Cathy's Art Diary

Beautiful sales exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of work by Cuban photographer, Raul Canibano. I loved the slightly surreal quality of some of these images. I couldn’t tell if this caught a moment or was a collaged piece. I loved a picture of a man though the net over a window which abstracted his image except for a defined eye seen through a hole in the net. Closed 7 April 2024

Fascinating exhibition at the   Photographers’ Gallery on the life and work of the photojournalist Bert Hardy. I went into the show not thinking I knew any of his work but was immediately greeted by an image of two girls on the seafront at Blackpool which I remember from many book covers and friends rooms at college. I laughed out loud when I read his comment on it from 1985 “People who have hardly ever heard of me will suddenly remember that picture. That’s me” and it was me too! From that moment I was hooked. Hardy was a pioneering photojournalist working for Picture Post from two years after its foundation in 1958. The journal aimed to explore social issues and he worked for them in the UK and abroad. I loved his clear, well-constructed images particularly those framed in doorways. I was fascinated by his work in the Second World War working for the Army Film and Photographic Unit. He landed in Normandy three days after D-Day and went into Bergen-Belsen a few days after liber

Interesting small exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery highlighting the publisher Café Royal Books . Since 2012 this publisher has produced a weekly publication in a small format dedicated to post-war photography from the UK and Ireland with a focus on unseen or overlooked work. Each of the over 600 issues highlights a small body of work by a specific photographer such as Martin Mayer looking at London in the 1970s. The journals were beautifully produced with nicely reproduced images and minimal commentary. Closes 2 June 2024  

Eclectic exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of the shortlisted finalists of this prestigious photography award. The award goes to at outstanding body of work exhibited or published in Europe in the previous 12 months and the show highlights the work of the top four artists. This year featured two artists who had had retrospectives and one of these, VALUE EXPORT, for Austria was showcased with a selection of work by this feminist photographer and performance artist over 5 decades. I’m not sure the work translated very well as static images. Despite being shortlisted for a retrospective Hrair Sarkissian was represented by two works. One was an eerie soundscape recording of exhuming bodies from a Spanish Civil War mass grave but the photographic element was 50 photographs of the empty homes of people who had disappeared in conflict which were very moving. In the floor below I liked Gavin Gill and Rajesh Vangad’s book blending Gill’s photography of India with Vangad’s indige

Charming exhibition in the sales gallery of the Photographers’ Gallery of pictures of birds by five of the photographers they represent. I loved their description of this as a “curated menagerie” reflecting the number of words for gathering of birds. My favourites were pictures of show birds by Luke Stephenson. Beautifully focused images of individual birds on perches against bright backgrounds. They had a feel of Renaissance portraits. There were 21 hung together which was very effective. I also liked Pentii Sammallhati’s black and white images capturing moments in the wild which made a lovely contrast to Stephenson’s pieces. Closed 10 September 2023

Confused exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of a project by Johny Pitts. I must admit I got confused by the number of ideas which seemed to drive this show but I think in the end it boiled it down to a trip around the coast of Britain with poet Roger Robinson to address the question “What is Black Britain?” which then developed into him looking at what home means to him. Throw in Japanese ideas of a ‘personal utopia’ and you’ll see where I’m coming from. I wanted the photos of people around the coast to tell me more about who they were and where they were taken but he did explain that there were no labels to remove hierarchy and that “people and places will be apparent to anyone from that location” but what about the rest of us. I liked the nostalgic installation of a living room wall with shelves, tv, videos etc but wasn’t convinced this was recording a black experience as implied. My first student rooms looked remarkably similar. Closed 24 September 2023 Review Gua

Strange but fun exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the history of virtual worlds. This show was part of an online resource that explores photography's increasingly automated, networked life and a three-year project with the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at South Bank University. It started by looking at the history of virtual worlds with Second Life being one of the longest running. It then looked at how most fail and why. To show this they had created a game to model a world called “World Imagining Game” which you could play. Built into it was that any economic model you built for it failed. I invented a world for art history geeks!    Closed 24 September 2023

Serene exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the career of Evelyn Hofner. I’d not consciously come across Hofner’s work before but I loved her clear cool vision. Having fled Germany in 1933 aged 11 with her family, she settled in Mexico before moving to New York in 1946 to work as an editorial photographer on magazines. She was then commissioned to take photographs for a book “The Stones of Venice” by Mary McCarthy and moved into this type of documentary work. I loved her black and white photos of City life in New York, Washington, Dublin and London. Unlike other contemporary street photographers she didn’t catch a moment but worked with her subjects to produce insightful portraits. Some of the pictures, like this one of two Dublin maids, seemed to hint at a short story. I also liked her pictures of empty interiors which seemed to include the shadows of the people who had been there. Closed 24 September 2023 Review Guardian  

Fabulous exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at Queer pictures of men in the 20th century and the development of physique photography. The show was arranged around areas of London where men went who were seeking other men and looked at the aesthetics that developed there that were unique to the city. The show was so tender and was as much a history of Queer London as of the images. I found lots of wonderful stories I want to find out more about. I was intrigued to find photographs by Keith Vaughan, an artist I know quite well but I’d never come across the photographs. I was also delighted to find the work of Montague Glover as I’d seen a book by him years ago, which I loved, of photographs of soldiers and working men. I’ve just looked up the book and it’s now £280 second hand! Closes 12 June 2023  

Fascinating small exhibition at the Photographers’   Gallery looking at a series of supplements in Architectural Review in 1969-70 which critiqued 1960s town planning. In eight themed works the journal examined different aspects and themes of urban life and commissioned a different photo journalist or street photographer for each issue. The show had a lovely selection of images as well as copies of some other supplements showing the commissioned covers which all featured versions of a human head. I loved the clarity of the photographs and recognised a number of the photographers from previous shows. Closes 12 June 2023

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers Gallery showcasing the four shortlisted finalists in this years Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. I always find this show slightly baffling as they seem to take quite a broad definition of photography. I should take it as artists who use photography in contemporary art rather than people who take photographs. Most baffling was Arthur Jafa who the commentary said was looking at how visual media could transmit “the equivalent power, beauty and alienation” embedded in black music. Not sure what that means and feel that music has developed over time where as this is trying to do the same in one moment. I found Bieke Depoorte’s Installation very moving. It documented a chance meeting with a man in Portland, Oregan, who gave her a suitcase of his belongings and disappeared. The installation was a video recording how she tried to find him and find out more about him with the content of the suitcase around the walls. Frida Orupado

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the history of photography. I found this a useful run through developments and themes in photography but wasn’t sure how alternative I found it. The idea was to leave out some of the better known names in order to think beyond Europe and North America to give “a fuller, richer and more dynamic version of photography’s evolution”. However I found a lot of the big names were there plus I’ve seen quite a few shows recently of non-Western work so some of the other names were familiar to me. I liked the way it was roughly chronological but then used that to gently theme the work. The early section did introduce me to new names to look up and it’s always interesting to see the influence of women in the early days. A later section looked at how photographs can help to form identity and I loved this quote from Martyn Ewoma, artist and critic, “A nation is made up of and defined by its people, as such, how those people are

Strange exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery using computers to combine and analyse photographic portraits from South India. The show combined images from the artist Aarti Akkapeddi’s family album and from a South Indian archive. Akkapeddi had dropped similar images then merged then into one. These were displayed in the pattern of a kolam, a pattern drawn in rice flour to welcome people to the home. The amalgamated image was shown in the middle of the group which formed it. I liked the effect and the idea but I wasn’t sure what the aim and conclusion of it was. The commentary said it looked at issues of seeing photos as data points. I wasn’t sure if the combined images were to be seen as giving those around it a stronger identity or diminishing them. Closes 19 February 2023  

Tender exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of work by Chris Killip who died two years ago. I’d not come across Killip’s work but I loved these bleak but dignified pictures of life in the north of England in the 1980s. He emerged himself in communities at one point living in a caravan on a beach where people were foraging for coal spill. My favourites were the early ones from his home in the Isle of Man at a time when the community was split between the agricultural workers and financiers coming in. There was a stunning picture of an auction which was full of faces. I also loved this one from Durham in the miners’ strike. I love the man juxtaposed with the crowd of police yet their faces are the same. A section on a fishing community at Skinningrove in North Yorkshire reminded me of the current Winslow Homer show at the National Gallery and his work in the village of Cullercoats. Closes 17 February 2023 Reviews Guardian Telegraph    

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking as photography’s role in making and shaping musical artists. I must admit this show was a bit geeky even for me! I didn’t know a lot of the albums being talked about and there was quite an emphasis on early jazz however it was still interesting and you can always learn something. There were small sections on different topics from the work of Richard Avedon, whose portraits were used on over 120 covers and inspired others, though the collaboration between Grace Jones and Jean-Paul Goude to create her image via her covers and work by Andy Warhol used on covers. My favourite section focused on Ian MacMillan’s work for the Abbey Road cover shown with Linda McCartney’s informal images of the day including the one shown here. It was interesting to see an iconic image deconstructed. Closed 12 June 2022

Eclectic exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery for this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize for work published or exhibited in the previous 12 months. I always try to get to this show and it can be a bit of a mixed bag. As ever there were four photographers highlighted. I think my favourite was Anastasia Samoylova whose work looked at the environmental crisis in American coastal cities. I loved the abstract shapes created by the damage as in the attached picture. Her work was shown as big bold works against a striking green and purple background. Jo Ratcliffe’s work recorded conflict and dispossession in South Africa and Angola shown in a white room to contrast with the previous works. I would have liked to have been able to read more of the stories that went with this harrowing works. Denna Lawson, who won this year’s prize, showed work which challenged the conventional representation of Black Lives through encounters with strangers and planned scenes. The p

Fourth show in a series of exhibitions at the Photographers’ Gallery to mark their 50th anniversary. I looked at this show thinking how interesting it was and how I would try to go to the subsequent shows only to look it up now and fins this was the last in the series and I’d missed the others as this was the first time I’d got to the gallery this year! Oh well you can’t do it all! This show looked at exhibitions at the gallery using posters and archive material. It focused on four shows including Martin Parr’s “The Cost of Living” from 1989. How I wish I’d discovered this gallery a bit earlier. I came to it about 10 years ago. Closes 1 February 2022

Insightful exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of work over six decades by street photographer Helen Levitt. I loved the early black and white pieces taken in East Harlem and the Bronx which often focused on the natural humour and uncanniness of the streets. I loved the monumental style of the picture shown and a lovely picture of a young boy with a bucket on his head. She was particularly interested in the strange things children do when they play. In the late 1940s Levitt moved into film and they were showing her work “In the Street” from 1953 which was like an animated version of the photographs. In the 1970s she moved into colour photography having tried in it 1959 only to have her work stolen, and of those I loved her pictures taken on the subway with a candid camera. Lovely glimpses of everyday life. Closes 13 February   2022 Review Telegraph

Interesting video and installation at the Photographers’ Gallery by Helen Cammock. Cammock worked with the people of Rochdale to explore ideas of community and the principles of the Cooperative Movement which were laid down in 1844. She used the collection at the Touchstones Museum in the city to talk people about these ideas and recorded them in a video in which she also showed the people around the city with he objects. As often the case with a video it was too long. I liked its slow pace but just didn’t have the time to watch the whole thing which I think from memory came in at well over an hour. Alongside the video the objects the people had chosen to talk about from the museum were shown in the adjoining room with stills from the video. Sadly I was more taken by this eclectic mix of objects than the video and loved this picture by Tristram Hillier from 1865. Closes 13 February 2022

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the work of Czech photographer Jan Svoboda. These were concentrated art photographs working through repetition and focus on a particular subject. I loved them shown together but I am not sure one on its own would speak to me. They reminded me a bit of the still life paintings of Giorgio Morandi. I loved the repeated pictures of his studio table, with or without a cloth or objects. He then moved this onto using half the table or a quarter of it. It is like the focus on the table is becoming ever tighter. I also liked the way he used his own photographs within new ones, either photographing the back, the floor strewn with abandoned works or the walls of his studio with one of his pictures hung on it. Closes 20 September 2020