Reviews

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Humanity and Inhumanity - George Rodger - book review by Matthew Rake
Acquired Images - exhibition review by Peter Marshall
Current shows at the Barbican - exhibition review by Peter Marshall
Shooting the Heart - TV review by Peter Jennings


Humanity and Inhumanity

Mathew Rake

Don't what ever you do, show George Rodger's photos of the Blitz to anyone who had the misfortune to live through the war. The photos, published in the now remaindered book Humanity and Inhumanity (Phaidon), confirm all you've ever heard about the war. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times - but one thing was for sure:
Hitler hadn't bargained for the British mettle.

Life goes on in Rodger's photos: postmen still do their rounds although some of the addresses no longer exist; a canteen is up and running at dawn for the bombed; civilian defence workers even manage to serve tea in china cups.

In one particularly startling photo, an air raid warden makes a call from a phone box, although everything in the picture - the houses and pub behind and the box itself - has been blown to pieces.

This defiance-in-spite-of-all was exactly the image Churchill needed to show to Britain and especially America. Rodger was photographing the Blitz for a feature in American Life. The photos showed Britain worthy of America's support, and probably helped in a small way in the victory.

But another set of photos, not beholden to the over-riding need of winning the war, could have told another story. One picture, in fact, does begin to tell it. It is of an old lady in an underground shelter, lying down with a walking stick by her side and a gaunt, hopeless expression. She is alone, apparently abandoned.

This photo, perhaps, reminds us of that for every act of courage in the Blitz, there was an act of cowardice. For every person miraculously recovered from the bombed wreckage, thousands died. And this, I suspect, must have had a dark and dispiriting effect on morale.

The old story is that the Blitz served only to bolster resolve; if this is true, why did Britain continue indiscriminate night-time bombing of Germany until 1945?
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Acquired Images

Peter Marshall

Photographs from David Hurns Collection, on show at Photofusion - Part II ends 27 March

A sanguine Julia Margaret Cameron goddess gazes firmly across towards Eve Arnold's dwarf, then a Sue Packer doll-like baby propped in a fireplace. These three works both start and set the scene for the rest of the show - works by some of the best-known photographers from the last 130 years or so, along with some other often equally fascinating prints from the less well known (including anon). The concentration is on people, and on photojournalism, but with some outstanding work outside this area or on its more individual fringes as well as such interesting curiosities as Arthur Mole's human Statue of Liberty posed by 18000 men (the US shield at Camp Custer, Battle Creek, Mich with 30,000 is a clearer design, but less impressive.)

David Hurn has managed to collect my favourite Burk Uzzle, two of Capa's finest, a good Frank, Thurston Hopkins's chauffeured poodle, a prime example of Friedlander's obsession with street furniture, one of my favourite Ray Moore reflections, a surreal Bruce Gilden haircut... and there's a Brandt, Koudelka, Salgado, Parr, Reas, Franck... Many of the photographers involved were or are. like Hurn, members of Magnum, that most select club of photographers; and much of the collection was acquired as a fringe benefit, direct from the photographers, often in exchange for his own prints. Such exchanges are perhaps less common these days with prints from well-known names selling for high prices, but photographers can still produce interesting collections from those they know by this method - something that we should certainly encourage within LIP. Perhaps we should even set up a `print exchange' to encourage it.

Of those that were new to me, what sticks most firmly in my mind is a family group, 4 young boys and a woman, naked facing the camera in a white painted living room, taken on large format in beautiful window light with hanging plants, trailing from their pots, by John Benson.

Worth a trip south of the river to Brixton - now rapidly becoming gentrified territory. Photofusion is a minute's walk from the tube and BR stations at 17a Electric Lane. By the time you read this, the works I saw will have been replaced by the second tranche (equally dazzling I'm told) from David Hurn's magnificent collection.

The Gallery is open Tue, Thur, Fri 10-6, Wed 10-8 and Sat 10-4.
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Photography at the Barbican

Peter Marshall

The Barbican has a pretty good record for showing photography over recent years which both its current (until 28 March) shows continue.

On the upper floor is Picasso and Photography: The Dark Mirror, a show based around his enormous interest in photography and collaborations with such photographers as Brassai, Dora Maar, Gjon Mili and Andre Villers. Perhaps a surprising omission is any mention of his connections with Steichen and Stieglitz, who gave his work its first US exhibition and published it in Camerawork - Volume 36 was illustrated by 16 Steiglitz photogravures and a single Picasso drawing and the Special Number for 1912 was covered the work of Picasso and Matisse, (and included an essay on them by Getrude Stein, a portrait of whom was one of 3 Picasso works in the following years Special Number.)

What surprises and even shocks is the continuing evidence throughout the show in Picasso's own photographs of the inability of such a visually gifted person to come to terms with the camera. Occasionally, mainly in portraits of women, he starts to resemble at least a competent amateur, but otherwise these could largely be the enprints of any ungifted hanger-on. What gives some a peculiar interest is of course their relation to the paintings for which they were the source material. Photographically the most interesting work is from Mili with his well known series of Picasso painting with light.

Downstairs is a curiously mixed show, Africa by Africa: A Photographic View. It's well worth a visit if only for the work of German Jurgen Schadeburg and the team of African photographers working for Drum in apartheid South Africa, including Peter Magubane, Bob Gosani, Alf Kumalo and Gopal Naransamy. My favourite is I think the only picture by Barbey Desai, a woman ecstatic in front of a dance-hall stage with a band and sax blowing behind her.

Much of the show is concerned with attempting to establish the existence of a peculiarly African portrait tradition, but at the start it showcases the work of Mama Casset (1908-92) which seems so strongly in the European vogue of the times. Seydou Keita's posed studio work with its patterned textiles on sitters and backgrounds and carefully chosen accessories is full of delights, and Philip Kwame Apagya's formal portraits in front of commissioned painted backdrops of country houses, modern kitchens, airports are both highly amusing (was I politically incorrect?) but also unintentionally disturbing in the insight they offer into an increasing cultural vacuity. This is the dream and it is empty and materialistic. He seemed a very nice guy when we talked. Samuel Fosso's series of large self-portraits fitted well into the post-modern desert occupying many galleries in the eighties, but was perhaps more engaging in reproduction than when confonted with it's large scale presence.

In the last room there is interesting current work from photographers from South Africa; Santu Mofokeng in a series reflecting on spirituality and in Andrew Tshabangu's views of townships and urban farms, and large-format colour portraits in peoples homes by Zwelethu Mthethwa.

It's a very mixed in every way. Africa is too vast for this to be more than a very limited snapshot, and it doesn't really hang together as an experience.
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Shooting the Heart

Peter Jennings

I watched with interest, as I am sure many photographers did, Steven Poliakoff's TV drama, Shooting the Past, on BBC Two. It seemed preservation of photographic collections was the central issue. The real issue, however, was the uniqueness and complexity of the human brain, which no computer or corporation can destroy. This was the real heart of the drama.

Oswald, the main - albeit fictional character - is now immortalised in photographic circles. He dominated the idiosyncratic photo- library where priceless prints were seen hanging on washing lines. Confusion may now reign in the minds of some as to the worth of photographs, but there is no doubt that in a world of bland, corporate identity, in life-style, TV drama - and often photography - we need as many Oswalds' (played brilliantly by Timothy Spall) as we can get. `Without him, we have no future,' as Marilyn (Lindsay Duncan - also good) said in the last episode. He symbolised those who follow their own path, photographic or otherwise, and stick to what they believe in a changing world - yet are also streetwise. `He's a very modern person, really,' Marilyn said to the disbelief of her American buyer. Oswald realised, or rather writer Steven Poliakoff realises, that real progress is not to do with promoting the use of technology without question, but ultimately recognising and promoting the human spirit. Those frantically imaging with the latest gismo take note.

`Isn't photography a wonderful thing, `said Oswald, face to camera, at one point in the drama. It is, and we can praise Poliakoff for trying to use the medium of television to achieve what others have failed to achieve in three decades - he may have interested the public in the art of photography. But all could be wasted; those newly awakened to photography will turn around to find that the gurus of the arts, in this fair land, have downgraded photography - not recognising it as a major art form. The real enemy of photo- libraries/photography, as portrayed in Shooting' may not be the business world - which, helpfully, sets ever increasing monetary value on photographs - but the Arts world!


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