30.12.2023

General Information:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2023/taylor-wessing-photo-portrait-prize-2023/prize-winners

Some of the Photographs:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2023/taylor-wessing-photo-portrait-prize-2023/exhibitors

In this short piece of writing (I write such pieces to share art and culture and to keep in practice), I want to focus on some of the photographs I found interesting in the exhibition. Why the photographic portrait? I did my doctoral thesis on the relationship between the law and the photographic portrait in Victorian fiction. I have spent years thinking about photography and because my thesis was published as an academically successful book, I guess that makes me an expert. So, onto the list, in no particular order. And the reasons why I thought the images were interesting and worth talking about.

The Wrestlers by Prarthna Singh (from the series Champion)

A female wrestler holding up another wrestler across her shoulders so we see buttocks next to her face. It is like one of those old hunting photographs displaying the prize. Formally, there is the repetition of red between the two women on their clothing, so we are looking at similarities and patterning. The woman wrestler stares into the camera intensely. The earth is barren, like a traditional Indian wrestling site. But the woman wrestler’s face is between the trees in the background, suggesting a connection with nature and growth or even that nature and womanhood can flourish despite adversity.

The context is that these women wrestlers are fighting in Indian states known for high rates of crimes against women, female infanticide and child-marriage. As the curator label says, they are becoming what we call ‘strong women’ in traditionally male dominated spaces and challenging accepted representations of femininity with their powerful bodies.

My comment: What the curator label doesn’t mention is the Hindi smash hit film ‘Dangal’ which preceded these images. This was about how a man who had to give up wrestling to make money trained his two daughters to become wrestling champions with a pro-feminist message thrown in. However, Dangal was about the Father and patriarchy – it was the father’s wish that his daughters became wrestling champions and like men (traditional male wrestlers). Here, although the photograph is powerful as the representation of a woman fighter, can we really see these images as resistance against the patriarchy? Such photographs are probably inspired by the ethos of Dangal and, actually, the patriarchal Indian state is hell-bent on destroying the traditional, rural Indian way of life so that women join the economy as earners and India can compete on the global economic stage. When you forget the money situation, you forget everything. Interesting merely as an exposure of the fictions of ‘independence’ and ‘feminism’ in the Western mindset and which pander to the Western lip-service of these themes without looking at the actual reality behind what is being portrayed here and why.

Mum’s Engagement Dress by Cara Price from the series Her Possessions

A woman lies face down on a bed in a blue dress. Her face is angled into the corner of the room, her back is exposed, we can only see one eye. A bedside drawer frames the head. Light falls across her arm.

The context is that the woman lost her mother to breast cancer as a fifteen year old and wears her mother’s clothes so that she can explore the feelings of ‘absence and longing, revisiting memories and seeking closure’.

My comment: F-ing weird. Wearing a dress so that, in some sense, you become the woman that your father proposed to. Oedipal. And why is half of the face hidden? What is there to hide? Is it the Oedipal side of things? If sexuality isn’t the theme, why is the woman on a bed? That’s where the act happens. As Freud observed, the Oedipal aspects of the self are everywhere in Western culture in a very obvious kind of way. Could you get more obvious than this? And yet, no one is going to notice it. The beautiful observations of the people in this culture that can never see anything, know anything, recognise anything, analyse anything, say anything…

Ibu by Byron Mohammad Hamzah from the series Yang Tinggal Hanya Kita (All That Is Left Is Us)

A woman with an enigmatic, serious face stands in a full figure shot, encased in a cream gown with a cream head covering in a proud assertion of Muslim identity and womanhood. The arms seem to be – underneath the clothes, folded across the chest in a classic posture of rejection, defence.

The context is that the photographer abandoned his mother to move into a Western country despite her wishes. She knew that his values would change, that he would abandon his culture, that he would no longer be her real son.

My comment: Pretty shameless and exploitative shot of this mother by the son that betrayed her love and abandoned his culture (for what? Money? ‘Independence’?). However, in the shot, despite the photographer, the mother becomes iconic, powerful, beautiful. The figure of resistance against everything that Western modernity and its seduction of the power-hungry becomes. The more you look at her, the more you are impressed by her. It reminds me of the story of Sri Devi and Jurassic Park. Sri Devi was the Queen of Indian cinema. Steven Spielberg – the top director at the time – the most famous – approached her to be in the movie. He offered her a piddling little role. She refused. Because why would the Queen condescend to have a little bit part in a Western movie when at home in India, she ruled? She had self-respect. This is what the Queen is chosen for – self-respect and honour. The photographer’s mother in this photograph has self-respect and honour. And so much of it that she is an inspiration for difference against power. Jai Mata Di! (Praise the Mother [Goddess]!)

Grandad Sups his Tea by Thomas Duffield

An old man whose eyes we can’t see is against a dark background drinking tea from which steam curls up. There is a subtle power in the way that he is represented, something kingly about him. Perhaps it is the perfect ease, the perfect repose.

The context is that the photographer was raised by his grandfather, like I was raised by my grandfather too, as he was at home.

My comment: It was my grandfather that I looked up to and that I wanted to be like more than anything, the wise man, the community man, the pioneer, the athlete. Something of that emotion of looking up is caught here by the photographer.

Roy and Josef with their daughter Jude by Rona Bar and Ofek Avshalom from the series Us

A beautiful shot of a cute baby amongst a homosexual couple in Israel. They are heavily tatooed, so the appearance of the unmarked child’s body forms a strong contrast with the suggestion of being ‘a blank slate’. Black and white dominate the colour scheme, the black of the man-made and the white of the natural body.

The context is that the photographer photographed couples in their homes that had been overlooked by the mainstream media.

My comment: If you come from my culture and background, a blank slate is precisely what you see children as. Someone to begin with afresh, someone full of potential, someone who is going to learn and become filled with writing and images. Without those blank slates, there would no longer be any reason to live. They are the future. The most beautiful thing about the photograph is those eyes of the baby Jude, full of life and the keenness of curiosity, the wish to learn…

A moment’s pause by Frankie Mills from the series Good Evening We Are From Ukraine

A child in the liminal space between water and land – almost in a swimming pool. An air of uncertainty, the body caught between two differing spaces and states. He is on the stairs (Freud says this would suggest something about sex – but he often says that…) The stairs introduce the idea of up and down: will he go down into the water? Or will he stay up (does this suggest something about the trajectory of life and success?) The boy is framed by beautiful flowers in the background, a big bush of them. He appears against the beauty of nature, a reminder that the apparently serene state and stillness of of nature is contrasting with his uncertain stillness in this moment trapped in time and hesitation…

The context is that the photographer photographed the people of Ukraine that had fled the country for refuge after the Russian invasion. He writes: ‘Artem’s hesitation made me think of every other moment his family had stopped to make impossible decisions during their journey from Ukraine’.

My comment: Swimming is my favourite activity in the whole world (aside from one other…) One of the most beautiful experiences imaginable. However, every time, just before I would get into the pool, I would hesitate. Because I hate cold water. Here, when this teenager looks unusually apprehensive, it becomes about the plight of refugees across the whole world. However, what if he is just apprehensive about getting cold and wet in the water? The photograph makes me think of the difference between an internal state of mind that we experience and what the world understands about it, how it makes it into the Symbolic (Jacques Lacan – the symbolic and the real, etc.) This is not to say that the apprehension does not have a link to the refugee status of the teenager – it is merely to suggest the gulf between inner experience and its expression in the world, a world with its own rules of meaning and politics…

19.12.2023

NB: This is a personal interpretation and is not endorsed by the organisation.

In recent years, the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College – ‘the Sistine Chapel of England’ – has become a contemporary art gallery in a fusion of new and old. Juxtaposed against the beautiful paintings on the walls and ceilings influenced by the classical tradition – artwork which is about 300 years old – we have had art in other, more contemporary media such as enormous three dimensional models done to the scale of the earth and the moon. Each time, the installation fits and expands the themes on the ceilings. So for the appearance of the moon, the Painted Hall had already figured astronomy on the ceiling, including a representation of the moon in the figure of Diana or Artemis with the crescent in her hair. There was an interesting comparison between scientific advances, the relative merits of photography and painting, the mythological depiction of celestial bodies and the accurate topography of the surface of the moon from a ‘literalist’ point of view.

The newest art installation is ‘Coalescence’ by Paul Cocksedge (supported by Carpenters Workshop Gallery) since, in one detail, the ceiling depicts a figure pouring a sack of coal into a bowl made out of gold. Historically, the Painted Hall derived some funding from the coal tax too as a component of the Royal Hospital for Seamen, the immense and royally sponsored charity of its time. The one ‘naval pensioner’ that we know is depicted on the ceiling – John Worley – also appears to have worked in the coal industry (which perhaps dirtied the soul of this rogue since he figures in the records of the Hospital for Seamen as a master of profanity, drunkenness and unlawful wenching since he is said to have smuggled women into the exclusively male space of the architecture by Christopher Wren).

Trumpeted as questioning ‘our relationship with, and dependence on, fossil fuels’, Coalescence is a construction in a type of coal  called ‘anthracite’ which shines brightly in the light (I asked a Greek woman if it was a Greek word and she told me that I pronounced it incorrectly in a typically English way in a complete laceration and ruination of the Greek tongue. However, after that, I was informed that ‘anthracite’ literally just means ‘coal’ in Greek). Here is what is touted as the absolute point of Coalescence:

‘A single 200W light bulb, turned on for a year, would consume over half a tonne of coal – Coalescence represents that same amount. This sculpture is made up of 2, 500 pieces of anthracite, which is a form of high carbon coal that has a lustrous quality when illuminated’.

As the artist says ‘It’s easy to forget the origins of the energy that’s required in almost every aspect of our lives’.

Coalescence is exhibited alongside 20 Trees, also in anthracite. The point that is made is that if this sculpture were to be burned, ‘it would take 20 trees an entire year to offset the carbon emissions produced’.

How do we analyse these artworks? We are told that they are a blend of ‘mathematics with environmental awareness’. As mathematics, they lack the important quality of precision. For example, 20 Trees demands more details. What type of trees? How tall? How old are the trees? What exactly is the equation that we are talking about?

But let us not be pedantic. What the artworks do is to make the abstract and incomprehensible realm of mathematics and figures (for some) become concrete and visible. So we can see just how many objects it takes to produce the energy that we can consume mindlessly. We can see the resources that we are using up. In short, we are substituting the real for the notional and therefore understanding the effect that we have on the planet and the carbon that is locked up in things like coal. It is the nakedness of the numbers that we are seeing and that hit our eyes. When I was younger, my history teacher (the most boring teacher in the world, a great feat in a grammar school full of the most boring teachers I have ever encountered) told me that it was literally unimaginable how many people died in the World Wars. The human mind is not capable of envisioning that many bodies with personalities of their own. So the value of Coalescence is that it allows us to literally see what is destroyed for us and our energy needs, how we are destroying the planet and its treasures. The coal is literally burnt and destroyed to become pollution and dirt. It is absolute destruction.

Let us reflect on the fact that we are looking at coal illuminated by light in Coalescence. The art exhibit is about light. It is equating itself to the light emitted by a light bulb. The coal itself becomes filled with light. Is this a glorification and transfiguration of the material world which becomes filled with illumination – what has traditionally been linked in the Western tradition to spiritual rapture and enlightenment, heaven and truth? Or is there a problematic ambiguity? Is this, despite itself, a celebration of the fossil fuels that we are trying to escape from but which are necessary to the conditions of an advanced, industrial, mechanised, captialist society? If Coalescence is an artefact of light which reflects on the transmission of light – which in many ways equates coal to diamonds that capture light – what is this saying about the value of light, its communication, its manipulation, its use? Light makes the show. We can’t see without light. But what if light is being used to talk about light itself and its construction? Surely this is the postmodernist twist, the meta-level: the exposure of processes, manufacture. The transparency of the making.

Let us reflect on the context of Coalescence in the Painted Hall. The Painted Hall is a piece of propaganda. Beautiful propaganda, but propaganda nonetheless. The paintings are a celebration of British power and the power of the monarchy. So, the fact that we have an exposure of the mechanics of power in the form of Coalescence – what it physically and realistically takes to create power – takes on a new connotation in the space. Intentionally or unintentionally – let us not forget the power of the unconscious – we are being made to compare and contrast the situation from 300 years ago to the one today but also to reflect on the exposures of the situation of power today. The Painted Hall is, in a sense, ‘powered’ by coal since it derives its funding from the Coal Tax. There is this idea that the fossil fuel economy is in the past which is – as we all know if we read our novels – a foreign country. And that power of the time was linked to colonialism, the slave trade, to all those exploitative economies which fuelled modern Western development. The fossil fuel economy today is politically and socially powered by exploitative economies which rape the earth through mining, which unfairly martial resources for developed countries at the expense of the developing in the main strategy to keep them developing and to keep them subservient. The artist is a very political man. I have met him. On the very first meeting, he started talking to me about politics. I don’t think it is unintentional that the installation is about power and that he wanted it to be exhibited in the Painted Hall. Unintentionally or intentionally, location determines the meaning of a work. There is an exposure of the old evils of power and its mechanics which continue into the present moment, poisoning the earth and making it unlivable, barren, arid, sterile.

Lastly, let us reflect on the name. Coalescence means ‘the process of coming or growing together to form one thing or a system’ (Cambridge Dictionary). On a literalist level, the artist has created art objects by lumping coal together. Obviously. However, there is more of a meaning if we consider the intention of the work. Surely, the artist is inviting the public and society to come together to make a transformation of the coal into something else – something as pure and luminous and beautiful like light. The artist is asking us to become the creators and the people of light. To become separated from the dirtiness of coal – for surely, who expects coal to glow like it does in the exhibition before they come to the Painted Hall? There is a drive to make us form a new society, a new revolutionary society. To bring the people together into a greater whole against the rich that control resources in the world.

What is my overall opinion of Coalescence? It looks beautiful and spectacular, much more so than I expected. It is thought provoking and sophisticated, not what I expected at all. It does capture something of the essence of light – it is illuminating. The artwork has substance and it has an appealing charm to it. The question is, however, is the art fit for purpose? Can you make beauty into a stone and fling it into the face of this wretched world and its mechanisms of power – its control by the rich in the service of the exploitation of the world and all that are in it? Will the people – who never understand anything – that misunderstand everything – even make the first move towards appreciating the work? The attempt has to be applauded. The spirit has to be applauded. The real artist is a revolutionary. As the Hindi song title says we must have ‘Sarfaroshi ke tamana’ – the desire to have the revolutionary spirit. Without that, art is meaningless in a corrupt world. Because art is either the resistance, or it is not art. It would be propaganda for arrogance, insolence, sin and exploitation. As we reflect on the differing beauties in the Painted Hall – beauty without a conscience, beauty with a conscience – as we ponder on the unthinking and selfish and inconsiderate atrocities of the past and the atrocities of the present, what conclusion can we really come to? At the very least, there has to be the attempt at justice. At the very least, there had to be the attempt to crawl out of the gutter towards the stars and the light. At the very least, there has to be something said about what is happening, what is hidden, what we don’t want to know and feel. At the very least, some small, small ounce of ‘sarfaroshi ke tamana’ must be in the world. Otherwise, all you have is burning coal. And dirt that chokes.