I was again struck by the irony of being in New York, attending an art gallery and seeing an exhibition of a very British photographer - in this instance Martin Parr and his "Life's a Beach" series. As with the Paul Graham pieces I was reminded of my youth (days out in Mabblethorpe!),and struck by the inherently 70's colour palate - which is great but I'm troubled as to how to take inspiration from this without being retro. It was interesting how the more recent photographs looked inherently less compelling from a colour perspective, they also had a more digital feel about them which wasn't as emotive as the earlier shots.
The series was taken over a number of years, including shots of approx a year ago. The prints were at varied sizes, but some were reasonably large. In comparison with some of the other exhibitions I went to the prints were not displayed as consistently across the series - I felt this made the viewing experience less engaging and immersive.
I was fortunate to be in listening range of a guide talking some visitors through the exhibition. However, I was struck by lack of detail commentary of composition, use of colour or purpose. Instead the commentary was more foussed on subject, location and culture. This often seems to be the case, which I think is unfortunate. One interesting comment however was that Parr is a colector of holiday postcards - I think this insight provides a new perspective on his interest in his subjects.
As is often the case with street photography I was struck with wondering how candid these photographs were - clearly some of then would have involved conversations with the subjects before the photograph (I don't think they were intended to look otherwise - this was particularly the case with the more recent shots in Thailand), but others look like they're supposed be candid, but I wonder whether they are. The shot below is the prime example of this - it's hilarious (as well as being a great composition), but I find it difficult to believe that it's not setup.
Jason Evans
There were a lot of quite academic/philosophical concepts at play here which I think I'd need to read about in more detail in order to understand and comment on. However, they key feature was the placement of coloured round stickers which the artist had placed onto the prints. This had an interesting effect of emphasising the 2 dimensional surface layer of the 3 dimensional image. This was both an interesting idea and also made for an interesting viewing experience as the eye moved within the image and also onto the surface of the image itself.
???
I'm not sure who the artist was (think I'll write to Aperture to find out), but actually the most interesting photograph I saw in Aperture was by an artist who had compiled a montage of sunsets from photographs posted on Flickr. This was both visually engaging and a really intriguing and thought provoking idea. The colours were obviously warm, but also varied, and the almost polkadot patterned composition caused a smile as you moved closer to it and realised what the dots were - suns!
For me this piece raised questions about the nature of shared photography; the consistency and universality of this subject from photographs all across the globe; the consistency underlying a very individually felt and expressed experience (i.e. watching the sunset); ethics of consumption of other people's shared work/photographs/experience etc etc etc. It was one of the most interesting pieces I saw while I was in New York.
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