Exhibition Visit - Exposed, Tate Modern 24.9.10

I found this exhibition interesting as it had a bearing on the sunbject of this course - People and Place, especially the section People Unaware. When I was taking photographs for Exercise 15, Public Space Public Activity, my family found my photography somewhat embarassing expecting me to have some complaints.

Since its invention, the camera has been used to make images surreptitiously and satisfy the desire to see what is hidden. Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera examines photography's role in voyeuristic looking from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present day. It includes pictures taken by professional photographers and artists, but also images made without our knowledge on a daily basis through the proliferation of CCTV.
The exhibition is divided into five thematic sections: The Unseen Photographer, Celebrity and the Public Gaze, Voyeurism and Desire, Witnessing Violence, and Surveillance. In each case, the nature and character of invasive looking is evident not only in the images themselves, but also in the ways in which the viewer is implicated in acts of voyeurism. Rather than blame the camera for showing illicit or forbidden material, Exposed explores the uneasy relationship between making and viewing images that deliberately cross lines of privacy and propriety.

In Room 1 I enjoyed looking at the pictures by Philp-Lorca diCorcia's Heads which were taken on the streets of New York in 2000 without he subjects knowledge using cameras and flash hidden in a scaffold. As well as being taken surrepticiously these images were also attractive. I liked the backlighting. Interestingly legal action was taken against him. This did result in a landmark ruling giving the artist rights over the subject.

In Room 2 I found the two images by Paul Strand - Man and Woman - taken in 1916. Despite beeing taken unaware they have an intimacy and show expressions of hopelessness and resignation.

Room 3 presented work by some of the twentieth century's most important photographers. In each case they exploit the camera's ability to create images without the knowledge of their subjects. I like the work of Henri Cartier Bresson and was interested in the way that he photographed people from above to great visual effect. I especially liked his photograph of the cyclist taken in 1932. Not only was the subject unaware and taken from above it captures the moment just before he disappears and also shows appropriate movement blur. During the weekend I visited Covent Garden and enjoyed trying to take similar images from above while the subjects were dining and unaware. Andre Kertesz also took people unaware from above in his work on Reading.I liked Dorothea Lange's 1933 photo White Angel Breadline. Each photographer had his own preferred technique. In Women lost in Thought from 1950, for example, Harry Callahan preset the focus and aperture only making his exposure at the last moment. Other photographers with these lightening fast reactions included Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand and Robert Frank.

Rooms 1-3 largely feature photographs of people unaware that they are being taken. They therefore have natural expressions and often show real poverty with resigned expressions. This is portayal of everyday life. The work is either for the photographer or taken for soacila documentary reasons.

In the next section in Room 4, Celebrity and the Public Gaze, I feel that the reason for taking the images changes from the last section. Here the photographs are taken to satisfy public curiousity as with today's paparazzi. The tension between the photographer and the famous person - who desires both privacy and publicity, and whose personna depends on a kind of notoriety - is often evident in the photograph. I felt that the subjects often look angry and haunted. I enjoyed Weegee's image from the 1950s of Marylin Monroe standing over a grating with her dress blowing up. I can imagine she was less than pleased!

In Voyeurism and desire I feel that many of the images are designed to titillate and place the viewer in the role of Peeping Tom. Room 8 had a slide show by Nan Goldin The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. I thought that this engendered a feeling of tawdriness and unpleasantness. I couldn't help but comapare this work to some of that of Robert Mapplethorpe whose images are beautifully lit and composed even if not to everyone's taste. I felt that Nan Goldin's work was more snapshots - but what do I know??? I did hear a comment by another couple as they came out suggesting that it 'unglamourised sex' but maybe that was Nan Goldin's aim. If it was she certainly succeded in my opinion. I couldn't help but wonder why her sunbjects wanted to be photographed in such situations and also wondered who would want to look at them. Dis her subjects realise that the images would be made public? What does the photographer get out of this? Hate her work or love it this part of the exhibition did promote the most discussion between my wife and myself - so perhaps Nan Goldin has been successful.

Witnessing Violence. Images of violence raise numerous questions. Who should look at them? Can we justify intruding upon another's death? Can photography allow us to responsibly bear withness to a victim's suffering or does it anaesthetise us to it's horrors.