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Review: ‘Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang’ at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 31st July – 31st October 2010

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) 'Vale Street' 1975 from the exhibition 'Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang' at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July - Oct 2010

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Vale Street
1975
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of the Philip Morris Arts Grant, 1982
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

“A face tells the story of what a person is thinking. The eyes reveal the suffering.”

Carol Jerems

Time and Truth: Looking again at the work of Carol Jerrems

This is a solid exhibition of the photographs of Carol Jerrems at Heide Museum of Modern Art, accompanied by small selections of the work of Larry Clark and William Yang and the sequence The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1979) by Nan Goldin.

I like Jerrems work: it is strong, frontal, direct and truthful. What I dislike is the hagiography that has grown up around this artist, the mythologizing of Saint Jerrems. We don’t need a saint of Australian photography; what we need is an appreciation of the artist, the person and her legacy. While the personal history of this artist is well known – facing depression, putting herself in danger, sexually active, documenting the counter-culture sharps and skinheads and urban indigenous people, the photographing of women and her death at far too young an age – few people actually look at the photographs clearly.

Most of the photographs are 8″ x 10″ prints, mainly portraits, that are usually dark and contrasty, small and emotionally intense. Jerrems images are made full frame (the modernist conceit of filing out a negative carrier, so that if the negative was printed full frame there would be a black border around the picture) to avoid cropping in the darkroom. This shows good previsualisation by the artist, the composition of the image made at the time of the exposure. There is a closeness to the framing of the portraits and a conversant ambiguity about all of her backgrounds – mainly low depth of field, anonymous places (perhaps a brick wall or a close up of a street corner). In fact it is difficult to pin down any actual place in her photographs unless you are told in the title of the work. The contextlessness of her backgrounds allows the viewer to focus on the people placed before her lens and here Jerrems gets up close and personal, trying to capture the truth of her subjects, their soul (in this sense she is like Diane Arbus, thrusting her camera into places it was not supposed to go until something gives – the subject gives up, drops the mask, even if just for a split second, and click, the artist has their image). The mainly head and shoulders photographs of women are most impressive in this regard as Jerrems portrays the women’s strength and vulnerability as are the photographs of the artist herself in hospital fighting her debilitating illness, the most moving, emotional photographs in the exhibition.

Other photographs show constructed intimacies between people, the camera and the artist. In Esben and Dusan, Cronulla (1977, above), Jerrems uses the yin yang black, white background to frame the two protagonists, bringing forward the body of Esben in the right portion of the frame and letting Dusan recede into the darkness. In Boys (1973) two bodies are photographed in a bed, legs and arms entwined but the print is so dark that you would never know they were two boys unless you were told – and this adds to a sense of mystery, the imaging of the most beautiful, sensitive, abstract embrace. Mark Lean with Arms Crossed (1975) shows a cocky, self-assured Lean staring directly at the camera as though it were not there, as though he were conversing directly with Jerrems, the camera an extension of the artist capturing his brave-aura: one camera, one lens, one vision. If you study the contact sheet for the photograph Vale Street (1975, above), Jerrems eventually draws the central luminous figure forward in the frame to create the now iconic image while the two acolytes hover, brooding and menacing in the darkened background.

As Kathy Drayton has observed, “Her photographs engage the viewer in an intimate relationship with her subjects. It’s not always a friendly intimacy – sometimes her subjects look defensive, irritated or even menacing, but you always sense that you’re seeing beyond the mask into the soul.”1

Jerrems saw herself as a serious photographer; if something happened she felt she should be commenting on it. She was also quite naive but always pushed herself and her art into sometimes dangerous places. She would have thought ‘how do I say something that is true’ and her endeavour, which is also constructed, was seeing things in terms of opportunities for a good photograph. Jerrems removed the safeguards; she got right in there among her volatile characters, her potential sexual predators: let’s just see what happens when the safety fence goes down. Although I believe there is a lack of really good photographs that Jerrems made (what I call highlight pieces, namely the iconic Vale Street, Mozart Street, and Mark and Flappers all 1975, see photographs below) there is a consistency to her work and how it exemplifies an exchange that takes place between the artist and the world. What I would call “a good deal.”

When looking at art, one of the best experiences for me is gaining the sense that something is open before you, that wasn’t open before. I don’t mean accessible, I mean open like making a clearing in the jungle, or being able to see further up a road, or just further on. And also like an open marketplace – where there were always good trades. There is the feeling that if you put in a certain amount of honesty, then you would get something back that made some room for you in front – some room that would allow you to look forward, and maybe even walk into that space. Seeing Jerrems work gives you that feeling.

Jerrems had the power to draw themes together, to ramp up the intensity, to empower her photographs and she was possibly on the way to becoming the things that people now say she was, but her early death curtailed this journey. Her photographs have social significance and photographic integrity and evidence time in the visible – the time in which Jerrems took them, the 1970s, and the truthfulness of her self and her style. I would have loved to have seen Jerrem’s response to the film still work of Cindy Sherman, the layering of the Sherman personas and the challenge to the feminist critique. As it is Jerrems photographs are very frontal in today’s terms and, because of her early death, she lacked the opportunity to interact with the development of more complex theories. The layers present at the time are now conflated into seemingly one layer, supported by back stories and obfuscation that clouds the work – it’s naked frontality and boldness. This obfuscation formalises her legacy into mythology.

Jerrems work does not need this. She struggled with her art, to get the best out of herself and her visualisation, to step into those spaces that I mentioned earlier. What we need is an appreciation of the time of her endeavour and the truthfulness of her art. To say that the work achieved fulfilment is to deny the importance of her death.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Drayton, Kathy quoted in Wilmoth, Peter. “The ’70s stripped bare,” on The Age website. July 17th, 2005. [Online] Cited 05/10/2010

Many thankx to Jade Enge and Heide Museum of Modern Art for allowing me publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on all of the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Carol Jerrems. 'Mozart Street' 1975 from the exhibition 'Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang' at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July - Oct 2010

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Mozart Street
1975
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of the Philip Morris Arts Grant, 1982
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Mark and Flappers
1975
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of James Mollison, 1994
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Sharpies
1976
Gelatin silver print
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Dusan and Esben
1977
Gelatin silver print
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Flying Dog
Nd
Gelatin silver print
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Butterfly Behind Glass
1975
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems, 1981
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Evonne Goolagong, Melbourne
1973
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems, 1981
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

Featuring the exceptional talent of four photographers whose images capture people, places and events with candid intimacy, Up Close traces the significant legacy of Australian photographer Carol Jerrems (1949-1980) alongside that of contemporary artists Larry Clark (USA), Nan Goldin (USA) and William Yang (Sydney). According to Guest Curator Natalie King, ‘Up Close takes its inspiration from the way each artist candidly depicts a social milieu and urban life of the 1970s and early 1980s’. Sharing an interest in sub-cultural groups and individuals on the margins of society, each artist reveals a remarkable capacity to provide an empathetic glimpse into semi-private worlds through intimate depictions of people and their surroundings.

Newly discovered prints by Jerrems are included as well as rare archival material from Jerrems’ family and previously unseen out-takes from Kathy Drayton’s documentary film, ‘Girl in the Mirror.’ It is 30 years since Jerrems’ death and 20 years since the first and only survey of her work was presented. Jerrems’ photographic practice was associated with a feminist and political imperative; as she put it: ‘the society is sick and I must help change it’. This exhibition uncovers Jerrems’ preoccupation with people and their environment, subcultures, forgotten and dispossessed groups, especially Aboriginal communities of the time.

Larry Clark unflinchingly turned the camera onto himself and his amphetamine-shooting coterie to produce Tulsa (1971), a series of photographs repeatedly cited for its raw depiction of marginalized youth. This significant publication and photographic series influenced Goldin and a generation of artists who aspired to break with the more traditional documentary modes. With its grainy shot-from-the-hip style, Tulsa exposes a world of sex, death, violence, anxiety and boredom capturing the aimlessness and ennui of teenagers.

First shown at Frank Zappa’s birthday party in 1979 at the Mudd Club in New York, Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency has evolved to be an iconic work of its time. Goldin’s snapshot aesthetic is evident in this immersive installation of close to 700 slides full of saturated colour and intimate framing accompanied by a soundtrack. Mining the emotional depths of her friends, lovers and family, Ballad signals a riveting intimacy whilst uncovering the bohemian life of New York’s Lower East Side. Goldin says, ‘I was documenting my life. It comes directly from the snapshot, which is always about love…’

William Yang’s photographs from the 1970s further the snapshot aesthetic through journeying into the intimate world of his particular social milieu: drag queens, Sydney gay and inner-city culture. Yang’s direct, unpretentious photographs provide a unique chronicle of marginalised groups especially as he put it: “… people who are gay, who were invisible, who were too scared to come out. During gay liberation people became visible, people became politicised, and there was a Mardi Gras that was a symbol of the movement.”

Up Close reveals how photographic practices provide an empathetic glimpse into semi-private worlds with close up depictions of people and their surroundings.

The accompanying publication provides for the first time an in-depth account of Carol Jerrems’ work alongside that of her peers and will feature a number of newly commissioned essays. Edited by Natalie King and co-published by Heide and Schwartz City, it will be available at the Heide Store from 31 July.”

Press release from the Heide Museum of Modern Art website

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Juliet Holding Vale Street
1976
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems 1981
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Lynn
1976
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of the Philip Morris Arts Grant 1982
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

Larry Clark (American, b. 1943)
Untitled
1979
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 1980
© Larry Clark
Image courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

Larry Clark (American, b. 1943)
No Title (Billy Mann)
1963
from the portfolio Tulsa
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 1980
Image courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

William Yang (Australian, b. 1943)
Peter Tully, Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras
1981
Gelatin silver print
edition 2/10
40.4 x 27cm
National Library of Australia
Courtesy of the artist

Heide Museum of Modern Art
7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen, Victoria 3105

Opening hours:
(Heide II & Heide III)
Tues – Sun 10.00am – 5.00pm

Heide Museum of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance & the Camera’ at Tate Modern, London

Exhibition dates: 28th May – 3rd October 2010

Many thankx to Rose Dahlsen and the Tate Modern for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)  'Untitled (Atlanta)' 1984 from the exhibition 'Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance & the Camera' at Tate Modern, London, May - Oct 2010 from the exhibition 'Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance & the Camera' at Tate Modern, London, May - Oct 2010

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Untitled (Atlanta)
1984
Dye transfer print  9 7/16 x 14 5/16 in. (23.97 x 36.35cm)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
© The Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Jonathan Olley. 'Golf Five Zero watchtower (known to the British Army as 'Borucki Sanger'), Crossmaglen Security Force Base, South Armagh' 1999 from the exhibition 'Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance & the Camera' at Tate Modern, London, May - Oct 2010

Jonathan Olley (British, b. 1967)
Golf Five Zero watchtower (known to the British Army as ‘Borucki Sanger’), Crossmaglen Security Force Base, South Armagh
1999
Gelatin silver bromide print
Coutesy Diemar/Noble Photography, London
© J.Olley

Philip-Lorca diCorcia (American, b. 1951)
Head #23
2001
From the Head series

Examining photography as an invasive act immediately confronts the complacency with which we accept these invasions, encourage them even in our curiosity, and though it falters in parts and overwhelms in others (this is a huge exhibition), EXPOSED successfully addresses a number of the social, cultural and psychologically motivating factors behind these kinds of images – why we take them and why we look at them. Critical to this engagement is the wall text at the beginning, which states that most of the hundreds of photographs on display were taken without the subject’s knowledge. It is a distinctly creepy start.

Philip-Lorcia diCorcia’s Head series perhaps best embodies this conundrum. Visually they are not terribly shocking or even necessarily interesting. Theatrical lighting catches the head of someone in a crowd and the effect is of a staged encounter. In fact, these people, denominated variously as Head #23 or Head #4, were photographed without their knowledge by a series of hidden cameras, the flash triggering as they walked by. Famously, one of diCorcia’s unwitting targets tried to take legal action against him but the landmark ruling defended the artist and his right to self-expression over any right the subject might have over their own image. It is difficult to know which is worse – to be censored or to be spied upon.

Jo Higgins. “Review: Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance & the Camera, Tate Modern, London,” on the Jo Higgins website, July 5, 2010 [Online] Cited 22/03/2025

Benjamin Lowy (American, b. 1979)
Iraq Perspective II
2003-2007

US soldiers go on a late night raid with Iraqi Sunni Concerned citizens leading the way and identifying potential AQi targets. Due to a high level of IEDs in the area the company size raiding party walked 5 kilometres to the target in complete darkness, raided the target houses, detained questionable suspects and walked 5 kilometres back to waiting humvees.

Sophie Calle (French, b. 1953)
The Hotel, Room 47 (L’Hôtel, Chambre 47)
1981
2 works on paper, photographs and ink
2140 x 1420 mm
Tate
Presented by the Patrons of New Art through the Tate Gallery Foundation 1999

This is a two-part framed work comprising photographs and text. In the upper part, the title Room 47 is printed below a colour photograph of elegantly carved wooden twin head-boards behind a bed covered in rich brown satin. Below it, three columns of italic text are diary entries describing findings in the hotel room between Sunday 22 February 1981 and Tuesday 24. In the lower frame a grid of nine black and white photographs show things listed in the text above. This work is part of a project titled The Hotel, which the artist has defined:

“On Monday, February 16, 1981, I was hired as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks in a Venetian hotel. I was assigned twelve bedrooms on the fourth floor. In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and observed through details lives which remained unknown to me. On Friday, March 6, the job came to an end.” (Quoted in Calle, pp. 140-141.)

Each of the twelve rooms gave rise to a diptych of similar structure following the occupancy of one or more guests during the period of the artist’s employment at the hotel. Some rooms feature more than once as a second set of guests occupied them, giving rise to a total of twenty-one diptychs in the series. Calle’s descriptions of the hotel rooms and their contents combine factual documentation along with her personal response to the people whose lives she glimpsed by examining their belongings. Each text begins with the chambermaid / artist’s first entry into the room and a notation of which bed or beds have been slept in, with a description of the nightwear the guests have left. A list of objects usually follows, as the artist transcribes her activities in the room. Calle is unashamedly voyeuristic, reading diaries, letters, postcards and notes written or kept by the unknown guests, rummaging in suitcases, and looking into wardrobes and drawers. She sprays herself with their perfume and cologne, makes herself up using the contents of a vanity case, eats food left behind and salvages a pair of women’s shoes left in the bin. Outside the room, she listens at doors, recording the occupants’ conversations or any other sounds she may overhear, and even peers into a room when the floor-waiter opens the door to catch a glimpse of the unknown guests.

The absent occupants described in Room 47 are a family of four – two parents and two children – as revealed by their four pairs of slippers. Calle does not go through their suitcase, commenting: ‘I am already bored’. From their passports she discovers that the parents are a married couple from Geneva and she copies out four postcards one of them has written. Words on one of these hint at problems within the family.

Calle began her artistic projects in 1979 on returning to Paris after seven years’ travel abroad. Disorientated, she felt like a stranger in her own city, not knowing how to occupy her time. She started to follow random passers-by and spend her days as they did. Eventually she picked up the camera she had been experimenting with during her time abroad and photographed the strangers, writing diaristic notes of their movements. From this she has developed a particular way of working, collecting information about people who are absent and investigating her subjects like a detective. The Hotel follows directly from a project the artist undertook the previous year entitled Suite Venetienne 1980, which evolved from a chance encounter with a man she had been following in Paris. He told her he was going to Venice, so she followed him there in disguise, documenting her observations. After a year of planning and waiting, she returned to Venice in 1981 as a chambermaid.

The Hotel diptychs were produced in an edition of four in English and four in French. Tate’s copy of Room 47 (22 February) is the first in the English edition. Another version of Room 47 exists for the period 2-6 March.

Elizabeth Manchester
June 2005

Text from the Tate website [Online] Cited 26/12/2019

Unknown photographer
Bain News Service, publisher
Mrs. Wm. Thaw, veiled, on street, White Plains, N.Y.
1909
From a glass negative
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

Tom Howard (American, 1894-1961)
[Electrocution of Ruth Snyder, Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York]
1928
Gelatin silver print
Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase

In 1925, Ruth Snyder, a housewife from Queens, New York, took a lover, Judd Gray, a corsetmaker from upstate. Already married to Albert Snyder, an arts editor at MotorBoating magazine, she hid the affair for nearly three years. But on March 12, 1927, she and Gray planned a murder. After taking out a forged insurance policy, the two killed Ruth’s husband and staged a burglary scene. It didn’t take long for law enforcement to connect the dots, and a few months later, Gray and Snyder found themselves charged with first degree murder.
The court case was front page news and both Ruth and Judd found themselves constantly photographed for ever-evolving stories. Sing Sing, not one to change policy for press, reinstated that no photographers were to be present at the execution. But the public wanted to see.

The New York Daily News knew that the prison was familiar with many journalists from their staff, so they hired someone from out of town, Tom Howard, a then-unknown local photographer from the Chicago Tribune. Knowing he would never be allowed in with a camera, Howard strapped a single-use camera to his right ankle and wired a trigger release up his pant leg. Remarkably, he was allowed in. From across the room, Howard pointed his toe at the chair and took but one photo as Snyder took her last breaths.

The camera was rushed to the city and the film developed overnight. Editors and writers marveled at what was to be one of the most shocking photographs ever made: Snyder in the chair, the legs of the prison guard to the right. The image, shot on an angle, was cropped and published immediately with the headline: Dead!

The black-and-white image was shocking to the U.S. and international public alike. There sat a 32-year-old wife and mother, killed for killing. Her blurred figured seemed to evoke her struggle, as one can imagine her last, strained breaths. Never before had the press been able to attain such a startling image – one not made in a faraway war, one not taken of the aftermath of a crime scene, but one capturing the very moment between life and death here at home.

Erica Fahr Campbell. “The First Photograph of an Execution by Electric Chair,” on the TIME website, April 10,2024 [Online] Cited 24/03/2025

Erich Salomon (German Jewish, 1886-1944)
Hague Conference (Second Hague Conference on Reparations, January 1930, in the early morning hours)
1930
Promised gift of Paul Sack to the Sack Photographic Trust of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Henri Cartier Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Hyeres, France
1932
Gelatin silver print

Ben Shah (American, 1898-1969)
Post Office, Crossville, Tennesse
1937
Gelatin silver print

Ben Shahn visible using his right-angled lens in the window reflection

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Subway Passengers, New York
1938
Gelatin silver print

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Subway portrait' 1938-1941

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Subway Passengers, New York
1938-1941
Gelatin silver print

Weegee (Arthur H. Fellig) (American, 1899-1968)
Their First Murder
Before 1945
Gelatin silver print

“Brooklyn School Children see Gambler Murdered in Street
Pupils were leaving P.S. 143, [Sixth Ave. and Roebling St.] in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, at 3:15 yesterday when Peter Mancuso, 22, described by police as a small time gambler, pulled up in a 1931 Ford at a traffic light a block from the school. Up to the car stepped a waiting gunman, who fired twice and escaped through the throng of children. Mancuso, shot through the head and heart, struggled to the board and collapsed dead on the pavement. Above are some of the spectators. The older woman is Mancuso’s aunt, who lives in the neighborhood, and the boy tugging at the hair of the girl in front of him is her son, hurrying away from her. Below is what they saw as a priest, flanked by an ambulance doctor and a detective, said the last rites of the Church over the body.”
PM Daily, October 9, 1941, Vol. II, No. 82, p. 15

Text from the International Center of Photography website

Weegee (Arthur H. Fellig) (American, 1899-1968)
Audience in the Palace Theatre
c. 1943
Gelatin silver print
© Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images

Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (American born Austria, 1899-1968)
[Lovers at the Movies, Times Square]
c. 1953
Gelatin silver print
26.7 × 35.4cm (10 1/2 × 13 15/16 in)
© International Center of Photography

Robert Frank (American, 1924-2019)
New York City
1955
From The Americans
Gelatin silver print

Tazio Secchiaroli (Italian, 1925-1998)
Anita Ekberg and Husband Anthony Steel, Vecchia, Roma
1958
Gelatin silver print
SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase

Abraham Zapruder (American born Ukraine, 1905-1970)
Assassination of John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963
1963
Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase
© The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

United Press International
Suffolk, Virginia, Race Confrontation, May 6, 1964
1964
Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase
© United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
New York City
1966
Gelatin silver print

Vito Acconci (Italian, 1940-2017)
Following Piece
1969
Gelatin silver prints

Exposed offers a fascinating look at pictures made on the sly, without the explicit permission of the people depicted. With photographs from the late nineteenth century to present day, the pictures present a shocking, illuminating and witty perspective on iconic and taboo subjects.

Beginning with the idea of the ‘unseen photographer’, Exposed presents 250 works by celebrated artists and photographers including Brassaï’s erotic Secret Paris of the 1930s images; Weegee’s iconic photograph of Marilyn Monroe; and Nick Ut’s reportage image of children escaping napalm attacks in the Vietnam War. Sex and celebrity is an important part of the exhibition, presenting photographs of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, Paris Hilton on her way to prison and the assassination of JFK. Other renowned photographers represented in the show include Guy Bourdin, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philip Lorca DiCorcia, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, Lee Miller, Helmut Newton and Man Ray.

The UK is now the most surveyed country in the world. We have an obsession with voyeurism, privacy laws, freedom of media, and surveillance – images captured and relayed on camera phones, YouTube or reality TV.

Much of Exposed focuses on surveillance, including works by both amateur and press photographers, and images produced using automatic technology such as CCTV. The issues raised are particularly relevant in the current climate, with topical debates raging around the rights and desires of individuals, terrorism and the increasing availability and use of surveillance. Exposed confronts these issues and their implications head-on.

Text from the Tate Modern website [Online] Cited 21/09/2010 no longer available online

Kohei Yoshiyuki (Japan, b. 1946)
Untitled
1971
From the series The Park
Gelatin silver print

Sandra Phillips on Surveillance – Exposed at Tate Modern

SFMOMA’s Curator of Photography Sandra Phillips describes how contemporary artists like Sophie Calle and Benjamin Lowry have started to talk back to surveillance.

Ron Galella (American, b. 1931) 'What Makes Jackie Run? Central Park, New York City, October 4, 1971' 1971

Ron Galella (American, 1931-2022)
What Makes Jackie Run? Central Park, New York City, October 4, 1971
1971
Gelatin silver print
7 3/8 in x 9 7/8 in (18.73 x 25.08cm)
© Ron Galella

Ronald Edward Galella (January 10, 1931 – April 30, 2022) was an American photographer, known as a pioneer paparazzo. Dubbed “Paparazzo Extraordinaire” by Newsweek and “the Godfather of the U.S. paparazzi culture” by Time magazine and Vanity Fair, he is regarded by Harper’s Bazaar as “arguably the most controversial paparazzo of all time”. He photographed many celebrities out of the public eye and gained notice for his feuds with some of them, including Jacqueline Onassis and Marlon Brando. Despite the numerous controversies and claims of stalking, Galella’s work was praised and exhibited in art galleries worldwide.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Couple Kissing, Girl Staring at Camera, Tortilla Factory, New York
1969
Gelatin silver print
© Garry Winogrand/Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Nan Goldin (American, b. 1953)
Nan and Brian in Bed, New York City
1983
Chromogenic print
Nan Goldin and Matthew Marks Gallery, NYC

Denis Beaubois (Mauritian, b. 1970) 'In the event of Amnesia the city will recall…' 1996-1997 (still)

Denis Beaubois (Mauritian, b. 1970)
In the event of Amnesia the city will recall... (still)
1996-1997
DVD
9 mins 30 secs
Courtesy the artist

Denis Beaubois (Mauritian, b. 1970)
In the event of Amnesia the city will recall… (still)
1996-1997
DVD
9 mins 30 secs
Courtesy the artist

Alison Jackson (English, b. 1960)
The Queen plays with her corgis
2007
From the series Confidential
Chromogenic print
Courtesy the artist and Hamiltons Gallery, London
© Alison Jackson, Hamiltons Gallery, London

Giuseppe Primoli (Italian, 1851-1927)
Edgar Degas emerging from a Parisian public toilet
1889
Gelatin silver print

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Street Scene, New York' 1929

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Street Scene, New York
1928
Gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Georges Dudognon (French, 1922-2001)
Greta Garbo in the Club St. Germain, Paris
c. 1950s
Gelatin silver print
7 1/16 x 7 1/8 in. (17.94 x 18.1cm)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Members of Foto Forum, 2005.200
© Estate of Georges Dudognon

The face in the paparazzi image above is actually The Face: Greta Garbo. One of the most famous and admired women in the world, Garbo became a New York recluse after retiring from films at the beginning of the 1940s. Sightings of her were rare, and this 1950s image captures the conflict between a movie star’s public persona and private life. Now older and with her face obscured, Garbo is unrecognisable, but once understood to be her it becomes a contrasting reference to all those images of her as an icon of beauty and stardom.

Christian Hayes. “Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera,” on The Classic Film Show website, June 15, 2010 [online] Cited 24/03/2025

Weegee (Arthur H. Fellig) (American, 1899-1968)
[Marilyn Monroe]
c. 1950s
Gelatin silver print
International Center of Photography, New York, Gift of Wilma Wilcox, 1993
© Weegee / International Center of Photography / Getty Images

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
And Warhol
1969
Gelatin silver print

Shizuka Yokomizo (Japanese, b. 1966)
Stranger No. 1
1998
Chromogenic print
50 x 42 1/2 in. (127 x 108 cm)
© Shizuka Yokomizo

Shizuka Yokomizo (Japanese, b. 1966)
Stranger No. 2
1998
Chromogenic print
SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase
© Shizuka Yokomizo

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Review: ‘Intimacy’ at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 7th October – 30th November, 2008

The exhibition includes works by Louise Bourgeois, Nan Goldin, Steve McQueen, Sophie Calle, Mariele Neudecker, Jesper Just, Gabrielle de Vietri, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mutlu Çerkez, Amikam Toren, Margaret Salmon and Annika Ström

Sophie Calle (French, b. 1953)
Doleur exquise
1984/1999

Set up by Frank Gehry and Edwin Chan
Exhibition view at Rotonde1, Luxembourg, 2007

An eclectic mix of mixed media, photography and video work is presented in this exhibition. The work examines concepts of intimacy – staged performances, stories of the city, of men, women, families and children; the artists “contemplate passion, love and longing, as well as feelings of disquiet, loss, and loneliness that embody intimate human relations.”

The show exudes a certain melancholia and is troubling in many aspects: loneliness, separation, desire for intimacy, desire for love all being expressed through the presented works. Some of the works are strong but others left me cold and uninterested. Few are joyous renditions of the closeness of intimate relations and most works ponder the dangers and disillusionment of failed intimacies that involve feelings of vulnerability (intimate acts often involve a degree of self-disclosure where intimates show something of themselves that may make them feel vulnerable), ambiguity (intimate acts are often an ambiguous and incomplete shared and often idiosyncratic view of the world) and secrecy (intimate acts are private: they are often constructed, by their participants, to be hidden from the view of others).1

The large work by English artist Steve McQueen features two naked black wrestlers shot in slow motion in grainy black and white video. The wrestlers are photographed from the waist down, images of moving legs, or from below, bodies clinging together, faces grimacing in a hyperreal performance of some hypnotic intimate dance – an acted out state of being.

Amikan Torren’s 2008 video work is by comparison is about the improbabilities of life’s daily encounters: in Downstairs over a video image of 3 steps outside a London railway station the narrator tells of a man, a stockbroker who after an accident sometimes needs help descending steps; in Blind the narrator comments on a person helping a blind man across the street; and in Carrots, over a video image of a London street the narrator tells a story about an adolescent and fresh carrots! The musings on the synchronicity and serendipity of everyday encounters are very effective.

Jesper Just’s two video works No Man Is An island II (2004) and The Lonely Villa (2004) were very effective and moving. In the first lonely men in a pub sing the Roy Orbison song Crying with pictures of naked ladies behind them – it is funny and sad at the same time. In the second men in the shadows sit or stand with telephones in front of them: two men sing to each other the song I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire with close-ups of their lips singing into the telephone: songs of loss, longing and remembrance.

The two most interesting pieces are not video works, nor are they the overrated photographs of Nan Goldin featuring photographs of a family hugging and lying on a bed, but the work of two women: Sophie Calle and Louise Bourgeois.

In Doleur exquise (exquisite pain) Calle revisits fifteen years later the breakup of a relationship and the aftermath of that event: the distress and pain, the experiences of her friends in such circumstances and turns them into brilliant insightful art. A selection of the whole work is presented here that features colour photographs (multiples of a red telephone, abandoned car with it’s doors open, washbasins and empty bedrooms) above text woven onto linen – black on white, grey on grey. The texts are both painful and repetitive (Calle’s on the left) and others heartbreaking accounts of pain (on the right): “6 days ago, the man I love left me …”

(For an insightful analysis of this work see Can Pain Be Exquisite? Autofictional Stagings of Douleur exquise by Sophie Calle, Forced Entertainment and Frank Gehry and Edwin Chan by Anneleen Masschelein. “On the one hand, it deals with the most intense, acute experiences of pain in a human life. On the other hand, these moments are unique and “localised”, that is, they are connected to a concrete time and space, of which the details are forever inscribed in memory.”)

My favourite work from the show is Louise Bourgeois 10AM IS WHEN YOU COME TO ME (2006) – drawings on music paper of mainly red hands, the key a drawing of a 10am clock with a man the big hand with hands extended drawing towards him (or is it tethered to him) an armless woman, the small hand. Some have seen these as “ambiguous images of a hermetic cosmos, as acts of violence or love” but they represent “both Bourgeois’s hands and those of her friend and muse Jerry Gorovoy” and how he helps her and arrives at her studio at this, the designated hour.

To me they are joyous, liberating, spontaneous expressions of love and intimacy, fingerprints on the page, hands intertwining together. They made me feel the intimate expression of humanity: holding a babies hand, so small and vulnerable and feeling them grasp your hand. That connection is what Bourgeois achieves with this work and I thought it was wonderful.

This exhibition is no easy ride but is well worth the contemplation necessary to tease out the themes and feelings that the work investigates.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Steve Howard, Frank Vetere, Martin Gibbs, Jesper Kjeldskov, Sonja Pedell, Karen Mecoles, Marcus Bunyan, and John Murphy. Mediating Intimacy: Digital Kisses and Cut and Paste Hugs. 2004.