Reviewing Re_View

Re_view is NGV’s historical exhibition of photographs celebrating 40 years of its Department of Photography, their separate curatorial department which was the first of its kind.


Although the exhibition claims that each photo chosen from its horde of 15,000 has been selected because it tells a story, plays a particular role in the career of the photographer concerned and because of its unique social and cultural context, the emphasis in the accompanying text seems to be on the latter. From observation and personal experience, it is true that there is a limit to the amount of text most visitors will read, so exhibitions are designed to engage people at multiple levels. Thus, particularly with visual art, this is likely not to move beyond being an audience to the work who either likes or dislikes what they see in the moment’s attention they spare it.

About 25 photographs are hung in chronological order in a single line around the petite, third floor semi-circular photographic gallery. Entering the gallery one is confronted by a series of relatively small, black and white images in large cream matts and unadorned wooden frames: these are the pre-21st C images. The handful of large, highly coloured contemporary images is behind the viewer as they enter. This is a relevant decision in a small space not accessed casually by visitors: this is not a blockbuster, but an exhibition one has to intend to see and, as a consequence, I observed several people walking in and immediately out again.

However, I persisted and found that the one image selected per photographer to represent a significant move in photography was successful (if a bit teasing!). These significant moves revolved around the expansion of purposes to which photography was put, although a new purpose clearly did not eliminate older purposes. Thus, the earliest purposes were non-artistic but ‘realistic’ relating to surveying and documentation, for example Maxime du Camp’s (1849) Egyptian archaeological sites and Linneas Tripe’s ‘sites of interest’ in India as well as examples that relate to surveying natural resources and life in slums. What is not highlighted is what new technologies are present and how new interests (mostly those of colonial expansion and middle-classes with the wealth and leisure to travel) underlie what we are shown.

The move towards photography as an art medium is shown to be in the 1880s and we are shown portraiture (Nadar), landscape (Peter Henry Emerson) and visual trickery (Kasahabe Kimbei) which reveal the artist’s aesthetic thinking: unique personality, natural aesthetics and the nature of reality. The ‘art’ is readily apparent in Frederick Evans’ 1895 portrait of Aubrey Beardsley where he chooses to emphasise the subjects’ long hands and prominent nose and the play of light upon them. However, there are no links to the anti-industrial, anti-reason moves in the arts in general.

Around 1900 we are shown that the next significant move is to include non-realistic use of the camera (Edward Steichen’s 1901 ‘Moonrise’), the un-posed use of the hidden camera (Paul Strand), but the continued documentary use in exotic/’primitive’ cultures of the other...but there is no exploration of importance in the rise of psychoanalysis, the portability of cameras or the artistic fascination with ‘primitivism’ (and its links to constructing Western modernity).

Post WW1 (although neither the war nor the importance of that post war phase is mentioned) there are moves towards discovering meaning via our awe in nature’s patterns (Imogen Cunningham) and Rothko-like ‘optical experience’ experiments (Lazzlo Moholy-Nagy), as well as fears of meaninglessness with links to Dada and Surrealism (Man Ray), the harnessing of nature’s vistas to national reconstruction projects (Ansel Adams). Not that these links are explored. And, there is a return to documenting grim realities (Bill Brandt). Then, in the 1950s, there is a decisive move beyond the real into psychological interiors such as Robert Frank’s 1953 photo of the blackened faces of Welsh miners: without discernable features we are compelled to search their eyes.

Finally, Lee Friedlander’s (USA, 1934-) work on ‘people and people things’ shows the move to critiquing modernity, an acceptance of colour and manipulation of reality is seen in Franco Fontana’s 1978 vibrant formalised landscape.here is a move to post-modernist absurdist appropriation (Martin Parr’s 1997 vast close-up image of pig cupcakes) and the exhibition ends with political and ecological statements (the wilted ducks of Boyd Webb – Placebo, 1989 -, Huang Tan’s traditional ink landscapes tattooed on his body, Yee I-Lann’s spiritual power of women and indigenous connection to land).

I was willing to put in the time to make these connections, but most visitors will not. Most will just miss this gallery altogether. Perhaps a picture is not better than a 1000 words.