Last Thursday London’s Photographers’ Gallery opened its doors to three new exhibitions exploring ideas around photo collage.
On the second floor the gallery presents the first UK exhibition of the work of Geraldo De Barros (1923 – 1998), a key figure in Brazilian art and design and a pioneer of Modernist photography. De Barros engagement with photography made during two intensive periods of experimentation at the very beginning and the end of his artist career. The exhibition What Remains traces the rather subtle connections between the two series Fotoformas and Sobras, the results of his encounter with photography, with a display of vintage contact prints and archival material, reveals his distinct processes of production and the relationship of these works to his other artistic practices. As a young painter, De Barros discovered photography and was soon experimenting with over-painting and scratching of his negatives, multiple exposures and camera rotations to abstract his subjects resulting in a series entitled Fotoformas. It was not until the end of his career that De Barros revisited photography following a series of strokes, when his daughter discovered a box of negatives form his personal archive. In the last two years of his life, he then started to create over 250 intricate collages in a burst of photographic energy entitled Sobras. Marking the beginning and the end of his artistic career, these two series are brought together to demonstrate De Barros radical approach to the photographic image, and the image in general, whilst also exploring the formal and philosophical layers of his work.
Simultaneously on display is the display III Form and Void Full, which is the title of Chicago-based Laura Letinsky’s new series on whom this exhibition focuses. Using a large format camera in a studio environment, Letinsky has developed her practice since the late 1990’s through meticulously composed still life photographs. 2009, however, marks her increasing interest in the artificiality of the photograph, using paper cut-outs from lifestyle magazines and art reproductions of food and tableware into her studio arrangements. This new series, III Form and Void Full (2010 – 2011) continues to explore and play with the representation of space and time. However, different from her older work, this project departs from the narrative potential of the still life and rather focuses on the positive and negative space. In these still lifes Letinsky manages to make decay look gorgeous, to photograph messes that are exquisitely tidy. These photographs are constructed of countless layers of white surfaces and collaged materials and the constructed quality of these collages give these images are sense of delicacy and fragility to the compositions. III Form and Void Full definitely pushes the boundaries of still life as well as her own photographic process.
On the fifth floor the viewer is faced by an exhibition entitled Perspectives on Collage, showing eight different approaches to collage – from conceptual to political and cultural critique. Included in the show are the works of Jan Svoboda, Peggy Franck, Nicole Wermer, Batia Suter, Anna Parkina, C.K. Rajan, Roy Arden and Clunie Reid. These are artists using varied techniques and styles in their work – from exploring the conceptual limits of the photographic image to working within the tradition of political and cultural critique and, as a whole, this exhibition highlight the enduring relevance of photo collage.
Anna-Maria Pfab
The Photographers’ Gallery’s Season of Collage Exhibitions – Laura Letinsky, Geraldo de Barros and Perspectives on Collage
All exhibitions will be on display from 18 January – 7 April 2013.
The Photographers’ Gallery,
16 – 18 Ramillies Street,
London, W1F 7LW
United Kingdom
