Exhibitions & events - September
The most noteworthy event of this month is of course the European Photobloggers Meetup in Berlin, which starts this Friday. A few of us are heading there, but don’t worry if you’re not going, because there is still plenty to visit in London as well.
The Photographers’ Gallery
5 & 8 Great Newport Street, WC2
Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar - from 13th September
For this project Simon assumes the dual role of shrewd informant and collector of curiosities, compiling an inventory of what lies inaccessible, hidden and out-of-view within the borders of the United States. She examines a culture through careful documentation of diverse subjects from across the realms of science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature, security, and religion. Transforming the unknown into a seductive and intelligible form, Simon confronts the divide between those with and without the privilege of access.
Taryn Simon’s elegant but unsentimental images identify her as a central figure within a new generation of American photographers.
From Emperor To Military Dictator: Shemelis Desta’s Ethiopian Archive - from 13th September
Against the political and historical events that defined the twentieth century, Shemelis Desta recorded the tumultuous history of Ethiopia. For the first time in a major exhibition the key figures and moments he captured are revealed.
From the early 60’s until deposition Desta was Haile Selassie’s, Emperor of Ethiopia 1930 – 1974, official court photographer. During this time he took photographs of State leaders, including a youthful Queen Elizabeth II, paying their respects.
Following the infamous 1974 military coup and subsequent deposition of the Emperor, Desta continued to record government activity under the rule of the military dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam. Desta captured the colourful pageantry of state military processions as well as a state visit from Fidel Castro.
This exhibition not only celebrates the power of the documentary photograph and the discovery of such a monumental archive, but also the story of a very personal journey and a country that is rich in culture, tradition and history.
Pumphouse Gallery
Battersea Park, SW11
Anything You Want - until 14th October
Anything You Want is a group show highlighting some of the most innovative approaches to contemporary photographic practice by three international artists: Walead Beshty from Los Angeles, Anne Collier from New York and Annette Kelm from Berlin. For both Beshty and Kelm this will be the first substantial presentation of their work in the UK. Diverse in their approach, subject matter and techniques – which include hand-processed photograms and aura photography – all of the artists investigate with both rigour and playfulness the unique properties of the medium, as well as having dialogues with other media such as painting, sculpture, performance and film. Highly conceptual, many of the works reference historical photographic precedents, resulting in compelling images that defy easy categorisation and are laden with complex visual codes.
National Portrait Gallery
St. Martin’s Place, WC2
Daily Encounters: Photographs From Fleet Street - until 21st October
This exhibition will draw upon the rich and relatively neglected surviving archives of newspaper photography to tell two parallel stories - one of a powerful industry with an internal culture of its own, and the other of the often uneasy relationship that grew between public figures, the photographic press and the wider population of readers. Placed within the context of the National Portrait Gallery, the exhibition will explore the pictorial depiction, through newspaper photography, of Britain and Britishness, the creation of new forms of celebrity, and the scripting and constant redrafting of the rules of engagement between photographers, editors and the subjects of their insatiable gaze. Newspaper photographs of politicians, jockeys, gangsters, models and actors will be interwoven with images of the industry itself; the owners and editors, newsrooms and printing presses, photographers and journalists as they hunted and gathered stories, both alone and in packs.
21st Century Portraits - until 28th October
The sixteen photographs in this display reflect the wide variety of contemporary photographs recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. Each year the Photographs Collection acquires approximately 200 new photographs, from a cross-section of professional image-makers, which range from personal projects to commissioned works.
The majority of portrait photographs offered to the National Portrait Gallery have originally been commissioned by magazines and newspapers. John Reardon’s award winning photograph of thirteen chefs posed in a tableaux resembling Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper was commissioned for the Observer Food Monthly and has been reproduced many times in other periodicals. This print is in an edition of thirteen.
In contrast, Ghanaian-born Sal Idriss is undertaking a personal project to photograph black British people that are recognised for significant achievement in their professions. His portrait of Sokari Douglas-Camp is one of twenty that the Gallery has collected to date. 1960s model-turned photographer, Jill Kennington, is currently undertaking a personal project photographing her contemporaries, one of which is the designer Margaret Howell.
James Hunkin has recorded prominent people from different fields in a series of collections. His previous collections include theatre people for the Royal National Theatre (1997), religious leaders (Faces of Faith, 1997) and a collection of leading scientists, commissioned by NESTA for Science Year. (2001), examples of which are represented in the collection. The group of six artists shown here is part of a large ongoing commission by the Royal Academy to record all living Royal Academicians.
In The Making: Fashion and Advertising - until 14th October
This exhibition showcases images by leading English fashion and advertising photographers Elaine Constantine, Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton Jones, Alexi Lubomirski, Sølve Sundsbø and Paul Wetherell. Each exemplifies a particular approach to working in the industry such as composition, digital platforms, working with celebrities, the studio and natural light published in magazines.
Audiences readily recognise the faces and products that fashion photographers popularise, but rarely know them by anything other than their picture credit. Together with their work, this display features a specially-commissioned portrait of each photographer by London-based image-maker Immo Klink with quotes from interviews about individual working methods to further reveal the processes of how these team driven images are created.
Diana, Princess of Wales - from 14th July
Marking the tenth anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, this display brings together a diverse range of portraits of the princess by photographers including Lord Snowdon, David Bailey and Mario Testino. Drawn from the Gallery’s Collection, this display covers the years from her engagement to the Prince of Wales in 1981, to her last public charitable campaign in 1997.
The wedding of The Prince and Princess of Wales took place at St Paul’s Cathedral on 29 July 1981. When Patrick Lichfield’s official photographs of the occasion were reproduced globally, no one could have predicted to what extent the ‘fairy-tale’ princess would capture the world’s imagination. The portraits in this display show the development of Diana’s image from a shy teenager to the glamorous and sophisticated woman she became, one of the most photographed in the world.
Atlas Gallery
49 Dorset Street, W1
Documenting Style: 60 Years Of Fashion Photography From Magnum Photos - from 14th September
It may come as a surprise that an agency traditionally associated with Photojournalism, features a wealth of fashion photography in its archive. Dating back to Werner Bischof’s poised studio portraits from the 1940s, and Eve Arnold’s early 1950s documentary of a Harlem fashion show, it includes Ferdinando Scianna’s long-term engagement with the genre and work from Magnum’s “Fashion Magazines” by Martin Parr, Bruce Gilden and Alec Soth, between 2005 and 2007.
Flowers East
82 Kingsland Road, E2
‘Says The Junk In The Yard’ - until 8th September
As issues of cultural ephemerality and man-made waste rise ever higher up the social agenda, this year’s summer show at Flowers East takes ‘junk’ as its theme. The works in this exhibition examine our attitudes to the objects that we discard and the value systems that we create, to demonstrate how art can focus these assumptions through a different optic.
The featured artists - who include major figures from post-war and contemporary art in addition to emerging talents on the international scene - confront this timely and contentious subject from a number of angles. Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of recycling plants in the Zhejiang Province of China make visible the human cost and environmental impact of our twenty-first century obsession with excess. Commenting further on the malignant effects of materialism, David Hughes’ ‘Untitled (Conveyor Belts)’ is a visual statement of the blot we have created on our landscape, whilst Derek Boshier’s ticket series shines a light on the minutiae of our culture of disposability.
Following the lineage of Duchamp, a number of the artists take up the discourse of the found object to explore how seemingly redundant matter can be re-substantiated with aesthetic value. Jessica Stockholder’s work commands contemplation of objects we normally perceive as carrying little significance. Graham Hudson scavenges junk to create absurd assemblages on a mockingly aggrandised scale, and Peter Blake presents us with carefully curated cabinets of kitsch that, in another context, would appear as clutter.
Whilst it is the concern of some of the artists to appropriate junk as their medium, others cite it as their visual goal. By producing work that affects the appearance of the outcast or expendable, these artists disorient the viewer and upturn traditional systems of value. Gavin Turk’s deceptive bronze replica of a sleeping bag, entitled ‘Nomad’, juxtaposes notions of the marginal and itinerant with the literal and symbolic weight of its medium. Susan Collis’ ‘Better Days’, a dustsheet apparently splattered with paint, reveals itself on closer inspection to be a form of blank canvas, painstakingly embroidered with technicolor thread.
The title of the exhibition is taken from a lyric in the Beatles’ song ‘Junk’, which was written at the time of The White Album but omitted from the final recording. Widely considered as a critique of consumerism and capitalist decadence, the song’s critical thrust and flair for cultural commentary - together with it’s ‘discarded’ status - make it a fitting reference point for a show that seeks both to explore the boundary between aesthetics and excess and blur the line of demarcation between the object and the abject.
Victoria & Albert Museum
Cromwell Road, SW7
The Art Of Lee Miller - from 15th September
Lee Miller is one of the most renowned female icons of the 20th century - a unique individual admired as much for her free-spirit, creativity and intelligence as for her classical beauty. This exhibition will cover her extraordinary career as a photographer and is the first complete retrospective of her life and work, exploring her transformation from artist’s muse to ground-breaking artist.
Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, Miller began her modelling career on the cover of American ‘Vogue’ before meeting Man Ray in Paris in 1929. She became both his lover and muse and under his guidance started to produce her own imagery.
Curtis Moffat: Experimental Photography and Designs, 1923-1935 - until 13th January
Curtis Moffat created dynamic abstract photographs, innovative colour still lives and some of the most glamorous society portraits of the early 20th century. He was also a pivotal figure in Modernist interior design. Moffat’s archive, containing over 1,000 photographic prints and negatives as well as press cuttings, scrap books and ephemera, was generously donated to the V&A in 2007 by Penelope Smail. The donation is celebrated by featuring some of its highlights in this display. It also acts as a starting point to study Moffat’s pioneering but hitherto little-known work in more depth.
Spitz Gallery
109 Commercial Street, E1
Steve Hollinghead: EVENT - from 6th until 24th September
Steve Hollingshead returns to the Spitz with the next phase of his epic London Wall Project - an exploration of a city in celebration.
His candid black and white photographs of Londoners taking part in a kaleidoscope of free outdoor events, capture the spirit, energy, creativity and cultural diversity of the capital. They offer a unique and personal insight into this teeming metropolis and present an upbeat view of city life.
The photographs are much more than a record of an event or spectacle. They focus on the emotional content and humanity in these collective moments and illustrate the communal desire to celebrate and to creatively embrace the environment, ultimately presenting a positive take on the urban experience .
Event focuses in closer detail on selected festivities from the London Wall portfolio with additional recent celebrations – the increased number of ‘alternative ‘ and eccentric gatherings and the creative groups, organisations communities behind them.
Proud Galleries – Central
Buckingham Street, WC2
The Daily Telegraph and Currys ‘Our Lives’ Photography Competition - until 8th September
On display will be photographs from the 45 finalists from five categories — Our People, Our Places, Our Environment, Our Lives in Motion, Our Events. The overall winner will be chosen by the acclaimed photographer, David Bailey.
Photofusion
17a Electric Lane, SW9
Lesley McIntyre: Time Of Her Life - until 29th September
When photographer Lesley McIntyre’s daughter Molly was born in 1984, it was revealed she was suffering from a muscular abnormality and the doctors thought it was highly unlikely she would survive more than a few weeks or months, most likely never leaving the hospital. In spite of this, McIntyre did take her home and Molly lived until her fourteenth birthday. However, in all of this time, her condition was never properly diagnosed.
Before the birth, McIntyre assumed she’d be able to combine her career as a photographer with being a parent. She did achieve this, but not in the manner she anticipated. Grounded in domestic life and unable to pursue the commissions she might have done had her child been more robust, McIntyre began recording the details of the day to day and found observing childhood fascinating. The first pictures were taken shortly after Molly’s birth and the last a few days before she died at home in South London. Because of the precarious nature of Molly’s life, the photographs have an extraordinary poignancy.
Molly’s is a story that crosses all barriers of race, class and gender. Any family, at any time or anywhere in the world can find themselves confronted by the reality of disability. Having spent years fighting so that her child would not be socially and educationally marginalized by her physical disability, McIntyre is fully aware of how resistant many people are to engaging with such subject matter. This is not confined to disability alone – but to death, and in particular child death.
Michael Hoppen Gallery
3 Jubilee Place, SW3
Matthew Pillsbury: LONDON - from 12th until 29th September
Further to his photographs of the unseen world of the iconic museums and attractions in New York, we are delighted to announce the second UK exhibition of work by Matthew Pillsbury - LONDON.
Freezing the passage of time is the camera’s most conventional trick. American artist, Matthew Pillsbury, takes this further and his photographs capture the experience of time, both physically and psychologically. Utilizing his definitive style of natural light and long exposure these new images capture the human traffic through the extraordinary and unseen spaces of London’s business and cultural institutions and private rooms. The figures are absorbed in and illuminated by, back-lit displays and incidental lighting. Transitory and shadow-like as they pass against the permanence of the surroundings; the diverse environment and architecture of London.
AOP Gallery
81 Leonard Street, EC2
Jerry Oke (1952-2006) - 28th & 29th September
Jerry Oke’s last entry for the annual AOP Awards in 2006 won him a Silver, for his stunning series of ads for Dunhill Accessories, shot on 10×8 film on his favourite old Deardorff plate camera. He was quietly very pleased that his work could still create a stir after thirty years in the photography business. His sudden death in July last year robbed the industry of one of its best known and well-liked characters, as well as a great talent.
This two-day exhibition brings together some of the best of Jerry’s personal and commissioned images, some film, some digital, and illustrates the breadth of his creativity and artistry.
AOP OPEN 2007 - until 26th September
In it´s eighth year, the Association of Photographers OPEN competition goes from strength to strength and continually surprises with the originality and creativity of the work on show. This year the judges were faced with a record number of entries to search for outstanding imagery,the highest standards being met in all genres. The AOP OPEN offers a rare opportunity for amateurs, emerging photographers and established professionals to contend on a level playing field.
AOP Members Showcase - until 19th September
AOP members have been invited to exhibit their work at Home Bar in collaboration with the AOP Gallery. Following a great response from members an eclectic mix of imagery from six AOP members will be on show from June 19th 2007 for a minimum of three months. Members taking part are: Judith Katz with two separate series of works, one of which won a Bronze in the Still Life section of this years Photographers’ Awards. Anthony Marsland, with a new stunning series inspired by Ashtanga-yoga. Edward Webb with part of his series of black and white images from the Greek Island of Ikaria. Chris Gascoigne, showcases one of his images taken from a series of eleven banal scenes photographed in incredible detail using a unique process. Minimal compositions of both interiors and lifestyle are bought to us by Andy Eaves, while Jon Hall showcases two contemporary Camera-Less photographs.
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