This is the first of several posts I hope to write following the panel discussion I took part in on August 31 at the Museum of London, a few days before the end of the Museum’s ‘London Street Photography‘ show, which has been the most successful show in terms of audience figures ever held there. The book of the show has also sold well, and had to be reprinted to meet demand.
It’s also possible that this show will now be shown in several overseas venues, perhaps including a showing in Rio, the next city after London to host the Olympics.
I very much welcome the success of the Museum of London’s show London Street Photography 1860-2010, which along with other ‘street photography’ related events has I think helped to shift the whole perception of photography by museums and galleries in the UK. Not only the Museum of London but other institutions are thinking much more seriously about showing photography, and of showing photography outside practices in the more general art world and portraiture. We could even in the future see shows of British documentary photography or landscape at major institutions in this country, and it could, just could mark the beginning of the end to the critical coldshouldering of photography – and particularly British photography – that has prevailed here.
Although I have my doubts, not least as there are now so few curators with any real knowledge of the media in position in UK institutions – on a generous estimate a couple at most.
Mike Seaborne, who along with Anna Sparham, curated this show for the Museum (and is one of that very few) is shortly leaving the museum after a long tenure there. He was also responsible for what was arguably the last great survey related to British photography (there have been a few more partial and half-hearted attempts since,) again at the Museum of London, with the show ‘Photographers London 1839-1994’, and unsurprisingly quite a few photographers are common to both volumes. The book of that earlier show was rather larger and better produced but long out of print, although you can get a secondhand copy in fair condition for less than it cost at the time or pay another £550 or so for a “collectable” copy.
It is perhaps important to state that the current show is not a show of ‘street photography’, but “a compelling view of London street life over 150 years” and designed to give a “fascinating insight” into the museums photographic collection, with few images drawn from other sources. Its title is perhaps a little of an opportunistic grab at the zeitgeist, but ‘Photographs taken on London Streets from the Museum of London collection‘ would have been rather less compelling.
In fact the show was even more restricted than this, as the curators took the decision at the start of their work to exclude all pictures taken at organised events. Possibly this was on pragmatic grounds, simply a way to reduce the workload of looking through the huge collection, but for whatever reason it had the effect of excluding what must surely be the largest source of street photography (or photography on the streets) and certainly where most of the more interesting street photography of the last thirty or more years has taken place. It has the effect also of producing an anodyne view of the capital, removing most if not all of the evidence of dissent and social action; one of my friends described the result as “perfectly pure pabulum puree”. I certainly felt that in the work from the past fifty years the show reflected surprisingly little the great changes in population that have produced today’s vibrant multicultural city.
Contrary to the rumours put about by some (including the curators of some other exhibitions) street photography is alive and well in London and has been so for many years. The real problem has been photography and art institutions that have turned their backs on documentary photography (and particularly British documentary photography) for so many years.
It was a policy that perhaps reached its asinine depths earlier this year with the Arts Council decision to remove its support from Side Gallery, one of the very few institutions that kept the flame of documentary burning strongly in this country – and gained international recognition for its work.
The show certainly had its strengths and its weaknesses, and some of both come from the museum’s collection, which includes some real gems but also has significant weaknesses, in part because for much of the period covered by the show it lacked a curator for the medium or anyone with the knowledge of the medium to form a rounded collection. But I also felt the show was weakened by the desire of the curators to avoid showing some of the well-known works of some photographers and instead including unknown images. Certainly in some cases there was evident good reason why these works have been less often seen.
Perhaps the weakest aspect of the exhibition is a slide show of recent street photography, which I think adds little to the overall show. When I viewed it last week I was also shocked by the presentation, showing a complete lack of concern for the medium. The images were all being projected at the wrong aspect ratio, stretching out the vertical dimension and making the images look like something from a ‘Hall of Mirrors’, presumably because the screen of the computer sending the signal to the projector had been incorrectly set. They were also being projected at too low a resolution for the screen size and were ridiculously blurred to a degree that made them uncomfortable to watch. This isn’t the first time I’ve been appalled by the apparent disdain shown by the museum towards the display of photographs on-screen which is truly unprofessional.
This was also a show that very much side-steps the question of what street photography is, something I’ll return to in a later post.
According the to museum web site, the show ends on 4 Sept, and it says:
Please note that due to the popularity of this exhibition, a timed ticketing system will be in operation during weekends and school holidays.
Tickets can be collected from the Museum front desk on arrival, tickets cannot be prebooked.