How to Win at Photography

I have to confess that this exhibition at The Photographers Gallery, which has the subtitle Image Making as Play, was not high on my list but I happened to be in London with some spare time – sometimes such exhibitions confound you expectations but in this case unfortunately not – possibly the worst show I have seen at TPG.

This was not to say that there were not items of interest. But the concept was stretched very thin and surely any exhibition that includes a video of some of the instructions from a video game must be pretty desperate to fill up the wall space?

In-game photography and video was a major part of the show and is now recognised as an emerging genre – one of my previous Tutors Andy Hughes has done work in this area (Plastic Scoop, using Grand Theft Auto V) as well as fellow student Catherine Banks (using Second Life). There is certainly an interesting philosophical aspect to representations of representations of life, as well as exploring and documenting people’s use of virtual worlds which perhaps touches on Baudrillard’s writings on simulacraby looking a the increasing reality of such worlds, and the corresponding decreasing use for reality. Tabor Robak looked directly at this in his work Rocks (2011), a print that showed 198 artificial rocks from game environments, reminding me of my walk along the Thames collecting 1 stone each mile and later photographing them. I was not sure if each rock appears multiple times (i.e. chosen from a menu of rocks) but it did somehow also remind me of the photo book that catalogues Dutch street furniture available to purchase by towns – thereby highlighting the off-the-shelf look of these places. Recreations of iconic moments, such as the “tank man” in Tiananmen Square, and indeed recreations of those recreations as they became tropes, were a key feature.

The work of Ed Ruscha was explored via an original book in a case and a video flick through of the book (this is an effective way to show such work as discusses by David Campany). This was handy as this was one of the references given to me by my Tutor and Ruscha’s original book are very rare. However the exhibition went further, looking at the representations of those gas stations in GTA V, and the work of artist Lorna Ruth Galloway who makes charcoal screenprints of these representations.

Again GTA V is used, by Roc Herms, to replicate Ai Weiwei’s series Study of Perspectives (1995-2003), in which the Chinese artist photographs a POV of himself showing the middle finger to iconic landmarks around the world. However showing 9 large prints from Ai Weiwei’s series and devoting a similar amount of wall to Herms’ derivatives was a handy way of using up the space…

Several classic images, such as John Hillard’s 1971 Study for Camera Recording its Own Conaition and work by Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman exploring identity, brought a little more depth to the show although touching on work by the latter two that has been explored in far more effective detail in London exhibitions recently – https://contextandnarrative515050.wordpress.com/2017/03/16/gillian-wearing-claude-cahun/, https://land515050.home.blog/2019/07/03/thats-not-me-is-it-cindy-sherman/ – did to some extent highlight the somewhat lightweight concept of the design.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. The Photographer’s Gallery (2022) How to Win at Photography: Exhibition Guide. At: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/sites/default/files/attachments/How%20to%20Win%20at%20Photography%20Exhibition%20Guide.pdf (Accessed 12.10.2022).