Information and discussion on all aspects of British photographic history
Time: April 22, 2015 to May 8, 2015
Location: James Hyman Gallery
Street: 16 Savile Row
City/Town: London
Website or Map: http://www.jameshymangallery.…
Phone: 02074943857
Event Type: exhibition
Organized By: James Hyman
Latest Activity: Apr 22, 2015
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Spitting: Photographs by Andrew Bruce and Anna Fox was commissioned by James Hyman Gallery in order to coincide with this year’s general election. One of the most popular British television programmes of the 1980s and 1990s, watched by an audience of 15 million people at its peak, Spitting Image featured puppet caricatures of prominent celebrities of the time, including international politicians and the Royal Family, among others. The series was cancelled in 1996 but remains a seminal piece of British television.
Echoing the garish photographs made by Spitting Image creators Peter Fluck and Roger Law before Martin Lambie-Nairn approached them to suggest adapting their creations for television, Fox and Bruce spent weeks in the studio working with a selection of the original puppets, crafting these ominous images. Photographed either against brightly coloured neon backdrops or shrouded by darkness, each image depicts a former Tory party member. Rendered in extraordinary detail on large format film, at times stripped of their clothing, every mark on the latex or foam is made visible and accentuated, including signs of wear, fragility and decay. Presented in this way, the puppets become evocative emblems of a past era and a faded power. There is an awkward tension in these photographs between the puppets as depictions of people, as cultural icons and also as crumbling modern artefacts.
Fox and Bruce say of their experience of making the work, ‘Once we had them out of their packing cases, lying on the studio floor, the puppets looked broken, aged, decrepit and lacking any glimmer of life…Spitting Image was a great show that was made, in the wake of Python, at a time when humour really could be outrageous. These puppets, imbued with satire, represented our most significant politicians at their worst…Now….we are left with the remnants of a different age.’
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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