(Above) Catherine Yass, damage / burn / canal (2005). Courtesy the artist and Alison Jacques Gallery, London
Exhibition: The Photographic Object, Photographers' Gallery, London, until June 14 2009
Digital photography is now heavily intertwined in our lives. Mobile phones have the capacity to take 10 megapixel quality photos and cameras come in pocket friendly sizes. Facebook reports that more than 850 million photos are uploaded each month. Let's face it—our culture is obsessed with photography.
Given the saturation of the digital photographs in our society, how can artists differentiate themselves from the masses of amateurs? The answer may no longer lie in the medium itself, but in the manipulation of the medium. This show explores just that – the photograph as an object, a two and three-dimensional medium.
As the first independent gallery in Britain devoted to photography and the world's first publicly funded independent photography gallery, the idea of deconstructing photography as a medium is daring but perhaps not entirely surprising from the Gallery.
"We live in a culture increasingly dominated by the digital image," says Curator Clare Grafik. "We felt this was an opportunity to look at how artists might approach the idea of the photograph as an object, or as tactile material in its own right, and we wanted to explore the idea of working with photography as a process rather than an end product."
Nine artists represent the physical and tactile quality of the photograph often lost in today’s digital internet world, ranging from the established (Andy Warhol) to the emerging (Maurizio Anzeri). "We were keen to use an eclectic mix of established and younger and emerging artists works," explains Grafik, who chose "people who we felt approached the idea in a really original and interesting way."
Andy Warhol, Catholic Dolls (1976-86). The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London (2009)
The exhibition begins with an installation on the first floor of Vanessa Billy's work. Playing with space and texture, Billy incorporates tape, plastic, steel, marble and concrete in separate works with individual titles.
The presentation places visitors in the position of being invited in and yet restrained from viewing the work in its entirety. Steel beams extend from the edges of the gallery into the centre wall, cutting off two triangular sections in the gallery corners where most of the works lie. Though works are placed outside of the confines of the railing, visitors seem most intent on viewing those that are inaccessible.
Though the installation on the first floor is interesting, the works on the second floor relate more neatly with the theme of the Photographic Object exhibition. Maurizio Anzeri’s series of images are punctured and altered with colourful and patterned string. The black and white figures lose their identity in the portraits as the web of thread masks their face leaving only the orifices untouched.
Walead Beshty rolls or creases photographic paper to create large photograms (objects placed directly on photo-sensitive material), resulting in twisted and manipulated photographs and a crumpled final piece.
Gerhard Richter presents personal photos which might otherwise feel generic or unimportant, painted to entirely alter the reception – a brown room feels horrific with the application of irregular red paint.
Richter creates enormous tension in a photograph by leaving all but a slither of a man's eye and suit unpainted. Three photos of Florence use the same image but different overpainting for each, creating differing analyses of each underlying image, drawing the eye to different points in the image depending on the changes of the overpaint.
Priscilla (1940), Maurizio Anzeri
Wolfgang TIllmans questions the medium itself by extending the 2D photographic paper into space and creating a hanging sculpture, Warhol's repeated pictures are fastened together and pierced with thread, Annette Kelm’s images of textiles use the photo to flatten a 3D pattern and Alina Szapocznikow captures anthropomorphic chewing gum sculptures.
Smaller works by Catherine Yass are placed in a display case in the centre of the second gallery. Yass removes the traditional process of development and treats her photographic film in accordance with the subject. Images of water are drowned in a stormdrain and images of gas towers are burnt, challenging aesthetics of traditional artwork and the treatment of a traditional medium.
The labelling is confusing, something most contemporary galleries are afflicted with, and at times even wrong, but the overall content, theme and works themselves are strong and thought-provoking.
"It seems people enjoy thinking about photography away from the computer screen and as something that can be physically engaged with," says Grafik. The exhibition begs the questions – is this the future of photography?
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