More Smoke, More Mirrors

There'll be a gallery of these up soon...



I've just got back from Photo London 07 ... pretty disappointing really. I'm not even sure what it's trying to be - a showcase of new work? a trade fair for galleries? a viewing opportunity for wealthy collectors? Certainly they seemed to be trying to make it very "exclusive" - it was at a posh venue in the City, with uniformed doormen, and an exorbitant admission fee… not really ideal for this struggling photographer.

Contents-wise: I was very happy to see some new colour work by Graciela Iturbide, and some (well, two…) lovely prints by Hiroshi Sugimoto, but otherwise there wasn’t a huge amount that caught my eye. The whole New Objectivism/Düsseldorf thing seems to be still in full swing, and there was some rather unfortunate video art.

In contrast – I also went to see How We Are: Photographing Britain at Tate Britain which is incredibly straightforward in what it’s trying to do, viz. showing the story of British photography from its inception to the present day. Masses of really fantastic work – an absolute delight. A revelation for me was the quality of some of the images from only a few decades after photography was invented. A Roger Fenton print from c. 1860 could have been made yesterday. Some astonishing colour images from the 1940s really stood out for me too … but there’s too much for me to list here. Go and see it if you can.