Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera

28 May  -  3 October 2010

From Tate Modern website: "Exposed offers a fascinating look at pictures made on the sly, without the explicit permission of the people depicted. With photographs from the late nineteenth century to present day, the pictures present a shocking, illuminating and witty perspective on iconic and taboo subjects. 

Beginning with the idea of the 'unseen photographer', Exposed presents 250 works by celebrated artists and photographers including Brassaï's erotic Secret Paris of the 1930s images; Weegee's iconic photograph of Marilyn Monroe; and Nick Ut's reportage image of children escaping napalm attacks in the Vietnam War. Sex and celebrity is an important part of the exhibition, presenting photographs of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, Paris Hilton on her way to prison and the assassination of JFK. Other renowned photographers represented in the show include Guy Bourdin, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philip Lorca DiCorcia, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, Lee Miller, Helmut Newton and Man Ray. 

The UK is now the most surveyed country in the world. We have an obsession with voyeurism, privacy laws, freedom of media, and surveillance - images captured and relayed on camera phones, YouTube or reality TV. Much of Exposed focuses on surveillance, including works by both amateur and press photographers, and images produced using automatic technology such as CCTV. The issues raised are particularly relevant in the current climate, with topical debates raging around the rights and desires of individuals, terrorism and the increasing availability and use of surveillance. Exposed confronts these issues and their implications head-on."

Thomas Demand, Camera 2007

© Thomas Demand

Garry Winogrand's New York (Couple Kissing, Girl Staring at Camera, Tortilla Factory), 1969.

Shizuka Yokomizo's Stranger No 2, 1999

Update:

Review

Review

It was a pleasure to meet both Sally and Virginia Mann, at the "Sally Mann in conversation with Camilla Brown" session at the National Portrait Gallery last week. The conversation was very engaging. The main topics of discussion centered around "What remains", "Immediate Family" and the wet plate collodian technique followed by a lively discussion on Mann's new body of work which evolves around the theme of slavery/racism/religion. Six "work-in-progress" images were shown for the first time and the London audience were invited to respond. Sally Mann: "The Family and the Land" exhibition is on at  The Photographers Gallery London until 19th September 2010.

image: sherry cuttler

"Futurising is a one-stop shop of opportunities, advice and information for all future and current creative graduates from all universities across the UK. The first opportunities and recruitment festival specifically tailored to the needs of creative graduates will take place at the Nicholls & Clarke Building, Shoreditch High Street, London on 29th-30th June 2010. Whether you are seeking your first step on the ladder, already in work and want more options, or an employer wanting to connect with the cream of the young creative world, Futurising is the place to be."



Futurising: The full story - read interview with Marice Cumber, Director and Creator of Futurising.

The Free Range graduate art & design show takes place every June and July at the Old Truman Brewery.  The show provides the best platform for graduate art and design students to showcase their work to both public and industry. Free Range is a one stop shop featuring more than 100 university courses from across the UK providing visitors with a unique opportunity to meet the hottest new creative talent all under one roof. Shows rotate weekly over the 8 week season and are curated by disciplines including design, graphics, photography, art and interiors.

For more information and full listings of events and directions to the Old Truman Brewery, visit www.free-range.org.uk.

Out of this world photographic project? Send your face into space

Debbie Grossman's commentary on her work, My Pie Town, via her website 

"My Pie Town reworks and re-imagines a body of images originally photographed by Russell Lee for the United States Farm Security Administration in 1940. Using Photoshop to modify Lee's pictures, I have created an imaginary, parallel world - a Pie Town populated exclusively by women.

"In this work, I take a selection of Lee's beautifully-photographed body of images and re-imagine, revise, and reconstruct them using Photoshop. The archive I have created resembles Lee's with an important difference - in My Pie Town, the rag-tag community of homesteaders is populated exclusively by women.

In some of my revisions, I have taken male bodies and rendered them to look like masculine women; in others, I have taken pairs of women, shifted their distance and body language, and brought them closer to create a sense of intimacy. In some of the pictures I have created women so masculine, or so ambiguously gendered, that they may not, for some viewers, clearly read as one gender or the other. I've also left a few images untouched, allowing for another dimension of re-reading Lee's work".  

For comparison check out "Savouring Russell Lee's Pie Town 2005" @ Americansuburbx

Image by Debbie Grossman, 2010. Jessie Evans-Whinery, homesteader, with her wife Edith Evans-Whinery and their baby

Wolfgang Tillmans forthcoming exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London will focus on both the figurative and the abstract in Tillmans' work, and embrace a broad range of subjects; from unconventional eloquent portraits, to large-scale, colour-saturated abstractions that capture the beauty of photography's chemical processes. 26^th June - 29 August 2010

Wolfgang Tillmans
Wald (Briol I), 2008

PETITES MORTS

"In French, there is a phrase - petit mort, or 'little death' - that alludes to the orgasm. For me, photographing is like this.I am a pack of nerves while waiting for the moment, and this feeling grows and grows and grows and then it explodes, it is a physical joy, a dance, space and time reunited. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Like the end of Joyce's Ulysses. To see is everything."

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Fabrica, the Benetton group's communication research center, and Forma, International Photography Centre, present the third edition of the F Award, an international photography contest for concerned photography open to photographers from all over the world.  The most interesting project will be awarded with an economical contribution of 20,000 euro and with the possibility to do an exhibition and to publish a book.  A special section, F25, for photographers under 25, will see the winner awarded with a one year scholarship at Fabrica. Submissions will be accepted until 31 May 2010. Entry form available at www.fff.ph       F Award 2010.pdf

Excellent news.  Forthcoming Exhibition at the Photographers Gallery, London

The Family and the Land: Sally Mann

18^th June - 19^th September 2010

Press Release