The trip was primarily a meeting between myself, Tim Andrews, and fellow Wivenhoe photographer Lindsay Wakelin, to discuss a possible shoot as part of his ongoing project 'Over The Hill', in which he is having portraits created by 100 different photographers, most famously (thus far) Rankin. Tim was diagnosed with Parkinson's a few years ago, retired from his career as a lawyer and embarked upon this project. He also took part in Antony Gormley's Trafalgar Square plinth living art installation, where he danced to the new Madness LP for an hour:
Norton Folgate
Tim's wife is a very talented artist, and her work can be seen here:
Jane Andrews
After discussing ideas for the shoot with Tim, we took in the Photographic Portrait Competition winners at the National Portrait Gallery. It goes without saying there was some powerful work on display there, although for my money, some of the images stretched the definition of 'portraiture', including one (splendid) reportage shot and another (unspectacular) glamour shot. As always, young girls with blank expressions seemed popular with the judges.
I then detoured to the Tate Britain to catch the Turner exhibition before it closed. Wonderful to see so much work by one of my favourite artists (an influence for some of my own landscape work), but I was disappointed that the emphasis the exhibition was on Turner's competitive nature and desire to 'improve' on images by other Masters. I felt it undervalued Turner's revolutionary impact on painting.
Galleries are always a strange experience anyway. I always want the hoards of zombies with their educational headphones to vanish into thin air, leaving me the space required to truly soak in the beauty on the walls.
No comments:
Post a Comment