CAPITAL at George & Jørgen
George & Jørgen is a small gallery in narrow Morocco Street, just around the corner from the White Cube, Bermondsey. It is easy to miss, with no ostentatious signage or flashy shop window front. Visitors must overcome the suspicion that they are in the wrong place, push open the grey front door and climb the...
Photographers on Film: Mark Lewis in ‘Peeping Tom’
Cinema is a medium built upon photography, but it has not always been kind to photographers. In the cinematic imagination the photographer is often emotionally detached, exploitative, sexually aggressive or even psychopathic. One thinks of arrogant Thomas in Blow-Up (1966), Harlen Maguire photographing corpses in Road to Perdition (2002), or Robin Williams’ obsessive lab technician...
Photographers on Film: Dick Avery in ‘Funny Face’
Funny Face (1957) is a light musical comedy directed by Stanley Donen. Set to a Gershwin score, it centres on the romance between Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) and Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn). Avery is a fashion photographer at ‘Quality’ magazine; Stockton is the Greenwich Village intellectual who becomes his model. Frivolous fantasy it may be,...
Photographers on Film: L. B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies in ‘Rear Window’
For the first in our new series ‘Photographers on Film’, we’ve chosen one of cinema’s most famous photojournalists: L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’ (1954). Jeff, played with typical affability by James Stewart, is confined to his flat with a broken leg. It is a sweltering New York summer. Bored and frustrated, he...
‘Lynne Cohen: Nothing is Hidden’ at the Design Exchange, Toronto
Lynne Cohen has been photographing domestic and institutional interiors since the 1970s. Using an 8 x 10 view camera, she takes detailed pictures of living rooms and laboratories, private clubs and swimming pools, all notably void of human figures. Cohen was awarded the first Scotiabank Photography Award in 2011 and a selection of her work is now...
Thomas Struth’s Family Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery
In July 2011, the Whitechapel Galley launched a major retrospective of the work of Thomas Struth. In the same year Struth was commissioned to take a portrait of the Queen (currently on display in The Queen: Art and Image). Now, the National Portrait Gallery have unveiled a small display of Struth’s portraiture, comprising three images:...
Willie Doherty: Photo/text/85/92 at Matt’s Gallery
An exhibition of black-and-white photographs by Willie Doherty is currently on display at Matt’s Gallery, London. Taken from 1985-1992, the images reflect Doherty’s ongoing concerns: territory, land ownership, and borders, both political and geographical. Doherty was born in 1959 in Derry. Much of his work draws on his own experience of the ‘Troubles’ and the...
Festival Focus: ‘Bill Cunningham New York’ screening at Cube Cinema
As part of the Bristol Festival of Photography, the Cube Cinema will be screening Richard Press’ acclaimed documentary ‘Bill Cunningham New York’. Released in the US in 2011, the documentary has finally made it to UK screens this spring and offers an insightful look at Cunninghams’ life and work. One of the world’s most famous...
‘Selling Dreams: One Hundred Years of Fashion Photography’ at the RWA
The Royal West of England Academy currently plays host to Selling Dreams: One Hundred Years of Fashion Photography. Named for Irving Penn’s famous statement that fashion photography is ‘selling dreams, not clothes’, the exhibition comprises sixty works from the collections of the V&A. Combined with original magazine spreads from the likes of Harpers Bazaar and...
‘Spotlight on Peter Rand’ at the National Portrait Gallery
Today the National Portrait Gallery opens the first solo display of photographs by Peter Rand. Celebrating the NPG’s recent acquisition of works by Rand, the display comprises 10 portraits, all taken in the 1960s. Born in 1940, Rand attended the infamous Ealing Art and Photographic College in the late 1950s. He went on to...
In Review: Hisaji Hara at the Michael Hoppen Gallery
In February the Michael Hoppen Gallery unveiled the first European solo show of works by Hisaji Hara. The show demonstrated Hara’s studious approach and meticulous technique in a display of beautiful, if disquieting, works. Hara painstakingly recreates works by the painter Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, commonly known as Balthus. Born in 1908, Balthus painted controversial...
Fergus Heron at The Front View, Whitstable
Until 22nd April The Front View gallery presents Fergus Heron’s first solo show. Currently Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Brighton, Heron creates meticulously researched works, focusing on landscape and architecture. Exploring collective experience and perception, Heron’s subjects include forests, shopping centres and coasts. His photographs are captured using available light and are...