The Photographers Gallery
Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive
American photographer and filmaker Alex Prager constructs large-scale images. Her aesthetic produces a hyper-stylised body of work that often references cinema and popular culture. The exhibition highlights Prager's major series and moving image works.
Prager's hometown Los Angeles is inspiration for her series including Polyester (2007), Week-End (2010) and Compulsion (2012). Female characters are placed in strange yet familiar contexts, creating an atmosphere of intrigue and allure. Deeply influenced by photographers such as Diane Arbus and William Eggleston, Prager's fastidious compositions offer the viewer world vivid and drama, emotion and wit.
For her series Face in the Crowd (2013) Prager employed elaborate stage sets, often using hundreds of extras, to create dynamic tableaus where individual charcters are presented in equally sharp focus, seemingly lost in their own internal conversations. The carefully fabricated sets recreate public spaces- streets, beaches, and airports.
Prager's inviting, glossy compositions also allude to dark psychological ambiguity and drama. At once temporal and timeless her instantly recognisable image-world exists within the fantastical and hyper-real, where the line between reality and fiction, surface and depth, is blurred.
Crowd number 7 (Bob Hope Airport), 2013
From the series Face in the Crowd
Archival pigment print
Courtesy of Sayoko and David Teitelbaum
Tish's interest in unemployed young people grew out of her own childhood experiences and an earlier project she had made in Newcastle for the housing charity Shelter. Made in west Newcastle, Youth Unemployment is. probably her finest series, combining sharp social observation with a lyrical sense of place and form.
Shirley Barker: Personal Collection
15 June- 28 July 2018
The Print Sales Gallery presents rare vintage and lifetime prints from the personal collection of pioneering British photographer Shirley Baker (1932- 2014).
Thought to be the only woman practicing street photography in Britain during the post-war era, Shirley Baker's humanist documentary work traced communities in the North West of England throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and into the 1980s.
Baker's passion for photography is perhaps best epitomised by her depictions of the daily life of the working class terraced streets in Salford and Manchester, which despite receiving little attention at the time, still remain important and empathetic documents of the urban clearance programmes and the resilience of communities under siege.
Eye number 2 (Boulder) / Eye number 3 (House Fire)
Eye number 5 (Automobile Accident) / Eye number 9 (Passenger Casualties), 2012
From the series Compulsion
Archival pigment prints
Courtesy of Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann
Maupin, New York and Hong Kong
Tish Murtha: Works 1976 to 1991
The exhibition explores six major projects made by Tish Murtha (UK 1956- 2013) between the 1970s and 1990s. After undertaking a photography course in Newcastle, Murtha enrolled on the influential Documentary Photography programme in Newport led by photographer David Hurn. There she developed her socially critical eye and photographic approach, making series' including Newport Pub (1977).
Murtha returned to the Middle-East in the late 1970s and made projects while employed as Community Photographer at the Side Gallery in Newcastle. In 1982, she moved to London and was awarded a London by Night commission by The Photographers' Gallery and supplied documentary photographs for various publications.
After moving back to the North East in the late 1980s, she made a significant work, Elswick Revisited. Although this was her last major series, she continued to make photographs through out her life. Like other photographers in her generation, Murtha documented the harsh reality of lives lived in the austere times. The friends, family and strangers she pictured were surviving in communities marginalised by economic inequality, racial tension, and social stigma.
These works interrogate a period of transition and social change set against the background of post-war dereliction, while also retaining an incisive relevance today.
London by Night (1983)
Later London Works (1986)
In 1982, Tish moved to London, and was commissioned by The Photographers' Gallery to produce a series for the group exhibition London by Night. She collaborated with Karen Leslie, who worked as a dancer and stripper in Soho. Karen's text accompanied Tish's images, and together they still stand as a powerful critique of the sex industry. Some later works made in Soho are also included here.
This Photographing Women issue of Creative Camera (November, 1984) contained work by women photographers including Murtha. Jenny Matthews and Sue Isherwood. Edited by Susan Butler, who commissioned The Photographers' Gallery director Sue Davies to write a short essay about women photographers. This marked a change in direction at the magazine, and within British photography as a whole.
Elswick Revisited (1987-1991)
When Tish returned to the North East in 1987, she made the series Elswick Revisited. A decade after her first photographic study of Elswick, she focused both on cultural diversity and the rise of racism. With her commitment to social justice as strong as ever, she used her photographic practise to document the decline of the North East and the resilience of its population.
Tish Murtha: Works 1976 to 1991
The exhibition explores six major projects made by Tish Murtha (UK 1956- 2013) between the 1970s and 1990s. After undertaking a photography course in Newcastle, Murtha enrolled on the influential Documentary Photography programme in Newport led by photographer David Hurn. There she developed her socially critical eye and photographic approach, making series' including Newport Pub (1977).
Murtha returned to the Middle-East in the late 1970s and made projects while employed as Community Photographer at the Side Gallery in Newcastle. In 1982, she moved to London and was awarded a London by Night commission by The Photographers' Gallery and supplied documentary photographs for various publications.
After moving back to the North East in the late 1980s, she made a significant work, Elswick Revisited. Although this was her last major series, she continued to make photographs through out her life. Like other photographers in her generation, Murtha documented the harsh reality of lives lived in the austere times. The friends, family and strangers she pictured were surviving in communities marginalised by economic inequality, racial tension, and social stigma.
These works interrogate a period of transition and social change set against the background of post-war dereliction, while also retaining an incisive relevance today.
London by Night (1983)
Later London Works (1986)
In 1982, Tish moved to London, and was commissioned by The Photographers' Gallery to produce a series for the group exhibition London by Night. She collaborated with Karen Leslie, who worked as a dancer and stripper in Soho. Karen's text accompanied Tish's images, and together they still stand as a powerful critique of the sex industry. Some later works made in Soho are also included here.
Elswick Revisited (1987-1991)
When Tish returned to the North East in 1987, she made the series Elswick Revisited. A decade after her first photographic study of Elswick, she focused both on cultural diversity and the rise of racism. With her commitment to social justice as strong as ever, she used her photographic practise to document the decline of the North East and the resilience of its population.
Youth Unemployment (1981)
Tish's interest in unemployed young people grew out of her own childhood experiences and an earlier project she had made in Newcastle for the housing charity Shelter. Made in west Newcastle, Youth Unemployment is. probably her finest series, combining sharp social observation with a lyrical sense of place and form.
15 June- 28 July 2018
The Print Sales Gallery presents rare vintage and lifetime prints from the personal collection of pioneering British photographer Shirley Baker (1932- 2014).
Thought to be the only woman practicing street photography in Britain during the post-war era, Shirley Baker's humanist documentary work traced communities in the North West of England throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and into the 1980s.
Baker's passion for photography is perhaps best epitomised by her depictions of the daily life of the working class terraced streets in Salford and Manchester, which despite receiving little attention at the time, still remain important and empathetic documents of the urban clearance programmes and the resilience of communities under siege.
Purchase from The Photographer's Gallery
The use of the gold foil print stood out and created the idea of power and confidence. This could be explored in the future, of exploring screen printing for lettering. The use of the gloss finish paper created a photographic finish, which really highlighted the content of the publication.
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