The Camera Exposed
It shows that
cameras often appear in self-portraits of photographers but can also be
included to draw attention to the voyeuristic nature of photography.
There seemed to
be a lot of pictures by or of Weeggee, the New York photographer named after a
Ouji board due to his ability to get to a crime scene before the police. I was
amused though that the first picture of him was when he visited Camera Week at
Owen Owen in Coventry! I’d not come across him before but I’ll look out for his
work now.
I liked Isle
Bing’s self-portrait, set up like a Flemish portrait, where the only bit of the
camera you can see is the shutter release cable. It felt like an artist
painting themselves with a brush. I also liked Nicholas Nixon’s series “The
Brown Sisters” of his wife and her sisters taken every year. Many of them like
the one shown include his shadow with the camera. There were also a number of
fashion pictures with cameras in them.
I loved the
inclusion of work by Charles Thurston Thompson, the first official photographer
of the V&A. He documented works in the collection and on loan to the museum
including a lovely one here of a Venetian mirror with his reflection in it. I
also noted that his sister took over from him when he died. I bet she’s
interesting.
Finally there
were some lovely pictures of cameras taken for advertising pictures and the
whole show could also have been read as a history of the camera as the
technical detail on the commentaries was very good.
Closes on 5 March
2017
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