Always look on the bleak side of life
Rule one is that, in modern photography, it is forbidden to smile. Photographing anyone smiling instantly leads to your cameras being confiscated. Photographing anyone laughing leads to instant banishment.
Grifton from the series Perfect Strangers by Nigel Clarke © Nigel Clarke
Photography is a serious business. Life is all about being isolated and alienated. A tragic affair. None of the sitters in the 57 photographic portraits on show in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2018 is smiling, let alone laughing. Most have expressions of mute despair, sullen passivity, stare plaintively at the camera or mournfully off into the distance.
Portrait of Marta Weiss and her daughter Penelope from the series Artfully Dressed: Women in the Art World by Carla van de Puttelaar 2017 © Carla van de Puttelaar
Remember that awful movie, Dumb and Dumber. This is a display of Serious and Seriouser.
Greta and Guenda by Guen Fiore © Guen Fiore
Teenagers are good, because they come with built-in sulkiness (which, as the owner of two teenagers, I know only too well).
Eimear by Trisha Ward 2017 © Trisha Ward
A number of the sitters are actually crying, this guy because he’s just been given a beating in a kids’ boxing competition. Yes, life is a tragic business.
Runner Up from the series ‘Double Jab ABC Show’ by Sam Wright 2017 © Sam Wright
I wonder if anyone submits photos of people smiling, laughing, joking or having fun, and the judges systematically weed them all out to produce this uniformly glum set of portraits. Or whether clued-up entrants know from their photography courses (by far the majority of snappers in the competition have degrees in photography) that happiness is not art.
Africa
It’s a shame the selection on display makes such a cumulatively negative and depressing impact because, taken individually, there are lots of absolutely brilliant photos here.
And the locations, ages and types of sitter are pretty varied and interesting. It’s true that, as last year, there is a heavy bias towards British photographers (over half) and Americans (about 10 out of 57). But they get around a lot – especially to Africa, which was the setting for a brilliant couple of photos by Joey Lawrence.
Portrait of ‘Strong’ Joe Smart from the series Tombo’s Wound by Joey Lawrence © Joey Lawrence
This portrait won third prize. Another image which drew me further in the more I looked, was of a teenager called Sarah in Uganda, photographed by Dan Nelken.
Sarah, aged 13, carries a five gallon jerrycan of water home three times a day from the series The Women of Rural Uganda by Dan Nelken © Dan Nelken
In fact, the winning photo was one of a series by Alice Mann taken of drum majorettes in South Africa.
Keisha Ncube, Cape Town, South Africa 2017 from the series Drummies by Alice Mann © Alice Mann
About 24 of the 64 or so sitters featured in the photos are black. Precisely 32, half the sitters, are white.
Stories
The three photos above, and the suggestive titles of the series which they’re from, raises the matter of the stories behind the photos.
Because the exhibition doesn’t just show 57 photos cold – each one comes with two wall labels, one telling us quite a bit of biography about each photographer (like the fact that most of them are British and most of them have studied photography at university or art college).
And another, often quite lengthy label, telling us about the sitter and the circumstances behind the photo. In some cases these stories are more interesting and thought-provoking than the photos themselves. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes a thousand words can say as much or more than a picture.
Take the first of the three black kids, above: we learn that the photo of ‘Strong’ Joe Smart was made in the remote village of Tombohuaun in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone where Joey Lawrence (Canadian b.1989, self taught) was working with the charity WaterAid. It interested me to learn that Joe had made this mask while playing with his mates, and in between shots mucked about and giggled. It says a lot for the aesthetic of modern photography that no photos were taken of these high spirits. Instead he is depicted like a Victorian angel staring sensitively and seriously into the philosophical distance.
The photo of Keisha Ncube, a nine-year-old drum majorette, is by Alice Mann (b.1991 South Africa, studied photography at the University of Cape Town). It’s one of a set of four on show here (from a much bigger series) all of which are composed beautifully and taken with pin-point digital clarity. The wall label explains how many of these girls come from very poor backgrounds but how saving up for, or making, the costumes, and taking part in the activities gives them a strong sense of dignity and self worth.
Similarly, the photo of Sarah, aged 13, carrying a five-gallon jerrycan of water on her head is a strong image to begin with but gains immeasurably from learning more about the village and her background. The photographer, Dan Nelkin, was born in 1949 in New York.
Unsmiling kids
I counted 64 people in the 57 photos, of whom 31 are children (plus two babies).
Kids give you instant pathos. Especially if you tell them to stop smiling, laughing and fooling around, stand still and look mournful. The wall label explains that Lo Pò (b.1979 studied photography at the London College of Communication) had spent a long frustrating day trying to photograph a racehorse in Sardinia, packed it in and went for a meal at a local pizzeria. Coming out he spotted this pale freckled girl playing with friends. He asked her parents if he could photograph her and placed her against the warm plaster wall which brings out the tones in her skin and hair. It’s an amazing and striking photograph. But it did make me laugh that the first thing the photographer did was stop her playing with her friends. Now, now, none of that laughing and smiling: this is art! Instead she is carefully posed in the soulful, intense, rather numb expression which is the visual style of our age.
Girl outside the pizzeria at night by Andy Lo Pò 2017 © Andy Lo Pò
Charlie Forgham-Bailey (b.1989, based London, studied French and Philosophy at uni) is represented by a set of four photos of boy footballers, who were taking part in the Danone World Cup four unsmiling, stern looking young dudes.
Ditto this photo of ‘Rishai’, snapped by Meredith Andrews, sitting sternly unsmiling on his bike. ‘Don’t smile kid – this is art!’
Rishai from the series After School by Meredith Andrews © Meredith Andrews
Two particular photos of kids take the art of seriousness to new levels; by Richard Ansett (b.1966), they are from two series, one titled After the Attack (The Manchester bombing) showing a teenager in her bedroom who witnessed the bombing and has had difficulty leaving her house, since; and one titled Children of Grenfell, whose subject matter you can probably guess.
Old people
But it isn’t just kids who can look grim and unsmiling. Images of old people, the more vulnerable the better, can always be relied on for instant pathos.
Nan, Hafen Dag Sheltered Scheme, Mid Glamorgan from the series Old Age Doesn’t Come By Itself by Rhiannon Adam 2017 © Rhiannon Adam
Even famous old people. There’s a dazzling photo of Hollywood legend Christopher Walken (although can anyone name a movie he’s been in since the Deer Hunter?) Against a jet black background, his aged haunted face looms pale and haunted. It’s fascinating to learn that the session took only a few minutes, the photographer Anoush Abrar (b.1976 Tehran, masters degree in photography) setting up, just the two of them in the room, the photos taking just moments to take.
Christopher Walken by Anoush Abrar 2018 © Anoush Abrar
Katherine Hamnett is featured. Who? The fashion designer who hit the headlines way back in 1984 when she was invited to meet the Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, and wore a white t-shirt of her down design emblazoned with the words ‘58% don’t want Pershing’ referring to Ronald Reagan’s siting of cruise missiles at Greenham Common. Ah, I remember it well. So I was a little surprised to see that she’s still alive, not so surprised to learn that she’s spent a lot of the intervening 34 years making more t-shirts with ‘political’ slogans on them, and not in the slightest bit surprised that the latest one is anti-Brexit photo by Pedro Alvarez (b.1972 took a degree in photography at Blackpool Uni).
Katharine Hamnett by Pedro Alvarez 2018 © Pedro Alvarez
Ordinary adults
But most people aren’t babies, kids, teenagers or pensioners. Most people belong to the age range 18 to 65. But this age group, what you might call ordinary everyday people, the kind you go into a work environment and see, or see on the Tube at rush hour.
In contrast to serious children, sensitive artists and sad old people I liked some of the photos of blokes. Here’s a geezer, Conor, with his dog Levi, snapped by Tom Cockram (b.1986, BS Hons in photography from Manchester Metropolitan University).
Conor and Levi from the series British Boxing by Tom Cockram 2018 © Tom Cockram
The more I looked at this, the more I liked it, though it took a while to figure out why. First, the subject does not fill the frame (compare and contrast with all the images, above). He is set in a landscape, which just makes it visually more interesting. And the landscape itself is intriguing, the way the heavy mist obscures the trees on the horizon, and teases you to try and decipher the types of buildings behind them – hotel, council estate, I think that’s a petrol station on the right. And then there’s the visual relation between one man and his dog, the way the sloped back of the politely sitting dog makes a line which, if you extended it, would touch the man’s head, in other words together they form a triangle, hidden, concealed in the photo, but which, I think, subtly gives it a unity of composition.
Also featuring a bit more background than usual, and an intriguing one at that, is this photo of a ‘guest at a graduation party’ by Adam Hinton (b.1965).
Guest at a graduation party by Adam Hinton 2018 © Adam Hinton
The wall label tells us that Hinton had travelled to Plovdiv in Bulgaria to document the largest Roma community in Europe and came across a party celebrating the graduation of several young women from the local university.
I liked this photo because it is not of a serious-looking child, nor of a frail and vulnerable old lady, nor of a high-minded liberal fashionista. It captures the spirit and culture of the huge number of people across Europe, who aren’t educated, don’t read new novels, go to the opera or art galleries, who just make a living trading horses, dealing in scrap metal, working as seasonal labourers, fixing up cars, running second hand TV shops, men who try to do the best for their wives and kids, and on special occasions dress up in bling and greased hair.
It reminded me of some of the photos I’ve seen at the Calvert 22 Foundation, which focuses on art and photography from East European countries, or the absolutely brilliant photos of men and landscapes around the Black Sea taken by Vanessa Winship and featured in a recent exhibition at the Barbican.
I liked all these because they are unusual.
By contrast when I read that one of the photographers on display here had set off on a 1,000 mile roadtrip round America on a Harley Davidson bike, photographing the weird and eccentric people she met, my heart sank. If I never see another black and white photo of weird and kooky, provincial, backwoods, redneck characters from America, it will be soon.
Rinko Kawauchi
There is absolutely no requirement for the exhibition as a whole to be representative of everything. I just like counting, noting data sets, trends, numbers. My day job is a data analyst for a government agency.
Thus I couldn’t help noticing the complete absence of images from India or China which, between them, have 2.7 billion people, 38% of the world’s population. Also because I’m still savouring the exhibition of works by Vasantha Yogananthan at the Photographers’ Gallery. It’s a big country, India. Lots of people. Very colourful. Not here at all (there is one photo of a British Sikh).
I wonder why. Don’t Indians apply? Do Westerners not go looking for colourful subjects in India any more (as they obviously still do in Africa, from the evidence here)?
A country which was specifically represented was Japan, in the form of a special feature – a wall of eleven works by Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi. Kawauchi’s work came to prominence with the simultaneous publication of three books: Hanako (a documentary of a young girl of the same name), Hanabi (which translates as ‘fireworks’) and Utatane (a Japanese word that describes the state between wakefulness and sleep. In 2002 Kawauchi was awarded the Kimura-Ihei-Prize, Japan’s most important emerging talent photography prize, following the publication of her first photobooks.
Her photos are about delicacy. She shoots in a way which lets in so much light that the photos are almost over-exposed, have a milky misty quality. And her subject appears to be the everyday life of her family – ‘small events glimpsed in passing’ – including a couple of striking images of adults holding a tiny, tiny baby.
Untitled by Rinko Kawauchi
Related links
- The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2018 continues at the National Portrait Gallery until 27 January 2019
- Press release
Reviews of other National Portrait Gallery exhibitions
- BP Portrait Award 2018 (September 2018)
- Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2017 (January 2018)
- Cézanne Portraits (December 2017)
- BP Portrait Award 2017 (September 2017)
- Picasso’s Portraits (January 2017)
- BP Portrait Award 2016 (August 2016)
- Russia and the Arts (March 2016)
- Giacometti: Pure Presence (November 2015)
- Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends (March 2015)
- BP Portrait Award 2014 (August 2014)
- The Great War in Portraits (March 2014)
- Man Ray Portraits (April 2013)
- Lucian Freud: Portraits (April 2012)
Books & Boots 