This exhibition is everything it promises and more. The tag line, simply 'photography past and present', underplays the vast array of questions raised in this dazzling showcase of old master paintings and photographic responses to them.
Flowers have long been used by painters in Vanitas pieces; visual reminders of the immediacy and inevitability of death. In photography this melancholy is pushed further. Sam Taylor Wood's iconic video installation of a plate of rotting fruit is both beautiful and repulsive at once; death creeps over the fruit at a startling rate which compels the viewer to watch despite their knowing the inevitable is on its way. Sarah Jones' over-exposed photographs of rose bushes use the bight flash of the camera to block the daylight from the park the picture was taken in and suspend the roses in time and in blackness. Like picking a flower plucks it from reality and forces it into a bitter-sweet destiny of love and death, taking a picture, in Barthes is to be believed, captures reality in a cruel way so that the past always has the power to live beyond reality and be truly haunting.
Thomas Struth's long exposure photographs of families echo Victorian photographs where people didn't smile largely because posing was so boring. With Struth's work the personality of each sitter shines through and we are captivated by his images.
Ironically photography is banned in the National Gallery, to protect the original images. A photography exhibition where images such as Struth's National Gallery are displayed, recalls issues of Benjamin's aura. Whatever your thoughts on the power of the original, this exhibition is well worth seeing for yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment