Exhibitions & events - May
Also in the month of May there is lots to see in the galleries around London.
The Photographers’ Gallery
5 & 8 Great Newport Street, WC2 (www)
Once More, With Feeling - until 15th June
Once more, with feeling explores the interwoven themes of memory, repetition and performance found in each artists’ work. Using video, photography and performance, the artists explore all aspects of life in Colombia – from the violent internal conflict to the humour, youth and playfulness of this troubled country.
Milena Bonilla’s photographs document the colourful remnants of her anonymous performances of sewing torn seats on buses throughout Bogotá.
María Elvira Escallón’s photo installation of the aftermath of a nightclub bombing is a lasting memorial to the 36 lives lost in the Colombian capital of Bogotá.
Juan Pablo Echeverri’s passport photos are the result of his daily visits to a photography studio. Accumulating over seven years this ongoing – perhaps lifelong – work uses both repetition and performance.
Juan Manuel Echavarría’s videos include recordings of songs composed by country dwellers displaced by violent events and massacres, and also the witty interplay between two parrots taught to repeat endlessly the words war and peace.
Oscar Muñoz revives a forgotten archive of street photographs depicting everyday life in the city of Cali during the 1950s, 60s & 70s. In his video Re/trato he repeatedly attempts to draw a self-portrait in water on a hot pavement, but as the water evaporates the impossibility of his task becomes frustratingly evident.
María Isabel Rueda’s black & white photographs document young Colombian Goths, a group of young people united in silent resistance to what is considered ‘normal’ Colombian lifestyle.
In Focus: Running Late - until 15th June
Ever waited for a haircut? This display features photos of Soho by Cuts hair salon clients, taken in early 2008, who were handed a camera while waiting for a cut and style. Cuts staff also took to the streets with cameras during their down time.
The resulting photographs present a view of Soho you may have never seen before – in turns mysterious, baffling and full of quiet, reflective moments.
Proud Galleries - Camden
Stables Market, N1 (www)
Mike Figgis: Glenmorangie 5 Senses - from 14th until 27th May
The exhibition will encompass a dynamic selection of images inspired by Glenmorangie and the 5 Senses. Sexy and stylish, these images really make an impact and push the boundaries of fashion and photography in Mike’s trademark digital style. The exhibition will run exclusively for just two weeks and is set to ignite and invigorate the senses with large, imposing images that entice the viewer.
Mike Figgis is a writer, director, composer and photographer. His film ‘Leaving Las Vegas, starring Nicholas Cage and Elisabeth Shue, was nominated for five Academy Awards in 1994. Throughout his prolific career, he has worked on feature films, documentaries and photography projects with such luminaries as Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Francis Ford Coppola, Vivianne Westwood and Kate Moss. Famous for his inventive use of technology new and old, his first book of photographic stills ‘In the Dark’ allowed him to explore how digital cameras could produce stunning, multitextured images – a theme that has continued through his work.
Michael Hoppen Gallery
3 Jubilee Place, SW3 (www)
The New York School - until 7th June
Between the late 1930s and the early 1960s a group of young photographers living and working in New York City redefined street photography. This group of artists became known as The New York School.
These photographers documented the post war energy and exotic chaos of New York City as it evolved from the crisis years of the Great Depression and the Second World War through to the social turbulence of the early seventies. Most of them worked on magazines but it was their personal work that stood them apart. They captured the choreography of the city from the sidewalks of downtown, to the intensity of Times Square, the isolation and elegance of the architecture and the mass of humanity at Coney Island. Many of the New York School identified with the values of film noir, stylish low-key black and white images with a certain moral ambiguity. Their style utlilised the methods of documentary journalism, small cameras, available light and a sense of the fleeting and candid and yet they rejected the anecdotal descriptiveness of most photojournalism.
Many had attended workshops at Richard Avedon’s studio often taught by their mentor Alexei Brodovitch, who had totally re-invented photography, design and layout within the confines of Harpers Bazaar magazine. Many went on to become legendary in their chosen fields of photography.
Alex Prager: The Big Valley - until 12th May
Cinematic and darkly playful, The Big Valley is a series of highly saturated staged portraits by Los Angeles based artist, Alex Prager. For her first solo UK exhibition this entirely new work will be shown alongside photographs from her high-successful Polyester series.
Prager photographs her female subjects in a style reminiscent of the great mid 20th Century film directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk. Amongst the naivety of her compositions and colour palette there is the suggestion of impending narrative. Similar to old style movie stills displayed outside cinemas, Prager’s photographs offer us stories that encourage us to imagine what happens before and after, beyond the edge of the frame. Often shot from an unexpected angle and unusually lit, the audience are positioned as voyeurs. Synthetic wigs, fake birds and retro costumes are meticulously planned and her models cast as players frozen in the narrative. On the surface these models appear polished and eerily near perfection, an artificial perfection racked with tension. Like Guy Bourdin, the king of photographic mise-en-scène, Prager demands more than simply a ‘pretty picture’.
Magnum Photos Print Room
63 Gee Street, EC1 (www)
Steve McCurry: Asia - until 16th May
McCurry, best known for his iconic image of the Afghan girl with the piercing green eyes, recently published the book ‘In The Shadow Of The Mountains’ (Phaidon, 2007) where a large majority of portrait and landscape images in the exhibition have been sourced.
This exhibition features a large selection of images from Afghanistan, a country which has always held a fascination for McCurry and is where he first established his photographic career. He has since returned many times and always favours longer term projects where he can engage with his subject matter.
McCurry has a distinctive visual language; his photographs are contemplative and his style is based on strong compositions, direct portraiture and jewel-like colours. He is able to find beauty within the rubble of a Kabul landscape and expresses a celebration of racial diversity through his acclaimed portraiture.
Tate Modern
Bankside, SE1 (www)
Street & Studio: An Urban History Of Photography - from 22nd May
It presents a fascinating history of photographic portraiture taken on the street or in the photographer’s studio, looking at the differences between these two key locations in which photographers work. Street & Studio brings out the contrast between the photos taken in the carefully orchestrated studio, and images captured in the changing and uncontrollable street, whilst highlighting the crossovers between the genres and their influence on each other.
Over 350 striking works are gathered in this stylish exhibition, by some of the world’s most famous and important photographers including Francis Alÿs, Diane Arbus, Cecil Beaton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Rineke Dijkstra, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Norman Parkinson, August Sander, Cindy Sherman, Malick Sidibé, Paul Strand, James Van der Zee, Juergen Teller and Wolfgang Tillmans. Focusing on photos taken in buzzing cities, with their cosmopolitan cast of hipsters, businessmen, beauties and criminals, Street & Studio builds an engrossing urban history of photography, ranging from early black-and-white pictures from the late 1800s, to elegant fashion photography from the mid twentieth century, to cutting-edge portraiture by contemporary artists.
Hoopers Gallery
15 Clerkenwell Close, EC1 (www)
Gilbert Garcin: Tout Peut Arriver - until 23rd May
Gilbert Garcin creates photomontages which provide the settings (often absurd) for his fictional ‘Mr Everyone’.
There is a humour and universality about his work that immediately enables the viewer to relate to various human predicaments.
Critics have described his artistic vision as surrealist,but Garcin feels this is only true in terms of his vision of absurdity. He relates far more strongly to Magritte than to Dali.
Proud Galleries – Central
Buckingham Street, WC2 (www)
Ali Folio - until 11th May
An intimate portrait of Muhammad Ali as seen through the lens of internationally acclaimed photographer Sonia Katchian. The only collection of its kind, this exhibition is the most intimate photographic portrait of Ali ever seen, shot all over the world alongside his family, friends and close travelling companions. 30 years since he won his third and final World Heavyweight Championship, these images celebrate the world’s favourite sporting hero at the pinnacle of his career.
Host Gallery
1 Honduras Street, EC1 (www)
Adam Hinton: Lovin’ It - from 9th May
Hinton’s new work from Shanghai documents the emergence of an aggressive consumer society in which the new proletariat of “communist” China comes to terms with living under the surreal haze of fluorescent lights and the constant gaze of advertising images.
The vivid colour photographs echo the nascent metropolis’ energy and explore the subtle interchange between the city framework and people who populate it. From commodity fetishism to impressions of personal nostalgia, Hinton’s work has dramatically drawn out the personal hope, dreams and struggles of the people of a 21st century metropolis.
White Cube Mason’s Yard
25-26 Mason’s Yard, SW1 (www)
Gregory Crewdson - until 24th May
In this latest body of work, shot over the past three years, the artist continues to explore the lush and ragged edges of small-town America. While much of his earlier work focused on character and drama, Crewdson now shows a greater awareness of atmosphere and setting.
Gregory Crewdson shot these photographs in and around the same town in upstate Massachusetts, but the scenery varies widely, from leafy summer landscapes to stark, ghostly interiors and – a first for the artist – austere winter scenes. The surroundings and minor details – the light of a distant interior, the glow from a TV set, a highlight on a patch of muddy snow – are essential elements in the picture’s composition, as forceful and significant as any figure. The stillness depicted in each photograph suggests a suspension of everyday life, and yet any hint of narrative or action is deferred by a mood of mystery and incompletion. A man pauses on a wet road in the hazy light of dawn and looks at a modest house; the shopping cart he pushes and the objects it holds are probably his only possessions. A semi-naked couple rest, in post-coital lassitude, surrounded by luxuriant green, with mist rising from the river running in the background. The atmosphere is tactile and moist, the light a substance that seems to cling to the leaves and bodies that occupy the space. The summer photographs bring to mind American realists such as Edward Hopper and Walker Evans, filtered through the damp, saturated colours in the work of eighteenth-century French painters such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Jean-Antoine Watteau. The importance of David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock are evident in the interiors, which have an otherworldly intensity, and paralysis haunts the winter scenes. Overall, Crewdson’s vision of everyday America is one of disconnection and belatedness.
National Portrait Gallery
St. Martin’s Place, WC2 (www)
Underexposed - until 8th June
The 4 The Record Initiative was set up to address issues of cultural diversity through innovative and creative partnerships and interventions. The philosophy is to engage as many people as possible with the success stories and experiences of individuals who have played a part in promoting cultural diversity in the United Kingdom. Underexposed is the initiative’s response to the necessity of raising the profile and celebrating the immense talent and achievements of black Britons.
In the first in the series of Underexposed artistic interventions and exhibitions, photographer Franklyn Rodgers was commissioned, with the support of Decibel and Arts Council, England, to make portraits of thirty black actors including Earl Cameron, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Colin Salmon and Ashley Walters. These photographs have been used as the basis of a LCD screen installation featured in the Ondaatje Wing, Main Hall at the National Portrait Gallery. The film loop also contains a personal quote from each sitter that provides an insight into their personal approach towards their life and art.
Bryan Adams: Modern Muses - until 15th June
Historically, the term ‘muse’ refers to the Greek goddesses who represent the arts and inspire the processes of creation. The twenty-one subjects chosen as Modern Muses are a selection of outstanding women from different fields of achievement including the arts, charities and business photographed at differing points in their careers.
Canadian-born Adams has established himself as a leading photographer after many years as a successful rock singer and recording artist. He published a book of portrait photography for Calvin Klein called American Women (2005) and has had his work published in magazines such as i-D, British Vogue and Vanity Fair.
Vanity Fair Portraits - until 26th May
Throughout its history Vanity Fair has helped define the public persona of some of the most influential individuals from the worlds of music, sport, fashion, business, literature politics, theatre, cinema, and the arts. Vanity Fair Portraits brings together portraits of cultural icons from the magazine’s vintage and modern periods with sitters ranging from Claude Monet, Amelia Earhart and Jesse Owens to David Hockney, Arthur Miller and Madonna, displayed with legendary Hollywood actors from Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo to Demi Moore and Tom Cruise.
This is a unique opportunity to see 95 years of iconic imagery by some of the most renowned photographers of the twentieth century, including Baron De Meyer, Edward Steichen, Man Ray and Cecil Beaton, as well as portraits by celebrated contemporary photographers such as Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino, Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts.
Shutting Up Shop - until 4th May
In 1972, photographer John Londei started taking pictures of small independent shops the length and breadth of Britain. Often family-run businesses, well-established in their local communities, Londei strove to capture the timeworn presence of these already anachronistic businesses the butchers and bakers, button makers, cobblers, fishmongers and chemists of our high streets. Over a fifteen-year period, he photographed 60 shops. In 2004, when he retraced his steps and revisited the shops he’d photographed, he found that only seven of the 60 were still in business. His subsequent book of the series, Shutting Up Shop is a fitting tribute to Britain’s independent retailers.
Atlas Gallery
49 Dorset Street, W1 (www)
Harry Gruyaert: TV Shots - from 7th May
Harry Gruyaert made photographs of distorted TV images, covering events such as the 1972 Munich Olympics to produce a distressed parody of the current affairs photostory. The work created controversy when exhibited (at the Robert Delpire Gallery in Paris in 1974), with its disrespectful assault on the culture of television and its radical challenge (both formally and in terms of content) to the conventions of press photography. Gruyaert views the work as the closest thing to journalistic photography he has ever made.
George Rodger: African Portraits - until 3th May
A founding member of Magnum Photos, in 1947, George Rodger made his name during the Blitz in London; and through his work documenting Monty’s Desert Rats’ struggle against the Axis armies in Africa, for Life magazine, in 1941. His enduring passion remained Africa, where he returned in 1947, embarking on a two-year long, overland journey from Cape Town to Cairo, with the intention of photographing the wild-life, and, also, wanting to explore something of Man’s inseparable relationship with nature. He visited Nigeria, Uganda, and Lamberene in Gabon, photographing, from the high hills of Basutoland to the remote Nuba villages of Kordofan in Southern Sudan, the little known, day-to-day existence of the tribal peoples in this part of South and East Africa. Rodger gained unprecedented access to the Nuba tribe and the Masai warriors in Kenya; first publishing his extraordinary pictures in National Geographic in 1951. Africa remained a major preoccupation for Rodger for the rest of his life. He died in 1995.
AOP Gallery
81 Leonard Street, EC2 (www)
AOP Photographers Awards 2008 - until 15th May
The winners of this year’s AOP Photographers Awards.
Photofusion
17a Electric Lane, SW9 (www)
Gimme Some Credit - until 10th May
Scarlett Crawford’s dramatic, staged photographs explore themes of how we view people, particularly young people, from ethnic and low economic backgrounds living within the urban environment. The issues that affect these people and the trauma they experience – both in reality and through the media – often have a secondary impact on the rest of society. Often using cinematic visual codes within her documentary style approach, Crawford asks us to consider whether the way her subjects are represented, and in turn viewed, perpetuates the problems further. The exhibition will also include photographs from her previous series ‘Same Shit, Different Day’ which were published in Tank and Vice magazines.
Changing Spaces - from 16th May
Changing Spaces brings together five photographers whose work addresses the changing nature of urban space. The exhibition reflects on a range of visual styles, narratives and research methodologies drawing on documentary, fine art and landscape practices, in order to investigate how urban space is constructed through the perceptions, intuitions and apperceptions of the visual artist located within, and responding to the city.
Simon Rowe’s photographs, part of a larger project about the Pepys estate, present a portrait of a South East London housing estate as it moves into a new era. The project reflects a sense of the multiplicity of human and social relationships against a backdrop of social change and regeneration.
Gregor Stephan’s practice addresses urban and rural spaces in transformation based on economic revaluation, more specifically addressing questions of aesthetics in relation to economic change in urban and rural structures. His work in this exhibition focuses on Berlin – Schönefeld airport, which will become one of Germany and Europe’s largest airports within the next ten years.
Mandy Lee Jandrell’s photographs, taken within the parameters of constructed leisure environments such as theme parks and zoos, highlight the discord between the aspirational or idyllic nature of their design and the points at which those aspirations are broken down by reality.
Isidro Ramirez’s interest stems from differences in sensory perception. Sighted people are often unaffected by some visual aspects of their world. Using photography, Ramirez tries to expose this paradox by illuminating the spaces in which blind people live and work.
Laura Braun photographs social and public spaces devoid of the presence of people. This project about Downtown Los Angeles has it’s beginning in the fiction written about the city but it seems that time has forgotten it. There is a sense of absence and stillness, as if Downtown was suspended somewhere above the rest of the city.
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