Photography
The Surreal House, Barbican Art GalleryFriday, 11 June 2010
Surrealism, it occurred to me while looking round this fine exhibition, is like pornography: it is hard to define, but everyone knows it when they see it. The Surreal House examines what precisely is conjured up in our collective minds by the word “... Read more... |
Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera, Tate ModernSaturday, 29 May 2010
In the week that Sarah Ferguson was caught on a secret camera receiving a stash of $40,000 from News of the World journalists, Tate Modern launched this ambitious and excitingly diverse photography exhibition. Had the meeting been earlier, the... Read more... |
The Stones in Exile: an Imagine Special, BBC OneSunday, 23 May 2010
Aptly, this new documentary about how the Rolling Stones fled from England to the South of France to record Exile on Main Street was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, with a supernaturally healthy-looking Mick Jagger on hand to give it a... Read more... |
Photo Gallery: A Landscape of WalesTuesday, 11 May 2010
The Welsh landscape promoted by the tourist board is a known entity. Postcard photographers patrol its contours waiting for the rains to desist and the sun to peer out so that they can snap splendid estuaries, meadowed shores patrolled by a lone... Read more... |
Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack CardiffThursday, 06 May 2010
The last time Jack Cardiff went to Cannes, nobody recognised him; wearing his trademark trilby, he'd tell curious autograph hunters he used to be a stand-in for Frank Sinatra. In fact Cardiff's claim to fame was somewhat greater: his was the eye... Read more... |
Photographic Gallery: Grace Jones Portraits by Chris LevineFriday, 30 April 2010
One can hardly imagine the spiky dervish Grace Jones sitting still for a second, let alone remaining motionless long enough to have photographs (and plenty of them) taken for her portrait. Nevertheless, Chris Levine has managed to pin her down - in... Read more... |
Hana Vojackova, Chernobyl: Red Balloon 86, 11 Mansfield StMonday, 15 March 2010
A 1986 documentary about the USSR’s new modernist city, Chernobyl, featured a five-year-old boy kicking a football through landscaped gardens, past blocks of clean, elegant flats and inside the soon-to-be opened funfair in the workers' town of... Read more... |
Irving Penn: Small Trades, Hamiltons Gallery/ Portraits, NPGThursday, 11 March 2010
This week I discovered Irving Penn’s little-known portraits of anonymous street traders, taken in Paris, London and New York between 1950 and 1951. Previously unseen in the UK, they are now appearing at Hamiltons’ Mayfair gallery: 33 examples from a... Read more... |
Photographic Gallery: John Angerson's English JourneyMonday, 08 March 2010
“Being a rambling but truthful account of what one man saw and heard and felt and thought during a journey through England.” Upon its publication 75 years ago, J B Priestley’s English Journey became an important influence for writers, photographers... Read more... |
Ana Mendieta, Alison Jacques GalleryFriday, 19 February 2010
Works of art are usually quite easily recognisable: they’re in a frame, or on a pedestal, or (if it’s a particularly expensive one) there’s a security guard nearby. You’ll probably be in an art gallery or a smart private house too. But what about... Read more... |
Photographic Gallery: Gavin Bond, Idea Generation GalleryTuesday, 16 February 2010
Over the past couple of years, maverick photographer Gavin Bond has built up a contacts book that would be the envy of Rankin or Annie Leibovitz. He’s been shooting everyone who is anyone: subjects range from godfathers of rock such as Bono and AC/... Read more... |
Photographic Gallery: Niall O'Brien, Art Work SpaceMonday, 01 February 2010
Purists would have it that punk rock was but a brief explosion in first New York then London, and was all but spent by the end of 1977. Irish photographer Niall O'Brien, however, was born in 1979 and has no truck with purism. Instead, taking the... Read more... |
