Stuart Bailes' Ruin Value carries a heavy weight. Not unlike Nietzsche's heaviest weight it will either transform the viewer or crush them; as Bailes himself remarks, "It's about deciding to understand or not to understand". To understand what though? To understand infers a finitude, an end to a thought -an end of an idea. Indeed, perhaps the word 'understand' is not quite right, or perhaps it needs to be preceded by words such as 'endeavouring to': It's about endeavouring to understand or not to understand. We arrive then at an act of sorts, something that does not have an end as such. Again, like Nietzsche's burden, we are compelled to return eternally to the image, to the question it poses, never understanding, but forever lingering in its indeterminate proposition. (more)

The singular image in photography, like Bailes' unaccompanied works Ruin Value, The Empiricist or The Informants, can, by virtue of being seemingly infinite (there is no visible end unlike the linear inevitability of a photographic project) exist for much longer; the images can continually prevail in their eternally recurrent action. In this sense the singular image is always open, liberated by its own unhindered sovereignty. There is neither beginning nor end in the lone image, it appears free from precise conceptual agendas, and progresses in an action that does not move linearly towards a destined understanding, but exists recurrently in a continual evolution of understanding. For this reason, we arrive at an understanding of Bailes' images in not understanding them, but forever endeavouring to understand them.

Consequently, it then becomes harmful for the viewer to decide to understand, and say: "Ah, The Empiricist, it is about the limits of understanding through visual analysis alone". If this is the thought, the vital function of the image has been overlooked, and the work digresses back into an isolated picture lost amongst its sequenced others. The viewer has missed their chance to take the artist's thought, to take a measure of the artist's weight, and allow it to provoke a sometimes-disconcerting but necessary process within themselves.

The totality that is Bailes' pictures and their titles -their indivisibility into two separate elements- is the success of the work. There exists in Bailes' singular images a duality of simplicity that results in a complex mechanism for extended thought. The viewer is provoked to linger in the presence of these images as there subsists in them an ambiguity of both title and image that resists definition; that resists an appropriation of its content into mere information. It is Bailes' concern to do away with information that can be catalogued and stored, information that stunts thought with its pretence to being understood. The Empiricist asks, "How much information is enough?" Bailes' entire oeuvre asks, "How can I refuse information and resist understanding?"

~Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

Stuart Bailes' solo exhibition is showing at Edel Assanti Gallery until 2nd June, 2012

In a soon to be published interview, I asked the question: 'Is the role of the photographer changing from the maker of images to the person who makes sense of them?' The question was asked in relation to the ever expanding photographic archive humanity has been contributing too since the mid 19th century. Ruff is one of those artists who, I think, finds this snowballing archive of humanity more affecting than that of his 'own' photographs. (more)

How to comprehend an archive that is already built and yet continually under construction? An archive that appears as an ever-shifting gas like mass that is determined not by its content, but by its audience? Ruff begins with something that acts upon the instincts and senses, a deeply human motivation that will be hard for the passage of time to alter - Ruff presents an unknown amongst humanity. In vivid pinpoint precision, in a size to reflect the vastness of space, Ruff instils in the viewer a feeling of inconsequence that accompanies them around the entire exhibition. Ruff places the viewer at the mercy of thought beyond our world. He offers us tinted pictures of a world that appears filmic, images that seem so foreign they could be either from NASA or a still from Tarkovsky's Solaris. It doesn't matter either way; Ruff's images continuously refer the viewer back to the fragility of their own being and the immanent terrestrial.

A central cavernous room plays host to the majority of Ruff's ma.r.s. images. Suddenly the modernist gallery space appears as something constructed by NASA; indeed their ambitions aren't too different either. Ruff's images reside easily, clinically, in this hangar like room; so much so that it's hard to imagine the walls with anything other than Ruff's images from space hanging from them. A combination of monochrome, and colour images punctuate the walls each offering a little piece of Mars. In a separate room, donning green and red glasses offers 3D portions of Mars, adding to the unshakable science fiction ambience of this work.

A thought or feeling, a sensory experience (Francis Bacon is said to have attempted to make paintings that act upon the nervous system) is something that evidently can be siphoned from this vast photographic archive. Ruff appropriates from this ever-altering archive, and appeals to our weakness for thinking beyond ourselves and into the expanded universe of the unknown. This is Ruff's brilliance in ma.r.s. - the ability to stir in the viewer that which is rarely awakened; that which jolts us out of our daily lives and into a momentary objective viewpoint of our position in space.

~Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

In Edel Assanti's current exhibition Immortal Nature, the esoteric architecture of the gallery space plays host to three mythological realms. The exhibition's pre-occupation is one of tension with the natural world. Three humanly constructed territories; the Underworld, Earth and the Afterlife, show us glimpses of civilisation's ever-present and ever-changing relationship with the earth we inhabit. (more)

It is however, as one begins to ascend the stairs to floor two, or rather 'Earth', that the exhibition's premise becomes animate. Facing the entrance to floor two, Richard Mosse's Herd at Dusk, 2011 greets the viewer with a mystifying view of a war torn Congo. At once recognisable and otherworldly, Mosse's images stop the viewer in their tracks and silently demand attention. Like Richardson's photographic-film, Mosse's images reveal themselves slowly, filmically, to the viewer. It is a gradual process that begins with colour and ends beyond what the image can show - indeed, beyond what any image can show. With a dusting of white the violet and red landscape surrounds a solitary shepherd and his flock. Two red parasol-like trees disrupt this otherwise figureless panorama - if the shepherd were to die in this landscape, would anyone but his flock bear witness to his end? It is a bleak feeling that leaves the viewer in a bewildered space between the purple landscape of science fiction, and the solitary man unknown in his singularity, but recognisable as part of humanity.

To the right of this image sits Mosse's other work of the same series. Like Herd At Dusk, Flower of the Mountain appears to slowly mutate within its own static presence. The landscape that plays backdrop to the central knoll appears to move in a slow motion vortex around this central feature with its sovereign flower. There is something primordial about this scene - the crowning feature of the hill once again instilling a feeling of isolation in the viewer, and consequently a feeling of desperation for the continual struggles in the Congo.

The photographer in both of these works has managed to conceal his presence and evoke a feeling of the distant remoteness that, in its own reserved way, emerges as the most poignant and provoking work in the exhibition.

Surrounded by images of car crashes and visions of the actuality of war, Mosse's images sit passively. Playing off the literal destruction and desolation that surround them, they once again begin to metamorphose and shift in implication. However, it is when viewed alongside Piers Secunda's Chinese Army Bullet Holes (PLA), 2009 that we begin to not only see Mosse's images, but also to hear them. Suddenly, through Secunda's work, the literality of war is manifested in violent bullet holes rupturing slabs of industrial floor paint. On returning to Mosse's pictures from these uncompromising, severe 'sculptures', it is almost possible to witness the fireworks and listen to the sound of artillery echoing through the silent, unearthly valleys of the Congo.

~Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

Immortal Nature is showing at Edel Assanti Gallery until 3rd March 2012.

It is not a new thing; indeed at the present it seems a positively over-done thing. Appropriation of Internet photography -specifically from Google street-view or Google maps- is acutely prevalent in current photographic and art practice. It may be said that there is far too much imagery littering both our virtual and actual environments already, and to react to this by producing yet more images only adds to the glut of imagery that is being critiqued in the first place. However this seeming contradiction of agendas can be beneficial to the work of a few. In order to make work that critiques the very thing that it eventually embellishes, the work must conceal its agenda behind deliberate layers of intersecting imagery and absolute conceptual rigour. The work must have entire conviction that it is not just another Google project. (more)

David Smith's work can be found at www.david-thomas-smith.com and http://david-thomas-smith.blogspot.com. He is a Dublin based artist who has been exhibited in several European countries to great acclaim.

~ Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

Between two arid Sicilian hillsides -one black and white, the other in colour- we are encouraged down a photographic valley to a crumbling headstone. Jeff Wall's new exhibition at the White Cube Gallery begins with a room of only three images all made in Sicily in 2007. This is as close as you will ever come to a series of pictures made by Jeff Wall. The photographer who famously excels in singular tableaux narrative images, now brings three pictures together to work in an almost installation like manner. And it works convincingly. One has the feeling that the abrupt earth of the hillsides is too barren and unforgiving to breach, and so you must flow down this vale to the inevitability of death. And in this case a forgotten death; a single headstone sits on an unkempt rust coloured floor, a row of tiles appear uprooted by indiscriminate weeds that gradually make their way towards a concrete slab that marks the resting place of an unidentified person. Wall's voyage into 'series' leaves the viewer with an irrational, but entirely human melancholic feeling deep in their conscience. (more)

The biggest of the works, Band & Crowd (2011), hangs on the far wall of the lower gallery. Like the band playing on the stage before us, we enter the gallery and look over the detached, sparse looking crowd. Wall plunges us immediately into an awkward, almost embarrassing moment.

Two of the seven images in the lower gallery form a dialogue between themselves that begins to exclude the other images hanging around them. Boy falls from tree (2010) and Boxing (2011) sit across the room from each other but mutually yearn to be looked at in the same thought. Both of these works deal with immanence. In Boy falls from tree Wall shows us a typical suburban back yard: a shed, a football on kept grass, a swing hanging from a tall tree bathed in sunlight- all these things attest to normality, banality even. However, with a second look we observe the lumbering figure of a boy falling towards terra firma from the aforementioned tree. His gawky adolescence -his lack of control over his own body- makes the viewer tense at the prospect of this boy thumping into the ground. We stand then before the image, absorbed by this moment of infinite suspense and linger upon this quintessentially photographic moment of just before.

Boxing (2011) could have been made in parallel to Boy falls from tree. Once again Wall sets his work in the familiarity of middle class life. An overly neat, clean cut contemporary living room in tones of beige is disrupted by two shirtless boys boxing. One dodges a punch and leans backwards as the offensive of the two extends his arm in a failed punch. Once again this image lives in the just before. The just before not only of the punch -what is the retaliation attempt going to be like?- but in their adolescence, there just before adulthood; the next generation pre-programmed to aspire to the middle class house with its respectable, large garden.

These works address each other in the tension of youth, the difficulty of the boy, and what is expected of him once through his inelegant teens. Wall, consistently responsive to and inspired by, art history, will be acutely aware of the role of the boy in the history of western art. This work appears as homage to that motif and simultaneously a comment on the difficulties of the contemporary youth in an increasingly competitive society, that condemns the young to a premature adulthood that once part of, one can never escape.

Jeff Wall is on view at The White Cube Gallery, Masons Yard, until 7th January, 2012.

~Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

(images courtesy White Cube Gallery - thank you!)

It is Viviane Sassen's images in Hotshoe Gallery's latest exhibition Other I that emanate from the wall with such effervescence and sincerity one is almost blinded to the work of WassinkLundgren and Alec Soth that also adorn the walls of the gallery. (more)

It is the picture Kathleen that speaks volumes about the underlying issues of Sassen's work; a woman in a duck egg blouse rests against a handrail with a cityscape behind her; her face is veiled in shadow almost to the point of making her features invisible. One can, however, just make out lips, nose and eyes all catching the weakest hint of the unforgiving African sun. It is the context of this woman that says more about her than her face. By removing the features of this woman -we can presume her name is Kathleen- she begins to represent every woman (including the photographer herself) that has lived or been part of this environment she is framed within. The use of shadow to shroud features, obscure limbs or make the entirety of the body difficult to see is a technique employed frequently throughout Sassen's images in this exhibition, and it is this technique that also correlates to Aaron Schumans concept for this exhibition most plainly.

The exhibition title Other I is philosophical in its premise; this exhibition attempts to deal with such philosophical problems as the Other and the Self. Without launching into a vast project on Hegel's philosophy - not to mention Levinas, Said, Sartre and the many more who have explored this subject - it would be hard to interrogate this exhibition from the philosophical standpoint it proposes. However to take Schumans concept more literally, and to look at the work of Sassen in this simplified context, would provide an interesting entry into her work and begin to move beyond the colour and form that so dominates her images. It is precisely Sassen's history in Kenya that makes this work autobiographical (concerned with the I). However it is also deeply aware of the wider perception of Africa in the West, a perception that is understood through media dominated imagery that drives a wedge between our own society and way of life, and African cultures and custom - a wedge that has resulted in Africa and its cultures regularly being perceived as the Other.

Contrastingly WassinkLundgren's work Tokyo Tokyo appears to show a much more individual interpretation of the Self and Other. The diptych images of Tokyo streets show WassinkLundgrens own attempt to acclimatise to a new environment - the restlessness of the imagery reflects their Otherness in an area that they are unfamiliar with, forming a well observed contrast with Sassen's relaxed portraiture.

An exhibition with such a heavily philosophical concept will always implore dense readings and blunt criticism. It is not that this exhibition theorizes above its weight, it is merely employing well-known philosophical ideas to provide an alternate entry into a photographers work. Photography transcends many discourses - advertising, family albums, Art, journalism, fashion etc. There is no reason why it is to shy away from ideas rooted in philosophy; to widen the breadth of the medium once more can only ever be a good thing for photography.

Other I is on at the Hotshoe gallery, London, until 27th November, 2011.

~Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

Whilst in conversation with a friend on the new Gerhard Richter exhibition at Tate Modern, he commentated that he believed Gerhard Richter to be the greatest living painter. Without hesitation and before I myself knew what I was saying, I began to correct him; surely he meant the greatest living artist. (more)

Once these limitations on medium specificity have been lifted and we are free to discuss each medium within the context of Art, we can begin to look at Gerhard Richter's 'Overpainted Photographs' not as paintings or photographs but objects that address much larger ideas than that of themselves.

In the monumental new exhibition at Tate Modern, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, there are eight of Richter's overpainted photographs displayed. They are small by comparison to the rest of his works, only a modest and recognisable 6x4inches- the format of the traditional family album, and indeed beneath their painted surfaces these photographs depict intimate moments of family life. They appear unconstructed bearing all the hallmarks of family snapshot spontaneity; the subjects look artless, relaxed and safe in the knowledge that these photographs are for the eyes of a very select few.

Of the eight pictures displayed, three are portraits of the same woman¹. Dressed in a floral shirt she appears in one of the pictures with the bridge of her nose and eyes still visible, in another with her chin visible and in the third with her smiling mouth visible -her floral shirt remaining the signifier to her identity. The majority of the rest of her face is obscured by thick smears of various coloured paint. However, it is still possible with the features Richter allows us, to build a complete picture of this woman who by natural association we may accept to be of the Richter family.

Through the stretched blotches of paint it is possible to see that this woman is in bed. Her eyes in one of the pictures are bloodshot as if she has been unwell, or rather speculatively through looking at the other five pictures that include images of a woman with a baby, as if she has just given birth.

To own a camera during such times of nativity is to instinctively turn it to the occasion and document for future reference the specificities of the moment. These universally translatable pictures hold the ability to cross seas and at once be recognised as a shared occasion of humanity. They are deeply personal images taken during a time of profound change for all the people involved; this is photography in one of its purest and most easily translatable forms. Richter's pictures here touch upon the fundamentals of photography and remind us of its translatory abilities.

Here, however, the images appear plucked from the narrative of the album and go on display to the public. Fragmented by the application of paint they become something quite different. The flat glossy surface of the pictures has been disturbed and each bear the unique marks of the artist's hand veiling his subjects beneath colours of oil. These seemingly aggressive acts of effacement could perhaps be gestures, reminding the artist even more clearly of the memories roused by that photographic instance. No different to the handwriting on the back of a photograph, these gestural marks appear to be a type of language, addressing only the artist and making these family photographs even more individual. However for us the viewer, who is intruding on this moment of family history, we examine the images in detail and absorption hoping to peer through the cryptic gestures and see the fundamentals of another; never have we looked so closely at a photograph than when it is someone else's and covered in paint.

~Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

Gerhard Richter: Panorama is on at the Tate Modern, London until 8th January 2012

¹ It is possible the other five images are of this same woman, however it is hard to tell for certain through the obscuring paint.

Walking into an exhibition of work by one photographer, and thinking of another is seen by most as a cynical thing, however to walk into a Lee Friedlander exhibition and immediately think of Gary Winogrand's picture Utah, 1964 seems entirely natural and relevant. (more)

Fittingly a portrait of John Szarkowski, framed by Friedlander's car window, approvingly hangs amongst a junkyard of diners, billboards, road signs and countless other props of American everyday life. Like so many before him, the car provides Friedlander with an almost secondary medium to his camera, and like so many before him Friedlander has used the car both metaphorically and literally, to great success.

In 1964 Friedlander was commissioned by Harper's Bazaar to photograph the much-anticipated new Buick and Ford models of that year. Despite his apparent indifference towards cars, Friedlander was given complete control over the project and duly began photographing for his unforeseen commission. The resulting photographs, rejected by Harper's Bazaar, were re-discovered only recently and are now at the Timothy Taylor Gallery shown in full.

It is not surprising why Harper's' then editor-in-chief rejected Friedlander's pictures. Photographed in areas of undistinguished everyday life, the cars appeared as regular and banal as the landscape they were installed into. Friedlander's unmistakable vision saw these cars how he saw all his work - in reflections, obscured by signs, behind lampposts, and surrounded by the suburban detritus that frequents so much of his work. The new cars for Friedlander seemed to symbolise a culture of consumerism so far from the actuality of their products' inevitable surroundings, that by placing these new cars in such environments, Friedlander could critique the very fabric of American society with wit and visual immediacy.

Sporadically the spectre of Friedlander appears in a window; the reflected self-portrait, a perennial motif in his work, places Friedlander directly into the society he is deconstructing and allows his photographs a selfless self-critical reading. Friedlander is not beyond what he is photographing, he is very much a part of it.

America by Car comprises of 192 images. Taken in its entirety, this is a wall of visual chaos that is impenetrable until you get up close and view each image individually. The background of the vast highways of America appear as fragmented collages creating a picture-plain of multi-dimensions; Similar to the principles of Cubism, Friedlander's work subsists in its use of order within perceived disorder.

As an individual and a member of the New Documents three, Friedlander has forged a place in photographic history through his critical but self-effacing critique of contemporary society. The premise of this exhibition - the car - stands as concisely symbolic for a wealth of Friedlander's preoccupations. This exhibition, his first solo show in London since 1976, is an exhibition highlighting his importance as a photographer and accordingly places Friedlander on a deserved pedestal with work that even though nearly half a century old, still resonates with concerns that are very much alive today.

~Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

Lee Friedlander, America by Car and The New Cars 1964 is on view at Timothy Taylor Gallery until 1st October 2011

(image credits: Lee Friedlander photographs © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; installation view courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery)

David Bate in his brilliantly concise book Photography- The Key Concepts allows the idea of 'Postmodernism' little more than 15 lines of text. Seemingly fed up with the cyclical debate around the troubled movement, Bate sums it up as the application of codes and conventions of commercial photography to current art photography. This combined with an influx of female artists opposing male domination within the arts at the end of the 1970's seems to be enough for Bate to draw a line under this unending debate. However Bate is just one person, and there are vastly differing views on this dense and convoluted subject¹. (more)

The narrow, dimly lit Gallery 38A provides the setting for this exhibition, with 28 photographers represented, each typically showing one image. This exhibition covers a multiplicity of genres, concepts and vastly differing aesthetic approaches. Out of the 28 photographers, just under half are women, but with Clare Strand's Signs of a Struggle occupying an entire open-ended room at the rear of the gallery.

Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince are represented by one image each from their most renowned works, Untitled Film Stills and Untitled Cowboys, respectively. Prince and Sherman, the two artists who most plainly and widely represent the shift to postmodernism, supply these iconic images only for them to struggle to stand alone; isolated from their series, and drowned in imagery on all sides, they fail to appear as revolutionary, as avant-garde as they are widely accepted to be.

Works by Jeff Wall and Keith Arnett vie for attention between other works of limited interest. Jeff Wall's elaborately constructed tableau images, customarily displayed to advertising proportions and backlit -bus shelter like- by a light-box, are here displayed small, within a frame and blunted by the weak lighting of the gallery. The very things that make Wall's work so necessary when looking at the postmodern in photography have here been overlooked.

Past the plethora of postmodern imagery Clare Strand's Signs of a Struggle is given ample display in a dedicated space at the back of the gallery. Nine black and white seemingly archival crime scene photographs are displayed on tattered backing card, yellowing and ripped at the edges from years of storage. Tip-ex numbers and arrows mark the spots where remnants of crimes - fingerprints, trails of blood and perhaps more - are found and recorded. Are these images scenes from a police archive, or just elaborately constructed sets? This question plays on our minds whilst viewing the pictures. Fascinated by the gritty flash-lit scene frozen before us, one wonders where, when and what, and in a very postmodern fashion, 'if'.

Like Strand's Signs of a Struggle, one leaves this exhibition with more questions than answers; the chasm that is postmodernism plays on one's mind, still unanswered, confusing, a toxic waste ground for easy theoretical categorization. If this exhibition is a survey of postmodernism, the implication here is that it has finished and been abandoned to the lions of history. However if we were to take this as truth, what then has filled the abyss left by this theoretical melting pot?

~Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

Signs of a Struggle - Photography in the Wake of Postmodernism is at the V&A London, until 27th November 2011. Admission is free.

(images kindly provided by V&A - thank you!)

¹ See the writings of Douglas Crimp, Michael Fried, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jeff Wall to name but a few.
² Letter to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie (March 18, 1857)

A woman silhouetted in black and framed by an inferno of orange leaps from a second story window towards the arms of waiting riot police. As I write, this image adorns the pages of our British press. In print and on screen, this soon to be iconic image -like the scene it depicts- is burning itself into our collective memory. (more)

It has needed little appropriation from the press- the context is the London riots, and this is the reality of the populace trapped in the middle. The blank silhouette of the woman has provided an ideal canvas for individual relation to the image. The absence of a human face allows for self-reflection; 'That could have been me' 'That could have been X Y Z'. This image works as much nationally as it does individually, and therein lies a key aspect of its use as the face of the riots.

It's brutality of form -it is almost entirely constructed of just two colours- means that this image is quickly and easily digestible, no writing is needed to frame this image. It can be brought from memory very quickly for instant reflection of a time of confused unrest.

This image tells us nothing of the reason for the riots, nor does it show us what happened to the woman. However, because of its simplistic form and key pictorial features it is set become an image of historical relevance, an image that will be brought from the archives time and again; it is destined to become a recurring image of national significance.

~Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

In the retrospective of Thomas Struth currently on at the Whitechapel Gallery, his first solo show in Britain for almost 20 years, the viewer is repeatedly plunged into a state of hypnotic fixation whilst attempting to absorb his relentlessly detailed images. A common theme prevails throughout Struth's career and this exhibition: human achievement and human endeavour provide a loose parameter for his eclectic mix of subject matter. From works of art, space shuttles and progressive technologies to the simplicity of a family portrait, Struth's pictures examine what is possible within the confines of humanity. (more)

Reminiscent of a bustling museum a man in a blue blazer stands partly in shot and marginally out of focus, in front and to his left Albrecht Dürer's commanding yet passive expression stares back. Printed to the exact size of Dürer's painting and consequently to life size, Dürer's gaze in Struth's, Alte Pinakothek, 04.06.2000, confronts the viewer of the image as it would if you were standing in front of the actual painting. The man in the blue blazer -Thomas Struth himself- is notably larger than life-size; the actual photographic representation of the person in the image here is less recognizable, and subsequently more abstract than Dürer's 500 year-old painted self-portrait. The representational quality attributed to the photograph is questioned here by its juxtaposition against a historical painting that one can relate to more, compared to the oversized, unrecognizable Struth in the photograph.

Struth's work is full of such paradox, but more than being just a visual device, his pictures (in particular the museum and audience series) address the role of the spectator in art, the aspect that brings the gallery space -the location of art- back from abstraction, to reality.

Through an arrangement of family portraits where colour and composition respond to muted expressions, and an air of Struth's education in painting comes through most plainly, a room of varying greens on gallery white appears, and insists on the viewer being seated.

Struth's intriguingly titled Paradise project consists of images of dense, tangled undergrowth photographed deep in the virgin jungles of the world. An immeasurable number of greens, with the occasional ochre of dead foliage, knot and weave into pictures as complex as they are formally inspiring. Despite their seeming chaos, these images are however meticulously organised. They are allegorical images; not concerned with jungle, but made to obtain a desired human response. There is an element of psychology in these images that Struth himself has recognised:

"It echoes back to you as an observer. I am the first observer; I make the observing plan. I want to observe something in a way that has a particular effect on subsequent viewers."¹

Struth's work takes time, it is meticulously calculated with nothing being left to chance, and in this respect his projects and individual pictures perform more akin to painting (at least formally and conceptually) than photography. Because of this element of invested effort, coupled with their chosen display method Struth's images command both time and patience from the viewer, and the more of these you put in, the more his work confesses.

Alongside a handful of contemporaries Struth has reinterpreted the limits of the photograph. His work, more so than any other I know of, is laced with an overwhelming preoccupation with the act of looking; the people in his images look, the viewer looks at the people looking and at one point formerly, Struth himself has carefully looked. His jungles are so dense, so convoluted one has to spend hours gazing into them; past tangled ideas, past branches and foliage, the effort in just standing before these pictures is great. And even in his most contemporary work, the writhing mass of cabling that behaves so wildly and appears so abstract, is all but impossible to unravel with only your eyes.

And so then, what comes of this time consuming, intense form of looking? Perhaps the answer is subjective, or maybe these works succeed so well they elicit a common feeling of calm; a feeling of total immersion in someone else's controlled vision, Thomas Struth's wholly conceived gaze.

~Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

Thomas Struth: Photographs 1978-2010 is on at the Whitechapel Gallery, London until 16th September, 2011

¹ Art Forum No 347 p3- Paradigm Shift- Thomas Struth Interviewed by Mark Prince, June 2011.

(images kindly provided by Whitechapel Gallery - thank you!)

My commute to work is a six-mile cycle from southeast London to the centre of the city. Typically everything stays the same with only the weather seeming to alter. On my trip I may pass 15 or even 20 billboards, each trying to sell something, each littering the air with their contrived glossy advertising imagery. I'm so accustomed to ignoring this type of photography that a couple of days ago I nearly missed the vast, fresh looking triptych that appeared overnight on one of the billboards directly beneath London Bridge. (more)

Nothing situates or contextualises this series of three images, just one lone URL is typed above the centre picture, if you're interested it's: http://j.mp/rgps2011. For me however, I'm not sure if I want to ruin the images by finding out their creators or purpose.

The costs of producing a professional photo-book are high, and even before framing and mounting costs are added, making exhibition quality prints can also be extremely expensive. Doubtless, it costs a considerable sum of money to hire a billboard in a noteworthy location and then make a billboard size print, nevertheless the volume of people that see the work and the lack of commercial emphasis attributed to the image is very appealing as an alternative method of show.

Photography has long been credited with being a cheap and accessible way to bring art and information to the populace. Benjamin argued that photography in doing this -by reproducing works of art for the mass- undermined the aura of the artwork. We can now accept this as fact, however despite this deficit of aura, the majority of the Western world, even without seeing the original, can now visualise in their minds eye, Michelangelo's David for example.

This billboard mode of display, this 'public art' is a prime example of the breadth of photography's ability as a medium. It shows the potential of images outside of the exhibition or book and locates photography somewhere entirely separate from other mediums by its capability to be self-effacing, even when enlarged to advertising proportions.

Not only is this triptych a particularly interesting demonstration of the way photography can reach an audience other mediums cannot, it also makes my commute that little bit more visually pleasing.

The London Bridge Triptych has no closing date that I am aware of, and is of course free for all to see and enjoy.

- Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

(image by Christopher Thomas - click to enlarge!)

Gravity in art is a theme frequently employed but seldom acknowledged; it is often overlooked because even though we are consistently benefited by its presence, it tends not to intrude on our day-to-day life. Unlike some of the principal issues tackled in art gravity simply goes about its duty and rarely if ever digresses from its purpose. However despite its apparent 'background' nature, gravity has played a significant role throughout the history of art and can still be seen in works of contemporary art today. (more)

The works in the exhibition are extensive in their concepts; various pieces of painting, drawing and engraving occupy the 17th and 18th century, including a work from Rubens: The Descent from the Cross, 1611. This painting, a sketch for the central panel of the altarpiece in Antwerp cathedral, depicts an apparently weightless Christ being taken down from the cross after crucifixion. The noticeable ease in which Christ is being lowered from the cross is evident by the surrounding figures expressing little effort in bearing His weight. Perhaps an obvious nuance when pointed out, but this weightlessness in spite of gravity gives emphasis to the perceived sanctity of His body.

I elaborate on this painting because of the contrasting work of contemporary photography that seems to have been sited against it. Even though these two works occupy different walls on apposing sides of the room, their similarities are striking. Clare Strand's Aerial Suspension, 2009, like Christ's body in the Rubens, effortlessly mirrors the act of weightless suspension and consequently opens up a profound formal and conceptual connection that spans precisely 400 years.

The image is part of Strand's Conjurations series, a project in which she stages illusions and records them in black and white and in perceived clarity, however what seems apparent cannot be true, these are after-all illusions. Photography in this instance makes clear what the majority of historical works in this exhibition try to hide. Whereas Rubens employs an act of defiance to gravity to emphasise the point of Christ's holy body, Strand's point is to highlight the impossibility of earthly weightlessness, Strand's preoccupation in this project is the treachery of images.

Three pieces of sculpture from the 20th century are represented in the exhibition. A loaded angular tower forces itself up towards the sky, worn bricks begin large and heavy and then gradually decrease in size and begin to float, and a small bronze by August Rodin sits suspended in action in the corner of the room. This bronze, Nijinsky (Study), about 1912, situated next to Wolfgang Tillmans' Dan, 2008, makes up the next significant parallel of contemporary and historical.

Rodin's sculpture depicts a celebrated ballet dancer; he appears coiled, ready to leap into dance despite the burden of the bronze he is cast in. A congruence of form unites Dan and Nijinsky. Tillmans' image shows us a shirtless, red headed male seen from above striking a seemingly impossible pose. The camera tricks us into believing an act of balance that shouldn't be possible. Both representations have outstretched limbs and appear on the cusp of movement, they are suspended in time, one in the 20th, the other in the 21st century.

All the works in this exhibition stand alone, they are all masterworks from their designated fields. However when one begins to look outside the confines of medium specificity, the themes and concerns used in art throughout history stand as a common representation for the issues that have beleaguered humanity from the very beginning of cognitive thought. Gravity, in this exhibition is a fitting polemic to bring important contemporary photography alongside great works that have helped shape the history of art.

- Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

Falling Up - The Gravity of Art is on at the Courtauld Gallery, London, until the 4th September, 2011.

The extent of information in Taryn Simon's new solo show at Tate Modern is nothing less than staggering. As soon as you step into the gallery you are confronted by portrait after portrait, devoid of context and photographed in a manner so monotonous that each image begins to mold into the next leaving only a distant idea of what each person may look like. Typically in an exhibition of photography this is the opposite effect one would want to give, however in this show it seems to add to Simon's overall ambition. (more)

In A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII three panels represent each story; a panel of portraits, a text panel, and a panel known as the 'annotation panel', these three panels sit together on the wall to complete each narrative.

Similar in part to an ethnographic study, Simon seems to question among other things the anthropological techniques of photography. Displayed using an archive aesthetic with neutral beige backgrounds, nondescript font and a highly contrived and organised mode of display -the artist describes this as "a periodic table of fact"- Simon attempts to juxtapose the presentation of the project against the issue at the heart of each individual chapter, the aesthetic and subject then begin to contrast and form a body of work that is at once considered and structured in style but chaotic and nonsensical in content.

From controlling rabbit populations in Australia, recent legislation on polygamy in Kenya to the effects of thalidomide in Scotland, each individual narrative adds to the density of this exhibition as a whole. Every chapter's separate concern follows an intricate web of bloodlines, each portrait has a different story to tell and each object tells a story, all these facets combine to make a profusion of information for the viewer to take in. To make this abundance of information coherent, Simon has arranged each project into chapters, and like a work of literature, brings them together under the pretence of an anthology of narratives.

Taryn Simon is perhaps one of the most interesting and important artists working today. Her work is continually rooted in the documentary tradition and the conceptual rigour that she applies when constructing her projects has all the faculties of scientific research. But perhaps most importantly, as demonstrated by this exhibition, Simon is challenging conventions of display in art and photography. Similar to Paul Graham's Shimmer of Possibility, Simon is working in chapters; she constructs expansive, multifaceted works in sections and then arranges them sequentially in exhibition form to create an entirely engrossing body of work.

A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII is both intellectually stimulating and formally sophisticated; it manages to address profound issues of concern whilst retaining an advanced understanding of the difficulties of displaying documentary photography as art. Conforming to neither the principles of documentary photography nor the boundaries of art photography, combined with its avant-garde display method, Simon's work seems closer to a great work of literature than a work of photography, an absorbing book that one returns to time and again.

- Christopher Thomas (cmlthomas88@yahoo.co.uk)

Taryn Simon - A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII 2011, is on view at the Tate Modern in London until 6th November 2011.

(images courtesy Taryn Simon's studio - thank you! click for larger versions)