PHOTOGRAPHIC SECTION WHO’S LOOKING AT THE FAMILY? VAL WILLIAMS BARBICAN ART GALLERY €1 5 1 2 8 PP. 99 ILLUS ISBN 0-9463-7232-2 CATALOGUE OF AN EXHIBITION, BARBICAN ART GALLERY, LONDON 26 MAY-4 SEPTEMBER 1994

THE NUCLEAR family, we are led to believe, is under threat and with it the cornerstone of all order and morality. This is specifically the family in the sense of an ordered small-kin group, living together under one roof, with a particular balance of parents to progeny and a required equilibrium in the sex of the parents. The extended family, those simply connected by descent from a common ancestor, is less of a concern apparently, though it must inevita- bly be suffering from the same perceived malaise. Ultimately it is “The Family of Man” which is the real concern: to what extent has the humanist ideal embodied in Edward Stei- chen’s 1955 Museum of Modern Art exhibi- tion survived the apparent ravages of disrespect for the sacrament of marriage, sin- gle-parent families and the demands of capit- alism?

Val Williams, one of the exhibition cura- tors and writer of the catalogue texts, denies that this exhibition attempts to address such issues - “We neither argue for the family nor against it, but merely acknowledge that it is there.” It was doubtless the safest route to disclaim broad sociological empiricism in fa- vour of what-you-see-is-what-you-get. What the selection of work does suggest is that since the family as an institution is simply not what it used to be, definitions such as “nuclear” can no longer form the sole basis of any reasoned approach to the subject. Much has been made of the supposed emphasis in the show on the “dysfunctional” family - this is easily attribu- table to the fact that undeniably the most memorable images relate to the most uncom- fortable issues. The exhibition does in fact explore the gamut of difficulties encountered in family life, utilising photography as the viewing platform.

Found photographs constitute a significant portion of the show and create the greatest emphasis when large numbers are combined to reinforce the prosaic uniformity of the family unit passing through rites of passage. Whether wedding, christening or new-born announcements in local newspapers (which Linda Duvall has sardonically titled Babies that Look Alike), the impression is distinctly that the family is alive but is fairly risible when viewed in this abstract manner.

The Thompson family snapshots appear similarly mundane, particularly alongside the appropriated documentary images of the Thompson home interior which on a gallery wall suggest some Martin Parr-style social comment. Taken from the files of the Lanca- shire Constabulary the story is only told by displaced captions which elucidate the chilling tale of paternal abuse and deadly revenge. Photography is not just about appearances, its lacuna is our imported assumptions.

The most searing work in the exhibition is that where photographers have used their art to explore their own relations with members of their family, often on an obviously thera- peutic level. Mari Mahr’s two series M y Daughter, My Darling and Time for Sorrow, use multiple-overlaying of images to construct a poignant and perspicuous visual semblance of her relationships with her daughter and her mother. In a more traditionally documentary model, Portrait of an Znvisibk Man is Paul Reas’ traumatic exploration of his father’s role in the family, and Tony O’Shea’s Father is a study of the subtleties of his father’s decline towards death.

The breadth and quality of photography represented is immense: the fine portraits of

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pregnant women and their children by Katri- na Lithgow; Jim Golberg’s portraits which the subjects have captioned with revealing self- indictments; and Thomas Struth’s objective family portraits. There are numerous others worth mentioning and, inevitably with a show of this size, some that are not.

The catalogue succeeds in fluidly recon- structing the basis of the exhibition and whilst lacking the huge variety of work does incorporate sigmficant reference images. Val Williams’ text ably supports a lucid recon- struction in thematised sections and, despite a questionable cover design, makes this an im- portant catalogue from one of the principal photography exhibitions of the year.

MICHAEL MACK

dents, collectors and curators. Each volume contains a scholarly biographical essay, a chronology, a comprehensive bibliographical section and a selection of texts by and about the photographer. So far the series extends to six top-ranking photographers. In addition to the two under review, they are Imogen Cun- ningham, Henry Fox Talbot, Carleton Wat- kins and Bill Brandt. Two more on Frederick Sommer and Fred Holland Day are to be published within the year.

Frederick H. Evans, being the first book in the series, set the high standard against which the future compilers would have to be mea- sured. Anne Hammond’s essay is impeccably researched. It illuminates the creative im- pulses which drove Evans to produce his fine photographs of architecture - especially ca- thedral interiors - around the turn of the century. She contextualises Evans’s work by Photoflaphers drawing attention to the religious preoccupa- tions of the era, as well as the photographer’s interactions with an artistic coterie which in-

Reference Series

cluded Aubrey Beardsley and Arthur Sy- mons. In the Documents section. Hammond FREDERICK H m EVANS

ANNE HAMMOND (ED) VOL 1 CLlO PRESS 1992 €44.00 192 PP. 36 MONO ILLUS ISBN 1-8510-9190-4

J m CRAIG ANNAN WILLIAM BUCHANAN (ED) VOL 6 CLlO PRESS €47.50 212 PP. 3 2 MONO ILLUS ISBN 1-8510-9207-2

has chosen examples of Evans’s writing which support her thesis, yet his own voice comes through, still fresh and jaunty 80 years on. Each book in the series contains a vast amount of archival information and in the most recent J. Craig Annan, one detects slight modifications in the way the material has been organised. There are separate entries for the principal collections holding examples of the photographer’s work, and for his exhibition

THIS IMMENSELY useful series seeks to pro- history, whereas previously this sort of data vide a handy research tool for anyone with a had been incorporated in the chronology and serious interest in photography, primarily stu- preface. Minor adjustments such as these

Corinne Noordenbos, Alzheimers4, 1993, from ’Who’s Looking at the Family?”

make a tremendous difference to the harassed researcher.

William Buchanan displays a rigour com- parable to Hammond’s in his compilation of the documents relating to Annan. The intro- ductory essay culturally locates Annan’s photographs firmly in the fine art tradition. While Evans espoused the aesthetic of the straight, unmanipulated image, Annan had few qualms about altering his work. He was a leading pictorialist who worked extensively in photogravure. This medium lends itself to manipulation because the copperplate can be worked like an etching to sharpen, soften or shade the image. Buchanan emphasises Annan’s masterful understanding of the photographic language by citing numerous examples where he successfully brought to- gether the components of time and movement, capturing “true photographic moments”.

The World Photographers Reference Ser- ies is a boon for researchers up to, say, gradu- ate level, offering quick fact finding and an enlightening read. Beyond that, however, is a depth of enquiry which will still enable photo- historians to relish their own trawls through bygone magazines and catalogues.

MARY ANN ROBERTS

SOUNDINGS The Cross Channel Photographic Mission

JANE ALISON AND BRlOlTTE LARDlNOlS (EDS) CCPMJLUND HUMPWRIES P14.95 108 PP. COLIMONO ILLUS ISBN 0-951 7-4275-2

SOUNDINGS is a collection of the work of several photographers commissioned by the Cross Channel Photographic Mission to document their responses, in England and France, to the social and cultural implications of the construction of the Channel Tunnel.

The eleven photographers whose work is represented here were allowed admirable flex- ibility in their approach and exploration of their chosen area of concern within the gener- al brief of the project. The result is a compila- tion of great diversity.

Several major themes emerge, however, that bind the photographers together into common concerns and which give a coher- ence to the book that it might otherwise have lacked. One central nexus of interest that emerges is their response to the important idea of national identity and the tensions made explicit in the cultural and social linkage formed by the tunnel.

In the foreword to this selection the edi- tors, Jane Alison and Brigitte Lardinois, de- scribe the total oeuvre, rather oxymoronically, as concerned with “contemporary archaeol- ogy”. Certainly, the work of Kenneth Baird, whose photographs open the collection, draw strongly on the traces left by man on the landscape, and how the depiction of land- scape informs our sense of history.

Baird works within a very well-defined tradition of English landscape depiction, and it is a part of his subtlety as a photographer that he acknowledges and uses this tradition in a fine ironic manner. An example is an aerial photograph of the Cheriton terminal con- struction site where the environmental and historical associations of the land, shaped by nature and man, as a settled living body in a state of flux, are implicit in the sensuous, almost luscious description of the dune-like land that the earthworks scarify. An abstract L-shape formed by a rooted-out hedge carries the movement of the photograph to an earth mover as it delineates the outline of change. History, as described in the land by genera-

THE ART BOOK

tions, is here literally being worked out and stripped away, irredeemably.

Baird’s images work because they are con- ceived of a coherent whole; each photograph resonates with others in the group - as in the image of the lone grave of the American pilot shot down during the Battle of Britain. The ironies multiply: he was killed defending the idea of Britain as an enclosed isle and, we shouldn’t forget (especially in this context) Europe against fascism. Now his monument, almost lost in an archetypal English land- scape, and encroached upon by weeds, is being underpinned, literally, by the ramifica- tions of the tunnel. Implicit is the question of historical remembrance: what notions of nationalism are we honouring among the changes that are besetting this lonely monu- ment?

Indeed irony, critical, saturated and col- ourful, seems very much the staple response of many of the photographers represented here. Thankfully, in Huw Davies’ work this irony is combined with a sense of personal poignancy and pathos that sets his work apart. Davies has explored the stresses of cultural and social identity among a group of English people who moved to the Nord and Pas-de- Calais departments of France during the 1980s. Such was the influx into the area at that time that it was nicknamed South Kent.

In a marvellously seen photograph of the back of a bar in the Hotel Dolphin in Enquin- sur-Baillons, owned by Peter Dolphin, an Englishman recently “relocated”’ in the area, we see Davies gracefully explore his themes: meanings proliferate among the cultural clut- ter; the tinted photograph of a young Queen Elizabeth, a pot-bellied statuette of a tourist, the ceramic dolphins and a Thatcher puppet, all presided over by a portrait of Mr Dolphin as a younger, handsome, nightclub singer. Everythmg works to establish the fragmented, cultural identity that underlies his suspect version of the “Englishness” he is at once emotionally drawn to, yet, by force of social circumstance, has become dislocated from.

The real power of the picture lies, how- ever, in its combination of irony and an en- riched sense of the personal pathos of his

on the shelf and our smile is tempered by the poignant recognition that Mr Dolphin fears that he too may be left there. Next to the sign, another fragment to shore against his ruin: a bizarre memento of the severed leg of a cow, an apt symbol perhaps of his own dissocia- tion.

Unfortunately Davies can’t seem to trust his own visual sensitivity; the portrait of Mr Dolphin which is paired with this picture adds little to the meanings it so fluently achieves. This heavy-handedness is enforced by re- printing, under the portrait, an advertisement placed in a Lonely Hearts column by the hotel owner. I find this cultural “accessorising” quite patronising and cannot help feeling that it is an expression, at best, of insecurity. It is found elsewhere in the book, at its most redundant in the frames surrounding Julian Germain’s mundane images. It is a fashion that I thought had reached its nadir in Paul Rea’s book, Flogging a Dead Horse, (Corner- house 1993) which has surely the most pa- tronising context to be found in any photographic book. Given the subtlety of the best of Davies’ images I rather resent being clouted around the head by an unnecessary, unn.ieldy context to make sure that I have taken the point - it reminds me uncomforta- bly of my schooldays.

Karen Knorr’s beautiful, witty, delicate grasp of the tensions implicit in any historical analysis, as shown in her images, serves as a tine example of how sure a touch is needed in the contexualisation of images. Her work forms a titting coda to the book.

Neil Ascherson’s brilliantly written, his- torically and politicall!- stimulating analysis of the tunnel’s significance provides, as a pre- face, exactly the right context for the work that follows. Indeed, some of- the photogra- phers should be immensely grateful for the intellectual weight he lends to the book.

subject: SINGLE BUT LOOKING, Says the Sign

As a compilation Soundings is inevitably uneven - the images by Anna Fox, for exam- ple, should never have passed the pre-produc- tion stage - but coupled with the quality of production and the diversity of the work on offer, it is an interesting document of a signifi- cant time in our history.

DAVID WISE

JOHN KOBAL FOU N DATION PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT AWARD 1994 JOHN RUSSELL TAYLOR ZELDA CHEATLE PRESS C7.50 4 8 PP. 64 COL ILLUS ISBN 0-9518-9715-X

JOHN KOBAL, who died in 1991, was a re- nowned authority on the cinema and Holly- wood portrait photography and the founder of the Kobal Collection, one of the world’s leading film photo archives. In order to con- tinue to promote the enthusiasm he felt for portrait photography, he established the John Kobal Foundation to “encourage interest in, and help advance the general public’s appre- ciation and awareness of, photography in gen- eral and portrait photography in particular”.

The Kobal award is a yearly open submis- sion competition and exhibition selected by judges representing principal areas of the dis- cipline. This year, over 2,300 entries were received from around the world. The final edited version was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Following the high profile competition, and the major exhibition, there is now a book, The John Kobal Photo- graphic Portrait Award 1994.

If I read one more essay on photography which starts with “From today painting is dead”, I’ll personally go round and tattoo it on the author’s forehead. It begins John Russell Taylor’s introduction, “Portrait Photography Today”, a babbling, neurotic text which makes the age-old comparison between photographic development and the evolution of painting. This is 0 level exam material, full of inaccurate assumptions and classic one- liners describing photography as “finally a matter of catching the unique moment before it flies away”.

The book is about imagery, thank God. Polly Borland, a joint winner in the competi- tion, opens the show with her portrait of Adrianna, Transvestite. Brazil 1994. “Not an- other picture of a Brazilian transvestite!”, I hear you cry. Well, unless Transvestite is a place in Brazil - yes. As far as photographs of Brazilian transvestites go, this one holds its charm. A direct, down-to-earth photo of Adrianna, in domestic situ, clutching her pe- nis between her legs. A deserved winner.

However, most of the photographs in this book cover old ground. Maybe this is to be expected from an open submission selection by a group of disparate judges. Very little, if any, of the work addresses major considera- tions within contemporary photographic art practice.

The work here simply is not experimental, creative or exciting. On the whole there are lots of pseudo-style shots. Photographers des- perately trying to define an original style through the abuse of tricky techniques, for- mulations and manipulations. Sure, portrai- ture’s principal objective is to record the good, the bad and the ugly of society - but shouldn’t we expect more than what is presented here?

The most successful imagery steers away from being overtly self-conscious. The straightforward, natural, honest portraits, such as Andrew Pothecary’s photo of Ben and Jacqui from a series on relationships, and Bruce Thorndike’s, Kate with Gameboy, rise above the rest. Unpretentious, simple record- ings of ordinary people in ordinary situations.

Of the more conscious efforts, the humor- ous, semi-surrealist portraits capture the ima- gination. Michael Berry’s portrait, Zan Scott Hunter considers early retirement, featuring the aforementioned chap adorning a hedgehog-

Polly Borland. Adrianna, Transvestite, Brazil 1994

like form on the peak of his beautifully bald head, or Hugh Turvey’s Carnation, featuring a cherubic young lad adorning a small plant pot on his chin are simple but funny.

The most interesting aspect of this publi- cation is the fascinating juxtaposition of a disparate range of incongruous expressions. The editing succeeds in representing the dead-end trends which currently exist within the genre. A beautifully printed book with a cover photo that is by far the best image here. Nice legs . . .

RONNIE SIMPSON

An Album from Frank Lloyd Wrfght’s Photographer

PEDRO E. QUERRERO POMEGRANATE ARTBOOKS C19.99 170 PP. 150 MONO ILLUS ISBN 1-5664-0804-0

WRIGHT IS arguably the most highly re- garded, and consequently published, Ameri- can architect. The two iconographic images of Wright’s life and work, recognisable to stu- dents of architecture all over the world, are not to be found in this book. That wonderful photograph of FLW surrounded by some of his Fellows, looking rather like a spiritual Quentin. Crisp explaining trouser design to fifteen handsome young men, was taken at Spring Green Studio in 1937 by Hedrich Blessing: the same Blessing captured the 1937 image of Kaufmann House, familiar to many as Fallingwater, which is probably in every book about FLW, American design or the development of modern architecture ever written. Where was Guerrero? Unfortunately still at art school producing pictures such as the Plate of fried eggs and bacon reprinted on page 17. Guerrero has the humility to suggest that it was the optimist in FLW that hired him after seeing this and other pictures. After reading the text and having some previous knowledge about FLW, I suspect his main reason was to exercise tighter control over

THE ART BOOK

printed media output by bringing a techni- cally proficient, but patently malleable, young man into his Fellowship. A revealing anecdote tells of how FLW made him destroy all nega- tives which did not get his approval when he presented them. Art historian Norris Kelly Smith once observed that our perceptions.2 FLW have been created by his “evaluation of himself’; while this is perhaps true, he was hardly unique in this respect. The vain and self-promoting have always used photography to this end. Regular readers of the architectur- al press will be familiar with the symptoms.

FLW was desperately trying to piece to- gether a second career when he hired Guer- roro. The previous decade from the 20s to the mid 30s had seen the depression, his marriage fail, loss of his home to creditors, pursuit by federal marshals, most of his possessions burnt or auctioned and his practice collapse. (A scenario familiar to many architects but perhaps horrific to most readers.) His very practical response had been to create a quasi school “The Fellowship” and charge fees. The Fellowship had two homes; a winter home in the desert, Talesin West and a summer home, Talesin East, in bucolic Wisconsin. The spirit of the Fellowship is captured beautifully in Guerroro photographs : the annual migration, the collective agricultural work, the students building their extraordinary vision of a con- temporary utopia in the desert, the all- pepading influence of FLW in their lives: These are profoundly uncynical images.

By contrast the images of the architectural exteriors and interiors, while crisp, convey nothing of the philosophy which damned many aspects of American culture and society but manifest itself in uniquely organic form; He addressed the first All Union Congress of Soviet Architects in 1937, gave inflammatory lectures deriding small-town American values in American small towns and pamphleted on pacifism. Somebody obviously told him that he desperately needed nice photos to sell nice buildings to nice Americans. Guerrero rtwk them and FLW got them into Housc and Home. The rest is history.

D. L. Johnson has pointed out that “it took intelligence to hire FLW before 1936 but only money thereafter”. Perhaps FLW, ahead of

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