Tuesday, 10 March 2009

Photocinema Photography Exhibition - Derby

What an interesting morning.   Both my wife and I had lots to talk about after visiting Photocinema.  It was thought provoking.  However, whether this is what the organizers wanted is another matter.   The exhibitions I viewed were:

Derby Museum and Art Gallery
The exhibition is descibed as '...the director's photographic journey around the world part travel diary, photo album and photo essay...'.  The first thing to say is that I am aware of Wander's cinemagraphic work so I came cold to this series.   It is broken down into a number of different selections with a descriptive text that always started with Once...   I am not sure whether these were supposed to be poems but they left me cold.   As for the images they were really snapshots of his life.   So we saw him traveling around the world and with other well known movie directors.  For me the most interesting was the series through the Australian outback.  Although, the series of photographs from Soviet Russia were fascinating.   These recorded a refusnik protest next to the Kremlin.  I was not aware that such protests were tolerated in Russia at that time.

Locations - Steve Harries & Mel Bies
A road movie in every sense of the word.  This was a series of photographs that documented locations for famous movies of the 1970's.   One wall of the exhibition is taken over to a large map of the USA with their road trip route picked out.  There were then red tap indicating where each location was and a series stills from the respective movies.  The photographs themselves were quite ordinary.  However, taken as whole the exhibition worked as a documentary of the respective locations.  This is probably because I knew the movies and so had some reference to work from.   As individual photographs I found the Utah desert scene the most enjoyable.  This was from the film Plant of the Apes.  Here we see a large barren desert vista with a large lake in the foreground.  The image is barren apart from some large industrial complex in the fare distance that could almost be part of the movie.   This, of course, does raise the obvious question.  Why was this included as Plant of the Apes was made in the late 1960's.

Spaghetti Westerns - Aaron Schuman
This was a series of photographs that document the fading sets of the Spaghetti westerns of the 1960's.  I have to say this left me cold - much as the movies did.

Quad Gallery
Photocinema Exhibition.
This is an eclectic selection of photographs '...From film still to still film the theme for Photocinema...'  So the introduction for this exhibition starts and this is as good a description for the photographs and images on display.   There are too many artists featured in this exhibition so I will deal with those that I am aware of.  

Gregory Crewdson:
We have three large prints from Crewdson each following his usual style of ambiguity and narrative.   They do provoke a lot of  interest at initial viewing.  There just is so much information within each image.   Then you move beyond the initial impact and start to realise that the work is really just a documentation of many technicians skills that Crewdson has employed to produce the the photograph.   In the end the narrative within the image becomes meaningless.  Perhaps a better exponent of this type of image is making is Jeff Wall.

David Lynch
On the opposite wall to Crewdson is a series of photographs selected by David Lynch.  Whether this position is on purpose is deliberate or not is not made clear.   Lynch is well documented as a key influence on the work of Crewdson.  It is unclear what the photographs are trying to say - even the guide is somewhat unclear on this '...is it a homage to Alice in Wonderland?  Or a poisoned valentine to Hollywood?...'

Cindy Sherman
I always have problems with Sherman's work and this one image is no exception '..Her work examines archetypical images of women, by casting herself in the central tole of every picture...'  The reason why I mention this one image is because I am interested in self portraiture at the moment and it is fascinating to see how Sherman approaches this.  It is also worth noting that again she is an influences on Crewdson.

So what were my overall impression of the exhibitions?  In short confusing.  Many of the images were individually unimpressive but taken as a whole did have an impact.   They made me think as I walked away from the exhibitions.  So perhaps it wasn't as disappointing as I initially felt.  Indeed as we walked away from the exhibitions my wife and I spent a significant amount of time discussing the works on display.  So in that sense it was worthwhile.   This, however, does need to placed against ambiguity felt whilst viewing much of the work.

No comments: