Capture the Moment

Steve McCurry exhibition

All is not lost for anyone who might have missed the exhibition by the renowned American photographer at the gallery of Chris Beetles Fine Photographs in London.  The exhibition has been extended until 15 October. 

A Magnum photographer since 1986, Steve McCurry has made his reputation with images from Afghanistan from before the Russian invasion, Burma, Sri Lanka, Beirut, Cambodia, the Phillipines, the former Yugoslavia and the Gulf War.   

McCurry is, perhaps, best known for his striking image of the Afghan refugee girl, Sharbat Gula.  Against a green background, the girl’s green eyes stare out, her head shrouded in a tattered red robe through which fragments of green clothing can be seen.  It’s a powerful but understated image of someone in a troubled land who has known hardship. 

Look around this exhibition of around 40 images from the centre of the gallery and McCurry’s palette of vibrant reds, greens and blues leaps out from almost every one of his images.  His street scenes are richly-coloured, with bright red and green headgear, vibrant oranges in the trunk of a car, blue walls, faces covered in red powders and red hand prints; red jackets punctuate the grim brown smoke clouds of the 9/11 image and red prayer flags stand out from the snow.  Everywhere in these images are bright costumes, sails on boats, the walls of brick and plaster buildings.  The colours are rich, saturated and immensley powerful.

  Holi Festival, Rajasthan, India, 1996

Yet, in the introduction to the exhibition catalogue, McCurry says, “Most of the time I’m not looking for colour pictures...Colour is secondary...colour alone...does not make a good picture.  For McCurry, a powerful image is one that “reveals a deeper truth”.  

  Monk at Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, Tibet, 2000

However, McCurry is, in the true sense of the word, a colourist. It is not, as he says, that he searches out colours.  He simply seems to have absorbed the colours of the lands in which he has extensively travelled and they permeate his images, but only as one of a series of compositional elements which help him to say something about his subjects.  The key is in his comment: “As I reflect back, I see that the vibrant colours of Asia had a big role in teaching me to write in light”.  Colours in McCurry’s hands become an organising principle, around which other elements fall into place. 

This exhibition is an opportunity to see the work of one of the world’s finest image-makers and is well worth the trip.

 

Chris Beetles Fine Photographs

3-5 Swallow Street, London, W1B 4DE

www.chrisbeetlesfinephotographs.com

 

Homeless in photographs

I was in Newcastle one evening recently looking for some street photography ideas.  A man called Kevin, who lived on the streets, saw my camera and invited me to take photographs of him and his friends.  He showed me where he slept and he and his friends told me a little about their life on the streets.

Kevin has been sleeping on the streets for 20 years and sees little chance of getting accommodation. His bed is a collection of old blankets and cardboards under a foul-smelling archway.  I couldn't believe it when he told me he was only 50.

 

 

Kevin's friend was sitting in a doorway when I met him.  He was happy to be photographed but seemed resigned to his fate.

 

 

I looked at these images afterwards and thought how Kevin and his friend's eyes told the story of their hard lives. But this type of photography needs to be treated with care.  I only learned recently about the subsequent history of Dorothea Lange's famous image of Florence Owens Thompson, Migrant Mother, and the lessons it offers to photographers.

 

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother

 

In March 1936, , Florence Thompson and her family were traveling to find work when their car broke down.  As she waited, Lange working for the Resettlement Administration, drove up and started taking photos of Florence and her family. Over 10 minutes she took 6 images.  Lange's field notes of the images read: "Seven hungry children. Father is native Californian. Destitute in pea pickers’ camp … because of failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tires to buy food.", and she later wrote of the meeting:  "I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food."

However, Florence, who only came to light as the subject of the image in 1978, claimed that Lange never asked her any questions and got many of the details incorrect. She claimed that Lange promised the photos would never be published, but the San Franscisco News ran the pictures almost immediately, with an assertion that 2,500 to 3,500 migrant workers were starving in California.

Migrant Mother had an immediate impact and achieved near mythical status symbolizing an entire era in American history.  As a whole, the photographs taken for the Resettlement Administration are some of the most remarkable human documents ever rendered in pictures.

Later, Lange was criticized for taking inaccurate notes.  Worse, Florence was quoted as saying:  "I wish  [Lange] hadn't taken my picture. I can't get a penny out of it. She didn't ask my name. She said she wouldn't sell the pictures. She said she'd send me a copy. She never did."  Thompson's daughter Katherine (to the left of the frame) said in a December 2008 interview that the wide distribution of the image made the family feel shame at their poverty.

Lange was funded by the federal government when she took the picture, so the image was in the public domain and Lange never directly received any royalties. However, the picture did ultimately make her reputation.

E J Major, Matt Roberts Arts

Two works at the Matt Roberts Gallery in Bethnal Green have recently showcased the young photographer, E J Major. 

Born in Hong Kong, E J studied photography at Nottingham and graduated in Fine Art from Goldsmiths in 2009.  E.J. was exhibited as part of the Salon Photography Prize 2011 and selected as the winner from over 960 artists for the Selectors’ prize supported by A Thousand Words Magazine.  She summarises her practice as creating:

photographic constructs that are, and are not what they seem [...and] aim to challenge the veracity of the photographic portrait finding an authenticity in a notion of self-portraiture that involves acting. Referencing both historical events and characters as well as those from popular culture, individual works have a narrative content but the work is predominantly concerned with ideas. The aim is to construct visually arresting images that can also be read.

The historical events referenced in Shoulder to Shoulder (2009-2011)  are the Sufffragette struggles of the early twentieth century and constitute a dialogue with herself as a suffragette. There are three panels in the form of monochrome contact sheets, showing Suffragette street protests, E J apparently in prison as a result and linking these events with modern day protests.  Individual images in between show E J in period dressed chained to railings as the Suffragettes often were.

   

These articulate into three large colour photographs, carefully constructed and photographed by E J and based on the attack by Mary Raleigh Richardson on Valazquez’s Venus in the National Gallery in 1914.  In the first, E J “plays” Venus and the cherub of the original (transformed into a nurse). Venus’ reflection in the mirror is, I was told, that of her mother.

 

In the second, we see E J as “Slasher” Mary in front of the reconstructed Velazquez.

 

In the final image, the destruction has taken place, a tangle of material from the previous images hides two hands slashing the painting. 

These are fascinating works, painstakingly constructed and cleverly executed.  What E J - who clearly identifies with this and other Suffragettes - would make of their subsequent support of British fascism is something I’d like to ask her about. 

Marie Claire RIP (2009-2011) references an article published in Marie Claire magazine showing the dreadful decline through police mug-shots of a woman a over a fourteen year period. The series, restaged again by E J, traces, recreates the woman's drug-induced decline over the period.  With titles like  Do not care, 1985. Hid in fear, 1988. Carried on, 1997. the awful descent into hell of the woman is traced out by E J herself. 

The crux of E J's work seems to me to be the introduction of acting into photographic practice. Whether the woman is E J, or E J is the woman is perhaps the question at the heart of these images.

 

Matt Roberts Arts

http://www.mattroberts.org.uk/

 

An angle on the Tour of Britain

The final stage of this year's Tour of Britain was a 56 miles circuit: starting at Whitehall, along the Embankment to the Tower of London and back again, the riders did this loop twelve times, so there was plenty of opportunities to capture images.

There were thousands of photographers along the route.  Most of them seemed to have brought their long lenses and were looking for compressed depth of field shots of the peloton in the distance.  I opted for a different approach, using my 17-40 mm. more or less at the widest end, choosing a low angle and dropping the shutter speed to around 1/60.  I used flash to freeze the shot, while the slow shutter speed left a trail, which I felt would help convey the sense of speed.

I felt that these three images worked best.  I particularly liked the one above for the way in which I'd managed to capture the eyes and intense stare of the leading rider.  The second image is a dramtic angle, which I also felt worked well.

As always, I wanted to search out an angle that was unusual and I was pleased with these images. 

 

Jeanne Simone street theatre at Sotteville

My visit to the Sotteville street theatre festival in June was enhanced by the presence of Dr Susan Haedicke, who is an expert in this type of performance art and has written extensively on the subject.  She introduced me to two actors from the Jeanne Simone Company, who are pictured here, and we later witnessed one of their street "interventions".  

This is an except from the report of a lecture she gave on their work:

The first video Haedicke showed was initially confusing. It was a 3-minute excerpt of a 45-minute film of the Jean Simone street theatre company. The actors in the clip repeated bizarre movements, such as circling a streetlight pole, while keeping their heads touching the pole, this movement complemented by wild arm flailing. Viewers could have been puzzled by what sort of radical change would come of a performance like the one featured.  The presenter responded to such criticism of this performance by explaining that these performances constitute events, not content. The performers have targeted the “perception,” “disgust” and “tension” of the public bystanders.

 From the point of view of a photographer, the opportunity to photograph these actors in one of their performances was a chance to portray ambiguity.  Without background information, the viewer of these images would probably describe them as a street "incident", but it's hard to know what's going on.  Is the woman in the top picture a dancer who's decided to use the road to practice? has she lost her mind?  has the man just had a row with her?  are the three people in the middle image embarassed by her antices and have to look away?  was the bottom image taken seconds after a mugging?  if not, why is the woman on the road?

 

Susan emphasises the way this type of theatre aims to bring about radical change in attitudes. Thanks to Susan, I had a chance to talk with the actors and I liked and understood the emphasis they place on the relationship between their actions and the space in which they take place.  Part of their aim at least is to get the "audience" (actually, a large group of people following them round the streets) to reassess the space and look at at it in a very different way.  I think they achieve this objective.

 

Guler Ates, "Orientations", Hoxton Art Gallery

A delightful small exhibiton by the Turkish-born artist, photographer and print-maker Guler Ates is coming to a close at the Hoxton Art Gallery.  By the time you read this, I fear it will be too late - but do look out for her work. 

Guler Ates, who was born and brought up in Turkey, graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in printmaking in 2008. Her photography strikingly illustrates the cross-cultural themes often explored by the deracine artist- contemplation of the homeland and its customs from the standpoint of the adopted country.  In Ates case, the images interweave Turkish dress, colours, customs and costume with western interiors and artistic traditions.  The title of the exhibiton plays on the etymology of the word Orientation with its implications of east-facing and, by implication, the western interpretation of all that “eastern” implies. 

Bold slashes of primary reds and blues punctuate dark interiors which mostly fade to solid black.  Before disappearing into the darkness, we glimpse sections of tables, chair arms and other furniture or furnishings.  The colours turn out to be the costumes of an anonymous female figure, present in each image, part-spectral yet vibrant.  The womens’ heads are covered, veiled both as if by Muslim custom as much as by the women of classical Dutch interiors, which the photographs clearly reference. 

 
 
Woman in Red, above, and Trace of Blue, below, present all these themes.  In these images, the interior becomes the exterior as we are forced to move from the rooms and furnishings to the interior life of the women.  We do not see their faces, we can deduce nothing from their expressions and so we must cast ourselves into their minds through contemplation of their situation - strangers in “western” settings - although what is “west” and what is “east” is part of the problematic.  

 

 

 
  In Present and Absent, above, the woman is even less evident to the viewer as she half disappears as she goes down the stairs.  Again, the interior becomes exterior to these women: this is, perhaps, the main point Ates wants to make and  asks us to contemplate.   

Ates has exhibited consistently during the last 10 years so there should be opportunities to see her work in the future.  This is the first time I’ve seen her photography and I’ll make a point of looking for future examples of her art.

 

Hoxton Art Gallery, 64 Charlotte Road, London, EC2A 3PE

http://www.hoxtonartgallery.co.uk/

 

 

Street theatre in Rouen

There is a strong tradition of street theatre in northern Europe and the annual festival each June in Sotteville-les-Rouen, a small town about 5 kms from Rouen, is one of the biggest in France.  I went this year with my daughter Olivia and a few of her colleagues from University and took a number of interesting photographs.  I'll post more in the near future.

This image is from a show called Tango with Fire, a small company who acting out a narrative in dance over the course of an hour with lots of fire effects. 

 

Cloud burst

 I took this image just north of the English border as I was driving home from the Edinburgh Festival this year.  It was a bright, clear evening and I pulled into a lay-by to capture the beautiful cloud formations and colour reflections in the calm sea.  

 I knew that straight shots would be effective and I took a few which turned out to fine.  But I also wanted more of an ethereal look so I took a few more in which I moved the zoom during the exposure.  I thought this would work but I also know that it's a hit and miss technique, so I took  a number of shots in this way.  This one was the best of the crop.

The beach at Dungeness

Just a couple more straightforward shots from the shingle beach at Dungeness.

 

 

 

The shape of pylons

 Pylons are ugly things but sometimes make strong graphics.  These two images were taken around Dungeness and rely on the strong shapes and lines created by the pylons and the cables against a setting sun.