Photographers' Gallery

The Photographers’ Gallery was a welcome change from the mega museums we had been wandering through so far on the trip. In contrast to the giants like the Tate Modern and National Gallery this museum was small and comprised mostly of only one exhibit room. The art featured in the Photographers’ Gallery had a stunning amount of variability. The pieces all seemed to have little in common, from chewing gum to naked men, the variability was astounding. The three objects I liked the best in the Photographers Gallery were:

Anzeri’s portraits: Anzeri’s strung portraits were great surprise. At first I was off put by the thread that had been sewn through the portraits of various people but upon spending time viewing the pieces I began to develop a sense for what Anzeri was expressing. The patterns sewn through the portraits seemed to express something about the person now part covered in thread. Each of the portraits seemed to match the patterns effaced to them. An older looking woman with lacey dress and a proper look might have a pattern that evokes a sense of her perhaps stiff personality and rigid beliefs. Above all I was amazed at how much of a message could be conveyed by the patterns and colors of the thread.


Warhol’s portraits: Warhol’s photographs were probably the most striking of all the work in the gallery. Not because of some great artistic merit but simply because of the subject which he has photographed. I was not expecting to see large prints of naked me sitting down in chairs during my visit to the gallery. Nevertheless, there they were. I thought that the photos were a little blunt but at the same time they conveyed a sense of how Warhol wanted the viewer to perhaps be shocked by the average or casual look of the naked men. The interesting part to me is how strange I felt looking at the prints, really it is simply a person, nothing that I hadn’t seen before, yet the pose and composition of the print made me feel quite awkward while looking at it. For obvious reasons I have not included a picture.

Alina Szapocznikow’s gum sculptures: Alina Szapocznikow has displayed an interesting set of images. At first the subject of her photographs is not entirely clear. The scope is hard to determine and the depth of the photo leads the view to imagine the subject as much larger than it actually is. Her subject: chewing gum. Szapocznikow has affixed the self-molded pieces of gum to various precipices and photographed them in macro. Interestingly the effect is quite unique and they really do seem quite a bit larger than life. It always surprises me what some people call art but nonetheless it is a fun idea and the results are genuinely interesting.