Walking around the beautiful galleries of Somerset House last weekend demonstrated the unique power of photography when artfully printed and exhibited - the experience often took my breath away. The setting and people watching might have had something to do with it - Somerset House really is the most special place.
I went on three separate days to the fair (shout out to my sister Sheila who got me a VIP pass), and managed to cover most of the fair in that time. I have photography in my blood - it was my late father's profession and it's still how I feel most creative.(Do also check out Habie Schwarz' photos on Instagram from our Sunday visit there together).
So it was three days to reflect on the kind of images of the world that we can now capture, and how we use them in film. Pictures that are worth a thousand words (the length of this blog post). Images that - if used in a documentary might be fleeting, or in some way a background to 'the story' or something that a protagonist was saying. Don't we need more time to absorb and react to these images? It seems that in film we often only show the wonder, drama, spectacle and beauty of the world when it involves nature or animals. Why not other aspects of life?
It gave me some ideas for the panel discussion I'm moderating at next month's Sheffield Doc Fest with the Documentary Film Council, whose mission is in part to promote the non-TV side of documentary filmmaking.
The fair featured a talks programme, but many photographers spent time on the stands featuring their work. I enjoyed meeting Ragnar Axelsson, about whom my friend Margret Jonasdottir had made an excellent film, Last Days of the Arctic, 15 years ago. Iceland's best-known photographer, he was displaying incredible landscapes from Iceland and Greenland - I got to see some 'behind the scenes' on his iPhone from a recent trip to Greenland, complete with a scary polar bear story.
I also loved the photography of Cristina Mittermeier and Bruce Nicklen. I'd come across Cristina's work, and her sealegacy.org foundation, in research for a project I'm developing around Jules Verne. Her epic images, presented by Chicago's Hilton Contemporary gallery, stay with you, like those of Sebastião Salgado, who also had his own space in Somerset House.
Seeing Martin Parr's documentary photography pinned simply to a wall was refreshing after seeing a lot of work behind glass. His gallerist/publisher Jonathan Stephenson was there, displaying the many books that Parr has produced (he's certainly prolific). We chatted about a talk Parr had just done alongside his friend Grayson Perry, and how you'd turn that into a television programme. Maybe something like Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing ?
I enjoyed meeting Gigi Cifali, a photographic artist based in Milan whose work deals mostly with recent Italian realities. I was really struck by his dogged pursuit of evidence from the assassination of Aldo Moro in 1978. He had managed to get access to pieces held by the various police forces dealing with the case - a bloodied monogrammed shirt, a piece of the car and the blanket he was found in - and displayed these artefacts in close up. It was documentary photography which made you feel the weight and contemporary resonance of the anni di piombo.
(c) Habie Schwarz
Bettina Pittaluga is a French-Uruguayan photographer making exquisite and insightful images of people and their bodies - Habie created her own image of her reflected in one of her works. Bettina took the time to give us insights into her work and craft.
(c) Habie Schwarz
I also admired Canadian photographer Laura-Jane Petelko, represented by the GBS Gallery in Wells, Somerset. She exhibited works from her 'Ma' series, using images of dancers - suspended moments to evoke rather than depict. Ma is a Japanese concept that embraces negative space—not as emptiness, but as a meaningful pause. The printing technique was 'dye sublimation', a method of fusing images onto an aliminium backing.
At the other end of the scale was the wonderful analogue photobooth set up by the stairs by Catalan political scientist Rafael Hortala-Vallve who was happy that I'd listened to his interview on Radio London the week before. Photobooths still exist of course - but now using digital technology. Seeing Rafa's machine in action, creating prints the old fashioned chemical way, took me right back.
I learned about the Sarabande project from Emma Wingfield, a foundation set up by the late Alexander McQueen, which has subsidised studios for photographers and many other artists in Tottenham and Hackney. I made a promise to visit the Tottenham one, even though it's right next door to the Spurs stadium and I'm an Arsenal fan...then Emma told me she was too! Aware that I'm posting this the day after Spurs won the Europa League, well done guys.
Alexander McQueen was a fashion artist as much as a designer, and created extraordinary - and lasting - images. He once said 'I don't see the point in doing anything that doesn't create an emotion, good or bad. If you're disgusted, at least that's emotion. If you walk away and you forgot everything you saw, than I haven't done my job properly'. He also said that if he hadn't become a designer he would have liked to become a photojournalist. I found this fabulous book today in an airport lounge - published to accompany his 2015 Savage Beauty exhibition there.
Many publishers displayed their wares at Photo London - I learnt that the majority of fine art and photography books are published in Verona, where small but mighty bookmakers like EBS and Trifolio attract clients from around the world. Seems you don't have to be big to be successful if you have a quality product.
If you went to Photo London, feel free to post or message your thoughts. And if you have a picture that's worth a thousand words, I'd love to see it!
