Comments on Photographers and Exhibitions Visited.

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your feedback on my first assignment.  Most helpful.  It was interesting viewing my pictures after reading your comments.  I tried to see them as if for the first time and ignore what the photographer, me, had seen at the time of their taking and view them as for the first time.  The pictures hadn’t changed but my view of them had.  

Two of the four names you suggested I should look at I am reasonably familiar with, Diane Arbus and August Sander. 

I find Arbus rather cruel in her approach with her emphasis on the odd and grotesque.  Even ordinary people, when photographed by Arbus, take on a surreal, strange and sometimes tortured look.  Very powerful and very distinct. 

August’s pictures are all about a changing world.  What did happen to the Young Farmers in the coming war?  What became of “The Soldier”?  His photograph “Blind Children” and “Crippled ex-Serviceman” left the subjects with their dignity.  Arbus would have turned them into exhibits.  If I could hang one of his pictures on the wall it would be “Radio”.

I knew Joel Sternfeld only through his work “The High Line”.  Whenever Sue and I visit a new city or town we try and seek out a river or canal trip as these give the visiter a unique and quirky view from behind the facade.  The now disused High Line gives such a view to a city with which, at least through cinema and television, we are all familiar.  I was less familiar with his portrait work, which has a cold dispassionate feel.  There seems little engagement with the subject.  His Sweet Earth project would seem worth a closer look linking as it does people and architecture.

Erwin Wurm.  I’m not sure if I am looking at an engineering project or a photographic project.  Well executed on both counts but not for me.  

Came across three collections by Elliott Erwitt.  I had seen his work on dogs and thought he might be worth a second look.  He has a great eye for the absurd, such as the lady playing the cowboy slot machine, as well as the poignant with the shot of the gates to  Auschwitz.  

For light viewing I have been delving into Cruel and Tender by Emma Dexter and Thomas Weski.  Great names and super pictures.  Discovering more photographers to study.

Earlier this year I attended Tate Modern to view both the William Klein and Daido Moriyama exhibitions.  I was aware of Klein’s work but had no idea how well they would work on the grand scale of the exhibition hall.  I particularly enjoyed seeing his portrait of the snarling boy with the gun blown up to the size of a poster.  The unused and raw pictures with their cropping marks gave an insight to his work.  I found the Moriyama exhibition less satisfactory.  I was puzzled by some of his subject matter, such as the series of pictures taken at a railway station featuring the random collection of people on the opposite platform.  I was interested in his scatter-gun approach to photography but found some of the voyeuristic results disturbing.  A recent television programme showed him at work walking the streets and snapping away with his Ricoh at anything that moved, and many things that didn’t.  It may be this approach that makes his photographs so memorable.  The overworking of the prints took away much of their subtlety, giving them a dark power.

Last week I attended the Man Ray exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery.  This really was one for the purist.  The prints were originals with all the subsequent damage and fading.  Lovely portraits of the great and good of the day simply lit with perfect poses.  I would liked to have seen some of them reprinted so that their true glory could have come through.  His use of polarization was much softer I thought it would be.  Having tried solarization, back in the day when I had a dark room, I know how difficult it is to get right.