[Leica] Photo London Review - and those Salgado Prints

[Peter Dzwig]

I said I would post a review of Photo London, so here we go! Bear in mind that
this is my personal opinion.

Overall
=======

This is the first in an intended series of shows to rival, if that is the right
word, Paris Photo. London has been lacking a major show of this type and despite
having a fairly active photographic market it lacks a main event around which to
focus. This in despite of the UK having produced some very important figures in
the history of photography, think Fox-Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Brandt,
McCullin, Parr and many more.

The mixture of talks, interviews and exhibitions was what you would expect from
a show with the aspirations of Photo London and although I was unable to attend
any, the reports have been very good. My loss, I had particularly wanted to hear
McCullin and Salgado speak, but by the time that I was able to settle when I
could go it was too late to get tickets.



The Venue
=========

As a first event the show was excellent. Somerset House is an outstanding
building with great history and interesting spaces. However it isn't up to
holding this. I went on the Saturday and the place was packed and in many places
it was impossible to stand back, or even stand still, and look at the pictures
that were being exhibited, so great was the throng.

Long term Somerset House can't remain the venue, movement is restricted,
exhibitors have inadequate space to allow people to pause, there is little
seating so that you can't sit down and contemplate a photo. The publisher's area
was tiny, overcrowded and situated as it was in one of the main entrance areas
actually stopped people circulating.

A better venue would be Tate Modern or somewhere similar with much larger spaces.

Quality of Exhibits
====================

Bbviously this is subjective, but the quality of the exhibits was very variable.
There were quite a number that you would probably reject from in your family
photo album, so little merit did they possess yet somehow were able to
masquerade as fine art.

Using the LUG as a benchmark, many wouldn't even have been submitted. Many of
the prints were of dubious and very varied quality, a point I will come back to
in a few lines. Certainly printing varied: there were several cases where prints
weren't all of the same quality, even though by the same photographer, of
exactly the same image but exhibited by different galleries.

Much European and Asian work was trying to be radical, to the point that they
looked tired and outdated and anything but radical. That said there was a great
deal of very fine work which you could live with and which would also be
"collectible".

For me some the antique prints being shown by Robert Hershkowitz would win my
prize for most interesting gallery. Yes there were the usual galleries selling
selections of HCB, Arbus, Rodchenko and Salgado and all the rest, but their
prints were somehow magical

There were also two special exhibits

(i) Beneath the Surface

This is a selection from the Victoria and Albert Museum's archives and hence
rarely seen. It was fantastic covering the whole of the history of photography
containing pictures which are rarely exhibited at the V&A. This remarkable
exhibition remains at Somerset House until the end of August and I recommend any
LUGers who can to go and have a look if you get the chance.


(ii) Prostitute

This special exhibition is a history of the Shahr-e No red light district of
Teheran by the late Kaveh Golestan. By turns fascinating and sad, this merits a
good look if you are inclined towards ethnographical documentary photography. I
understand that it is touring intermittently.


Organisation
=============

Surprisingly, having pre-booked and entered by a main entrance, the security
guard on that particular door had no idea what Photo London was, despite the
fact that it had taken over a large slice of Somerset House. When I eventually
found it and went to collect my tickets, I was told to go to the pre-booking
desk to collect my guide (although they gave me the tickets) and tthey took me
back to the front desk etc.

The show could have been better organised and a lot of lessons can be taken from
this first show that need to be addressed in the second.


The Salgado Platinum Prints
===========================

Now the Salgado prints. There was an exhibition of about twenty hand-printed
Platinum Prints called "Genesis on Platinum". The prints were all marked "Bat
1/1" and were all stamped and signed.

They were printed on what looked like Arche or something similar, to larger than
A2 size. The quality wasn't what I was expecting at all. The more so since there
were a number of other prints by Salgado, nominally in limited editions,  among
the galleries exhibiting.

Overall their definition wasn't brilliant, and this really impacted their merit
in my eyes. Even compared with the ones that were shown in the touring Genesis
exhibition they weren't as striking. In fact I preferred the prints of them in
the glossy brochure and also some (but not all) of those in the exhibition.



"Prizes":

My prize for the most striking image goes to a print of cattle herders in
Southern Sudan on a pearl-like roll paper, a version of this one:

<http://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/1400951/sebastiao-salgado-dinka-cattle-camp-southern-sudan-2006.jpg>



However for sheer "best image" my prize goes to one of these two, by Sugimoto
both Platinum Palladium prints exhibited at A1+. Either

<http://www.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/cahiers-dart-gallery-hiroshi-sugimoto-designboom-22.jpg>

or this:

<http://www.designboom.com/art/cahiers-art-hiroshi-sugimoto-100th-issue-of-the-revue-07-06-2014/gallery/image/cahiers-dart-gallery-hiroshi-sugimoto-2/>

Both had amazing detail, depth, gradation, resolution and maintain a quiet
simplicity. I think that the latter probably wins for me.


Verdict: Good, could do better.


Peter Dzwig