have otherwise missed. The addition of these photographs to the National Gallery’s collection allows us to reflect on two decades of artistic innovation and celebrate the talented, diverse group of creators who captured them. We hope that this exhibition inspires visitors, as they contemplate some of the highs and lows experienced by British citizens in the ’70s and ’80s,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art.

 

Exhibition overview

This Is Britain: Photographs from the 1970s and 1980s focuses on the work of photographers who recorded ways of life that were under threat or disappearing in those tumultuous decades. John Davies’s expansive view of Agecroft Power Station, Salford (1983​) emphasises the displacement of industrial structures. Paul Graham’s​ elegiac series A1: The Great North Road (1982​) examines the shift away from the A1 – a major thoroughfare from London to Edinburgh – to the newer, more direct M1 motorway, resulting in businesses along the former highway to suffer. With their forlorn colours and barren spaces, his pictures challenged the expectation that photography on social themes should be in black and white. Reflecting Britain’s growing immigration and multiculturalism during this period of modernisation, Vanley Burke’s Boy with Flag, Winford in Handsworth Park (1970) pictures a Black youth proudly displaying the Union Jack from his bike.
Many artists in the 1980s continued exploring colour photography, using intense hues inspired by advertising to poke fun at the rise of leisure activities, consumerism, and corporate greed. The series The Last Resort (1983-1986) by Martin Parr, arguably Britain’s most influential living photographer, surveys seaside tourists in New Brighton with acerbic wit. Chris Steele-Perkins​’s decade-long project The Pleasure Principle (1980-1989) captures Margaret Thatcher’s England through surreal images, such as Hypnosis Demonstration, Cambridge University Ball. Six photographs from Anna Fox’s Work Stations (1987-1988​) signal the competition and stress of London office life in the late 1980s. Sunil Gupta strikes a more polemical tone in his series “Pretended” Family Relationships (1988) by responding to Thatcher’s policy prohibiting the promotion of gay and lesbian lifestyles.

The final room presents Handsworth Songs (1986, 59 minutes), a landmark nonfiction film that connects the civil unrest in London and the Handsworth section of Birmingham in 1985 with Britain’s colonial past, weaving contemporary reports and interviews with historical footage and photographs. The film, produced by the Black Audio Film Collective and directed by the acclaimed filmmaker John Akomfrah, features a soundtrack that mixes reggae and post-punk with industrial noises and voiceovers.

Press release from the National Gallery of Art, Washington

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) 'New Brighton, Merseyside' 1984

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
New Brighton, Merseyside
1984
From the series The Last Resort
Chromogenic print
Image: 26.67 x 33.02cm (10 1/2 x 13 in.)
Sheet: 30.48 x 40.64cm (12 x 16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund
© Martin Parr, Courtesy Rocket Gallery

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) 'New Brighton, Merseyside' 1984

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
New Brighton, Merseyside
1984
From the series The Last Resort
Chromogenic print
Image: 26.67 × 33.02cm (10 1/2 × 13 in.)
Sheet: 30.48 × 40.64cm (12 × 16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund
© Martin Parr, Courtesy Rocket Gallery

 

Punk Rock, record unemployment, urban uprisings, Margaret Thatcher, the Troubles in Northern Ireland: profound changes shook British society and inspired a revolution in photography in the 1970s and 1980s. A generation of young photographers used their cameras to comment on the deep unrest of these pivotal decades. With a keen eye for social critique and a spirit of rebellion, they photographed a country redefining what it meant to be British and, ultimately, modern.

Photography during this period became a central form of creative expression, fuelled by a rapidly expanding network of galleries, museum departments, artists’ collectives, schools, and magazines dedicated to the medium. Immigrants and artists of colour, reflecting the nation’s growing multiculturalism, introduced new perspectives, as did the many women who entered the field.

Moving from largely black-and-white, documentary styles toward more conceptual projects in colour, photographers adopted new strategies to examine national identity. In the face of severe economic dislocation, widespread civil disorder, and Prime Minister Thatcher’s controversial policies, these artists declared: This is Britain.

 

Documenting the Deindustrial Revolution

The decline of British heavy industry in the 1970s led to labor disputes and high unemployment in the early 1980s. As the country prioritised modern technologies and greater efficiency, photographers recorded the communities, structures, and ways of life that were under threat or disappearing. Graham Smith and Vanley Burke portrayed people they had known for decades, while Chris Killip, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, and Gilles Peress undertook long-term projects to create intimate yet often bleak photographs of life on the margins of society. Paul Graham and John Davies explored England’s uneasy embrace of the future by showing the people and places being left behind. While these photographers held no real hope of inspiring change, they shared an earnest concern for who and what was being lost as the nation modernised.

 

Picturing Absurdity in the Thatcher Years

As the leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 and as prime minister from 1979 to 1990, Margaret Thatcher was a polarising figure in Britain. She oversaw the development of an American-style free market economy, the resurgence of British nationalism, and major cutbacks to public spending (famously declaring that “there is no such thing” as society). During the Thatcher years, photographers Martin Parr and Anna Fox used the brash colours of advertising to poke fun at the rise of leisure activities, consumerism, and corporate greed. Combining text and image, Karen Knorr and Sunil Gupta considered how traditional English institutions sidelined women, people of colour, and gay and lesbian communities. Their works openly satirise long-held traditions and question emerging values in British society.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972) 'Butlin's Holiday Camp, Scarborough' 1968

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Butlin’s Holiday Camp, Scarborough
1968
Gelatin silver print
Image: 15.8 x 24.8cm (6 1/4 x 9 3/4 in.)
Sheet: 35.8 x 28cm (14 1/8 x 11 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Karen Knorr (American born Germany, b. 1954) 'A mood of Highly Coloured Naturalism' 1983

 

Karen Knorr (American born Germany, b. 1954)
A mood of Highly Coloured Naturalism
1983
From the series Country Life
Gelatin silver print mounted on board
Image: 40.2 x 40.9cm (15 13/16 x 16 1/8 in.)
Sheet: 60.7 x 51cm (23 7/8 x 20 1/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Karen Knorr (American born Germany, b. 1954) 'Newspapers are no longer ironed, Coins no longer boiled So far have Standards Fallen' 1981-1983, printed 2015

 

Karen Knorr (American born Germany, b. 1954)
Newspapers are no longer ironed, Coins no longer boiled So far have Standards Fallen
1981-1983, printed 2015
From the series Gentlemen
Gelatin silver print
Image: 40.6 × 40.5cm (16 × 15 15/16 in.)
Sheet: 61.5 × 50.7cm (24 3/16 × 19 15/16 in.)
Mat: 71 × 55.8cm (27 15/16 × 21 15/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Karen Knorr (American born Germany, b. 1954) 'We owe it to the Free world not to Allow Brutal Forces to succeed. When the Rule of law Breaks down, the World takes a further Step towards Chaos' 1981-1983, printed 2015

 

Karen Knorr (American born Germany, b. 1954)
We owe it to the Free world not to Allow Brutal Forces to succeed. When the Rule of law Breaks down, the World takes a further Step towards Chaos
1981-1983, printed 2015
From the series Gentlemen
Gelatin silver print
Image: 40.5 x 40.7cm (15 15/16 x 16 in.)
Sheet: 60.8 x 50.5cm (23 15/16 x 19 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Chris Killip (Isle of Man, 1946-2020) 'Margaret, Rosie, and Val, Seacoal Camp, Lynemouth, Northumberland' 1983

 

Chris Killip (Isle of Man, 1946-2020)
Margaret, Rosie, and Val, Seacoal Camp, Lynemouth, Northumberland
1983
Gelatin silver print
Image: 40.5 x 50.5cm (15 15/16 x 19 7/8 in.)
Sheet: 47.8 x 57.6cm (18 13/16 x 22 11/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Chris Killip (Isle of Man, 1946-2020) 'Crabs and People, Skinningrove, North Yorkshire, UK' 1981

 

Chris Killip (Isle of Man, 1946-2020)
Crabs and People, Skinningrove, North Yorkshire, UK
1981
Gelatin silver print
Image: 39.9 × 48.9cm (15 11/16 × 19 1/4 in.)
Sheet: 50.7 × 59.7cm (19 15/16 × 23 1/2 in.)
Mat: 56 × 71.2cm (22 1/16 × 28 1/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund
© Chris Killip Photography Trust / Magnum Photos, Courtesy Augusta Edwards Fine Art

 

Colin Jones (English, 1936-2021) 'The Black House, London' 1973-1976

 

Colin Jones (English, 1936-2021)
The Black House, London
1973-1976
Gelatin silver print
Image: 33.8 x 49.1cm (13 5/16 x 19 5/16 in.)
Sheet: 41 x 50.8cm (16 1/8 x 20 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Vanley Burke (British born Jamaica, b. 1951) 'Young Men on See-Saw, Handsworth Park, Birmingham' 1984, printed 2021

 

Vanley Burke (British born Jamaica, b. 1951)
Young Men on See-Saw, Handsworth Park, Birmingham
1984, printed 2021
Gelatin silver print
Image: 30.1 x 45.4cm (11 7/8 x 17 7/8 in.)
Sheet: 40.4 x 50.5cm (15 7/8 x 19 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Vanley Burke (British born Jamaica, b. 1951) 'Boy with Flag, Winford in Handsworth Park' 1970, printed 2022

 

Vanley Burke (British born Jamaica, b. 1951)
Boy with Flag, Winford in Handsworth Park
1970, printed 2022
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen (Finland, b. 1948) 'Young Couple in a Backyard on a Summer's Day' 1975, printed 2012

 

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen (Finland, b. 1948)
Young Couple in a Backyard on a Summer’s Day
1975, printed 2012
Gelatin silver print
Image: 36.1 × 39.3cm (14 3/16 × 15 1/2 in.)
Sheet: 40.4 × 50.5cm (15 7/8 × 19 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund Courtesy L. Parker Stephenson Photographs

 

John Davies (British, b. 1949) 'Agecroft Power Station, Salford' 1983

 

John Davies (British, b. 1949)
Agecroft Power Station, Salford
1983
Gelatin silver print
Image: 37.6 × 56.1cm (14 13/16 × 22 1/16 in.)
Sheet: 50.5 × 60.4cm (19 7/8 × 23 3/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund Courtesy L. Parker Stephenson Photographs

 

Graham Smith (British, b. 1947) 'The Queen's Pub, Southbank, Middlesbrough' 1981

 

Graham Smith (British, b. 1947)
The Queen’s Pub, Southbank, Middlesbrough
1981
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.8 × 22.8cm (7 × 9 in.)
Sheet: 21.8 × 26.8cm (8 9/16 × 10 9/16 in.)
Mat: 28 × 35.6cm (11 × 14 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund
© Graham Smith, Courtesy Augusta Edwards Fine Art

 

Graham Smith (British, b. 1947) 'Bennetts Corner (Giro Corner), the Erimus Club and Commercial Pub, South Bank, Middlesbrough' 1982, printed 2008

 

Graham Smith (British, b. 1947)
Bennetts Corner (Giro Corner), the Erimus Club and Commercial Pub, South Bank, Middlesbrough
1982, printed 2008
Gelatin silver print
Image: 37.4 x 47cm (14 3/4 x 18 1/2 in.)
Sheet: 47.7 x 57.4cm (18 3/4 x 22 5/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Paul Graham (British, b. 1956) 'Café Assistants, Compass Café, Colsterworth, Lincolnshire' November 1982

 

Paul Graham (British, b. 1956)
Café Assistants, Compass Café, Colsterworth, Lincolnshire
November 1982
Chromogenic print
Image: 19.4 x 24cm (7 5/8 x 9 7/16 in.)
Sheet: 27.4 x 35cm (10 13/16 x 13 3/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Paul Graham (British, b. 1956) 'Little Chef in Rain, St. Neots, Cambridgeshire' May 1982

 

Paul Graham (British, b. 1956)
Little Chef in Rain, St. Neots, Cambridgeshire
May 1982
Chromogenic print
Image: 24.2 x 30.6cm (9 1/2 x 12 1/16 in.)
Sheet: 27.9 x 35.7cm (11 x 14 1/16 in.)
Mat: 35.5 x 45.8cm (14 x 18 1/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund
© Paul Graham, courtesy Pace Gallery

 

Tom Wood (Irish, b. 1951) 'Between Chester and Birkenhead' 1989

 

Tom Wood (Irish, b. 1951)
Between Chester and Birkenhead
1989
Vintage gelatin silver print
Image: 17.2 x 26.1cm (6 3/4 x 10 1/4 in.)
Sheet: 27.9 x 35.2cm (11 x 13 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Tom Wood (Irish, b. 1951) 'Lime Street' 1995

 

Tom Wood (Irish, b. 1951)
Lime Street
1995, printed 1997
Analogue hand print
Image: 19 x 25.6 cm (7 1/2 x 10 1/16 in.)
Sheet: 19.8 x 27.2cm (7 13/16 x 10 11/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

 

 

Sunil Gupta on Community and Activism

Sunil Gupta, photographer, curator, writer, and activist has maintained a visionary approach to photography, producing bodies of work with keen social and political commentary. Gupta’s diasporic experience of multiple cultures informs a practice dedicated to themes of race, migration, and queer identity. His photographic projects – born from a desire to see himself and others like him represented in art history – draw upon his own life as a point of departure.

The Arnold Newman Lecture Series on Photography provides a forum for leading photographers, primarily known for portraits, to discuss contemporary issues in the medium. Arnold Newman (1918-2006) is acknowledged as one of the great masters of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries whose work changed portraiture. The Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation generously supported this series to make such conversations available to the public.

Text from the YouTube website

 

Sunil Gupta (Canadian born India, b. 1953) 'Untitled #1' 1988, printed 2020

 

Sunil Gupta (Canadian born India, b. 1953)
Untitled #1
1988, printed 2020
From the series “Pretended” Family Relationships
Inkjet print
Image: 61 x 91.4cm (24 x 36 in.)
Sheet: 63.5 x 94cm (25 x 37 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund
© Sunil Gupta

 

Pogus Caesar (British born St. Kitts, b. 1953) 'Handsworth Riots: Birmingham, United Kingdom September' 1985, printed 2022

 

Pogus Caesar (British born St. Kitts, b. 1953)
Handsworth Riots: Birmingham, United Kingdom
September 1985, printed 2022
Gelatin silver print
Image: 50.8 × 60.96cm (20 × 24 in.)
Sheet: 41.6 × 57.4cm (16 3/8 × 22 5/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund
© Pogus Caesar/OOM Gallery Archive, ARS, New York, DACS, London

 

 

Handsworth Songs (1986)

A landmark in nonfiction filmmaking, Handsworth Songs was the first film directed by the Ghanaian-born artist John Akomfrah. It was produced by the Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998), a group of experimental Black artists who examined the diasporic African and Asian experience in Britain. The film weaves archival footage with scenes, interviews, and pictures from contemporary events, including photographs by Vanley Burke, with a haunting soundtrack that mixes reggae and post-punk music with industrial noises and voiceovers. This layered structure connects Britain’s colonial past with unrest in London’s Tottenham and Brixton neighbourhoods and Birmingham’s Handsworth area in 1985. Today, Handsworth Songs reveals the solidarity shared by Britons of African and Asian descent in the face of inequality as it brings historical perspective to civil disturbances in the 1980s.

This film includes depictions of police violence and the use of racial slurs. Viewer discretion is advised.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Chris Steele-Perkins (British, b. 1947) 'Hypnosis Demonstration, Cambridge University Ball' 1980-1989

 

Chris Steele-Perkins (British, b. 1947)
Hypnosis Demonstration, Cambridge University Ball
1980-1989
Silver dye bleach print
Image: 25.4 × 38.1cm (10 × 15 in.)
Sheet: 30.2 × 40.4cm (11 7/8 × 15 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

Paul Reas (British, b. 1955) 'Constable County, Flatford Mill, Suffolk' c. 1992

 

Paul Reas (British, b. 1955)
Constable County, Flatford Mill, Suffolk
c. 1992
From the series Flogging a Dead Horse
Inkjet print image: 41 x 50.5cm (16 1/8 x 19 7/8 in.)
Sheet: 50.5 x 61cm (19 7/8 x 24 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

 

 

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Exhibitions: ‘Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou’ / ‘Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens & Erwin Olaf’ / ‘Glamour stakes: Martin Parr’ at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 22nd October 2016 – 4th December 2016

 

Installation view of 'Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring three images from the series 'It's all about me' (2016)

 

Installation view of Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, featuring three images from the series It’s all about me (2016)
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

 

There was hardly standing room at the opening of Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne. As for car parking, I had to park the car on the grass out the back of the gallery it was so full. Inside, it was great to see Poli and the appreciative crowd really enjoyed her work.

It was the usual fair from the exhibition Glamour stakes: Martin Parr, a whirl of movement, colour, intensity – in the frenetic construction of the picture plane; in the feverish nature of encounter between camera and subject – and obnoxious detail in photographs from the series Luxury (2003-2009). Low depth of field, flash photography, fabulous hats, and vibrant colours feature in images that ‘document leisure and consumption and highlight the unintentional, awkward and often ugly sides of beauty, fashion and wealth’. Sadly, after a time it all becomes a bit too predictable and repetitive.

The pick of the bunch in the exhibition Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens & Erwin Olaf was the work of Hendrik Kerstens. Simple, elegant portrait compositions that feature, and subvert, the aesthetics of 17th-century Dutch master paintings. I love the humour and disruption in the a/historical account, “the différance [which] simultaneously contains within its neo-graphism the activities of differing and deferring, a distancing acted out temporally as well as spatially.” (Geoffrey Batchen)

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to Monash Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Installation view of 'Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring three images from the series 'It's all about me' (2016)

 

Installation view of Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, featuring three images from the series It’s all about me (2016)
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'It's all about me' 2016 (installation view)

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
It’s all about me (installation view)
2016
From the series It’s all about me
Pigment ink-jet print
Collection of the artist
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Ask me again when I'm drunk' (installation view) 2016 from the series 'It's all about me' 2016

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Ask me again when I’m drunk (installation view)
2016
From the series It’s all about me
Pigment ink-jet print
Collection of the artist
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

It’s all about me comprises five photographs of the artist’s daughter wearing doll-like masks and sporting a series of T-shirts bearing sassy slogans. As in much of Papapetrou’s work, the aesthetic of role-playing is used to suggest an awkward relationship between social appearances and an authentic self. These works specifically explore the complex world that contemporary teenage live in and the way identities are created and manipulated through fashion, social media and the internet. In this respect, the gauche quality of the photographs reflects the awkward self-importance of teenagers reaching for adulthood.

 

Installation view of 'Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring photographs from the series 'Eden' (2016)

Installation view of 'Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring photographs from the series 'Eden' (2016)

Installation view of 'Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring photographs from the series 'Eden' (2016)

Installation view of 'Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring photographs from the series 'Eden' (2016)

Installation view of 'Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring photographs from the series 'Eden' (2016)

Installation view of 'Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring photographs from the series 'Eden' (2016)

 

Installation views of Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, featuring photographs from the series Eden (2016)
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (seated) surrounded by friends, family and well wishers at the opening of her exhibition 'Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (seated) surrounded by friends, family and well wishers at the opening of her exhibition Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

 

Beyond Eden: Polixeni Papapetrou

Polixeni Papapetrou is a Melbourne-based photographic artist. She first began taking photographs in the 1980s, creating documentary-style portraits of drag queens, body builders and Elvis fans. Soon after the birth of her first child, Papapetrou’s artistic practice began to focus on projects that employed her children, Olympia and Solomon, as models. She is now known nationally and internationally for her staged images that show her children dressed in costumes and masks while performing in front of real and imaginary backgrounds.

This exhibition brings together three recent bodies of work by Papapetrou: Lost psyche (2014), It’s all about me (2016) and Eden (2016). Each of these studio-based series explores themes that have been central to Papapetrou’s practice for the past 30 years. In particular, they highlight her long-term interest in social identity being elaborated through the processes of role-playing and performance.

It is important to note that Papapetrou composes her photographs using a range of historical and contemporary references, thereby embedding these staged performances in a network of competing forces. As a result, there is often a purposefully awkward style to the images, which suggests that identity is continually being inherited, negotiated and perpetuated through the history of representation.

As with much of Papapetrou’s work, the series included in this exhibition either partly or wholly feature the artist’s children, who are now in their late teenage years. By photographing her children and at the same time concealing their identities, Papapetrou is able to create portraits that are grounded in her personal experience of parenting but reflect on more universal themes of childhood innocence and the transience of life.

Text from the Monash Gallery of Art website

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Flora' 2016

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Flora
2016
From the series Eden
Pigment print
127.3 x 85cm
Courtesy of the artist and STILLS Gallery, Sydney

 

In Roman mythology, Flora (Latin: Flōra) was a Sabine-derived goddess of flowers and of the season of spring – a symbol for nature and flowers (especially the may-flower). While she was otherwise a relatively minor figure in Roman mythology, being one among several fertility goddesses, her association with the spring gave her particular importance at the coming of springtime, as did her role as goddess of youth. Her name is derived from the Latin word “flos” which means “flower”. In modern English, “Flora” also means the plants of a particular region or period.

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Blinded' from 'Eden', 2016

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Blinded
2016
From the series Eden
Pigment print
127.3 x 85cm
Courtesy of the artist and STILLS Gallery, Sydney

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Eden' 2016

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Eden
2016
From the series Eden
Pigment print
127.3 x 85cm
Courtesy of the artist and STILLS Gallery, Sydney

 

Installation view of 'Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, featuring photographs Irwin Olaf's 'Keyhole' series (2012)

 

Installation view of Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, featuring photographs Irwin Olaf’s Keyhole series
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Installation view of 'Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring at left, Irwin Olaf's 'Keyhole 7' (2012); and at right, 'Keyhole 12' (2012)

 

Installation view of Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring at left, Irwin Olaf’s Keyhole 7 (2012); and at right, Keyhole 12 (2012)
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Erwin Olaf (Dutch, b. 1959) 'Keyhole 3' 2011

 

Erwin Olaf (Dutch, b. 1959)
Keyhole 3
2011
From the Keyhole series
Chromogenic print
62.5 x 50.0cm
Courtesy of the artist

 

Installation view of 'Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring the work of Hendrik Kerstens

 

Installation view of Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring the work of Hendrik Kerstens
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Hendrik Kerstens (Dutch, b. 1956) 'Bathing cap' 1992

 

Hendrik Kerstens (Dutch, b. 1956)
Bathing cap
1992
Ink-jet print 62.5 x 50.0cm
Courtesy of the artist

 

Installation view of 'Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring the work of Hendrik Kerstens with at left, 'Re rabbit IV' (2009); and in centre, 'Doilly' (2011)

 

Installation view of Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring the work of Hendrik Kerstens with at left, Re rabbit IV (2009); and in centre, Doilly (2011)
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Installation view of 'Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring the work of Hendrik Kerstens with at left, 'Bag' (2007); and at right, 'Paper roll' (2008)

 

Installation view of Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring the work of Hendrik Kerstens with at left, Bag (2007); and at right, Paper roll (2008)
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Installation view of 'Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring the work of Hendrik Kerstens with at left, 'Naturel' (1999); and at right, 'Wet' (2002)

 

Installation view of Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne featuring the work of Hendrik Kerstens with at left, Naturel (1999); and at right, Wet (2002)
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Hendrik Kerstens (Dutch, b. 1956) 'Re rabbit IV' 2009 (installation view)

 

Hendrik Kerstens (Dutch, b. 1956)
Re rabbit IV (installation view)
2009
Ink-jet print
62.5 x 50.0cm
Collection of the artist
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

 

Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf

This exhibition features work by the internationally acclaimed Dutch photographers, Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf. These photographers both create images that reflect an interest in paintings by Dutch Masters such as Rembrandt (1606-1669) and Vermeer (1632-1675). This is particularly evident in their manipulation of light and shade and also in their poetic use of everyday subject matter. Drawing on aesthetics of the past while also incorporating aspects of the present, these photographers create emotionally charged portraits that draw attention to the liminal nature of contemporary life.

Hendrik Kerstens took up photography in 1995 and has since been creating portraits of his daughter, Paula. His photographs began as documents and reflections on the fleeting nature of childhood. He later introduced the aesthetics of 17th-century Dutch master paintings to his portraits, creating a dialogue between painting and photography and between the past and the present.

Erwin Olaf is a multidisciplinary artist who is best known for his highly polished staged photographs that draw on his experiences of everyday life. His refined style and meticulous technique relate his background as a commercial photographer; and his use of light is inspired by painting. The subjects of his Keyhole series turn their gaze away from the camera in a way that evokes feelings of shame and humility.

Dutch masters of light: Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf is part of a series of events that mark the 400th anniversary of the first Dutch contact with Western Australia. On 25 October 1616, Dirk Hartog made landfall with his ship the Eendracht at Dirk Hartog Island, in the Shark Bay area.

Text from the Monash Gallery of Art website

 

Hendrik Kerstens (Dutch, b. 1956) 'Bag' 2007

 

Hendrik Kerstens (Dutch, b. 1956)
Bag
2007
Ink-jet print
62.5 x 50.0cm
Collection of the artist

 

Hendrik Kerstens (Dutch, b. 1956) 'Cosy' 2012

 

Hendrik Kerstens (Dutch, b. 1956)
Cosy
2012
Ink-jet print
62.5 x 50.0cm
Collection of the artist

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) 'Australia, Melbourne' 2006 (installation view)

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Australia, Melbourne (installation view)
2006
From the series Luxury
Pigment ink-jet print
50.8 x 76.2cm
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) 'Australia, Melbourne' 2008

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Australia, Melbourne
2008
From the series Luxury
Pigment ink-jet print
50.8 x 76.2cm
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries (Melbourne)

 

Installation view of 'Glamour stakes: Martin Parr' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne with work from the series 'Luxury'

 

Installation view of Glamour stakes: Martin Parr at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne with work from the series Luxury
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Installation view of 'Glamour stakes: Martin Parr' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne with work from the series 'Luxury'

Installation view of 'Glamour stakes: Martin Parr' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne with work from the series 'Luxury'

Installation view of 'Glamour stakes: Martin Parr' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne with work from the series 'Luxury'

Installation view of 'Glamour stakes: Martin Parr' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne with work from the series 'Luxury'

 

Installation views of Glamour stakes: Martin Parr at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne with work from the series Luxury: Australia, Melbourne 2008
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

 

Glamour stakes: Martin Parr

Martin Parr was born in Surrey in the United Kingdom in 1952. He studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic from 1970-73 and held his first exhibition the following year. He has since developed an international reputation as a photographer, filmmaker and curator and has been a full member of Magnum Photos since 1994.

Parr is known for his satirical social documentary photography. Focusing on particular aspects of contemporary consumer culture, he produces images that are a combination of the mundane and the bizarre. He uses the language of commercial photography, creating an aesthetic that is bright, colourful and seductive. However, his images often inspire viewers to cringe or laugh.

Glamour stakes: Martin Parr shows a selection of works from Parr’s Luxury series. This series is comprised of images taken predominantly between 2003 and 2009 in multiple destinations around the world. While creating Luxury, Parr photographed what he describes as ‘situations where people are comfortable showing off their wealth’, such as art fairs, car shows and horse races. The series is indicative of Parr’s practice in that the images document leisure and consumption and highlight the unintentional, awkward and often ugly sides of beauty, fashion and wealth.

The images in this series are not only documents but also critical and humorous reflections on contemporary society. By turning his camera to the world of luxury, Parr invites viewers to consider the sustainability of a culture that constantly demands the latest styles in fashion and the newest luxury items. This exhibition focuses specifically on Parr’s images of horse-racing events, particularly those taken in Melbourne in 2008.

Text from the Monash Gallery of Art website

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) 'Australia, Melbourne' 2008

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Australia, Melbourne
2008
From the series Luxury
Pigment ink-jet print
50.8 x 76.2cm
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries (Melbourne)

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) 'Australia, Melbourne' 2008

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Australia, Melbourne
2008
From the series Luxury
Pigment ink-jet print
50.8 x 76.2cm
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries (Melbourne)

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) 'Australia, Melbourne' 2008

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Australia, Melbourne
2008
From the series Luxury
Pigment ink-jet print
50.8 x 76.2cm
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries (Melbourne)

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) 'Australia, Melbourne' 2008

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Australia, Melbourne
2008
From the series Luxury
Pigment ink-jet print
50.8 x 76.2cm
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries (Melbourne)

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) 'Australia, Melbourne' 2008

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Australia, Melbourne
2008
From the series Luxury
Pigment ink-jet print
50.8 x 76.2cm
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries (Melbourne)

 

Installation view of 'Glamour stakes: Martin Parr' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne with work from the series 'Luxury': showing at right, 'South Africa, Durban' 2003

Installation view of 'Glamour stakes: Martin Parr' at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne with work from the series 'Luxury': at right, 'South Africa, Durban' 2003

 

Installation views of Glamour stakes: Martin Parr at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne with work from the series Luxury: at right, South Africa, Durban 2003
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and the Monash Gallery of Art

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) 'South Africa, Durban' 2005

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
South Africa, Durban
2005
From the series Luxury
Pigment ink-jet print
101.6 x 152.4cm
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries (Melbourne)

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) 'England, Ascot' 2003

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
England, Ascot
2003
From the series Luxury
Pigment ink-jet print
101.6 x 152.4cm
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries (Melbourne)

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Only in England: Photographs by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr’ at Media Space at Science Museum, London

Exhibition dates: 21st September 2013 – 16th March 2014

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Beachy Head Tripper Boat, 1967' 1967

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Beachy Head Tripper Boat, 1967
1967
© National Media Museum

 

 

“Be more aware of composition

Don’t take boring pictures

Get in closer

Watch camera shake

Don’t shoot too much”

.
Tony Ray-Jones from his diaries

 

 

Growing up in the 1960s we used to get taken to Butlins holiday camps (Billy Butlin founded the company, a chain of large holiday camps in the United Kingdom, to provide affordable holidays for ordinary British families). It was a great treat to be away from the farm, to be by the sea, even if the beach was made of stones. Looking back on it now you realise how seedy it was, how working class… but as a kid it was oh, so much fun!

Tony Ray-Jones photographed these environments (mainly the British at play by the sea) and their opposites – afternoon tea taken at Glyndebourne opera festival for example (Glyndebourne, 1967, below) – drawing on the tradition of great British social documentary photography by artists such as Bill Brandt. TRJ even pays homage to Brandt in one of his photographs, Dickens Festival, Broadstairs, c. 1967 (below) which echoes Brandt’s famous photograph Parlourmaid and Under-parlourmaid Ready to Serve Dinner, 1933 by changing “point of view” from up close, personal, oppressive and interior to distance, isolation, leisure/work and exterior.

Through his photographs Ray-Jones adds his own style and humour, using “a new conception of photography as a means of expression, over and above its accepted role as a recorder.” He does it all as an intimate expression of his own personality, his maverick, outsider, non-conformist self. I feel – and that is the key word with his art – that he had a real empathy with his subject matter. There is a twinkle in his eye that becomes embedded in his photographs. There is an honesty, integrity and respect for the people he is photographing, coupled with a wicked sense of humour and the most amazing photographic eye. What an eye he had!

To be able to sum up a scene in a split second, to previsualise (think), intuitively compose, frame and shoot in that twinkle of an eye, and to balance the images as he does is truly the most incredible gift, the quintessential British “decisive moment”. Look at the structural analysis of Location unknown, possibly Worthing (1967-1968, below) that I have presented in a slide show. This will give you a good idea of the visual complexity of Ray-Jones’ images… and yet he makes the sum of all components seem grounded (in this case by the man’s feet) and effortless. Devon Caranicas has observed that TRJ possessed a quick wit and adeptness for reducing a complex narrative into a single frame, the photographed subjects transformed into social actors of supreme stereotypes. The first part is insightful, but social actors of supreme stereotypes? I think not, because these people are not acting, this is their life, their humanity, their time out from the hum-drum of everyday working class life. They do not pose for TRJ, it’s just how they are. Look at the musicality of the first five images in the posting – how the line rises and falls, moves towards you and away from you. Only a great artist can do that, instinctively.

I cannot express to you enough the utmost admiration I have for this man’s art. In my opinion he is one of greatest British photographers that has ever lived (Julia Margaret Cameron, William Henry Fox Talbot, Roger Fenton, Francis Bedford, Frederick H. Evans, Cecil Beaton, Peter Henry Emerson and Herbert Ponting would be but a few others that spring to mind). He photographed British customs and values at a time of change and pictured a real affection for the lives of ordinary working class people. Being one of the them, he will always hold a special place in my heart.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

.
Many thankx to Media Space at Science Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

“Although the entirety of the images from Only in England were shot throughout the politically and socially turbulent late 60’s and early 70’s both artists shy away from depicting the culture clashes that so often visually defined this period. Instead, they each opted to turn their lens onto the quintessential country side, and in doing so, pay homage to a traditional type of English life that was becoming a sort of sub-culture in itself – a way of living that was not yet touched by the encroaching globalisation, or “americanisation,” of the UK.”

Anonymous text on the ART WEDNESDAY website September 26th, 2013 [Online] Cited 05/03/2014. No longer available online

 

“Ray-Jones printed his black and white pictures small, in a dark register of tonally very dense prints. The National Media Museum has lots of these, and perhaps to devote the cavernous new space only to such small pictures would have been a mistake. Even backed up with a mass of supporting material, including the fascinating pages from Ray-Jones’ diaries, the prints would struggle to fill the space. So only the first section is devoted to about 50 beautiful little Ray-Jones vintage prints. Two whole sections have been added to the exhibition to flesh it out…

[Parr] has unfortunately chosen to print them [Ray-Jones prints] in a way quite alien to anything Ray-Jones ever made: they are printed in Parr’s own way, as larger, paler, more diffuse things in mid-tones that Ray-Jones would never have countenanced. They are printed, inevitably, by digital process…

Sadly, these Ray-Jones by Parr prints add up to an appropriation of the former by the latter: they are Martin Parr pictures taken from Tony-Ray Jones negatives, and it would have been better not to have shown them so. They are fine images, but they should have been seen in some other way: on digital screens, perhaps, or as modern post-cards. Anything to make quite explicit the clear break with Ray-Jones’ own prints. That the images they contain are very fine is not in doubt. But I take leave to question whether they “present a new way of thinking through creative use of the collections”. They are well labelled and for specialists there will be no difficulty in knowing that they are not by Ray-Jones. But for the public I am not so sure. Suddenly two-thirds of the show are in this larger, modern, digitally printed form, either by Parr himself or by Ray-Jones-through-Parr. It looks as if that is the dominant group…”

Extract from Francis Hodgson. “Two Exhibitions of Tony Ray-Jones – Two Ways of Giving Context to Photographs,” on the Photomonitor website, September 2013 Cited 05/03/2014 no longer available online

 

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Beauty contestants, Southport, Merseyside, 1967' 1967

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Beauty contestants, Southport, Merseyside, 1967 
1967
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Brighton Beach, West Sussex, 1966' 1966

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Brighton Beach, West Sussex, 1966
1966
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Eastbourne Carnival, 1967' 1967

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Eastbourne Carnival, 1967
1967
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Blackpool, 1968' 1968

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Blackpool, 1968
1968
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Location unknown, possibly Worthing' 1967-68

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Location unknown, possibly Worthing
1967-68
© National Media Museum

 

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Tony Ray-Jones Location unknown, possibly Worthing (1967-68) picture analysis by Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Fascinated by the eccentricities of English social customs, Tony Ray-Jones spent the latter half of the 1960s travelling across England, photographing what he saw as a disappearing way of life. Humorous yet melancholy, these works had a profound influence on photographer Martin Parr, who has now made a new selection including over 50 previously unseen works from the National Media Museum’s Ray-Jones archive. Shown alongside The Non-Conformists, Parr’s rarely seen work from the 1970s, this selection forms a major new exhibition which demonstrates the close relationships between the work of these two important photographers.

The first ever major London exhibition of work by British Photographer, Tony Ray-Jones (1941-1972) will open at Media Space on 21 September 2013. The exhibition will feature over 100 works drawn from the Tony Ray-Jones archive at the National Media Museum alongside 50 rarely seen early black and white photographs, The Non-Conformists, by Martin Parr (1952).

Between 1966 and 1969 Tony Ray-Jones created a body of photographic work documenting English customs and identity. Humorous yet melancholy, these photographs were a departure from anything else being produced at the time. They quickly attracted the attention of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London where they were exhibited in 1969. Tragically, in 1972, Ray-Jones died from Leukaemia aged just 30. However, his short but prolific career had a lasting influence on the development of British photography from the 1970s through to the present.

In 1970, Martin Parr, a photography student at Manchester Polytechnic, had been introduced to Ray-Jones. Inspired by him, Parr produced The Non-Conformists, shot in black and white in Hebden Bridge and the surrounding Calder Valley. This project started within two years of Ray-Jones death and demonstrates his legacy and influence.

The exhibition will draw from the Tony Ray-Jones archive, held by the National Media Museum.  Around 50 vintage prints will be on display alongside an equal number of photographs which have never previously been printed. Martin Parr has been invited to select these new works from the 2700 contact sheets and negatives in the archive. Shown alongside these are Parr’s early black and white work, unfamiliar to many, which has only ever previously been exhibited in Hebden Bridge itself and at Camerawork Gallery, London in 1981.

Tony Ray-Jones was born in Somerset in 1941. He studied graphic design at the London School of Printing before leaving the UK in 1961 to study on a scholarship at Yale University in Connecticut, US. He followed this with a year long stay in New York during which he attended classes by the influential art director Alexey Brodovitch, and became friends with photographers Joel Meyerowitz and Garry Winogrand. In 1966 he returned to find a Britain still divided by class and tradition. A Day Off – An English Journal, a collection of photographs he took between 1967-1970 was published posthumously in 1974 and in 2004 the National Media Museum held a major exhibition, A Gentle Madness: The Photographs of Tony Ray-Jones.

Martin Parr was born in Epsom, Surry in 1952. He graduated from Manchester Polytechnic in 1974 and moved to Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, where he established the ‘Albert Street Workshop’, a hub for artistic activity in the town. Fascinated by the variety of non-conformist chapels and the communities he encountered in the town he produced The Non-Conformists. In 1984 Parr began to work in colour and his breakthrough publication The Last Resort was published in 1986. A Magnum photographer, Parr is now an internationally renowned photographer, filmmaker, collector and curator, best-known for his highly saturated colour photographs critiquing modern life.

Only in England: Photographs by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr will run at Media Space, Science Museum from 21 September 2013 – 16 March 2014. The exhibition will then be on display at the National Media Museum from 22 March – 29 June 2014. The exhibition is curated by Greg Hobson, curator of Photographs at the National Media Museum, and Martin Parr has been invited to select works from the Tony Ray-Jones archives.

Greg Hobson, curator of Photographs at the National Media Museum says, “The combination of Martin Parr and Tony Ray-Jones’ work will allow the viewer to trace an important trajectory through the history of British photography, and present new ways of thinking about photographic histories through creative use of our collections.” Martin Parr says, “Tony Ray-Jones’ pictures were about England. They had that contrast, that seedy eccentricity, but they showed it in a very subtle way. They have an ambiguity, a visual anarchy. They showed me what was possible.”

The Tony Ray-Jones archive comprises of approximately 700 photographic prints, 1700 negative sheets, 2700 contact sheets, 600 boxes of Ektachrome / Kodachrome transparencies. It also includes ephemera such as notebooks, diary pages, and a maquette of England by the Sea made by Tony Ray-Jones.

Media Space is a collaboration between the Science Museum (London) and the National Media Museum (Bradford). Media Space will showcase the National Photography Collection of the National Media Museum through a series of exhibitions. Alongside this, photographers, artists and the creative industries will respond to the wider collections of the Science Museum Group to explore visual media, technology and science.

Press release from the Science Museum website

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Bacup coconut dancers, 1968' 1968

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Bacup coconut dancers, 1968
1968
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones (1941-1972) 'Bournemouth, 1969' 1969

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Bournemouth, 1969
1969
Vintage Gelatin Silver Print
16 x 25cm (6 x 10 inches)
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Location unknown, possible Morecambe, 1967-68' 1967-68

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Location unknown, possible Morecambe, 1967-68
1967-68
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones (1941-1972) 'Mablethorpe, 1967' 1967

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Mablethorpe, 1967
1967
Vintage Gelatin Silver Print
14 x 21cm (6 x 8 inches)
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Ramsgate, 1967' 1967

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Ramsgate, 1967
1967
© National Media Museum

 

Martin Parr. 'Mankinholes Methodist Chapel, Todmorden' 1975

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Mankinholes Methodist Chapel, Todmorden
1975
© Martin Parr/ Magnum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Cruft's Dog Show, London, 1966' 1966

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Cruft’s Dog Show, London, 1966
1966
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Dickens Festival, Broadstairs, c.1967' c.1967

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Dickens Festival, Broadstairs, c. 1967
c. 1967
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Dickens Festival, Broadstairs, c.1967' c.1967

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Dickens Festival, Broadstairs, c.1967
c.1967
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Wormwood Scrubs Fair, London, 1967' 1967

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Wormwood Scrubs Fair, London, 1967
1967
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Untitled' 1960s

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Untitled
1960s
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Trooping the Colour, London, 1967' 1967

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Trooping the Colour, London, 1967
1967
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Untitled' 1960s

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Untitled
1960s
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Glyndebourne, 1967' 1967

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Glyndebourne, 1967
1967
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Elderly woman eating pie seated in a pier shelter next to a stuffed bear, 1969' 1969

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Elderly woman eating pie seated in a pier shelter next to a stuffed bear, 1969
1969
© National Media Museum

 

Tony Ray-Jones. 'Blackpool, 1968' 1968

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Blackpool, 1968
1968
Vintage Gelatin Silver Print
21 x 14.5cm (8.25 x 5.70 ins)

 

Martin Parr. 'Tom Greenwood cleaning' 1976

 

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Tom Greenwood cleaning
1976
© Martin Parr/ Magnum

 

 

 

Media Space at Science Museum
Exhibition Road, South Kensington,
London SW7 2DD

Opening hours:
Open seven days a week, 10.00 – 18.00

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Melbourne’s magnificent eleven 2012

January 2013

 

Here’s my pick of the eleven best artists/exhibitions which featured on the Art Blart blog in 2012. Enjoy!

Marcus

 

1/ Review: The work of Robyn Hosking, AT_SALON at Anita Traverso Gallery, Richmond

6th March – 24th March 2012

 

Robyn Hosking. 'The Wing Walker' 2011

 

Robyn Hosking (Australian, b. 1948)
The Wing Walker
2011
Mixed media

 

Robyn Hosking. 'The Wing Walker' 2011 (detail)

 

Robyn Hosking (Australian, b. 1948)
The Wing Walker (detail)
2011
Mixed media

 

 

… My favourite has to be The Wing Walker (2011) as an irate Julia Gillard tries to get rid of Kevin Rudd once and for all, even poking him with a stick to push him off the edge of the biplane. Balanced on a slowly revolving turntable with the world at its centre, this political merry-go round is panacea for the soul for people sick of politicians. This is brilliant political satire. The planes are all ends up and even when Julia thinks she has got rid of Kevin there he is, hanging on for dear life from the undercarriage of one of the planes…

Reminding me of the fantasy creatures of Tom Moore, these whimsical manifestations deal with serious, life changing and challenging issues with purpose, feeling and a wicked sense of humour. I really enjoyed this art (and joy is the correct word) because it takes real world issues, melds fantasy and pointed observation and reflects it back, as the artist observes, in a funfair’s distorted mirror. Magic!

 

2/ Review: Martin Parr: In Focus at Niagara Galleries, Richmond, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 6th March – 31st March 2012

 

This is a fine exhibition of the work of celebrated English photographer Martin Parr at Niagara Galleries, Richmond, albeit with one proviso. The mainly large colour prints are handsomely displayed in plain white frames within the gallery space and are taken from his well known series: Last Resort, Luxury, New British and British Food. Parr’s work is at its best when he concentrates on the volume of space within the image plane and the details that emerge from such a concentrated visualisation – whether it be the tension points within the image, assemblage of colour, incongruity of dress, messiness of childhood or philistine nature of luxury.

And so it goes. The dirt under the fingernails of the child eating a doughnut, the lurid colours of the popsicle and jacket of the kid with dribble on his face, all fantastic… They are joyous paeans to the quirky, incongruous worlds in which we live and circulate. They evidence life itself in all its orthogonal absurdity.

 

Martin Parr. 'England. New Brighton' 1983-1985

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
England. New Brighton.
From the series Last Resort
1983 – 1985
Pigment print
Edition of 5
102 x 127cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

 

Martin Parr. 'England. New Brighton' 1983- 985

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
England. New Brighton.
From the series Last Resort
1983 – 1985
Pigment print
Edition of 5
102 x 127 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

 

 

3/ Review: Tourist #5: Disappearing Project 1 – 41 by Nicola Loder at Helen Gory Galerie, Prahran, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 14th March – 7th April 2012

 

I have always loved the work of Nicola Loder ever since I saw her solo exhibition Child 1-175: A Nostalgia for the Present at Stop 22 Gallery in St Kilda in 1996. This exhibition is no exception. Loder is the consummate professional, her work is as imaginative and intriguing as ever and there has been a consistent thematic development of ideas within her work over a long period of time. These ideas relate to the nature of seeing and being seen, the mapping of identity and the process of its (dis)appearance…

Loder’s exquisitely sensuous description of disappearance allows us to see the phenomenal word afresh. I look forward with a sense of anticipation to the next voyage of discovery the artist will take me on.

 

'Tourist #5: Disappearing Project 1 - 41' by Nicola Loder, installation photograph at Helen Gorie Galerie

 

Tourist #5: Disappearing Project 1-41 by Nicola Loder, installation photograph at Helen Gorie Galerie

 

Nicola Loder. 'Tourist #5: Disappearing Project 1-41 (no 11)' 2012

 

Nicola Loder (Australian, b. 1964)
Tourist #5: Disappearing Project 1-41 (no 11)
2012
Polyester thread, muslin
86 x 69cm

 

 

4/ Review: Jane Brown / Australian Gothic at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 25th April – 12th May 2012

 

Jane Brown. 'Big Trout, New South Wales' 2010

 

Jane Brown (Kuwait, Australia, b. 1967)
Big Trout, New South Wales
2010
Museo silver rag print
59 x 46cm

 

Jane Brown. 'Adelong, New South Wales' 2011

 

Jane Brown (Kuwait, Australia, b. 1967)
Adelong, New South Wales
2011
Fibre based, silver gelatin print
16.5 x 20.5 cm

 

 

This is a good exhibition of small, darkly hewn, traditionally printed silver gelatin photographs, beautifully hung in the small gallery at Edmund Pearce and lit in the requisite, ambient manner. There are some outstanding photographs in the exhibition. The strongest works are the surrealist tinged, film noir-ish mise-en-scènes, the ones that emphasise the metaphorical darkness of the elements gathered upon the stage. Photographs such as Big TroutThe Female Factory, Adelong, New South Wales and Captain’s Flat Hotel, New South Wales really invoke a feeling of unhomely (or unheimlich), where nature is out of kilter. These images unsettle our idea of Oztraliana, our perceived sense of Self and our place in the world. They disrupt normal transmission; they transmutate the seen environment, transforming appearance, nature and form.

 

5/ Review: Jacqui Stockdale: The Quiet Wild at Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 18th April – 19th May 2012

 

Jacqui Stockdale. 'Rama-Jaara the Royal Shepherdess' 2012

 

Jacqui Stockdale (Australian, b. 1968)
Rama-Jaara the Royal Shepherdess
2012
Type C Print
100 x 78cm

 

Jacqui Stockdale. 'Lagunta Man, Leeawuleena' 2012 Type C Print 100 x 78cm

 

Jacqui Stockdale (Australian, b. 1968)
Lagunta Man, Leeawuleena
2012
Type C Print
100 x 78cm

 

 

These are incredibly humorous, magical and symbolic photographs. A thought came into my mind when I was in the gallery surrounded by the work: for me they represented a vision of the Major Arcana of the Tarot (for example Jaguar Hombre could be seen as an inverted version of the Hanged Man with his foot in a figure four, the Hanged Man symbolising the need to just be in the world, yielding his mind and body to the Universal flow). The Major Arcana deal with the human condition, each card representing the joys and sorrows every man and woman can experience in a lifetime. In a way Stockdale offers us her own set of subversive Major Arcana, images that transgress the boundaries of the colonial vernacular, offering the viewer a chance to explore the heart of the quiet wild.

 

6/ Review: Littoral by Kristian Laemmle-Ruff at Colour Factory Gallery, Fitzroy

Exhibition dates: 4th May – 26th May 2012

 

It was such a joy then to walk around the corner from the CCP to the Colour Factory Gallery and view the exhibition Littoral by emerging artist Kristian Laemmle-Ruff. This is one of the best, if not the best, “photography” exhibition I have seen so far this year. As soon as you walk into the simple, elegant gallery you are surrounded by fourteen large scale horizontal photographs that are suffused with colour variations bouncing across the gallery – here a blue, there a green, now a lush orange palette. The effect is much like Monet’s waterlilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris; seated in the middle of the four curved paintings you are surrounded by large daubs of paint of various hues that have an elemental effect – resonances of earth, air, water, fire – on the viewer. The same affection of colour and space can be found in Laemmle-Ruff’s photographs.

 

Kristian Laemmle-Ruff. 'Olympic Stadium' 2012

 

Kristian Laemmle-Ruff (Australian)
Olympic Stadium
2012
Type C print
100cm x 67cm

 

Kristian Laemmle-Ruff. 'Truck in Safi' 2010

 

Kristian Laemmle-Ruff (Australian)
Truck in Safi
2010
Type C print
100cm x 67cm

 

 

7/ Review: Lost & Found: Family Photos Swept away by the 3.11 East Japan Tsunami at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 1st June – 15th July 2012

 

What we are left with in these images are vestiges of presence, remnants or traces of people that have passed on. In a kind of divine intervention, these photographs ask the viewer questions about the one fact that we cannot avoid in our lives, our own mortality, and what remains after we pass on. We can never know these people and places, just as we can never know the place and time of our death – when our “time” is up – but these photographs awaken in us a subconscious remembering: that we may be found (in life), then lost (through death), then found again in the gaze of the viewer looking at the photographs in the future present. We are (dis)continuous beings.

There is no one single reading of these photographs for “there are only competing narratives and interpretations of a world that cannot be wholly, accurately described.” These indescribable photographs impinge on our consciousness calling on us to remember even as the speed of contemporary life asks us to forget. This ethical act of looking, of mourning and remembering, of paying homage to presence acknowledges that we choose not to let pass into the dark night of the soul these traces of our forebears, for each emanation is deeply embedded within individual and cultural memory.

These photographs are a contemporary form of Western ‘dreaming’ in which we feel a link to the collective human experience. In this reification, we bear witness to the (re)assemblance of life, the abstract made (subconsciously) concrete, as material thing. These images of absent presence certainly reached out and touched my soul. Vividly, I choose to remember rather than to forget.

 

'Untitled' from 'Lost and Found' 2011

'Untitled' from 'Lost and Found' 2011

 

 

8/ Review: Berlinde De Bruyckere: We are all Flesh at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 2nd June – 29th July 2012

 

The main work We Are All Flesh (2012) reminded me of a version of the game The Hanged Man (you know, the one where you have to guess the letters of a word and if you don’t get the letter, the scaffold and the hanged man are drawn). The larger of the two hanging pieces featured two horse skins of different colours intertwined like a ying yang paux de deux. Psychologically the energy was very heavy. The use of straps to suspend the horses was inspired. Memories of Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp and The Godfather rose to the surface. My favourite piece was 019 (2007). Elegant in its simplicity this beautiful display case from a museum was dismantled and shipped over to Australia in parts and then reassembled here. The figurative pieces of wood, made of wax, seemed like bodies drained of blood displayed as specimens. The blankets underneath added an element of comfort. The whole piece was restrained and beautifully balanced. Joseph Beuys would have been very proud.

The “visceral gothic” contained in the exhibition was very evident. I liked the artist’s trembling and shuddering. Her narratives aroused a frisson, a moment of intense danger and excitement, the sudden terror of the risen animal

 

Berlinde De Bruyckere. 'We Are All Flesh' 2012

 

Berlinde De Bruyckere (Belgian, b. 1964)
We Are All Flesh
2012
Treated horse skin, epoxy, iron armature
280 x 160 x 100cm
Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Galleria Continua

 

Berlinde De Bruyckere. '019' 2007

 

Berlinde De Bruyckere (Belgian, b. 1964)
019
2007
Wax, epoxy, metal, glass, wood, blankets
293.5 x 517 x 77.5cm
Private Collection, Paris

 

 

9/ Review: Light Works at NGV International, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 23rd March – 16th September 2012

 

This is an intimate and stimulating photographic exhibition at the NGV International featuring the work of artists Mike and Doug Starn, David Stephenson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Bill Henson, Adam Fuss, Simone Douglas, Park Hong-Chun, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Sam Shmith, Christoph Dahlhausen and Patrick Bailly-Maitre-Grand. It is fantastic to see an exhibition of solely contemporary photographs at the National Gallery of Victoria taken from their collection (with nary a vintage silver gelatin photograph in sight!), one which examines the orchestration of light from which all photography emanates – used by different photographers in the creation, and there is the key word, of their work. Collectively, the works seem to ooze a mysterious inner light, a facing towards the transcendent divine – both comforting, astonishing and terrifying in part measure.

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto. 'Winnetka Drive-In, Paramount' 1993

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese 1948-, worked in United States 1972- )
Winnetka Drive-In, Paramount
1993
Gelatin silver photograph
42.3 x 54.1cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by the Bowness Family Fund for Contemporary Photography, 2009
© Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy The Pace Gallery, New York

 

Mike and Doug Starn. 'Sol Invictus' 1992

 

Mike Starn (American, b. 1961) and Doug Starn (American, b. 1961)
Sol Invictus
1992
Orthographic film, silicon, pipe clamps, steel and adhesive tape
175.0 x 200.0 x 35.0cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by the National Gallery Women’s Association, 1994
© Doug Starn, Mike Starn/ARS, New York. Licensed by VISCOPY, Sydney

 

 

10/ Review: Gregory Crewdson: In A Lonely Place at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 28th September – 11th November 2012

 

In his visual mosaics Crewdson engages our relationship with time and space to challenge the trace of experience. His tableaux act as a kind of threshold or hinge of experience – between interior and exterior, viewer and photograph. His photographs are a form of monism in which two forces (interior / exterior) try to absorb each other but ultimately lead to a state of equilibrium. It is through this “play” that the context of the photographs and their relationship to each other and the viewer are “framed.” This device emphasises the aesthetic as much as information and encourages the viewer to think about the relationship between the body, the world of which it is part and the dream-reason of time. This intertextual (n)framing (n meaning unspecified number in mathematics) encourages the viewer to explore the inbetween spaces in the non-narrative / meta-narrative, “and by leaps (intuitive leaps, poetic leaps, leaps of faith)” encourage escapism in the imagination of the viewer. It is up to us as viewers to seek the multiple, disparate significances of what is concealed in each photograph as “felt knowledge” (Walter Benjamin), recalling to mind the sensory data placed before our eyes, something that can be experienced but cannot be explained by man: “the single moment of the present amidst the transience of life and searching for some kind of eternal truth.”

 

Installation photographs the series 'Beneath the Roses' (2003-2008) from the exhibition 'Gregory Crewdson: In A Lonely Place' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne

 

Installation photograph of the series Beneath the Roses from the exhibition Gregory Crewdson: In a Lonely Place at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Melbourne

 

Gregory Crewdson. 'Untitled (Maple Street)' 2003-2005

 

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (Maple Street)
2003-2005
© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

 

 

11/ Exhibition: Janina Green: Ikea at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 28th November 28 – 15th December 2012

 

Installation photograph of 'Ikea' by Janina Green at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

 

Installation photograph of Ikea by Janina Green at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

 

Janina Green. 'Orange vase' 1990 reprinted 2012

 

Janina Green (Australian born Germany, b. 1944)
Orange vase
1990 reprinted 2012
Silver gelatin print on fibre based paper, hand-tinted with orange photo dye
85 x 70 cm

 

 

Fable = invent (an incident, person, or story)

Simulacrum = pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original

Performativity = power of discourse, politicization of abjection, ritual of being

Body / identity / desire = imperfection, fluidity, domesticity, transgression, transcendence

.
Intimate, conceptually robust and aesthetically sensitive.
The association of the images was emotionally overwhelming.
An absolute gem. One of the highlights of the year.

 

 

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Review: ‘Martin Parr: In Focus’ at Niagara Galleries, Richmond, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 6th March – 31st March 2012

 

Martin Parr. 'England. New Brighton' 1983-1985

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
England. New Brighton.
From the series Last Resort
1983-1985
Pigment print
Edition of 5
102 x 127cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

 

 

This is a fine exhibition of the work of celebrated English photographer Martin Parr at Niagara Galleries, Richmond, albeit with one proviso. The mainly large colour prints are handsomely displayed in plain white frames within the gallery space and are taken from his well known series: Last Resort, Luxury, New British and British Food. Parr’s work is at its best when he concentrates on the volume of space within the image plane and the details that emerge from such a concentrated visualisation – whether it be the tension points within the image, assemblage of colour, incongruity of dress, messiness of childhood or philistine nature of luxury.

The best photographs have a wonderful frisson about them, a genuine love of and resonance with the things he is imaging. This frisson can be seen in all of the photographs in this posting but most notably in :

  • The incursion of the surreal red colour to left in England. New Brighton (above) and Parr’s masterful use of vertical and horizontal lines within the image. Note the verticality: of the child’s toy, the two children themselves, the pillars of the pavilion and the lighthouse holding the whole image together at right. If this lighthouse were not there the eye would fall out of the image. As it is it is contained, forcing the viewer to look closely at the absurdity of the melting ice cream and the splashes that have fallen on the ground.
    .
  • The complexity of the photograph England. New Brighton (below) where the eye does not know what to rest upon, constantly jumping from object to object. Do you look at the women on the ground, the shoes to right, the piece of fabric to left, the screaming baby, the sunlit pink umbrella, the women in blue bikini up the ramp, the long elongated shadowed wall with peek-a-boo heads leading to the outlined figures at the vanishing point of image – the top of the ramp. The understanding of light (with the use of flash) and the construction of the image is superlative. Wow!
    .
  • The incongruity evidenced in the photograph England, Ascot. 2003: the over tight pink sateen dress with unfortunate stain (which the eye is irrevocably drawn to), applique bow linked through to hideous flower embossed handbag which then contrasts with the seated women behind in hat and purple floral dress. In the large print in the gallery the background is more out of focus than in the small reproduction here, allowing the viewer’s eye an avenue of escape via the grass and deck chair beyond.
    .
  • The delicious, choreographed mise-en-scène of Australia, The Melbourne Cup. 2008 – the suits, ties and glasses, the teezed hair, the alcohol – where none of the participants is looking at the camera, where only the ladies hand clutches at the back of the man’s shoulder. They look down, they look left, they look right, they look away, they never engage with each other or the viewer. The critical space in this assemblage is the distance between the man and the woman’s noses, that vitally small space of separation that is a synonym for the interactions occurring in the rest of the image. The blindness of Lux’ry, its crassness, its stain.

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And so it goes. The dirt under the fingernails of the child eating a doughnut, the lurid colours of the popsicle and jacket of the kid with dribble on his face, all fantastic. There are moments of stasis, for example in the contemplative photograph Australia. South Hedland. Blackrock Tourist Park. 2011 (below) taken from Parr’s new series Australia, where Parr has photographed Australian life in three Western Australian port cities, Fremantle, Broome and Port Hedland. See the video at the bottom of the posting and listen to Parr talk about his work.

This is all fine and dandy, dressed up in polka dots and a lurid bow tie, but when the photographs become too reductive, as in the large photograph in the exhibition England. Dorset. West Bay. 1997 (see first column, fourth down) there is really not enough to hang your hat on. This feeling of over simplification, as though the photographer has said to himself “here’s something I have seen that you haven’t recognised, and I think it is important for you to recognise it” – the perceived essentialness of the object – can become a bit strained. I know that these type of images are part of the series about British or Scottish food or about objects from a specific place but do they really have this grand an importance in the scheme of things? This feeling is reinforced in the exhibition, and this is my proviso to show, when the images such as Scotland. Glasgow. Fairy cakes. 1999, England. Blackpool. 1995 (bread and butter on a plate on red check cloth) are presented at A4 size surrounded by heavy white frames. These photographs have to be large to have any chance of working at all and at the small size they fall flat.

The size of a photograph raises interesting questions about the display of contemporary photography. The giant light boxes of Jeff Wall, the huge group portraits of Thomas Struth, the huge portraits of Thomas Ruff, the huge environments of Candida Hofer and the huge panoramas of Andreas Gursky (to name but a few) are all points in case. Would they work at a smaller size? No. They rely on scale and detail, visual impact for their effect: the same with Martin Parr. What is really ‘In Focus’ is the visualisation of the artist, his ability to envisage the final print at this large size. The A4 prints in this exhibition simply do not work at that size, for these photographs.

Think of Ansel Adams’ famous Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, Calif., (circa 1926). Originally printed as a contact 8″ x 10″ from the negative, Adams gradually increased the size of this image till it became a huge print as tall as a man in his later life. The image works at multiple sizes, it spoke to him (and the viewer) at all these sizes: the small contact is intense and gem-like, the larger imitating the monolithic structure of the Face itself. I feel that some large contemporary photographs are quite vacuous at this large size, that there is no reason for them to be at this size. In other words it is not appropriate for the image. Conversely it would seem that artists previsualise for this size in the end print, which is fine, but that the print cannot exist, cannot breathe in the world at a smaller size. Is this a problem? Does this matter? I believe it does, especially when a photograph is displayed at a size that simply doesn’t work. I was always taught to print a photograph at an appropriate size for the image, whatever size(s) that may be (and there can be multiples), as long as it has resonance for that particular image.

As evidenced in this exhibition, if the photograph cannot “work” at the size that it is to be exhibited then it should not be displayed at all – it is a diminution not just of the artists vision but of the resonance of the photograph, in this case going from large to small. In an upcoming posting about the retrospective of the work of American photographer Fransceca Woodman, there is an installation photograph of the exhibition at The Guggenheim, New York (see above). Her vintage prints (seen in the background) – small, intense visions – have been printed at a huge scale (with her permission) and they simply do not work at this floor to ceiling height. They have lost all of their intimacy, which is one of the strengths of her photography. Again, I believe it is a diminution of the artists vision and the integrity of the photograph, this time from small to large. Artists are not always right. The same can be said of the retrospective of Cartier-Bresson that I saw at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh in 2005. One room out of four had very small, intense vintage prints in brown hues and the other three galleries had large 20″ x 24″ grainy prints with strong contrast that really ruined any response I had to the work as evidenced by the vintage prints. They were almost reproductions, a simulacra of the real thing. I had a feeling that they weren’t even by the artist himself. The same could be said here.

To conclude I would say this is a fine exhibition of large photographs by Martin Parr that would have been even more focused without the small A4 prints. They are joyous paeans to the quirky, incongruous worlds in which we live and circulate. They evidence life itself in all its orthogonal absurdity. I love ’em!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to the artist and Niagara Galleries for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Francesca Woodman installation photograph at The Guggenheim Museum, New York

 

Francesca Woodman installation photograph at The Guggenheim Museum, New York. Note the small, vintage prints on the far wall.

 

Martin Parr. 'England. New Brighton' 1983-1985

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
England. New Brighton.
From the series Last Resort
1983-1985
Pigment print
Edition of 5
102 x 127cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

 

Martin Parr. 'Australia. South Hedland. Blackrock Tourist Park. 2011'

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Australia. South Hedland. Blackrock Tourist Park. 2011.
From the series Australia
2011
Pigment print
Edition of 5
101.6 x 152.4cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

 

Martin Parr. 'England, Ascot 2003'

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
England, Ascot. 2003.
From the series Luxury
1995-2009
Traditional C-type print
Edition of 5
101.6 x 152.4cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

 

Martin Parr. 'Australia, The Melbourne Cup 2008'

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Australia, The Melbourne Cup. 2008.
From the series Luxury
1995-2009
Pigment print
Edition of 5
101.6 x 152.4cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

 

Martin Parr. 'England. Ramsgate. 1996'

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
England. Ramsgate. 1996.
From the series New British
1994-1996
Traditional C-type print
Edition of 5
105.5 x 157.5cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

 

Martin Parr. 'England. Bristol. Car boot sale. 1995'

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
England. Bristol. Car boot sale. 1995.
From the series British Food
1994-1995
Traditional C-type print
Edition of 33
18 x 25.5cm
Image courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

 

 

No Worries: Martin Parr – FotoFreo 2012

Magnum photographer Martin Parr was asked by FotoFreo Festival Director Bob Hewitt to photograph three Western Australian port cities, Fremantle, Broome and Port Hedland. Photographer David Dare Parker was assigned to document the project, the work titled No Worries.

© David Dare Parker

 

 

Niagara Galleries
245 Punt Road
Richmond, Melbourne
Victoria, 3121
Australia
Phone: +61 3 9429 3666

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Saturday 12pm – 5pm

Niagara Galleries website

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Exhibition: ‘Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works’ at the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford

Exhibition dates: 30th September 2011 – 19th February 2012

 

Daniel Meadows. '25th wedding anniversary party. Farnborough Park, Kent. August 1985'

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
25th wedding anniversary party. Farnborough Park, Kent. August 1985
From Suburbia, 1984-1987
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

 

In the 1970s, Daniel Meadows was at the forefront of the independent photography movement. His practice is complex, passionate and sometimes deeply autobiographical.

Daniel Meadows’ early work broke with tradition and infused the medium with new energies and ways of seeing. Between 1971 and 1987, he produced an astonishing record of urban society in Britain, working in a uniquely collaborative way through his interviews with – and writing about – his subjects.

Text from the National Science and Media Museum website

.
Many thankx to the National Media Museum, Bradford for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All pictures are copyright © Daniel Meadows except for the June Street, Salford which is copyright © Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr.

Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s authored by Val Williams

 

Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr. 'Untitled' from 'June Street, Salford', February-April 1973

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) and Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Untitled
From June Street, Salford, February – April 1973
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) and Martin Parr (British, b. 1952) From the series 'June Street, Salford', photographed in Salford 1973

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) and Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
From the series June Street, Salford, photographed in Salford
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr

 

Daniel Meadows. 'Brighton, Sussex. May 1974' from 'the Free Photographic Omnibus', 1973-1974

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Brighton, Sussex. May 1974
From the Free Photographic Omnibus, 1973-1974
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

Daniel Meadows. 'Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria'. Left: identified as James O'Connor. Right: David Balderstone. November 1974

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria
Left: identified as James O’Connor. Right: David Balderstone
November 1974
From the Free Photographic Omnibus, 1973-1974
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) From 'the Free Photographic Omnibus' portrait series, photographed in Hulme, Manchester 1974

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
From the Free Photographic Omnibus portrait series, photographed in Hulme, Manchester
1974
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

Daniel Meadows. 'The Free Photographic Omnibus' 1974

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
The Free Photographic Omnibus
1974
From the Free Photographic Omnibus, 1973-1974
© Daniel Meadows

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) From the 'Free Photographic Omnibus' portrait series, photographed in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria 1974

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
From the Free Photographic Omnibus portrait series, photographed in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria
1974
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) From the series 'National Portraits: Now & Then'

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
From the series National Portraits: Now & Then, mother and son Susie and Peter Gatesy, Brighton, Sussex 1974 and London 2000
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) From the series 'National Portraits: Now & Then'

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
From the series National Portraits: Now & Then, twin brothers Michael (left) and Peter McParland, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, 1974 and 1995
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

Daniel Meadows. 'Untitled' from 'Butlin's Filey, Yorkshire', July-August 1972

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Untitled
From Butlin’s Filey, Yorkshire, July – August 1972
© Daniel Meadows

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) 'The Dome of Fun and Fortune' 1972

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
The Dome of Fun and Fortune
1972
From the series Butlin’s by the Sea, Filey, Yorkshire
© Daniel Meadows

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) 'Falling' 1972

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Falling
1972
From the series Butlin’s by the Sea, Filey, Yorkshire
© Daniel Meadows

 

 

The National Science and Media Museum presents the first retrospective of the career of Daniel Meadows – photographer, documentarian, digital storyteller and unofficial co-founder of a uniquely British photography movement. Daniel Meadows was one of a group of photographers who spearheaded the independent photography movement in the early 1970s, breaking with tradition and infusing the medium with new energies and ways of seeing. His practice is complex, passionate and sometimes deeply autobiographical.

Between 1971 and 1987, he produced an astonishing record of urban society in Britain, working in a uniquely collaborative way through his interviews with – and writing about – his subjects. Meadows is a documentarist and an exceptional storyteller. He reveals historic and culturally significant aspects of people’s lives, dating from the 1970s to the present day. This exhibition displays photographic works alongside oral testimonies by some of the people featured in the photographs and Digital Stories.

Meadows’ practice developed at Manchester Polythechnic, where he trained alongside fellow photographers Martin Parr, Brian Griffin, Charlie Meecham and Peter Fraser. Together they spearheaded a new documentary movement intent on establishing an independent method for making and disseminating photographs, outside the existing conventions of commercial practitioners and photojournalists. Meadows’ resulting work displays complexity and passion, and confers a personal and sometimes deeply autobiographical imprint. During his career he has produced an astonishing record of urban British society, working in a uniquely collaborative way, through photography, digital stories and recorded interviews, to capture extraordinary aspects of everyday life.

His career began in 1972, when he opened a photographic studio in a former barber’s shop in the Moss Side area of Manchester. The Shop on Greame Street features residents from the district who posed for a portrait which they then received free of charge. None has been previously exhibited, and a selection will be on public display for the first time from October.

Two further early projects are also included in the exhibition, both undertaken in partnership with Martin Parr. June Street, 1973, is an intimate portrayal of working class households in an area of Salford, which have since been demolished. Butlin’s by the Sea, 1972, presents a fascinating record of the holiday camp in Filey, North Yorkshire, just after the heyday of this style of British resort.

In 1973, Meadows, aged 21, also bought a 25-year-old Leyland PD1 double-decker bus for £360.20. He removed the seats to make space for a darkroom and living quarters and named it the Free Photographic Omnibus. He spent 14 months taking his Greame Street studio philosophy of free portraits on tour around England. Original photographs from the journey appear in the retrospective, along with a selection from a follow-up project in which Meadows sought out his Photobus subjects more than 20 years later to re-photograph them for National Portraits: Now and Then, 1995-2000.

Other notable works displayed include Decline in the Cotton Industry, 1975-1978, Welfare State International, 1976-1983, and Nattering in Paradise, 1984-1987. The gallery will also screen a selection of Meadows’ Digital Storytelling films. Condensing personal stories into two-minute features of approximately 250 heartfelt words and 12 images, he created “multimedia sonnets from the people”, leading American commentator J.D Lasica to call him “one of the icons of the Digital Storytelling movement.”

This exhibition and the accompanying publication is the product of research by Professor Val Williams as part of an ongoing study into British photography of 1970s and 1980s at the University of the Arts London. It is preceded by the research project, The New British Photography, 1968-1981, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Together Val Williams and Daniel Meadows have brought to light the photographer’s incredible archive of prints and negatives, along with ephemera and audio recordings. They have unearthed unpublished and sometimes forgotten treasures which add to a remarkable document – a dramatic, moving and empathetic evocation of a recognisable, yet increasingly alien era.

Press release from the National Science and Media Museum website

 

 

Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Work

 

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Foster mother and children
1972
From the free photographic studio on Greame Street, Moss Side, Manchester, February – April 1972
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Portrait of Angela Loretta Lindsey, aged 8, with her brother Mark Emanuel Lindsey
1972
From the free photographic studio on Greame Street, Moss Side, Manchester, February – April 1972
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Hell’s Angels
1972
From the free photographic studio on Greame Street, Moss Side, Manchester, February – April 1972
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Untitled
1972
From the free photographic studio on Greame Street, Moss Side, Manchester, February – April 1972
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) From 'The Shop on Greame Street' portrait series, Moss Side, Manchester 1972

 

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
From The Shop on Greame Street portrait series, Moss Side, Manchester
1972
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

 

 

National Science and Media Museum
Bradford,
West Yorkshire,
BD1 1NQ

Opening hours:
Daily 10.00 – 17.00

National Science and Media Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures’ at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

Exhibition dates: 1st October 2010 – 23rd January 2011

 

Many thankx to the Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. All text comes from the Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina website. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures' at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina - Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

Installation view of the exhibition 'Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures' at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina - Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

 

Installation view of the exhibition Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence with the work of Rineke Dijkstra at right

 

 

Portraits and Power explores portraiture and the representation of political, economical and social power in the contemporary world through the works of contemporary artists. Portraits of famous political figures, investigations into the lifestyle of the social elite, as well as inquiries into the power structures of international institutions.

The exhibition explores its theme from three main standpoints: it analyses power as an expression of the charisma of those individuals who have become icons or symbols of their age; it probes the power of institutions and social models that either represent themselves or are represented in a critical light; and it investigates the hidden mechanisms of powerful authorities.

Portraits and Power is a project of the CCC Strozzina, with the consultancy of Peter Funnell (National Portrait Gallery, London), Walter Guadagnini (“UniCredit & Art” project) and Roberta Valtorta (Museum of Contemporary Photography, Cinisello Balsamo) coordinated by Franziska Nori (CCCS, Firenze).

Text from the Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina website [Online] Cited 02/02/2020

 

Tina Barney. 'The Ancestor' 2001

 

Tina Barney (American, b. 1945)
The Ancestor
2001
C-print
Courtesy the artist and Janet Borden Inc., New York

 

Tina Barney. 'The Brocade Walls' 2004

 

Tina Barney (American, b. 1945)
The Brocade Walls
2004
C-print
Courtesy the artist and Janet Borden Inc., New York

 

Tina Barney installation view

 

Installation view of the exhibition Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence showing the work of Tina Barney

 

 

The characters Tina Barney portrays are the representatives of a social class that normally exercises careful control over the circulation of pictures of its members, whether in the form of family photographs or official portraits, which are often published on the pages of glossy magazines. She is one of the first photographers to have made artistic use of this kind of representation. Hers is not merely the gaze of an onlooker, but that of a trusted person, who has personal relationships with her subjects. What she is interested in is not so much the idea of displaying the wealth of these families, but that of analysing social and family dynamics – such as the ambivalent relationship between children and parents. Her work is conceived as a means to improve self-understanding.

The people portrayed all come from families educated in the awareness of their own social role: discipline, self-control and rigour are features to be observed in all the subjects photographed, and they share the same high level of composure. For the series entitled The Europeans, which was produced over a period of about eight years, the author was introduced by one circle of friends to another, and thus given the opportunity to portray Italian nobles, Austrian bankers and landowners, proud representatives of the wealthy Spanish bourgeoisie, and English gentlemen in their sophisticated dwellings. Neither the formal way of dressing nor the furnishings can be traced back to any particular fashion: Tina Barney seeks to produce timeless pictures that at first sight will appear closer to traditional painting than to contemporary photography. Tina Barney creates her portraits through a careful observation of people in their everyday lives; to capture transient moments she asks her subjects to repeat something in front of the camera in such a way as to fix them. Her work tool is a fixed, large-size camera; an extended time exposure and high resolution enable her to render the details of each setting in detail. The figures portrayed have a rigid and formal countenance, which makes them appear markedly detached from one another, even though it is often brothers and sisters or parents and children who are photographed together: “this is the best that we can do. This inability to show physical affection is in our heritage”.

Tina Barney’s photographs give a sense of the fleetingness of their relationships behind the mask of self-controlled bearing. The artist thus unveils the game of social roles and attitudes conducted by her subjects, a veritable Theater of Manners (to quote the title of one of her most famous series) which demands enough sensitivity on the viewers’ part for them to focus on those details in the pictures that render hidden and non-immediately obvious features visible.

Since the mid-1970s, Tina Barney has been focusing her work on the portrayal of the privileged exponents of New York and New England high society, seen either in their own homes or on certain special occasions. The style of the pictures ranges from that of tableaux vivant to that of genre paintings, drawing expressive force from the interaction between wealthy settings and the people who move about in them.

 

Tina Barney. 'The Granddaughter' 2004

 

Tina Barney (American, b. 1945)
The Granddaughter
2004
C-print
Courtesy the artist and Janet Borden Inc., New York

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures' at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina - Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

 

Installation view of the exhibition Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence showing the work of Jim Dow

 

Jim Dow. 'Library Metropolitan Club, New York' 1999 / 2010

 

Jim Dow (American, b. 1942)
Library Metropolitan Club, New York
1999 / 2010
Chromogenic colour print
Courtesy the artist, Janet Borden, Inc., New York

 

Jim Dow. 'Dining Room, Morgan Library, New York' 1999 / 2010

 

Jim Dow (American, b. 1942)
Dining Room, Morgan Library, New York
1999 / 2010
Chromogenic colour print
Courtesy the artist, Janet Borden, Inc., New York

 

 

By taking shots that are as objective as possible and completely devoid of any human presence, Dow gives a concentrated and authentic view of the architecture, furnishings and frameworks of these backdrops of life. “My interest in photography centres on its capacity for exact description. I use photography to try to record the manifestations of human ingenuity and spirit still remaining in our country’s everyday landscape.” For one of his most recent series, Dow has been able to make his way into some of the most exclusive private circles of New York City. He selected circles that are still active and have a long and significant history behind, such as the renowned Metropolitan Club, which was founded in 1891 by John Pierpont Morgan, and once listed James Roosevelt and William K. Vanderbilt among its most illustrious members. Most of these circles require strict adherence to rules consolidated by tradition. Only those introduced to the club by one of its members can join it, a practice that contributes to keep it a kind of network; a specific commission will then consider whether the candidate is fit for acceptance. Though there are over twenty circles of this kind in New York, outsiders will rarely notice their presence. While they no longer exercise the kind of political influence they used to as seats of power and decision making bodies, these clubs are now undergoing a new renaissance. An increasing number of politicians and businessmen are choosing to meet in their secluded rooms, which public opinion often perceives as places of intrigue and the setting for secret appointments of various kinds. With his descriptive and comparative photographs, Dow is giving a face to these exclusive meeting places, inviting viewers to join him in admiring the timeless opulence of their rooms. Architecture is the “primary and most powerful form of mass-communication”; at the same time, it is a mirror for power and its strategies, for the consolidation of authority and its effects on those who exercise it. “Architecture is power. The powerful build precisely because they are powerful. Yet architecture is also an expression of the capability and resoluteness – as well as resolve – of the powerful. Politicians intentionally exploit architecture to seduce, impress, and intimidate.” (Deyan Sudjic, The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World, 2006).

American photographer Jim Dow approaches places as meeting points bearing visible traces of people’s mutual interactions. In different photographic series, the artist has portrayed American barbecue joints, pie and mash shops in London, tango halls in Buenos Aires, the workplaces of farmers, tinsmiths and iron-smiths, and baseball stadiums from one coast of the US to the other.

 

CLEGG & GUTTMANN (Michael Clegg and Martin Guttmann) 'Grand Master' 1985

 

Clegg & Guttmann (Michael Clegg and Martin Guttmann)
Grand Master
1985
Cibachrome
Courtesy Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne, Berlin, Antwerp

 

 

For Grand Master, part of a photographic series produced in the 1980s, Clegg & Guttmann asked an actor to display certain poses characteristic of power, presenting him as the representative of a non-specified institution. The background of the image consists in a fictional architectural scenario – one simply simulated by using photographed space – the artificial nature of which is revealed by certain incongruities in the lighting effects. What is central here, once more, is the reflection offered on the controlled and never spontaneous construction of an image of power.

The tension conveyed by Clegg & Guttmann’s works springs from the subtle gap characterising the artists’ relationship with tradition. Their classical and apparently affirmative representations of people with power should be interpreted, within the context of their career spanning several decades, as different ways of visualising an analytical and deconstructive practice engaging with the mechanisms of authority.

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures' at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina - Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

 

Installation view of the exhibition Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence showing the work of Clegg & Guttmann

 

 

The CCCS – Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, will be staging an exhibition entitled Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures, from 1 October 2010 to 23 January 2011, which will run concurrently with the retrospective devoted to Bronzino, the undisputed master of the Mannerist portrait, on Palazzo Strozzi’s piano nobile.

The exhibition, based on an original project by the CCCS in consultation with Peter Funnell (curator and director of research programmes at the National Portrait Gallery in London), Walter Guadagnini (chairman of the “UniCredit & Art” project’s scientific committee) and Roberta Valtorta (director of the Cinisello Balsamo Museum of Contemporary Photography) and coordinated by Franziska Nori (director of the CCCS), will show the work of international artists and collectives such as Tina Barney, Christoph Brech, Bureau d’études, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, Clegg & Guttmann, Nick Danziger, Rineke Dijkstra, Jim Dow, Francesco Jodice, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Trevor Paglen, Martin Parr, Wang Qingsong, Daniela Rossell, Jules Spinatsch, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and The Yes Men – who have all proved capable of developing a critical analysis of the portrayal and depiction of political, economic and social power in the media.

The exhibition explores its theme from two main standpoints: it analyses power as an expression of the charisma of those individuals who have become icons or symbols of their age; and it probes the power of institutions and social models that either represent themselves or are represented in a critical light.

The role played by images has grown to such an extent that it has led to the predominant emergence of their value not only in terms of portrayal but also of the successful establishment of power. The works of art on display bear witness not only to the self-referential strategies of power, but also to the different approaches artists adopt in deconstructing or chipping away at the images that represent social, economic and political power in a way that can not only bolster a leadership but that can also undermine its authority.

The National Portrait Gallery in London will be contributing works by three famous international photographers that explore the image of political authority. The series devoted to Queen Elizabeth II by Annie Leibovitz evinces a celebrated contemporary artist’s dialogue with the great tradition of official portraiture, and the cycle entitled Blair at War by Nick Danziger gives an extraordinary vision of Tony Blair’s daily life in the days immediately preceding the outbreak of the war in Iraq. The portrait of Margaret Thatcher by Helmut Newton keeps alive the iconic role of one of the most influential politicians of recent decades despite the fact that her authority had waned.

Clegg & Guttmann show the photographs of three managing directors of the Deutsche Bank. These images, while based on the official portraiture genre, provide the opportunity for a conceptual reflection on the theme of the public presentation of individuals who are at the same time both subject and patron of the work. Christoph Brech portrays a modern patron of the arts in a video that dwells on a detail of the hull of his yacht, Sea Force One, a floating museum filmed from a distance in Venetian waters.

The role of the image not only as representation but also as a tool for the construction or exploration of power is analysed by artists such as Hiroshi Sugimoto, whose Portraits bring to life wax effigies of historical or contemporary political figures through the evocative power of photography, and Rineke Dijkstra whose series of images of a soldier with the French Foreign Legion prompts a reflection on what remains of the individual when he becomes the representative of a military authority. Francesco Jodice, in his video entitled Dubai Citytellers, analyses the development and the social impact of one of the new centres of global economic power.

In the photo triptych Past, Present and Future, Wang Qingsong portrays himself as a bystander, bearing witness to fighters in poses mimicking celebrative and monumental Socialist sculptures, reflecting upon the contradictory nature of the actual power of masses in contemporary China.

Tina Barney records the life and domestic environment of the beau monde, combining the spontaneous feel of a private snapshot with a sophisticated aesthetic approach strongly echoing the world of art and traditional photography. The provocative photo series Ricas y Famosas by Daniela Rossell portrays the taste and excesses of the new super wealthy social oligarchy in Mexico, while Martin Parr’s series entitled Luxury, which is devoted to fashion shows, horse-racing and art fairs in the world’s major capitals, probes the lifestyle of the upper class in a globalised Western world. The pictures of Jim Dow portray the luxurious rooms of the great private social clubs of New York City’s elite, fashionable places that are inaccessible to the general public.

A different critical approach to the theme of power is offered by the French collective Bureau d’études with its project involving mapping the links between political and economic power. The CIA’s secret missions and operations, on the other hand, provide the focus for the work of Trevor Paglen who reconstructs top secret movements and connections. Jules Spinatsch presents a new work taken from his Temporary Discomfort video-photographic series, denouncing the controversial transformation of a place such as the island of La Maddalena in Sardinia into the venue for the G8 summit that never took place. Also on view is the antagonistic activism of The Yes Men, a collective who will be presenting their spectacular media initiative that rocked the image and power of the multinational corporation responsible for the Bhopal environmental catastrophe in India.

Finally, the composer Fabio Cifariello Ciardi uses famous politicians’ public speeches as his raw material for the creation of electroacoustic music that will underline their rhetorical techniques of persuasion.

The exhibition catalogue, published in Italian and English, contains a series of essays by authors from different countries, backgrounds and disciplines, offering the visitor a chance to explore in greater depth the themes addressed by the exhibition.

Press release from the Strozzina website [Online] Cited 02/02/2020

 

Rineke Dijkstra. 'Olivier' Quartier Vienot, Marseille, France, July 21, 2000

 

Rineke Dijkstra (Dutch, b. 1959)
Olivier
Quartier Vienot, Marseille, France, July 21, 2000
On loan from The Bank of America Merrill Lynch Collection

 

Rineke Dijkstra. 'Olivier' Quartier Monclar, Djibouti, July 13, 2003

 

Rineke Dijkstra (Dutch, b. 1959)
Olivier
Quartier Monclar, Djibouti, July 13, 2003
On loan from The Bank of America Merrill Lynch Collection

 

 

A crucial feature of Dijkstra’s photography is her desire to show the true personality of her subjects, as opposed to any simulated one. Up against the contemporary mystifying quality of the Internet and digital manipulation, her images illustrate in a very convincing way how photography is still capable of transcending the surface of subjects to grasp their deeper and constantly evolving identities. Her series feature, for instance, young bullfighters immediately after a bullfight, young mothers with babies born only a few minutes before, and portraits of boys and girls from various parts of the world at the beach. Her work method, whereby subjects are given very few directions and are usually portrayed frontally, leads to the creation of bare and detached pictures in which people display an inevitably fragile and vulnerable air. The Olivier Silva project, which the artist has developed over the course of more than three years, centres on the figure of a young man who in July 2000 voluntarily enrolled in the French Foreign Legion. Dijkstra portrays crucial moments of his intense training in France and Africa – from the day of his enrolment, in Aubagne, near Marseille, to the missions he was sent to fulfil in various parts of the world (Gabon, Ivory Coast and Gibuti) in 2003. The photographs clearly illustrate the metamorphoses the young man underwent over the course of the years: the innocent looking boy becomes an energetic and professional elite soldier enlisted in one of the world’s toughest and most controversial army corps. The centrepiece of the work is the artist’s interest in Olivier as an individual whose personality evolves in the course of his training, as is clearly revealed by his attitude and the look in his eyes, as well as by the very way in which his facial features change. The training imparted in military units of this kind is aimed at annulling the recruit’s personality in order to then recreate it according to new parameters: the youngster draws closer and closer to the prototype of the soldier as we progress from one photograph to the next. Just as all new recruits of the Foreign Legion are assigned a new name and identity, after three years Olivier no longer looks (even physically) like the same person as before. Like an accelerated film sequence, this series shows the dissolution of the original identity of a man subjected to the conditions dictated by an apparatus of power. Every soldier is at the service of the country he fights for and becomes one of its official public representations, embodying its military power. The same power he now wields is that which in a few years has conditioned him – or even produced him, one may say. Through her aesthetically minimalist photographs, Rineke Dijkstra illustrates the paradox of opposition between individual values and those of the community, between identity and conformity.

Rineke Dijkstra has carried out profound research in the field of photographic portraiture. Her subjects are adolescents who are still searching for themselves and who are incapable of acting in front of a camera, as well as adults caught in decisive moments in their personal development. By portraying these subjects, the artist explores the theme of identity and its representation.

 

Martin Parr. 'France. Paris. Haute Couture' 2007

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
France. Paris. Haute Couture
2007
from the series Luxury
Pigment print
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

 

Martin Parr. 'England. Epsom. The Derby' 2004

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
England. Epsom. The Derby
2004
from the series Luxury
Pigment print
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

 

Martin Parr. 'Russia. Moscow. Fashion Week' 2004

 

Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Russia. Moscow. Fashion Week
2004
From the series Luxury
Pigment print
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

 

 

Unlike most of his colleagues, Parr has little interest in the great themes of photographic reporting, such as the documenting of war and poverty. Working around the world, he finds his motifs in everyday life. At the beginning of his career, he focused in particular on the observation of people from lower middle class backgrounds engaged in different activities, in the context of themes such as consumption, communication and leisure. He has left it ambiguous as to whether these pictures of his are charged with critical overtones or intended to serve as a mere means of social documentation. Through this approach to his work, Parr has developed a highly distinctive and almost unmistakable style marked by dazzling colours obtained by the use of flash on top of natural light. Parr takes his camera near people and their social milieus, creating images that appear grotesque or exaggerated at first. Their motifs, which often coincide with moments of everyday life, are shot from unusual perspectives.

The feeling these pictures convey is that of being spontaneous photos, similar to snapshots. Only under closer scrutiny you understand they have been skilfully construed and arranged. While always highly charged and taking widespread social stereotypes as their starting point, Parr’s images are never banal. The perspective they convey stands out for the way in which it takes viewers by surprise and for the ironic detachment with which the photographer turns to his subjects.

According to Parr, his photographs never fail to elicit extreme emotions because they always show some truths: “We are so used to digesting pictures that are pure propaganda, that people are surprised when someone like me shows them images that are closely tied to reality. I, at least, don’t lie”. The photographer’s gaze takes the viewer into his confidence, leading him through the pictures to discover the absurdity of what we deem normal. Gathered in large series regularly published in volumes, these shots transcend the irony of individual images to concentrate on the analysis of a given social milieu.

The Luxury series portrays personages from the international jet set, photographed in different settings around the world – from the Miami Art Fair to horse races in Durban, from polo tournaments in Dubai to the Beijing Auto Show. With these images, Parr has intentionally moved away from his previous subjects to focus on the life of the upper classes: for, as he himself has noted, the main problem the world is facing is not poverty but wealth – excessive development and prosperity. These photographs offer the perspective of an external, noninvolved observer, whose gaze is drawn towards minor details that usually find no place in the common representations of these events.

The centrepieces of these photos are the superficial clichés that the people participating in the events adopt as tokens of their upper-class identity. The pictures fix moments in which this enactment reveals itself to be so fragile or so exaggerated that the people involved become extras in a comedy – one that the photographer’s eye has fallen upon, finding interest not in individuals as such, but in their belonging to a given social system with all its rules and values.

Martin Parr describes himself as a “chronicler of our times”. In his photographic series he records the behaviour of people of different social classes in different contexts, searching not so much for mutual differences as for what brings human beings together when they find themselves in certain roles.

 

Nick Danziger. 'Helicopter Flight from RAF Lyneham to Battersea, 3 April 2003'

 

Nick Danziger (British, b. 1958)
Helicopter Flight from RAF Lyneham to Battersea, 3 April 2003

Bromide print
Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, London
© Nick Danziger

 

 

This opportunity had arisen thanks to The Saturday Times Magazine, which had launched a project to produce a special report on the occasion of Blair’s fiftieth birthday, one based not on official photographs but on a way of perceiving and depicting power from the point of view of everyday life – the interior of private and usually inaccessible places, removed from the conventional and more distinctly representational ones. These were the very days in which Blair was facing one of the most challenging decisions of his mandate: that concerning Great Britain’s intervention in the Second Gulf War on the side of the United States.

Danziger was able to document moments and scenes that could otherwise never have been made visible, capturing apparently insignificant moments that actually express all the underlying tensions and dynamics of those crucial days in 2003. On his first day of work, 14 March, Danziger was in Blair’s so called “den” – the Prime Minister’s private workroom in Downing Street. While engaged in a telephone call with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Blair is shown in a non-conventional and informal, rather than simply official, pose. A mirror here gives us a glimpse of Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister’s ever-present spin doctor, and the person responsible for his public image. This reflection becomes a sort of picture within the picture, a reminder of the assemblage of Danziger’s photographic documents, which are never created by chance or artlessly, but always follow from a conscious decision on the photographer’s part.

Danziger seems to be providing an almost intimate depiction of power, one that catches its subjects unawares. Yet it is worth recalling that the Blair government had developed a very careful and well-thought strategy for controlling its own public identity. New Labour’s promotion of an image of its Prime Minister as a young man from next door and of its own political class as one close to ordinary people has been a central feature of its political platform – a way of making a break after the long years of Conservatism under Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

The power of Danziger’s photographs lies in their ability to suggest the moments preceding and following the one portrayed, as illustrated for instance by the pictures of the Prime Minister’s transfer by plane, or the conversation held by a group of politicians outside Blair’s cabinet as they wait for the imminent war decisions to be made. In these pictures the outside world is always cut off; still, as critic John Berger has noted, the importance of photographs lies precisely in their ability to show things they do not directly portray.

Danziger himself bears witness to this when he writes that “in some of the pictures, from where the Prime Minister is sitting, he could hear people shouting ‘stop the war’ outside”. Power censors what might damage or shed doubt upon the reassuring appearance of a politician, and always seeks to portray itself in a manner useful for its own preservation.

The work of photojournalist Nick Danziger features videos and photographs in a documentary style, which often accompany the diaries he writes during his many trips around the world – from Bosnia to Afghanistan, Great Britain to Brazil, and so on. Between March and April 2003, Danziger and journalist Peter Stothard spent thirty days in close contact with the then Prime Minister Tony Blair and his entourage.

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures' at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina - Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

 

Installation view of the exhibition Portraits and Power: People, Politics and Structures at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina – Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence showing the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto

 

 

The Portraits series was first developed in 1999, starting from a portrait of King Henry VIII of England inspired by the work of Dutch painter Hans Holbein. Sugimoto’s self-professed aim was to become “the first sixteenth-century photographer.” The series then continued with different subjects, including famous contemporary figures who have entered the collective imagination, such as the Cuban lider máximo Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul II.

Sugimoto’s works are not portraits of the original subjects, but of wax sculptures reproducing them in the most hyper-realist way possible. The figures are illumined by a source of direct light and strongly stand out against a black background in an extremely theatrical way, imitating poses typical of the characters they represent, while removing them from all context and thus emphasising their nature as icons rather than human beings.

For these works Sugimoto has not made use of the 50 x 60 cm format that is typical of him. Yet, they stand in continuity with the artist’s unique reflection upon the nature of photography and its relation to history and time. Here he embarks upon a reflection on portraiture and the process whereby an image is translated using different media, emphasising the problematic “realistic effect” of photographic reproduction.

An attentive gaze will notice small disproportions in the various parts of the subjects’ bodies or strange lighting effects due to the way in which light reflects on wax as opposed to real skin. Still, these pictures invite us to look at them as we would other photographs. Thinking, that is, about the genuine subjects they portray, something that paradoxically makes them “more real” than the wax statues that constitute their actual subjects. Different levels of reproduction are at play here: from the original subject to an initial photograph that served as a model for the wax statue that Sugimoto then portrayed in his photographic work. Our gaze will strongly be drawn towards the extraordinary elegance and aesthetic refinement of these works, which reveal the uncommon technical abilities of Sugimoto, marked as they are by the endless range of white, grey and black shades typical of him. Despite all this, his works remain emotionally cold: they consist in conceptual reflections upon the very notion of portrait and its political and cultural value as an icon of the characters it represents, and explicitly forgo any realist view of the individuals they take as their subjects. The artist seems to be causing all sense of natural time to collapse – in such a way as to stress that of absolute time. He attains a balance between life and death that is characteristic of photography but also of portraiture, whereby what counts is not the reality or the life of a subject, but the latter’s value as an image in itself, beyond time and everyday life.

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs convey a conceptual attitude aimed at stripping images down to their bare essence, thus emphasising the primacy of the idea over the object portrayed. His famous marine landscapes and dioramas express a view of photography as a sort of time machine – a way of preserving or constructing memories and emotions.

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japan, b. 1948) Pope John Paul II 1999 (installation view)

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japan, b. 1948)
Pope John Paul II (installation view)
1999
Black and white photograph
Courtesy Rosa e Gilberto Sandretto
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japan, b. 1948) 'Pope John Paul II' 1999

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japan, b. 1948)
Pope John Paul II
1999
Black and white photograph
Courtesy Rosa e Gilberto Sandretto
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japan, b. 1948) 'Fidel Castro' 1999 (installation view)

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japan, b. 1948)
Fidel Castro (installation view)
1999
Black and white photograph
Courtesy Sonnabend Gallery, New York
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japan, b. 1948) 'Fidel Castro' 1999

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japan, b. 1948)
Fidel Castro
1999
Black and white photograph
Courtesy Sonnabend Gallery, New York
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

 

 

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