In my early work I pretended to speak about my childhood, yet my real childhood had disappeared. I have lied about it so often that I no longer have a real memory of this time, and my childhood has become, for me, some kind of universal childhood, not a real one. Everything you do is a pretence. My life is about making stories, I travel a lot; I am like some kind of travelling circus clown.
Christian Boltanski
in conversation with Tamar Garb.
Christian Boltanski. Didier Semin, Tamar Garb, Donald Knight. Phaidon Press. London. 1997. p.8
Photography is concerned with death and always the past. It records our past so that we might contextualise and understand our present. This documentation, the selection and recording of evidence, evidence of past shadows, histories, facts, locations, explanations, faces, fictions and most importantly, that which isn't shown. The hidden may be revealed by it's absence.
An abstract from my notebook. 1998
Wednesday 28 July 2010
Thursday 15 July 2010
Don McCullin, War Photographer Interview.
A life in photography: Don McCullin
I saw 800 children dropping down dead in front of me. That turned me away from the gung-ho image of the war photographer
The Guardian,
A few years ago Don McCullin, inevitably on assignment in a geopolitical hotspot, found himself hors de combat in a dusty and ill-equipped local hospital. He had a broken rib and a collapsed lung and woke up, the morning after sustaining his injuries, to be confronted "through a haze of pain and medication" by the sight of ministry of the interior policemen standing at the foot of his bed. "And of course they wanted my passport," he recalls. "Which was, of course, full of some pretty exotic stamps. Here we go, I thought. This could be fun."
Had McCullin, the great war photographer, been felled by a Vietnamese bullet or Israeli shrapnel? By Congolese thugs or Belfast paramilitaries? In fact, none of the above. For although he was in Syria, he wasn't there to chase war or discord, or at least none that had occurred within the last couple of millennia. Instead, he had been photographing the Roman ruins at the Great Sanctuary of Bel in Palmyra as part of a wider project to document the frontiers of the Roman empire. And the now septuagenarian photographer had simply tripped over some fallen masonry.
"I came round in the hospital and a rather attractive translator from my hotel explained that the police weren't even really interested in me. They just wanted to know if anyone had given me a push so they could go out and crack someone's skull. That's the flip side of a police state," he laughs. "Sometimes they can have your interests at heart. And to be fair to them, I felt less under surveillance in Syria than I do in England. Every street in London has a camera, and if you ever travel up the M4 it feels as if George Orwell should be your chauffeur."
McCullin will be discussing the fruits of his work in Syria, as well as elsewhere in the Levant and the Maghreb, on Friday at one of the early events at this year's Guardian Hay festival. His latest book, Southern Frontiers marks the culmination of three years' work for a man better known for recording more contemporary imperial adventures. The project had its genesis in the 1970s when McCullin was on assignment with Bruce Chatwin to report on the harassment by French fascists of Algerian refugees in Marseilles. "One night we just got the ferry over to Algiers to follow it up and there I got my first glimpses of these remarkable structures which have stayed with me ever since." He has now returned in the spirit of the Victorian painters and early photographers of the late 19th century such as David Roberts and Francis Frith to capture the ruined temples, theatres, colonnades and statues that marked the far corners of Roman expansion.
"Yes, it's a departure", he acknowledges. "But there is also more of a link than you might think to my previous work. I was absolutely overjoyed to be in these remarkable spaces. You feel part of the great canvas of history. But it is difficult to avoid the vibrations of the cries of the people who built them more than 2,000 years ago. The energy it took to put them up would have cost thousands of lives, and people must have perished left, right and centre. They are huge statements and wonderful achievements. But achievement is one thing and cost is another."
The cost to ordinary people of decisions made by their rulers has been at the heart of McCullin's work since he made his name with photographs on the construction of the Berlin Wall before moving on to produce legendary images from the war zones of Indochina, Latin America and the Middle East. After seeing his work, Henri Cartier-Bresson said to McCullin: "I have one word to say to you: Goya." An admiring John le Carré, with whom McCullin visited Beirut, wrote in an introduction to McCullin's 1980 book, Hearts of Darkness: "He has known all forms of fear, he's an expert in it. He has come back from God knows how many brinks, all different. His experience in a Ugandan prison alone would be enough to unhinge another man – like myself, as a matter of fact – for good."
"I've seen my own blood and broken a few bones," says McCullin, "I've been hit, which isn't an entirely bad thing as at least you have a glimpse of the suffering endured by the people you are photographing. And in a sense, crumbling empires and war have been with me all my life. I'm from England, and like every other great empire who stole bits of the world, there is a price to pay. And I was born in 1935. So since I've been conscious of the world I've either been in, or been on the periphery of, a war zone."
The above is an extract of the article that appeared in The Guardian. To read the whole piece follow this link (you may need to cut and paste it into your browser window).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/may/22/don-mccullin-southern-frontiers-interview
further to this article you may find the follow piece, also from the Guardian website, another interesting view of the influence and outcomes of war and combat photography.
Link to Marlboro Soldier article
And another view of the same image by the photographer that took the image can be found on the LA Times website Here
And a follow up article in the Guardian/Observer Here
Are we spoiling you or what?
Silvy Exhibition at National Portrait Gallery
15 July - 24 October 2010
Camille Silvy was a pioneer of early photography and one of the greatest French photographers of the nineteenth century. This exhibition includes many remarkable images which have not been exhibited since the 1860s.
Over 100 images, including a large number of carte de visites, focus on a ten-year creative burst from 1857-67 working in Algiers, rural France, Paris and London, and illustrate how Silvy pioneered many now familiar branches of the medium including theatre, fashion and street photography.
Working under the patronage of Queen Victoria, Silvy photographed royalty, aristocrats and celebrities. He also portrayed uncelebrated people, the professional classes and country gentry, their wives, children and servants. The results offer a unique glimpse into nineteenth-century society through the eyes of one of photography's outstanding innovators.
Exhibition organised by the Jeu de Paume, Paris, in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, London
Camille Silvy was a pioneer of early photography and one of the greatest French photographers of the nineteenth century. This exhibition includes many remarkable images which have not been exhibited since the 1860s.
Over 100 images, including a large number of carte de visites, focus on a ten-year creative burst from 1857-67 working in Algiers, rural France, Paris and London, and illustrate how Silvy pioneered many now familiar branches of the medium including theatre, fashion and street photography.
Working under the patronage of Queen Victoria, Silvy photographed royalty, aristocrats and celebrities. He also portrayed uncelebrated people, the professional classes and country gentry, their wives, children and servants. The results offer a unique glimpse into nineteenth-century society through the eyes of one of photography's outstanding innovators.
Exhibition organised by the Jeu de Paume, Paris, in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, London
Private Collection, Paris
another exhibition? But Monsieur Ambassador you are spoiling us...
A show at the National Portrait Gallery in London's Trafalgar Square that we may be taking groups to early in the new term (September / October). Something else for staff to take in on their next trip to the big smoke...
Friday 2 July 2010
Wolfgang Tillmans
The Photography staff will also be going to see the Wolfgang Tillmans show at the Serpentine Gallery, reviews and pictures to follow. If you are interested in seeing it yourself, it is going to be running from 26th June - 19th September at the Serpentine Gallery in London.
"Since he made the UK his home 20 years ago, Wolfgang Tillmans has redefined both the photographic image and the numerous ways in which it is presented.
In this new exhibition, conceived for the Serpentine Gallery, Tillmans will reflect on his longstanding relationship with London and show both new works made specifically for this show, as well as a range of images from throughout his career.
The exhibition will focus on both the figurative and the abstract in Tillmans’ work, and embrace a broad range of subjects; from unconventional yet intensely eloquent portraits, to large-scale, colour-saturated abstractions that capture the beauty of photography’s chemical processes." Link to Serpentine Gallery exhibit
Sally Mann Exhibition Visit
Photostaff are off to London to see the Sally Mann and Wolfgang Tillsman shows. Reviews to follow...
18 June - 19 September 2010
EXHIBITION AT THE PHOTOGRAPHERS GALLERY NOW OPEN AND RUNS UNTIL SEPTEMBER 19. 2010
The work of American photographer Sally Mann is deeply rooted in both her family, and the landscape she lives and works in. This exhibition, her first solo-show in the UK, draws on several powerful photographic series from throughout her long career that reflect these influences.
Sally Mann (b.1951, USA) first came to prominence for Immediate Family (1984 – 94), a series of intimate and revealing portraits of her three young children Emmett, Jessie and Virginia. Taken over ten years, Mann depicts them playing and acting to camera in and around their homestead in Virginia. Capturing their childhood in all its rawness and innocence, both this and the later series Faces were born out of a collaborative process between mother and child.
Changing focus to the landscape close to her home, the series Deep South (1996 – 98) draws on significant locations from the American Civil War. The photographs are ghostly lit and covered with delicate marks and drip trails – a result of using antique cameras and processes which Mann relishes – that imbue them with a sense of time suspended.
The most recent series in the exhibition, What Remains (2000-04), brings together both of the earlier strands. Facing us are beautifully realised portraits of decomposing bodies returning to the land, photographs taken at a research facility in Tennesse. Dealing directly with the social taboo of death, Mann treats this subject with sensitivity, encouraging us to reflect on our own mortality and place within nature’s order.
The Family and the Land: Sally Mann at The Photographers’ Gallery is an edited version of a touring exhibition, conceived by Sally Mann in collaboration with Hasse Persson, Director, Borås Museum of Modern Art, Sweden.
Link to Guardian Web site review of show
Sally Mann (b.1951, USA) first came to prominence for Immediate Family (1984 – 94), a series of intimate and revealing portraits of her three young children Emmett, Jessie and Virginia. Taken over ten years, Mann depicts them playing and acting to camera in and around their homestead in Virginia. Capturing their childhood in all its rawness and innocence, both this and the later series Faces were born out of a collaborative process between mother and child.
Changing focus to the landscape close to her home, the series Deep South (1996 – 98) draws on significant locations from the American Civil War. The photographs are ghostly lit and covered with delicate marks and drip trails – a result of using antique cameras and processes which Mann relishes – that imbue them with a sense of time suspended.
The most recent series in the exhibition, What Remains (2000-04), brings together both of the earlier strands. Facing us are beautifully realised portraits of decomposing bodies returning to the land, photographs taken at a research facility in Tennesse. Dealing directly with the social taboo of death, Mann treats this subject with sensitivity, encouraging us to reflect on our own mortality and place within nature’s order.
The Family and the Land: Sally Mann at The Photographers’ Gallery is an edited version of a touring exhibition, conceived by Sally Mann in collaboration with Hasse Persson, Director, Borås Museum of Modern Art, Sweden.
Link to Guardian Web site review of show
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