[Leica] Photo London Review - and those Salgado Prints

[imra at iol.ie (Douglas Barry)]

Thanks for the heads up Peter. Might try and get to it yet.

Paris Photo seemed certainly less crowded when it moved to the Grand Palais 
from the Louvre.

Douglas

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Dzwig" <pdzwig at summaventures.com>
To: "Leica Users Group" <lug at leica-users.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 6:03 PM
Subject: [Leica] Photo London Review - and those Salgado Prints


>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
>
>
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