Tate Modern level 2: Carrie Mae Weems. From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried 1995-1996.

I would like to dedicate this post to my best friend who has been battling cancer for nearly three years now.  Cancer the roller coaster, from the first diagnosis, to the chemo, to the hospitalisation. My friend  was unable to walk for a time, given the pain, the endless trips back & forth from hospital, and staying in hospital. The wide variety of nurses, losing control of one's own body, being suddenly reliant on others when one has always been fiercely self reliant and independent; a total shock psychologically, with illness comes the realisation that you are more dependant on others that you might have wanted, and that without the help of others you wouldn't be able to stand up or go to the toilet, you are ever so grateful to the nice nurse who doesn't kill your veins.  The nurse is experienced and doesn't cause any unnecessary extra pain by missing your veins or getting the needle stuck. Then after the chemo, not knowing whether you are going to survive or not, living in the moment. Then Christmas and New Year, the actual realisation that you are still alive, even after taking the highest lots of chemotherapy that a human body can withstand. The joy of all your friends and family that you are still alive and that you are able to actually walk on Christmas day and eat solid foods without throwing up or ending up hospitalised, a major achievement. The joy all around that even if you looked completely different  from three years ago due to being ravaged by cancer that you are still with us, enjoying having a laugh. You can't read books anymore as it makes you so tired, but you are always happy to watch a bit of comedy with your friends and  finally you have been able to eat and celebrate Christmas lunch for the first time in three years. What will happen in 2018? You don't know and you don't care, you just manage a day at a time, you live in the moment.

I have found that after dealing for three years with my friend's cancer I  have very little patience for those who whine and complain, for arrogant people, the self centred or people that bring you down.  Most importantly I don't waste time with pretentious, un-engaging art. 

Photo of Carrie Mae Weems  courtesy of ARTnews

So I was pleased with the exhibition that I saw at Tate Modern by Carrie Mae Weems, curated by Mark Godfrey,  titled 'From Here I Saw What Happened & I Cried', 1995-1996.

It fully engaged me straight away. It's an installation of photographs. The photographs were selected by the artist from Museum and University archives as early as the 1850's. They are photographs of African American slaves taken in the Southern Sates of America. In the exhibition they are grouped, breaking down in subsets to show that African Americans were considered a lower species. You can see this by the way the photographs were taken, that the slaves were considered less than human.

Photos by Carrie Mae Weems courtesy of Pinterest

The original photographs clearly attempt to bolster the justification of slavery. These pictures had been commissioned as a form of propaganda for slavery when it had already been abolished in other states. By using photographs from archives and putting captions on them such as 'You became playmate to the Patriarch' about their lives the artist is humanising them and confronting you with their actual situations. The photographs are coloured in red. One generally associated red with blood, meaning that their lives were cheap. When taking pictures of women slaves naked without their consent, it's about the mistreatment and exploitation of African Americans.

Photo by Carrie Mae Weems courtesy of Pinterest

The photographs are shown in groups with frames around them. The fact that it was acceptable that the original photographs of the slaves were displayed  as exhibits in public, something that would not have been done with white people, points at the cruelty of the practice of slavery. This again shows that they were seen as less then human. Slaves were bought and sold in slaves markets, displayed naked in the same way as animals; it makes you feel sadness, anger, but there is also satisfaction that these images are able to be used to commemorate them in a positive way, the antithesis of their original purpose  to show them as other people's property.

Photos by Carrie Mae Weems courtesy of Pinterest

To me these photographs show their strength and dignity in the face of their situation as slaves. The artist has personalised the photographs by referring to their names and what roles they had. It's her response to her distress at seeing the original photographs. Where the photographs were originally used as a vehicle for furthering racism, negatively stereotyping, she is using photography for the opposite.

Photo by Carrie Mae West courtesy of Pinterest

The original photographs were daguerreotypes, they were the earliest form of photography, capturing images onto to a silver plate see pics below. This process was invented by L J M Daguerre in France, while in England an alternative process was invented, called the collodian process, which consisted of coating a glass plate; this was invented by Frederick Scott Archer. In the mean time Henry Fox Talbot was coating a sheet of paper with silver which was then exposed to light. There is a Museum in England dedicated to Henry Fox Talbot.

Example of Daguerrotype photos courtesy of Pinterest

Carrie Mae Weems has rephotographed the images and enlarged them, one of the reasons is that maybe the original daguerreotype photographs would have been quite small see pic. above, but by printing them large and grouping them the photographs take more of a human scale. In the way that they are displayed on the walls of a whole room they are given dominance & importance. This is an excellent exhibition.

The new director of the Tate is showing that she is giving more prominence to gender, sexual orientation, race and etnicity, a  greater variety of artists which is shown in the new display on Level 2.

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2017.

I always find the period before Christmas goes really fast. I like the buzz and Christmas decorations in London, and I enjoy hearing Christmas songs being being played inside the supermarkets. I always get invited to several Christmas dos, I have already been to two and I have got another Christmas lunch next week.  I particularly enjoyed the last one, being my friend's sports club; they have got a smart dress code in place and I like to dress up for the occasion. People were nice, the dinner was lovely, and to top it all I won two prizes in the raffle. It made it all worthwhile despite it being freezing cold outside, I had been freezing in my sparkly evening dress. I was invited to another Christmas lunch this week by another friend of mine, a vegetarian Christmas lunch, I had a nut roast that was actually really nice, the entire meal was lovely. I did well in the quiz, my friends were laughing because I got all the questions on Hugh Hefner, Chuck Berry & Bond correct while the other people at my table were covering other more high brow topics... I also had a chat with a well known American War correspondent who has written several famous books including one on Iraq. We had an interesting chat about Hemingway. Anyway, since having all these lunches I decided to walk it off and go to the Portrait Gallery to view The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait prize 2017. I must say the weather has been dreadful so I was really glad to be indoors again. There has been a controversy for this year's competition due to the fact that the judges accepted and then gave a prize to Maija Tammi who took a photo of an android and by doing so broke the rules of the prize. Many people have questioned this, as the photographers had to pay to participate and the judges, by breaking their own rules, rather undermined the fundamental meaning of the prize. 

Rule 5.3 of the competition states that: All photographs must have been taken by the entrant from life and with a living sitter after January 2016.

Photo courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery

Competitions for prizes are a lucrative business; if you have 5717 people applying and each is paying and then you have to select only a handful of winners. This year was also the first year one could apply by sending the images digitally. It was not specified  what all the images in the Portrait Prize should be printed on. They were extremely well taken, high quality photographs not printed in a normal way as they were high definition.

Overall I would say there was a narrative to each image, more than with regular portrait photography, and the selection of photographs was more in the realm of documentary photography. Each photograph told a story. Of refugees escaping war, with one particular photograph of a young woman  wearing a scarf looking out of a bus, with a lost look. The photograph was taken by Abbie Trayler-Smith, entitled Fleeing Mosul (see pic. above from right), from the series Women in War. This received second prize, the woman is been taken away from a war zone into a refugees camp by Oxfam. Her red scarf matches the bus curtain, the photograph is a close up of her, of her raw emotion. The colours are muted, the close up makes you think of religious paintings like for example the Botticelli's Madonna of the Pomegranate (see pic. below), due to the way it is framed, which gives it a holy feel.

Madonna of the Pomenegrate by Sandro Botticelli courtesy of Pinterest

The first  Prize went to Cesar Dezfuli and his portrait of 16 years old Amadou Sumaila (first pic. see above from left) who has just been rescued from the Libyan coast, part of the migration drama. It's a close up of him, we can see human tragedy stretched across his face, fear, uncertainty but also determination. We can see his thin frame & ribs while in the background  we can see the infinite sea and sky that has killed other refugees who have not been lucky enough to have been rescued. Both photographs show human tragedy, human emotion, unlike the photograph of the android with no expression, titled Erica by Maija Tammi  part of the Series One of Them Is a Human (see pic. above, centre), who won third prize. The android looks soulless, is in fact a photograph of a robot. There is a fake alluring serenity in this photograph, it is glossy and the expression is serene and distant, it shares nothing with the different faces of human tragedy of the refugees. By giving third prize to this photograph it rather suggests that artifical intelligence is more relevant than actual human tragedy. It is a distant and generic photograph, there is no expression in the face of the android. Yes, the photograph questions what it is to be human, it is a provocative view on the evolution of human beings, per se it is an interesting, well taken photograph, it does raise interesting questions but it should not have won a prize as it broke the rules of the competition. The whole point of the Prize was to take a photograph of a human, not of a robot.... 

Photo By Laurent Elie Badessi courtesy of the Guardian

Then there is the photograph taken by Laurent Elie Badessi in black and white of Texan 16 year old George carrying automatic weapons  which I find more relevant; it's a full frontal photo, with George grinning. It is a disturbing photograph as no 16 year old is allowed to carry guns in the UK. His demeanour is depicted as normal -  he is showing off his weapons as if he is carrying groceries and not automatic firearms, while wearing an American Tshirt with the emblem of an an Eagle,  the American symbol of power and freedom. So for him power and for a section of society in America, guns are seen as symbols of power and freedom while we over here associate them with aggression & the military, not as a common thing you would carry in your daily life, and certainly not as a 16 year old. But I have to say a lot of 16 year olds in London do carry knives, and there is a big problem with knife culture,  and the proliferation of different gangs. I also found the photograph of President Trump exiting a room (see pic. below) telling of his petulant, impatient personality. 

Photo By Benjamin Rasmussen courtesy of the Daily Mail

The photo was taken by Benjamin Rasmussen  who photographed Trump for Time Magazine. Apparently he only had 30 seconds to take a picture of Trump, and this is one of only two shots he managed to get.  We can only see his hair and his grumpy expression reflected on the door,  as he walks away.

Photo by Alan Mozes courtsey of Vanity Fair

There is also a close up of Barack Obama with a child pinching his nose (pic. below, taken by Alan Mozes)! This shows Obama in a friendly, funny way. There is another photograph of Hillary Clinton, by Alan Mozes, looking excited (see pic. below); this particular photograph of her was used by some parts of the media to suggest  that she was unstable and unreliable rather than energetic and purposeful. Each portrait photograph in its on way shows a different side of the USA. Much more interesting than a picture of a soulless robot.

Photo by Alan Mozes Courtesy of Vanity Fair

If I had to choose I would have liked to give the third prize not to the photo of the Android but to Anna Boyazis and her photo titled Burkini Island, see pic below. To me this photograph shows what difficulties women still face in some parts of the world to carry out a basic activity. It is a photograph of girls from the Kijini Primary school wearing burkini swimsuits and for doing so they have been allowed to learn to float in the water and perform rescue operations in the Indian ocean, in an area where life is dependent on the sea.

Photo by Anna Boyazis courtesy of Photoint.net

Each photograph is framed and accompanied with a description which adds to the understanding of the photograph. Excellent exhibition.

My photographs & Dan Rubin's workshop in London.

Photo by Mirta Imperatori

After viewing the exhibition Instant Stories by Wim Wenders, I  joined a photographic workshop run by Dan Rubin - see his Instagram & Twitter accounts for further information on him at the bottom of this page.

As you know, recently I have been going around the urban landscape in London and taking photographs, which I generally do on my own. So I decided to be part of a group for a workshop and to do something different, staying well clear of digital photography for a day, to take photos with a Polaroid. I have never used this type of camera before and I was aware they used to be seen in the past as a fun, playful way of taking photos. Dan told us to roam the streets of Central London and take photos of anything we found interesting, whether people, buildings or whatever. I took photos both in black and white and in colour and like Wim Wenders I was trying to warm up my polaroids, not under my arm pits as this would have proven difficult under layers of clothing but inside my pockets!

Photo by Mirta Imperatori

I wandered around the streets of London with an old fashioned large Polaroid camera around my neck asking strangers to be photographed, a dazzling experience. I got some people who really enjoyed being photographed with an old camera and others who didn't want to be pictured at all (which was actually quite funny in some cases because they were  being filmed by CCTV cameras, at least four of them,  and this would provide much more detail than my old polaroid camera would). This made me ponder about how people are fed up with being filmed and photographed in our digital age, which is fair enough, but we can't escape CCTV cameras in central London now. I used two different types of Polaroids to take the photos in the street. Dan Roubin loved my black and white photographs, particularly one street scene that he said was amazing. He thought this photograph looked like it could have been taken 100 years ago, it doesn't look like central London at all, which is very busy and generally full of people; it's got an air of mystery, see pic. below.

Photo by Mirta Imperatori

He also liked very much my colour photographs done with another Polaroid, which have softer mellow colours. I took photos, portraits of people and strangers in the street, see pic. below, within a given time constraint.

Photo by Mirta ImperatoriAdd caption

I had several people coming up to me asking about my cameras, so the old fashioned cameras prompted a dialogue. I got one guy asking me for my number that made me laugh because it was so not London where people don't usually communicate, they prefer to shut down because it's so busy. And it seemed none of the other members of the group had as many people coming up to them. All our photographs look very different from each other, some took photos of people from a distance, some took close ups, others concentrated on the buildings, the architecture. I enjoyed manually changing films in the street.  It was an enjoyable workshop with a leader in his field.

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Instant Stories: Wim Wenders' Polaroids - Photographers' Gallery - Recommended.

Wim Wenders - Photographers' Gallery

                   
The long lost art of instant Polaroids. It seems another life as we are now accustomed to the digital fast and furious of the right here right now, the endless photographs on Instagram and other online platforms, of the hyper real, of people projecting their wonderful lifestyles worldwide.

The Wim Wenders exhibition is a visual diary of his trips, a notebook of what he saw, the objects and the people he encountered, the magic of instant Polaroid, of the surprise of not knowing what the camera will dish out each time; of waiting with his photographs under his armpits, to make them warm up and developing them correctly while doing other things; the magic of having an original, different photographs from all the others;  the magic of telling one's own story, sharing the experience with each instant Polaroid picture. I have to say this exhibition was a delight, not only because it includes some 200 photographs by Wim Wenders (he took thousands), but also because it is a very well curated exhibition. The photographs are neatly framed together, with a tight frame that only shows the centre of the photograph, at its best. On the day I went the exhibition was very busy; I also saw the actor Jude Law wandering around inside the gallery. So I was glad to have turned up early for it as I could spend more time looking at the images. As they are positioned closely together and being fairly small, as you would expect, they force you to look in, they have a natural, nostalgic feel to them that you can only get with this type of camera.

Wim Wenders - Photographers' Gallery

There are Polaroids of his trips across the USA and Europe, of famous people such as Dennis Hopper, of friends,  of strangers, of daily life, everyday objects he would encounter in drive-ins and other places such as rooftops, cars, shop fronts. He builds a visual story, a way of remembering places, faces, and moods. Also showing are excerpts from his film, Alice in the Cities.  Another of his films, American Friend, has Dennis Hopper obsessively taking photographs of himself, this too is showing see pic. below. Wim Wenders said he took about 12000 photographs while he was filming between 1973 and 1983 but that only 3.500 of those photographs remain. He said he took pictures of a person and sometimes he gave the photographs to him or her.

Dennis Hopper as Tom Ripley in American friend by Wim Wenders

                               
Wim Wenders himself was also obsessively taking photographs of what was around him at the time. The Polaroids in the exhibition have been grouped under titles such California Dreaming, Photo Booths, Mean Streets, Typewriters, Looking for America. All together they create a visual diary of a bygone era. The Polaroids are instinctive. Wenders also said he has not taken any Polaroids in 30 years, he is now 72 years old and he had first learnt to use a camera as a child, taught by his father.  He says he never saw himself as a photographer. Part of the charm of the Polaroids in this exhibitions is that  some of them are badly over or under exposed, they create a specific mood, they have an air of mystery to them, they are romantic, they point at something lost, that we no longer have, a gone moment in time that we can only retrace through the photographs themselves. This is the complete opposite of taking photographs with a digital camera, or an iPhone, where the photos are pixels, or on Instagram where we are constantly looking at hyper real photos. Like Wenders says, photography has changed for him; the act of looking nowadays doesn't hold the same meaning - he said in an interview that nowadays it is about showing, sending and maybe remembering. While to me, in this exhibition, those Polaroids are all about remembering.

Dennis Hopper photo by Wim Wenders - Photographers' Gallery

Wim Wenders & his daughter - Pinterest

The Polaroids are a storybook, his stories, his encounters with people famous and non famous, for example with a young Annie Leibovitz who takes him on a trip to Los Angeles. There are Polaroids of her driving. Or of hearing about John Lennon's death while driving in LA. In the exhibition there are  also several portraits; Polaroids were frequently used for taking portraits; my favourites are the ones of Dennis Hopper who was actually a photographer himself. The Polaroids of him do go well with the film of him taking loads of pictures of himself in manic fashion, he definitely predated the obsessive selfie culture we now have. This particular set of photographs is a take on the obsessive nature of self and fame and of how really it is all redundant, because by taking so many photographs of himself in the film, not only is he showing his sociopathic, manic tendencies but he makes the act of taking photos redundant and it turns the viewer into a voyeur. Brilliant exhibition.

Sheila Hicks: Stones of Peace - Alison Jacques Gallery.

                                           Sheila Hicks - Photo Alison Jacques Gallery

On a bright sunny day I viewed the exhibition by Sheila Hicks at the Alison Jacques Gallery, entitled Stones of Peace. This includes a variety of her works, with large sculptural pieces that go beyond textile to inhabit the installation realm. They are imposing, soft, colourful sculptures that hang down from the ceiling, resembling loose ponytails, see pic. below - if you touch them they move. There is movement in this specific type of work, unlike her minimalist work on the walls, they change every time they are installed in a new exhibition space. Opposite on the floor are large balls of colourful intertwined yarns, more of a rough nature, made with synthetic yarns. Some of her work is made with handlooms. 

                                             Sheila Hicks - Photo Alison Jacques Gallery

On the walls of the gallery are her minimalist works; they are white and go towards paintings, they are more controlled due to being just one colour and wrapped on hard material, all of them are made with soft textile materials, some natural, some synthetic and what joins them together is the repetition of wrapping the material; it’s a very meditative way of working, spending time intertwining and wrapping see pic. below.

                                           Sheila Hicks - Photo Alison Jacques Gallery

In the more colourful works there is playfulness, while in the white minimalist works there is instead calmness, a stillness. The soft materials and the way in which they are shown in the gallery make you want to touch them, they are tactile, large and small but when they are intertwined with each other as in the balls on the floor they gain in volume, because they are also amassed together in a way you would want to sit on them and play with them. This is also due to the bright colours they are made of and the soft texture. I really felt the urge to pounce on them, but I refrained as I was aware I was not allowed; it would be great if they actually allowed people to jump on them and play with them, take the whole thing further, fill the whole room with them and allow people to just have fun, they tried this in another exhibition. At the moment you can look but you can’t touch or play with them so they sit in between, a sculpture, installation and textile, see pic. below. 

                                          Sheila Hicks - Photo Alison Jacques Gallery

The way she threads them also makes you reconsider what textile in the past was used for, but she shows the unlimited potential of the material, taking it into a new realm altogether, moving textile forward into new directions.

In the second room are her ‘Minimes’, small weavings which are made with a hand loom, which she has been doing for the past 50 years. They are intimate pieces with feathers, porcupine needles, shells, paper, or bamboo or even steel fibres, sensitively added on to the piece and not overpowering the work but complementing it. Some are more brown in tone than her other more colourful works in the main room. Due to the small scale of these works, they draw you in like you would find looking at miniature work, so you have to go close up to them to get a proper feel for them. Some say it reminds them of the paintings of Italian artist Giorgio Morandi, see pic. below. 

                                            Sheila Hicks - Photo Alison Jacques Gallery

Some of her initial work was based on pre Columbian weaving structures while from 2005 she started using synthetic filaments, which the balls also called boules are made of. All the work in this exhibition was presented indoors; I think next time I would love to see her outdoor works.

Sheila Hicks in an interview with Arnet Magazine said: Textile had been relegated to a secondary role in our society, to a material that was considered either functional or decorative.  I wanted to give it another status and show what an artist can do with these incredible materials.

This was a very enjoyable and stimulating exhibition.

Hicks has a BFA and MFA from Yale University and studied under Joseph Albers, and Eva Hesse was a fellow student.

Hamiltons Gallery Photographic Exhibition by Christopher Thomas.

I thought it was a normal day like any other but it wasn't to be. Inside the underground I was calmly walking behind a guy with a trolley suitcase when suddenly I saw a guy on my right, very tall 6 feet tall, rushing past me and bumping into the trolley suitcase in front of me; he fell forward really badly, hitting the ground literally in front of me and gashing his nose, I went up to him and asked him if he was ok. He nodded angrily at me that he was ok. Several other people rushed towards him. I decided to quickly move on as there was no way I could help the guy any further, by helping him to get up as he was so big & tall, so I let the other people around me help him up. I have often seen inside the underground people having accidents because they are not paying attention, when they are in a rush, or tired from long hours of commuting and work; sometimes they push others to get through. When I am on the escalators I always stand well away from tourists with large suitcases. I have seen time and time again people carrying huge suitcases and not managing them properly on the escalators, blocking others & accidentally falling forward basically causing accidents. I have also seen people running down the escalators not holding to the handrails and I am thinking jeez if for whatever reason the escalator stops they would fall forward and take others with them, and hurt themselves really badly. I have seen it happening, the injuries weren't a joke, a whole pile up of injured bodies down the escalators, luckily this doesn't happen often. But some  people still run down the escalators, and we are supposed to be the 'intelligent, advanced species on earth'! But we struggle with making even the most simple changes in our behaviour; in our routines we hold on to the same behaviour. So I still see people pushing and shoving others to get forward to get to the tube, as though their life depends on it. But the trains come nearly every minute! I finally got out of the underground and everything was fine.

Photo by Christopher Thomas - Hamiltons Gallery

I went to Hamiltons Gallery in Mayfair to see the photographic exhibition by German photographer Christopher Thomas (his background is in advertising) titled Lost in LA. While I was in the gallery I was greeted by Tim Jefferies the owner who was very friendly. He has a long history of  showcasing photography in the gallery. The photographs are made with a Polaroid film type 55 ( there is at the moment a revival of this and other Polaroid formats) and then digitally scanned so it's a mix of the two processes. The fact that they are taken with a large Polaroid with long exposure in black and white gives them a nostalgic, ethereal feel, they are photographs of classic buildings taken in LA, such as the Hollywood signs, and McDonald's, see pics. above & below.

Photo By Christopher Thomas - Hamiltons Gallery

They show no humans or cars, but empty vacant spaces; quite the opposite of what we associate with LA which is busy and polluted; this is a rare thing, a dream. There are also photographs of solitary piers and oil pumps.

Photo by Christopher Thomas - Hamiltons Gallery

Christopher Thomas took the photographs over a period of three years while staying in a camper van; the photographs are carefully planned so as to keep them free of people; he would need to take them very early in the morning or late in the evening.  They are not conceptual photographs but they are his own portraits of the city, its structure, a peaceful view of a bygone era. The dim lighting in the gallery added to the nostalgic feeling of the exhibition. The quiet ambiance of the gallery suites the exhibition well.