![\"Bruce](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/PF1167961.jpg\")
Bruce Davidson, Brooklyn Gang, 1959, copyright Bruce Davidson, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery <\/i><\/p>\n
Bruce Davidson, Brooklyn Gang, 1959, copyright Bruce Davidson, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery
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It seems appropriate that Photo London<\/i>, surely to date the capital\u2019s grandest festival of photography, made its debut crammed into the very building where, at a meeting of the Royal Society in 1839, Sir John Herschel coined the term \u2018photography\u2019. Seventy galleries from twenty countries came together over this special weekend at Somerset House to exhibit photography from all around the world.<\/p>\n
The vast set-up felt like an enlarged section from the Frieze Art Fair, with content sprawling over every inch of space. There were photos in every corner; it\u2019s the first time some areas of Somerset House have been opened to the public. German photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg\u2019s commissioned installation The Teaser,<\/i> in the open courtyard, drew viewers in from the very beginning, urging the audience to walk on her photographs, to engage with photography on a physical level before they\u2019d even entered the building. Hidden in the Stamp Staircase of the South Wing was Sohei Nishino\u2019s specially commissioned diorama of London \u2013 scraps of paper coming together to form a dream-like city like one of Italo Calvino\u2019s Invisible Cities<\/i> or something out of \u2018Kubla Khan\u2019.<\/p>\n
Several gems dominated the specially curated exhibitions. Beneath the Surface, <\/i>selected from the V&A archive, featured stunning work from Stephen Gill\u2019s award-winning \u2018Talking to Ants\u2019 as well as the epic landscapes and close-up studies of the surface of water by David Kronig and Susan Derges. Across the hall in the adjacent gallery the stunning work of Sebasti\u00e3o Salgado\u2019s epic eight-year international project Genesis<\/i> was combined with the debut UK showing of Kaveh Golestan\u2019s provocative photojournalism. The entire experience was a visual feast, made for wandering, discovery, and quiet contemplation.<\/p>\n
![\"Sama](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/canvas.jpg\")
Sama Alshaibi, Fatnis Al-Jazirah (Fantasy Island) 2014, Copyright the artist, courtesy of Ayyam Gallery<\/p>\n
The fair drew in exhibitors from all over the world, and as a result produced a wonderful array of content from all walks of life. Founded in Damascus in 2006, with the aim of showcasing under-represented Middle Eastern artists, the Ayyam gallery presented a stunning selection from Sama Alshaibi, images that seemed at once landscapes and portraits through inventive reflections.<\/p>\n
As well as the many classical portraits and landscapes on display, it was often such striking manipulations of traditional photography that caught the eye. Ben Brown Fine Arts, for example, presented Vik Muniz\u2019s 1961 exotic collages made using what the artist dubs \u2018cards from Nowhere\u2019, old and unused postcards. Through modern digital C print he then transforms these typical English scenes\u00a0 \u00ad\u2013 \u00adthe thrum of Piccadilly Circus or the rural idyll of Stonehenge \u2013 renewing the clich\u00e9 through his cunning photomontage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Jean](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/2014_lepage_recycle_12-e1424950237800.jpg\")
Jean Francois Lepage, Recycle 04, copyright the artist<\/p>\n
Another incredible showcase came from the Ravestijn Gallery \u00a0(Amsterdam) with their presentation of Jean Francois Lepage\u2019s 1980 Recycle<\/i> series. Here Lepage adapts a cut-and-stick method similar to Muniz\u2019s to stretch the medium to its limit, reworking and revisiting his own photographs from his time working in the fashion industry, and bringing a surgical scalpel to resurrect these images in new forms and with new faces.<\/p>\n
![\"Karine](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Karine_Laval_Poolscape_82_2010.jpg\")
Karine Laval, Poolscape #82, copyright the artist<\/p>\n
Some of the photographs seemed more akin to paintings. Awoiska van der Molen\u2019s hand-printed landscapes of reeds in water, from the Robert Morat Gallery, resembled oil on canvas. There was nothing of the slick lines and accurate edges we\u2019re so used to in so much contemporary photography. Similarly the Crane Kal gallery (Brighton) conjured the allure of dreamy summer days with their display of Karine Laval\u2019s vibrant square prints for her series Poolscape<\/i>. Laval\u2019s signature development process actually sees her using water as a distorting lens to manipulate the film \u2013 water is both her subject and one of the means by which she creates the finished photograph.<\/p>\n
![\"Matthias](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Artist-Mathias-Olmeta-Title-Khansine-Ambrotype-Unique-piece-70x80-cm-Courtesy-PUG-OSLO.jpg\")
Matthias Olmeta, Khansine, 2014, copyright the artist<\/p>\n
In fact there was a pleasing inclination across the fair for galleries to showcase a diverse selection of photographic techniques. An artist such as Matthias Olmeta, featured by the PUG gallery, went a step further in shunning the latest cutting-edge technology in favor of an ancient technique, the ambrotype. For this a glass plate is coated with collodion and then immersed in a bath of silver nitrate. As the plate is only exposed to light when shooting the resulting image produced is a negative. A positive image only appears when the plate is placed on a black background. Summoned into existence, it\u2019s a technique that lends the subject a mystical aura. The intensive process really does seem justified by the exquisite end products.<\/p>\n
Another eye-catching exhibit came from Paris, with the incredible contributions from the Lumiere des Roses gallery which presented many original xographs from the 60s, including David Bailey\u2019s cheeky \u2018Look for Deneuve\u2019 in which Catherine Deneuve\u2019s face transforms before us. Other portraits winked as the viewer walked around them, and an old clicking slide-show saw an array of sixties pin-up girls combined with the special 3D Lenticular Show. The whole section provided a cheerful tongue-in-cheek delight in the aftermath of the more sombrely curated exhibitions of the lower galleries.<\/p>\n
![\"Bill](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/bill.jpg\")
Bill Brandt, East Sussex Coast, 1978<\/p>\n
The Kahmann Gallery from Amsterdam followed in a similarly raunchy route leaving nothing to the imagination. Founded in 2005, with a focus on Dutch vintage photography, steamy black and white images and close ups saw bodies practically dissected by the camera. However what proved most effective were the subtler uses of this intense observation present in the works of Bruce Davidson and Bill Brant and their documentary style images of youth and life in all its vitality \u2013 captured in perfect motion.<\/p>\n
Naturally, the show was full of firm favourites: Cecil Beaton, Francesca Woodman, Guy Bourdin, Rankin. Name a famous photographer and he or she was probably represented in some capacity. The Rose Gallery from California in particular showcased a stunning array of images from William Eggleston, while the James Hyman Gallery also ensured space for showcasing older but underappreciated artists such as the \u2018unknown soldier of photography\u2019 Andre Kertesz whose photography of Henry Moore\u2019s Shadow, among other objects, is currently showing at the gallery. <\/i><\/p>\n
However what made the event most exciting was the voracious mix of old and established artists with up-and-coming ones. Many of the photographers exhibited for the festival were showing work for the first time at a major venue. The whole affair felt like Frieze for a single medium, the kind of specialisation that allowed for much greater appreciation of a single form. Many of the galleries exhibiting were invited to nominate an emerging artist for the John Kobal Residency Award, sponsored by the John Kobal Foundation.\u00a0 This year it was won by Daisuke Yokota, of G\/P Gallery, who the judges praised for his ‘meticulous approach to photographic experimentation … which hark back to an identifiably Japanese tradition, whilst pushing the medium irrevocably forward\u2019. This duality itself seemed to be at the forefront of the entire fair.<\/p>\n
![\"Ruben](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Ruben-Brulat-Douces-Brise.jpg\")
Ruben Brulat, Douces brise (Kiketi, Georgia) 2013, Copyright of the artist, courtesy of LAMB Arts<\/p>\n
Another young talent that shone out came from LAMB Arts, the main show-stopper being several large scale prints from the 23-year-old French photographer Ruben Brulat, whose expansive portraits set naked human bodies out in great expanses of wilderness. His most recent series uses his own body, reduced to the size of an ant in the depths of a ravine \u2013 presenting a profoundly moving portrait of mortality and the place of man in the world. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Susan Sontag dubbed the photographer as a figure \u201cadept at the joys of watching\u201d and this sensation of delight in observation permeated Somerset House. The entire weekend read as a giant celebration of photography in all its forms from modern digital prints to ancient traditional techniques. It was a joy to see such an assembly under one roof \u2013 the old and new harmoniously brought together, and through contradiction and contrast set in new and unexpected lights. After the success of Photo London<\/i> the committee have happily announced it will return next year.<\/p>\n
Text von Thea Hawlin<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n