Showing posts with label Photographers' Gallery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Photographers' Gallery. Show all posts

Friday, 22 January 2016

Saul Leiter - The Photographers' Gallery

Saul Leiter, Phone Call, c1957
Saul Leiter is at The Photographers' Gallery until 3 April 2016.
It is a curiosity of the history of photography that 'serious' photography came so late to colour that the myth of its 'invention' by William Eggleston in 1973 prior to his 1976 exhibition at MoMA was sustained for so long. Some of his contemporaries  - William Christenberry, Stephen Shore, Joel Meyerowitz - have since been acknowledged as also exploring colour. However, Saul Leiter (1923-2013) was there before any of them. A combination of his personal modesty and the narrowness of the institutional perspective on important photography meant his glorious, painterly, abstract, colour street photographs of the 1950s, 60s and later have only recently become known - through a book, Early Color and an exhibition in 2006.
Now The Photographers' Gallery is showing a terrific retrospective of his work which reveals him as a lyrical poet of street photography.
Read a feature by Andrew Dickson, a review by Christian House and a selection of features and interviews at ASX.
Saul Leiter, Don't Walk, 1952
Saul Leiter, Sign Painter, 1954
Saul Leiter, Red Umbrella, 1955
Saul Leiter, Straw Hat, c1955
Saul Leiter, Taxi, 1956
Saul Leiter, Walking, 1956
Saul Leiter, Taxi, 1957
Saul Leiter, Window, New York, 1957
Saul Leiter, Red Umbrella, 1958
Saul Leiter, Harlem, 1960

Thursday, 10 April 2014

John Deakin - The Photographers' Gallery

John Deakin, Francis Bacon (Vogue), 1952
Under the Influence: John Deakin and the Lure of Soho is at The Photographers' Gallery 11 April - 13 July 2014.
This is a terrific exhibition. I love Deakin's intense photographs of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, George Dyer, Henrietta Moraes and others in the Colony Room circle of 1950s and 60s Soho; oddly, his great prints look even better having been salvaged from Bacon's studio - paint stained, creased and torn.
Sacked twice from Vogue, Deakin, an alcoholic, was clearly a difficult person. Gordon Comstock's profile of him, John Deakin: Champagne and Sulphur in Soho quotes George Melly describing him as a "vicious little drunk of such inventive malice and implacable bitchiness that it's surprising he didn't choke on his own venom". 
The Photographers' Gallery show includes 'rarely seen and un-shown works':  it is very good.
Watch a short video pairing Deakin's less well known pictures of Genoa with Johnnie Shand Kydd's pictures of Naples: A Tale of Two Cities.
Read a review of John Muir's book of the exhibition and a review of John Muir's earlier book A Maverick Eye: The Street Photography of John Deakin.

John Deakin, George Dyer, c1964
John Deakin, George Dyer
John Deakin, Portrait of an unknown girl in a cafe, 1960s
John Deakin, Francis Bacon, 1968
John Deakin, Francis Bacon, 1952
John Deakin, Lucian Freud, c.1961
John Deakin, Lucian Freud,1960s
John Deakin, Henrietta Moraes
John Deakin, Tony Abbro, newsagent, Old Compton Street, December 1960
John Deakin, George Dyer in Francis Bacon's Reece Mews Studio, c.1964

Sunday, 21 April 2013

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2013

Christina de Middel, The Afronauts, 2012
Work by the artists shortlisted for the 2013 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize is on display at The Photographers' Gallery until 30 June 2013. The artists are: Broomberg & Chanarin, Mishka Henner, Chistina de Middel and Chris Killip. Together they represent as diverse an approach to photography as you could wish for: 
Broomberg & Chanarin juxtapose contemporary news images with Bertolt Brecht's newspaper clippings of Second World War photographs accompanied by his brief poems; Mishka Henner appropriates images of sex workers around the world caught on Google Street View;  Christina de Middel constructs a semi-fictional documentary account of the Zambian space programme; Chris Killip's social documentary pictures record working-class life in the north-east of England in the 1970s and 80s.

Read reviews by Adrian Searle,and Richard Dorment; watch a video in which Sean O'Hagan introduces the artists. Download a copy of Broomberg & Chanarin's book War Primer 2.

See below for entries on the 2012 and 2011 prizes.

The brief biographies below are from The Photographers' Gallery website.

Adam Broomberg (b. 1970, South Africa) and Oliver Chanarin (b. 1971, UK) are nominated for their publication War Primer 2 (MACK, 2012).
War Primer 2 is a limited edition book that physically inhabits the pages of Bertold Brecht’s remarkable 1955 publication War Primer. Brecht’s photo-essay comprises 85 images, photographic fragments or collected newspaper clippings, that were placed next to a four-line poem, called ‘photo-epigrams’. Broomberg and Chanarin layered Google search results for the poems over Brecht’s originals.
Broomberg & Chanarin, War Primer 2, 2012
Broomberg & Chanarin, War Primer 2, 2012
Broomberg & Chanarin, War Primer 2, 2012
Broomberg & Chanarin, War Primer 2, 2012

Mishka Henner (b. 1976, UK) is nominated for his exhibition No Man’s Land at Fotografia Festival Internazionale di Roma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (20 September – 28 October 2012).
No Man's Land represents isolated women occupying the margins of southern European environments. Shot entirely with Google Street View, Henner's method of online intelligence-gathering results in an unsettling reflection on surveillance, voyeurism and the contemporary landscape.
Mishka Henner, No Man's Land, 2011
Mishka Henner, No Man's Land, 2011
Mishka Henner, No Man's Land, 2011
Mishka Henner, No Man's Land, 2011

Cristina De Middel (b.1975, Spain) is nominated for her publication The Afronauts (self-published, 2011).
In her first book, The Afronauts, De Middel engages with myths and truths, reality and fiction. In 1964, after gaining independence, Zambia started a space programme in order to send the first African astronaut to the moon.
De Middel sequences her beautiful colour photography with manipulated documents, drawings and reproductions of letters, presenting them as almost folkloric inlays alongside fashion illustrations and technical sketches.
Christina de Middel, The Afronauts, 2012
Christina de Middel, The Afronauts, 2012
Christina de Middel, The Afronauts, 2012
Christina de Middel, The Afronauts, 2012
Chris Killip (b. 1946, UK) is nominated for his exhibition What Happened – Great Britain 1970 –1990 at LE BAL, Paris (12 May – 19 August 2012).
British born Killip has been taking photographs for nearly five decades. What Happened – Great Britain comprises black and white images of working people in the north of England, taken by Killip in the 1970s and 1980s. After spending months immersed in several communities, Killip documented the disintegration of the industrial past with a poetic and highly personal point of view.
Chris Killip, Youth on Wall, Jarrow, Tyneside, 1976
Chris Killip, Boo and his rabbit, Lynemouth, 1983
Chris Killip, Bever's First Day Out, Skinningrove, North Yorkshire, 1982
Chris Killip, Helen and her hoola-hoop, Lynemouth, 1984 

Friday, 18 May 2012

Burtynsky: Oil - Photographers' Gallery

Burtynsky: Oil is the opening exhibition in the refurbished Photographers' Gallery. Closed for nearly 2 years the gallery reopens on 19 May in a building expanded by a 2-storey extension designed by O'Donnell and Tuomey.
Edward Burtynsky:
“In 1997 I had what I refer to as my oil epiphany. It occurred to me that the vast, human-altered landscapes that I pursued and photographed for over twenty years were only made possible by the discovery of oil…”
This exhibition shows three sections from Burtynsky’s series OIL: Extraction and Refinement, Transportation and Motor Culture and The End of Oil. The works depict landscapes scarred by the extraction of oil, and the cities and suburban sprawl defined by its use. He also eloquently addresses the coming end of oil, as we face its rising cost and dwindling availability. (From The Photographers' Gallery website).

Watch a video of Burtynsky talking about his work and a 2006 film by Jennifer Baichwal: Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscapes. (The first 8 minutes of the film is a continuous tracking shot through a vast Chinese factory; read an article about the film.)

Edward Burtynsky, Socar Oil Fields #6, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2006
Edward Burtynsky, Alberta Oil Sands #2, Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, 2007
Edward Burtynsky, Shipbreaking #13, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000
Edward Burtynsky, Highway #1, Intersection 105 & 110, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2003
Edward Burtynsky, Oil Refineries #22, St John, New Brunswick, Canada, 1999
Edward Burtynsky, Socar Oil Fields 1a, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2006

Wednesday, 7 December 2011

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012


Pieter Hugo, Yakubu Al Hasan, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2009
Just as the winner of the 2011 Turner Prize (Martin Boyce) has been announced (see below), the shortlist for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize has been made public. This prize lacks the visibility of the Turner but has been the subject of some local debate (see below). The shortlisted photographers are: Pieter Hugo, Rinko Kawauchi, John Stezaker and Christopher Williams. Read comment by Sean O'Hagan.
Examples of their work are shown below. NB these images are selected from their oeuvres as a whole and are not necesarilly representative of the work for which they have been shortlisted. An exhibition of work by the selected photographers will be at the Photographers' Gallery next summer.
Pieter Hugo, Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara, Lagos, Nigeria, 2007
Pieter Hugo, Abdulai Yahaya
Pieter Hugo, Pieter and Maryna Vermeulen with Timana Phosiwa
Rinko Kawauchi, Untitled, from the series "Illuminance", 2009
Rinko Kawauchi, Untitled, from the series "Aila", 2003
Rinko Kawauchi, Untitled, from the series "Aila", 2004
Rinko Kawauchi, Untitled, from the series ‘the eyes, the ears’, 2005
JohnStezaker, Marriage (Film Portrait Collage) XLIII, 2007
John Stezaker, Pair IV, 2007
John Stezaker, Blind I, 2006
JohnStezaker, Gothic II, 2009
Christopher Williams, Fachhochschule Aachen, Fachbereich Gestaltung, Studiengang: Visuelle Kommunikation, Fotolabor für Studenten, Boxgraben 100, Aachen, November 8th, 2010
Christopher Williams, Ritter Sport Von oben nach unten / from top to the bottom 100 g Tafeln / 100 g Bars Offizieller Produktname / Official Product Name / EAN Code Bar / UPC Code for Case / Bars per Case Voll Nuss / Whole Hazelnuts / 4000417019004 / 050255013005 / 10 Joghurt / Yogurt / 40004170270 09 / 050255027000 / 12 Voll Endnuss / 4000417262202 / ... / 10 Weisse Voll Nuss / White Whole Hazelnuts / 4000417013002 / 050255013003 / 10 Marzipan / Marzipan / 400041725005 / 050255025006 / 12 Cappuccino / Cappuccino / 40004172300 03 / 0550255230042 / 12 Fotostudio Axel Gnad, Düsseldorf, October 24th, 2008 [No. 1], 2009

Christopher Williams, Linhof Technika V fabricated in Munich, Germany. Salon Studio Stand fabricated in Florence, Italy. Dual cable release. Prontor shutter. Symar-s lens 150mmm/f 5.6 Schneider kreuznach. Sinar fresnel lens placed with black tape on the ground glass. Dirk Schaper Studio, Berlin, June 20, 2007, 2008
Christopher Williams, Tenebrionidae Asbolus verrucosus Death Feigning Beetle Silverlake, California October 1, 1996, 1996

Christopher Williams, Bergische Bauernscheune, Junkersholz, Leichlingen
September 29th, 2009
, 2010