The Photographers’ Gallery – London

Image by Kate Elliott

When we were in London in June-ish we dropped by The Photographers’ Gallery near Oxford St, expect they were in the middle of changing over all their exhibitions.  When we went back a couple of weeks ago we managed to catch a couple of exhibitions and a documentary, instead of just spending a bunch of time wanting everything in their downstairs shop.

The documentary ‘Somewhere to Disappear’ by Laure Flammarion & Arnaud Uyttenhove follows photographer Alec Soth (and his massive large format camera) around the US as he goes in search of hermits and recluse cave dwellers for his project Broken Manual.  It’s really well put together, shows a great side of a photographer following his concept over the course of about 18 months.  Pretty interesting stuff.

 

The Shoot! exhibition kind of focused around Shooting Galleries that were/are around fairs and carnivals where if you shoot a bullseye with an air rifle it activates the shutter of a camera and captures the moment of your shot.  One of the two highlights for me was a series of images taken in this way of one woman, Ria Van Dijk, spanning about 50 years.

They also had a gallery set up in the corner, which i couldn’t go past to show off my recently improved marksman skills.

The other highlight was Rudolph Steiner’s series of shots made by shooting an air rifle through a box thus creating a pinhole camera, exposing the film but also leaving a hole through the film – very cool and makes me want to give it a shot (Ha! Pun!)

http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/

Blog CPR

This blog’s been seriously neglected over the past few months, especially after getting into the swing of things in London and France with getting content up quickly and as it happens.

A lot’s been happening… after nearly 18 months of traveling we went home to Perth for a great couple of months and are now back on the road on a different journey.  With 2 year work visas for Canada we’re going to give Vancouver a go as a base, hopefully do some winter sports and get out to see some of Canada.

We spent a great week in London immediately after Perth, catching up with a few friends and hanging out and then flew to New York last week a day or two after the storm which was a very surreal experience.  Kat had been to NYC before whereas I hadn’t, and driving across the bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan and seeing the northern part of the city lit up, but everything south of 34th St (where we were staying) in complete darkness made it feel like we were entering Gotham City in a Batman flick.

Iwan Baan, a Dutch Photographer got some great images (From DeZeen, via Kev Macey)

The audio in this piece gets a bit full on, but amazing shots and time lapse.

And a couple of mine..

Power Outtage

Flat Iron Building and south without power.

I found New York overwhelming… as somewhere I’ve wanted to go for a long time with a huge list of must do’s I’m left wanting.. having the power off and no subway for the first day or two didn’t help.

Definite highlights were:

• Knicks game at Madison Square Gardens
• Spending the afternoon walking from Manhattan and through Brooklyn
• Momofuku
• Wythe Hotel upstairs bar
• Fette Sau

I think I’ve found more things to add to my list than check off.  Definitely need a couple of weeks next time.

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