the radical eye - exhibitionThe Radical Eye is an exhibition at the Tate Modern showcasing the highlights of Elton John's 8,000-image photography collection. The collection, entirely black-and-white, ranges from simple close-ups of still lifes, documentation of American life during the Great Depression to bold portraits of models and celebrities. Inside the collection are famous photographs, like Migrant Mother (Dorothea Lange) and Glass Tears (Man Ray).
The exhibition was certainly really interesting as it showed such a huge and prestigious range of photographs that have been really important in how photography has developed. A lot of the techniques used to create these images were unprecedented at the time and a lot of them are also very inspirational to more modern photographers. |
Wolfgang Tillmans is a contemporary photographer from west Germany who lives in Berlin and London. He was the first photographer - and the first non-British person to win the renowned Turner Prize. I went to his exhibition in February 2017 in the Tate Modern and absolutely loved his work. There was no real theme as across 8 rooms Tillmans had arranged his photos in chronological order , starting from 2003 in the first room to the present day in the last room. There were also a lot of newspaper articles, reports and leaflets (e.g. an article describing the possibility of alien life) that Tillmans had positioned on tables throughout the exhibition. However, I found that they didn't add anything substantial and that he was 'documenting life and time' (according to the exhibition notes) was pretentious.
What I did like, aside from a lot of the photos was how they were set up in the exhibition. They were put up very unusually with invisible tape and crocodile clips. As a result, there were no over-imposing frames or other things that would take away from the actual image. The majority of images from the exhibition I found very inspiring and characteristic, especially the abstract images (see below) and various others that I have made a slideshow of below. However, many of Tillmans' portraits throughout his exhibition were very forgettable and I don't feel like he put a lot of effort into composing them. |
ilsoo yang |
macro room |
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thomas danthony |
me |
rozine jahfar |
me |