Category: Contextual Research

Artist Self-Publishers’ Fair, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 8th and 9th December 2018

A really great way to finish the module for me. Having explored social media and other ways of promoting and disseminating work online, and building a profile, it was good to explore critical alternatives at the these ICA events. The Saturday session comprised of presentations and a group discussion. Highlights for me were the overview of the history of and relationship between political and artistic self-publishing provided by Nick Thoburn, the insight into a small scale community arts initiative (based in my own area of east London) by Sofia Niazi from OOMK and Erik van der Weije’s account of his transition from independent publisher in Brazil to lecturer in Holland (which involved giving away all his remaining publications – I got a copy of his Oscar Niemayer book).

Thoburn presents the strength of self-publishing as residing in its ability to create its own context (to be self-institutionalising) and the small scale, intimacy, tentativeness, vulnerability and emergent nature of its outputs. It is, for him, a fundamentally political activity, and lies in opposition to the the commodification of art and the institutionalisation of knowledge. Need to follow-up on Infopool and Mute Magazine, both of which address issues around the arts, regeneration and London. And his 2016 publication Anti-Book: On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing.

One Of My Kind (OOMK) is a collective publishing practice based in Manor Park. They run a community printing press and courses for local people (Rabbits Road Press). Good local contacts to have for my projects, and their project The Library Was is very relevant to the social infrastructure dimension of my project. Was able to talk to them at the Fair on Sunday and will visit in the New Year.

Also spoke to photographer Erik van der Weijde about his transition from zine production and publishing to teaching at the Rietfeld Academy, and my own journey (more or less) in the other direction. A good introduction to the challenge (and economics) of small-scale self-publishing. His 2017 publication This is not my Book explores photography and independent publication.

Over 70 exhibitors at the fair on Sunday, and lots of examples of forms of publication to consider for my own work, and work that I’ll be doing with community groups. Particularly liked the work by OOMK and by Roberts Print. A lot of potential for a hybrid (online/print) publication strategy for my own work. The event helped to see the positive (critical and oppositional) dimension of self and small-scale publication, and provided contacts in this particular community to follow-up. And helpful to make tangible links between the themes of this module and the next two modules. Much of the work in this area is strongly theoretically informed, which links with Informing Contexts, and the outputs as books, zines, small print runs, events and workshops relate closely to the themes to be explored in Surfaces and Strategies.

The purpose of this post is to put down a marker around these themes and to form a bridge between Sustainable Prospects and subsequent modules, in relation to the development of my own practice and progress towards my final major project. I’ll return to all the themes signaled here in later posts.

OOMK (2016). The Library Was. Berlin: Fehras Publishing Practice.

Thoburn, N (2016). Anti-Book: On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

van der Weijde, E. (2017). This is not my Book. Leipzig: Spector Books.

From the outset, the purpose of my project has been to do more than document (and lament) the impact of regeneration and gentrification on residents. Work by photographers to date has tended to focus on the visible effects of change, but has done little to empower residents or reach a deeper understanding of what can be done to ensure that residents receive real benefits from the process (and can take appropriate action to ensure that they do benefit and are not displaced). In part this has to do with the lack of a conceptual base to the photographic work – as photographers we respond to what we see, but what we see is shaped by how we understand the contexts and lifeworlds we explore, which is in turn shaped by our own background and experiences.

In my initial exploration of housing estates and urban centres where change is taking place, it is clear that how residents organise themselves, where they meet and what they do (and links within and between different communities) is of vital importance for well-being and life chances. This forms a connection between the built environment on the one hand and the lifeworlds of residents on the other, through the activities of communities and the use made of public and private space. The idea of social infrastructure helps us to understand this relationship in a way that avoids individualisation (as notions of social and cultural capital might do) and emphasises activity in giving meaning to space and place (rather than prioritising, as developers will tend to do, the design of the space, abstracted from its use). In terms of the regeneration of estates, it is clear that in some cases residents have developed their own social infrastructure (re-purposing spaces for childcare, supplementary schooling, community events, worship and so on), often in the face of inadequate and decaying physical infrastructure, and lack of public services. Displacement of residents during and following regeneration at best threatens and at worst destroys this.

For my project, I need to develop a clearer understanding of social infrastructure in the contexts I’m exploring, and figure out how to investigate and represent this as a photographer, in and through the experiences of residents.

In Heatwave, Eric Klinenberg (2002) examined the effects of the 1995 Chicago heatwave on different communities. In particular, he wanted to understand why seemingly similar communities, in terms of socio-economic status, ethnicity, housing and employment rates and other factors, were differently effected, for instance, in terms of the number of people who died. A key factor appeared to be social infrastructure; having places to meet and engage in joint activities. In his most recent book, Palaces for the People: How To Build a More Equal and United Society, Klinenberg (2018) focuses specifically on social infrastructure, which he argues is

‘the missing piece of the puzzle, and building places where all kinds of people can gather is the best way to repair the fractured societies we live in today.’ (Kindle Locations 195-196)

and, further, that

‘social infrastructure plays a critical but underappreciated role in modern societies. It influences seemingly mundane but actually consequential patterns, from the way we move about our cities and suburbs to the opportunities we have to casually interact with strangers, friends, and neighbors. It is especially important for children, the elderly, and other people whose limited mobility or lack of autonomy binds them to the places where they live. But social infrastructure affects everyone. And while social infrastructure alone isn’t sufficient to unite polarized societies, protect vulnerable communities, or connect alienated individuals, we can’t address these challenges without it.’ (Kindle Locations 232-237)

Klinenberg’s work provides a strong rationale for a focus on social space. He goes on to define what counts, in his terms, as social infrastructure. It is worth quoting this at length here, as it begins to define a direction for the photographic gaze.

‘Public institutions, such as libraries, schools, playgrounds, parks, athletic fields, and swimming pools, are vital parts of the social infrastructure. So too are sidewalks, courtyards, community gardens, and other green spaces that invite people into the public realm. Community organizations, including churches and civic associations, act as social infrastructures when they have an established physical space where people can assemble, as do regularly scheduled markets for food, furniture, clothing, art, and other consumer goods. Commercial establishments can also be important parts of the social infrastructure, particularly when they operate as what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg called “third spaces,” places (like cafés, diners, barbershops, and bookstores) where people are welcome to congregate and linger regardless of what they’ve purchased.’ (Kindle Locations 268-277)

Clearly, there is a long photographic history of focusing on these kinds of spaces, and the activities that take place in them. For my project, opportunities to explore these spaces in relation to urban regeneration are already opening up (for instance, the complementary schools in Newham, and the community centres in Barking). Whilst making these spaces visible and celebrating the activities that take place there through image making is easy to envisage, photographically exploring the threat to these spaces/activities, and the lack in new housing developments, is a challenge. I am going to come back to Klinenberg’s work in more detail later in the CRJ, once I have done more work on photographic precedents, and developed my own approach further.

Klinenberg, E. (2018). Palaces for the People: How To Build a More Equal and United Society. New York: Random House. Kindle Edition.

Klinenberg, E. (2002). Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

From Tate Modern 10th floor , 3rd December 2018

Caroline Knowles (2018) explores how photography can play a unique role in understanding the complexity and dynamism of cities. She states that:

‘Photography is proving itself an invaluable tool in urban investigation and analysis as well as in campaigning arenas for global social justice. But there is scope to work in still more imaginative ways in bringing what is not seen before the public gaze in new and exciting grammars of images.’ (p.20)

In this post I want to explore how the role for photography envisaged by Knowles relates to my own work and, in particular, my proposed final major project. In her own fieldwork (as a sociologist) Knowles has used photographs as a way of exploring lived experience, for instance of homeless and marginalised people with schizophrenia. The relationship with the city evident in the images produced (in a collaboration between the researcher, a photographer and the participants) is very different from that expressed in words, and enables consideration of the ‘unspoken’ (and perhaps even the ‘unspeakable’). Producing, and discussing, images (for instance, in a form of photo-elicitation) enriches insight into the lives of the participants, and also creates the opportunity to consider what is not visible in the images. Images also enable aspects of the outcomes of the study to be communicated to, and engage, different audiences. Images can also provoke consideration of the relationship between the macro and the micro, and between different forms of practice and experience that fall within the frame. Images both invoke what is framed, whilst raising questions about the wider context within which they are produced. Relationships between people and with their environment can be explored through, for instance, environmental portraiture. Photographs also foreground the embodied nature of experience and activity, and entanglement and engagement with the city (and with each other) in both spatial and temporal trajectories.

Visual methods can work in consort with other forms of investigation and representation (ethnographic, statistical, cartographic, textual), bringing forward the kinaesthetic, contextual and sensual dimensions of experience. Knowles cautions, though, against banal and descriptive uses of images, either supplementing text or as the object of convoluted and obscuring narrative. Images ‘suggest other ways of thinking’ (p.17). Photography can enable us to slice through the city, and explore the tapestry of intersecting lives, activities and contexts. Knowles suggests a tactic of selecting a group, or category, of people and following members in their passage through the city. Or taking an object and following its pathway, or focussing on an event or a microcosm, or a part of a city that exemplifies a set of issues or a movement. These are different points of entry for investigation, which then give rise to sets of pragmatic, ethical and methodological decisions as the investigation unfolds. The point here is to preserve, and enhance, the distinctiveness of photographic image making as a supplement or a challenge to logocentric textual and statistical forms of enquiry.

My own study employs three levels of image making, which range across the uses of photography suggested by Knowles, from a form of elicitation (gaining insight into the lived experience and aspirations of residents) to an artistic response to environments and lifeworlds encountered. It is by necessity cross- or inter-disciplinary. As the recent meeting of the UKRI Loneliness and Social Isolation in Mental Health network made clear, the major challenge here is to create a new space for the production of new forms of knowledge, through new configurations of disciplines and approaches. As Barthes (1986) observes,

‘in order to do interdisciplinary work it is not enough to take a “subject” (a theme) and to arrange two or three sciences around it. Interdisciplinary study consists in creating a new object, which belongs to no one.’ (p.73)

This accentuates the need not just for integrity and rigour within a discipline (for instance, the visual arts), but the ability to build relationships and networks across disciplines, professions, communities and contexts.

References

Barthes, R. (1986), The Rustle of Language (trans. R. Howard). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Knowles, C. (2018). ‘Researching and Photographing Cities: Getting Started’ in S. Nichols & S.Dobson (Eds), Learning Cities: Multimodal Explorations and Placed Pedagogies, Springer: Singapore, pp. 9-22.

The Photographers’ Gallery, London, Saturday 24th November 2018.

A collaboration between The Photographers’ Gallery, Centre for Photography and Visual Culture, University of Sussex and The Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, London South Bank University.

After diving into the sea of photography and having to learn to swim fast, I now wash up on (relatively) dry land. With the familiar scent of Bataille, Baudrillard and Kristeva, and even, in the afternoon, the terra firma of the relative autonomy of the field of cultural production and Bourdieu’s three forms of capital. This one day conference was organised to complement one of the current exhibitions at the gallery, All I know is What’s on the Internet. Lots of notes, but for the CRJ I’ll just pull out a few points relevant to the development of my project and practice (and the current module).

Nina Power (Roehampton) traced a path through contemporary theory in relation to seeing and de-capitialism (preferred by her to the problematic term post-capitalism, which to some invokes a form of hyper-capitalism). Some familiar ground, but also plenty to follow-up (Aria Dean’s ‘Closing the Loop‘, Franco Berandi’s notions of necro-capitalism, Josef Leo Koener’s idea of enemy-painting). She proposes the practice of enemy-photography, but it was difficult to put substance on this and trace through what this might mean for photographic practice. The triple loop of representation warrants some thought (that photography represents, represents representation and represents the representation of representation). The point raised from the floor that she had conflated seeing with photography (particularly in the discussion of Kristeva and The Severed Head in discussion of engagement with images on the internet) seemed a fair one, and was perhaps the root of the difficulty, as a photographer, of relating this to image making (beyond raising a range of important critical issues, to which it will be productive to return as practice, and associated critical commentary, develops).

Martin Zellinger (Anglia Ruskin) provided a critique of Kodak’s attempts to financialise and produce artificial scarcity of images in the age of proliferation through blockchain technology. An issue that is raised here is the assumption that all images are assets with financial value, and therefore prey to aspirations for corporate control. The commodification of the image was addressed by others also. Kuba Szreder, in the afternoon, makes the point (drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of the relative autonomy of the field of cultural production) that not all images and image making can be seen as directly a part of economic production and circulation. Interesting that Szreder uses the Company Drinks in Barking as a prime example of alternative forms of organisation in the arts (and worth following in up relation to my work with Thames Ward Community Project).

Ben Burbridge (Sussex) addressed the corporate take over of public galleries in the face of decreased and constrained public funding and the impact of the new managerialism on galleries and academic institutions. Very familiar ground. Emily Rosamond’s (Goldsmiths) analysis of contemporary art and investment started to open up possible tactical and strategic responses, and the importance of understanding photography’s normative performativity and the attempt by investors to manage volatility and parse out uncertainty. References to follow up in a future post: Hito Steyerl (In Defense of the Poor Image, 2009), Paul Frosh (2015, The Gestural Image, IJ Communication, 9, 1608) and the ideal of kinaesthetic sociability, Michael Feher (2018, Rated Agency: Investee Politics in a Speculative Age), Petra Cortright (2007, VVEBCAM; 20167 i thot i wiz free), Femke Herregraven (2014, Volatility Storms), Jodi Dean (2017, Crowds and Party). Also questions around what it is to be a photographer in the age of de-professionalisation and uberization, new forms of alliance and ‘data artists’ (as a supplement to data scientists).

Harry Sanderson explored the demand for hi-res images, Rowan Lear photography as feminised labour, touch, gesture and finger work, Constant Dullaart on his social media manipulation work, Szreder on post-capitalist art worlds (and alternative organisation) and Mike Cook on Stocksy (making the point that co-operatives have to be founded on sustainable business models).

The major benefit for the development of my own work is to be able to position what I do more effectively and start to relate contemporary photographic practice to wider social, cultural and political theory. Two more events next year on this theme. For this module, the symposium has opened up an alternative, critical domain for the image making, and alternative (radical and oppositional) forms of organisation for the production and circulation of images.

Thursday 22nd November 2018, Wellcome Collection, London.

The exhibition features photographs alongside film, maps, document, text and artefacts exploring the relationship between housing and health, and also buildings for health services. Includes Tony Ray-Jones’s 1970s photographs of the Pepys Estate in Lewisham (one of the estates in the ESRC Displacement Project) and the film Bird’s Eye View by Edward Mirzoeff with poetry by John Betjeman.

Pepys Estate, Deptford, 1970. Photo © Tony Ray-Jones/RIBA Library Photographs

Pepys Estate, Deptford by John Betjeman:

Where can be the heart that sends a family to the 20th floor
In such a slab as this.
It can’t be right, however fine the view
Over to Greenwich, and the Isle of Dogs.
It can’t be right, caged halfway up the sky
Not knowing your neighbour, frightened of the lift,
And who’ll be in it, and who’s down below
And are the children safe?

What is housing if it’s not a home?”

The Tower: Tale of Two Cities (2007) also focuses on the Pepys Estate. As a photographer aiming to work collaboratively with the community, the following review left on the IMDB site is worth noting:

Having lived on the Pepys Estate while this film was being made I like most others who saw it being made were shocked when we saw this. The disparity between the way the film crew presented themselves to the community as ‘educational film makers’ and the largely sensationalist result which heavily featured the most vulnerable residents was jaw dropping. Many of the scenes are staged and scripted, incentives were made to encourage entertaining behaviour and some of the narrative is simply lies. After protracted exchanges with the BBC where all actions of the filmmakers were justified by the show being ‘award winning’ and ‘popular’ I received a formal apology from Harry Dean at the BBC about the false claim in episode 4 that the Pepys Estate ‘suffered the highest rape figures in London’ (when in fact they were lower than most boroughs). Altogether more fantasy than reality, I would take Anthony Wonke’s work with a pinch of salt.

Other more recent work featured: Gursky’s (1993) Montparnasse Mouchette Building and East London photos by Chris Dorley-Brown (though not this one of Ilford, but others in the 2015-6 series).

Chris Dorley-Brown (2016), Westplan House, Ilford.

For me, the Dorley-Brown images (impressive though they are) have reinforced my commitment to explore more collaborative image making and to explore more directly the relationship between the residents and the environment (and, in particular, the social infrastructure, or rather, in some cases, the lack of it). The emphasis of the exhibition is really on health, and the images play a supporting role. The accompanying Iain Sinclair book, Living with Buildings and Walking with Ghosts: On health and architecture, though, is something else (includes a very touching chapter about visiting Jonathan Meades in Marseille).

Addendum [26.11.18]. The above building in Ilford, taken in passing this morning. I didn’t have the right lens to duplicate the shot, but I did get the green traffic light (as Dorley-Brown always does).

And another angle on it, with Pioneer Point in reflection.

27.11.18. Final go at this (until we get longer and brighter days in the summer).

This is something I have been meaning to post about for a while. Having come across the term ‘mnemotechnic’ twice in one week, maybe now is the time. The first mention was in a passage by Derrida about writing as an aide-memoire, and as representing the passage of thought out of consciousness.

‘Writing, a mnemotechnic means, supplanting good memory, spontaneous memory, signifies forgetfulness … its violence befalls the soul as unconsciousness’ (Derrida, 1976: 37)

The second mention was … well, I can’t remember, though, by chance, I have just re-encountered it on a page left open in the Kindle app on my phone.

‘Long before the book, poetry was the brain’s first ‘external storage’, our first ‘mnemotechnology” (Paterson, 2018: 3).

And that’s the (pragmatic) point. In past academic work and study, I’ve relied on memory, and used writing principally to sketch out ideas and produce provisional and final texts as outcomes. Now, too frequently, I have the sense of having had an idea, or found something to which I might want to return at a later date, but no idea what. Entering a new field, and not having existing points of reference on which to secure my thoughts exacerbates the situation. So, suspending consideration of the inversion of speech and writing just for the moment (but noting the need to come back to it, of course), I’m going to map out my mnemotechnic tools and processes. And in doing so, assess the practicality and maybe even increase the prospect of sticking with them.

• Sources found on the web, and iPhone photos of book covers and events, go into Evernote.
• References, texts and reading lists go into Mendeley.
• Notes are made in Simplenote, which is also used to draft CRJ and Canvas posts.
• Resources are collected, clustered and classified in Devonthink.
• Long documents, together with associated research and resources, are created in Scrivener.
• My images are stored and processed in Lightroom with additional editing in Photoshop or Silver Efex Pro 2 as necessary.
• Exported jpegs are filed in folders according to module (though should really move to using Devonthink).
• Reflections, coursework, contextual research and project developments are posted in my CRJ according to module (WordPress).
• Portfolios are created in Scribus and exported as PDFs.
• Presentations are created in Keynote, exported as movies and converted to QT format in Quicktime.

That’s about it. Part memory supplement, part workflow. All these applications run on all my devices and are synchronised, so everything is available everywhere. In the remaining weeks of this module I will formalise my use of social media and develop a website – the outputs.

Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology (trans. G.Spivak). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.

Paterson, D. (2018). The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre. London: Faber.

19th November 2018: Spotlight on Val Wilmer’s Jazz Seen Exhibition, 1973.

[Show slideshow]

Went to this as part of my work on the Courtauld digitisation project. You never know what the spotlight will focus on, so really lucked out with this one. ‘As Serious as your Life‘, which I bought and read in 1977, is one of my favourite books, and really influenced me in so many ways (musically and academically). Prints from the exhibition, plus other supporting material, such as curator’s planning notes, posters (see above), photos of the Steve Lacy Quintet performing at the exhibition event (below), print material such as Ten8 24 (above) and boxes of related prints (like the Tony Ray-Jones US jazz photos, cited as an influence by Val, see above).

Photos of Jazz Unseen (1973) concert from V&A archives

The point here is not so much about the event (which was terrific) but the archive as a resource. Will certainly schedule visits to the prints and drawings study room in the future for research related to my project. Includes the RPS photograph collection. You can ask for up to four boxes of prints to look at per visit. I need to think carefully about how archival work might fit with my project. Whatever, looking through print collections is an important part of developing photographic and artistic practice.

 Sunday 11.11.18

Portfolio review was really useful, not just for comments by tutors and peers, but also to see and talk about other people’s work. A lot to follow up in forthcoming posts and making images. Message for me is to draw together the work I have been doing into a coherent portfolio (that can include different forms/genres of work, but with an overarching rationale). Jesse suggests submitting a PDF to allow more control over the presentation, as I have demonstrated that I can use an online portfolio in the first module. Can also include an introduction (around 200 words). Must show development of photographic work, and relate to the focus of the module (for instance, audiences). Lots of references in relation to other people’s work to follow-up.

 Saturday 10.11.18

Most of the day spent at the Grand Palais. Hundreds of gallery stands showing every kind of work, plus some selections from collections (such as the JP Morgan collection, with, for instance, a number of Eggleston prints). Good to see the scale of some of the work seen previously only on screen and in print, and to pick up ideas for presentation of work. Likewise, the publisher and book distributor stands, for ideas about publication.

Highlights for me were the talks (Tod Papageorge, Joel Meyerowitz, Chistopher Williams), visiting Akio Nagasawa gallery/publishers and looking at the low volume Japanese handbound books, Evangelia Kramioti’s ‘Beirut Fictions’, Denis Dailleux’s ‘Meres et Fils”’ (Egyptian wrestlers and their mothers), and more (will add when I can go through notes, fliers, books and images).

More photo books at Polycopies, and conversation with Guy Martin about his new book, The Parallel State, with Gost Books. Then late night visit to On Air exhibition at Palais de Tokyo.

Stunning and inspiring (particularly for the inter-disciplinarity, and creative and inter-connected ways of addressing both with a ‘grand challenge’ and engaging audiences).

 Friday 9.11.18

A quick reflection on the days activities, principally to list the galleries visited whilst fresh. One immediate impression is the quality of gallery space around the Marais district, and the diversity of work exhibited. In the order visited.

Gallerie Les Filles du Calvaire to see Laura Henno’s M’Tsamboro, photographs and films made in Comoros.

In the lower gallery was a dual screen film exploring the role of children in illegal migration. In the upper gallery, photographs and films (one three channel in the gallery, the other single channel in a side room, but open so that the shouts from the film permiate the gallery space) focussing on the use of dogs as protection. The still images were lit from above with spots, giving them the appearance of light boxes in the darkened space (necessary for the video projections). The video and still images worked well together with clear thought given to the sonic landscape (see early posts about paying attention to sound in exhibition). In particular, the handling of illumination of still images alongside projection worked very well (all natural light was excluded, so light was entirely designed).

&CO119. Ango by Sakiko Nomura. A small gallery off a courtyard. Not immediately obvious from the street (sign outside, but we had to tailgate someone to get in).

Specialising in Japanese photographers, with a good selection of books. Brilliant exhibition by a student of Araki. Text from 1942 with contemporary staged grainy black and white photographs (with different women representing the same women in the text, thus despecifying the experiences described). Beautiful book (limited edition in French, standard edition in English, German and Japanese). Very striking offset binding.

Not sure how that was achieved so will investigate with Simon at London Book Arts (its the cutting of the pages and the covers, not the binding, which is standard).

La Galerie Particulaire. Claudine Doury, Le long du fleuve Amour.

Some great contextualised portraits here from along the Amur River. Interesting zig-zag double sided mounting of prints in perspex, held together by metal clips.

Could be a good way of exhibiting material that is also presented in zig-zag book form.

Eric Hussenot. Sur Face by Martin d’Orgeval.

Huge white walled space, with natural light from above. Upper and lower galleries. Large prints. Monochrome and two tone.

Polkagalerie. Small gallery on the street leads to larger two floor gallery off the courtyard at the back. Large exhibition by Joel Meyerowitz. Pretty much what you would expect. The large size of some of the Empire State shots was a surprise (with clear long exposure blur on the one with the woman on the corner by the convenience store). More interesting exhibition in the front gallery of contemporary work by Toshio Shibata on the dwindling stocks of Cibachrome. Mix of small, tightly framed and mounted contact prints (I assume) and larger prints without mounts (drawing attention to the nature of the print).

Galerie Templon. Large exhibition on two floors by David Lachappelle, Letter to the World. Large exhibition of work, including Kardashian installation.

écal MA in Photography pop-up exhibition. Encountered by chance.

Interesting exhibition of augmented photography by masters students. Some CGI and lot of post-processing. Two floors, with projection spaces downstairs. Will write something further about

Jeu de Paume. Dorothea Lange and Ana Mendieta. The Lange exhibition is the one that was shown at the Barbican (though difference configuration – the Barbican had a clearer spatial structure), so good to revisit and spend time looking at things missed first time around. The volume, scope and humanity of the work is striking. Ana Mendieta’s work is more conceptual and personal, though through this some big issues are addressed.

As with a number of other exhibitions recently, the use of long, holding shots on film/video was notable. These demand the attention of a still, but determine duration, and in some cases where there is some movement, pace. I wonder, in a space that contains large scale projected video, and photographic prints, how much attention is paid to the latter? The Laura Henno exhibition appears to address this effectively through the dramatic lighting of the still images (brighter and more vibrant than the projected video) and spatial arrangement (between one video and another). The video also provides the soundscape for the exhibition.