Cathy's Art Diary

Fun but overwhelming exhibition at Somerset House showcasing galleries specialising in selling photography. I had always wanted to go to this show but it usually clashes with the Charleston Festival which I go to. I had not appreciated quite how big it is! It takes over the whole of Somerset House including erecting a temporary structure in the courtyard and the Embankment galleries. I quickly learnt that the best approach was to walk round fairly quickly just lingering at images which really caught your eye. It would have been good if the galleries provided a bit more information on the works on show. I liked the mix of contemporary and older work and I impressed myself at how many of the photographers I recognised from other shows. I think the only was to review the show is to mention pieces I particularly liked! Fan Ho's Hong Kong street photography from the 1950s A lovely picture of Amsterdam from 1934 by Wolfgang Suschitsky Jeffrey Milstein's aerial views of Rome ...

Fascinating online interview with photographer Michael Najjar to mark Photo London. Najjar has become fascinated by space exploration since watching a live rocket launch in 2011. Since then he has built up a body of 65 photographs and 5 video installations in his Outer Space series. He sees space as a unique cultural and scientific world. He discussed how he had undergone space training in Russia with cosmonauts and had experimented with taking photographs in a weightless environment. He constructs realities to show the possibilities of space. He then took us through a selection of his works explaining how they were achieved and what they represent. There was a sense of the sublime about a number of these and in fact the picture shown here was inspired by Caspar David Friedrick’s “The Ice Field”. It shows the wreck of the Virgin Atlantic Galactica in 2014 made up of a digitally manipulated press footage. Sadly didn’t manage to get to Photo London to see the works in the person ...