The Photography Gallery-Exam Trip
Floor 2 Feast For The Eyes-The Story Of Food In Photography
Feast for the eyes looks particularly at how food is represented and used in photographic practises and brings together a broad-range of artists all of whom harness the history and popularity of food photography to express wider themes. Crossing public and private realms the works on show evoke deep-seated questions and anxieties about issues such as wealth, poverty, consumption, appetite, tradition, gender, race, desire, pleasure, revulsion and domesticity.
Feast for the eyes looks particularly at how food is represented and used in photographic practises and brings together a broad-range of artists all of whom harness the history and popularity of food photography to express wider themes. Crossing public and private realms the works on show evoke deep-seated questions and anxieties about issues such as wealth, poverty, consumption, appetite, tradition, gender, race, desire, pleasure, revulsion and domesticity.
Edward Weston is considered to be one of the most influential American photographers of the 20th century. 'Pepper No.30' is one of the best-known photographs taken by Weston. It depicts a solitary green pepper in rich black and white tones, with strong illumination from above. On August 3, 1927, Edward placed the particular pepper inside a tin funnel, which allowed natural light to illuminate the vegetable in a 3-dimensional way. Weston says "it was a bright idea, a perfect relief for the pepper which caused me a week's work, I had decided I could go no further with it, yet something kept me from taking it to the kitchen, the end of all good peppers. I placed it in the funnel, focused with the Zeiss, and knowing just the viewpoint, recognising a perfect light, made and exposure of six minuets, with but a few moments' preliminary work, the real preliminary was on in hours passed. I have a great negative, - by far the best!"
Holger Niehaus's 'Naked' provides his take on the classic bowl of fruit image, stripping fruits off their skin and removing the bowl entirely. Niehaus interweaves the traditional still-life with minimalist forms, so that every photograph requires a second glance to see what is actually there. It then becomes clear that the objects have been attacked with an apple corer, paint or scissors. Niehaus destroys characteristic features of the original, preventing us from looking at the photographs in a 'normal' way. And although his actions betray his love of manipulation, there is also a cruel side to it. Everything we think we see is contradicted by what we actually see. Holger literally peels off a layer and exposes the fruit:he conjures up a little world behind which lie hours spent working away at the subject, a search for a dream world where the goal is aimless perfection.
Henri Cartier-Bresson's 'The Modern Century' helped define the creative potential of modern photography, and his uncanny ability to capture life on the run Mande his work synonymous with "the decisive moment"-the title of his first major book. In 1947 Bresson joined in founding the Magnum photo gallery, which enabled photojournalists to reach a broad audience through magazines while retaining control over their work. In the decade following the war, Cartier produced major bodies of photographic reportage on India and Indonesia at the time of independence, China during the revolution, the Soviet Union after Stalin's death, the United States during the postwar booming Europe as its old cultures confronted modern realities. For more than 25 years, he was the keenest observer of the global human affairs and one of the great portraitists of the 20th century.
Floor 4 Around The Table
Martin Parr's 'Around The Table' has unveiled a new collection of photographs showing a cross section of Brits eating their evening meal. Parr has been documenting real people doing everyday things for more than 22 years, aims to explore what makes up the typical, modern mealtime in Britain. Entitled 'A Birds Eye View', the exhibition features 30 brand new photographs depicting Parr's four-month tour of the nation capturing everyday mealtimes in regions including Kent, Cornwall, Norfolk, Yorkshire, Merseyside, London and Birmingham. The aim of this is to celebrate meal times and the important role they play in people's lives. The commission follows the 'Big Mealtime Audit', a study exploring the way in which people eat and interact with one another over food. Parr said "My aim with 'A Birds Eye View' was to champion the many food traits and behaviours Brits have in a way that makes us appreciate each other for our different wonderful ways of living."
Peter Menzel's 'Hungry Planet' presents a photographic study of families from around the world, revealing what people eat during the course of one week. Each family's profile includes a detailed description of their weekly food purchases; photographs of the family at home, at market and in their community; and a portrait of the entire family surrounded by a weeks worth of groceries. Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio then released a book called "Hungry Planet:What The World Eats" in 2005, showcasing meals in 24 countries. In 2013 and 2014, their "Hungry Planet" portraits were exhibited by the Nobel Peace centre to give viewers a peak into kitchens from Noway to Kuwait and China to Mexico, and raise awareness about how environments and cultures influence the cost and calories of world's dinner.
Stephen Shore's series 'Uncommon Places' is where this photograph comes from. Cantaloupe, a stack of pancakes with frothy butter and filled -to-the-brim glass of pure white milker ready to be devoured by the traveler who has stopped for breakfast in a dusty Western town. The photograph was shot with an 8-by-10-inch view camera during the artists road trips across the United States. Shore presents his pictures in vibrant colour and vivid detail. Snapping a 35mm picture "just like that," he said, is quite different from setting up the shot with a large-format camera. At Trail's End Restaurant, he stood on a chair to find the view he wanted. He later recalled, "The food was cold by the time I took the picture."
Floor 5 Shot In Soho
Shot In Soho is an original exhibition celebrating Soho's diverse culture, community and history of creative innovation as well as highlighting its position as a site of resistance. Through the range of photographs, ephemera and varied presentations, the project reflects the breadth of life in a part of the capital that has always courted controversy and celebrated difference.
Shot In Soho is an original exhibition celebrating Soho's diverse culture, community and history of creative innovation as well as highlighting its position as a site of resistance. Through the range of photographs, ephemera and varied presentations, the project reflects the breadth of life in a part of the capital that has always courted controversy and celebrated difference.
Andres Peterson says "Soho still smells of life. Every kind of human being was there, it was so lively. The integration of people is so fantastic" he enthuses. Peterson now 75, first wandered the streets of the West End district in 1971, and did not return for 30 years, until he was invited back in 2011 Forfar a residency by The Photography Gallery, where his work where his work is currently being shown in a group exhibition, Shot In Soho. "Everything has changed except for one thing," he says, recalling the seedy streets of the 'old Soho', lined with strip clubs, peep shows and late-night drives. "The feeling that these streets have a history, and a possibility the energy and the secrets of life."
william klein
Back in the 1960s Kelvin Brodie on assignments for the Sunday Times covering routine street works and accompynying police and charity workers in Soho, snapping young people caught up in its criminal underworld or at the other end of the social spectrum, some of the area's ancient shopkeepers.
John Stezaker was born in England in 1949, and currently lives and works in London. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Artin London in the 1960s, and has taught at Central Saint Martins School of Art, Goldsmiths College and The Royal College of Art. Stezekar is one of the leading artists in modern photographic collage and appropriation. Employing vintage photographs, old hollywood film stills, travel postcards and other printed matter, Stezaker creates seductive and fascinating small-format collages that bear qualities of surrealism, Dada and found art. In referring to the large compendiam of images he has collected, Stezaker asserts that the images "find him", not the other way around. With surgical like precision, Stezaker excises, overlays and conjoins distinct images to create new persionalities, landscapes and scenes.
Chuck Close was born July 5, 1940 in Monroe Washington. The son of artistic parents who showed great support for their boy's early creative interests, Close who suffers from severe dyslexia, struggled in almost all phases of schoolwork except art. Close eventually enrolled at the University of Washington, graduating in 1962 and immediately heading east to Yale to study for a Master of Fine Arts from the universities Art and Architecture School. Steeped heavily in the abstract world, Close radically changed his focus at Yale, opting for what would become his signature style photorealism. Using a process he describes as "knitting", Close created large-format Polaroids of models that he then re-created on large canvases. This early work was bold, intimate and up front, replicating the particular details of his selected faces. Close suffers from the neurological condition prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, which prevents him from recognising faces. In addition, his pieces blurred the distinction between photography and painting in a way that had never been done before.
Elise Wehle raised in California, moved from her home to study at Brigham Young University in the United States where she graduated with her Bachelor of Fine Arts. However it wasn't until she lived in Southern Europe that she understood what kind of art she wanted to make. Visiting granddad's Alhambra, an ancient place covered in hand carved pattern, was an especially transformative experience. There in Andalucia Spain is where Wehle became captivated by the intricacy of design. Her artistic focus shifted, and she began incorporating dense repeating patterns i her own works on paper. Although the Alhambra was her original impetus, Wehle pulls inspiration from a variety of sources, including cathedrals, illuminated manuscripts and patterns of all shaped and sizes, to manipulate portraits and landscapes into new creations. The unifying thread that runs through all her work is the interference of the image by geometric design.
Half Term Homework
During the half term I had to take pictures of 3 different things which linked to my chosen theme Broken.
Strand 1 Flowers
During the half term I had to take pictures of 3 different things which linked to my chosen theme Broken.
Strand 1 Flowers
Strand 2 Past & Present
Strand 3 Distorted Mirrors
Nadav Kander
Billy Kidd