Photography in Birmingham: a review of three exhibitions

By Kieran Connell

There are a number of interesting photography exhibitions on show in the city at the moment.  Although the type of photographs being shown at the exhibitions differ greatly, they each in their own way raise certain important questions about photography as a genre and the ways in which it can be exhibited in cities such as Birmingham.

A major exhibition currently on is a retrospective of the work of photo-journalist Steve McCurry at the Museum & Art Gallery’s Waterhall.  Having started taking photographs seriously in the mid-1970s, McCurry is best known for the breathtaking scenes he photographs in war-zones such as Cambodia, the Philippines and Afghanistan.

Copyright: Steve McCurry

As a travel photographer, McCurry’s aim is to show things his western audiences will never have seen before.  This can be landscapes, as with his photograph of a religious shrine in Cambodia, or people, as with the world famous portrait of the ‘Afghan girl’ with the strikingly beautiful eyes.  Wherever these photographs are displayed, whether on the walls of art galleries or on the pages of National Geographic, where McCurry features regularly, they are always accompanied by labels informing us exactly what is going on, and most importantly, where.  For McCurry, this is the point of his work.  Wherever he is, there are things, moments that must be ‘captured’ and shown, before they disappear.  ‘This is what drives the photographer’, he writes.  ‘The gnawing sense that “this is it”’.

This idea that photography is a means of capturing moments is taken to extremes in the work of Harold E. Edgerton, currently being exhibited by the Ikon and Birmingham Central Library in a disused shop in the Pallasades.  The exhibition is part of the Ikon’s 1970s season looking back at some of the art it displayed in the period, and is situated nearby to a premises the Ikon once occupied during the ‘70s.

Copyright: Harold Edgerton

Whilst McCurry aimed to capture spectacular moments in exotic places, Edgerton focuses his attention on capturing the more mundane scenes we all see every day, but in ways we have never seen before.  Edgerton was a scientist by trade, and in the 1930s he invented a photographic process that could project a flash 120 times a second, thus enabling moments such as the kicking of a rugby ball, or the drop of milk into a bowl, to be captured in miniscule detail.  The photographs are so accurate, to a thousandth of a second, such largely familiar scenes are made to appear strange and, in a way diametrically opposed to McCurry’s photography, even exotic.

The final exhibition of photography currently on in the city exhibits the work of New York publican Sheldon Nadelman.  For ten years during the 1970s and ‘80s Nadelman ran the Terminal Bar in Manhattan, a place renowned for being the hang-out of choice for people on the fringes of mainstream society – pimps, drag queens, down and outs.  Throughout these years Nadelman set about creating a remarkable photographic record: he photographed his clients as they sat, drank and smoked in his bar.

Copyright: Sheldon Nadelman

A selection of the more than 2,500 images Nadelman took are currently on display at Trove, the old science museum on Newhall Street.  They are not obviously scenes from a bar but rather are close ups of faces, portraits of the people that made the Terminal the bar it was.   At Trove, essentially an empty warehouse, the photographs are pinned to boards and so from a distance, they appear as a sea of unknown faces.  There are no labels accompanying the images, and it would be difficult to determine that they were taken in a bar at all.  However without any form of mediation, the emphasis in these images is solely on the people, and as you get up close to them and study these nameless faces that they have their most powerful effect.  You begin to see recurring faces in the selection, and often speculate on each person’s story, their lives and relationships with each other.  Although these are people you have of course never met, the stories you construct for them makes them seem somehow familiar – these are not strangers but friends staring contently – and sometimes drunkenly – back at you.

Copyright: Steve McCurry

These exhibitions each provide insights into the various ways photography has and continues to be used as a way of recording aspects of the human condition.  It is almost treated as a way of immortalising scenes or people for future generations.  If McCurry’s style is that of an adventure-photographer, seeking out pictures in far-off places, both Edgerton and Nadelman focus their lenses much closer to home, on the everyday or the mundane.  Both McCurry’s and Nadelman’s photographs also raise particularly vexed questions in relation to the ethics of photography – the relationship between the western eye and the ‘Other’, or of the uneven relationship between photographer and photographed.  Did the ‘Afghan girl’, or any of Nadelman’s drinkers for that matter, have any idea their images would be shown in galleries – of whatever kind – around the world?

This is the other crucial point that these three exhibitions each allude to.  The diversity of venues for each shows the advantages of thinking outside of the box when it comes to showcasing photography – or art of any kind – in a city like Birmingham.  McCurry’s exhibition has been heavily promoted across the city, and as a result has received excellent attendances. A venue such as Trove strips away some of the formalness of conventional art galleries and allows you to experience art in a less mediated way.  Finally, taking art out of the art gallery altogether and placing in it venues such as the shopping malls allows you to reach new audiences entirely.  In the current climate of cuts, and with the arts a prime target, these exhibitions provide a blueprint for the imaginative thinking required in Birmingham for it to move ahead.

The Steve McCurry retrospective is on at BMAG until the 17th of October; The Harold Edgerton exhibition is on until the 5th of September in the Pallasades Shopping Centre; the Sheldon Nadelman exhibition can be seen by appointment only at Trove (old science museum) – visit trove.org.uk for details