Critic's choice

Every month we ask a distinguished guest to select an image or series of images from our collection and to write about it.

Lucy Davies | Daily Telegraph

posted by Michael on 01 February 2010

Our Critic's Choice reviewer for the month of February is Lucy Davies.

Lucy edits Telephoto, the Telegraph's new online art and documentary photography space. She is a photography critic for the Telegraph, picture editor of the Sunday Telegraph Seven magazine and when not working, Lucy manages to paint portraits.

Reynolds after Raphael by photographic artist Victoria HallShe writes: "I've chosen these three photographs by Victoria Hall, in which she casts herself as the lead in re-enactments of familiar paintings.

Unabashedly contrived in their staging, they embrace, even exalt theatricality. The ensuing slippage between what is real and what is represented makes them provocative on several levels.

Firstly, they grasp photography's aptness for and history of toying with the fictitious. Think Julia Margaret Cameron's housemaids playing scenes from the Elgin Marbles; Marcel Duchamp posing for Man Ray as Rrose Sélavy. Cindy Sherman's actresses, Yinka Shonibare's Diary of a Victorian Dandy.

Secondly, the paintings she has chosen to emulate are interesting in themselves. When he painted Caroline Duchess of Marlborough, Reynolds was imitating and intending his audience to make the connection with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and Raphael's Madonna of the Sedia. Hockney drew on both The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck and A Rake's Progress by William Hogarth in the symbolism and composition of his painting - there's a version of the Hogarth on the wall in Hockney's version, if you look closely.

After Hockney by photographer Victoria HallI'm reminded too, that Rembrandt painted himself in antique costume; that Durer and Botticelli, Mantegna and Piero della Francesca painted themselves into narrative scenes; that Courbet said he intended his painting to be a stage, with he the central character. The ways in which photography has dovetailed with theatre, film and Old Master paintings is fascinating, and Victoria's work calls to mind and makes a stimulating exchange with her antecedents.

Furnished with a wealth of meticulously matched props - an imported raffia chair, a period telephone, the exact vista from the correct window at Blenheim Palace, Victoria's versions also move or reverse some objects - the Hockney is missing its husband and cat - and adds modern touches - the Burdett Coutts gains a spy novel - but they retain the alabaster grace and redolent colour of the originals.

After Ross by photographer Victoria HallLastly, they reach beyond their artifice to address contemporary concerns - the relationship between audience and artist in today's consumer culture; the influence the heritage industry has on our visual language and how Englishness is concerned almost entirely with the past. As she says, period dramas, stately homes and national history have become an important part of how we identify ourselves.

I think they work partly as a novelty, but they are also deeply moving: a fine thread of familiar beauty reaching across the centuries, toying with history, all the time analysing the value of artistic vision."

See our special Critic's Choice offer

0 comments

Tim Clark | 1000 Words Magazine

posted by Michael on 01 January 2010

We are delighted to welcome Tim Clark, Editor of 1000 Words Magazine, as our very first Critic's Choice reviewer. Tim has dipped into the Troika Editions Collection and selected his favourite photograph and you can read all about his choice here.

"Rummaging through the treasure trove of stunning imagery that is Troika Editions, one inevitably ends up feeling hard pressed when asked to single out a favourite photograph, or photographer for that matter. The selection of images presents a range of styles, techniques and global reach but it is the images from closer to home that really struck a chord with me. So I have gone local and would like to highlight Polly Braden and David Campany´s collaborative project "Adventure in the Valley" as my choice.

Limo, Broxbourne by photographers Polly Braden and David CampanyThe work explores a secret pocket of wilderness in London's East End, loved by locals but virtually unknown to the rest of the capital´s population. I have taken many a walk along this stretch of the river which has now come to feel like my backstage pass to the city.

I was strongly taken by the image "Limo", and its perplexing landscape, but also by its confident aesthetic. The rigorous composition immediately arrests the eye - the wonderfully organic lines formed by the trees' branches and their reflection in the canal give a striking visual impression to the scene. The main focus of our attention though is of course, the Limo and the industrial waste land beyond it, the juxtaposition of which is strangely beautiful and perfectly embodies the project's wider concerns of exploring the collision and overlapping of rural and urban spaces."

Tim Clark- 1000 Words Magazine (January 2010)

We have a special January offer on all medium prints in this series here

0 comments

Vicky Richardson | The British Council

posted by Michael on 01 March 2010

This month's Critic's Choice comes from Vicky Richardson who starts as Director of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council on Monday 1 March. She was previously editor of the architecture magazine Blueprint .

Vicky writes: "In my role at Blueprint I worked closely with our art director, Patrick Myles, to commission pictures of newly completed buildings. We avoided publishing images supplied to us by architects, which were often indistinguishable from the computer renderings used to sell the scheme to developers.

Block of Flats 02, East Berlin by photographer Isidro RamirezWe were particularly interested in photographers who challenged the prevalent way that new buildings are photographed in architecture magazines: set against blue skies; sharp angled, and pristine. Real buildings are not like that, much as architects would like their work to be represented as perfect and iconic. Buildings may look solid and un-changing, but they're actually constantly in flux, whether due to shifts in the light, changes in use and occupation, or to the deterioration of their physical fabric over time.

Isidro Ramirez's work, which I recently discovered, provides a different way of looking at buildings. I particularly like his series 360 Degrees, where he has photographed blocks of flats in East Berlin. By taking four images, from each corner of the building, and laying them on top of each other, Ramirez manages to show us a 360 degree view in one image. While the block itself stays constant and sharp in the centre of the frame, the ephemeral layers of graffiti, trees and plants around it, appear like ghostly moving shadows. This sounds straightforward, but apparently to achieve the affect, Ramirez approaches each image with a mathematical accuracy using the tools of a surveyor.

Ramirez's images may not offer a direct representation of the world, but they can offer a new truth through interpretation."

Block of Flats 01, East Berlin by photographer Isidro RamirezBlock of Flats 04, East Berlin by photographer Isidro Ramirez

0 comments