Allan Sekula, Waiting for the Tear Gas, Tate Modern

Recently one of Sekula’s works has been exhibited in the Tate Modern as part of the Transformed Visions exhibition (2013) that explores the new kinds of expressive abstraction and the ongoing presence of the human figure; as well as the wider responses to violence and war. Waiting for the Tear gas chronicles emerging forms of Global Activism. 

The exhibition consists of 81 images taken during the widespread protests against the world trade organisation Ministerial Conference held in Seattle, 30^th November 1999. The series is presented as a 16 minuet slide sequence as well as also featuring as a contribution of 32 printed images in the book 5 Days that Shook the World, Seattle and Beyond, the both challenge the standard procedures of photojournalism, whilst documenting the fragmented collectivity that has come to define an era of mass social movements.

Sekula’s work is situated within a deep political context using both photography and the written word as mediums to create a multi-level critique of late capitalism. His works make critical contributions on questions of the social reality and globalisation, “The imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world”. What is impressionable in this particular series of images, is the human aspect, the multiplicity of the activists of the global justice movement, this is an aspect that is usually lacking from visual representations of globalisation. 

 

Bertien Van Manen, Lets sit down before we go

19th March- 24th June 2012 FOAM Amsterdam

As you walk into the exhibition space you are immediately immersed into imagery, as if you had stumbled into someone’s personal photo album littered with pages concealing memories. The exhibition comprises of over 60 photographs created between 1991 and 2009 of Van Manen’s travels though Russia, Moldavia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Tatarstan and Georgia all shot using a small 35mm camera. The use of basic photographic equipment is what really makes this series of work successful, creating not only intimacy, but a sense of equality between subject and photographer. "She stayed for long periods with the people she met on her travels, learned their language and usually became friends with them.  This produced intimate and sometimes tender photos resulting from a personal and sincere relationship. In Bertien van Manen's humanistic approach, photographer and subject are equals and the mutual respect is palpable."

There is a strong sense of reflection in this collection of photographs, this is also suggested in the title of the exhibition, Let's sit down before we go, refers to an old Russian custom: before you leave on a journey, take a moment to think about where you come from, where you are going and why.

Book reviews

So recently, I have picked up a few new books, so naturally I thought I would put a review of them on my blog.

 

My personal favorite is The Clearing by Ori Gersht. This elegant, beautifully illustrated publication presents three ambitious series of works. The forest has been seen traditionally as a dark place, and a place of dark deeds, and this is certainly true of the area surrounding Kolomyia, in Ukraine, where these works were made. It was here that appalling atrocities were perpetrated by the Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators upon the local Jewish population, Gersht's, father, father-in-law, and brother amongst them. It is in this personal connection that can be found the genesis of this work, a meditation upon memory and meaning. This book with an essay by Jeremy Millar, explores the representation of history and catastrophe in photography, film and literature, and the possibility or impossibility of bearing witness to such events.You could find yourself staring at these photographs for hours on end, reflecting and developing your own interpretations of the works. It is certainly easy to find yourself lost within the pages.

Published by Film and Video Umbrella, in association with CRG Gallery, New York, Angles Gallery, Los Angeles, Noga Gallery, Tel Aviv and Andrew Mummery Gallery, London. With additional support from University College for the Arts at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester.

Review Jane Bown: Exposures

Jane Bown had been taking portraits for the Observer newspaper since 1949 and in that time has photographed everyone from Bertrand Russell to the Beatles to Samuel Beckett to the Queen. Working almost exclusively in black and white and with an absolute economy of means her portraits are immediately recognizable and many have become classics of the genre.

The exhibition consists of over fifty photographs from her sixty year carrer, featuring remarkable portfolio of portraits of a range of public figures and popular culture icons, including previously unpublished photographs. Bown captures soft, delicate portraits often depicting true character and reflective moments not seen by the public, however each photograph is strong and impacting. Her consistant style was reflected through exhibition, it flowed through six decades of consistant, yet unique, monochrome digital prints on fibre based baryta paper in the same size and frame format, making sixty years of work feel united as one piece of work.

Bowns work has a beautifull sense of silent communication between subject and observer, this may be a result of her simplistic style, and pressense in the photographs.

Sinead O Connor

Samuel Beckett 1976

"Exposures shows why Jane Bown is so well regarded by both other photographers and her subjects. It shows her work as expressive and capturing nuances of her subjects’ character without technique and the photographer’s style getting in the way. Exposures shows simplicity of style and soundness of technique that is so difficult to achieve without it intruding. Exposures shows Jane Bown as the mistress of her art and it speaks for her better than mere words ever could."

Forward by Luke Dodd and David Bailey

Jane Bown: Exposures is a free exhibition and will be running at The Gallery, at Winchester discovery center running from 23rd March untill 20th May  

If you are interested in the life and work of Jane Bown here is a video from the exhibition by the guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2009/oct/22/jane-bown-exposure-photography

You can also purchase Jane Bown: Exposures http://www.amazon.co.uk/Exposures-Jane-Bown/dp/0852651414/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334422620&sr=1-1

Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton at the Victoria and Albert

This week I have also visited the V&A to see the Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton marking the Queen's diamond Jubilee. It was not an exhibition I would personally choose to see myself, but a interesting experience and insight into the royal world and the work of Beaton.

The small exhibition of around 100 photographs was as much a note of the photographic icon Beaton as much as the celebration of the Royals. However although I felt the exhibition had a certain charm as well as celebrating a historic landmark, to me i did feel that it lacked any true depth.

Captured through the lens of a Rollieflex Beaton offers us some intimate exposures of the Royal life through a collection of portraits by Beaton taken from 1939 to 1968 as a contribution to the Queen's diamond jubilee. The narrative follows Princess Elizabeth through adolescence, motherhood and eventually monarchy. Early portraits of the Queen Mother depict a fairy tale atmosphere with beautifully painted scenic backdrops inspired by the french painter Fragonard. They are portraits of elegance, grandeur and prosperity, demonstrating Beaton's talents as a photographer and set designer. 

Ori Gherst: This Storm is what we call progress

Ori Gersht’s first solo British exhibition is located in the inspired setting of London’s Imperial War Museum, co-curated by Photo Works head of programme Celia Davies the visually and conceptually stunning exhibition is comprised of three sections, including photographs, film installations and text. “This storm is what we call progress” entitled after Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by famous German- Jewish literary critic Walter Benjamin, re-examines our relationship with debris after past events. Drawing inspiration from the second world war and using photography as a metaphor for history, Gersht explores the representation of past and present and the links and ruptures between physical traces, cultural symbols and memories in a visually sublime manner.”I am interested in the formal tension that exists between brutal violence and delicate and poetic beauty. Often in those extreme moments of violence there are enchanting pockets that are crucial for our survival as human beings” (Ori Gersht, 2012). 

Night Fly 1 Chasing Good Fortune 

Upon entering the exhibition you are immediately immersed by the magnificent print “Against the tide: Isolated” from the series of photographs “Chasing Good Fortune”. The series explores notions of the shifting symbolism of the Japanese Cherry Blossom. With its early links to Buddhist concepts of renewal, Gersht translated this idea into the field of conflict and photographed clusters of Cherry Blossom at sites in Hiroshima where trees grew in contaminated soil. Gersht spent time photographing its presence at memorial sites. The photographs push the technical boundaries of photography, taken at night in low light conditions, many of the photographs present reality in a different way to our own mundane experiences. As a result they adopt a disjointed and textural quality; Gersht describes this “As a return to the atomic particles of the image”. This destructive quality acts as a reflection of Gersht’s interest in the tensions between brutal violence and poetic beauty. The aesthetic beauty of this series of photographs transcends into the meanings behind them. 

A series of transcendent prints from “Chasing good fortunes” guide you around the space until subsequently, you are faced with the first dual channel film Evaders. The film follows the ill-fated journey of Walter Benjamin through the “Lister Route” in his endeavour to escape Nazi-occupied France. As you enter the dim room you are primarily greeted by a haunting monologue taken from Benjamin’s last text “A Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.” ( Walter Benjamin 1968).The two screens of the film are divided into a close up figure walking towards us showing human struggle, and the right, the figure walking away through beautiful diverse landscape fading in and out of our view. What is impressive about the film is that it does not create a sentimental nor historical account of the event.

Concluding the exhibition is the third section, Will you Dance for me? The second dual screen film in the exhibition features an elderly Israeli woman, Yehudit Arnon as she recounts the experience of being a young woman in Auschwitz and the consequences of refusing to dance at an SS Officer's Christmas party. As punishment, Arnon spent the night standing barefoot in the freezing snow. That night night, she vowed that if she were ever to leave Auschwitz alive, she would dedicate her life to dance, and she did. The split screens create a beautiful juxtaposition of the light physical space of the landscape and the dark physiological space of the room, as we watch Yehudit constantly drift in and out of a pool of light, gracefully rocking such as her dance, we are reminded of a frail woman, whose strength is faded but her spirit remnants. The falling snow provides a melancholic beauty, disguising the brutality of her story. It provides a powerful finale to the exhibition, reminding us of the strength of the human spirit that is an integral part of our survival.

What is most interesting about the exhibition is how it explores without literal depictions of war; instead it provides a deeper and intricate interpretation. One of the strongest points is that the exhibition still resonates the pain and destruction of war, Gersht has approached the matter with sensitivity and sincerity yet avoiding any possible romanticisms of conflict, this is also reinforced through the setting of the Imperial War museum providing a poignant reminder of the true grit and struggle of war. In conclusion Ori Gersht’s “This Storm is What We Call Progress” is a complex, compelling and powerful interpretation of past anguish, and how we cannot heal the past, but enhance our understandings and not loose sight of what we have learnt.

http://www.iwm.org.uk/exhibitions/ori-gersht-this-storm-is-what-we-call-progress
http://www.mummeryschnelle.com/pages/gersht.htm

Here is a fantastic insight into the exhibition by Ori Gersht and PhotoWorks.

War Story: Serving in Afghanistan IWM

War Story at the Imperial War Museum is an innovative project which records the experiences of male and female servicemen in the British Armed forces. As well as collections of objects and stories from tours in Afghanistan, the exhibition also includes a Series of Photographic series of portraits of the participants in the War Story project. As the photographs were initially intended as an administrative record of the collecting process, our photographers adopted an approach intended to produce consistency and conformity. However, the resulting photographs instead highlight the variety and individualism of the subjects.

As you walk into the exhibition space, you immediately absorbed by the larger than life portraits, all shot using a systematic approach. The methodical and almost clinical approach of the series has emphasized each soldiers individuality that is typically absent through the uniformity of the armed forces. 

What is most compelling about this series is the direct gaze of the subjects, Richard Ash has been incredibly successful in creating intimacy and discourse between subject and viewer. Each portrait is as intriguing as the last. Overall the exhibition is an insightful look on life serving in Afghanistan. 

http://www.richardashphotography.co.uk/

http://www.iwm.org.uk/

David Cotterrell Monsters of the Id Exhibition Review

Apparent Horizon

Influenced by Cotterrell's two year experience in the Helmand Province, Afghanistan, Monsters of the Id explores representations of war and the media. Cotterrell spent the first year of his creative journey taking photographs of the war torn country however he started to become discontent with this way of creating, describing it as "photography's false promise"

 Apparent Horizon, 2012

Searchlight 2, 2012

What is interesting about this exhibition is the use of advanced display technologies, it is on the cutting edge, bridging art and technology. Each installation is not only interactive with the audience, there is a communication between each other, creating a complex network. The use of technology in this exhibition also allows you to be in control of your own engagement. I started to find the technology an intimidating presence and a possible reflection of the control and technology of the military. 

Immediately, in the first installation Observer effect, you are  imersed in a landscape that cross's the physical and virtual, creating and unnerving and alien world. It explores the notion of the foreign body, and as a population of figures grow before you, unsettling questions rise. Are you the observer or the observed? These notions are carried with you throughout the exhibition. The installation Searchlight 2 reveals projected shadowy figures crossing a desert terrain, I feel that this piece connotes a sense of displacement within the landscape, of those effected by war. This installation felt particularly intimidating to me as we are now possibly observing this landscape from the perspective of an aerial drone, are we in control? 

Short  video of the installation Searchlight 2

Overall I feel that Monsters of the Id provides an innovative perspective on war effected regions.

Image credit and more information here : http://www.hansardgallery.org.uk/exhibition/current.html

David Cotterrell : http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4511/monsters-of-the-id-110212/

Monsters of the Id will be at the John Hansard Gallery from the 11th Febuary - 31st March 2012

Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize

As part of our Representation module we went on a trip to The National Portrait Gallery to see the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize.This year there was a total of 6,000 entries by over 2,500 photographers, selected down to an exhibition of sixty portraits. Overall I wasn't blown away by the range of work, I think that a lot of the portraits were very safe and there was nothing in particular that really demanded my attention. However there were a few images that I did find thought provoking. 

  

Oliver, Kelvin Murray 

Kelvin Murray's portrait Oliver, really draws you in, it's intriguing and quirky. Oliver's family won a photoshoot from this distinguished photographer, the catch being that Murray would have complete creative control. The results are phenomenal.   

Paolo Patrizi - Anna

What I found compelling about Paolo Patrizi's Anna, is it plays loosely with the term portrait, we can not see her face or read any expression, and I feel that this alone made it stand out from the other entries. The narrative of the photograph makes it even more powerful, as we find out that Anna is a migrant Nigerian prostitute working in a field by the side of a road in Italy.

Erica E. Born In 1910 by Karsten Thormaehlen

What to me is striking about this portrait by Karsten Thormaehlen , is the way is demands your attention, you can not avoid her gaze. It is strong and empowing, yet the lighting and colour pallet creates a sense of softness. Each line and contour of her skin seems defined revealing character. This portrait is part of a series depicting people at 100 who are not suffering. 

The exhibition runs from the 10th November 2011 until the 12th February 2012.  


http://www.npg.org.uk/photoprize1/site11/index.php

Don McCullin at Tate Britain

'Photography isn’t looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures" Don McCullin. 

The exhibition consisted of around 50 black and white, silver gelatin prints, displayed, in three categories.The exhibition is quite refreshing in the sense that it avoids McCullin's well regarded war photography, taking a broader view of his lifelong career. The photographs depict the impoverished, the homeless, the underprivileged. 

The first selection of photographs depicts Berlin, in 1961. A city troubled by the uncomfortable coexistence of military occupation and everyday life. A little girl held in the arms of her mother eyes the artillery lying across the cobbles. A woman leans casually alongside a tank parked on the street of the gritty metropolis as the wall is going up. There is a lot of looking and staring going on.

We then move from East Berlin to East London: the harsh reality of life for the poor in post-war Britain is unveiled. A homeless filthy Irishman looks you straight in the eye and there is no way you can escape the human connection. That is what McCullin does, he looks at people with dignity and not in a clichéd kind of way, he captures their essence and lets their eyes meet your eyes. 

There is so much going on in these photographs it’s perplexing: sadness, courage, hope, admiration, melancholy, confusion. The latest sequences show eloquent rural landscapes. During his later career McCullin distances himself from the image of war photographer. These landscapes are reflective spaces, but with as much dark undertone and subjectivity as his previous works. 

Don McCullin is on at the Tate Britain until 4th March 2012