REVIEW: Clare Strand | Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time | Grimaldi Gavin


Images courtesy of Clare Strand


Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time
showcases new work by British artist Clare Strand. Known for her unconventional and subversive use of the photographic medium, Strand’s work studies the ordinary while revealing numerous layers of complexity. Taking inspiration from forensic images and instruction manuals she employs photography as an exploratory tool rather than a quest for the real. In between evidential material and Surrealist experiment, the artist’s work examines the very substance of the image: “Scrutiny of a photographic vocabulary” is at the heart of her work.

Employing kinetic machines, Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time defies the traditional rules of the photographic exhibition. It investigates the quality of image degradation through repetition and use within a medium usually considered for its preciousness and precision. For example, The Happenstance Generator is a large Perspex chamber with hidden fans that randomly emits vernacular images. In a similar vein, The Entropy Pendulum fascinates the spectator as an abrasive metal arm swings over the photographic prints, which, one after the other, will be partly erased, before being framed and hung onto the gallery wall. Control in Motion, a revisited type of Rolodex, tirelessly rotates to unveil the 100 pages of gradual tones of black and whites, slowly and imperceptibly degrading. Viewed through a peephole, the film Material captures the movement of domestic dust floating towards and away from our gaze, untouched.

The decaying nature of the photograph becomes the show’s abiding concern, the exhibition equally retains an authority as it develops independently from the artist’s decisions.  In a moment of retreat Strand returns power to the medium thereby allowing time, chance, mechanics, or natural elements to decide the material’s fate, getting better and worse, while unconsciously revealing its intangible strength.

Focused on the shallowness of the everyday deluge of imagery, the artist reminds us of the perishable object and archival moment captured in a photograph, referencing society’s evolution and contemporary consumption. Succumbing to chance, the images endlessly change, being carefully damaged, yet remaining perpetually imprisoned within their fabricated gymnastics.

They are the victims of their destructive process, like specimens of a frantic experiment surviving the absurd dynamics of their random mechanical exploitation. Here photography is celebrated as the medium of erosion. Made for deterioration, and diverted from its frames, it is unexpectedly submitted to uncertainty in order to reveal both its limits and unexplored possibilities.

BODIN_CV

Céline Bodin is a French photographer. After studying literature and architecture, she graduated from a photography BA at Gobelins, L’école de l’image in Paris. In 2013 she completed a Photography MA at the London College of Communication. As well as regularly writing about photography, her personal practice explores themes of identity, gender, and the metaphysical frustration of the medium in representation.

Sebastiao Salgado by Nerris Markogiannis

Sebastiao Salgado gained notoriety in the 1980s, when he photographed the famine and its effects in the Sahel region of Africa.  Since then, he has continuously documented the most uncomfortable  aspects of our contemporary world – human pain resulting from exploitation, terror of wars, and ecological destruction.  Salgado’s photos, although records of specific events in time and places, have the power to transcend this specificity and even point to universality.  It could be argued that human pain does not have nationality, ethnicity or country.  It is something that we can all feel and share. Susan Sontag, in her short essay titled “Photography: A Little Suma”, tells us that “in a modern society, images made by cameras are the principal access to realities of which we have no direct experience” and Salgado’s photos are powerful enough to take viewers to remote places but also close a gap of indifference.

However, Salgado has been criticized because of his lush, aesthetic style, which conflicts with the subject matter. While recording tragic and painful events, he has also created works of art narrowly defined as the incarnation of the idea of beauty, or the antithesis of ugliness.  The most prominent critic in this regard was Ingrid Sichy who, in an article titled “Good Intentions” in the New Yorker magazine, claimed, “beautifying human tragedy results in pictures that ultimately reinforce our passivity towards the experience they reveal”.  In other words, the sheer beauty of one’s photographs can weaken their message.  Even those who generally appreciate the body of Salgado’s works sometime find his photos too aesthetically beautiful.  According to J. Stathatos, for example, Salgado’s photos are both brilliant in execution and absolutely harrowing in content. But there is a problem.  Their sheer beauty does not allow us to read the images in any way other than through a veil of aesthetisised exoticism. To this accusation, Salgado himself responded: “the beauty of the photographs lends dignity to the people in them”. If the photos are indeed viewed through a “veil of aesthetisised exoticism”, why is it thought that their message is weakened?  If Salgado’s photos were made in a less artistic way, that is, in a more conventional style of documentary photography, would they convey more serious messages on human pain, misery and madness more effectively?  To put it differently, is the relation between human pain and aesthetic beauty that of mutual exclusivity?

Salgado claims that he never stages his photographs, however, the extreme formalism of some of his photos may lead people to believe otherwise, and open the work up to moral critique. However, it can be argued that this formalism may well be the very element that renders his photographic images successful.  For example, in his photo that depicts a parallel image of a dead tree and a starving child next to it (Untitled, Mali, 1985/87),  the child is obviously underweight and underfed.  On the left side, towards the back, there is a tree that has little sign of life, and towards the front, a child is standing.  In contrast to the tree, the child is alive, still standing on his own feet, and somehow shows the sign of life and perhaps hope for survival.  However, his skeletal body hopelessly resembles that of the tree and our moral conscience will be stirred by this parallelism that indicates the stark probability that the child may never overcome the cruel fate. This blatant parallel, though effective in showing the tragedy of nature, may also be read as insensitive to the subject.

But even if some of his pictures are indeed staged, does it mean that these images never really existed unless they were artificially composed?  They did.  The child and the tree were always there, and they always will be.  Thanks to the aesthetic formalism that yields powerful storytelling power through parallel images, the photo transcends the specific time and space and renders possible the incarnation of timelessness of human suffering through different experiences.  The fact that this photo or other photos might have been staged does not annul the cruel reality and the real problem that exist, and Salgado is only trying to pass a timeless message that can be received with as much sympathy and emotion as possible.

To compare Salgado’s photos with other forms of art when discussing the relation between human suffering and its aesthetic formalization, we can look at Paul Gauguin, who was inspired by the image of Peruvian (Inka).  Gauguin used this image and the form repeatedly in his paintings, in order to symbolize our fear of death (Eve – Don’t Listen to the Liar, 1889; Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going, 1897).  In this way, the dead body that was mummified in a remote time and place was revived by the artist and was given a universal form that to symbolize our fear of death that any human beings experience.  One of Salgado’s photos exhibits amazing resemblance to these paintings of Gauguin.  In Gourma-Rharous, Mali, 1985, an old lady covers her head with both hands, and her facial expression shows her immense sadness and hopelessness.  Although the picture was taken in Mali at a particular moment, the image is timeless because the whole gesture of the lady is so familiar to us, which somehow cancels the distance.  It is this power of the photo that derives from the aesthetic form itself that compels us. David Levi Strauss correctly evaluated Salgado’s work in this regard by quoting moral philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and saying that, through his photographs, Salgado aspires to that “transcendence of self, which calls for the epiphany of the Other”.

It can also be said that the tradition of Christian art has also made human suffering the primary source of its products.  Christ’s as well as others’ pain has been symbolized in various paintings and icons the images of which often take specific forms that are already so familiar to us.  It was this formal beautification of pain that helped Christianity to spread its message and continuously make people identify with its religious ideology.  It is through this formal beauty and symbolism in Salgado’s photographs that we not only catch a glimpse of a one-time event, but also experience certain timelessness that surrounds the images.  The range of photographs of the workers in the Brazilian Serra Pelada gold mine (1986), for instance, is not a series of temporary events.  The remarkable resemblance of these images to those of pyramid building adds depth For many critics, this still poses an ethical question: If suffering is portrayed as universal and aestheticized, does this de-humanize the subjects?

According to Salgado, his photos are “almost too beautiful” to be cynical about the reality that he sees through the lens.  He says:

“Compare me to the American photographer Walker Evans.  In the end, Evans has a kind of cynicism.  So they think that it must also be necessary for me to have a little bit of cynicism inside my pictures, no?  And this is a big problem in the society that we live in.  I work with many journalists and they are basically cynics.  It’s terrible this society that we are living in today.  If we eliminate a little bit of the huge pretentions that we have we can live in a better world”.

This statement reveals Salgado’s optimism.  He has seen and documented pain that covers our world, but he faces the world with conviction that it can be changed through human praxis.  Salgado of course has his own perspective to understand the world which he has developed since he was trained and worked as an economist.  In other words, he “photograph[s] with all … [his] ideology”.   But this ideology is characterized by a belief in positive human actions and the possibility to make a difference to the world, which is why Salgado is also committed to humanitarian work, and cooperation with prominent Non Governmental Organizations.

According to Vicky Goldberg, some of Salgado’s photographs can be credited with provoking powerful responses.  For example, his photographs of Cambodian amputees that appeared in The Independent in 1990, along with an appeal for money to manufacture artificial limbs in Cambodia, helped bring in contributions far beyond the amount of the appeal.  He also donated most of his profit from the Sahel picture to the French NGO  “Medecins Sans Frontiers”.

Salgado is also a photographer who affirms that it is not the photographer alone but other agents such as the media that have much influence in order to sensitize the society, to help or perhaps just simply to conduct propaganda.  Salgado himself hopes that his pictures can be used to provoke a debate.  His photographs, as a matter of course, have much power to “engage our attention, invite contemplation and nudge us to action”.  At the same time, he does understand that the pictures alone can do little to transform the reality, but “… these pictures together with humanitarian organizations, with the newspapers… all together can probably build a new society”.

In this way, Salgado not only photographs through his ideology, but also tries to ‘make it work’ through actions that are not confined to the sphere of pure imagery.  In other words, he would not hesitate to try to convince us, compel us to act, and push us to see and feel what he has created through his ideological standpoint.  His optimism allows him to overcome boundaries that often regulate our lives and narrow our mind: boundaries between beauty and ugliness, form and content, ideology and reality, art and media, us and them, self and other.  And herein lies his humanism that crosses our moral codes.

10930155_10152695981018261_3213884078012643331_nNerris Markogiannis, originally from Greece,  obtained an MA degree in Photojournalism in London followed by an MA in the History of Photography from the University of St. Andrews.  He has been a photographer for the United Nations for many years and has completed missions in Kosovo, Darfur, and Haiti and is currently based in the Central African Republic. His work in Darfur was recently published by Dewi Lewis Publishing in the book Fragments of Darfur.

References

Susan Sontag, “At the Same Time, Essays and Speeches: Photography: A Little Suma”, p.125, FarrarnStraus Giroux, New York 2007.

Susan Sontag, “At the Same Time, Essays and Speeches”, p.4.

Ingrid Sischy, “Good Intentions”, New Yorker, September  09, 1991.

John Stathatos, “Linke Gegen Rechte Fotografie”, Kunstforum 129, Spring 1995.

Michael Kimmelman, “Can Suffering be Too Beautiful?”, The New York Times, Photography Review, Friday, July 13, 2001.

Mev Puleo, “The Prophetic Art of Bearing Witness: The Work of Sebastiao Salgado”, ART.

Sebastiao Salgado, “Migrations, The Work of Sebastiao Salgado: Conversation, Sebastiao Salgado and Orville Schell”, p.13, Dorren B. Townsend Center Occasional Papers 26, University of California, Berkeley 2002.

Ken Light, “Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers-Sebastiao Salgado”, p.108, Smithsonian Books, New York 2000.

Vicky Goldberg, “The Heroism of Anonymous Men and Women”, The New York Times, Photography View, Sunday, June 13, 1993.

Mev Puleo, “The Prophetic Art”.

Sebastiao Salgado, “Migrations”, p.6.

Coleen MacPherson introduces Guy Bourdin

Betwixt & Between | Laurence Miller Gallery | Sept 12 - Oct 19

Betwixt & Between | Laurence Miller Gallery | Sept 12 - Oct 19

Laura Letinsky: To Want for Nothing | Yancey Richardson | Sept 12 - Oct 19

Laura Letinsky: To Want for Nothing | Yancey Richardson | Sept 12 - Oct 19

Carrie Yamoaka: Panorama | Ulterior Gallery | Sept 15 - Oct 20

Carrie Yamoaka: Panorama | Ulterior Gallery | Sept 15 - Oct 20

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Past Presence | Marian Goodman Gallery | Sept 10 - Oct 26

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Past Presence | Marian Goodman Gallery | Sept 10 - Oct 26

Federico Martinez, Clemente Castor, Carlos Iván Hernández | Baxter St at CCNY | Sept 11 - Oct 26

Federico Martinez, Clemente Castor, Carlos Iván Hernández | Baxter St at CCNY | Sept 11 - Oct 26

Arlene Gottfried: After Dark | Daniel Cooney Fine Art | Sept 12 - Oct 26

Arlene Gottfried: After Dark | Daniel Cooney Fine Art | Sept 12 - Oct 26

Mikiko Hara: Kyrie | Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery | Sept 12 - Oct 26

Mikiko Hara: Kyrie | Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery | Sept 12 - Oct 26

Stephen Wilkes: A Witness To Change |  Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery | Sept 12 - Oct 26

Stephen Wilkes: A Witness To Change | Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery | Sept 12 - Oct 26

Staley-Wise Gallery | Txema Yeste: Crossroads | Sept 12 - Nov 2

Staley-Wise Gallery | Txema Yeste: Crossroads | Sept 12 - Nov 2

Jean-Pierre Sudre | Gitterman Gallery | Sept 11 - Nov 9

Jean-Pierre Sudre | Gitterman Gallery | Sept 11 - Nov 9

Don McMullin | Howard Greenberg Gallery | Sept 11 - Nov 16

Don McMullin | Howard Greenberg Gallery | Sept 11 - Nov 16

Jane Evelyn Atwood: Paris Red Light, 1976-1979 | L. Parker Stephenson Photographs | Sept 13 - Nov 23

Jane Evelyn Atwood: Paris Red Light, 1976-1979 | L. Parker Stephenson Photographs | Sept 13 - Nov 23

Cecil Beaton’s London’s Honourable Scars: Photographs of the Blitz | Santa Barbara Museum of Art | Sep 18 – Jan 08

Cecil Beaton’s London’s Honourable Scars: Photographs of the Blitz | Santa Barbara Museum of Art | Sep 18 – Jan 08

Frank Gohlke | Gallery Luisotti | Nov 19 – Jan 14

Frank Gohlke | Gallery Luisotti | Nov 19 – Jan 14

Jeff Brouws Desuetude: The Berkeley Pit Stereographs | Craig Krull Gallery | Dec 03 – Jan 14

Jeff Brouws Desuetude: The Berkeley Pit Stereographs | Craig Krull Gallery | Dec 03 – Jan 14

Michael Light Sidereal Rift | Craig Krull | Dec 03 – Jan 14

Michael Light Sidereal Rift | Craig Krull | Dec 03 – Jan 14

Doug Aitken: Electric Earth | Geffen Contemporary at MOCA | Sep 10 – Jan 15

Doug Aitken: Electric Earth | Geffen Contemporary at MOCA | Sep 10 – Jan 15

Revolutionary Vision: Group f/64 and Richard Misrach Photographs From the Bank of America Collection | The Autry in Griffith Park | Ongoing thru Jan 17

Revolutionary Vision: Group f/64 and Richard Misrach Photographs From the Bank of America Collection | The Autry in Griffith Park | Ongoing thru Jan 17

Unruly Bodies: Dismantling Larry Clark's Tulsa | California Museum of Photography | Jun 10 - Jan 28

Unruly Bodies: Dismantling Larry Clark's Tulsa | California Museum of Photography | Jun 10 - Jan 28

Recent Acquisitions in Focus: Latent Narratives | Getty Center | Sep 13 – Jan 29

Recent Acquisitions in Focus: Latent Narratives | Getty Center | Sep 13 – Jan 29

Boundless: A California Invitational | Museum of Photographic Arts | Oct 15 – Jan 29

Boundless: A California Invitational | Museum of Photographic Arts | Oct 15 – Jan 29

UNSEEN: Silhouettes and Shadows | Peter Fetterman Gallery | Dec 10 - Feb 25

UNSEEN: Silhouettes and Shadows | Peter Fetterman Gallery | Dec 10 - Feb 25

Mickalene Thomas: Do I Look Like a Lady? | Museum of Contemporary Art | Oct 16 – Feb 26

Mickalene Thomas: Do I Look Like a Lady? | Museum of Contemporary Art | Oct 16 – Feb 26

Identity: Timothy Greenfield Sanders The List Portraits | Annenberg Photo Space | Sep 24 - Feb 26

Identity: Timothy Greenfield Sanders The List Portraits | Annenberg Photo Space | Sep 24 - Feb 26

#Girlgaze: A Frame Of Mind | Annenberg Photo Space | Oct 22 - Feb 26

#Girlgaze: A Frame Of Mind | Annenberg Photo Space | Oct 22 - Feb 26

Flash: Steve Rowell | California Museum of Photography | Oct 1 - Mar 18

Flash: Steve Rowell | California Museum of Photography | Oct 1 - Mar 18

Real American Places: Edward Weston and Leaves of Grass | The Huntington | Oct 22 – Mar 20

Real American Places: Edward Weston and Leaves of Grass | The Huntington | Oct 22 – Mar 20

Unposed: Street Photography from the CMP's Collection | California Museum of Photography | Oct 15 - Mar 11

Unposed: Street Photography from the CMP's Collection | California Museum of Photography | Oct 15 - Mar 11

Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media | Getty Center | Dec 20 - Apr 30

Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media | Getty Center | Dec 20 - Apr 30

Rotation 2015: Recent Acquisitions | California Museum of Photography | Mar 12 - Jun 24

Rotation 2015: Recent Acquisitions | California Museum of Photography | Mar 12 - Jun 24

Laurie Brown: Earth Edges | California Museum of Photography | Sep 17 - Jul 01

Laurie Brown: Earth Edges | California Museum of Photography | Sep 17 - Jul 01

Artifacts from UCR/CMP's Permanent Collection | California Museum of Photography | ongoing

Artifacts from UCR/CMP's Permanent Collection | California Museum of Photography | ongoing

Audre Lorde, Robert Alexander : Powerful and Dangerous | Alice Austen House Museum | 22 Mar - 15 Feb 2021

Audre Lorde, Robert Alexander : Powerful and Dangerous | Alice Austen House Museum | 22 Mar - 15 Feb 2021


Images courtesy of Guy Bourdin / Somerset House

Guy Bourdin: Image Maker sheds new light on the infamous French fashion photographer Guy Bourdin. The protégé of Man Ray, Bourdin was deeply inspired by surrealism. He transformed photography in the 1970s and gained significant notoriety for his work with fashion magazine Vogue.

This exhibition invites the viewer to appreciate the artist’s process: to see original film footage, sketches, unpublished photographs and polaroids; the hidden Bourdin is revealed while the viewer is taken on a trip through his filmic, sexy, wild and powerfully suggestive images.

The exhibition begins in Britain, tracing the famous trip Bourdin took with his family across the country in a black Cadillac with a pair of mannequin legs and a suitcase full of shoes. Here he places the mannequin legs against the backdrops of Britain: train station, bus stops, fields, poolsides, crossing a cobblestone street, awaiting a black cab. These photographs in particular ignite the imagination, teetering off balance, suggesting movement. Bourdin invites the viewer to conjure a narrative around the image – and so, we are all the image-makers and photographers in his world.

Several rooms reveal unpublished photographs, alongside famous Vogue spreads and a film is projected on a Super 8 camera giving the viewer some insight into his process

Bourdin always searched for a location upon which to place his models, enhancing his worlds through various techniques to create filmic worlds that are imbued with narrative; models are hidden, only legs or lips or hands revealed.

 

Screen shot 2015-03-16 at 22.19.35Coleen is a Canadian writer and theatre director with a thirst to explore the world. She trained at École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, where she mentored with French playwright, Michel Azama. She is currently developing a new play through the Arcola Theatre Writers’ Programme.

Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition

From families hit by Ebola, to abandoned Italian nightclubs, including Bolivian women wrestlers and American teenagers on their prom night: the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards exhibition features some of the finest photographs of the year in the most diverse categories.

For their eighth year running, the awards – the world’s largest photography competition – received no less than 173,444 entries from 171 countries. The panel of judges, from the World Photography Organisation, had to select images from a diverse range of subject-matter which included current affairs, sport, still-life, architecture and arts. The selected images in each category are exhibited in different formats: prints, but also tablets or TV screens for the mobile phone competition.

Shocking images of Ukraine crisis sit beside quirky portraits of elderly women having their hair cut. In addition to the different competitions, the Outstanding Contribution to Photography exhibition celebrates the iconic images of everyday life made by the legendary Magnum Photographer Elliott Erwitt.

2015 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition, Somerset House, until 10 May

MARINAMarina is a freelance journalist and culture writer based in London and an analogue photography enthusiast. She holds a Journalism degree from City University.

Portraiture and Projection by Céline Bodin

Appearances are bearers of meaning. Our first impressions of a person are concealed within our own imaging process. The tendency to classify into types is almost instinctive; it is a common path towards identification. Portrait photography is its ambiguous medium. Scraping the surface, it destabilises our sense of reality. Because of its supposed guaranty of exact replication of the living reality, it has been established to ‘re-present’ and reveal.

In the 19th century it was considered the best means to classify and identify into types with the use of phrenology and physiognomy, as can be seen in Francis Galton’s composites which merged multiple individuals into one generic image. Photography offers time for the contemplation of subtle details; unlike painting, it isn’t the summary of its subject.

However, along its journey towards contemporary portraiture the notion of representation has become problematic: what is readable only on the surface? To what extent are we learning about the individual portrayed in the instant of an image? Does a portrait truly allow space for genuine presence?

Photography is objective only in its functional aspect but it is somehow weakened in its ability to unite self and subject. Imagery offers fantasy, it can comfort and reassure. Susan Sontag, in her study On Photography (1973), insists on a photograph to be only a ‘narrowly selective transparency’. It is only a part of reality.

The question of projection is key. Posing is an obstacle to the ‘air’ that allows us to recognise the person, as Roland Barthes stated in Camera Lucida (1980). In Portraiture: Facing the Subject, (1997), Joanna Woodall introduces the notion of ‘portraiture’s mimetic mask’, as we are bound to look for the flaw in the surface which will guide us to the true presence. Therefore, the portrait opens itself to interrogation and suggestion more than it delivers a sense of truth or character.

The works of contemporary photographers Rineke Dijkstra, Bettina Von Zwehl, or Marjaana Kella revisit the conventions of portraiture as a genre. Dijkstra’s work is strong in narrative, her subjects enter the camera’s frame to tell a story subtly shaped by the specificity of a moment or action. In the case of Von Zwehl portraiture is treated as a laboratory, as she carries out experiments on her subjects, confronting them with their own vulnerability while the camera witnesses their reaction.

When 19th century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot documented hysteria, he proved that the likelihood of the patient performing was increased by the presence of the medical staff. The notion of performance, as an observed state, raises the question of authenticity in the self as it engages with attitude. To disrupt their subjects’ effort at self-representation Von Zwehl, and Dijkstra consider the residual traces of extreme forms of exertion or specific contextual affect, as a bullfighter leaves the arena (Villa Franca di Xira, Portugal, May 8, 1994), a woman just gave birth, or vulnerable subjects lie on the floor holding their breath (Untitled III, No 2, 1999). In Hypnosis (1997-2001), Marjaana Kella scrutinises the suspended moment of her hypnotised subjects (Niclas, Hypnosis, 2001).

Such works invite the viewer to investigate the layers of visibility a subject offers, as the ones represented here face the challenged projection of themselves, necessarily defying the notion of self-consciousness in the moment of being photographed.

The viewer’s examination should therefore remain aware of the body’s performative quality.

Images mediate a cultural coding. Acknowledging this dimension, Cindy Sherman’s work reveals how conventionalised appearances are acted out. (Untitled Film Stills, #12, 1978). Through genre performance she portrays gender as the ‘regulatory model’ Judith Butler defines in Gender Trouble (1990). In Sherman’s self-portraits, gender follows an imitative structure influenced by customs and ideals constantly revaluating the ‘corporealisation’ that imaging should set apart from identification.

Portrait photography can be considered the space for interpretation, its definition relying both on the artist’s intention and its relationship to the viewer’s judgment.

Looking at Thomas Ruff series of passport-like photos our longing to identify is frustrated. The person’s character remains a mystery. The quality of those deadpan portraits remains in the subtle signs of interaction, the way the subjects address the camera.

We can therefore witness multiple layers of projection within a portrait: The photographer interprets the sitter’s self-interpretation, and the sitter in return interprets the photographer and viewer’s expectation. Finally, the viewer interprets the overall impersonation.

In the end, the camera doesn’t classify, we do. As spectators we long to read through the subtlety of a face, the grace of gesture, the drama of expression. Portraits fascinate us because of what they could say. Our relationship with portraiture is therefore a subjective and sentimental one. It is easy to understand that more than it renders personality, photography reveals our intimate projections on the surface. We conjure a dialogue, and the desire to relate might in itself be the only possible truth portraiture could deliver.

 

BODIN_CV

Céline Bodin is a French photographer. After studying literature and architecture, she graduated from a photography BA at Gobelins, L’école de l’image in Paris. In 2013 she completed a Photography MA at the London College of Communication. As well as regularly writing about photography, her personal practice explores themes of identity, gender, and the metaphysical frustration of the medium in representation.

Interview with Gemma Padley

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Urban Impulses: An interview with the Curators María Wills and Alexis Fabry (2019)

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Melanie Bonajo: Night Soil (2016)

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David Lynch on Photography (2013)

Shirin Neshat: Art in Exile (2011)

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Carrie Mae Weems: Can an Artist Inspire Social Change? (2016)

Carrie Mae Weems: Can an Artist Inspire Social Change? (2016)

Stephen Shore: American Beauty (2006)

Stephen Shore: American Beauty (2006)

Sally Mann: Hold Still @ Art Institute of Chicago (2016)

Sally Mann: Hold Still @ Art Institute of Chicago (2016)

New York Voices: Joel Sternfeld (2002)

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'The Role of Photography', The Photographic Universe Conference - Charlotte Cotton with David Reinfurt (2011)

'The Role of Photography', The Photographic Universe Conference - Charlotte Cotton with David Reinfurt (2011)

Ryan Linkof in conversation with Hemera on 'Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium', LACMA (2016)

Ryan Linkof in conversation with Hemera on 'Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium', LACMA (2016)

Larry Schaaf - The Damned Leaf: Musings on History, Hysteria & Historiography (2015)

Larry Schaaf - The Damned Leaf: Musings on History, Hysteria & Historiography (2015)

Liminal Camera (2014)

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BBC Omnibus: Mario Testino (2002)

BBC Omnibus: Mario Testino (2002)

The Real Weegee (1993)

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Scholar Emmanuel Iduma on Contemporary African Photography (2015)

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Alice Austen House: New Eyes on Alice Austen @ Whitney Museum of Art (2016)

Alice Austen House: New Eyes on Alice Austen @ Whitney Museum of Art (2016)

Vivian Maier: Who Took Nanny's Picture's (2013)

Vivian Maier: Who Took Nanny's Picture's (2013)

The Conscientious Lens: A conversation between Jonathan Alpeyrie and Spencer Platt

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Alfredo Cramerotti: The Hyperimage @ Riga Photography Biennal (2016)

Alfredo Cramerotti: The Hyperimage @ Riga Photography Biennal (2016)

John Chiara  (2015)

John Chiara (2015)

Simon Baker in conversation with Hemera on

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The Invisible Photograph - Part I (Underground), Carnegie Museum of Art  (2014)

The Invisible Photograph - Part I (Underground), Carnegie Museum of Art (2014)

Joel Meyerowitz: Street Photography (1981)

Joel Meyerowitz: Street Photography (1981)

Matthew Brandt (2015)

Matthew Brandt (2015)

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Martha Cooper: Graffiti interview (2011)

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Allison Rossiter (2015)

Allison Rossiter (2015)

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Nan Goldin - The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (2013)

Bruce Davidson: Subway at the Strand (2011)

Bruce Davidson: Subway at the Strand (2011)

Jeff Wall in conversation with Thierry de Duve at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (2015)

Jeff Wall in conversation with Thierry de Duve at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (2015)

Julia Margaret Cameron @ the V&A, 28 Nov - 21 Feb  (2015)

Julia Margaret Cameron @ the V&A, 28 Nov - 21 Feb (2015)

Garry Winogrand MIT Q&A  (1974)

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Interview with Helmut Newton (1996)

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Is Photography Over? Symposium at SFMoMA (2010)

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Magic Mirror by Sarah Purcill (2013)

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Saatchi Gallery Talk: New Directions in Contemporary Photography  (2011)

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ArtStop: Identity in Contemporary Photography at the San Diego Museum of Art (2013)

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Imagine: The Colourful Mr Eggleston (2009)

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David Campany: Photography Between Page and Wall (2014)

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The Afronauts by Cristina de Middel (2012)

The Afronauts by Cristina de Middel (2012)

Masters of Photography: Diane Arbus (1972)

Masters of Photography: Diane Arbus (1972)

Cindy Sherman: Nobody's Here But Me (1994)

Cindy Sherman: Nobody's Here But Me (1994)

Guggenheim Symposium: Empathy, Affect, and the Photographic Image (2012)

Guggenheim Symposium: Empathy, Affect, and the Photographic Image (2012)

Sebastiao Salgado: The Silent Drama of Photography (2013)

Sebastiao Salgado: The Silent Drama of Photography (2013)

Dying to Tell the Story (1998)

Dying to Tell the Story (1998)

Elina Brotherus: The Black Bay Sequence (2010)

Elina Brotherus: The Black Bay Sequence (2010)

Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light (1995)

Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light (1995)

David Hockney: Painting and Photography (2015)

David Hockney: Painting and Photography (2015)

Truth, Lies, and Photographs. Symposium at MoMA (2012)

Truth, Lies, and Photographs. Symposium at MoMA (2012)

Photography and Sculpture Symposium at the Clark Art Institute (2014)

Photography and Sculpture Symposium at the Clark Art Institute (2014)

New Thoughts on the Photographic Portrait at the San Diego Museum of Art (2013)

New Thoughts on the Photographic Portrait at the San Diego Museum of Art (2013)

Hemera interviews Sheyi Bankale, curator of Photo50 (2015)

Hemera interviews Sheyi Bankale, curator of Photo50 (2015)

The Future of Editorial at Magnum Foundation PhotoEx symposium (2014)

The Future of Editorial at Magnum Foundation PhotoEx symposium (2014)

Behind the Scenes: New Photography by Alex Prager at MoMA (2010)

Behind the Scenes: New Photography by Alex Prager at MoMA (2010)

Alec Soth interviewed by curator George Slade at the Walker Art Center (2010)

Alec Soth interviewed by curator George Slade at the Walker Art Center (2010)

Sophie Calle interview with Whitechapel Gallery Director Iwona Blazwick (2011)

Sophie Calle interview with Whitechapel Gallery Director Iwona Blazwick (2011)

Mary Ellen Mark at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2013)

Mary Ellen Mark at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2013)

Elina Brotherus: It's not me, it's a photograph (2013)

Elina Brotherus: It's not me, it's a photograph (2013)

Ansel Adams, a Documentary (2002)

Ansel Adams, a Documentary (2002)

How Photography Connects Us by David Griffin, Photo Director of National Geographic (2013)

How Photography Connects Us by David Griffin, Photo Director of National Geographic (2013)

Kora by Jawshing Arthur Liou (2012)

Kora by Jawshing Arthur Liou (2012)

La Petite Mort by Alex Prager (2012)

La Petite Mort by Alex Prager (2012)

James Mollison: The Hottest Mess on Earth (2011)

James Mollison: The Hottest Mess on Earth (2011)

TateShots: Broomberg & Chanarin (2015)

TateShots: Broomberg & Chanarin (2015)

Arles 2015, les Rencontres de la photographie (2015)

Arles 2015, les Rencontres de la photographie (2015)

Ruben Lundgren of WassinkLundgren, on

Ruben Lundgren of WassinkLundgren, on "The Chinese Photobook" (2015)

Bruce Gilden: New York (2014)

Bruce Gilden: New York (2014)

James Mollison and Jon Ronson on Playground Bullies (2015)

James Mollison and Jon Ronson on Playground Bullies (2015)

Reconsidering the Object: Researching Interwar Photography in the Digital Age (2014)

Reconsidering the Object: Researching Interwar Photography in the Digital Age (2014)

Zoe Strauss: Sea Change at Haverford's Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery (2015)

Zoe Strauss: Sea Change at Haverford's Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery (2015)

Rinko Kawauchi, Approaching Whiteness (2013)

Rinko Kawauchi, Approaching Whiteness (2013)

Duane Michals, The Man Who Invented Himself (2012)

Duane Michals, The Man Who Invented Himself (2012)

Alec Soth – Summer Nights at the Dollar Tree (2013)

Alec Soth – Summer Nights at the Dollar Tree (2013)

Howard Schatz - Photographer (2015)

Howard Schatz - Photographer (2015)

Sacha de Boer Interview with Howard Greenberg (2014)

Sacha de Boer Interview with Howard Greenberg (2014)

Saul Leiter in Conversation with Vince Aletti (2014)

Saul Leiter in Conversation with Vince Aletti (2014)

Arne Svenson, The Workers at Julie Saul Gallery - Video interview (2015)

Arne Svenson, The Workers at Julie Saul Gallery - Video interview (2015)

Lynne Cohen. Occupied Territory 1971 - 1988, at Higher Pictures (2012)

Lynne Cohen. Occupied Territory 1971 - 1988, at Higher Pictures (2012)

Photography journalist Gemma Padley will be taking over our Instagram feed during the run of Photo London. LPD took the opportunity to chat with Gemma about her impressive career to date and her thoughts on the photography scene in London.

Sarah Allen: How did you get involved in this field?
Gemma Padley: I started out as lots of people in this industry do by interning at as many editorial/media places as I could. One of these was at BJP, shortly after I moved to London in 2007. I was doing a post-grad diploma in Journalism at the time and leant so much from working on a busy arts magazine alongside studying. Before this I studied English at university and had developed an interest in photography, but knew early on that I was more interested in writing about photographs and telling other photographers’ stories than trying to be a photographer myself. I still enjoy taking pictures for me, from time to time, and feel it’s important to have a good understanding of the workings of photography so I can relate to photographers. Although I would never claim to know what it’s like to be a photographer and to make a living this way. I imagine it’s probably as challenging as making a living through writing though! I guess we all do it for the love of it, which is as good a reason as any I suppose.

What are the most interesting trends you’ve noticed recently in photography?
Hmmmmm, I won’t be breaking new ground by saying this, but there’s certainly a trend (which has been going on for a while now), of people working across mediums – looking at where photography meets sculpture/collage/painting etc. There’s a lot of interesting quite conceptual-based still life around too, and within photojournalism people are tending to pursue longer-term, slower, sometimes more personal projects. This could be attributed to changes within the editorial market, as budgets decrease and commissions become harder to win, photographers are taking matters into their own hands. I don’t want to infer that there are no longer opportunities within editorial photography, but things are undoubtedly more difficult, and I think it’s great that photographers are reacting to this in a positive way and finding other ways to make the kind of work they want to.

What recent exhibitions / fairs have you found really exciting or engaging?
I loved the Christopher Williams retrospective, which is currently at the Whitechapel Gallery, but it’s not an easy show. There’s little to guide the visitor in terms of panel texts, labels, etc, It’s one of those exhibitions that if you go with an open mind, wanting to think, wanting to work hard to find meaning or understand what’s going on, then you’ll be rewarded.

If you could buy the work of one photographer who would it be?
Great question! I have so many favourites it’s hard to say… I’m a sucker for beautiful, enigmatic portraits by photographic masters like Paolo Roversi and Emmet Gowin, and I also love Jack Davison’s approach to portraiture, so anything by those photographers. I’m also a huge fan of Rinko Kawauchi. I love her attention to detail and the simplicity of her work, so again anything by her would get my vote!

What excites and annoys you most about London’s photography scene?
London is such a melting pot of talent, and I love how international it is, but it can be cliquey and stifling at times, and also very competitive, so sometimes I need to take a break from it, and do something completely different – then I can come back feeling refreshed and ready to go again

If you weren’t a photography journalist what would you be and why?
I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, as trite as that sounds!

Interview with Gemma Padley

Photography journalist Gemma Padley will be taking over our Instagram feed during the run of Photo London. LPD took the opportunity to chat with Gemma about her impressive career to date and her thoughts on the photography scene in London.

Sarah Allen: How did you get involved in this field?
Gemma Padley: I started out as lots of people in this industry do by interning at as many editorial/media places as I could. One of these was at BJP, shortly after I moved to London in 2007. I was doing a post-grad diploma in Journalism at the time and leant so much from working on a busy arts magazine alongside studying. Before this I studied English at university and had developed an interest in photography, but knew early on that I was more interested in writing about photographs and telling other photographers’ stories than trying to be a photographer myself. I still enjoy taking pictures for me, from time to time, and feel it’s important to have a good understanding of the workings of photography so I can relate to photographers. Although I would never claim to know what it’s like to be a photographer and to make a living this way. I imagine it’s probably as challenging as making a living through writing though! I guess we all do it for the love of it, which is as good a reason as any I suppose.

What are the most interesting trends you’ve noticed recently in photography?
Hmmmmm, I won’t be breaking new ground by saying this, but there’s certainly a trend (which has been going on for a while now), of people working across mediums – looking at where photography meets sculpture/collage/painting etc. There’s a lot of interesting quite conceptual-based still life around too, and within photojournalism people are tending to pursue longer-term, slower, sometimes more personal projects. This could be attributed to changes within the editorial market, as budgets decrease and commissions become harder to win, photographers are taking matters into their own hands. I don’t want to infer that there are no longer opportunities within editorial photography, but things are undoubtedly more difficult, and I think it’s great that photographers are reacting to this in a positive way and finding other ways to make the kind of work they want to.

What recent exhibitions / fairs have you found really exciting or engaging?
I loved the Christopher Williams retrospective, which is currently at the Whitechapel Gallery, but it’s not an easy show. There’s little to guide the visitor in terms of panel texts, labels, etc, It’s one of those exhibitions that if you go with an open mind, wanting to think, wanting to work hard to find meaning or understand what’s going on, then you’ll be rewarded.

If you could buy the work of one photographer who would it be?
Great question! I have so many favourites it’s hard to say… I’m a sucker for beautiful, enigmatic portraits by photographic masters like Paolo Roversi and Emmet Gowin, and I also love Jack Davison’s approach to portraiture, so anything by those photographers. I’m also a huge fan of Rinko Kawauchi. I love her attention to detail and the simplicity of her work, so again anything by her would get my vote!

What excites and annoys you most about London’s photography scene?
London is such a melting pot of talent, and I love how international it is, but it can be cliquey and stifling at times, and also very competitive, so sometimes I need to take a break from it, and do something completely different – then I can come back feeling refreshed and ready to go again

If you weren’t a photography journalist what would you be and why?
I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, as trite as that sounds!

Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition @ Somerset House

From families hit by Ebola, to abandoned Italian nightclubs, including Bolivian women wrestlers and American teenagers on their prom night: the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards exhibition features some of the finest photographs of the year in the most diverse categories.

For their eighth year running, the awards – the world’s largest photography competition – received no less than 173,444 entries from 171 countries. The panel of judges, from the World Photography Organisation, had to select images from a diverse range of subject-matter which included current affairs, sport, still-life, architecture and arts. The selected images in each category are exhibited in different formats: prints, but also tablets or TV screens for the mobile phone competition.

Shocking images of Ukraine crisis sit beside quirky portraits of elderly women having their hair cut. In addition to the different competitions, the Outstanding Contribution to Photography exhibition celebrates the iconic images of everyday life made by the legendary Magnum Photographer Elliott Erwitt.

2015 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition, Somerset House, until 10 May

MARINAMarina is a freelance journalist and culture writer based in London and an analogue photography enthusiast. She holds a Journalism degree from City University.​

Review: Nick Waplington/ Alexander McQueen: Working Process @ Tate Britain


Images courtesy of Nick Waplington / Tate Britain

In ‘Working Process’ photographer Nick Waplington gives a rare look behind the scenes of Alexander McQueen’s last collection.

Selected from the previously published book project ‘Working Process’, Waplington’s photographs capture the creative journey of McQueen’s final Autumn/Winter collection ‘Horn of Plenty’ in 2009, one of the most celebrated fashion collections in recent history.

The major exhibition at Tate Britain reveals McQueen’s working practice through a selection of hundred large-scale prints completed by Waplington and McQueen three months before the designer’s suicide.

For over six months Waplington followed McQueen and his team from the designer’s studio in Clerkenwell to the final catwalk show in Paris, documenting every step of the creation of ‘The Horn of Plenty! (Everything But the Kitchen Sink)’, taking on recycling as a guiding theme.

McQueen conceived ‘The Horn of Plenty’ collection as an iconoclastic retrospective of his career in fashion, reusing silhouettes and fabrics from his earlier collections and creating a catwalk set out of broken mirrors.

‘Working Process’ reveals a raw and unpolished side of the fashion world. Waplington juxtaposes candid images of McQueen’s creative process with close-up shots of landfill sites and recycling plants, featuring beer bottles, plastic bags and piles of newspapers.

The exhibition, as the photobook, resulting from this unique artistic collaboration creates a powerful commentary on destruction and creative renewal – themes at the heart of the ‘Horn of Plenty’ collection.

Nick Waplington/ Alexander McQueen: Working Process at Tate Britain until 17 May 2015


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Miriam is the Deputy Editor of LPD.

Portraiture and Projection by Céline Bodin

Appearances are bearers of meaning. Our first impressions of a person are concealed within our own imaging process. The tendency to classify into types is almost instinctive; it is a common path towards identification. Portrait photography is its ambiguous medium. Scraping the surface, it destabilises our sense of reality. Because of its supposed guaranty of exact replication of the living reality, it has been established to ‘re-present’ and reveal.

In the 19th century it was considered the best means to classify and identify into types with the use of phrenology and physiognomy, as can be seen in Francis Galton’s composites which merged multiple individuals into one generic image. Photography offers time for the contemplation of subtle details; unlike painting, it isn’t the summary of its subject.

However, along its journey towards contemporary portraiture the notion of representation has become problematic: what is readable only on the surface? To what extent are we learning about the individual portrayed in the instant of an image? Does a portrait truly allow space for genuine presence?

Photography is objective only in its functional aspect but it is somehow weakened in its ability to unite self and subject. Imagery offers fantasy, it can comfort and reassure. Susan Sontag, in her study On Photography (1973), insists on a photograph to be only a ‘narrowly selective transparency’. It is only a part of reality.

The question of projection is key. Posing is an obstacle to the ‘air’ that allows us to recognise the person, as Roland Barthes stated in Camera Lucida (1980). In Portraiture: Facing the Subject, (1997), Joanna Woodall introduces the notion of ‘portraiture’s mimetic mask’, as we are bound to look for the flaw in the surface which will guide us to the true presence. Therefore, the portrait opens itself to interrogation and suggestion more than it delivers a sense of truth or character.

The works of contemporary photographers Rineke Dijkstra, Bettina Von Zwehl, or Marjaana Kella revisit the conventions of portraiture as a genre. Dijkstra’s work is strong in narrative, her subjects enter the camera’s frame to tell a story subtly shaped by the specificity of a moment or action. In the case of Von Zwehl portraiture is treated as a laboratory, as she carries out experiments on her subjects, confronting them with their own vulnerability while the camera witnesses their reaction.

When 19th century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot documented hysteria, he proved that the likelihood of the patient performing was increased by the presence of the medical staff. The notion of performance, as an observed state, raises the question of authenticity in the self as it engages with attitude. To disrupt their subjects’ effort at self-representation Von Zwehl, and Dijkstra consider the residual traces of extreme forms of exertion or specific contextual affect, as a bullfighter leaves the arena (Villa Franca di Xira, Portugal, May 8, 1994), a woman just gave birth, or vulnerable subjects lie on the floor holding their breath (Untitled III, No 2, 1999). In Hypnosis (1997-2001), Marjaana Kella scrutinises the suspended moment of her hypnotised subjects (Niclas, Hypnosis, 2001).

Such works invite the viewer to investigate the layers of visibility a subject offers, as the ones represented here face the challenged projection of themselves, necessarily defying the notion of self-consciousness in the moment of being photographed.

The viewer’s examination should therefore remain aware of the body’s performative quality.

Images mediate a cultural coding. Acknowledging this dimension, Cindy Sherman’s work reveals how conventionalised appearances are acted out. (Untitled Film Stills, #12, 1978). Through genre performance she portrays gender as the ‘regulatory model’ Judith Butler defines in Gender Trouble (1990). In Sherman’s self-portraits, gender follows an imitative structure influenced by customs and ideals constantly revaluating the ‘corporealisation’ that imaging should set apart from identification.

Portrait photography can be considered the space for interpretation, its definition relying both on the artist’s intention and its relationship to the viewer’s judgment.

Looking at Thomas Ruff series of passport-like photos our longing to identify is frustrated. The person’s character remains a mystery. The quality of those deadpan portraits remains in the subtle signs of interaction, the way the subjects address the camera.

We can therefore witness multiple layers of projection within a portrait: The photographer interprets the sitter’s self-interpretation, and the sitter in return interprets the photographer and viewer’s expectation. Finally, the viewer interprets the overall impersonation.

In the end, the camera doesn’t classify, we do. As spectators we long to read through the subtlety of a face, the grace of gesture, the drama of expression. Portraits fascinate us because of what they could say. Our relationship with portraiture is therefore a subjective and sentimental one. It is easy to understand that more than it renders personality, photography reveals our intimate projections on the surface. We conjure a dialogue, and the desire to relate might in itself be the only possible truth portraiture could deliver.

 

BODIN_CV

Céline Bodin is a French photographer. After studying literature and architecture, she graduated from a photography BA at Gobelins, L’école de l’image in Paris. In 2013 she completed a Photography MA at the London College of Communication. As well as regularly writing about photography, her personal practice explores themes of identity, gender, and the metaphysical frustration of the medium in representation.