V&A

October 2018 Page 2

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Peter Funch

b: 1974 Denmark
In his 42nd and Vanderbilt project, Funch photographed the same New York intersection over a period of nine years and paired up images of the same regular commuter in various states. Three of the pairings are shown in this display. It is an interesting variant on the decisive moment and evidences the fact that it is repeatable. Quote from the New York Times.

He is unaware he’s being photographed. The unposed portrait has been made in bright sunshine on a busy street, and we can see other people, blurred, behind him. The man is tanned, with a head of thinning white hair and a short white goatee. His collared shirt is pale, striped and open at the neck. He has rosebud lips and somewhat worried brows that make him appear lost in thought or on the verge of making a decision. Out of the flux of the street, a unique event has been preserved: this man, this moment, this mien.
Now look at another portrait. It’s the same man. Placed side by side with the first portrait, it immediately raises new questions. The look is almost the same: the tanned face, the small mouth, the dark, slightly furrowed brows. With his narrowed eyes, he seems a bit more preoccupied. His white goatee is fuller and more neatly shaped, giving him the debonair look of a knight in a Renaissance painting. In this second portrait, the man is all buttoned up, and he wears an ocher bow tie. Behind him this time is a different crowd, and instead of the taxi seen in the first picture, there is an armored truck.
It’s not that hard to go out into the street and take a stranger’s picture. It is legal and, with the right equipment, technically simple. But how do you arrive at two pictures of the same person, with almost the same expression, on what seem to be different days? These photographs were made by the Danish artist Peter Funch, and they are part of a series of many such pairs. For nine years, from 2007 until 2016, Funch hung around Grand Central Terminal and watched commuters during the morning rush between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. Using a long-lensed digital camera, he made countless portraits, an intriguing face here, another one there, yet another over there. He began to notice repetitions, the same people, the same faces, the same gestures, the same clothes. Each person was in the self-enclosed reverie of getting somewhere. The photos were all taken in May, June or July, in bright summer sunshine. The resulting project, published last year in a monograph titled “42nd and Vanderbilt,” is named for the street corner on which Funch stationed himself. It contains dozens of pairs of portraits (and a few in sequences of three), all of strangers. NY Times

Links - artist's web site, NY Times

Hillelson Collection

Works from the Hillelson Agency that dealt in photo journalism from 1958 to 2010 and was also the London Agent for Magnum Photos.

Cindy Sherman

b: 1954 New Jersey
Described in Wikipedia as,

an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. She is best known for "Complete Untitled Film Stills," a series of 69 black-and-white photographs which were meant to subvert the stereotypes of women in media (namely arthouse films and popular b-movies). In the 1980s, Sherman used color film and large prints, and focused more on lighting and facial expression…
Sherman works in series, typically photographing herself in a range of costumes. To create her photographs, Sherman shoots alone in her studio, assuming multiple roles as author, director, make-up artist, hairstylist, wardrobe mistress, and model. wikipedia

Nan Goldin

b: 1953 Washington
Described in Wikipedia as,

an American photographer. Her work often explores LGBT bodies, moments of intimacy, the HIV crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Her most notable work is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986), which documents the post-Stonewall gay subculture and Goldin's family and friends. She lives and works in New York City, Berlin, and Paris. wikipedia

McCartney Collection

Works by Linda McCartney (1941-98) and Mary McCartney (b. 1969)

Link

Floris Neusüss

b: 1937 Lennep, Germany
This was the highlight of the show for me, in conception, execution and reality. A direct contact print (and therefore life-size) of the window first photographed by Fox Talbot in 1835. The original is discussed here. There are some examples of Fox Talbot's (surprisingly small) 'mouse trap' cameras later in the show.

Description from the V&A, referring to the 2010-11 exhibition, Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography

Floris Neusüss … has dedicated his whole career to extending the practice, study and teaching of the photogram. Alongside his work as an artist, he is known as an influential writer and teacher on camera-less photography.
Neusüss brought renewed ambition to the photogram process, in both scale and visual treatment, with the Körperfotogramms (or whole-body photograms) that he first exhibited in the 1960s. Since that time, he has consistently explored the photogram's numerous technical, conceptual and visual possibilities.
His works often deal in opposites: black and white, shadow and light, movement and stillness, presence and absence, and in the translation of three dimensions into two. By removing objects from their physical context, Neusüss encourages the viewer to contemplate the essence of form. He creates a feeling of surreal detachment, a sense of disengagement from time and the physical world. Collectively, his images explore themes of mythology, history, nature and the subconscious. V&A

Link

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