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Twilight, the V&A's latest photography exhibition,
brings together a disparate group of eight photographers from five countries
whose images are linked only by the fact of having been made at the same time
of day. This relatively tenuous connection means that the work is very
diverse in both style and subject matter and on the face of it the curators
face an uphill task in bringing a sense of coherence to the whole exercise.
As the introduction to the book readily acknowledges, while painters from the
fifteenth century onwards have explored the possibilities offered by evening
light, modern twilight photography does not really exist as a genre. However,
a number of photographers have chosen to work during the twilight hours at
some point in their careers and it is not difficult to understand why.
Twilight is a transient time, a period of change when the familiar becomes
mysterious and potentially dangerous. As a literal time of transition - from
day to night Ð twilight is an easy metaphor for other kinds of transitions.
Working at a time of day when most of the natural light has leached away
gives the artist a subdued backdrop against which to work. Three of the
photographers in the exhibition exploit the resulting dramatic possibilities
by using artificial lighting to illuminate their subjects against that
background, giving the feel of a stage set. They take this a step further by
arranging the contents of the image as well as the lighting.
At the extreme end of this choreographed imagery is Gregory Crewdson who
constructs highly elaborate stage sets involving large scale preparation and
complete control over every aspect of the image. His 'productions' take place
in small town America - Edward Hopper territory - where there is a sense of
something sinister lurking beneath the surface of everyday life. A car sits
in the middle of a junction in a deserted street, the door open and its
occupant lit by a light from within the vehicle. In another image, a shaft
of light that could be man made or equally the result of divine intervention
illuminates a patch of ground in a suburban housing lot. Crewdson's images
undoubtedly represent a technical tour de force and they are intriguing and
ambiguous in a David Lynch way. Ultimately, however, they remain too
clinically executed to be truly engaging.
Much more interesting is Philip-Lorca di Corcia. He too controls the staging
and the lighting but crucially enlists real people as the 'actors' in his
dramas. Working on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, surely the ultimate
metaphor for broken dreams, di Corcia paid street hustlers, prostitutes and
other 'low-lifes' to appear in
his images. Sitting at tables
in diners, on motel balconies or standing in shopping mall car parks, the
subjects are separated from the backdrop of L.A's evening sky by a burst of
artificial light. In one sense, di Corcia is simply a portrait photographer,
albeit one who has created an unusual set for his subjects. However, the fact
that the people in Lorca di Corcia's images are real, that there is an
element of chance about who wanders onto his set, makes all the difference.
The viewer is left wanting to know more about these individuals and their
lives.
Bill Henson alternates twilight images from the edges of suburban Australia
with pictures of adolescents who are barely visible in the choking darkness
that seems about to consume them. In a continent famed for its intense sunlight,
Henson has chosen to take us instead to the dark heart of the 'Lucky
Country', creating chiaroscuro effects around the wasted youths that are
reminiscent of a Caravaggio or Rembrandt. It is these extraordinary portraits
that demand repeated viewings; a girl, visible only from the neck up, is seen
in three quarter profile, looking off camera into the darkness while in
another image a sleeping woman is apparently suspended in mid air above a
blurred landscape of city lights.
Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov and China's Liang Yue, consider how
their respective countries have fared in the wake of the collapse of
communism. In the case of the Ukraine, the old system collapsed overnight
while China's move towards a capitalist economy has been a slower process,
managed by the communist party itself. This is reflected in each
photographer's methodology. Mikhailov's chaotic, panoramic images, shot in a
photojournalistic style and blue tinted, could have been taken at any time
over the last sixty years. The ambiguity is intentional; having lived through
the war with Germany in the 1940s, Mikhailov sees parallels with the
situation after the collapse of the Soviet Union and concludes that little
progress has been made since then. In several images, citizens seem to be
running for cover, as if from an air raid. Other images show ruined city
streets, damage that could have been caused by Nazi shelling or post-Soviet
neglect. Could it have been any worse if Hitler had won the war in 1945?
Mikhailov seems to imply that, win or lose, in the end the result for the
Ukraine was the same. Just as China has moved away from communism in a more
controlled fashion, Liang Yue's images are more structured. Working during
the sandstorms that create an artificial twilight in her city, Liang places
an individual in the centre of each frame with a flashlight that points
towards the camera. However, the images just do not pull the viewer in as
Mikhailov's do.
Ori Gersht and Chrystel Lebas consider the impact of twilight on the natural
world. Gersht has created images of the London sky shot from the same window
in his flat. The resulting saturated blocks of colour reference Abstract
Expressionist painting but the fact that the shades and tones are the result
in many cases of urban air and light pollution lend them a certain poignancy.
Lebas, by contrast, works in the natural world, the forests of Europe. The
all pervasive gloom that settles over the dense stands of trees as night
falls recalls childhood images of fairytale landscapes populated with witches
and wolves.
Finally, we have Robert Adams, the eminence grise of the
group and the only photographer working in straight monochrome. In this and
other ways, Adams is the odd one out in this exhibition. A long time
chronicler of the despoliation of the American West, the selection of eight
images chosen for inclusion seems somewhat arbitrary. It is certainly
possible to see how the twilight relationship of light and dark mirrors
Adam's central concern which is the contrast between the unspoilt wilderness
and the urban development that relentlessly encroaches on it. However, Adam's
work is a long term narrative which has been running now for some fifty years
and such a partial selection cannot hope to do it justice.
All in all, Twilight is an eclectic mix of artists and styles that
doesn't quite add up to more than the sum of its parts. The real revelation
of this exhibition and book though has to be Bill Henson. His are the images
that stay in the mind the longest and genuinely deserve the epithet
'haunting'.
© Colin
Bradbury 2006
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