London Image:
Yes, it's alive and well

THE PHOTOGRAPHERS' GALLERY | MIKE VON JOEL

In the UK, the art world still reels from the impact created by a tsunami of photo-based works, currently washing gallery walls clear of exhibition schedules previously dedicated to paintings and graphics. This might not be openly acknowledged by the art establishment, but a closer inspection of gallery programmes show photography related works creeping onto the agenda of even the most traditional operation. Last year, leading Cork Street dealers in Modern British, Beaux Art, successfully hosted their first one man show of monochrome photographs by Santa Monica-based, English artist, Andy Summers. Even esteemed antiquarian book dealer, Maggs Bros (reps for the late J.P. Getty) were found exhibiting photographs at PLUK [1] as was Bernard Quaritch, another old school antiquarian outfit.

England has a curious relationship to the photographer as fine artist, although it warmly embraced the medium of photography at its birth. Roger Fenton was a student in the studio of Paul Delaroche, a vociferous champion of Daguerre and his new invention, the daguerrotype. Whether Delaroche, one of the most acclaimed history painters in Paris, actually did declare "from today, painting is dead" is hard to prove, but leading artists of the day soon saw the potential of the medium – if only to relieve them of the burden of paying an unreliable and twitching nude model. It was also an Englishman, W.H. Fox Talbot, who had a reasonable claim to have paralleled Daguerre's innovation with his own, independent process, the calotype.

Despite a long history of eminent practitioners of the photographic art, the British seem reluctant to comprehend photography as anything but pure reportage, social narrative or the historical document. Indeed, the most popular image makers in England have always been those that fulfill this criteria: Bill Brandt's social peekaboos; Cecil Beaton's royal fawnings; and Bert Hardy's street urchins and records of a vanished working class. Perhaps it is inextricably linked with the cultural phenomenon of illustrated newspapers and picture magazines, long a British obsession.

It is contemporary British art that has enabled photography to hit the mainstream and the genii is well and truly out of the bottle. One of the key building blocks of today's effervescent market for photographic images has to be the Photographer's Gallery, based on the edge of Covent Garden in central London. Founded in 1971 as the first independent space dedicated to photography, the Photographer's Gallery has survived and developed apace, often in a political climate hostile to the arts, and is now an integral part of the cultural firmament with over half a million visitors a year. It is a sobering thought that until exhibited by the Photographer's Gallery, there had never been an exhibition of the work of Jaques-Henri Lartigue in the UK. Or Irving Penn for that matter.

Although the gallery programme has expanded to encompass artists from all over the world, and has a well developed multicultural agenda, it still retains its founding principals of showing emerging artists and established photographers within a dynamic and educational context. The sterling efforts of the inaugural director and co-founder, Sue Davies, set the tone for the many years ahead, first at 5 Great Newport Street and then additionally at number 8 next door, initially leased in 1980 and then purchased in 1986. The successful campaign to raise funds for this ably demonstrated the support the gallery had within the London art world.

A review of the first years exhibition programme [2] reveals eight young photographers juxtaposed with archive French images from the mid 19th century. Towards the end of 1971, Andy Warhol polaroids counterbalanced Four Masters of Erotic Photography and a clutch of image makers drawn (typically for the time) from fashion and advertising: Clive Arrowsmith, Julian Cottrell, Sara Moon and Harry Peccinotti.

Today the Photographer's Gallery (current director Brett Rogers, appointed 2005) is in an unassailable position as the premier London venue for photography, and with the support of the Deutsche Börse Group, hosts an annual European Photography Prize -- one of the most prestigious art awards with a value of $45,000 (winner 2005: Luc Delahaye, b.1962). It has, predictably, a dedicated bookshop, café and print sales department with original images available by acknowledged masters and developing British talents. Specialist staff offer free, expert advice on all aspects of the raw material to buyers and visitors alike.

Additionally, the gallery has announced plans to expand into a major space in Soho to create : "a centre of photographic excellence that can match the best in Europe". With £3.5 million support from the Arts Council, 16-18 Ramillies Street will unite the two exhibition facilities the Gallery currently utilises.

The Photographer's Gallery maintains its dedication to the art of the image and is exempt, in some purist way, to the maelstrom of fads and fashion that was omnipresent at the increasingly successful Photo-London UK, conceived and directed by Daniel Newburg and now in its third year. The extensive, vibrant exhibition catalogue contained a somewhat sombre note, an in memoriam page dedicated to photographer Bob Carlos Clarke, best known for his fetish nude studies, and who had recently taken his own life. Of late, it was reported elsewhere, Bob had taken to presenting his work under an assumed alias, so convinced was he that his fame (or notoriety) was prejudicial to a fair appraisal of his new images. The fact that he might be deemed somehow 'unfashionable', after so many years in the vanguard, had been a cause for profound depression.

As photographers cross over into the mainstream of fine art [3], and fine artists manipulate the art of the photographic image, parameters cease to exist. All painters know -- and are forced to confront -- the transience of the art market and its fickle nature (and by extension, the collectors). It will be interesting to see how those more familiar with the qualified world of photography interface with the contemporary art business and its thirst for sensation and impact. London based art mogul, Charles Saatchi, was sanguine when presented with the following question by The Art Newspaper: "Blake Gopnik, the Chief Art Critic for the Washington Post, has stated that 'painting is dead and has been dead for 40 years'. If you want to be considered a serious contemporary artist, the only thing that you should be doing is video or manipulated photography". Saatchi replied: "It's true that contemporary painting responds to the work of video makers and photographers. But it's also true that contemporary painting is influenced by music, writing, MTV, Picasso, Hollywood, newspapers, Old Masters."

In the UK, the cross pollination of photography and fine art is now at its most virulent, most likely to the amusement of the rest of Europe and the USA with their more mature development in this area. It remains to be seen who the winners and losers will be when a saturation of the market results in the inevitable shakedown of styles and techniques, methods and methodology. But it was somehow reassuring to see the nude was omnipresent at even a desperately cutting edge event like Photo-London.

Notes
[1] Photo-London UK : 18th -- 21st May. Royal Academy.
[2] Photographer's Gallery : Inaugural Exhibition Programme 1971
23 February - 28 March: Ruan O'Lochlainn, Edward Weston, Adam Woolfit
6 April - 2 May : Eight Young Photographers
11 May - 13 June: France: 1850-1950 A Vanished World
3 - 30 September Witness Romano Cagnoni, Zoe Dominic, Richard & Sally Greenhill,
Florence Homolka, Michael Peto
Other exhibitions in 1971:
Edward Weston
Concerned Photographer No1
Polaroids: Andy Warhol
Scoop, Scandal and Strife (History of Newspaper Photography)
Four Masters of Erotic Photography: Haskins, Hamilton, Giacobetti,, Shirogama
Photographs and Anti-Photographs: Elliott Erwitt
A Retrospective: Lartigue,
Clive Arrowsmith, Julian Cottrell, Sara Moon, Peccinotti
[3] Fine Art is used in this context to denote the traditional realm of painting, printmaking and sculpture, and not to infer photography is not a fine art.

The Photographers' Gallery, 5 & 8 Great Newport Street. London WC2H 7HY
Tel +44 (0)20 7831 1772 www.photonet.org.uk
Admission Free Nearest Tube: Leicester Square