More gallery reflections

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I recently read that the film, "Ben Hur", is being re-made. There's an old joke about the 1959 version, starring Charlton Heston, wherein someone who is asked what they thought of the film replied, "Liked him, hated her."!

I was reminded of this  witticism (though in reverse) on a recent  visit to a Lisbon gallery dedicated to two painters, the Hungarian Arpad Siznes (1897-1985 and his wife, the Portuguese Maria Helena Viera da Silva (1908-1992). I very much enjoyed the latter's work, especially the abstract city landscapes, but really could not find much that I liked in her husband's work.

The gallery itself has been made from an existing building that faces a square near a section of the large aqueduct (Aqueduto das Aguas Livres) that traverses this area of Lisbon. Its interior is painted white  (see previous post) with the exposed roof timbers and the tiled floor adding natural and muted colour. However, its origins in a pre-existing building mean that it has multiple levels, stairs, walls, lifts and corridors. Walking through the main exhibitions I came upon this glass wall and photographed my framed reflection. When processing the shot it occurred to me that a high key treatment might work with the essentially white details, so I converted it to black and white and then made the necessary adjustments.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 67mm (13mm - 26mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/20 sec
ISO:6400
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Reflecting on gallery walls

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When I frame a photograph or select a background for a photographic subject the colours I most commonly use are cream, black and white. There are those that argue the latter two are not colours but in everyday parlance they are and most people treat them as such. Their virtue as a backdrop is that they are neutral and interact with and modify a subject much less than any of the other colours. The same is broadly true of cream (and also grey).

In my experience today's galleries also favour these colours, especially white, above all others as a background for art works, particularly framed paintings, and undoubtedly for the same reasons. However, more traditional gallery buildings housing more traditional paintings sometimes go in for other colours such as drab purple, greyish blue, or autumn green, colours that, I suppose, better reflect the opulent decor of the houses in which the works would have originally hung. But, as far as modern galleries displaying contemporary or twentieth century work are concerned white is pre-eminent as a background with, as far as I can see, black a distant second.

Today's photograph shows a gallery with black painted walls in a small Lisbon museum - the Casa Museu Dr Anastacio Goncalves - created from a house and the collection of paintings and furnishings of its owner. The gallery was between exhibitions and lit only sufficiently to allow visitors to pass through safely to the main rooms of the building. The fall of the light and the colours appealed to me sufficiently to take this shot.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 25mm (50mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/13 sec
ISO:6400
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Gallery-going

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What do people hope to get from going to art galleries? The answer to that question is many and varied, and though all (presumably) wish to see works of art, each individual brings his or her own thoughts, opinions, prejudices, hopes, expectations and experiences to bear on what they see. Consequently every gallery-goer sees and experiences something slightly (or considerably) different from their fellow visitors.

My tastes in art, as in photography, are wide. I like representational work but also semi-abstract and abstract pieces too. I'm old enough  and experienced enough to know what I like and to be able to make a fair stab at explaining my preferences and dislikes. But, as a photographer, and as someone interested in architecture I always have one eye on the setting of the works of art - the building and the individual galleries. This is not only for the interest and variety that can be found in these  areas, but also the way in which the setting can influence one's appreciation of what is displayed.

On a recent visit to several galleries in Lisbon, Portugal, after viewing exhibitions, I took a few shots of the interiors of galleries as I sat with my camera and my own thoughts. Today's post is the first of a few on this theme.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 67mm (134mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
ISO:3200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Sculpture, galleries and photography

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It's fairly common for photographers to be told that they can't use their cameras in certain locations. Regular visitors to this blog will remember my experience photographing in the private "estate" of More London on the South Bank. Shopping malls ban photography. So too do the majority of galleries and museums, even where they are essentially tax payer funded institutions. So, it's a real pleasure to come across somewhere that does allow photography inside their premises, as I did at The National Centre for Craft and Design (known as "the hub" - I don't like the lower-case) in Sleaford, Lincolnshire*. This venue regularly stages exhibitions, and we frequently go along to see them. I've said elsewhere that these are not always to my taste. However, that doesn't matter because one of the points of visiting such a place is to expose yourself to new ideas. Moreover, I find that I do enjoy the exhibitions sufficiently often that I keep returning.

The two exhibitions I saw on my most recent trip to Sleaford couldn't have been more different. Jason Lim's "New work in ceramics" didn't appeal to me very much at all. The shapes and textures of his clay work offered me neither beauty nor interest. I did like some of the colours and patterns of his glaze, but that was about it. I was, however, most impressed by Claire Morgan's sculptures. These featured stuffed (as in taxidermy) animals - all road-kill I believe - placed in volumes constructed of monofilament on which were fixed various plastics and even dandelion seeds. The exhibition was called, "About Time", which sums up the artist's motivation in creating these pieces. However, had I known nothing of this - and a video gave further insight into her ideas and techniques - I should still have liked the pieces featuring the crow and the fox.

The fox was standing in a grid of vertical lines on which were fixed torn shreds of back plastic arranged in such a way that the animal appeared to be in an inclined cube. The strongly directional lighting of the gallery emphasised texture, light and dark and the sham solidity of the sculpture. The crow was up-ended on the ground as though it had just crash-landed and was surrounded by two part-spheres made of dandelion seeds fixed to a grid of wires. A third piece with the rabbits - both "alive" and dead - had the word "Shhh..." backwards, made of pieces of pink plastic floating above. Descriptions such as mine don't do justice to the pieces, nor do my two-dimensional photographs: they have to be seen and walked around to be properly appreciated. If you can, go and see them.

* I asked at the "The Hub" if I could take photographs in the gallery and was told I could. I believe, from previous conversations on the subject, that photography is allowed with some exhibitions and not others - a policy that is much better than that of most museums and galleries.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 8.8mm (41mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.5
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO:400
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Best of PhotoReflect 5

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I've updated my Best of PhotoReflect gallery to version 5 (use this link or the permanent link on the right). Each time I make a revision I remove some of the older shots and replace them with recent images that I think are better. This time I've also added a couple of new folders - London and People. Anyone new to this blog may wonder why it's taken over 4 years to amass this tiny number of "people shots". Well, that's just the way I am, I don't take many photographs of people!

Once again I've used the free utility called JAlbum, but this time I've swapped "skins", replacing "Chameleon" (included with JAlbum) with "FotoPlayer" (separately downloaded.) This seems to be quite good, though it does have one or two quirks that I hope the author changes, not least the blank start-up page and the menu that has to be called up each time you change folders/galleries. JAlbum has moved on since I last used it, and now offers 30Mb of web space for your galleries and built in FTP that links to it. It also has a set of useful widgets - page counter, comments, etc. If you've ever thought of putting photographs on the web, in a location other than Flickr or its competitors, this is a quick and relatively easy way of doing it.

>>>>> Go to Best of PhotoReflect 5 <<<<<

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Don't interact

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"Interactive" has to be one of my least favourite words. So-called "involvement" through "interactivity" seems to be the 21st century's ubiquitous "democratic" bolt-on feature. Everything has to be interactive. Radios want you to call in or text and give your point of view. So do TV stations with their "tickertape" messages from the public. Have you ever read any of those - they must be the new outlet for the green ink brigade. Whole programmes now feature nothing but "real" people "interacting" with each other. Websites everywhere solicit the user's input, sometimes (like Facebook) to the point of being almost "content free", apart from people craving recognition in its most meaningless form from other people. And zoos, museums and galleries have caught the interactive disease too.

A couple of years ago I went to "The Deep", a new aquarium in Hull. It had some great fish in some stunning tanks, and I enjoyed seeing them. But the whole experience was spoiled (and limited) by an interactive section with computers, buttons to push, knobs to spin, headphones to wear, etc. Most adults seemed to be walking straight past all this. Children pushed, prodded, rarely listened, and raced between interactivities so rapidly that any information that was supposed to be conveyed must have gone straight into the ether. Art galleries offer this type of thing too - draw like an Impressionist, do a jigsaw of this famous painting, remove the layers of a painting electronically to see what's underneath, all in a feeble attempt to "involve" the visitor. What I - and I suspect many others - want is a well mounted exhibition, with interpretation by someone who is knowledgeable, that entertains, challenges and informs. The money a gallery saved on interactivity over a year could mount an extra exhibition. So, I was pleased when I heard this week a politician say that Government funding of the arts was to be more focussed on quality, and less on participation and "ticking the boxes". Until I realised that this might just mean even bigger doses of the juvenilia of Damien Hurst, Tracey Emin and co, and less space for new artists!

Today's photograph shows the exterior of "The Haven" gallery in Boston, Lincolnshire. It is currently showing some landscapes by the U.S. photographer Hope Greene, and drawings by David Lloyd Brown. I liked the confusion resulting from the layering of lights, the reflected converted warehouses, the grid of the glass curtain wall, and the passing person.

POSTSCRIPT: "Don't interact" seemed a prescriptive, rather killjoy title, and I was going to change it. Then I read this article about "Facebook" in today's Guardian newspaper. It only deepened my concerns about this type of phenomenon. If only half of the article is true, this post's title is advice worth following.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (32mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0EV
Image Stabilisation: Off