Tag: Media Space

Gathered Leaves: The Photographs of Alec Soth – Science Museum

I had some time left at the weekend so popped into the Science Museum to visit the exhibition Gathered Leaves: The Photographs of Alec Soth. The exhibition, which takes place in the Museum’s Media Space, showcases works by one of the world’s most famous documentary photographers, including pictures from four collections: Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), Niagara (2006), Broken Manual (2010) and the most recent, Songbook (2014).

I’m no photography expert but I admired the poignant, intimate pictures, capturing the personalities of characters across America and the different, often vast landscapes. The collection of Mississippi images was my favourite, with its echoes of great American literature such as the work of Mark Twain. Definitely worth seeing.

Julia Margaret Cameron: Influence and Intimacy – Science Museum

The Science Museum‘s Media Space is currently home to two exhibitions, one of which focuses on one of my favourite Victorian photographers. Julia Margaret Cameron: Influence and Intimacy, which is free to visit, contains pictures from the National Photography Collection, taken largely from the Herschel Album (1864), 94 images which Cameron compiled into a book, feeling that they were her finest. Originally a gift to the scientist Sir John Herschel, Cameron’s friend and mentor, the works still have a great deal of power even after all these years.

I first came across Julia Margaret Cameron’s work during a holiday on the Isle of Wight. She took up photography relatively late in life, when she was living in Dimbola Lodge on the island. I was fascinated by her work, and this exhibition, which also includes her camera lens – the only surviving piece of her photographic equipment – and handwritten autobiographical notes, reminded me why. The photographs from the Herschel Album, and those Cameron took later in life in Sri Lanka, are beautiful, artistic and imaginative, taking inspiration from fairytales and Biblical stories.

Open until 28 March next year, this is the first of two exhibitions in South Kensington mounted to mark the 200th anniversary of Cameron’s birth. The second opens at the V&A on 28 November.

 

Drawn by Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection – Science Museum

Drawn By Light is an exhibition at the Science Museum‘s Media Space encompassing the collection of the Royal Photographic Society. It focuses chiefly on early photography, the invention of which was publicly announced in 1839, but also includes some later works of significance.

The Great Exhibition, coming soon after the invention of photography, acted as a catalyst for the formation of the Royal Photographic Society owing to the increasing popularity of the new medium. The inaugural meeting was held on 20 January 1853, with Sir Charles Eastlake as the chair and Roger Fenton as the honorary secretary. One of my favourite pictures in the exhibition is of members of the RPS Club on an outing to Hampton Court in 1856, looking dapper in suits and top hats. The Society began to collect photographs in 1892, and has gathered donations from the time as well as earlier periods and later works, including Steve McCurry’s iconic 1985 Afghan Girl, an image which has been in the news again recently.

The works are unusual, often experimental: this was a new medium, after all, and pioneers were still working out how best to use it. Abstract images sit alongside human expressions: the pictures of the inmates of Surrey County Asylum in the 1850s, taken by Hugh Welch Diamond, are fascinating, while Erna Lendvai-Dirksen’s images of blond-haired, blue-eyed children in 1930s Germany have sinister overtones considering the rise of Nazism. The poster image, a red-cloaked, windswept girl on a beach, was, extraordinarily, taken in 1913, by Lieutenant Colonel Mervyn O’Gorman. Very early photographic images from the early nineteenth century are included, as are beautiful images of familiar and exotic places. This is one exhibition for which I certainly want to buy the accompanying book.

The exhibition has now closed at the Science Museum but is moving to the National Media Museum in Bradford, where it can be viewed between the 20th of March and the 21st of June.

Joan Fontcuberta: Stranger than Fiction – Science Museum

On Sunday morning I went to South Kensington, hoping to go and see some exhibitions at the Natural History Museum, but there was a huge queue outside so I went to an exhibition in the Science Museum instead. The exhibition in question was Stranger than Fiction, created by the photographer and artist Joan Fontcuberta.

Fontcuberta subverts traditional ideas of photography as a medium of truth by crafting elaborate fictions that challenge our concept of reality versus fiction. I found the exhibition absolutely fascinating. It features six documentary narratives, each of which use photographs alongside journalism, diaries, museum displays and articles to develop the story.

The Fauna series looks at the lost archive of the mysterious Professor Peter Ameisenhaufen, who documented a large number of highly unusual creatures. The level of detail, imagination and level of detail that went into this work made it one of my favourites.

Herbarium looks at rare and unusual plant species, and there were several drawings of weird and wonderful flora. Orogenesis is made up of computer-generated geographical landscapes inspired by works of art, while Constellations consists of incredible images of starry skies.

Another of my favourites was Sirens, which purports to illustrate the discovery of mermaid fossils. The images were so realistic that I could almost believe they weren’t fiction. I also liked Karelia, which looks at Fontcuberta’s “exposure” of the fake miracles supposedly performed by monks in this monastery in Finland. This work was funnier than the others – the idea of performing a “weeping blood” miracle and hiring oneself out as a mourner at a funeral made me chuckle!

This exhibition was pretty unusual – “stranger than fiction”, you might say. Definitely worth a visit.