Exhibition Review: Photographers Gallery (HOME TRUTHS: Photography, Motherhood and Identity & BIBI by Jacques Henri Lartigue)

'Home Truths' was an exhibition being presented throughout two galleries at the photographers gallery in London, oxford street. The exhibition included a total of eight artists (Janine Antoni, Elina Brotherus, Elinor Carucci, Ana Casas Broda, Fred Hüning, Leigh Ledare, Katie Murray and Hanna Putz) and was put together by Susan Bright. Susan Bright is a British writer and curator of photography who has helped with many art exhibitions for the national portrait gallery in London. The theme of this 'home truths' exhibition is about motherhood, identity and loss and I feel from viewing the photographs that you can see this theme throughout. I feel that the curator (Susan Bright) is trying to make us as the audience feel for the people in the photographs and really go in depth into looking at the messages shown throughout the exhibiters photographs and not just showing an illustrative message of motherhood and pregnancy etc. In an interview on the photographers gallery website, Susan Bright talks about her exhibition and states how she wanted to "look at the much more thorny issues of maternity and representation". The exhibitions consisted of many photographs from the eight artists and were spread into two rooms, grouped by the themes and messages they were showing of motherhood. Susan bright said she felt the main focus image of the exhibition was of a big portrait image taken by the artist 'Janine Antoni' called 'In Habit'.

The second exhibition being shown at the photographers gallery was called Bibi and was of a selection of photographs by Jacques Henri Lartigue focused around his first wife Madeleine Messager. The exhibition includes a series of photographs between the years of 1918 (when Lartigue met Bibi) to 1930 (When the couple divorced). The photos are arranged in a chronological order and show their time of them together before their break up. You can see this in the photographs because of how Bibi throughout the images stops being the dominant subject matter in the image. We also see in the photographs their wealthy lifestyle and I really love how these photograph could be shown as and taken as really 'tourist like photographs' but I really love how Lartigue has documented his time with Bibi because of the way he has compose the photographs.

V&A Museum: History Of Photography

Over the summer I went to visit the V&A's photography gallery to see the history of photography exhibition. I really like a lot of the photographs and saw a lot of photographers that I have researched into in previous projects. I feel that visiting this exhibition has also helped me see more documentary photography work and photographers that I can researched more in depth for the current documentary project that I have picked for A2.

The photographers gallery is a quite a new room display at the V&A and opened to the public on 24 October 2011. However the V&A has had previous photo exhibitions such as 'the history of photography' which was shown from the 1840's to the 1970's. The V&A was also the first museum that started to collect photographs in 1852. The current exhibition being displayed at the gallery is a re-hang of 'The history of Photography' and the museum say that it will be re-curated every 18 months and will be showing temporary displays such as contemporary photography in other galleries in the museum.

I really liked the arrangement of the gallery room and really liked how it was new, fresh and organised.  Even though there was a small paragraph about each photo and photographer below each photo. The different types of documentary photographs and the years they were taken in were grouped together   alongside a big information board for each group around the gallery which explained about the period in which the photographs were taken and the history of photography in this time. These were the names of all the group sections and what the info boards were called: After the war: Personal Vision, Facts and Focus, Documents, Records and Travel, Discovery and Modernism. Alongside these information boards there was also two boards called In-Focus which focused in depth on two photographers shown in the gallery. When I went the two photographers were 'Eugene Atget' and 'The Bechers (Bernd and Hilla Becher)'. Photographers such as: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Irving Penn and Diane Arbus were shown in the gallery.

This was one of the photographs I liked a lot from the gallery and is by a photographer called Antanas Sutkus. Antanas Sutkus (born 27 June 1939 in Kluoniškiai) is a renowned Lithuanian photographer and was one of the co-founders and a President of the Photography Art Society of Lithuania. This documentary portrait photo on the left is one of Sutkus's most well known photographs called ‘Pioneer, Ignalina’ or ‘The First Grader’ and was taken in 1964 in Sutkus's homeland of Lithuania. Since 1953 Sutkus spent most of his time documenting the changing life of his homeland of Lithuania. This photo is of a young boy dressed with the scarf of a young pioneers, which was a communist party organisation for young people. In the description of the photo it says Sutkus was trying to show honesty and intensity. I really love how he's done this and he has gone down to the child's level and been able to line the camera perfectly up with the child's face so that you can really see the emotion of how the boy looks tired, upset and quite confused because of how he is gazing into the camera. I also like how the boys behind have different emotions to this one boy in front because of how they are quite interested and happy when looking at the camera. I really like how the lighting isolates the boy from the other children behind because of how you can see his bold outline of his head, upper body and also the detail of his scarf. I feel that the lighting is natural but quite bright high contrast light coming from the left upper side because of how the boys in the background have a lot of shadows on the right side of their faces and parts of the sun glares on their hair. 

D&AD New Blood

Over the summer on the 4th of July 2013, I decided to go and visit the D&AD New Blood exhibition which was on for two days (3rd & 4th of July 2013) in Old Spitalfields Market. The Exhibition held place to over 70 different courses showing the UK's newest graduating talent from 49 different universities. The different courses shown included: Graphic & Multimedia Design, Graphic Communication, Creative Advertising, Creative & Cultural Industries Contemporary Arts Practice, Digital Media, Motion Graphics & Animation, Illustration & Animation, Brand Design, 3D Digital Design, Photography, and many more. 

I didn't intentionally go to look at photography courses at New Blood because I didn't know they would have any photography courses being shown because it was mainly Graphic design, illustration, motion design and media courses being shown. However when walking around the exhibition I noticed that there was one stall which was Middlesex University and they were showing off some of their BA(Hons) Photography students work. 


These were two students work that I like the most:      

On the right is a photograph taken by a student called William Lakin who goes to Middlesex university and has a tutor called Paul Duke. This was a Photograph he entered for a competition called Dazed & Confused and was one of the winners. Dazed & Confused is a magazine and they wanted Students to create their own portrait of contemporary youth. Their description of the competition: "A single image that will be just as relevant in a decade. An image that captures this period of time, with determination and attitude. They had to Capture reality, fantasy, people with interesting stories, people with great ideas. Something real. Avoid the clichés. Seize the chance to define the visual language of your world in 2012/13." 

The one on the left was taken by another student called Michelle Amosu who also got an award for this and another portrait she did for the dazed and confused competition. I chose this though because I was looking on her website and I really like her portfolio project which this photo was part of called 'Stammplatz'.  She says in the description of this project that she has photographed fellow residents, family and friends in their own outdoor personal spaces.A word in German meaning 'regular place' or 'native space', epitomises my fascination with 'home'. It is 'Stammplatz'. I really love the simplicity and thought and meaning of this project and could help me when I start to take my documentary photography. 

Overall I really liked this exhibition and how it was arranged out because of how each university had there own booth. This really helped when jotting down notes, asking questions and taking loads of photographs of different work from different booths and I would know which universities they are from. I also really loved how creative different Universities were with their small booths because they all had different arrangements in their booths and they were all unique.

Exhibition review: Coulsdon College Visual Arts Exhibition

The A2 classes coursework and exam pieces have just been finished displayed and are being exhibited in three rooms in the collage. The visual arts exhibition consist of the four creative art subjects; Graphic Design, Photography, Textiles and Fine art. When looking around the exhibition I really liked the range and different styles of work that people had created. I feel that looking at all of the A2 students work it has really inspired me and shown me how much work and effort I need to dedicate and put in into the A2 year ahead of me. The exhibition also showed me the wide range of experiments I can try in the A2 year.   

There was a lot of pieces of artwork from each subject that I really liked in the exhibition but I feel that if I had to pick my favourite piece from all the artwork I feel that this is one of my favourites (below). This is a Fine art exam piece by a student called Melissa Wear. She also had three other painted portrait pieces in the same style as this painting. I like this one best from the four she had submitted because of how she uses the plastic sheet in front of another canvas that she had painted on. I really like the use of the two layers and how she has painted on the glass with the different coloured brush strokes style technique which she has also used in her other portraits. 

When looking around the photo exhibition I really like the range of different techniques used by students. Some techniques used by the A2 students have inspired me to test and experiment with these techniques in my A2 year. I especially liked this technique of painting a photograph onto stones using liquid emulsion used by a student and feel that I will be defiantly experimenting with this in my A2 year. Also apart from looking at peoples final pieces I really liked looking at their sketchbooks that they have done to show their development throughout different units because it shows the work load and effort I should be putting in to my A2 year and how I can improve from AS to be able to create really good final pieces and sketchbooks to get higher grades for my work.     

Exhibition review: Photographers Gallery - Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2013

Over the half term on the 31st of May, I went to the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize Exhibition at the Photographers gallery in London. The Prize has been running each year since 1996 and was created by the Photographers' Gallery with the intention of promoting the finest contemporary photography. Between 1997 and 2004, the prize was known as the Citigroup Photography Prize. Every year the photographers gallery and other judges give a prize of £30,000 (funded by a german marketing company called Deutsche Borse) to a photographer who has made the most significant contribution to the photographic medium in Europe during the past year. The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2013 is generously supported by Deutsche Börse Group and media partner The Telegraph. The annual photography prize has been been described as "the biggest of its kind in photography in Europe" and "the most prestigious".

The Prize the year is on until the 30th of June 2013 and was open to the public on the 18th of April 2013. The artwork is being shown on the two top floors of gallery and this years finalists are Broomberg & Chanarin, Mishka Henner, Chris Killip, and Cristina De Middel. The winner of the £30,000 Prize will be announced on Monday 10 June. The panel of judges this year are; Joan Fontcuberta - artist, Andrea Holzherr - Exhibition Manager and art critic, Karol Hordziej - Artistic Director, Anne-Marie Beckmann - curator of the Deutsche Borse Art Collection, Brett Rogers, Director of The Photographers’ Gallery and is the non-voting Chair.

Chris Killip's work:

Broomberg & Chanarin's work: 

Mishka Henner's work: 

Cristina De Middel's work:

Juergen Teller - Woo!

Juergen Teller was born in Erlangen, Germany in 1964. Teller is an artist and Uk based fashion photographer. Currently a lot of Juergen Tellers work is in an exhibition in the London ICA called Woo!. When seeing this Exhibition I felt that it was very unusual and even though I wasn't quite shocked I felt that the photographs were very in your face as they were very big prints.

I really liked this photograph and felt that it was one of the best from the 'Woo!' exhibition. This is a photograph of Kurt Cobain and was taken in Juergen Tellers home country of Germany in 1991. The Picture was taken in the capital of Germany in Berlin in Juergen Tellers early photography career. Teller met Kurt Cobain and took this photograph when he got the opportunity to tag along with the band called 'Nirvana' while they were touring in germany. Back then the band were little known but became popular just after their tour in the summer of 1991. Teller took this photo of Cobain when he was hunched over and strumming his guitar. I feel that this position of Cobain and how his head is close to the guitar really shows how concentrated and how passionate Kurt Cobain is with music. The way Cobain's face is obscured almost gives the feeling that he has something to hide and that Teller is trying to divert the meaning so that the main focus of the photograph is music. I feel that Juergen Teller has accomplished this well because when first looking at this photograph my eyes were immediately drawn towards the guitar, but when reading the description of the photograph was when I then realised that the guitarist was Kurt Cobain (the lead singer, guitarist and primary songwriter of grunge band 'Nirvana'). After researching about Cobain I found that he had many problems throughout his life such as illnesses, depression and a heroin addiction. Depression final lead Kurt Cobain to death when in 1994 Cobain was found dead in his home in Seattle, Washington, United States with a shotgun across his body, a visible head wound and a suicide note discovered nearby. I really love this photograph as it really shows how under all the depression, illnesses and addictions that Kurt Cobain was passionate about his music. I also really like how this photograph of Kurt Cobain is in black and white as there is a very high contrast and different tones throughout photo, for example you can see the fine detail and how the light is reflected on Cobain's guitar and in his hair.