Two unique photography exhibitions at The Lowry
TWO ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITIONS AT THE LOWRY THIS AUTUMN
The Lowry celebrates 100 years of Guardian photography &
Jem Southam follows in Lowry’s footsteps
A Long Exposure:
100 Years of Pictures from Guardian Photographers in Manchester (1908 - 2008)
Exhibition at The Lowry
Sat 18 October 2008 – Sun 1 March 2009
The Lowry celebrates 100 years of The Guardian’s distinctive pictorial style with a unique photography exhibition showing some of the most memorable images from the last century. The exhibition, curated by one of the Guardian’s most distinguished photographers Denis Thorpe, will feature around 100 images. All display a fascinating mix of styles and stories, including images of German prisoners from the Handforth Prisoner of War Camp, an aerial view of a Second World War battlefield, Winston Churchill in Manchester Town Hall and a powerful portrait of playwright Arthur Miller.
JEM SOUTHAM
Clouds Descending
Sat 15 November 2008 – Sun 22 March 2009
Commissioned by The Lowry, leading landscape photographer Jem Southam has been re-tracing Lowry's footsteps along the Cumbrian coastline, resulting in a remarkable series of images, focusing on the remnants of the area’s long and significant industrial past. Like LS Lowry, Jem has been observing and recording the industrial landscapes and harbour towns of this area, in particular Maryport, Whitehaven, Workington, Sellafield and Barrow. His trademark patient observation of changes over many months or years, means that he slowly develops an intimate knowledge of the site, capturing the marks of time (both industrial and natural) embedded in his chosen terrain.
A LONG EXPOSURE
Since appointing its first staff photographer, Walter Doughty in 1908, the Guardian has developed a unique and often innovative style.
The six staff photographers who followed in Doughty’s footsteps - Tom Stuttard, Bob Smithies, Graham Finlayson, Neil Libbert, Don McPhee and Denis Thorpe - were all based at The Guardian’s Manchester office. This exhibition will show selections of work by each, providing a unique pictorial record of the last hundred years as well as capturing the more intimate moments of human life.
Other highlights include a collection of glass plates taken by Walter Doughty during the Irish civil war, and some of the most famous political photographs of recent years – including Don McPhee’s extraordinary portrait of Enoch Powell, then an Ulster Unionist MP for South Down, taken in the King's Hall, Belfast, during an election rally in 1974.
Denis Thorpe’s own iconic images include Helicopter searchlights on the Strangeways Prison siege, and an unforgettable image of Brian Keenan, shortly after his release as a hostage in Beirut.
A Long Exposure is dedicated to the late Don McPhee, who originally approached The Lowry with the idea for the exhibition. A catalogue of the exhibition will be available.
CLOUDS DESCENDING
Renowned for photographing the ever changing aspects of the English landscape, Jem Southam uses a large format camera to produce C-type prints from 8 x 10 inch negatives that record a high level of detail. When the pictures are enlarged from the negatives, under supervision at a commercial lab, they reveal an entrancing wealth of information. Others are 'contact printed' (placing the negative directly onto the photographic paper) by Southam himself, deliberately to achieve a contrasting intensity and intimacy.
Jem has taken various contributors in a range of different specialist fields on walks with him to the sites that he has been photographing and asked them to make a response to the place which will also be shown in the exhibition. These include Lindsay Brooks, an expert on LS Lowry and Richard Hamblyn - a popular science writer who is interested in geology and place and author of The Invention of Clouds and The Cloud Book. Nick Alfrey, an art historian who works closely with cultural geographers shared with Jem his intimate knowledge of how artists have informed our understanding of the landscape. Other contributors are Harriet Tarlo, a contemporary poet who is interested in landscape and environment and David Chandler, curator and critic. Jem also walked with his brother Math Southam, an ornithologist, to gain further insights into the area.
The walks and conversations with this range of contributors all helped to inform Jem's work as he observes the balance between nature and man's intervention, tracing cycles of decay and renewal. Southam's working method means that he combines topographical observation with other references: personal, cultural, political, scientific, literary and psychological.
Descending Clouds, the name of the exhibition came from a Wesleyan hymn reference to the Second Coming, Christ descending from the sky. For Jem, however, it also refers to both the oppressive nature of Lowry’s skies weighing heavy on the figures in his work and also the sense of decline and abandonment of the coast he has been focusing on.
Due to Jem’s intensive working method, Southam rarely accepts commissions and has almost exclusively focused on the landscape of the South West of England where he lives and works. However, The Lowry managed to interest Southam in producing this new body of work examining the industrial landscape along the North West coast. This unique exhibition initiated by The Lowry involved commissioning Jem Southam especially for this project which started in 2006. This exhibition is supported by Gulbenkian.
Since opening in 2000, The Lowry has actively promoted photography as a vital art form, showing 18 photography exhibitions and acquiring a reputation as the key venue in the North West for major photography exhibitions/retrospectives.
Posted on Thursday, 21 August 2008 under Press Galleries Press