fri 29/03/2024

Photography

Victorian Giants, National Portrait Gallery review - pioneers of photography

It is a very human crowd at Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography. There are the slightly melancholic portraits of authoritative and bearded male Victorian eminences, among them Darwin, Tennyson, Carlyle and Sir John Herschel. The...

Read more...

Another Kind of Life, Barbican review - intense encounters with marginal lives

“I start out as an outsider, usually photographing other outsiders, and then at some point I step over a line and become an insider,” wrote American photographer Bruce Davidson. “I don’t do detached observation.” A large number of the images in...

Read more...

Andreas Gursky, Hayward Gallery review - staggering scale, personal perspective

“Let the light in” has been the fundraising slogan for the two-year project to revamp and modernise the Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery, and adjacent Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room. And that is just what has happened, with two triumphs at...

Read more...

Love, Cecil review - poignant, inspiring, and very sad

It’s shameful to admit it, but it’s perhaps rather surprising that a film about a fashion photographer and designer should end up being so profoundly moving and inspiring. Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s deft biopic about Cecil Beaton starts off dancing...

Read more...

Highlights from the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2017 - raw emotion, not always human

What does it take to be included in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition? This year 2,423 photographers entered 5,717 images: 2,373 of those photographers are left wondering what it takes to make the grade. Remarks from the...

Read more...

Orhan Pamuk: Istanbul, Memories and the City review – a masterpiece upgraded

Along with Balzac’s Paris and Dickens’s London, Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul now ranks as one of the most illustrious author-trademarked cities in literary history. Yet, as Turkey’s Nobel laureate told me during a Southbank Centre interview last month, he...

Read more...

Cinema Through the Eye of Magnum, BBC Four review - moving pictures

Magnum was founded just after the war in 1947 as a co-operative that ensured both the quality of its members, and their clout in dealing with the media world. Its longevity is testimony to its success. The original founders were war-hardened photo...

Read more...

Podium nitrate: Conductors at the 2017 Proms

What do conductors actually do? It's a question that concert-goers, as well as listeners and viewers of the BBC Proms, often ponder. Conductors may not make a sound, but what they certainly do is put on a performance, the minutiae of which are...

Read more...

Sue Steward 1946-2017: She came, she saw, she salsa'd

Sue Steward, who died suddenly last week from a brain haemorrhage, was one of theartsdesk’s most loved members, her free spirit and her double specialism in world music and photography making her an intrinsic asset to this pioneering critics’ site...

Read more...

Teju Cole: Blind Spot review - haunting hybrid of words and images

As a photographer, Teju Cole has a penchant for the scuffed and distressed surfaces, materials and tools that form rectilinear patterns on construction sites. Opposite a shot of scaffolding, ladders and shadows – all favourite motifs – on the island...

Read more...

theartsdesk at Les Rencontres d'Arles: breadth and depth at the veteran photo festival

Now in its 48th year the veteran photography festival is in better shape than ever. You can walk through the French sunshine to more than 20 exhibitions, hear a talk, meet the snappers and shop on the fringe. It's not just a show; it's a holiday,...

Read more...

A Handful of Dust, Whitechapel Gallery review - grime does pay

Why is dust so fascinating yet, at the same time, so repellent? Maybe the fear of choking to death in a dust storm or being buried alive in fine sand provokes a visceral response to it. My current obsession with dust comes from having builders in my...

Read more...
Subscribe to Photography