Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2019 | The Photographers’ Gallery

In each room, the viewer is immersed in the expert documentation of the artist. Viewers are encouraged to do more than just watch the photographs; instead, the emphasis seems to be on more thorough understanding of the subject.

One of my favourite was the nucleus of Laia Abril’s abortion history is a beige flowered chair facing a television set from the 1960s, the two objects that invite you to sit down–but to do so would face you with a series of clips from polemical anti-abortion speeches, obscured by the blueish and jittering glass screen. However, we are reminded that they are by no means history when looking at the dates of information given on the walls–2005, 2014, 2015–words stinging in the ears when experienced in conjunction with sensitive portraits of people affected by their country’s lack of abortion rights. One woman attempted to induce her own domestic abortion to’ feel stronger than the law.’ These are juxtaposed with scientific photographs of objects associated with abortion history; a condom of fish bladder, ancient acid contraceptives, an unlawful kit of instruments. Here there is an excellent balance of thorough historical documentation, with testimonials from people who have undergone an illegal procedure as well as a woman who has performed thousands of them, and an angry exposure of the emotional and physical harm that stringent laws can have on women.

Arwed Messmer’s focus is on the RAF (Red Army Faction, a far-left student militant group) operating during the German student protests of the late 1960s, driven by the poor living conditions of the students at the time and the West German government’s impression of limiting political freedom, and then fuelled by police brutality. His is the first room, a collage of images primarily from press archives, including an enormous photograph of several figures gathered around a student’s body. No one looks in the same direction on every face that is not turned away, portrait-worthy emotion. There are members of the RAF along the left wall as you enter, each figure taken in sharp isolation from the mass protest, their costumes look almost comical, insincere, but it is their full expressions of pride, fear or youthful trust that denote the gravity of their situation.
In a slideshow compiled by Susan Meiselas, a member of Magnum Photos since 1976, she writes as part of her long-term work Kurdistan / akaKurdistan, “It felt weird–photographing the present when I knew so little about the past.” As a viewer, this strange feeling, looking at so much history potted in one room, is also easy to get. Some of the most striking photographs in the exhibition are those of clothing marking the tombs of Kurds instead of gravestones; crumpled like on the bedroom floor of a teenager, giving a haunting reminder of our material possessions’ ability to endure beyond the fragility of human life.

In previous rooms, photographs are generally populated with figures interacting with the world around them, but all the work of Mark Ruwedel shows a profound absence. (This work pretty much reminds me of my ongoing project disappearing landscapes.) Slight evidence of the presence of human, all in black and white, soaring landscapes. The Dusk series feels like some kind of post-nuclear wasteland–moving along the line of images along the wall of abandoned houses sitting on the plains of North America – places where human presence has broken down and moved away. These pictures are the timelessest of all. Ruwedel wrote that he is particularly’ in those places where the land reveals itself to be both an agent of change and a field of human endeavor’ –the landscape stretches across concrete tunnels and pulls down houses, a life cycle that we can either accept or resist, but the energy persists.

 

JENNY HOLZER | TATE

When you enter a Jenny Holzer exhibition, the first thing you see is text. The new Tate Modern display is no exception–the exhibition entrance is a small, high-top empty room, except for walls full of repeated phrases and wandering readers. One sentence reads “SYMBOLS ARE MORE MEANINGFUL THAN THINGS THEMSELVES,” and reading on, it becomes increasingly apparent that Holzer could not possibly mean bold statements. Instead, they’re just there to provoke thought, or at least reaction.

 

 

NAN GOLDIN, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency |TATE