She.

Sharing photographs is a part of everydaylife today. Whether searching for images on Google or Pintrest, our use of technology for sharing images is at an all time high with 350 million images being uploaded to Facebook each day. The first ever photography retrospective to be organised by the New York Public Library, Public Eye: 175 Years of Sharing Photography, aims to explore the various ways photography has been shared in the public domain. The works on display are from the NYPL photography collection and the success of the exhibition is largely due to making the photographs and ephemera from the archive seem contemporary, relatable and of significance.

 Walking into the Gottesman Exhibition Hall in the NYPL the visitor is confronted with a familiar sight: a family are posed with a smartphone taking a ‘selfie’. A mirror is suspended at an angle over the exhibition entrance – one has the choice to move on into the exhibition, or to stop and take a photograph to be shared via a social network or in a personal collection. This initial encounter presents the theme of the exhibition without the use of a traditional wall text and adds to the audience participation in the exhibition. The viewer is compelled to acknowledge that photography is social and pervasive even in the gallery.

The works are ordered into three sections: Photo Sharing, Street View and Crowd Sourcing. Introductory wall panels are presented at either side of the section so the visitor has the choice of how to navigate the exhibition. The wall texts are well curated, moving from analysis of contemporary trends in photo sharing, and then relating these to historical patterns in photography. Some images, however, would have benefitted from a small blurb about the project the photographs derive from. The two photographs on show by August Sander did not have any explanation, yet his typology ‘Face of Our Time’ is a great example of sharing photographs in Weimar Germany in the 1920s and would have added to the visitor’s knowledge of the different forms of sharing photographs, particularly in European history.

 Public Eye is set in a large square room, and rather than using dividing walls to spilt up the space and create more wall displays, the curator, Stephen Pinson, has strategically used vitrines to display works and move the audience away from trailing around the walls of the exhibition. Photo albums and negatives are presented alongside photographic prints that are laid out flat - echoing how they may look in a photographer’s dark room or how they may be passed around and shared in a group. This gives the audience another view of how photography is used and shared and what it looks like before it is mounted and framed and put on a wall – as many photographs never make it to this stage.

The photographs on display are not organised in chronological order and thus creates thought provoking juxtapositions such as two Martin Parr photographs from The Phonebook, 1992, displayed below two photographs by Valdir Cruz Group-body painting, 1997. Cruz shows the traditional wooden piercings and body painting of a remote tribe living on the Amazon whilst Parr compares two people in early 2000s dress speaking into a large mobile phone. The side by side viewing of the images brings the audience’s attention to the diversity of the photographs in the NYPL collection. These subtle comparisons weave throughout Public Eye and encourage the viewer to compare and contrast, something that is not always so easily read in exhibitions.

The major curation highlight of the exhibition was the wall of Farm Security Act (FSA) photographs in the back-centre of the room. The display is made up of photographs 7 along and 12 up and showed a selection of photographs that were produced for the government agency during the depression era in the U.S.A in the 1930s. They are presented unframed in a glass wall mount. This displays the range and number of photographs that were collected by the FSA. Below there is a vitrine with books produced by the photographers of the FSA such as Walker Evans and Dorethea Lange, highlighting to the viewer that the photographs were shared within the government in the form of geltin silver prints and with the public in books that were widely published and can still be viewed in libraries today. 

The top image is a photograph I took in St Andrews, Scotland, 2012. -She. 

It reminded me of the seascapes of Hiroshi Sugimoto, whom I was unaware of when I took the photograph. I have added two photographs by Sugimoto and will leave you with his words, as I could not have said it better myself (and was pleased to know I wasn't the only one who feels a sense of ease and spirituality from the sea). 

'Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing'. - Hiroshi Sugimoto. 

Photographs 2 and 3 by Sugimoto

- Caribean Sea, Jamica, 1980. 

Don't Dance, 2011-2012. 

The Man Ray Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, brings together some of Man Ray's finest photographs. It includes examples of his work published in French photo-magazine Vu, as well as his work for Conde Nast, particularly Harper's Bazaar, an avenue of his work I had previously not known of. 

The exhibition includes portraits from when Man Ray first turned to photography in 1916, all the way through to his colour portraits from his Hollywood years in the 1950s and 60s. These colour portraits are like jewels at the end of the exhibition, they are small in size and from a far  soft blocks of colour seem to make up the composition rather than the sitter of the photograph. I found them particularly intriguing and can safely say Man ray mastered colour photography as much as he did with the other photographic techniques he is now famous for experimenting with,  such as solaristation ( evident in two of the portraits above) and photograms. 

The only aspect the exhibition fell short on was its image labels, as the text to accompany the photographs focussed heavily on details of the sitter of the portrait.  Whilst in some cases this proved fruitful, it would have been great to see the curators explain and contextualise Man Ray's use of solarisation and why he was seen as so experimental and innovative in the 1920s. 

The 1930s was an important and defining decade for photography. The dominance and intrigue of documentary photography from this period forms a large part of my MA thesis. Recently, after years of study I have felt that I have finally come to grips with ‘documentary’ from this era. A recent exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, however, made me reassess the connections and assumptions I have made about British documentary. The exhibition ‘Edith Tudor Hart: In the shadow of Tyranny’ was a compelling show illustrating the Austrian born photographer’s work in Vienna and then Britain, where she fled to in 1933. As she had done in Vienna, Tudor-Hart’s camera continued to engage with social and political issues( and she notoriously worked as a low-level agent for the Soviet Union).

  Tudor-Hart’s photographs where connected to many of the great political upheavals of the 1930s, from documenting refugee children from the Spanish Civil War to the unemployed workers protesting in Wales and Northern England.

  Photographs from the Vienna Lido display how Tudor-Hart could also turn her attention to leisurely pursuits, seemingly far removed from the unemployed workers on strike in the capital.

  A sense of collectivity seems to be a domineering factor in T-H photographs of the unemployed in Britain; something I would not suggest is always present in other photographs from the 1930s. This theme seems to be one T-H is comfortable with, as were her photographs of children.

  In order to make a living as a photographer, like many others, T-H had to turn her hand to commercial work. Comparing her fashion photographs to her other work, underlines that she was much more comfortable in socially and politically engaged photography. Her fashion photograph seems stiff and disconnected.

The model’s rigid pose and somewhat aggravated facial expression perhaps indicates the resentment T-H may have held at having to peruse fashion photography.

  By acknowledging her political values and rejecting a candid approach to her photography, T-H avoided the suggestion that she was ‘removed’ from her photographs, or that they were mere ‘records’ or ‘objective scientific facts’. Such labels were often quoted from her contemporaries who vouched for the objectivity of documentary photography.

“I wanna be bad” Sung by Helen Kane, 1929.

After a day spent researching the complexities of the ‘Modern Woman’ of the inter-war period in Britain and America, I have been thinking about how we can also argue that the Modern Woman of the 21st Century is faced with a host of complexities in how to present herself and to navigate the cityscape, working life or even life as a housewife.

This song by American singer Helen Kane demonstrates the same ambiguities and issues women face today- does presenting oneself as sexy and attractive make you open to objectification? To scandal? To spectacle? Does it go against any feminist sensibilities you may have? Or is it just a way of embracing modernity and asserting a certain form of femininity?

William Klein (b.1928) is renowned for his fashion photography and street documentary photographs. His ability to move between the two fields is one of the reasons I became so infatuated with his work. Klein's fashion photographs seem to poke fun at the world they have been made for, yet embody everything one wants from a fashion shoot. In his documentary photographs Klein was insistent that this was not a candid approach- his subjects knew they were being photographed, an element I find fascinating and find myself trying to figure out if they have chosen to ignore the photographer or 'act up' to the camera. Another remarkable aspect of his photographs is that they are hard to date. Faced with a diverse selection of his documentary photographs at the recent Tate Modern 'William Klein and Daido Moriyama' exhibition  I could not distinguish what photographs were from 1959 or 1995. 

The selection of photographs here do not do justice to Klein's diversity and ability but they show the range of his subject matter and the different areas of his work I find intriguing. The last photograph is one of the photograms Klein made for the Italian magazine Domus, an area that seems to be under researched. 

I have decided on Toni Frissell as the photographer I will focus my 'Fashion and The Everyday' presentation around. Her photographs from the 1930s and 40s were fresh and energetic, and mostly all taken outdoors away from the studio.

After a week of suffering from the flu I am happy to be back in cyber space and studying for my dress history course. I am currently deciding on which 1930s fashion photographer to focus on for an upcoming presentation- American or British? Documentary photography or editorial? 

Martin Munkacsi (often claimed as the 'father' of fashion photography) is one of the options. I first saw his work at the 'Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century' exhibition in 2011. 

His focus on the body, movement and space is still fresh and relevant today. Munkasci's photographs are streamlined and simple and paved the way for other fashion photographers such as Richard Avedon.