BY STEVE BISSON
As with the previous edition we are glad to be media partners of Format Festival. Hereby some of our selected ‘evidences.
NICOLÓ DEGIORGIS: HIDDEN ISLAM
From the introduction by Martin Parr: «”Consider these facts. In Italy the right to worship, without discrimination, is enshrined within the constitution. There are 1.35 million Muslims in Italy and yet, officially, only eight mosques in the whole country. One consequence is that the Muslim population have accumulated a huge number of makeshift and temporary places of worship. These are housed in a variety of buildings including lock ups, garages, shops, warehouses and old factories. This shortage of places to worship is particularly acute in north east Italy – where the photographer Nicolò Degiorgis lives – home to many anti-Islamic campaigns headed by the right wing party Lega Nord. The dull images of the many and diverse buildings that house the makeshift mosques are printed on folded pages. You open up the gatefold to reveal the scenes inside the mosques, shot in full colour. The size of the gatherings varies, from large crowds who sometimes pray outside to a small room full to bursting, or to intimate groups of two or three Muslims. Nicolò Degiorgis provides a fascinating glimpse of hidden world and leaves the conclusions about this project entirely in our own hands.»
© Nicolò Degiorgis, ‘Hidden Islam’
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NAE: RESIDUAL: TRACES OF THE BLACK BODY
Developed as part of FORMAT International Photography Festival 2015, ‘Residual: Traces of the Black Body’ looks at the process of imaging the black presence in relation to memory and erasure. ‘Residual’ refers to the idea of what remains after the main visual or tangible part of something has been removed or has disappeared. The focus of this exhibition lies more precisely on traces and stories around the black body through the multidisciplinary approaches of a cross-generational and cross-cultural group of five international visual artists and photographers. Bringing together Larry Achiampong (UK), Cristiano Berti (Italy), George Hallett (South Africa), Zanele Muholi (South Africa), and Ingrid Pollard (UK), the project examines how each of those artists apprehends black corporeality, in such manner that both its materiality and embodied narratives are either visually or conceptually concealed, codified and complexified.
The works selected include Self Evident (1995) by Ingrid Pollard, a series of light boxes presenting colourful and picturesque full-length portraits taken in British landscapes, with each person holding a symbolic item that often evokes Britain’s colonial history.
Larry Achiampong’s Glyth series (2013) consists of family photographs reworked with the faces being replaced by black circles with sharp red lips. Through the “mask”, the hidden and performed identities transpose on a personal photographic archive a symbol schematising the racial experience of figures perceived as alien.
Zanele Muholi’s photographs She’ll, Umthombo and Dis-ease (2012) show a different aspect to her upfront visual activism. Trading her portraits and intimate scenes of the black South African LGBTI community, this series uses metaphors to depict the physiological patterns and aftermath of hate crimes committed against black lesbians. Each organic element evokes female and male private parts, and diseased cells.
Cristiano Berti challenges the voyeurism and spectacle that often characterise Western gaze on the black female body. His sound piece Happy (2004) invites the audience to an imaginary mapping of a body which scars are related in Edo, a Nigerian language. Likewise Iye Omoge (2005), an installation consisting of site photographs, polypropylene maps and sound, articulates a compelling relationship between location and morphology in a context of migration and marginalisation.
Finally the pictures taken by George Hallett in District Six and Bo-Kaap, Cape Town, in the late 1960s, mark the first traces of textual inscriptions in his work. These rare photographic inscriptions are tags mapping gang territories. They also contribute to convey the physicality of places that have been erased by the Apartheid regime. They are visual remnants of a lifestyle, culture and coding related to a marginalised existence then imposed on black bodies.
Curated by Christine Eyene, Residual: Traces of the Black Body responds to the theme of FORMAT FESTIVAL 2015: Evidence, and aims to take on a dialectical approach to the notion of photographic evidence through engaging with the dual positioning of discourse and counter-discourse in the field of black visual representation. Alongside the exhibition is planned a public programme consisting of an artists and curator’s talk and a photography workshop.
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EXCEPT THE MIRROR. CURATED BY MELANIE STIDOLPH
Artists: Sophie Clements, Annie MacDonell, Tom Lovelace, Richard Paul, Melanie Stidolph, Alice Walton. Except the Mirror is a group show that explores the movement and positioning of objects and found images in relationship to an evidencing and externalizing of artists’ thought. The artists are included in terms of what they reveal and offer around a making process that is engaged with a long-term fascination with forms of representation.
Alice Walton’s work provides a central sculptural pivot to the exhibition with the repeated act of a precise editing and positioning of found images. Tom Lovelace’s stilled performances for the camera reveal excerpts from a line of thinking through action. Sophie Clement’s video work joins the poetic randomness of objects in motion with a science of capture. The free fall and solidity of the work, enhanced through the sound track, creates a balance between intentionality and chance, harnessed by the artist.
Melanie Stidolph’s video and photographs use objects and the voice to trigger the camera. The repeatedly appearing coloured balls are evidence of a certain exhaustion of ideas, a process of trial and error in search of a response; a visual appearance that mirrors an internal thought process. Richard Paul and Annie MacDonell’s work plays with the precise nature of the photographic studio using the symbolism of ordinary objects and archival images. These are employed in an enquiry around images as evidence, through heightened attention to the devices of photographic appearance and representation.
© Richard Paul
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HOW TO HUMILIATE AND SHAME: THE POWER OF THE MUG SHOT
Mug shots are enduring, powerful, familiar and universal images seen today in newspapers, on TV and of course, on digital screens. The press have long since been fascinated and intrigued by the standard head and shoulder poses which emerged over a century and a half ago and still exist today; tabloids in the US especially, devour celebrities to extremes.
It’s hard to imagine a criminal justice system today without mug shots. But the so-called ‘judicial photograph’ emerged from mid 19th century photography during the Victorian era of experiments, and portraits began to be standardised into ‘mug shots.’ At that time, the sitters were mostly well dressed and posed seated, co-opting the language of painting, and as a result, carried a painterliness in their prints while the photographer expressed the criminals’ characteristics.
An example of this can be seen in a series of prints belonging to the owner of Derby Gaol, Richard Felix, by photographer William Garbutt of daguerreotypes that are part of a display for FORMAT in Derby Gaol, in conjunction with Derby Police Museum.
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NICK SARGEANT: THE ALBUM
Born and educated in Derby much of Sargeant’s photographic work has explored ideas of memory and identity. Sergeant has been drawn back to his earliest images to re-examine the subjects. The images are taken in the 1960s in Derby and across Derbyshire.
At the age of 11, Sargeant was given a camera. On his first roll of film he photographed classmates at Junior School. Shortly afterwards he moved on to a new school and ceased to see any of his mates again. This first roll of film remains as the only evidence of friendships the artist once had.
In the years following, Sargeant obsessively photographed family and friends. His grandparents died one by one and the family group shrank. In 1971 Sargeant’s parents separated and sadly in 1974 his mother died. Two years later his father followed the same fate.
The photographs from those years trigger memories for Sargeant. Using the photographs objectively the artist has attempted to find evidence of what went wrong in his family. From this he begins to question his history ‘were his parents ever happy?’ ‘Was he and his brother?’ ‘What was the role of his grandparents?’
The artist’s brother inevitably features in many of the images, often with some form of toy gun that Sargeant claims he has never seen before. Ostensibly the photographs are fairly conventional family snapshots but to the artist there is an underlying sense of unease.
© Nick Sargeant
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PICKFORD’S HOUSE: THE PHOTOGRAPH IS PROOF
‘The Photograph is Proof’. Mumbai based curator Anusha Yadav from the Indian Memory Project presents The Photograph is Proof, a historical representation of criminal investigations in India; a rare opportunity to see visual evidence records outside their legal usage.
The visual records on display re-look at a few cases where photographic evidence or the lack of it, lent itself for an objective understanding of the situation, or means to an end, including some meant for entertainment and illicit thrills. Yet they are a visual rhetoric and a representation of crime and narratives from a largely undocumented and diverse subcontinent.
The Memory Company was founded by Anusha Yadav, Photographer and Designer of the Indian Memory Project. Founded in 2010, it is an online, curated, visual and oral-history based archive that traces a personal history of the Indian Subcontinent, its people, cultures, professions, cities, development, traditions, circumstances and their consequences. Applying images, letters and stories from family archives (sent and collected from contributors), it reconstructs a visual history that is emotionally rich, vivid, informative and even more surprising than we think.
© Indian Memory Project
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