Out of Focus: Photography @ Saatchi Gallery, London

Just opened to the public at Saatchi Gallery is the eagerly anticipated Out of Focus, an exciting survey of contempoaray photography featuring a kaleidoscopic range of work with artists using photography in diverse and innovative ways. Artists featured include Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, John Stezaker, Mitch Epstein and may others in what should be a fascinating and diverse look at the state of the medium.  

Out of Focus, the first major photography exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery since the highly acclaimed and controversial 2001 show I Am a Camera, presents 38 artists who offer an international perspective on current trends in photography, working with the medium in diverse, innovative and arresting ways. 

This exhibition comes at a time when the world of photography is going through one of its richest and also most complicated moments. Millions of images are being uploaded onto the internet every day making available more visual stimuli than ever before; old ideas about ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ photographers are being upturned; the traditional boundaries between various territories within the world of photography - fashion, documentary, advertising and art - are blurring into one another in unexpected, exciting and not always tension-free ways; and even the labels ‘artist’ and ‘photographer’ are the subject of debate (Olaf Breuning responds to this thorny topic by describing himself as “a four-wheel drive, all-purpose terrain vehicle”).  

The work included in the show has been brought together to "challenge the received rules and regulations of the medium" while the artists featured within flag up shared concerns of the body and gender tensions, mind and memory, a sense of place and home, the face, bonds of family, friends, tribes and other subcultures, but display a huge range of approaches from classic documentary photography to the reworking of found images, from capturing collaborative performances to photographs of three-dimensional assemblages themselves made out of photographs. 

Out of Focus features works by Michele Abeles, Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Olaf Breuning, Jonny Briggs, Elina Brotherus, Anders Clausen, Mat Collishaw, JH Engström, Mitch Epstein, Andreas Gefeller, Daniel Gordon, Noemie Goudal, Katy Grannan, Luis Guispert, Matthew Day Jackson, Chris Levine, Matt Lipps, Ryan McGinley, Mohau Modisakeng, Laurel Nakadate, Sohei Nishino, David Noonan, Marlo Pascual, Mariah Robertson, Hannah Sawtell, David Benjamin Sherry, Meredyth Sparks, Hannah Starkey, John Stezaker, A L Steiner, Mikhael Subotzky, Yumiko Utsu, Sara VanDerBeek, Nicole Wermers, Jennifer West and Pinar Yolaçan. 

A catalogue to accompany the exhibition is published by Booth-Clibborn Editions with an essay by William E Ewing, former director of the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne. The exhibition runs until 22 July 2012.

Gillian Wearing @ The Whitechapel, London

© Gillian Wearing

With a recent string of exhibitions devoted entirely to photography, it seems The Whitechapel Gallery has converted itself into one of London’s primary destinations for fans of the medium. Off the back of highly-acclaimed solo shows of the work Paul Graham, Thomas Struth and John Stezaker, we are now being treated to the first major international survey of Turner Prize-winning British artist Gillian Wearing. 1000 Words Editorial assistant, Sean Stoker, went along to the media preview and was impressed with the results.

For more than twenty years Gillian Wearing’s work has shown a fascination with the performative aspects of everyday life, exploring this through photography that both embraces and breaks away from aspects of a documentary tradition. Split between three galleries, this delectable exhibition shows a range of work, from Wearing’s photographic series Signs that Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say, made in the early nineties, to her latest video, Bully from 2010.

Wearing’s portraits and mini-dramas reveal a paradox, given the chance to dress up, put on a mask or act out a role, the liberation of anonymity allows us to be more truly ourselves. The exhibition begins with the artist herself, dancing in a shopping mall, blissfully unaware of her bemused audience. The idea of performance continues with works including Wearing’s 1997 masterpiece, 10–16. Adults lip synch the voices and act out the physical tics of seven children in a captivating film which moves from the breathless excitement of a ten year old to the existential angst of an adolescent.

Bearing witness to such forthright confessions is occasionally uncomfortable, but the stories told are powerful and emotive. Because of this, Wearing’s work treads the line between real life and performance in a way that leaves the viewer unsure which is which. This feeling is heightened by the route navigated through the gallery. From the dark and intimate confessional chambers on the ground floor we must climb a set of stairs to the next gallery, giving us a much needed pause to process all that has been confided in us before the open and light spaces that follow, including Wearing’s iconic 1992 series, Signs that Say What You Want Them to Say, and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say where strangers are offered paper and pen to communicate their message, messages that are still relevant twenty years later. In the upper galleries we enter the world of private subjectivity. An advert - Confess All On Video. Don’t Worry, You Will Be In Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian… (1994) attracted a series of disturbing disclosures. Wearing then turns the mask from metaphor to reality to explore her own identity, simultaneously disguising and exposing herself while adopting the guise of family members or artists such as Diane Arbus or Andy Warhol, revealing her own background and influences in the process.

This comprehensive survey, which also premieres new films and sculptures, shows Wearing’s ability to remove the mask from everyday British reservations and lay bare occasionally uncomfortable truths about ourselves. She bypasses the often clichéd stigmata of the dispossessed and traumatised in order to focus on finding the extraordinary in everyone of us. Combining an unflinching honesty with an acute sense of humour, Wearing unveils the best and worst of us, like a joke amongst friends, subtly indulging our innate pessimism and self-deprecating nature in a way that is a joy to behold. The exhibition runs until 17 June 2012.

1000 Words Photography Magazine #13

We are proud to present issue 13 of 1000 Words, “Uncertainty”, our first release of 2012. To view it please go to www.1000wordsmag.com

“I can make no statement about reality clearer than my own relationship to reality; and this has a great deal to do with imprecision, uncertainty, transience, incompleteness, or whatever. But this doesn’t explain the pictures. At best it explains what led to their being painted.” So said Gerhard Richter whose paintings have taught us a thing or two about such matters.

Photography’s own intriguing relationship to uncertainty is what we have set out to enact within the current edition of 1000 Words. Featuring Roger Ballen, Natasha Caruana, Viviane Sassen, Raymond Meeks and Deborah Luster, Christer Strömholm and W.M. Hunt alongside essays, reviews and interviews by Gerry Badger, Sue Steward, Peggy Sue Amison, Louise Clements, Michael Grieve and Brad Feuerhelm, the bodies of work in this issue tap into a fundamental mood of uncertainty and reveal some of its dimensions of expression: the mystery caused by a lack of knowledge on the part of the observer or the fraught politics of representation when portraying ‘the other’; the unnerving combination of a documentary approach with staging and construction or the ambiguity between fact, fiction and stories; the experimental inaccuracies of an image or the fragmented and indeterminate narratives that typify many of today's photobooks are all but a few examples.

In the dedicated Books section, we cover Christian Patterson, Morten Anderson and Ori Gerhst’s recently released titles with reviews from Michael Grieve, Sean Stoker and Oliver Whitehead.

At best, photography should embrace the most difficult things of our world - the dissonant, the awkward, the unclassifiable - in order to help us posit new understandings of what it means to be a human being. It could be said that photography which is analogous with existentialism, an investigation of subjectivity, is the kind of photography that has the most beauty, poetry and truth, especially at a time when the world seems all too unsure of itself.

Once again, 1000 thanks to all the photographers, writers, editorial and art departments as well as of course our advertisers for making this magazine possible.

Hijacked III @QUAD, Derby

© Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin

Just opened at QUAD Derby, Hijacked III is a "major survey exhibition and publication featuring the best photographic talents from or within Australia and the UK". Known for halting the status quo, arresting the scene and exploding a new perspective on the practices of contemporary photography, this third edition of the biennale Hijacked series explores the world through the eyes and works of 32 international photographers from or within the UK and Australia. The exhibition will be on display simultaneously in QUAD with a partner version at PICA in Perth Australia and events will include live link ups for workshops, artist’s talks. Hijacked III is curated by Louise Clements QUAD & FORMAT International Photography Festival UK, Mark McPherson Big City Press Australia, Leigh Robb PICA Aus.

The featured photographers from Australia are: Tony Albert, Warwick Baker, Bindi Cole, Christopher Day, Tarryn Gill & Pilar Mata Dupont, Toni Greaves, Petrina Hicks, Alin Huma, Katrin Koenning, David Manley, Jesse Marlow, Tracey Moffatt, Justin Spiers, Michelle Tran, Christian Thompson, Michael Ziebarth.

Those representing the UK are: Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Natasha Caruana, Maciej Dakowicz, Melinda Gibson, Leonie Hampton, Rasha Kahil, Seba Kurtis, Trish Morrissey,  Laura Pannack, Sarah Pickering, Zhao Renhui, Simon Roberts, Helen Sear, Luke Stephenson, Wassink & Lundgren, Tereza Zelenkova.

HijackedIII:Contemporary Photography from Australia and the UK will be on display in QUAD until 6 May. Below is a video interview with the curators Louise Clements, Mark McPherson and Leigh Robb, courtesy of Troika Editions, and a version of the exhibition catalogue essay, re-published with permission.

Hijacked is a focused photographic anthology that explores two geographically divorced, historically connected communities. In this instance the United Kingdom and Australia are brought into the spotlight to locate and stimulate conflicting dialogues that that provoke the consideration of cultural specificity and diversity. The participating photographers were sourced via an open and collaborative process by Big City Press, QUAD/FORMAT and PICA, through the use of blogs, social and professional networks thereby expanding the reach and ability of the project to reflect the multiplicity of cultural identities. It is clear throughout the book that the narratives, influences, differences and specificities of the UK and Australia provide rich material for photographers to refer to. From becoming a nun after being proposed to by God via YouTube, to national identity and pride on the battlefield of sport; the appropriation and dissection of the photograph as contemporary art, to the aborigination of objects and the poetics of Welsh nightlife; together with the influence of the pop culture conflicts between Neighbours and Home and Away versus Eastenders and Coronation Street; alongside the fact of having shared Queen.  The project comes with no agenda to answer the questions about whether there is an Australian or UK identity in photography. Instead it creates a framework that invites deconstruction and reflection while showcasing the socially, culturally, politically and aesthetically diverse practices and points of view from a wide selection of photographers who work within and outside the contexts of the two countries.

Certainly no-one solely derives their interpretation of the world purely from the mass media and the internet, we are still unquestionably rooted in local, social, educational and familial landscapes, all of which can be positioned around the world. The idea of nation or a national identity relates to the power and control of communities, based on adopted myths of racial or cultural origin. Asserting and maintaining these identities was a key part of the imperial process and an important feature of much imperial and colonial politics. Instead of seeing the geographic definitions of the United Kingdom and Australia as singular identities, cultural hybridity emphasises their mutual intermingling, reference points and inevitable homogenisation with other international threads. This model of hybridity is based on thousands of influences entering into a form of dialogue through the fluidity of access to digital information, international social communication and global mobility. We understand and live simultaneously amongst multiple languages with their numerous modes of influence and significance, whether conscious of this influence or not. Between these languages we have to negotiate meaning, structure memory and define identity. We have become 'Janus' type figures with one face looking at the past and the other towards the future, whilst living in a post-modern, multi cultural landscape in which we must wrestle for cultural space. Artists have embraced this hybridised position not as a failure or denigration, but as a part of the contestation inherent in the weave of cultures.

In art, hybridity expands the possibilities for experimentation and innovation through the blurring and cross-breeding of traditional definitions between practices. Artists are notorious for their ability to hijack; meaning to stop and hold up, to seize control by use of force in order to divert, or appropriate, a deliberate attempt to action to change direction. Like the Situationist tactic of détournement championed by Guy Debord, it is an intentional action that disrupts and ruptures the habitual, turning it aside from its normal course or purpose.  All cultures can be defined by their ability to assimilate new ideas and adapt to change.  Although we live in an exposed version of remix culture, the phenomenon of remixing is not new. Digital technologies like networking, hypermedia and sampling have significantly accelerated the speed at which cultural material is distributed and made available to be repurposed; the ability to generate and incorporate new combinations of ideas is normal.  Contesting boundaries, breaking rules and creating hybrids occupies much artistic work, however, creating meaning by whatever materials or techniques are employed remains central to artistic practice. Be it the exploration of the sensibility for suburban melancholy, Indigenous culture and gender politics in Australia or the decadent drinking habits, reinterpretation of archives and curious weekend leisure pursuits in the United Kingdom the photographers and writers included in Hijacked3 will take you on a journey into the incredible and extraordinary worlds on opposite sides of the globe.  From surprising perspectives on portraiture and critically engaged collage, to images that map society at its best and worst moments, these conflicting photographic practices question what it means to look, create and construct images in the 21st century. This publication is a major survey contributing to the field and documenting the best photographic talents of today.  Representing the leading, boundary testing, fearless, fringe dwelling artists, whose work is rich with evocative, poetic, confounding and confronting imagery, ready to communicate, offering a transitory and relational view into the life and times of both countries and beyond.

Louise Clements is the Artistic Director and Curator at QUAD and also the Co-founder and Director of FORMAT International Photography Festival, Derby, UK. 

1000 Words Talk: Simon Baker in conversation with Chris Shaw

All images © Chris Shaw

*10.04.12-SOLD OUT*

1000 Words is pleased to present Before and After the Night Porter, a conversation with Simon Baker and Chris Shaw.

Daniel Blau Gallery, London 
11 April 2012, 7pm
£5

During Tokyo Photo Fair 2011, Simon Baker, Curator of Photography and International Art at Tate, presented the work of British photographer, Chris Shaw, together with Japanese post-war, avant-garde photographers of the Provoke movement, Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, Kirkuji Kirwada, Takuma Nakahira, Masahisa Fukase and Ikko Narrahara, who, from a distance, served as a major inspiration to Shaw’s attitude and approach beginning with his celebrated book, Life as a Night Porter. The evening’s discussion will examine Baker and Shaw’s passion for Japanese photography and its influence on his practice.

To book your ticket, click on the Paypal button below:

Chris Shaw began working in London hotels in 1993 and over a ten year period he created what would become Life as a Night Porter which was published in 2006 by Twin Palms. Born in 1967, Shaw studied photography at the West Surrey College of Art and Design at Farnham, graduating in 1989, and has had solo exhibitions at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, GUP Gallery in Amsterdam and 779 Gallery in Paris. Shaw has also been shown as part of Paris Photo and Arles Photography Festival in 2005.  He lives in Paris.

His work was featured in issue 12 of 1000 Words.

Simon Baker is Curator of Photography and International Art at Tate. He is Tate’s first curator of photography and joined in 2009 from the University of Nottingham, where he was Associate-Professor of Art History. He has researched and written widely on surrealism, photography, and contemporary art; and co-curated the exhibitions Undercover Surrealism: Georges Bataille and Documents (Hayward Gallery, London, 2006) and Close-Up: Proximity and defamiliarisation in art, film, and photography (The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2008).

Our talks are open to everyone. We recommend booking early to avoid disappointment. Numbers are limited to 60 people.

Daniel Blau Gallery
51 Hoxton Square
London N1 6BP
+44 (0) 207 831 7998
london@danielblau.com

www.danielblau.com/london

*10.04.12-SOLD OUT*

Hisaji Hara @Michael Hoppen Gallery, London

© Hisaji Hara

A series of beautiful, monochrome portraits by Hisaji Hara who has modelled his photographic compositions upon paintings by Balthus (1908-2001), one of the most revered and controversial artists of the twentieth century, will go on display to the public at Michael Hoppen Gallery this Friday.

In the style of the Modern Master, Hara creates scenes imbued with an unsettling combination of innocence and eroticism. The models have the light, unselfconscious attitudes of playful children and yet their postures invite the eye to see them as sexual young women. Moreover, in reinventing the pictures, Hisaji Hara has chosen to dress his teenage subjects in school uniform, thereby emphasizing the uncomfortable transitional period between child- and adulthood. We feel as if we are the quiet, almost intrusive voyeurs to moments of youthful innocence.

Hisaji Hara is technically brilliant and very meticulous in his preparation for each image. The stage-set for these photographs is the derelict building of a privately run medical clinic used in the 1940s and 50s. In order to emulate the depth and eerie atmosphere found in Balthus' paintings, Hara employs a number of techniques that transcend the use of photographic craft alone in order to mimic the skewed perspective of Balthus' work, including smoke machines, specially commissioned furniture and unseen additions to his subjects’ costumes to create a strange angularity to their dress. Hara's camera skills are evident in the use of multiple exposures and focuses whilst partially blocking the lens to create unusual depths of field which only add to the mystery of the scenes. The exhibition finishes on 31 March 2012.

Photographer's Own: Paper Negatives @Daniel Blau Gallery, London

What we see here are unique paper negatives from the 1850’s by some of the greatest old master photographers, a small but perfectly formed exhibition of which opens today at the London arm of Daniel Blau Gallery. They are the true originals, created by the light reflecting off the photographed subject. For their beauty, Zeitgeist, rarity and provenance they rank amongst the greatest treasures of photography.

The paper negative had its heyday for a brief period in the early days of photography until circa 1860. Because the negative is the plate from which a multitude of positive prints can be made, it normally remained in the photographer’s possession during his lifetime. Only later would it enter into public collections by will of the photo-grapher or the family’s donation. It is rare to find negatives by famous artists such as Le Secq, Nègre, de Beaucorps or de Clercq in private hands.

A negative can be so much more evocative than a positive print. We realise from the blurred movement of the clock’s hand on the picture of the Palazzo Vecchio that it took three minutes of exposure time to take the photo, long enough to empty the square of all the people moving about. Their movements made them invisible to the camera. Only the building remains in its static existence with the guard’s rifles leaning against the wall.

Like a printing plate, the photographic negative has long been regarded as a stage in a working process.  Surrealism and other lessons in art have taught us how to look at the more abstract pictures of the world. We have since begun to appreciate the photographic paper negative with its saturated, ominous dark against the ethereal pale as a work of art in its own mysterious beauty.

This is truly a prized opportunity to see such precious photographs outside of a museum context, some of which are even magically backlit and are sure to transfix the connoisseurs of nineteenth century photography amongst our readers. Photographer's Own: Paper Negatives runs until 31 March.