Exhibition Review
EXHIBITION REVIEW
Brian Griffin / / POP / /
Brian Griffin was an extremely successful music photographer in the 1970s and 1980s as a part of the “British Photographers of the Thatcher Years” alongside Martin Parr, Paul Graham, Graham Smith, Jo Spence and Victor Burgin.
He shot for a wide variety of musicians and bands during this time such as The Clash, Iggy Pop, Kate Bush, Elvis Costello and many more. His work shows more creative style and he was commissioned to shoot album covers. Due to record sleeves being square, Griffin had to compose his images with this in mind.
The image which stood out the most to me was his shot of King Sunny Ade And His African Beasts in 1984, titles “Aura”. What grabs my attention the most is that the image looks as if it has been created digitally, however this isn’t the case as it is way before digital edits and it is 3 exposures on the one frame. Griffin has also managed to give the image a futuristic AND 80s feeling to it, which I think is very impressive.
When looking at the exhibition, all of Griffins work vary in colour/black and white, composition, style and purpose for why he shot each image. Each image is displayed on its own and have no relation to one another but when you look at them in this way you can see his creativity almost jumping out at you through each different piece of work.
Steven Berkoff / / GORBALS 1966 / /
This body of work was shot in the Autumn of 1966 and wasn’t originally meant to be anything other than Berkoff capturing exactly what he saw in the Gorbals at this time. The photographs which he shot captured the decay of the Gorbals, just in time before large sections were destroyed and rebuilt. Before now, these images had never been seen before.
The image which stood out to me was this image of the 2 young boys where one of them is smoking. The reason this stands out to me more than any other image of Berkoff’s that was shown at Street Level is that not only is the boy too young to be smoking, he isn’t trying to hide that he is, it’s almost “normal” for him to be smoking at this time at that age. This leads to ask, what else is seen as normal at this time? standards that we, today, would see as shocking or unacceptable? The image is incredibly striking and shocking and is by far my favourite Image that was shown at this Street Level exhibition as it makes me ask a lot of questions and gives me an insight into what the city I’ve grown up in was like 50 years ago. The image also gives me the feeling that these children aren’t neglected but they are completely left to their own devices, more so than children these days. Kids these days are so protected so the fact that Berkoff was even able to take a photograph of children speaks volumes about the time compared to now.