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Jan. 16th, 2009 05:20 pmI wonder why the National Portrait Gallery thought it necessary to describe Susan Sontag as Annie Leibovitz's friend? Are we back in the 1950s?
I loved the work in this exhibition. But what I liked even more was that there was none of those fusty attempts to 'create a narrative', so none of the photos were grouped together but just all mixed up, a couple of family photos here, then maybe one or two portrait shots of famous people, then a shot of 'friend' Susan in the midst of the ruins of Sarajevo, now a large abstract piece maybe, all jumbled in time so more of a series would appear later on in another room with photographs taken years after. And why would I, having paid money to get in, want to know who these people were, what their stories were, why the photos were taken? No, fuck that, much better I should see a portrait of someone I don't know with a name I don't recognise, after all, it's my fault for not knowing these people from the nineties who didn't necessarily pierce the fabric of wherever I was living at the time.
I loved the work in this exhibition. But what I liked even more was that there was none of those fusty attempts to 'create a narrative', so none of the photos were grouped together but just all mixed up, a couple of family photos here, then maybe one or two portrait shots of famous people, then a shot of 'friend' Susan in the midst of the ruins of Sarajevo, now a large abstract piece maybe, all jumbled in time so more of a series would appear later on in another room with photographs taken years after. And why would I, having paid money to get in, want to know who these people were, what their stories were, why the photos were taken? No, fuck that, much better I should see a portrait of someone I don't know with a name I don't recognise, after all, it's my fault for not knowing these people from the nineties who didn't necessarily pierce the fabric of wherever I was living at the time.
