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, including an open-heart surgery. To me, that is *much* more fascinating. Also, you get the sounds and the smells of such an environment, and that completes the experience. All in all, an interesting visit, and I'm pleased I went, but there were parts to it that were emotionally distressing. > >> For lunch we dined in one of the many Indian restaurants in Brick Lane. >> Unfortunately, my Chicken Tikka resembled some of the displays we'd just >> seen, and I felt totally ick. Oh well. > >It can be a bit hit-and-miss round there. What I meant was, the food itself was *excellent*, really nice. It's just that physically it looked like some of the muscle and tissue that we just been examining in the Body Worlds! Anecdote: Alma, my SO, wanted to touch an exhibit - to feel the texture of the muscles in particular, that looked very stringy. She's very much a hands-on person. There were signs everywhere forbidding this. I created a decoy by standing in front of a display while she went around the back, and briefly felt the surface of a muscle. Curiosity satisfied, we resumed our viewing, until I realised that she'd just effectively goosed a corpse in the butt. A busy day. Cotty ____________________________________ Oh swipe me! He paints with light! http://www.macads.co.uk/snaps/ ____________________________________ Free UK Macintosh Classified Ads at http://www.macads.co.uk/ ____________________________________
