The Photographer’s Gallery is a true gem of London, and one to which I keep returning. This trip we find a trio of iconoclastic artists exhibited here who are primarily known for their work outside photography; William S. Burroughs, David Lynch and Andy Warhol. Of the three, only Warhol based much of his regular art practice on the form.
First, however, we need food, so go to the Coach and Horses, formerly frequented by Jeffrey Bernard, a dissolute and dissipated writer for Private Eye and The Spectator. They’ve gone all veggie, however, so we quickly flee and find succour at Thai Cottage nearby. They are renown for having caused a terrorist alert several years ago whilst cooking down chilli peppers for a special condiment.
Once at the gallery, we start at the top, literally, with David Lynch, The Factory Photographs, on Floor 5. These images, about 90 in total, are from abandoned factory-scapes in Lodz, Poland, England and the US. All black and white, the mood of these photos seems not the least out of character for Lynch, whose eerie industrial score accompanies the exhibit.
Floor 4 houses Taking Shots: The Photography Of William S. Burroughs, a collection of the prominent author’s personal photography, collages, constructions and some commercially exhibited works. Mostly amateur in feeling, one can still see Burroughs literary techniques in visual form here, too.
The Andy Warhol exhibit, Photographs 1976 – 1987, is much closer to his familiar work than that of Lynch or Burroughs. Some of Warhol’s most memorable pieces, after all, the boldly coloured portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe or Joan Collins, are based on photographs after all. Several on exhibit here, such as this piece featuring Jerry Hall, are stitched together (literally, by seamstresses) in arrays of 4, 6 or 10 images:
All in all, a nice day at the gallery.
We followed this up with wanders around Cavendish Square and a visit in a Soho wine bar with friend C, who had come in from Hanwell for the day. So nice to see her again!