Hi Bob,
It's an interesting combination to show in the same gallery. I went
with Frits a few weeks ago. I wasn't particularly familiar with
Eggleston's work before. That is, I hadn't had a look at lots of his stuff
all in one go. The pairing with AA worked extremely well, I think. I
liked Eggleston's work a lot. I think it's more interesting than AA's.
However, I was pleasantly surprised by the AA part of the show. I
liked the way you can trace his development, and see old prints
alongside newer ones. I still can't call myself a fan, but one thing I
do think he does very well is to contrast several textures within the
frame, in an abstract way. I'm thinking particularly of the 'Surf
Sequence' from 1940, and the 'Frozen Lake and Cliffs' from 1932. Both
of these are in his book 'Examples', which is the only book of his
that I have.
The 'Surf Sequence' was excellent, along with the other sequences. I've
always been a fan of Ansel Adams. I was fortunate enough to visit
Yosemite as a child and later a teenager, camping with friends. In those
days you could just bowl up and find a pitch. These days (so they tell
me) you can't even get into the valley without booking well in advance.
Such is the popularity of the place.
Having stood at the top of El Capitan, I can vouch for the amazing
scenery g.
I have a few old Adams prints from yesteryear (nothing grandiose, just
poster shop stuff), one of which is a tranquil shot of an orchard made in
the 50's in Santa Clara. Years later the land is full of houses, and we
lived in one. The pic reminds me of those times, and the countryside
around the south Bay Area. So I have a sentimental attachment to AA's
work, which perhaps colours my views.
The Eggleston collection left me cold. Technically, I found the quality
very inconsistent. Some of the prints featured blobs and dust spots, and
the contrast on one of them is appalling. Sure, one could argue that this
is the way that the artist (sic) intended them to be seen, as surely he
must have complete control over his work on display, no? If that is the
case, then I wasn't impressed.
As far as the style of work goes, there were hints of this and that. I
liked the way he used limited depth of field, particularly on bright,
sunny exteriors, which is quite difficult to do, as we know. But frankly
they left me cold. I was interested to see the shots in the 70s in
particular because that's when I was there, and I recognised the
paraphernalia and street furniture of the time, but I simply felt no
emotion form the pics at all. Not his fault, the poor chap! I just don't
like the style.
Yet when I look at Robert Frank, I see something totally different!
Weird, I can't explain fully, why.
In the morning we went to see the Body Worlds exhibition in Brick Lane.
Not for the feint of heart, it's a very 'medical' display using real
corpses, demonstrating the 'plastinisation' procedure whereby bodies and
parts thereof may be preserved and displayed. Fascinating stuff though.
For those interested:
I can't bring myself to go to that one. I really can't see the point
of it. In addition, I'm led to believe that there are some
'plastinisated' (?) children in the exhibition. I really don't see
how a child could possibly give informed consent to such a thing, and
I'd find it very distressing to look at.
That part was very difficult to get through. There were various displays
involving everything from embryos at selected stages of development,
through to post-natal infants, even a woman with child in womb. That as
hard enough, but there were several fetuses with severe abnormalities,
including siamese twins, and that was very difficult to take in. I
noticed a few women sniffling, and Alma was no exception. It was real
'lump in the throat' time. And I'm supposedly hardened to this: we often
film children who are terminally ill, cancer patients etc.
[Who am I kidding! I once cried so much during the interview that the
tears were dripping off my specs and into the viewfinder. The hardest
part was trying not to make a noise or it would have ruined the
interview. At the end, all the hankies came out and we blew for England!]
This area is a seperate room and can be avoided if necessary.
I found the displays both fascinating and appalling at the same time. I
can see the value for students of medicine and biology, but for the rest
of us it appeared to be morbid curiosity. Funnily enough, I was actually
underwhelmed by it, in the sense that I was expecting it to be much more
shocking or somehow 'revelatory'. In fact, the displays could easily have
been non-human plastic exhibits, created by model-makers. There was
nothing that immediately related the items to actual humans other than
this was a given from the start. Sure, it all looked like what it was
supposed to, but there was no 'humanity' to the displays, that I could
detect.
I have filmed in operating theatres (ORs) several times,
