London
“America’s hottest young photographer is a Brit”— or so I was told by a prominent New York critic. The fact that Adam Fuss lives in Manhattan has less to do with a kind of art brain-drain than with an accident of personal history, and yet it is true to say that he could not sustain his total commitment to his work nor his capacious studio in his home country.
The fact is that there is just not the collecting base to feed a large commercial gallery system in the UK. With the opening of two new spaces devoted to photography in London, there are hopeful signs, however, of a modest photographic spring. Both the Akehurst Gallery and the new Zwemmers space are welcome additions to the now well established Zelda Cheatle Gallery, the Special Photographers Company, Hamilton’s Gallery and the Photographers’ Gallery Print Room.
Photography has, of course, become a medium favoured by large numbers of contemporary artists, and almost all the major galleries deal in photographs of one sort or another. Notable London galleries in this category would include the famous Lisson Gallery; the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, through to Maureen Paley, Interim Art; Jay Jopling; Anthony Reynolds; Victoria Miro; Anderson O’Day down to the tiny, but fabulous Cabinet Gallery tucked away in a mansion block in Brixton.
Photographs can also be purchased at special photographic auctions held twice yearly at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams. A superb photographic fair, at which excellent nineteenth-century pictures can be found for a few pounds, is also held twice a year to coincide with the auctions. This is hosted by London’s Bonnington Hotel and it must be said is much more exciting than its New York equivalent.
If the collecting base here is sparse, the public for photographic exhibitions is very healthy indeed and all the major exhibition spaces have recently had large photographic shows. This includes the Royal Academy’s 1989 blockbuster “The Art of Photography” (a celebration of photography’s 150th birthday), the Victoria & Albert Museum’s “Photography Now”, of the same year, and recent hits such as the Barbican’s superb “All Human Life”, a selection from the Hulton Deutsch “The Epic and the Everyday” (all of which published splendid catalogues to accompany the exhibitions). Year-round coverage of contemporary work can be seen at the Photographers’ Gallery; at Camerawork in London’s East End; and shortly in a large suite of galleries, set to rival the MOMA space in New York which opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum (which houses the National Collection of the Art of Photography). Photographic exhibitions can also be seen occasionally at the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Independent Art Space (IAS) in Chelsea and the Saatchi Gallery, which often includes photographs in its mixed shows from the collection.
Outside London, among other places, photography is exhibited at the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television (NMFPT) at Bradford; the Ffotogallery, Cardiff; Portfolio Gallery, Edinburgh; Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno; F-Stop, Bath; John Hansard Gallery at the University of Southampton; the Cambridge Darkroom; Cornerhouse, Manchester; Impressions Gallery, York; Untitled, Sheffield; the James Hockey Gallery at WSCAD in Farnham; and many many other spaces across the country. The Artangel Trust often sponsors photographic-based projects in London and elsewhere, and it is expected that the huge collection at the Hulton Deutsch (said to be fifteen million images) will be displayed more frequently now that a curator has been appointed there.
The public for these exhibitions is also served by a number of magazines covering photographic art. New to this group are the glossy Portfolio magazine and the home-produced Inscape. These join the well established Creative Camera and the excellent and newly transformed History of Photography.
The major photographic collections are housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television (NMFPT) at Bradford. The V&A began to collect contemporary photographs in 1856 and continues to this day; work can be requested in the Print Room of the Collection of Prints, Drawings and Paintings there. The NMFPT houses the Kodak Collection and the wonderful Fox Talbot archives. More Fox Talbot material can be seen at his home, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, now owned by the National Trust.
Avoiding the obvious “big names” (such as Martin Parr and Chris Killip), there are a vast number of artists who use the medium. Among the more “traditional” users to watch one could name Peter Cattrell, Amanda Lane, Jem Southam and Roddy Thompson; while of those artists using photography as a vehicle for conceptual art one could name Adam Chodzko, Max Wigram, Bone & Gillick, and Stephen Murphy. One might also list artists who are fascinated by light and who use photographic materials without actually using cameras. Of these Susan Derges, Daro Montag and Garry Fabian Miller come easily to mind (an exhibition exploring this kind of work is planned for next year at Bradford).
Historically there has always been a distinction made between “photographers” and “artists who use photography”. (It is said for example that Gilbert and George refused to participate in the Royal Academy’s “Art of Photography”.) This distinction can still be seen to operate at the Tate Gallery, where conceptual art using photography is deemed collectable, whereas photography bearing any relation to a crafted, fine-print tradition is not. Despite appearances, it may be that this division has less to do with the opinion that real art is cerebral, than with the fact that as a genre, Realism has been out of intellectual fashion for most of this century. Thus the argument has been less to do with the question “Is photography an art?” than with the question “Is Realism a worthy vehicle for art?”. The answer, of course, depends on the quality of the art.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Thriving, despite itself'