Vera Lutter & Nancy Rubins at the Gagosian Gallery. Recommended.

How to sum up this winter? We had one of the darkest winters in years, snow in February and now snow again in the middle of March. I am happy though that the days are longer, it makes such a difference. I can't remember a year when it snowed this late, anyhow it looks beautiful, I love it! 

In the news also is the attempted assassination of Russians on British soil and the use of a chemical agent for the first time since WWII in Europe, and the fact that whoever used the chemical agent is most worryingly still out there.. Also I found the lack of information from the Government surprising, what to do if you come into contact with a nerve agent or other chemical, I mean like any other mere mortal I just googled it up on what to do in case it happens. With all of this happening & lack of sleep I was still able to meet my deadlines, with great results. I decided to take an afternoon off and go to the Gogasian Gallery near King's Cross station to view the works by Vera Lutter & Nancy Rubins. It was an oasis of peace in there.

Photo by Vera Lutter courtesy of the Gagosian Gallery.

The exhibition by Vera Lutter is titled Turning Time; she uses a large pinhole camera, she revived the camera obscura (light enters into a dark camera space thorough the pinhole and it projects an image inside the box onto the photgraphic paper) by using a large shipping container instead of using a small box. She then left the exposure for several hours, even days and months which then gave the work a ghostly appearance. All the photographs are large and are positioned in one room on the walls; some are put together as they are so large and you have to get close to notice this. She took photographs of ancient temples in Paestum, Italy, positioning the container at different angles, so has sometimes to get close ups of the subject or sometimes to get distant images. This ancient site includes three temples built around 550BCE, for the gods Neptune and Athena. Basically she turns a shipping container into a large camera obscura see pics above and below.

Photo by Vera Lutter courtesy of Pinterest.

Next to the above pictures are photographs of the Effelsberg Radio telescope at the Max Planck Insitut fur Radioastronomiey in Germany, where she went in 2013, that records cosmic acitvity in space see pic. below. They are all inverted black and white images, each image is unique, it is a slow process where she observes the changes that happened outside of the pinhole, like catching shadows; the long exposure gives a sense of emptiness, of the blackness of the photos observing the mystery of darkness, of time passing.  It actually reminded me of Andy Warhol's film Empire with the long observation of an object, registering the changes see link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMCeDBn1Zu0.
The pinhole camera is not well suited to capture fast movements such as cars, they would look like fragments, and it is an imaginative use of the camera obscura which was big in Victorian times. There are no people in the photographs; she would have spent a long time observing, recording the changes of the building over time.

Photo by Vera Lutter courtesy of Pinterest.

Her work is very different in nature from that of Nancy Rubins as evidenced in her exhibition titled Diversifolia which dominates the main room in a playful way. You can't really avoid it, not that you would want to as it is fun see pic below.

Nancy Rubin's sculptures photo courtesy of the Guardian.

It included found over-the-top garden ornamental objects/animals which are turned upside down, connected together through wires, going in different directions. She uses a structural property in her work called 'tensegrity': here the individual animals/objects are secured with tensile wires in a compact way. They made me think of bouquets of flowers scattered in all directions, that give you the illusion of floating in the air. They are monochrome, cast in iron, bronze, brass, aluminium, I went close up to them and I saw an upside down turtle at the bottom, a duck, a zebra, a crocodile tail, there is a lot to look at in the sculptures! While the wires zig zag through them, the sculptures invite you to walk around them to discover them as a whole. They have an organic feel to them, despite their being made of metal, as though they have grown rather then being designed, and they still retain a feeling of randomness & untidiness see pic below.

Photo courtesy of the Londonist.com.

In the exhibition room there are also two large drawings see pic below. At first I thought it was a wavy sculpture made out of aluminium (this is how good it is) fluidly moving across the wall, again in an organic way  and then when I went close up to it I realised it was made out of paper covered in graphite. It made me think of the heavy dense drawings by Richard Serra.

Photo courtesy of Pinterest.

It went really well with the other sculptures in the room, the balance between an organic fluid piece and the tension and the controlled caos and absurdity of the other works. I thought it was funny, the fact that she is recycling expensive garden ornaments that you would find in wealthy houses in California where she is based and she turns them into sculptures/installations which are surreal and which defy gravity. Brilliant exhibition.

My latest exhibitions.

Below is a selection of my photographs from my latest exhibitions in 2018 & 2017, which were successful and well attended.

Lewisham Arthouse 2018

Lewisham Arthouse 2018

Summer Exhibition 2017

Summer Exhibition 2017

Winter Exhibition 2017

The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro. Recommended.

I like going to the movies at odd hours when there is hardly anybody inside the cinema and I can fully focus on the movie without having to worry about people using their mobile phones or chatting, without getting some tall person sitting in front of me blocking the view. It's quite funny because I am not the only one doing this. Sometimes when I went to the movies I noticed a Chinese student doing exactly the same thing as I was doing, so we generally find each other at the same movie. Again this time I bought my ticket at the desk, not from a machine. I am not keen on machines that have replaced people, inside supermarkets and in other outlets, I just generally avoid them; companies should employ more people not soulless machines, machines take jobs from humans. It's amusing to see how England is adopting the worst from the USA and has become so Americanised; you know the long hours at work in the office, machines instead of people, poor quality coffee chains where the coffee costs double that in Europe and still doesn't taste of coffee.

Courtesy of Pinterest.

When I bought my ticket I said: Can I have one ticket for the Shape of Water? The guy behind the desk answered, sure, is this just for yourself? And I am like: as opposed to what? A dozen perhaps?.. Anyway I went inside the cinema, the Chinese student was already positioned in his favourite seat. I noticed that we were the only two single people in the whole cinema. We were surrounded by couples, it was more busy than usual...

Eliza & the amphibian fish, courtesy of Pinterest. 

The movie The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro is up for 13 nominations at the Oscars.

It's a fantasy, drama, romance, starring Sally Hawkings as Eliza Esposito, the mute cleaner  who works in a top secret military facility/lab in the Baltimore area. Doug Jones is the amphibian fish alien creature captured by the American Military in South America. They fall in love; he will break her monotony of daily egg eating and cleaning at the facility, he will learn her language and how to be emotionally intelligent. Eliza Esposito has two friends, one is the gay older illustrator called Giles, played by Richard Jenkins, with whom she lives in the same building above a cinema. They are both single and sexually frustrated and they keep each other company by watching old films on TV, usually musicals.

Giles & Eliza, courtesy of Pinterest.

Giles likes a young man that works in a restaurant where they make pies. Giles goes there regularly with Eliza to buy pies they don't like as an excuse to chat to the man behind the counter. But it's the early 1960's and things are not smooth if you are gay and when he makes a pass at the counter guy, he is told to leave and not come back. This is another dig from the director at the wholesome image of America; in fact the guy behind the counter hates gays and is a racist, he is not as nice as he appears.

Giles was  forced to leave his job and spends most of the time in his studio at home with his cats creating the perfect illustration that might get him his job back. The funny bits of the movie are left to Eliza's other friend Zelda, played by Octavia Spencer, another cleaner at the military lab.

Dr Hoffstetler with Eliza, courtesy of Pinterest.

I found the character of Dr Hoffstetler, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, the scientitist in the lab who is studying the creature, had depth because he is not just a scientist but also a Russian spy. He  is not close to the creature, unlike Eliza, but can see the creature responding emotionally. Dr Hoffstetler responds emotionally too, putting himself at risk when helping Eliza, which is not generally what scientists in movies do but he still does it from a scientific point of view. He will help Eliza, Giles and Zelda to save the creature from a violent fate at the hand of the guard Strikland, played by Michael Shannon. While Eliza is gentle to the creature and he responds to her in a gentle way, Strickland is a sadist government guard who enjoys causing pain to the creature. He hates its freakishness and smell. He loves power, he abuses power, so we see him in his work environment dominating others through fear. The meaning of this is violence brings more violence and that people in authority can abuse power if not kept in check.

Guard Strickland, Eliza & Zelda courtesy of Pinterest.

Then we see him in his home environment. Perfect on the outside, with the 1950's ever so pleasing wife, who cooks and cleans. It's the ideal of suburbia, the American dream, but it is all rotten. Everything looks perfect and beautiful on the outside but it is not so on the inside. Strickland is a troubled dark character. He enjoys inflicting violence on the creature, seeking to be in control. I don't like violence in movies, I generally find it hard to watch or hear about violence inflicted on others so I was sliding down inside my chair hiding behind my popcorn at violence scenes.

Strickland's family is a dysfunctional family where the wife is there to please her husband and his sexual desires while not truly expressing herself, she is a robot, a non entity. Strickland has little emotional connection with her and the kids, he wants her not to talk when they have sex, he doesn't care about her as long as his sexual needs are met. Strickland wants a better car, he will buy a flashy expensive car beyond his salary and to afford it he is willing to kill the creature, so he puts his wants and desires before anybody else's, he is a selfish man, he represents selfish capitalism but after buying the expensive car he is still not happy. The parable of this is that consumerism doesn't make you happy for long. Eliza, Giles, Zelda and Hoffstetler are the heart and the true heroes of the story, they are the outsiders, the misfits. Happiness has got nothing to do with how much money you have or what you own.

Giles & Eliza, courtesy of Pinterest.

Guillermo del Toro uses a specific colour palette throughout the movie, such as blue/greens/teal more inside the lab and grey representing metal and cold, while inside Eliza's and Giles's flats there are more earthy colours with hints of red here and there that add warmth. There is the green lime pie, or the green soap dispenser inside the lab. The candy that Stirckland eats is green, his car is teal, candy holds no nutritional value, it's just sugar. Eliza's shoes at one point are red, her coat is red too, red which symbolises love, passion and love for the cinema. Blue, green for water but also for the future. Giles's & Eliza's flats are old, they remind you of old Europe, post war Europe, it is nostalgic. The colour scheme creates a dreamy tone and an alternate atmosphere. The colours help the development of the story. It is a beautiful, moving, well thought out movie.

The movie: Ida.

Ida - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

A friend suggested seeing the movie Ida. It is a beautifully shot black and white movie that reminds you of Vermeer paintings. It came out a while back and I missed it at the cinema at the time. At the beginning of the movie, I thought how beautiful it was, but as the movie goes along, the grey  landscape and the minimal way it is shot feels oppressive; however, it is oppressive and beautiful at the same time. This is the story of Anna, a novice catholic nun, 17 years old, who has lived all her life inside a convent, and has not experienced life in the world outside.  She is about to take her final vows in the convent where she was abandoned as an orphan baby. But she has one surviving relative, her aunt. The Mother Superior insists she contacts her aunt before Anna, later known as Ida, takes her final vows.

Ida - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

Her aunt, Wanda Gruz, played by Agata Kulesza, is a completely opposite character to Ida.  She is a combative, hard-drinking woman who lives on her own and is a far more interesting character than Ida. When Ida goes to meet her aunt for the first time, Wanda is standing near the window in the kitchen, chain smoking, in her dressing gown, a man is lying in bed next door. One makes some immediate assumptions about Wanda. Pawlikowski the director encourages this by taking a direct camera shot at the man in bed. The whole setting of the scene leads you  to understand that Wanda is not married, and the situation is that Ida is meeting her aunt just after she has been having sex. But Wanda is not what you might think, she is actually a magistrate.

Ida - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

Wanda brutally tells her niece who she, Anna, really is. Anna's original name is Ida Lebestein, and she is Jewish. So she says to her niece, sarcastically; you know you are a Jewish nun! There is shock in Ida's face, it is all understated acting. This piece of information changes everything. It will make her question her faith and who she is in the world. Ida says to Wanda that she wants to know what happened to her parents during the war. Wanda and you yourself the viewer are dreading this as you know very well what happened to Jewish people during World War II in Poland, the Holocaust. As the viewer you know that this is going to be a difficult, emotional journey. But Wanda takes charge and they set off on a road trip.

Ida - Photos courtesy of Pinterest

This is a dark journey, one that questions the silence of the Catholic Church, depicts anti-semitism, the awful things people do to survive, and how do they live or not with their decisions afterwards.  This is in stark contrast with Ida the nun, her innocence, her naivety, her habits which have all been established by a pre-ordered system, her going to bed at the same time, saying prayers at the same time. Her status as a nun gives her the respect of the local people in Catholic Poland which is almost comical, as you now know she was born Jewish.

Ida - Photos courtesy of Pinterest

Wanda opens up and pushes the local people in the village with force and coercion to tell her the truth about what happened to Ida's parents and at this stage you realise it is not Ida who is most affected by this but it is actually Wanda. Her sister was murdered in a forest. In one particular scene you can hear the sound of the wind and the rattling of Ida's parents' bones which they take to bury properly, and you realise why she is the way she is: the heavy drinking, constantly sleeping with men, not able to be close to anybody. All this makes you realise that she is the one who survived, she carries the weight of these wartime experiences.... does she now suffer from survival guilt?

Ida - Photos courtesy of Pinterest

Ida realises as well that Wanda, the only surviving relative of her family, is lost and depressed; there are two sides to her, one that is pro-active and fighting to move forward and the other which is self destructive, and you don't know which side will prevail. Ida's moral innocence is counterbalanced by the weight of her aunt's history and life, you are very much aware she had to carry it all by herself and that has made her feel separated from others, unable to truly share who she really is. The person with whom she shared everything, her beloved sister, was brutally murdered. All of this is handled by the director with minimal shooting, that makes you think of the French director Truffaut and Bergman. There is no direct violence, but the sense of war is  strongly felt throughout the movie.The lengthy camera shots, the closeups of the forest, the vast landscape covered in snow, the rattling bones; all is done by association. It is a lyric movie that opens a lot of questions on the history of Poland during the war and about collaboration and antisemitism and it raises questions about faith and living in the material world.

Primo Levi - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

At a certain point the movie made me think of Primo Levi, whose death always troubled me. How can someone of his rigour and discipline, who survived Auschwitz, then die years later at his own hand. 

I always preferred to believe Rita Levi Montalcini's version of events saying he could have just fallen down the staircase of his appartment block in Turin; yes he was on antidepressants, but some people have side effects from them, making them unsteady, dizzy, lowering blood pressure. He could have just simply slipped off by mistake since he had just had surgery and the staircase was rather tight. Anyway, his writing legacy lives on with the masterpiece on Auschwitz 'If This is a Man'.

Photo courtesy of Pinterest

Going back to Ida, it is a powerful, beautiful, minimalist movie that opens up a lot of questions, but I felt that neither woman, Wanda or Ida, was able to overcome their history; they are bound up in it.

From the point of view of an artist, I think I was observing how the film was shot, the shots on the landscape that create a mood, and the beautiful black and white monochrome which I have been using myself lately in my photographs. I have a keen interest in analogue photography, the difference sense of time one gets from using analogue instead of digital, by working in a dark room instead of a computer.

Tate Modern level 4: Daido Moriyama's photographs.

With my friends we run a music club once a week where we meet and listen to music, each of us can choose a piece and sometimes describe it, if the others don't know it. The last time I went to my friends' house, which I love doing because it's like going back to England in the 1950's, you step inside and it's a time warp, everything literally is from the 1950's, and we spend time listening to wonderful music.
I look at their couch in wonder, I can't believe this 1950's style type of couch still exists, it is so comfortable, just perfect for listening to music.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Anyway after I viewed the installation of photographs by Carrie Mae Weems at Tate Modern, I decided to go up to level 4 and look at Daido Moriyama's photographs. I was curious about his work, his obsessiveness in taking photographs and leaving them undeveloped for 30 years.

Moriyama (born in 1938), the master of street photography, worked for the photographic journal Provoke by invitation of Takuma Nakahiri, who in 1968 asked him to join in the second issue see pic below.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama took photographs of a couple having sex in a hotel. This was in contravention of traditional Japanese culture. He loved photographing his area in Tokyo called: Shinjyuku. He has always been a voyeuristic street photographer, wandering around, pointing and shooting with his camera. His style called: Bure(=Shake) and Boke(=No focus). He made the images blurry, unfocused, grainy, shot in rapid succession, then seeing how they developed in the darkroom.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

He was inspired by Jack Kerouac's On the Road and the fact that he wrote on a continuous roll of paper, no interruptions. In Moriyama's case continuously taking photographs of the ordinary, taking in the city landscape, his impressions of the city, chance encounters, moods but also the grittiness of the ordinary, without trying to prettify them. With this approach he still produced striking images. His close ups make you slow down as a viewer, they force you to look in at the everyday that could be your everyday, he shows imperfect human beings up close: a woman opening her eye wide see pic below, a boy's shaved head; they could all be you the viewer, you tend to identify with them as they are depicted in a natural, ordinary way. He also takes photos of discarded, ugly objects, that you might not have noticed. The photographs are all in sequence, closely put together like a menu of images that create a view of a city they are melancholic images of the ordinary.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

It should be understood that this technique of documentating the everyday life in an urban environment, for example showing a photo of a urinal covered in tape, was a departure from the norms in Japan. It can be linked to the mass observation movement originating in the UK in 1937. Mass observation aimed to record everyday life in Britain, using large numbers of untrained volunteer observers. The photos in the exhibition are monochrome; by using black and white instead of colour he avoids distractions and he is able to focus for example more on detail close ups such as facial expressions.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama published the book Farewell Photography, orginally titled Bye Bye Photography Dear, in 1972. He was deconstructing photography, a process which he started with the photobook Hunter published in the same year.  The entire collection of images was exhibited for the first time at the Paris Photo 2015. The images were out of focus, randomly challenging Western precise photography at the time. Moriyama describes it with these words: 'The authority of the failed negative, with its inherent possibility, could be restored. I imagined I could construct a book - a book of pure sensations without meaning, by shuffling into a harmonious whole, a series of childish images'. Basically he is saying that all photographs are equally valid.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

The book had a punk quality about it, distinguishing it from the photographic medium of its time. It was a forerunner of images that would be used in the 1980's & 1990's, for example by Ray Gun Magazine, an American alternative rock and roll magazine founded by art director David Carson which used an experimental typography and abstract chaotic design. The first issue in November 1992 had on its cover Henry Rollins.

Photo of Ray Gun Magazine courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama also published Memories of a Dog, which was part of Asahi Camera, in 1983. This contains a famous photograph, a close up of a stray dog looking at the camera photographed in Misawa City in 1971. The way the dog is turned towards tha camera with his shoulders down, with a tired, beaten, almost human expression, provides an image that is at once beautiful and wretched, see pic below. The grainy monochromatic quality of the photograph produces poetry.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama said 'some days our howl is that life is wretched, some days life is wonderful'. It was a chance encounter he saw the dog as soon as he stepped out of the hotel where he was staying. You become completely absorbed by his photographs. The book is brilliant, showcasing his travels, it's an autobiographical account, the bars, the coffee shops he has visited, his school, it's about memory, it's nostalgic. He juxtaposes different images together. It was interesting to see ordinary life in Tokyo by a Master, I love his monochromatic photographs.

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.