THE PORTRAITS OF A MODERN MASTER: WILLIAM EGGLESTON AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
AN INTERVIEW WITH GARRY HUNTER : PHOTOGRAPHER, CREATIVE PRODUCER AND AUTHOR
CAPITAL INTEREST SEPTEMBER 2016 / VOLUME 2 / NUMBER 8 / WW.RPS.ORG
AN INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN GRIFFIN HON FRPS THE MAN BEHIND
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IN THIS ISSUE Page 3
Two Blue Buckets: Peter Fraser Hon FRPS special edition prints
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Himmelstrasse by Brian Griffin Hon FRPS
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The London Interview: Gary Hunter, photographer and conceptual artist
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Abandoned Shoes: Joe Jacobs introduces his project
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From going on a trip to an ongoing journey – Britta Giersche about her holiday with an Olympus Trip
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Book Reviews, Peter Fraser Mathematics, Steffi Klenz He only feels the black and white of it, Berlin Wall, 14-07-1973
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The portraits of a modern master: William Eggleston at the National Portrait Gallery
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Kodak Colour London, Pictures from London in the 1990s by Ted Richards
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Breathing London Update by Judy and Jen
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Useful Links
RPS LONDON NEWS THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH DEL BARRETT ARPS I’m guest editing this month’s issue of Capital Interest as Britta is on her hols, although she did most of the work before she went! The timing is most apposite as it gives me the chance to sign off as the London Regional Organiser. Deputy RO, Roger Kelly, and Treasurer, Pat Whittock, are also stepping down, and I’d like to thank them very much for their input over the past few years. I’d also like to thank all the volunteers that have kept the region buzzy and active through the different events they arrange. And, of course, big thanks to all of you who have made the London restoration journey so enjoyable through your unwavering support and enthusiasm. I’m sure you’ll all join me in wishing your new team the very best for leading the region into its next exciting phase. Your new Regional Organisers are Judy Hicks LRPS and Neil Cordell, with Lorraine Grey LRPS as deputy RO.
IMAGE © Jonathan Taylor
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Signing off with a quote from my favourite film: “So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye ...”
PETER FRASER
HON FRPS
A Unique opportunity to acquire limited edition prints. PETER FRASER HON FRPS has just released a set of exquisite special edition prints from his iconic series Two Blue Buckets. The original prints are part of a series of ten acquired by the Tate in 2014. This new edition is limited to 25 copies of each of four different images, printed by Fraser on A3 Museum quality archival inkjet paper with an image size of 25cm x 32 cm, signed and editioned, at £750 including VAT and secure postage. Two Blue Buckets met with critical acclaim when it was first published in 1988, setting Fraser firmly on the path to being one of the leading British photographers. TO BUY HIS PRINTS, CONTACT PETER DIRECTLY VIA PETER@PETERFRASER.NET
ELSEWHERE: In other news, the London Region is thrilled to be offering an intensive weekend workshop with Peter in October – details of Beyond the Surface can be found HERE. On the 29th September, Peter is ‘in conversation’ at the NPG about the time he spent with William Eggleston DETAILS HERE ABOVE: Blue Bucket (Icons), Washing Line (Icons); Green Shed (Valleys); Red suitcase (Icons). ALL IMAGES © Peter Fraser Hon FRPS
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The Society’s Magic Gallery is currently showing Himmelstrasse by Brian Griffin Hon FRPS – the first time the work has been shown in the UK. The images are haunting, sometimes discomfiting, whilst the story behind the series is both revealing and poignant.
By Del Barrett ARPS 5
I always enjoy meeting Brian. He pulls no punches when it comes to discussing photography, he is a mine of information - and not just about matters photographic. He’s also extremely amusing with a mordant wit. So I was very excited about catching up with him to discuss Himmelstrasse, his latest personal project, which could transpire to be his most potent work yet. We had arranged to meet on the day after the Brexit vote, and we were both feeling somewhat stunned, rather deflated and mildly depressed. Me, because of my Europhilia, and Brian, because his children (like many other youngsters) were keen to stay in Europe and we had deprived them of that chance. So maybe our meeting was already grounded in an air of fatality, which seemed most apposite for a discussion about concentration camps, religion and mortality.
Himmelstrasse is a complete departure for Griffin, who is better known for his corporate work and album covers. I ask him what prompted this change of direction. “When I turned sixty” he replies “I had an increased sense of my own mortality and began a Mortality Realisation Project that reflected this”. The work, entitled Freedom Pass, shows tunnel openings at various underground stations. Griffin sees these as a metaphor for his own journey of life – the pathway that leads into the darkness and the unknown. Jump forward a few years to 2014 and Griffin is in Poland attending a photo festival. Having flown to Warsaw he took the train to Łódź. “I find trains wonderful. I’ve always been interested in them.” he tells
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me. “I was a train spotter as a boy.” He explains that rail travel in Poland is relatively inexpensive and for a few złoty, you can travel in a style redolent of English trains in the era of Miss Marples. “I looked out of the window and saw railway tracks going off into the forests. I thought they were inspired. It was as if someone had decided to take the tracks in a straight line to a village without recourse to committees or planning applications. Just cut down a bit of forest and lay the tracks directly to their destination. They seemed so different from the lines in the UK and although I didn’t actually take any pictures of them then, the notion became embedded in my psyche.” Back in London, Griffin kept thinking about these railway lines – many of which appeared to be disused – and couldn’t shake the idea that he felt a calling to use them as a basis for a photographic mission. Coincidentally, at an auction of his work, some months later, he found himself describing these curious lines to Anne Braybon, who immediately said: “Oh you mean the lines that go to the death camps.” At that point, Griffin knew that he had to create a body of work. He chose the working title “Heaven Street”, since it was to be the next in his Mortality Realisation series and, convinced of his place in heaven, this would be one of the milestones on that journey. In some ways, the images resonate with Freedom Pass. The way he has chosen to photograph the series showing the tracks leading into the distance, towards infinity and the great unknown. With some despondency, he reflects on the extent that the destinations were probably known to those who had journeyed these routes seventy-five years ago. Griffin spent a great deal of time planning and researching. Using Google maps, he was able to identify the tracks, plan his routes and work out which tracks were accessible by car and which ones he’d have to reach on foot to secure the images he wanted. One of the first camps he visited was Treblinka, where 800,000 Jews met their deaths. Today, it is a national monument, exhibition centre and museum. For Griffin, the trip to Treblinka was much more than a photographic assignment or a history lesson; it marked an auspicious moment in the development of the project. “I went into the museum to look at the model of the camp. It showed the fences constructed out of trees interwoven amongst barbed wire, so that the camp would be camouflaged and blend in with the surrounding forest. At the entrance to the camp was the word Himmelstraße. My Polish friend told me that this translated as “Heaven Street” and explained how the Nazis used this cruel euphemism for the last stretch of the victims’ journeys to death. I felt a shiver run down my spine. I knew it was an omen that I had unwittingly chosen this as a working title. I became even more obsessed with the need to pursue this body of work.” He explains how he created all 140 images over five one-week trips to Poland. After the first week, he travelled and worked alone, sometimes driving nine hours or walking miles along the deserted tracks, through the harsh Polish winter weather, to find the right image. “It was a lonely existence.” he recalls. Although there is now little physical evidence of the connection between the camps and the railway (the last part of the track that actually goes into the camps has been removed in all but one of the areas), Griffin says that he could still sense the aftermath of evil. The deathly silence and utter abandonment of the surrounding areas added to the sense of foreboding. As Griffin followed his Himmelstraßen, the project followed its own development. At first, he thought it might be an indictment on the modern medium of photography. He wanted to experiment with typology and decided to shoot all the images from the same point of view and holding the camera at head-height. He likens the approach to “taking the micky out of a style of photography where typology can often be an excuse for mediocrity”, but once he began to see the way the images were working together, he realised how powerfully well suited this approach was to the subject matter. If there’s one
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aspect of photography that Griffin cannot tolerate, it’s mediocrity. He derides the way that too many photographers let the computer or the camera take over to the extent that images lose their ability to convey emotion and feeling. Our conversation has done nothing to lighten our post-Brexit mood and so I ask him about what he’s doing at the moment and what his next work will be. He tells me that he’s been thinking about a religious project, since he is inspired by religious symbolism. I break all the good etiquette rules and invite him to talk about religion. He doesn’t see this as a taboo subject and chats away quite amiably. He had a lot of religion as a child. He grew up with the Church, carrying the cross, leading the priest and choir to the stalls, helping the priest, handing him the bread and wine. I’m curious to know whether he comes from a religious family, but he laughs as he says he thinks he was sent to church to get him out of the house and give his parents a bit of peace and quiet. Religion to Griffin is a very personal thing nowadays. He often spends time in churches or cathedrals, sitting quietly simply contemplating and reflecting. He finds the Church totally inspirational with religious art and icons being a constant source for his creativity. He believes that photography has allowed him to get closer to God, who has bestowed upon him the gift of his creative prowess. This isn’t arrogance on Griffin’s part, rather, it is the only way he can explain his talent. Do I detect some inner insecurity that refuses to allow him the belief that his genius is of his own making? He admits that he only became aware of his talent when other people started remarking on it. And it was this that led to him questioning where his ability had come from. “I feel like a messenger who has to convey something. If you’ve been given a talent, you must utilise it.” Certainly the incidents, which took Himmelstrasse from a notion embedded in Griffin’s psyche to the powerfully heart-rending exhibition and book in little over a year, push the boundaries of belief in coincidence.
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But back to the future ... Griffin has an unquenchable desire for photography, but this passion reaches far beyond the mechanics. “If you work hard at it, you get enveloped in it and you find out things about yourself that you didn’t know existed. You discover your sub-conscious, through deep exploration.” He talks about Christ in Cookham (Stanley Spenser), and a number of other religious paintings. Religion is definitely his muse for his next body of work. It might be The Disciples – a series of portraits of the mates he drinks with, interwoven with objects. Or it might be still life – he proudly tells me that he has some thorns from the tree, which it is believed was the source of the original crown. He has started to photographically explore how they sit with the modern world. There is no question that Himmelstrasse has set Griffin on a different pathway, and one which could take the art world by surprise.
ALL IMAGES © Brian Griffin Hon FRPS
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CAPITAL INTEREST INTERVIEW
ABOVE Garry at his workshop and studio in Trinity Buoy Wharf ©Stuart Holdsworth
GARRY HUNTER Photographer, creative producer and author of books on street art, Garry is a Lead Artist on the Creative People and Places Programme ‘Cultural Spring’ and co-founder of Fitzrovia Noir Community Interest Company – Dave Harris LPRS spoke with the former adman turned conceptual artist about his career and ideas. Can you give us a little history as to how you came to be a professional photographer? I knew at the age of 12 that I wanted to be a photographer. Growing up, I was surrounded by keen amateurs such as my father. When I left school, all the heavy industry of my native Tyneside was in steep decline, meaning I was the first of my paternal lineage not to work down a coalmine. I studied marine engineering for a year and then got a job at a local photolab. Big place, about 200 people worked there in 1980. My final role was as an exhibition printer, making huge prints from glass plate negatives for museums. Did anyone inspire you? In my spare time I took photographs, starting off with black and white street photography, inspired by books on documentary greats like Bill Brandt and Tony Ray-Jones. Photography was a difficult profession to access, without independent backing or media connections, of which I had neither. In 1984, I took a day off work and turned up at Rik Mayall’s Soundcheck in Newcastle, with my camera. Luckily, he was sitting alone in the front row drinking from a six pack of Brown Ale, one of which he immediately offered me and told me I needed to move to London. He then introduced me to a journalist covering the show, which resulted in the first publication of one of my photographs, for which I received £25. I quickly realised that I could make almost as much in a few hours as I could working all week at the lab.
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What are you trying to say with your photographs? After starting out in the documentary tradition, I moved into large-scale creative advertising, assisting Peter Mackertich in London. It was a revelation to work with a photographer with such a range, from architecture, to portraiture and experimental assemblages using slide projectors and constructions commissioned from model-makers. This greatly influenced the direction of my own practice, but I tend to turn all learning upside down, push it to the limit, both technically and creatively. I eventually fell out with the idea of pursuing big advertising commissions, as the more I was being paid, the more I felt like a cog in the wheel of corporatism. Around the turn of the century, I met Michael Lindley, an art director firmly embedded in social inclusion and we collaborated on design based print projects for the NHS, NESTA. and the UK Film Council. This changed my view on what I wanted to achieve and led to me working with people on the edges of our society.
ABOVE NESTA TV monitor eye Art directed by Michael Lindley Š Garry Hunter
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A couple of Garry’s favourite photographs that he has taken RIGHT An early image from Garry's photolab days in the early 1980s © Garry Hunter ‘The girl turned round just as I was about to take a more general photograph. I love the strength of independence she shows in contrast to the ladies in the paintings behind her. I had my friend Helena Zakrzewska-Rucinska hand colour the original and I’ve now editioned this as an art print.’
LEFT Freya. Taken in Garry's shipping container studio for Cultural Spring © Garry Hunter ‘After 30 years away from the northeast I recently returned to work on an idea that I’ve been developing for years, responding to the streets named after writers on the council estate where I grew up. Through a successful consortium bid to the Arts Council, this idea became reality after seven years of trying to get it backed. I asked local people to select quotes from the writers and bring along something that demonstrated their passion. This became part of a BBC Newcastle broadcast:and led onto me being invited to show the work in Brazil by Global Space of Culture.’
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What genres of photography grab you? I agree with Don McCullin’s recent quote about the art world “trying to hijack” photography from its original purpose as a means of communication. It took me a long time to get back to what I was originally trying to achieve, which in a word is ‘inclusion.’ Outside of my advertising work, which increasingly at its core had a need for digital manipulation, I am at heart a purist, only really retouching out glitches from the process. What's been your most challenging assignment? Technically, I’d say it was the first major campaign I shot on high-end digital, where I found it difficult to be absolutely sure of the sharp focus point. I couldn't use my reassuring Polaroid 55, to check sharpness on the negative with a loupe and lightbox! Do you have any unfulfilled photographic ambitions? I want to collaborate with leading creative people from my home town who work in different disciplines. I am preparing a major project with the influential choreographer, dancer, director and
painter, Lindsay Kemp. I see this as part of a new wave of localism in the arts and I now spend about a quarter of my time in the North-East region. How do you see yourself five years from now? I hope to be spending most of my time in Italy. Give one piece of advice to an aspiring photographer? Be absolutely determined that the only thing you want to be is a photographer. Dedication, long hours and abstinence are key to success in the early days. When you’re more established you can relax, but only a little, as there’ll always be younger, hungrier people undercutting you. Will you ever be rich from photography? Is professional photography a viable income stream in our fast-changing digital world? I made a lot of money when working in advertising, when it was possible to licence work for longer , in new territories and different media. Now this is much more difficult and like the music industry, there is huge expectation for free content.
ABOVE Sony poster campaign Butterfly © Garry Hunter
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CAPITAL INTEREST PROJECT
ABANDONED SHOES If shoes could talk: Joe Jacob has been collecting pictures of pairs of apparently abandoned shoes for some time. His one firm rule is that he must not touch them. ‘Pairs placed and left are intriguing’, he says. We could not agree more.
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Many of the images were taken in London.
Joe: ‘It is to me an interesting fact that there seem to be more abandoned pairs in London than elsewhere.’ ALL IMAGES © Joe Jacobs
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CAPITAL INTEREST EXPERIENCE
From going on a trip to an ongoing journey How taking an Olympus Trip on holiday made me understand digital better By Britta Giersche
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In the Easter holidays, I took an Olympus Trip 35 loaded with a colour film from the Poundshop with me. I wanted to try out a different camera with different kinds of restrictions. The truth is that, in the months before my holiday, I had become increasingly disturbed by the sharpness of digital photographs. To me, maximising the camera’s abilities in that respect almost rendered all images, treated in that way, the same – it was the image’s definition, this superficial quality, that I saw rather than the subject, the composition, the tonal range etc. Digital image processing is, of course, a much debated topic in critical studies of photography, but in my personal photographic journey this had become a problem recently that I realised I wanted to investigate and that’s why I took the Olympic Trip. First things first: I found it really hard to use the camera. I couldn’t get over the fact that you could not review the image just taken. I have come to use the playback display of my digital camera as a work-in-progress editing tool:
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you shoot, you review, you adjust the setting or your position; you shoot, you review, you delete, you adjust and so on. Whereas with the Olympus Trip I didn’t really know what to do. I took one image and that was it. There was no chance of knowing at the time whether I’d got it right. (The alternative would have been to take many picture of the same subject and hope to arrive at the one image that works.) I presume I used the Olympus Trip like most holidaymakers would have in its heyday: snap and move on. The results came out accordingly – a bit out of focus and most subjects should have been framed better. Putting aside that these are not great images, here is what I took from using film. What struck me most was, unsurprisingly, the way in which the film registered colour. The range of tones seems to be a great deal more subtle and more nuanced than with a digital camera and the overall effect is much more painterly and atmospheric. There is a softness to the photographs captured on film which, on the level concerning the photograph’s meaning, gives it an ungraspable quality.
Compare the pictures of the river with the sign. They are obviously not pictures of exactly the same scene: the one taken with the Olympus Trip was done in passing when I just noticed that ‘the water is calm as that of a pond’ - a quote from a Robbe-Grillet story - whereas the picture with the digital camera was done with the intent to record that ‘the water is calm as that of a pond’. The digital image is arguably the better photograph: no specks of dirt, in focus, straightened with a variety of tonal adjustments. But I now wonder whether it really is the better picture in terms of capturing what resonates with the quote, which is a simile and hints at some ambiguity, something that cannot be grasped without comparison. On this level of meaning, the photograph shot on film might work better as it has the elusive quality of Robbe-Grillet’s sentence, and the detail that the digital photograph offers is not as good a realisation of that idea. Could I have cheated? Some people might argue that you could recreate this quality
with digital image processing, or at least come very close. I am not so sure. I have read somewhere that digital photographs are just a mosaic of pixels, whereas film negatives are a soup of randomly spaced crystals which give the images a more natural appearance. It is an altogether different medium. Asked whether to go with film or digital, Alec Soth, the award-winning American documentary photographer, gave this advice: ‘Use whatever tools that best suit the project.’ What I take from this is that the photographer needs to be clear about his or her project’s end before making a decision about which medium to use. In my case, for the above project, I will stick to digital because creating a seemingly accurate and hyper-clear record of something that is ambiguous fits my overall idea. Shooting with film for me was really about exploring the medium. It put me on a path to thinking in more depth about why I use digital photography – and that will be an ongoing journey. ALL IMAGES © Britta Giersche
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THE REVIEW: BOOK
by Del Barrett ARPS
Peter Fraser Mathematics ABOVE Carpenters at work, Lacock, Wiltshire, William Henry Fox Talbot © Public Domain
For those of you wanting something very special and very exclusive for your photographic book collection, you need look no further than Peter Fraser’s latest work. A limited edition of 35 copies, Mathematics is a carefully compiled collection of images that invite the viewer to embrace the way that mathematics shape the world around us. The concept that mathematics is so much more than numbers and symbols is rooted in the work of Pythagoras and has provided good fodder for philosophers ever since. Fraser cites Max Tegmark in his Afterword, the MIT professor who has taken the relationship between mathematics and the world to a new level.
taken for granted is a lie) and a series of images that depict a detail from a larger image (both shown on opposite pages). These are the easiest to understand in terms of mathematics, as the detail appears to be abstract, but when we see it in context, then we understand the relationship between the abstract and the real. One of my favourite images is the mass of seemingly molten caramel – translucent and deliciously orange but with a certain formal structure. It is not caramel or even confection, but a detail from stacks of orange plastic chairs.
Through these images, Fraser plays with the viewer’s sense of reality. Not all the relations are as obvious as the “caramel chairs”, but that Fascinated by mathematics at school, Fraser’s is what makes the book so enthralling and latest work is an eloquent testimony to the captivating; we, the viewer, are drawn into an notion that the world is made up of mathematical exploration of this mathematical universe as structures, which Tegmark defines as ‘a set of we try to identify the different relations, and as abstract entities with relations between them’. we look for them, we find more and more and The book shows a diverse range of subject more .... material, moving between details of the ordinary (a string pull of a bathroom light) that echo As a very limited edition, the book comes with Fraser’s earlier work such as Two Blue Buckets, a hefty price tag, but copies should shortly be details of the extraordinary (an unexpected available in a few select libraries. candelabra made from shells), wide vistas (a church interior), ordinary people (all of whom Part of the foreword can be found on Peter’s he has asked to act as if something they have website HERE. 20
THE REVIEW: BOOK
by Hendrike Rahtz
Steffi Klenz He only feels the black and white of it, Berlin Wall, 14-07-1973
ABOVE Carpenters at work, Lacock, Wiltshire, William Henry Fox Talbot © Public Domain
The latest photo book by Steffi Klenz, a German Fine Art photographer based in London, consists of a series of the same image in different screen prints. The original photograph, an Associated Press photograph, taken on 14th July 1973, depicts the reconstruction of section of the Berlin Wall which had been destroyed by angry West Berliners after they had heard that East German soldiers shot at refugees. Klenz, best known for her large-scale photographs of boarded up terraced houses in the Greater Manchester area, manipulated each screen print, thus conveying a different emotional reaction to the ruptured original photograph. For example, in one image the centre of the photograph is put in a dark shadow, to perhaps try to create a pretence that the event did not occur, while in another she produces an image that almost resembles white noise that evokes confusion. Each of the 102 screen prints is accompanied by snippets of texts, fragments of thoughts, told in third
person and attributed to Klenz’s father. The event in the screen prints drastically affected his life, in particular, his “constraints, pain and loss of identity”. The text is intimate, it adds sentiment to the photographs. Embedding a personal response in the multi-layering of the same event, the image that Klenz recreates again and again, every image unique from the last, the series becomes to symbolize not only a physical loss but an emotional loss too. Klenz sees her work as a “trigger for a series of textual reflections on [her] own family history” which is easily understood in the third-to-first person narrative of Klenz’s ‘characters. By using a single press photograph of a political event from the past and creating a complex set of images and texts around it that are personal, Klenz not only points light to a forgotten news story but demonstrates how photography can be re-used to expose hidden memories.
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THE PORTRAITS OF A MODERN MASTER William Eggleston at the National Portrait Gallery Those who know William Eggleston as one of the pioneers of colour photography in the 1970s, will recall that he is famous for his urban landscapes mostly devoid of human presence. To learn as I did that he is also a portrait photographer comes as something of a surprise. But a new exhibition running at the National Portrait Gallery until 23rd October shows a side to his output that will be unknown to many.
1970-74 (Dennis Hopper) by William Eggleston Filename: npg.995.1443.3.jpg Copyright: Eggleston Artistic Trust
He had burst upon the photographic firmament in 1976 with his first solo exhibition at MOMA in New York, the first for a photographer working predominantly in colour. The story goes that some three years earlier he had turned up at the Museum of Modern Art in New York with a suitcase crammed with hundreds of colour negatives and slides and left them with the photography curator John Szarkowski. This was a time when no serious art photographer would contemplate using anything other than monochrome. Walker Evans had said that colour photography was vulgar and it's use was generally confined to the advertising industry and magazine work. But Szarkowski was completely won over.
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That exhibition divided the critics: the New York Times described it as “the most hated show of the year”. It wasn't just the use of colour; both Eggleston’s subject matter and his “snapshot aesthetic” seemed to fly in the face of all normal artistic practice and finally mark a break with the pictorialist modernism of Alfred Steiglitz, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. It is still possible to appreciate the original sense of shock at seeing those pictures. Born and brought up in the Mississippi Delta, Eggleston turned for subject matter to the streets and environs of his home city of Memphis (where he was born in 1939) and neighbouring Tallahatchie County, using his camera to record what he saw in all its utter banality. He studiously avoided the conventionally beautiful and has famously said, “I am at war with the obvious”. The juxtapositions he sets up in his images in terms of form and colour and texture are always surprising. His framing of his subject matter, often slightly askew, almost never straight-on, often involving quite brutal partial-cropping of picture elements deemed inessential, seems to many to achieve a kind of perfection. The viewer, letting their eye be drawn in and allowing the images to work their magic, may then begin to appreciate this photographer's truly individual vision. He does not make it easy however, and as one modern critic has said, no photographer is harder to interpret in words than Eggleston. Forty years later this new exhibition of prints ranging from small to very large, many previously unpublished and mostly drawn from the years of his greatest creative output from the mid 60s through the mid 80s, establishes him as a portrait photographer of a very distinctive sort. As a young man he used a Minox 'spy’ camera to take portraits of his family members. He had loaded this with high speed police film which he customised himself to the extent of cutting the necessary sprocket holes by hand. One highly grainy print has his mother sprawled on her bed. In another the family’s maid makes an unmade bed. Both highly intimate pictures look as if they were taken unawares. During the early seventies he used large and medium format cameras to take portraits of those he encountered in the nightclubs of Memphis. Caught in the beautiful prevailing chiaroscuro lighting of those venues, these individuals are on display in large vivid prints both monochrome and colour, their awkward indifference betraying a distinct ambivalence. Otherwise his portraits are seldom posed or formal. He captures his subjects - mostly personal acquaintances - as he encounters them. His friend the dancer Marcia Hare lies asleep, bathed in the light of the late afternoon sun. Her body languorously outstretched fills the frame, her limbs creating powerful diagonals, in one hand holding a camera in a loosened grip. The very large print produced in the highly saturated colours of the costly dye-transfer method he loved, demonstrate his use of a narrow depth of field to draw the viewer’s eye to her beautifully modelled face and hair. Some of his subjects were famous at the time or became famous later. But he always avoids the ethos of the celebrity portrait. Joe Strummer, a member of punk band The Clash, becomes simply a drinking companion, uncharismatic and lacking all reference to his public persona. His friend the actor and photographer Denis Hopper is shown in moderately unflattering semi profile as he drives his car and gesticulates with his clutched cigarette. He is only one element in a picture that seems to be about something else entirely - the dirt on the wide windscreen and the desert road beyond, caught in the low afternoon sun perhaps. Both of these pictures show how this photographer so often seems to be depicting something quite beyond the literal image. A moment of extraordinary intimacy is registered by the photographer as he depicts his girl friend, Leigh Haizlip, on the point of dissolving into tears as she stares straight into the lens. His friend the musician,
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c.1980 (Joe Strummer) by William Eggleston Filename: npg.995.1442.3.jpg Copyright: Eggleston Artistic Trust
c.1975 (Marcia Hare in Memphis, Tennessee) by William Eggleston Filename: npg.995.1444.3.jpg Copyright: Eggleston Artistic Trust
Alex Chilton is caught seemingly in mid conversation, lit dramatically by a low single light source. So often for Eggleston the moment seems to be about an experience or an encounter. And if the classical portrait seeks to reveal identity, Eggleston's portraits betray familiarity and even intimacy whilst preserving for his subjects their privacy and even mystery. At the same time the ‘portrait’ encompasses much more than the individual, hinting always at a wider story. That's why this show is one not to be missed by anyone interested in seeing how the camera can be powerfully used to represent human presence.
by Romney Tansley, ARPS
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LONDON IN PICTURES
KODAK COLOUR LONDON Ted Richards contacted CAPITAL INTEREST to share the photographs that he took during several wanders through London in the1990s. I have always liked wandering around towns and cities and taking photographs of anything that seems a bit unusual. My theory is that you can manage this more easily in new places and it doesn't work so well after you become accustomed to the place. That is how I took these photographs. I visited London a couple of times in the mid 1990s and wandered the streets and these are some of the results. Of course you also accumulate many more that are not 'keepers', but that is only to be expected. I used a (film, not digital) Canon SLR with just a couple of kit zoom lenses - nothing really sophisticated. The camera might have been a 300 but I really can't I remember now. I usually used the ordinary Kodak 200 ISO 35mm colour negative film.
ABOVE It doesn't seem right that the woman in the tube, wearing the bright Spring fashion hat, is so happy in a carriage full of bored, sleepy people who can't wait to get home
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ABOVE LEFT I thought that taking a photograph of the people watching the Changing of the Guard reflected in the instrument that the bandsman is playing, and he is reflecting them when they came to see him ABOVE RIGHT The sunglasses sale is one of those situations where you find a good background and then wait for a suitable subject to blend in
ABOVE AND RIGHT I stood around Piccadilly Circus for I don't know how long to take photographs of dozens of people unfolding maps and trying to work out where they were, and these are just two of them
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BREATHING LONDON UPDATE Congratulations to our very own Jen Pedler for her winning image in the June July Competition "Essence of Place".
ROBERT CANIS says of Jen's image:"My pick for the competition is Family Fishing. A very well caught image. Simple composition which, importantly, shows where it was taken and I, also, like the added interest in the background".
Jen wins a 12-month subscription to The Photographer's Gallery and many congratulations from us all.
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DON’T FORGET our July - August Competition “Away from the Boroughs” We are looking forward to seeing your uniquely imaginative images of a Breathing Space or two from your summer holidays (or day trip out of the City!) - either a space which is very similar to somewhere in London, or very different, or is used in a different way. More details HERE
SEPTEMBER is the month of the Totally Thames Festival, which takes place over the month of September and brings the river to life via an exciting season of arts, cultural and river events throughout the 42-mile stretch of the Thames in London Our subject for the month will include canals too – so we invite you to take this opportunity to explore not only the Thames but its tributaries and London’s canals. More information to follow, and HERE There is lots more news on the Breathing London Website HERE including all the images uploaded to date for you to see, fun and light-hearted conversation on our FACEBOOK PAGE and don’t forget to check out our news and blogs HERE. If you haven’t signed up yet, please do – there’s still plenty of time to enjoy the project and take part in some of our activities….Judy
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USEFUL LINKS
RPS LONDON GROUPS RPS LONDON BLEEDING LONDON BREATHING LONDON LONDON, CINE LONDON, NATURALLY LONDON, STREET LONDON, URBAN FIRST TUESDAY
Have you got a story to tell? Or pictures to show? Have you been on a trip, at a workshop or to a fair? Are you working on a project or preparing an exhibition? Have you met a photographer who your fellow RPS London members should know of or visited an exhibition they should see? We love to hear from you. Get in touch with Capital Interest to share your experience. Click here.
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INFORMATION & ADVICE LONDON, EVENTS LONDON, DISTINCTIONS LONDON, WEB NEWSLETTER