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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Dennis Hopper photo by Wim Wenders - Photographers' Gallery |
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| 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.
