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The Guardian
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Secrets of the hair salon, from high street to high rise: Eileen Perrier/Dianne Minnicucci review
The art world is obsessed with the idea of 'being seen'. In a culture of lookism, being seen is understood as tantamount to existing, even to survival. But being seen is complicated. Both the current exhibitions at Autograph grapple with this through photographs by two women of the same generation working in portraiture. Eileen Perrier's A Thousand Small Stories occupies the ground-floor gallery. Since the 1990s, Perrier's work has centred on setting up temporary photographic studios, in homes, hair salons, on the streets of Brixton and Peckham in London, and at a metro station in Paris. Her 2009 exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London displayed large-format Polaroid portraits taken in pop-up studios at Petticoat Lane market and in the nearby 23-storey tower block Denning Point. The travelling portrait studio has been a device Perrier has used for 30 years, to take photography into diverse communities and tackle the politics of beauty and identity. This is the first survey of her work. Perrier makes portraits that don't rely on beauty but find it everywhere. She doesn't flatter – in fact the lighting and poses in her pictures in some series are direct references to school photographs, such as Grace (2000) in which her subjects, including the photographer and her mother, share the physical trait diastema (a gap between the teeth). Perrier's subjects are mostly regular people, commuters, passersby. In these quick encounters with ordinary lives, Perrier gives glimpses of beauty where you don't look for it. An image of two women on a leather chesterfield, from the series Red, Gold and Green (made between 1996 and 1997 in the homes of three generations of British Ghanaians), scintillates with shining confidence, from the women's style to the polished ceramics gleaming on the dresser behind them. The makeshift red cloth Perrier has hung up behind them is a reminder that this is a studio, too, where an unexpected moment of beauty, through the alchemy of the camera, becomes an eternity. There's an unresolved paradox in Perrier's pictures, between the artifice of beauty and the photographer's constant quest to find it. Perrier acknowledges this, between celebrating beauty and critiquing it, right from the start of her career. One of the earliest works in the show belongs to her documentary portrait series, Afro Hair and Beauty Show. Between 1998 and 2003, Perrier photographed women attending the annual show at Alexandra Palace, one of the venue's biggest events of the time. It's a document of evolving styles, creativity and the importance of self-expression through hair. While making the portraits, Perrier also began collecting and photographing products for black hair and skin from London shops and photographing them. She turned these grooming goods into a wallpaper that also charts a controversial side of the beauty industry: Dear Heart promises skin lightening, hair relaxant for children is marketed as Beautiful Beginnings. Perrier is positioned through this show as an important counter to a Photoshopped, retouched reality, in a culture of beauty and image worship. Upstairs Dianne Minnicucci's small exhibition of new works – made as part of a residency funded by Autograph – picks up on the impact of white-centric beauty standards on women of colour. Minnicucci confesses to not being comfortable in front of the camera herself – she has portrayed her family and domestic scenes with an intimate, autobiographical tenor but had never ventured in front of the lens herself. Her show, Belonging and Beyond, is about a personal struggle with self-image, compounded by photography, and now using photography as a means to unravel and understand it. Like Perrier, Minnicucci began by dismantling and reconstructing her studio – bringing it into the classroom of Thomas Tallis school, south-east London, where she is head of photography. Working alongside her students for six months, inviting them into the work as collaborators, Minnicucci was forced to practise what she'd preached – to embrace discomfort. A series of wistful black and white self-portraits sees Minnicucci try to break through this awkward confrontation, all of them shot in Lesnes Abbey Woods. We see her figuring out what to do with her body, her hands, her gaze. Half-masked by spiky shrubs and trees, thesepictures have a quiet, self-conscious grace. Minnicucci dressed in white in this misty atmosphere looks shyly away from the camera, tentative, uncertain. This is not really about the images but what the process reveals. In a film accompanying the images, Minnicucci realises where her trepidation in taking self-portraits as a black woman might come from: 'Because I haven't been exposed to those images, maybe that's why?' Eileen Perrier's A Thousand Small Stories, and Dianne Minnicucci's Belonging and Beyond are both at Autograph, London, until 13 September
The Guardian
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Film stars, photographers and fans: the other side of Cannes
After focusing on documentary portraiture from the 70s and 80s, Ridgers says he never expected to do a book about his experience in Cannes. However, after seeing Oriol Maspons' Ibiza series, featuring hundreds of photos from the days when the island was still relatively undiscovered, Ridgers felt maybe he could offer a similar viewpoint of the film festival. 'My photos capture a sense of time and place. Rather than heading to the red carpet, I went to the beach to capture what was happening there.' Here, Stallone stands on a chair surrounded by fans and paparazzi. All photographs by Derek Ridgers Prior to social media, many aspiring actors and models headed to Cannes in the hope of getting their photo taken and becoming famous. It was a trend kickstarted by Brigitte Bardot who, in 1953, posed in a tropical printed bikini to promote the film Manina, the Girl in the Bikini. The resulting photos became front page news. Ridgers noticed that photographers would roam the beach asking women to pose for them. Here he captures a woman called Jasmine who, before the crowd descended, was quietly sunbathing Ridgers explains that if a famous actor wanted to get papped they would arrive on a yacht that would dock at the main pier. This allowed all the awaiting photographers to rush over. Here the Hulk star and American bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno takes a turn. Ridgers describes his book as 'not a serious photo book. It is just a bit of lighthearted frivolity about an era which is no longer around' The fashion photographer Helmut Newton first began shooting at Cannes in the 70s. Ridgers said he attracted a huge crowd who would gather around to watch him at work. At one point, Ridgers found himself right at the front. 'Newton turned and said, 'Hey, you're so close, why don't you get in the photo too?' I wasn't sure if he was joking, but I did and he took some images. I have never seen them. It might have just been a trick to get me to move out the way' Ridgers says not everyone will like his book, pointing to shots of topless women and even photographers engaged in upskirting, a practice made illegal in France in 2018. 'It doesn't show the photographers in their finest hour,' he says. While some have argued it was a different time, Ridgers says, 'It wasn't that different. The word upskirting didn't exist at the time but it did seem absurd and ridiculous for photographers to be doing it. But that's why I wanted to photograph them doing it. I thought: what if someone they knew saw them doing this?' Ridgers says he was never asked by any of the other photographers to stop taking pictures of them taking pictures. 'If I stand near a beautiful woman, I'm invisible [to the photographers]. They don't see me. They don't care about me. They are just focused on her.' This shot was taken while having lunch at a beach club. 'These two were friends and larking around for the benefit of the cameras. There were loads of photographers hanging around. There's an obvious sexual metaphor here, but I didn't notice it until I was doing the edit decades later' A pornographic film awards ceremony called the Hot d'Or (a tongue-in-cheek take on Palme d'Or) was held close to the Cannes film festival from 1992 to 2001. Ridgers describes the 'intersection as crazy'. He chose this photo of Amore, an American porn star, as he liked the inclusion of the photographers standing on the bridge. The line stretched all the way around the pool. Ridgers had previously shot Amore in LA for a publication where they became friends, hence his front row spot. Amore died in 2016 aged 48 When Ridgers wasn't allowed to bring his camera to events or was trying to blag his way into parties, he would hide his Olympus MJU, a tiny, palm-sized camera, in one sock and a roll of film in the other. 'I didn't get accreditation most years but all the best places won't let you in with accreditation anyway.' This shot of Blur's Damon Albarn and his then-girlfriend Justine Frischmann, co-founder of both Suede and Elastica, was taken at a Trainspotting party. 'I don't think there could be a better party than that. It was wall-to-wall celebrities' Taking place close to the Croisette was an annual competition to be crowned Miss Dodue. 'Dodue means plump in French,' Ridgers explains. 'It was a common competition in seaside towns and this was quite a famous one.' He found this shot while trawling through his vast archive. Stored between his office and a garden room, it features more than 5,000 prints – '40 years' worth of negatives and a lot of transparencies' Ridgers captured this shot of the Hollywood star as he was being driven into the Carlton hotel. 'I was in a huge crowd,' he says. 'It was a melee. Everyone was rubbernecking trying to see who was coming.' Eastwood's driver happened to have his window slightly lowered, so Ridgers stuck his trusted Olympus MJU in between the gap and pushed the shutter button. The driver didn't stop. Ridgers only discovered he had a good shot once he got the roll developed. 'Eastwood obviously didn't mind me taking it. He is smiling at me' Ridgers could be described as the ultimate photobomber. 'They would shout 'monsieur, monsieur, move!' but I'd pretend not to hear them.' He has searched for photos of this shot from the photographers' point of view, but has yet to find any. Ridgers stopped attending Cannes in 1996, when updated French privacy laws meant he would need consent from everyone featured in a photo taken in a public area. But he is open to going again. 'I might try and find something else to do, some different angle. I'm never going to turn down a chance to photograph anything where lots of people get together'
The Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Lovers, haters, rivals and chums – Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists review
Standing in front of Frank Auerbach's quietly harrowing charcoal portrait of Leon Kossoff and Kossoff's own heavily textured, dour portrait of Auerbach, I felt as if I was caught between the gazes of the two artists. Caught in the balance of their stares, seeing the way each sees the other, I was both implicated and invisible. Moments like these are the most intimate and affecting in Pallant House's new exhibition of portraits of artists by artists. When a portrait of one artist by another is hung beside their portrait of the other, we find ourselves caught between them. There are many pairs of lovers featured, including Matthew Smith and his mistress Vera Cunningham or Lucian Freud and Celia Paul, as well as works by friends such as Auerbach and Kossoff or Nina Hamnett and Roger Fry. In some cases, such as the two paintings by Smith and Cunningham, it's easy to see how the two artists influenced each other as they found a shared visual language of heavy, impressionistic brushstrokes and a dark, jewel-like palette. In others, the aesthetic distinctness is what draws you in. There are also delightful little moments in which multiple paintings of the same artist are hung together, all painted by different people. The exhibition moves chronologically from the turn of the 20th century to the present, and there is a series of portraits of Walter Sickert at the start of the exhibition by three different women in his life: his friends Sylvia Gosse and Nina Hamnett, and one of his wives, Thérèse Lessore. Each portrays him entirely differently: Gosse shows him standing in profile, his middle-aged potbelly declaring his prosperity; Hamnett shows only his face, gazing directly at her from under the brim of his black hat; Lessore shows him from the back, the profile of his face hardly legible. The complexity of trying to convey a likeness in a portrait is profoundly evident when confronted with a group like this. If these women who knew Sickert so well each paint him so differently, what was he really like? Perhaps only via many representations can the real man begin to emerge. Moving from the bohemian London of early 20th century through pre-war modernism and eventually to pop art, the London School, the YBAs, and up to the present, this exhibition makes a compelling case for a story of British modern art that is communal and collaborative. The interlocking circles of portraits that emerge make it obvious that the avant garde movements that evolved in and out of existence throughout 20th-century Britain were as social as they were professional. Walking through the galleries feels like drifting through a cocktail party, going from group to group of interesting, chatty friends – much like the scene of a Slade tea party painted by Seóirse Macantisionnaigh. There is rivalry and darkness here, too – husband and wife John Bratby and Jean Cooke's portraits of each other are hung on either side of a doorway, which neatly emphasises the antagonism between them. Sickert's portrait of unhappily married couple Roald Kristian and Nina Hamnett oozes with their apathy for each other, and Cedric Morris's remarkably unflattering portrait of Barbara Hepworth can readily be read as a document of his dislike for her. The exhibition is the last in Pallant House's ambitious trilogy of exhibitions on modern British art – exploring first still life, then landscape and now portraits. There are moments when the exhibition feels like it belongs at the National Portrait Gallery, as it can feel it is tracing celebrity rather than aesthetic exchange. But for the most part, it triumphs in crafting a cohesive story of visual, and literal, conversations between artists on the canvas. I wanted it to be bigger, and kept thinking of artists who I felt were missing, which is a sign of how effective the curatorial construct is: it welcomes a way of considering the history of art via relationships, which is inherently expansive. There are always more artists to include. The contemporary section of the show is the biggest and most broad. It includes portraits of real-life friends, including a wonderful group of three iconic works by the artists Chantal Joffe and Ishbel Myerscough, who have been painting portraits of themselves together since their student days in Glasgow. It also includes portraits exploring relationships between artists of the present with those of the past. Gillian Wearing's photograph of herself as Georgia O'Keeffe, for example, or Caroline Coon's reimagined painting of the pop artist Pauline Boty, widen the notion of a relationship to include transhistorical, imagined but still intimate relationships between artists through time. The exhibition has a circular route, so it both opens and closes with Lubaina Himid's painted wooden figures of female artists from the past and present, including Élisabeth Vigée-le Brun, Frida Kahlo, Bridget Riley (represented entirely by stripes), and Himid's real-life friend, Claudette Johnson. The life-sized women are a fitting encapsulation of the exhibition's ethos: that artists see each other with profound depth, and that art itself is born out of intimacy and influence. Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists is at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, 17 May to 2 November
The Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Looking up! Glorious images from rising stars
Trevale is a Venezuelan photographer whose work merges portraiture, documentary and fashion photography. Her practice celebrates the beauty of the human body, her Latin American heritage, womanhood, youth and the lived experiences of those around her. Over the past two years, Silvana's work has focused on evoking childhood memories and the nostalgic elements of her homeland: the ocean, the sun and the warmth of familiar places. Photo London is at Somerset House, London, 15–18 May Photograph: Sorondo Projects Norton finds a visual language that disrupts stereotypes and informs new ways of thinking. She says: 'I've followed girls like Mia, a fearless 10-year-old, through the shifting landscape of adolescence. At 10 there's a rawness, and still some freedom from the external noise. But as they grow, they begin to absorb the world, its expectations, its contradictions and its pressures' Photograph: House of Bandits by Sarabande Perryman is a multifaceted artist whose work explores the existence and visibility of transgender identities. 5 Tops was created from the desire to display transmasculine vulnerability Photograph: Palm* Studios In her series, El Libro Supremo de la Suerte, Rose Marie Cromwell offers a profound exploration of Havana through photographs taken over seven years. Through richly coloured and evocative imagery, she rejects objectivity and embraces her role as both observer and participant. Her work lyrically intertwines the precision of numbers with the mysticism of luck, celebrating a culture that defies easy interpretation. The result is both an homage to Havana and a testament to Cromwell's deeply personal and immersive artistic practice Photograph: Euquinom Galllery Weinstein's photography has received many outstanding national and international awards. She says: 'This project is deeply personal – it includes my own story, as my adult child recently came out as queer, transgender and non-binary at 28. I've documented the diverse experiences of LGBTQA+ individuals and their families, capturing their stories in various US cities and around the globe' Photograph: 3C Gallery, LA This British-American photographer's work is deeply romantic and enquires upon values of identity and philosophy, using the camera as a tool to decode and search for the nuances that make up the human experience. The pieces are about passion, anger, lust and fervour Photograph: Guerin Projects Pinto is an Afro-Venezuelan artist whose work dives into the depths of the identity and cultural roots of his land. His artistic gaze is a bridge between the past and the present, between ancestral codes and contemporaneity Photograph: Beta Contemporary As a child, Axén was very interested in film, but because he enjoyed working alone he was led towards photography. He noticed that a main part of his influence came from painters. In his latest series of photographs, Axén lets the textural aspect of imagery take a larger part of the narrative. Layers of abstract elements interact with the photographs which are reduced of their main descriptive elements Photograph: Albumen Gallery Oosterholt's practice is rooted in an intuitive and experimental interaction with matter, in which craft and the innovative use of photographic techniques play a central role. In her work she's interested in the transience of our natural world, and how we relate to, experience and perceive this. As we are part of the natural world, she examines the way in which we interact with our surroundings and make sense of this ever-changing world around us Photograph: Contour Gallery, NL Montesi explores architectural themes, focusing on the interplay between urban landscapes and human perception. He invites us to rediscover the beauty of architecture from an almost painterly angle. Each photograph is an invitation to contemplate, to be transported by a beauty that goes beyond the visible Photograph: Bendana | Pinel Art Contemporain
BBC News
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Africa Daily Can you make a living as an artist in Somalia?
Available for over a year '90% of Somali people don't know the value of art. That is the problem.' Maslah Abdi Dahir has been threatened by the Islamist insurgent group Al Shabaab who believe portraiture is 'haram' or forbidden under Islam. Other Somalis have told him art is a waste of time with so many people out of work. But the Prime Minister spotted and praised his work and he has 250K followers on TikTok. So what drives the 28 year old founder of Mogadishu's art centre and school? For today's Africa Daily, Peter Musembi speaks with Maslah Abdi Dahir – and one of his students Anisa Abdulahi Farah. Produced by Mohamed Gabobe in Mogadishu.
