Information and discussion on all aspects of British photographic history
Time: January 17, 2011 at 6pm to February 5, 2011 at 2pm
Location: James Hyman Photography
Street: 5 Savile Row
City/Town: London
Website or Map: http://www.jameshymanphotogra…
Phone: +44 (0) 207 494 3857
Event Type: exhibition
Organized By: Valérie C. Whitacre
Latest Activity: Jan 17, 2011
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CONVULSIVE BEAUTY. SURREALIST PHOTOGRAPHY AND ITS LEGACY.
06.01.2011 • 05.02.2011
Convulsive Beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial or will not be. - André Breton
James Hyman Photography's newest exhibition Convulsive Beauty explores the legacy of the Surrealist's psychological, physical, spacial and sexual freedom.
The themes of this exhibition derive from an appreciation of the precedence given to photography within the Surrealists' visual practise and the appropriation and use of photography in its journals (including works by Atget, Brassao and Man Ray). These also provide a context for engaging with the more recent practise of Francesca Woodman in the early 1970s and Anna Fox in recent years, both of whom, like the Surrealists, place the female predicament at the heart of their work.
A Surrealist engagement with psychoanalysis and its focus on studies of female hysteria and sexuality is also played out in the emotionalism of both Surrealist and mid-twentieth century cinema. Convulsive Beauty addresses this through the inclusion of photographs of Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren and Jane Fonda in heightened states of agitation and arousal.
Highlights include:
Brassai's photographs recording sculptural objects fashioned by Picasso.
Man Ray's frontispiece for the Surrealist magazine Minotaur, which comes from the archives of its publisher Skira.
Kertész's bizarre use of juxtaposition to render strange a portrait bust and air-conditioning unit.
A photograph documenting John Lennon and Yoko Ono's performance Happening in the Sack which directly echoes Man Ray's Enigma of Isidore Ducasse in which the artist wrapped a sewing machine in cloth, making the concrete object a 'secret'.
Anna Fox's Country Girls (in collaboration with Allison Goldfrapp) which reverberate with a charge that recalls Duchamp's last major work Etant Donnés: a tableau visible only through peep holes that pictures a nude woman in the grass.
For Press & Sales Enquiries please contact Valérie C. Whitacre:
valerie@jameshymanphotography.com, +44 (0) 207 494 3857
Victoria and Albert Museum's photography collection
National Science and Media Museum
RPS Journal 1853-2012 online and searchable
Photographic History Research Centre, Leicester
Birkbeck History and Theory of Photography Research Centre
William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonné
British Photography. The Hyman Collection
The Press Photo History Project Mapping the photo agencies and photographers of Fleet Street and the UK
The correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot
Historic England Archive
UAL Photography and Photography and the Archive Research Centre
Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group
www.londonstereo.com London Stereoscopic Company / T. R. Williams
www.earlyphotography.co.uk British camera makers and companies
Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock.
National Portrait Gallery, London
http://www.freewebs.com/jb3d/
Alfred Seaman and the Photographic Convention
Frederick Scott Archer
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