Search for content, post, videos

London : Photography Past and Present

Preview

At first glance, we might think that contemporary photographers like Martin Parr, Rineke Dijkstra and Maisie Broadhead have nothing in common with classical painters like Thomas Gainsborough, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres or Simon Vouet. But the exhibition Seduced by art: Photography Past and Present shows how their reference remains one of the fundamental practices in the history of photography.

Organized by the National Gallery of London, this exhibition brings together more than 100 works of art: paintings from the museum’s collections, photographs from the Wilson Centre for Photography, the Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Museum of Bradford and the Fundación La Caixa in Spain, plus a few videos.

What role has pictorial tradition played in photography since its creation to the advent of the digital era? An essential one, it would seem, when looking at the astonishing similarities in color and composition between Eugène Delacroix’s La mort de Sardanapale and Jeff Wall’s Destroyed Room. The same is true for other photographs which were clearly inspired by ancient paintings, creating a work that is a combination of “re-photography,” copying, and tribute, making itself into an equal of painting.

But the photographs are not merely referential. Each work is a recreation in itself, a subtle re-appropriation and transformation of the original image. It might be the creation of a mise-en-abyme, an image-within-an-image that some spectators view as a photograph while others view it as a painting. Perhaps the human figure disappears entirely in an image intended to evoke a historic battlefield, or maybe the image is a close-up of the chipped and peeling surface of an oil painting by Francisco de Goya, making the work unrecognizable.

Marine Cabos

Read the full text of this article in the French version of Le Journal.

Seduced by art : Photography Past and Present
From October 31st 2012 to January 20th, 2013
The National Gallery
Trafalgar Square
London WC2N 5DN
UK

Catalogue
Seduced by art : Photography Past and Present
Hope Kingsley, Christopher Riopelle
Editions National Gallery Company, 2012.
£19.95

Create an account or log in to read more and see all pictures.

Install WebApp on iPhone
Install WebApp on Android