Disney and Other Hyenas

I was confused by the title of the current Tate photography show and after my first visit last week I’m thinking I still don’t quite get it. Street and Studio: An Urban History of Photography is actually about portraiture and claims to highlight “…the crossovers between the genres [Street and Studio] and their influence on each other.” So, sounds interesting but women under hypnosis? I’ll need to read the blurb to see where they fit in.

Not that I didn’t enjoy it. There was plenty I hadn’t seen before as well as some old favourites. The picture that had the strongest impact was this one by Pieter Hugo. I’m a little worried that I’m just impressed by the size of the hyena. I thought hyenas were more reasonable, dog-sized creatures (Max agreed and said this was because we’re informed by Disney films). They had the book of Pieter Hugo’s series (I don’t think the web gallery shows them very well) which I just about managed to resist buying. The printing looked great and even the non-hyena pictures seemed to have a strong other-worldly quality.

The show is on until 31 August so plenty of time to revisit.

3 Views on TV vs RL

I was going to title this post, The Bizarre World of Not London but I’m aware that most people don’t realise that I’m joking most of the time so I went with numbers and acronyms. I recently went on a rare trip out of London; firstly to see the Birth of Colour exhibition at the National Media Museum in Bradford. This was the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television (pic 1 - I don’t remember it ever being called just the National Museum of Photography so I guess this sign was just a contraction). The curation of the show was a bit “Blue Peter” in it’s tone but I suppose that’s partly due to the NMM being closer to the Science Museum than an art gallery and a lot of the exhibits seemed to take the dumbed down approach so I assume it’s the house style. In fairness, there is a lot of good supporting material on their web site for the show. Fortunately, they did have some actual autochrome transparencies on display. I wanted to get an idea of what 4 million potato starch grains per square inch could look like, because you can’t really tell from web photos (or the recent TV series). I think most of them were “quarter plate” size, so a bit bigger than 6×9cm format, and they looked great; the best of them similar to modern transparencies to my eyes (although they weren’t of consistent quality) but there were a couple of thin, vertical portraits which were much bigger and looked stunning.

Bradford seemed surprisingly rundown. I keep hearing about how much is happening in Leeds and Manchester but Bradford was dominated by boarded up shops and huge office to-let banners as if it hadn’t changed since the last recession. There were signs of tidying up in the centre but it’ll only end up looking like everywhere else so I rejoice in the mess (pic 2). We took advantage of the one of the nice cinemas at the NMM followed by curry at a very cheap restaurant, which in a neat coincidence, Sarah spotted in that day’s Guardian. The Kashmir. Because of the article, I half expected it to be full of Guardian readers but we seemed to be the only people who looked out of place.

The next day, on the way to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, it seemed like Leeds, seen from the train, had lots of emerging glass and steel and a horizon of cranes. That completed the survey of Northern developments.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park
If you visit the YSP web site you will see that the nearest railway station is Wakefield but there’s no mention of how you’re supposed to get from there to the park. We had half a plan to get a cab from the station but arriving at Wakefield decided to be more adventurous and find a bus. There were no signs at the station, no YSP leaflets amongst the many other attractions in the ‘things to do’ rack but a helpful man in the information office directed us to the bus station. Same thing at the bus station, no mention of the sculpture park. Another helpful man gave us the bus number and we started to feel like this wasn’t a well travelled route. The bus didn’t get us all the way there but the weather was ok so the 20 minute walk wasn’t a problem. By the time we arrived it was pretty clear that they expect everyone to get there by car. There’s no charge for entry, only for car parking. I felt a bit confused as I thought I might have been part of their target audience. (pic 3 - sculpture and tape)

The main reason for this part of the trip was the Andy Goldsworthy show and seeing some of his work in the flesh made me realise that it’s about 4,000 times more interesting than looking at the usual presentation as photographs. The pictures on the web site don’t do it justice and the postcards in the shop are even worse but I’d say, If you’re anywhere near the YSP before January ‘08 you should go. This was during the school holidays so the main building and restaurant were quite busy. However, most people didn’t venture far from the main galleries and even if they had I suspect, like me, they would have found the park map confusing and signage irritatingly minimal. This turned out to be a positive as it meant that the James Turrell Deer Shelter Skyspace (pic 4) was reasonably quiet. In this case, I was less wowed than expected after seeing similar rooms on TV (here, I think). I suspect you need to sit for hours in changing, end of the day, light to get the full effect. (More on skyspaces).

So that’s RL 2 - TV 1. Do click the pictures to enlarge. Update: I had a google search hit from someone looking for the bus from Wakefield to YSP, so it’s not just me and I’ve made this page to help.

How We Are

The How We Are show at the Tate has a flickr tie-in where users are supposed to have their pictures displaying as part of the exhibit (over 5,000 pictures in the group currently). Unfortunately all four screens were showing either crashed Windows or a spinning slideshow wheel with no pictures (how hard can it be?). The rest of the show is well worth seeing (room guide) although I have to admit that I found the best part of the last room was the ability to pull up my own flickr account and run it on a computer that was working.

In other news, my daughter Max is just finishing her degree and has put her final piece, a Knitimation Video, online. Go watch it.

How We Show

I’m always interested in seeing the underpants of a gallery and while I’m sure running such an enterprise is often a thankless task, it amuses me how often they seem unprepared for visitors. I sometimes find myself more interested in the mechanics of the place than the stuff on show. Today I went to Alec Soth at HOST and fortunately the pictures were enough of a distraction from all the construction work but I did feel like I was getting in the way a bit (click thumb to enlarge). Still, my arrival seemed to prompt the stacking of the otherwise empty bookshelf which gave me another chance to browse the Niagara book and get in the way some more.

CMT at Kinetica

A new Cabaret Mechanical Theatre show opens at the end of next week at Kinetica in London and runs for a month.

A Proper Job

Having just completed a rare 5-day week of teaching I’m once again wondering how people manage to do that 9 to 5 thing on a regular basis. World of Work. It’s odd.

The Guardian web site has a slideshow of 11 pictures from the Onto the Streets show so you can try to spot my picture.

Onto the Streets

I’ve got some pictures in the group show, Onto the Streets, which opens next month at Photofusion in Brixton (21 July to 16 September and then touring to Greece and Croatia I think). I’ll put together a web gallery of my pictures and add a link here when I’m a bit less busy. Update: gallery.

Not Strictly London

I have to admit that being invited to submit pictures to a show called Snapping Little Britain had me a little worried but it turned out to be better than I expected. It’s a group show which, although it had too many seaside pictures for my liking, I wanted to be positive about by linking to some of the other work. Unfortunately I can’t find any useful web links (I thought all photographers had web sites!). The show is at the Orleans House Gallery in Richmond and runs until April 30th. It’s in a nice location if you fancy a day out by the river. If you can’t make it, my three pictures are here (removed), including one which I did as an A2 lightbox. This picture was taken after the private view last night.

Paddington

Reminder: LIP show - Sunday 16 Oct. to Saturday 29 Oct. My pictures and more info, here.

Meyerowitz

Back to diary mode: I went with Tom to a talk by Joel Meyerowitz at the Tate Modern last night. JM is an impressive speaker on photography as well as a great photographer. When I saw his Ground Zero show at the Museum of London I was amazed to learn that it was his first solo show in the UK.

Lartigue

The Lartigue show at the Hayward is great. I really admire his playfulness and experimental spirit. The upstairs show, ‘About Face: Photography and the Death of the Portrait’, not only has a naff sub-title but also seems to get itself in a knot about the use of technology in photography, which they say is “challenging our perceptions of beauty and truth”.

At one point, the curators say we can no longer accept the idea of portraits being windows on the soul (who ever did?) and then alongside a series of red-eyed (from flash) teenagers, they claim the red eyes made them look like predators (or words to that effect). As if non-predatory people won’t have red eyes. They go on to say that the red-eye effect is a “technical glitch normally removed in printing”. Hilarious.

There are some interesting things in it but I recommend ignoring the interpretation boards. This is another of my “diCorcia without flashlight” pictures.

Bill Brandt

I can recommend the Bill Brandt exhibition at the V&A (until 25th July). It made me feel like I’d overlooked him even though his book ‘Shadow of Light’ is probably the photographic book I’ve owned the longest.

This picture has nothing to do with Bill Brandt except that it was taken inside the V&A.