Photo London 8 - 12 Sept 2021

 In 2019, Paolo Pellegrin visited towns along the highly politicised US - Mexico border, focusing on the social and political issues of this region, which has so often been subject to crude generalisation at the hands of the mass media. This picture shows a young woman celebrating her quinceañera, a moment which marks her coming of age and coincides with her 15th birthday, on a beach in the border town of Tijuana. 

This photograph is an example of what Pellegrin has termed as ‘an open picture’, in which he deliberately exploits an ambiguity (in this case, the absence of her face) to encourage a deeper engagement on the part of the viewer, who can imagine their personal journey to that moment and make it their own. Whilst many photojournalists have perceived their role as creating records which illustrate and testify to particular historical circumstances, Pellegrin believes in the importance of photography which points towards less definite conclusions, and which possesses the power to inspire a dialogue with his audience.

After briefly studying architecture at L’Università la Sapienza, Pellegrin pursued his interest in photography at Rome’s Istituto Italiano di Fotografia. He was soon taking on international commissions from publications including Time, National Geographic and Newsweek, for whom he worked as a contract photographer for ten years. He developed a particularly enduring and fruitful relationship with the New York Times, whose Director of Photography, Kathy Ryan, has praised his ‘poetic photojournalism.’ Over the course of a career which spans three decades, Pellegrin has received accolades including the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award, the Dr. Erich Salomon Award for lifetime achievement in the field of photojournalism, and 11 World Press Photo Awards

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Paolo Pelligrin

Henri Cartier-Bresson began traveling in 1930, at the age of twenty-two. For nearly half a century he was on the road most of the time, and the geographical range of his work is notoriously wide. Its historical range is just as broad, from ancient patterns of preindustrial life to our contemporary era of ceaseless technological change. In the realm of photography Cartier-Bresson's work presents a uniquely rich, far-reaching and challenging account of the modern century.

The two most important developments in photography in the first half of the twentieth century were the emergence of lasting artistic traditions and the rise of mass-circulation picture magazines. Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was a leading figure in both domains. In the early 1930s he helped to define photographic modernism, using a handheld camera to snatch beguiling images from fleeting moments of everyday life. After World War II, he turned to photojournalism; the magic and mystery of his early work gave way to an equally uncanny clarity and before the dominance of television, most people saw the world through the eyes of picture magazines. Early in Cartier-Bresson's postwar career, his photographs of Gandhi's funeral and the Communist revolution in China were journalistic scoops. But the vast majority of his photographs describe the social reality of the everyday for that was his essential subject. His work is included in nearly every significant photographic museum collection world-wide.

In 1934, Cartier-Bresson signed up for a French ethnographic mission which was supposed to take him to Argentina. In the end, the mission was suspended and the twenty-six-year-old photographer spent a year in Mexico, literally fascinated by the country. He worked for several newspapers there, moved in intellectual and artistic circles together with his sister and worried about his future. In March 1935, he exhibited his work at the Palacio de Bellas Artes with Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. This portrait of a man with a naked torso and folded arms is juxtaposed against the two boxes of shoes; neither side of the image seems to relate to the other and it certainly poses more questions than it answers. 

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Both cosmopolitan and avantgarde, Kati Horna (1912-2000) is mainly known for her photos of the Spanish Civil War taken between 1937 and 1939 for an album commissioned by the Spanish Republic, as well as her friendship with Robert Capa. Her work is characterised by the influence of the principles of surrealist Photography and her own moving approach to photojournalism and documentary photography. Kati Horna began her photographic career in the young Republic of Hungary in 1933. Newly-fatherless and staunchly political, photography offered Horna the means to earn a living and the chance to fulfil her political ideals. After enrolling at the most prestigious school of photography in Budapest, led by József Pécsi, she moved to Paris in 1933 where she turned her attention to the life she saw around her in the streets and cafés of the French capital. Her series Les Cafés de Paris (1934) captures her brilliant eye for irony and fun. This lighter mood however was soon overshadowed by the more serious images that history would dictate, namely the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

Between 1958 and 1968 she was the photography editor for Mujeres, a publication dedicated to women writers, artists, and other cultural agents. For Horna, Mexico was her ultimate motherland; her patriotism was felt only for this country. This series Mujer y Máscara (1963) is amongst Horna's most well known works and coincided with a period when Horna came to have an intense interest in theatrical productions. In 1963 her husband José Horna passed away and her friendship with Leonora Carrington became even closer. 

In 1985, Horna donated some 6,750 negatives to the Centro Nacional de Difusion e Investigación de las Artes Plásticas (Cenidiap) in Mexico. After her death in 2000, Horna's extraodinary archive has been managed by her family which includes 20,000 negatives alongside vintage prints. 

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Tim Walker's photographs are nostalgic for an era of innocence and exuberance; youthful imagination and a uniquely British aesthetic. At once modern yet familiar, his world is reminiscent of a childhood spent dressing up in ancient couture, dragging family heirlooms down to the bottom of the garden to furnish tree-lined ballrooms. These memories are retold with a sublimely reminiscent matured eye for drama and intrigue. Walker painstakingly stages each picture in camera, which reinforces the home-spun magic and texture shown in each image.

In 2018, Walker was commissioned by the V&A Museum to create ten new photographic series inspired by objects in their collection. He had access to their whole archive and chose ten items from it in order to create what has become his biggest solo show to date, Wonderful Things. Anyone that knows the V&A can only imagine how hard it must have been to make that selection.

This photograph takes inspiration from a 19th century circular concave mirror originally belonging to renowned early photographers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson (see installation shot). Hill and Adamson formed Scotland's first photographic studio and for early photographers like them, natural daylight was crucial to creating the perfect portrait: this mirror would have been used to reflect sunlight onto the faces of their sitters. Tim Walker's James Crewe, Fashion: Valentino Haute Couture, Dorset, 2018, shot with fish-eye lenses, framed in a circular frame with a domed glass, is presented in the museum as the matching half of the mirror, one almost feels that the photograph was born from it. 

Walker was especially drawn to the moon-like shape of the mirror. The moon has always been a source of inspiration for him, as cited in the title of his recently released retrospective book, Shoot for the Moon. The phrase originated from a quote by American author Norman Vincent Peale: 'Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars.' This is a message that Tim Walker wants to share with all of us, as creatives around the world.

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Tim Walker