Writing About Photographs

I've written about a glorious portrait by Walker Evans and the possibility of reading too much into a photograph. Find it on francishodgson.com.

Walker Evans, Stevedore, Havana 1933 A stevedore photographed by Walker Evans in Cuba in 1933. Evans’ time in Cuba was interesting and complicated – there’s a fine essay by John Tagg in Photographies in 2009 to give just a taste of how complicated, and it’s there I refound the picture. Great photographers control our readings of pictures. See how two blemishes on the left ( his left ) of his…

If you visit the website set up to showcase Bradford as the 2025 City of Culture, the very first page that you come to – at least at the moment (February 2025) – celebrates the major photographic commission awarded to Aïda Muluneh and the resultant exhibition at Impressions Gallery.  Those websites are not sequenced by chance.  This means in effect that Muluneh can be considered the lead visual…

Well, here is a rare and rather enjoyable thing.  I’m used to writing about pictures whose author is known, whose subject is known, whose date is known, whose cause is known, whose customer is known or any or all of those things.  The experience starts as that which is familiar to anyone who has finger-walked through shoeboxes of old post-cards, or cartes-de-visites or stereos : here’s something…

Collective Gymnastics on Ladders, by Max Penson, 1930s With PhotoLondon opening this week, I found myself remembering that great photography was shown at Somerset House before PhotoLondon was ever a thing.  There used to be housed in the Embankment Galleries at the lower level the great hoard of the Gilbert Collection, since then moved to the Victoria & Albert Museum.  The Gilbert Collection,…

This is one series that has been swirling lazily around in my mind for so many years that it’s now obviously a part of my mental scaffolding.  I first saw them when I worked at the Photographers’ Gallery and I was moved by them.  So the series goes straight into my virtual collection, and not just a single picture.  I absolutely love them and have loved them consistently, so I’m having all of…

It’s been quite a time that I’ve been obscurely dissatisfied with ordinary photographic monographs. I suppose I shouldn’t complain: I’ve written texts for dozens of them, usually as an introduction before the pictures, and usually found much to like in the pictures concerned. No doubt the good ones still keep coming; the great ones, too, and probably at the same very slow rate as ever. But I’m…

Helen Chadwick from the Viral Landscapes,1989 I don’t remember when I first saw Helen Chadwick’s Viral Landscapes – I suspect I went to the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford and saw them there in 1989 – but I do know that I have never forgotten them.   I think there were only five of these extraordinary pictures in the series, although I surprise myself now by finding what seem to be variants…

David Williams has a retrospective book out, covering many fine series of photographs and allowing us to see big arcs in his long career. Reviewed on francishodgson.com

Dreaming Difference, by David WilliamsScottish Photographic Artists #2, Published by the Scottish Society for the History of Photography and Edinburgh University Press 2023.  David Williams, ‘Is’: Ecstasies #V David Williams, ‘Is’: Ecstasies #VI David Williams, ‘Is’: Ecstasies #XIV The first of David Williams’ series that I came across was ‘Is’: Ecstasies I-XXII.  They were in the Print Room…