Posts Tagged ‘photography’

Resistance: Subverting the Camera at The Fine Art Society

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Last week I went to the opening of Resistance: Subverting the Camera at The Fine Art Society.

The exhibition included work by a variety of artists, photographers and experimenters all challenging the meaning of photography and cameras in the modern age. Curated around the notion that everyone is in their own way a photographer these days — whether they shoot a few quick snaps with their digital camera or post a series of photos from Instagram on social networks — the ability to effortlessly record moments in time is unlike it’s ever been.

My favourite pieces included (previously mentioned) Rob and Nick Carter who assembled over 100 diamonds in the shapes of constellations, and then captured the images by exposing the configurations to a single flash of light on light-sensitive paper.

Also noteworthy was the work of Turner Prize nominee, Steven Pippin whose response to the phenomenon of the everyday photographer was to fire a gun straight at the lens of a vintage camera, and to capture the moment before the camera is destroyed. The result is an eerie depiction of somewhere between inside and outside the camera, a photograph and a void.

Lastly, the brilliant works of Chris Bucklow were on display. Somewhat lost in the digital version, these vibrant pieces from his “Guest” series were made by drawing a life size silhouette on a sheet of aluminum foil which is then penetrated with thousands of pinholes that act as the camera’s lens. Using a homemade camera, the artist then exposed the work on photographic paper using direct sunlight, resulting in an ethereal and ephemeral portrait.

The exhibition is on at the Fine Arts Society until the 26th of May and is definitely worth a visit.

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A visit to the London Art Fair 2012

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

This weekend I attended the London Art Fair to have a look at some pretty exciting Modern British and Contemporary art.

My hands down favourite piece had to be by artistic duo Rob and Nick Carter called the Paint Pigment Photographs. The piece is composed of 25 photos of different coloured paint pigments thrown up in the air and captured at 1/1000th of a second against a bright blue cloudy sky.

The series is easily understood to be about the expression of colour, but what I also love about it is the different stages the work goes through to reach the end result. Kate Bryan of FAS London explained the complexity of the work  - the idea that the piece starts off with paint references a more traditional medium, but it then transforms into a performance piece as it’s thrown into the air, becomes a sculpture for a brief moment, and ends up as a beautifully captured photograph.

Also noteworthy was the series Tokyo Lights by Marco Bettoni showcasing a collection of photos documenting different Japanese taxi cab lights.

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Vivian Maier at the London Street Photography Festival

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

100,000 negatives were taken by the photographer Vivian Maier over four decades. 20 to 30,000 of them were never developed and in her lifetime she had never shown her work to anyone.

Every one of her photographs remained in storage as Maier got older, until she was no longer able to pay the warehouse holding fee, and subsequently had to put her work up for auction.

90% of her photographs were sold for $400 to a man called John Maloof who was researching the Chicago area for a book on the city’s history.  At the time, Maloof knew little about street photography and had no idea about what he was to discover. Years later, he did try to find her, but unfortunately was too late. Her obituary had been placed just days before he began his search.

Maloof set about developing the films and scanning the negatives, gradually revealing the brilliance of Maier’s work. It wasn’t until he properly took the project on that he realized the magnitude of it all.

I went to see the first UK exhibition of her work at the German Gymnasium last Thursday as part of London’s Street Photography Festival. There were around 40 prints on display, the little boy and the man on the beach were two that caught my eye. I enquired into the price of a print (as if I was a serious buyer!?) and… let’s just say that John Maloof will probably make his auction bid.

If you get a chance to see her work in the flesh it’s certainloy worth a visit. When standing in front of her more everyday snapshots of a bygone era, you cannot help wonder what she would  have thought about her newly acclaimed fame and exposure.

The London Street Photography Festival starts at King’s Cross and will be on until the end of July.

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