Whitechapel

Great to go out again to the Whitechapel Gallery - it's a nice sized place and has a great history.


Reason for my visit was to see some of the work of  German born photographer Thomas Ruff (it's perhaps worth noting that Germany has produced some great contemporary photographers like Wolfgang Tillmans for example) .

 Can you see the ID vibe ?

What I liked about Ruff's work was the breadth of subject matter from the amusing interiors made while he studied to the 'Cosmic' pictures derived from data supplied by the ESO.


Ruff also produces portraits but these are not typical and use something of the Police Identification style.



Some of the pictures on show used the artefacts from jpeg (digitally compressed files ) to show something of the modern communication/media process.

Using Jpeg images of twin towers

There were other things to see at the Gallery including ISelf -End of Love  - which included some rather sad wedding photo's taken Akram Zaatari in the Lebanon and unusual 'installation' work by Portuguese born Leonor Antunes.

Iself - varied

Iself exhibition 

Spatial work by Leonor  Antunes - The Frisson of Togetherness, strangely evocative

Photography at Tate Modern (53)

Photography taking centre stage

Back at Tate Modern for part four of the CityLit Intro to Tate Modern (more on that another day) - surprised at how very exited as I went around the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition, photographic exhibitions vary and what this was was engaging.

Tillmans is great

The range was great from Portraiture (including giants of the 20th Century like Richard Hamilton and Oscar Niemeyer) to landscape, pictures that were photographic collages  and some that mirrored the abstract art that can be seen elsewhere in the gallery.




Another of the things I loved seeing was really big photographs you felt you could walk into, here was work that competed with the large canvases, work about the human condition, looking at issues like pollution but also great images shoeing the cosmos.

Rather Black & White

Quite different from The Radical Eye  the collection of Elton John's that is also showing - this is (by its nature) about a collection and a collection of historic black and white photographs, some superb (like the Man Rays) but my criticism of it would be that  it tells us a lot more about Elton than the wider world.

Breaking my own rules today £67 50

Doors

This road seems to be connected to family from a Surrey Village (Lindfield) - the door looks like perhaps it has seen a bit of life.

Lindfield means 

Yes it is 53 at the top of the door