Street and Studio: An Urban History of Photography
Last weekend we had the pleasure of visiting the Tate Modern in London, which featured a huge photographic exhibition of the work of some of the world’s most famous photographers, designed to present “a fascinating history of photographic portraiture taken on the street or in the photographer’s studio, looking at the differences between these two key locations in which photographers work.”
Cecil Beaton (The Soapsuds on the Living Posters Ball, 1928)
It was certainly good to see the development of photography over the last 150 years. Some of the early photographs were astonishing, not for their subject matter, but simply because you could look back and imagine just how old these photos were, and what remarkable photographs they were bearing in mind the primitive cameras that were used then. These photographs weren’t just historical artefacts, they illustrated the men who were heroes of their time, the innovators who were masters of their art. Rich was totally wowed by some of the early Cecil Beaton work, and has been muttering ever since about “the lighting, the lighting.” I was blown away by Paul Strand’s Wall Street for pretty much the same reason, plus I’ve always been a sucker for architectural photography and it was great to see that Strand’s images looked as good in print as they did on the internet (I know a whole lot about Paul Strand…I am a Strand groupie…just as well he’s dead or Rich would have a serious problem.)
Paul Strand Wall Street (1915)
Anyhoo, after I’d finished drooling over Strand, I will admit to preferring some of the more recent work on offer. The best art in the show was unquestionably, one hundred percent Mapplethorpe for the following shot of Lisa Lyon (1982)
Mapplethorpe Lisa Lyon (1982)
…but I was equally wowed by Bert Stern and Garry Winogrand. I really didn’t expect to like Winogrand after everything I’d read about him, but his street portraits were excellent. And anyone who says “Whenever I’ve seen an attractive woman I’ve done my best to photograph her” gets my vote. There were also many photographers whose work I was unfamiliar with whom I loved, and whom I will be studying and you’re all certainly going to hear a whole lot more about in future, such as Marjaana Kella, Pieter Hugo, Jeff Wall etc etc. I guess I generally preferred the contemporary photographers, and those lesser known (to me) wowed me more than the better known ones. Mitra Tabrizian, in particular, I hadn’t heard of before, but certainly dazzled with a stunning surrealist photograph from Beyond the Limits series: surrealist photography at its best.
Mitra Tabrizian, Beyond The Limits (2000)
What a collection! What a comprehensive history of photography! Rich was in his element. The exhibition allowed him to study the work of all his heroes up close and personal, to touch his Gods, to be inspired. He loved it.
Are you bored yet?
Well so was I.
If photography has been my faith for the last few years, then this exhibition caused me to question it. I had one of those “what the fuck am I doing here?” moments. You know, a profound “is it Art?” moment. To be perfectly honest, although there was a lot of great work there, some of my heroes, my icons, left me cold and rotting in the gutter along with the hundreds of other homeless vagrants featured in the exhibition, alone and lost.
Boy was that exhibition depressing. I grant you it was an eclectic collection of photographs from famous (and not so famous) photographers, but at least half of it was collated by numpties. Some of the photographs just didn’t fit together. For example, you had a series of atmospheric moody street photographs and stunning portraits followed up by a photograph of a guy in a gimp suit. Why was that shot there? Presumably for the shock factor, presumably because the organizers had been donated a Mapplethorpe shot and wanted to feature it in there somewhere, anywhere, because it was “Mapplethorpe” (all hail the great one!) but it really ruined the flow of the images. O.K. so I was supposed to compare and contrast street and studio, but honestly, even to a beginner like me, it just didn’t work. In particular, the arangement of photographs in the contemporary section lacked cohesiveness.
I was incredibly, profoundly disappointed by the featured work of several Photographic Greats, even though it is heresy to say so. Some of the work featured by the contemporary Masters was clearly only there because it was done by “a famous photographer” not because the image itself was good art. Avedon’s featured image of “Andy Warhol and Members of the Factory” (1969) was awful, and Juergen Teller’s images disappointed me equally. (Most of you photographers reading this have done much, much better work, trust me on this.) Some of the images featured were just plain bad (even allowing for subjective viewer interpretation and my poor appreciation of composition) and some were simply featured in the wrong place, so the flow of images, the photographic history and the gradual build-up of emotion were broken. The viewer was left irritated and disappointed, rather than enriched.
My 13 year old wannabe-artist son summed it up best after pausing over Helmut Newton’s shot of Catherine Deneuve (1983. So bad that I can’t find it anywhere on the internet to link to.)
“That’s really, truly awful,” he said.
Me: “Cripes! You can’t say that! It’s Helmut Newton!”
“I don’t care who it is. It’s really bad. Just because he has a famous name doesn’t mean it’s a good photograph. Even famous artists screw-up you know.”
From the mouths of babes…
We adjourned next door to tea and Francis Bacon, both of which soothed our troubled brow, and went home feeling much, much better.
The Millennium Bridge, as viewed from The Tate Modern, with St Pauls Cathedral in the distance
Either something went horribly wrong with that photographic exhibition or I am the one who is a numpty because my innocent, naïve and inexperienced expectations of my icons were much too high, and I should probably just give up photography now and go and study surrealist painting instead. I’m not sure which of my two conclusions is the right one yet. I’ll let you know…
Cecil Beaton (The Soapsuds on the Living Posters Ball, 1928)
It was certainly good to see the development of photography over the last 150 years. Some of the early photographs were astonishing, not for their subject matter, but simply because you could look back and imagine just how old these photos were, and what remarkable photographs they were bearing in mind the primitive cameras that were used then. These photographs weren’t just historical artefacts, they illustrated the men who were heroes of their time, the innovators who were masters of their art. Rich was totally wowed by some of the early Cecil Beaton work, and has been muttering ever since about “the lighting, the lighting.” I was blown away by Paul Strand’s Wall Street for pretty much the same reason, plus I’ve always been a sucker for architectural photography and it was great to see that Strand’s images looked as good in print as they did on the internet (I know a whole lot about Paul Strand…I am a Strand groupie…just as well he’s dead or Rich would have a serious problem.)
Paul Strand Wall Street (1915)
Anyhoo, after I’d finished drooling over Strand, I will admit to preferring some of the more recent work on offer. The best art in the show was unquestionably, one hundred percent Mapplethorpe for the following shot of Lisa Lyon (1982)
Mapplethorpe Lisa Lyon (1982)
…but I was equally wowed by Bert Stern and Garry Winogrand. I really didn’t expect to like Winogrand after everything I’d read about him, but his street portraits were excellent. And anyone who says “Whenever I’ve seen an attractive woman I’ve done my best to photograph her” gets my vote. There were also many photographers whose work I was unfamiliar with whom I loved, and whom I will be studying and you’re all certainly going to hear a whole lot more about in future, such as Marjaana Kella, Pieter Hugo, Jeff Wall etc etc. I guess I generally preferred the contemporary photographers, and those lesser known (to me) wowed me more than the better known ones. Mitra Tabrizian, in particular, I hadn’t heard of before, but certainly dazzled with a stunning surrealist photograph from Beyond the Limits series: surrealist photography at its best.
Mitra Tabrizian, Beyond The Limits (2000)
What a collection! What a comprehensive history of photography! Rich was in his element. The exhibition allowed him to study the work of all his heroes up close and personal, to touch his Gods, to be inspired. He loved it.
Are you bored yet?
Well so was I.
If photography has been my faith for the last few years, then this exhibition caused me to question it. I had one of those “what the fuck am I doing here?” moments. You know, a profound “is it Art?” moment. To be perfectly honest, although there was a lot of great work there, some of my heroes, my icons, left me cold and rotting in the gutter along with the hundreds of other homeless vagrants featured in the exhibition, alone and lost.
Boy was that exhibition depressing. I grant you it was an eclectic collection of photographs from famous (and not so famous) photographers, but at least half of it was collated by numpties. Some of the photographs just didn’t fit together. For example, you had a series of atmospheric moody street photographs and stunning portraits followed up by a photograph of a guy in a gimp suit. Why was that shot there? Presumably for the shock factor, presumably because the organizers had been donated a Mapplethorpe shot and wanted to feature it in there somewhere, anywhere, because it was “Mapplethorpe” (all hail the great one!) but it really ruined the flow of the images. O.K. so I was supposed to compare and contrast street and studio, but honestly, even to a beginner like me, it just didn’t work. In particular, the arangement of photographs in the contemporary section lacked cohesiveness.
I was incredibly, profoundly disappointed by the featured work of several Photographic Greats, even though it is heresy to say so. Some of the work featured by the contemporary Masters was clearly only there because it was done by “a famous photographer” not because the image itself was good art. Avedon’s featured image of “Andy Warhol and Members of the Factory” (1969) was awful, and Juergen Teller’s images disappointed me equally. (Most of you photographers reading this have done much, much better work, trust me on this.) Some of the images featured were just plain bad (even allowing for subjective viewer interpretation and my poor appreciation of composition) and some were simply featured in the wrong place, so the flow of images, the photographic history and the gradual build-up of emotion were broken. The viewer was left irritated and disappointed, rather than enriched.
My 13 year old wannabe-artist son summed it up best after pausing over Helmut Newton’s shot of Catherine Deneuve (1983. So bad that I can’t find it anywhere on the internet to link to.)
“That’s really, truly awful,” he said.
Me: “Cripes! You can’t say that! It’s Helmut Newton!”
“I don’t care who it is. It’s really bad. Just because he has a famous name doesn’t mean it’s a good photograph. Even famous artists screw-up you know.”
From the mouths of babes…
We adjourned next door to tea and Francis Bacon, both of which soothed our troubled brow, and went home feeling much, much better.
The Millennium Bridge, as viewed from The Tate Modern, with St Pauls Cathedral in the distance
Either something went horribly wrong with that photographic exhibition or I am the one who is a numpty because my innocent, naïve and inexperienced expectations of my icons were much too high, and I should probably just give up photography now and go and study surrealist painting instead. I’m not sure which of my two conclusions is the right one yet. I’ll let you know…
posted by Lin at 12:15 PM
2 Comments:
Doesn't this all come back to the discussion of why certain photographers rise to the top of the heap (the recent discourse on Richard Prince)?
I join you in awe of Cecil Beaton and Strand. What incredible photography. These images alone make me wish I had seen the show, despite the muck you describe wading.
Many days I feel depressed about the way the art world functions. It can be no better than the people who have power over it and the politics surrounding it, I guess.
What the hell is numpties or numpty.
Oh...just googled it.
I am one. Damn.
D.L. Wood
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home