Urban Living
Street photography has always been a medium that has caught the imagination of many art and photography lovers, and this exhibition, Open City, should be no exception. With a wide and inclusive array of artists showing, the exhibition is well worth a visit. As the catalogue says, 'the street is central to the way many of us live in the modern urban environment', and Open City reflects this, through the many views of urban existence from the last fifty years of street photography. With nineteen artists exhibiting, the works vary greatly in depth and quality, subject and taste. The artists in Open City show the whole myriad of human life upon its stage - the street and the city, from the first world, to the third, work and play, privilege and poverty. The paradox is endless. The title of the exhibition takes its name from Roberto Rossellini's 1945 film, Rome: Open City. It was an uncompromising view of city life in a post World War Two Europe, and transformed the representation of urban life as presented in the media, film and photography. Open City is thus a fitting tribute.
One of the most impressive of all the exhibits is the work of Robert Frank, the Swiss-born photographer, who took to the streets of America in the 1950s and caught a very different view of American life to the one's presented by the contemporary glossy photo-magazines such as Life. He worked on the outside of society, as a detached and impartial spectator in New Orleans. Trolley, New Orleans (1955) frames its subjects, from left to right, curious, impartial and faintly hostile, in the riveted compartments of the trolley bus. Canal Street, New Orleans (1956) shows the careless and vaguely poverty stricken hustle of a busy street, with only one man catching the glare of Frank's camera, upright and in the middle of the photo. Frank's photos act as a sort of spy-like archive on the real 1950s America, worlds away from the supposed American dream propagated by the media and Washington. Aptly enough, with his continental accent, and camera at the hip (he always tried to be as discreet as possible while taking his street photos), Frank was taken into custody while taking this series, accused of being a communist spy.
Another important exhibit is the work of Allan Sekula. His Untitled Sequence (1972) is presented in the form of seventy-five slides projected at fifteen second intervals, of workers leaving a factory, focusing on the dull monotony of factory life, as hundreds of men and women leave their workplace for the street. All the pictures are taken from slightly different positions on the same vantage point. It is perhaps the most exciting piece in the exhibition, and certainly the most resolved in terms of presentation and context. (Make sure you sit through all seventy-five of the images though to appreciate it completely.)
Catherine Opie takes views of vast deserted areas of Los Angles, with brooding suburban views of factories, city streets and deserted housing, which somehow complement Sekula's work. They are a stark departure from the crowded hustle of the streets of many of the exhibitors, and so definitely worth a look for a comparison.
Wolfgang Tillmans, the winner of the Turner Prize 2000 also has work at the MOMA. His images contrast with the other pieces, as they are much more staged. There is a sense of the artist's own involvement in the photograph, whereas many of the other exhibits are far more natural and less posed. Tillmans's quality rests in his presentation, the lush colours and clever composition which almost verges on the sculptural.
The work of the exhibition does not judge, and nor does it classify. It just shows it how it is, according to the way the artists see through the lens of the camera. The overriding feeling of the exhibition is that the street and the city are the stages where we act out our lives. Therefore these photographs are a mirror, a look into the world we inhabit, and whether you're into your art, or just curious, they are definitely worth a look.
Photographs from the Open City exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Top: Nikki S. Lee, The Seniors Project (5), 1998-9 Above: Nigel Henderson, Shop Front, East London,1949-52
24th May 2001