It's rare that I come across a photography show which I haven't heard about. But that's what happened today. On my way back from Tate Modern I popped into the Purdy Hicks gallery. And there... was a little gem.
It's Bettina von Zwehl's new work, a series of miniatures made while on a residency at the V&A museum. Inspired by original miniatures, von Zwehl took photographs of the assistants of the museum, facing a window which emits a glowing yellow light. One particular work, Made up Love Song, is a series of 32 miniatures of the same woman, Sophia, an assistant at the museum. Shot in exactly the same position, two or three times a week, on first looking the photographs appear exactly the same. On closer inspection, slight differences become apparent, as time passes, light changes and the relationship between sitter and subject develops over the six months.
There are single portraits of other assistants too; all women, all photographed in the same way and in the same location. The resulting photographs are so peaceful, so timeless. And there is something about seeing photographic miniatures in an industry which seems so obsessed with enormous images. These objects are precious, each one a little treasure. This gives them a status similiar to the painted miniatures back in the 16th, 17th century, used amongst the wealthy classes as a form of introduction; fathers would send miniatures of their daughter to possible suitors for example. The dagurrotype eventually replaced the painted miniatures, and I can't help feeling that this exhibition brings this history full circle...
The exhibition is on til the 7 November, and it is not one to be missed. Go see!
Today I went to Tate Britain with my Dad... the John Martin show is dramatic and a little kitsch; the 19th century version of the Hollywood film. But the poster and the surrounding abstract design on the stairs inspired some colourful portraits...
For a while now I've wanted to write about the subject of photography and death, but have struggled to find a context with which to write. The theme has been on my mind for the last month for a number of reasons...
Firstly, I am organisng an exhibition at Photofusion (which opens next week, on 22 September) featuring two photographers whose work is concerned with the death of a parent. When André Penteado's father committed suicide, he picked up his camera and took pictures... of the funeral, of his journey to and from the funeral (which was in Brazil), and then for a year later in the form of a visual diary. Striving to have one last physical contact with his father, André took photographs of himself wearing his father's clothes, eyes closed, pensive, on a stone grey background. He then took pictures of the left over empty hangers.
The other photographer is Joachim Froese, who has made quite a few bodies of work following the death of his mother, and the possessions she left behind. The work he will show at Photofusion is from Archive, a study of what happens to possessions once they have been taken out of context; when his mother's belongings were sent to him in Australia, he found they had no meaning for him anymore. His photographs show precarious stacks of china and books, a comment on the constructions of our own personal memory.
While working closely with these photographers, I have had the pleasure to meet (if only on the phone for now) Sue Steward, a journalist and independent curator who, on the death of her mother in 2009, found an urge to photograph the dead body. In an article she wrote for The Guardian, she describes the sense of guilt she felt as she committed this act, looking round to check no one was looking. But then she found that many other photographers had also had this impulse; most famously Annie Leibowitz photographing her partner Susan Sontag.
All these conversations got me thinking about the link between photography and death, and then it became rather too relevant when I heard that my uncle died. He had been very sick, so it wasn't unexpected, but it doesn't make the sense of loss any less painful for us all. At the funeral, my father asked if I had brought my camera... and, although I had thought about it, I felt that it was inappropriate.
But a couple of days later I had a Roland Barthes moment. At the wake, my cousin told me that he had found many old photographs of our parents when they were children, and he emailed the scans to me shortly after. I felt like Barthes in his Camera Lucida... I was looking at picture of my uncle at a very young age and recognised him completely. This wasn't the sick old man I had last seen on a hospital bed at Christmas time, thin and wizzened, struggling to hear and lethargic with drugs. Here, in the eyes of this 10 year old boy, I saw the man I wanted to remember; the man with an amazing brain and an insatiable curiosity.
My late Uncle Rémi is on the left, my mother in the middle, and their brother Eric on the right. My mother told me she remembers going to get this picture taken, and she was scared as she thought it would hurt. How differently children respond to the camera these days!
At the beginning of this week I came across this film on the Guardian website, and I finally found the context with which to write this post. In the wake of the Japanese tsunami, hundreds of volunteers from the Fujifilm factory are collecting photographs found in the damaged areas, cleaning them, and archiving them in order to "save the memories of a nation". Many of the images have washed off the paper, a reference rather too close to what happened to the people depicted on them, and yet the volunteers still feel it is important to keep the indecipherable images. As one volunteer reads out the caption on the back of a photograph (dated 1954!) he turns it over to find the image completely gone. But we must keep it, he says, as it may help to identify the other pictures in the album.
The cleaned photographs are then organised by where they were found and sent to a centre where people can browse for their memories. As one man says, the people who go there "have lost their homes and their past". Photographs are such an important key to our past. I was so pleased to see the old photographs of my uncle, which still exist seventy years later, but I can't help wondering whether the children of our children of this digital age will be blessed with such tools as they get older. When, in eighty years time, my friend's daughter passes away, will her children have photographs of her as she is now? Or will they be locked in some digital timewarp, following the fate of floppy disks and the like. For all we know, we may be living in what will become the Dark Ages.
It's time to start printing pictures. As for photographing the dead, or the impulse to photograph what's left behind, it's a theme that occupies many photographers, and has inspired a book by Audrey Linkman. For my part, I am looking forward to hearing Sue Steward in conversation with André and Joachim at Photofusion on 11 October; I think it will be an interesting discussion, if perhaps not a very up-beat one.
Last Thursday, I went to the Private View of Nine Point Perspective; Ways of Seeing, at Hotshoe Gallery. The exhibition is a group show of photographers who form part of the Tri-pod group, set up by Hotshoe Deputy Editor Miranda Gavin, and photographer Wendy Pye. The group was conceived as a support network for "emerging and established artists and photographers to create a personal project in the context of a closed research and development group." The work made in the first year is shown in this exhibition.
Curating a show of nine photographers with such diverse work is always tricky, but curators Miranda Gavin and Sacha Lehrfreund have used the space to the full, creating separate spaces for each photographer's work, but succeeding in creating a flow. Every part of the gallery is used; including the glass front of the office, where Natasha Caruana has installed her piece Fairytale for Sale. This work is a collection of wedding photographs, with the bride and groom's faces blanked out in a variety of ways; using photoshop, black pen, blue tac or even bits of tissue paper. The effect is eerie, and it's only on reading the emails that are interspersed with the images that the viewer understands these pictures have come from a website where brides are selling their wedding dresses. For me, this project questions the act of marriage, reducing it to something farcical; all the effort which goes into buying the perfect dress is so easily frittered away when a little bit of cash is needed.
A far cry from Natasha's collection of digital images from the Internet is Dean Hollowood's project The Chase, which takes us back to the origins of photographic printing. His colour photographs of china animals are layered with test strips from the darkroom, with their different hues and tones, and including Dean's notes of exposure times. The visual effect is quite beautiful, and questions our "ways of seeing". And we get it; we've had experience in the colour darkroom and the work brings back all those agonising hours of trying to get the right colour. Most younger people, however, won't. The Chase is a project about photography, it's history and how it's changed.
In between these two bodies of work are seven other very strong examples of contemporary photography. Far too many for me to outline here... you best go and see for yourself. The exhibition runs until 30 August.
Yesterday, my picture of Ceridwen was on the front cover of the Independent on Sunday's New Review.
That's it really. Pretty chuffed.
There is still time to see it in the flesh, at Collyer Bristow Gallery, as part of the 50's, Fashion and Emerging Feminism exhibition. Viewing is during office hours only, and the gallery can be found at 4 Bedford Row, London WC1R 4TF.
Tilby was one of those chancers who come up at the end of the four hours, when all you fancy is a cold beer, and ask you if you could quickly see their work. He was so charming I couldn't say no, and I'm very pleased I didn't. I even arranged to meet him the next day in order to talk more about his work.
Mountains, again. But different. Tilby takes these shots with either a Holga or a Hasselblad, and then works on them digitally, adding glimmers of light, planets and inscriptions. The effect is very retro, and a little bit kitsch, but he succeeds in making sure it's not cheesy. Instead, the landscapes he creates are the landscapes of fairytales, where the paranormal come out to play.
Tilby Vattard is based in Montpelier, and seems to make a succesful living as a graphic designer, using his signature style in posters for festivals and theatre productions amoungst other things. His site has a comprehensive view of his work, which can also be bought via the site... enjoy!
