The Bite Magazine - Summer 2019 - Issue 25

bite exhibition bined with vision, camera and his trademark oily black printing, I was very interested in the way he captured the small details and private moments. His work can be seen at LEICA CAMERA Gallery. The late photographer David Goldblatt whose work I also found compelling is descriptive yet simple in a good way. By that I mean using a mundane situation in equivoque situations. Born in South Africa, he por- trayed both black and white citizens in some of their most intimate and vulnerable moments during the apartheid. He also ventured underground to photo- graph workers in the country’s gold mines and entered black shantytowns and the segregated white churches and town of Afrikaner hard-liners. Explaining the experience of capturing these shots, he said, “In 1975 after working for about five years on a series of portraits of my compatriots in the street and homes of Soweto and the suburbs of Johannesburg, it seemed natural, almost inevitable, that I should extend what I was doing to an exploration of their bodies, or rather, the particulars of their bodies, as affirmations and embodiments of their selves. I did this with much concentration for several months and since then have continued, from time to time, to photograph this way.” While walking through the exhibition space, I came across a large photograph in the basement by Ronghu Chen taken from a collection of photographs that he named ‘Chen Ronghu’. His work is based on the study of China’s urbanisation and individuals’ experiences, in which he captures these emotions in pictures. Another photograph that caught my attention was ‘Ragazzo con l’orologio’ by Piergiorgio Branzi, which showed a qui- et scene of a boy walking an empty street with a large watch flung over his shoulder. Italian photographer Matilde Damele who is currently living and working in the capital, whose work is fea- tured at Joanna Bryant and Julian Page, a private gallery in London, had an installation of her photographs at Photo London. In my opinion, it was one of the works that was the most touching and intriguing throughout the fair. It has soul, content, visual and fragility. The photographer had spent 15 years living and working in New York where she had been granted a visa as a pho- tojournalist. However, when the immigration laws in the United States changed suddenly, she was denied a visa renewal and re-entry into the country. As you could imagine, this unexpected and abrupt change in her circumstanc- es severely interrupted her life and ambitions, causing a permanent sense of loss and displacement. Having moved to London, she saw her uncertainties and fears mirrored in the faces of many of her neighbouring communities. Thus her project ‘Exiles’ explores the sense of not be- longing to a life that is currently being lived, where humanity is emotionally homeless and exiled from its surroundings and there are feelings of estrangement from reality. Taking her Leica camera around with her, she took photographs of her neighbourhood in north London, some of which she enlarged and recreated as screen prints, hand-printing onto the challenging sur- face of a black plastic bin bag. The uneven surface of each of these art works empha- sises the individuality as well as the ephemerality of each of our lives. Matilde displays these as sculptural art works, filled with yesterday’s news and discarded pack- aging, to show how those in higher authority may view our lives as cheap, valueless and disposable. In sharp contrast, however, four of these works are available in a very small framed edition, so that each work of art is turned into something precious and revered. Another promising creative of much interest was Lon- don-born photographer Juno Calypso whose project ‘Dazed & Confused’ used pastel-hued rooms filled with tacky decorations and edible props to create a bizarre world for her alter-ego Joyce: a woman of indefinable age seemingly teetering on the brink of either a nervous breakdown or death by indifference. Joyce is seen sur- rounded by cream cakes, fluffy fabrics and unearthed ‘80s beauty products as she stares emptily from behind her office desk, with her deadpan mien and glazed-over eyes reflecting a deeper exhaustion with unrealistic ide- als of femininity and beauty. Capturing herself as Joyce, Juno brilliantly balanced comedy and melancholy by using both analogue pho- tography and digital video that always has a glossy fin- ish and works as an ironic contrast to her character’s expressionless face and ultimately mundane environ- ments. There were so many other brilliant works that it would be impossible to name them all. Not only were there numerous artists’ work on display but Photo Lon- don 2019 was made up of talks, tours, exhibitions and events. One of the most influential showcases were a selection of works by the late American street photographer Viv- ian Maier, marking the first major presentation of her work in the UK and also Irish photographer Eamonn Doyle who showed his audio-visual work titled ‘Made Roger Fenton,‘Cottage overlooking the Dnieper, Russia’ (1852) Image credit- Josh Haner,The NewYork Times