Cathy's Art Diary

Stolid exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery looking at Japanese women photographers since the 1950s. The show was well presented under the themes of pioneers, elevating the day, self, gender and society and experiments but it was large, taking over all three floors of their galleries. I liked that it was shown in groups by individual photographers with good information boards including quotes by the artists. However the work lacked a sense of lightness and it all felt quite serious and worthy. I met a friend after and told her where I'd been and as she said "That's a bit niche". I think the “Elevating the Everyday” section was my favourite with street and diary photography. I loved Ushioda Tokuko's pictures of the inside and outside of her fridge as a commentary on her life. I was intrigued by Yanagi Miwa's staged pictures commenting on Japanese elevator girls (although I thought they were air hostesses from the image). The one shown here was us...

Moving exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery combining the photographs of Donna Gottschalk and the words of Helene Giannecchini. From the age of 17 Gottschalk has photographed her lesbian friends. Finding her work and becoming friends in 2023, Giannecchini was given access to her archive and worked it into a moving narrative framed as a walk around areas of New York where Gottschalk had lived. A deeply personal collection was transformed into the story of a community with words and images having equal weight. Closed 7 June 2026 Review Guardian

Quirky little exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery celebrating small online communities and   DIY and experimental publishing practices. I admit I’m not sure I understood it but at the heart was an interactive online quiz with questions about your online experience which then printed out a description of the type of online community you should join. Suitably for a blogger and former librarian it suggested I joined a wiki page. You were also invited on a second print out to write down your earliest online memory and pin it to a board. I’m not sure many went back to dial up modem which involved ramming a landline headset into two cups! Closed 7 June 2026

One of the better iterations of this annual exhibition at the Photographers’’ Gallery for the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. I have learnt that this is not a straight photography award but also included contemporary art works which have included extensive use of photography. I found all the four shortlisted entries very engaging this year. On the top floor I began with Weronika    Gęsicka constructed images based on "mountweazels" , fictitious encyclopaedia entries inserted as copyright traps as well as fabricated Wikipedia pages. She asks us to question what is real and what is fictitious in these believable images.   Next was Amek   Mahmoodian   “One Hundred and Twenty Minutes” based on the fact that on average we dream for 120 minutes a night. An exile herself, she has asked fellow exiles to share their dreams and work with her to construct images of them in drawings, photographs and words. Down a floor found Rene Matić’s installation of diaristic...

Moving exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the work of Polish photographer Zofia Rydet. Rydet was an established artist when at the age of 67 in 1978 she began her project “Sociological Record” in which she photographed people in their homes. As she did more and more work she developed subcategories such as looking at women on their doorsteps, the role of photographs in the home and still-lives in windows. The photos capture a moment in time and I found it moving to see what people had around them. I thought it was summed up by this quote from Rydet “Not only do people die, but with them their homes. Not only people vanish, but also everything that surrounded them. Only photography can stop time. Only photography has the power to overcome the spectre of death, and that is my unending struggle with death and transience." Closed 22 February 2026 Reviews Guardian Telegraph

Fun exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery marking 100 years since the invention of the photobooth. The show looked at the history of the booths, how they work and the sociological impact. It explained how the booths provided a cheap way of getting photographs and a space for people who found it harder to access photography such as gay couples and black sitters. They also explained how governments realised the usefulness of adding easily available photographs to official documents. There was a lovely selection of examples of photographs, some in standard frames or presentation envelopes. Closed 22 February 2026 Review Times

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the life and work of the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov. The show was arranged over two floors with the first looking at the Soviet years and the other the years since. His work combines humour and tragedy via photographs, conceptual work and performance. The text explained how he was given a camera to record the work of the factory where he worked but instead used it to take nude pic tures of his wife and he was fired. This story sums up his anarchic approach to his photography. The show was displayed in series with good explanations of them and often including quotes from Mikhailov.I loved his series called “Red” with images featuring the colour often in a subversive way and a tender series of pictures of people dancing in the street. Closed 22 February 2026 Review Guardian

Baffling exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery looking at the effects of AI by Felicity Hammond. I'm afraid I didn’t understand this show and found the description impenetrable. I got that AI is based on the images which you feed into it and that after a while it starts to feed in the images it has created itself into the algorithm but I didn’t get how this then led to broken up images or to then grasp how the works I was looking at represented this. I did watch the accompanying video as well as was none the wiser. Sorry. It possibly didn't help that this was the third in a series of four exhibitions called "Variations" by Hammond on the topic each of which fed into the next. Maybe by not seeing the progression I was missing something. I quite liked the installation at one end of the gallery but have no idea what it meant. Closed 28 September 2025

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery looking at the career of Dennis Morris. Morris came to the UK from Jamaica with his mother in the 1960s and from an early age began taking photographs of the people around him in Haringey both on the streets and in a makeshift studio in their home. I loved these early insightful works. In 1973 he went to see Bob Marley at the Speakeasy club and they struck up a friendship which led to Morris leaving home and school to tour with Marley and take iconic photographs. These ranged from iconic images for album covers to impromptu pictures of Marley relaxing. I liked this one of him smiling. Later in the 70s he was invited by John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of the Sex Pistols to document the bands rise to fame and half a floor of the show was devoted to this period. On the 3rd floor of the gallery, in the media gallery, there was a display of album covers and mechanise which features images taken by Morris. Closed 28 September...

Witty exhibition in the sales gallery of the Photographers’ Gallery of new work by Alma Haser. Haser explores the quirks of German idioms, their origins and often unexpected English translations by creating literal sculptures and collages of the words. These create fun works often with sausage-based translations which do make you think about words. Closed 22 June 2025  

Engaging exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery showcasing the work of documentary photographer, Peter Mitchell. The work focuses on the transformation of Northern England and was shown here to reflect several series of work. I found the work drew me in and I’d liken it to the work of Martin Parr for its wry look at people and life. I loved a series recording a ghost-ride which visited Leeds every year and a clever set “A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission” from 1979 comparing urban landscape to the exploration of Mars. I think my favourites were a poignant set recording the demolition of the Quarry Hill Flats in Sheffield. Closed 15 June 2025 Review Guardian    

Intriguing exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery using AI to interrogate archive photographs. It takes the archive of Cecil Rhodes, the miner and Imperialist, held at the University of Oxford and shows how applying AI learning to them to create single shot films enhances the original prejudices as AI replies on the data it finds in the original source. Planetary Portals (Casper Laing Ebbensgaard, Kerry Holden, Michael Salu & Kathryn Yusoff) is a research group that delves into imperial archives to produce critical cartographies. It made me think more generally about how AI works and how it can distort information rather than clarifying it. Closed 15 June 2025    

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery showcasing the four finalists in this year’s Deutsche Borse Photography Foundation Prize. I always try to get to this show and this year it felt more connected to photography than some years. On the upper floor there was an installation featuring photographs by Cristina De Middel chronicling a journey along the Central American migrant route. They were interesting images and I love this one of a church but I’d have liked to know more about the people and places. Also upstairs was Rahim Fortune nominated for his photo book “Hardtack” looking at the conflicts and nuances associated with the post-emancipation America. These were lovely black and white images of everyday life. On the floor below was Tarrah Krajnak and I was impressed that, although she is mainly a performance artist, she records her work using photography and prints all her images herself. I particularly liked a series where she photographed her hands holding a ...

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery in examining the photo collage work of fashion photographer Deborah Turbeville. Turbeville’s signature style was to place models in decaying buildings and to use a soft focus. I loved the series taken in Versailles for a book commissioned by Jackie Onassis emphasising the dust and objects in closed areas. I would have liked to see more explanation of the collage work, given that was the focus of the show. Closes 23 February 2025    

Thin exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the impact of the photography journal Ten.8. The journal, which ran from 1979 to 1992, provided a forum for West Midlands-based photographers to come together, share images and exchange ideas. This show focused on two issues Black Image (1984) and Body Politics (1987). This seemed an interesting topic but it was represented by quite a lot of text and just a few archive copies. It emphasised quotes from the issues without giving them very much context. I wasn’t always sure what I was looking at and why. Closes 23 February 2025

Striking exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the career of Letizia Battaglia. Battaglia mainly worked as a press photographer in Sicily and as such had covered Mafia activity on the island as well as daily life. The Mafia murder photographs were graphic but stunning. At first I found I could hardly look at them, but after a while they lost their reality and the most shocking aspect was that people were carrying on everyday life around them. My favourite works were the pictures of everyday life particularly religious activity and her pictures of children. The works were shown in no particular order to show their   breadth and the recurrence of themes. The lower galley was hung like an installation she had done in 2015 when the works had been hung from the ceiling. Closes 23 February 2025 Review Guardian    

Fun selling exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery marking the summer with photographs of the British seaside. I knew a few of the photographers represented from an exhibition with a similar theme at the National Maritime Museum a few years so there was some of Martin Parr’s observational pictures and one of Simon Robert’s pictures of piers. New to me were Anna Fox’s vividly coloured images of Butlins at Bogna Regis but my favourites were Luke Stephenson’s series “99 x 99s” recording how ice cream makers across the country make the 99 ice cream unique. Closed 8 September 2024

Enigmatic exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery showcasing work by Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide. Most of Iturbide’s career has been spent documenting indigenous populations in Mexico, offering a glimpse into their rituals, traditions and struggles. This sounds quite dry on paper but the images were quirky with an eye for the strange but beautiful. My favourite picture is this one which took me a while to work out. It is a man carrying two mirrors which create images within images. I think it’s one of the best photographs I’ve ever seen. Her later work has moved away from photographing people to look at abstracted images of cacti and other plants in a series called Naturata. Closed 22 September 2024 Review Guardian    

Pointless exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of books relating to the subject of love. This was a display of photobooks, novels and fiction publications which were intended to encourage an understanding of love that is open to interpretation. They were just laid out around the room with no guide into them or themes. The large info board said it was co-curated by Develop Collective a three-year programme (2023-2026) that mentors and commissions emerging creatives aged 18-24 through a series of talks and workshops connected to a photography-based outcome each year. I’d be interested to see what they work on next as this is early in the process but it needs to have more substance. Closed 22 September 2024  

Moving exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery marking the 1967 book “House of Bondage” by Ernest Cole. Cole published the book in exile in America and it is seen as one of the most important photo books   to record life in Apartheid South Africa and revealing its brutality and injustice to the world. The pictures were shown in the same chapter themes as the book and all the commentaries were in Cole’s own words which added an immediacy to them. The images were clear and effective and told the stories of the people shown simply.    The sheer inhumanity of the stories being told still beggar belief. I kept wondering what had happened to individuals. The most bizarre pictures were of rush hour trains which highlighted the illogical absurdity of making the black populations live a long distance from the cities while providing the Labour needed in them without reasonable train provision. Closed 22 September 2024 Review Telegraph