Oxford at Night
Oxford at Night: photographs by Norman McBeath
Ashmolean Museum, ends 23 July
It is a sad fact that most gallery experiences are rendered exasperating by the presence of others. The shuffling, the inane comments, the habit they have of gathering en masse in front of the picture one is trying to look at. The attendees of the Ashmolean’s Oxford at Night exhibition were a case in point: they seemed to delight in pointing out the buildings and streets that they recognised having apparently not realised that they were all named in the accompanying leaflet.
Irritating though this is, it does prove that these are more than a generic set of photographs of a pretty town that, at first, they look to be. Unlike say the Paris of Brassai, the Oxford of Norman McBeath is as unromantic as it is unfamiliar. McBeath avoids clichés, despite the potential for boring Brideshead truisms of his subject matter.
It is this which leads the viewer to question what it is they are actually seeing (and to congratulate themselves loudly on identifying the Sheldonian or the Exam Schools). His image of Catte Street is bisected by a strange white orthogonal, possibly a passing point of light captured at a slow shutter speed. This line literally tears in two any notion that these pictures depict something real.
It flattens the raking perspective of the picture and reminds us, by the very unreality of its appearance that the camera can, and does, lie. This kind of postmodernity may grate on some, Jeanette Winterson’s introduction to the exhibition will grate on most.
However, in an era when anyone with five mega pixels thinks they are a photographer, it is refreshing to find one with even a basic understanding of lighting and composition, better still if they throw in some aesthetic realism for good measure. For McBeath the spires are no dream: his depictions are as fictional as a gothic novel, empty, alienating, a nightmare.
25th May 2006