Downstairs in the basement of the Photographers’ Gallery there is an excellent shop selling not only all kinds of books about photography, but also cameras and film.
Next door to it is a room which serves a double function. Here a) you can buy top quality prints of works by photographers associated with the gallery – and b) three of the walls of this room are taken up by changing displays of new work by up-and-coming or established photographers.
For the next week or so there’s still time to catch a really nifty little exhibition (16 works in all) by five new and exciting women photographer-artists, titled Work in Process.
What the five have in common is their astonishingly inventive approaches to the idea of a photograph, they all push the boundaries and possibilities to amazing lengths. Or, as the blurb puts it, they all share:
process-based practices focusing on the photographic surface, interacting with it in challenging and innovative ways.
Julie Cockburn (b.1966, UK)
Cockburn draws on her training as a sculptor to re-invent vintage photographs as unique, contemporary works of art. Having selected old vintage photos, she then meticulously applies hand-embroidery and other mixed media to create works which I found beautiful and uplifting. Not just adding to the images but transforming them into something genuinely magical and inspiring. On display is Gust (2018), made specially for this show and her largest embroidered work to date.
Gust (2018) by Julie Cockburn © Julie Cockburn. Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery and the artist. Not available to buy
Jessa Fairbrother
Fairbrother has been working on a series titled Armour Studies (Regarding Skin). The examples here show her taking what are in themselves beautifully composed black and white shots of naked female models, generally sitting or bent over and from the back so as to conceal breasts and belly. Using a sharp contrast between the extremely white bodies and the pitch-black background Fairbrother has already produced starkly beautiful images.
But she then proceeds to create a maze of intricate needle perforations across the surface of the silver gelatin prints. They include zoomorphic, sometimes floral patterns, sometimes looking like larger pebbles sitting on sand, the patterns spread all across the stretched white skin of the subject to create images of strange and haunting beauty.
Dragonfly I (2017) by Jessa Fairbrother © Jessa Fairbrother. Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery and the artist. £1,750+ VAT
Alma Haser (b.1989, Germany)
Haser is represented by two startlingly different but equally inventive approaches to distorting and reinventing the idea of ‘the photograph’.
Her recent series, Within 15 Minutes (2017 to 2018), is based on taking high-quality colour portraits of people, then using a manufacturing process to convert the photos into 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles.
So far so interesting but what gives the images their unique twist is that Haser assembles the jigsaws with some bits subtly out of place and some bits left blank. The resulting images are still recognisable, but dislocated and beguilingly unnerving.
Lee and Clinton (1) 2017 by Alma Haser © Alma Haser. Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery and the artist. £1,250+VAT including frame
Haser is also represented by some new works from a project titled Pseudo (2018).
These are three-dimensional collages in which she takes a botanical image as starting subject, taking numerous shots from related angles, and then lays several ‘takes’ above each other and cuts holes in the upper layers so you can see through into the same or similar image on the layer beneath and the layer beneath that.
Not only this, but the pieces of original image which have been cutaway are stuck elsewhere on the image as if they’re floating away. These have to be seen in the flesh to appreciate their full 3-D effect, but flat images of them (as below) still convey their beguiling beauty.
Rhodanthemum (2018) by Alma Haser © Alma Haser. Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery and the artist. £1,200+VAT including frame
Felicity Hammond (b. 1988, UK)
Hammond takes the conversion of photographs into sculptural form to new extremes. Her series Surfacing (2017) begins with photographs of adverts for future sites in the city. Hammond prints digital collages of these real and imagined spaces onto acrylic and then, making moulds to vacuum them, creates abstracted, futuristic works which seem to be melting and drooping and bulging out of the frame at you.
Another strange and unsettling way of bringing photos into the third dimension.
Surfacing (formation 01) 2017 by Felicity Hammond © Felicity Hammond. Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery and the artist. £1,250+VAT including frame
Liz Nielsen (b.1975, Wisconsin)
Nielsen omits the camera altogether to produce her vivid, abstract photograms. The works are created using an alternative darkroom process, involving handmade negatives with coloured gel transparencies and found light sources, including torches, bicycle lights and mobile phones.
Landscape Shapes (2017) by Liz Nielsen © Liz Nielsen. Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery and the artist. £4,350+VAT including frame
Thoughts
Interesting, aren’t they? All of them are stunning as images in their own right quite apart from the ways they each play with the idea of ‘the photograph’ in thought-provoking and fun ways.
Between you and me, I found any of these women’s works much more visually pleasing and imaginative than much of the work shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and on display in the upstairs gallery. I like fun. Fun is good.
Buy one
All but one of the sixteen pieces on display (the exception being Gust) are on sale at prices starting from £1,200 + VAT. I’ve indicated the price in the caption to each photo.
If I had the money I’d buy almost all of them and hang them all round my house to brighten up the place and make me smile.
Related links
The photographers’ websites
More Photographers’ Gallery reviews
More photography reviews
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