Edward Woodman

The Artist’s Eye

Edited by Gilane Tawadros and Judy Adam
Foreword by Phyllida Barlow
Texts by Gilane Tawadros and Woodrow Kernohan

Edward Woodman was the photographer of choice for two generations of British artists, from Richard Deacon, Antony Gormley, and Cornelia Parker to Mona Hatoum, Rachel Whiteread, and Damien Hirst. These and other artists recognized Woodman’s acute sensitivity to their intentions and his unparalleled ability to present their radical works and ideas through photography. But his beautiful and distinctive images go beyond mere documentation, for they are traces of creative relationships that became intrinsic to the artworks and the way they have been received by audiences. As acclaimed sculptor Phyllida Barlow writes in her foreword, Woodman’s ‘images of artists’ works are themselves the work of an artist. His art is a visual poetry.’

Published to coincide with a retrospective exhibition at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, this book presents many of Woodman’s best-known photographs, including numerous iconic images of the most celebrated works of recent British art and portraits of their makers, as well as subjects captured for personal interest. Frame after frame reveal his extraordinary capacity to create photographs that enable us as future viewers to experience these sculptures, installations, and performances as if we had been there, in the present, sometimes years and decades after the event.

Gilane Tawadros is a curator and writer, based in London. She is the Chief Executive of DACS, a visual artists’ rights management organization. She was the founding director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) in London. She has curated numerous exhibitions and has written extensively on contemporary art. Her books include The New Economy of Art (2014), Changing States: Contemporary Art and Ideas in an Era of Globalisation (2004) and Life is More Important Than Art (2007).

Judy Adam is an independent curator and consultant.

Woodrow Kernohan is Director of the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton. He was previously Director/CEO of EVA International, Ireland’s biennial of contemporary art, and Co-Director of the photography festival Brighton Photo Fringe. In 2015, he was also the Curator of the Irish Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale.

Lament

Bettina von Zwehl and Josh Cohen

Winner of the 2016 Antalis Grand Print Master Award

‘With its handsome layout, words and haunting visual images, Lament is one of the most engaging volumes it has been my pleasure to read, look at and ponder.’ — Times Higher Education
‘A delicate and in-depth exploration of grief, loss and friendship’ — LensCulture
‘In its theme, light and dark, echoing the rhythm of life and death, the book goes back to the foundations of photography.’ — Photomonitor

Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Freud Museum in London, this beautiful, original and affecting volume is the result of a unique collaboration between the artist Bettina von Zwehl and the psychoanalyst and academic Josh Cohen. Two series of images by von Zwehl – fifteen black-and-white silhouette portraits of women in near darkness, and fifty fragments of a single repeated photo of a young girl – appear alongside and within two parallel pieces of writing by Cohen – one a critical reflection on light and shadow, truth and lies, the other a short story inspired by the torn fragments – to create an extraordinary hybrid work of art and letters.

Each series of photographs and text can be read separately, but it is through the combination and interplay of word and image that a new narrative emerges and an additional layer of meaning appears in the gaps, folds and blurred edges between the two. The result is a powerful and moving meditation on the themes of light and dark, love and loss, life and death.

Von Zwehl produced the silhouette portraits of women – which she called Laments – following a residency at the Freud Museum in 2013 / 14. Inspired by Anna Freud’s passionate letters with women friends, they are an expression of the female bonds in the artist’s own life after the sudden death of a close friend.

She also made the fifty torn fragments in response to her study of the life and legacy of Anna Freud, as well as her own experience of psychoanalysis. Their title – The Sessions – refers to the patient’s fifty-minute session with the analyst, the artist’s sessions with the child, and her many sessions in the darkroom as she sought the essence of both image and subject. She made each piece by first tearing the photographic paper and then exposing the chosen negative onto it. By breaking down one moment repeatedly and obsessively in this way, infinite possibilities, failures and associations are opened up. At the same time, the torn fragments form an archive of scraps and ‘mistakes’ that echoes the seemingly ‘unimportant’ material stored in the mind of the analysand – material that has the potential to illuminate the patient’s deepest issues.

Cohen’s short story ‘The Arrivals’ was written as a response to these fragments, while also evoking various ideas and scenes he had himself encountered in analysis. His parallel essay, ‘Invitation to Frequent the Shadows’, is a critical reflection on light and shadow, art and artifice, and truth and lies prompted by his reading of the Laments portraits, and it continues his ongoing investigations into darkness, privacy and the hidden self.

Bettina von Zwehl is an artist living and working in London. She has built an international reputation for her subtle and unnerving photographic portraits. From early works in which she photographed subjects under a range of exacting conditions to more recent projects that reprise the traditions of the painted miniature, she has consistently explored the nature and limits of portraiture. She was artist-in-residence at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2011 and had a five-month residency at the Freud Museum in London in 2013–14. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at a number of leading European and American museums and galleries, including the Sigmund Freud Museum (Vienna, 2016), Freud Museum (London, 2016), Fotogaleriet (Oslo, 2014) National Portrait Gallery (London, 2014), Centrum Kultury Zamek (Poznan, 2011), V&A Museum of Childhood (London, 2009), The Photographers’ Gallery (London 2005) and Lombard Freid Gallery (New York, 2004). Her photographs are held in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina; Victoria and Albert Museum, Arts Council Collection, London; National Portrait Gallery, London; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, Florida; and Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco

Josh Cohen is a psychoanalyst and writer and teaches at Goldsmiths University of London. He is the author of The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark (2013), which won the BMA Board of Science Chair’s Choice Award for 2014 and was longlisted for the JQ/Wingate Literary Award; How to Read Freud (2005); Interrupting Auschwitz: Art, Religion, Philosophy (2003); and Spectacular Allegories: Postmodern American Writing and the Politics of Seeing (1998), as well as numerous reviews and articles on modern literature, philosophy and psychoanalysis. He was a finalist in the 2015 Notting Hill Editions Essay Prize for ‘The Incurious Rabbit’, part of a book in progress on inertia in psychic and cultural life. He appears regularly in the TLS, Guardian and New Statesman. He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

Under the Influence

John Deakin, Photography and the Lure of Soho

Robin Muir

‘This beautifully produced book testifies to a talent that still astonishes’ — Guardian
‘Deakin’s work speaks for itself.… His work offers a fascinating glimpse into post-war London’ — Sunday Times
‘A marvellous record of the Soho of the 50s and 60s’ — AnOther Magazine
‘A fascinating retrospective’ — Black+White Photography
‘In his role as chief chronicler of Soho [Deakin] developed a candid and sympathetic eye’ — New Statesman, ‘Picture Book of the Week’
‘His portraits of Soho characters changed photography’ — Guardian G2
‘Deakin was a legend in the style of postwar Soho: brilliantly original, reliably nonconformist, and belligerently self-destructive’ — The New Criterion
‘A beautifully produced book that does justice to Deakin’s extraordinary images’ — Photojournalism Now
‘A stylish and well-produced volume … anyone with the slightest interest in photography should get their hands on a copy’ — Dublin Review of Books

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John Deakin was one of London’s greatest postwar photographers, renowned for his penetrating portraits, haunting street scenes and inventive fashion work. Though recognized as a genius by both peers and rivals – a ‘photographer with extraordinary eyes’, as one contemporary described him – he was prodigal and careless with his talent. He flourished briefly at Vogue, but the lure of nearby Soho with its pubs, clubs and subterranean watering holes led him away from regular employment. Loved and loathed in equal measure, Deakin was a legendary member of the quarter’s bohemian crowd of artists and misfits. His circle included the painters Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, the writers Dylan Thomas and Jeffrey Bernard, and the socialite Henrietta Moraes and Muriel Belcher, proprietor of fabled drinking den the Colony Room.

Coinciding with an exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery, Under the Influence: John Deakin, Photography and the Lure of Soho explores the hidden corners and colourful characters of this notorious part of London as seen through Deakin’s eyes. With dozens of his most compelling images, letters and contact sheets, it is an evocative record of life in and around the four parallels of Wardour, Dean, Frith and Greek streets in the 1950s and 1960s, the backdrop for this creative and maverick figure ‘whose pictures take you by the scruff of the neck and insist that you see’.

Robin Muir is a photographic curator and historian. A former picture editor for British Vogue, he is contributing editor to both the British and Russian editions of the magazine. He is author of numerous books on the history of photography, including David Bailey: Chasing Rainbows (2001), A Maverick Eye: The Street Photography of John Deakin (2002), Norman Parkinson: Portraits in Fashion (2004), Unseen Vogue: The Secret History of Fashion Photography (2004) and Terence Donovan Fashion (2012).

What others say

‘Deakin’s portraits of Soho characters and artists changed photography.… His wayward talent, only partially recognised at the time, makes it essential viewing on its own merits.… [His] photographs are timeless … our best record of the old bohemia, and some are masterpieces. Deakin was out on his own, a pariah in his way, but also a pioneer. ‘ — Guardian G2

‘The images are a marvellous record of the Soho of the 50s and 60s – a time when the area enjoyed a wealth of bohemianism and dissolution, its bars stuffed with dipsomaniac writers and artists like Dylan Thomas, Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud and Bacon himself, all of whom Deakin photographed, along with the general riff-raff of Soho.’ — AnOther Magazine

‘Deakin’s photographs reveal the hidden corners and colourful figures of the 1950s and 60s Soho scene.… The modern feel to his images is remarkable.’ — Black+White Photography

‘This beautifully produced book testifies to a talent that still astonishes. Clapping it shut you will be struck by a powerful sense that when the glory days of Soho are remembered it will be largely through the dark-adapted eye of John Deakin.’ — Guardian

‘Newsstands and drag artists sit alongside Soho’s inner circle in this nostalgic black-and-white series.’ — Nowness

‘He has a drunk’s sensitivity as well as a drunk’s aggression, and the lives of his sitters in all their glamorous and grotesque contradictions pour out of these pictures.’ — Time Out

‘Under the Influence is a beautifully produced book that does justice to Deakin’s extraordinary images in its exquisite reproduction of the black and white images in particular. These photographs leap from the page enhanced by the book’s design – clean and uncluttered, with blank white pages throughout – that allow the images to convey their stories without distraction.… Muir’s prose reads more like fiction such is the fascinating tale of Deakin’s numerous rises and falls and the pace of the narrative.… Wrapped in a dark aubergine fabric with Deakin’s portrait of author JP Donleavy, resplendent in a fur trimmed coat sitting in a Soho bar, inlaid on the cover, Under the Influence holds within its covers the unfurling of a story that once known is not easily forgotten.’ — Photojournalism Now

If you ever want to know what the 1950s looked like, seek out his images. Deakin shot the bohemians of Soho – the artists, the writers, the chancers and the drunks. He pinned them all to the page in images so sharp you could cut your eye on them.’ — Herald

Home Truths

Photography and Motherhood

Edited by Susan Bright

Essays by Susan Bright, Stephanie Chapman, Nick Johnstone and
Simon Watney
With featured artists Janine Antoni, Elina Brotherus, Elinor Carucci, Ana Casas Broda, Ann Fessler, Tierney Gearon, Miyako Ishiuchi, Fred Hüning, Leigh Ledare, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Katie Murray and
Hanna Putz

‘Gorgeous and brave … painfully revealing’ — Chicago Tribune
‘Surprising, stirring and provocative’ — Evening Standard
‘Visceral and powerful’ — The F Word
‘Playful and eloquent, unsentimental yet deeply moving, this is a welcome reassessment of maternal iconography’ — Time Out

Published to coincide with an exhibition held at The Photographers’ Gallery and The Foundling Museum in London and touring to Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography, this beautiful and striking book examines contemporary interpretations of one of the most enduring subjects in the history of picture-making: the image of the mother. Focusing on the work of twelve international photographic artists, the publication challenges the stereotypical or sentimental views of motherhood handed down by traditional depictions, and explores how photography can be used to address changing conditions of power, gender, domesticity, the maternal body, and female identity.

The work featured here is highly personal, often documentary in approach and with the individual subject at its centre, reflecting photography itself in the twenty-first century. The featured artists offer very different views of contemporary motherhood, from the devoted to the dysfunctional, representing the myriad ways that becoming – or even trying to become – a mother can radically alter a woman’s sense of self and how others perceive her. Each one explains in their own words the inspirations – and the emotions – behind the work.

The book’s essays, illustrated with dozens of comparative images from antiquity to the present day, present the historical and contemporary context of the mother figure. Curator of the exhibition and volume editor Susan Bright traces the history of photographs of motherhood from the nineteenth century to our ‘postfeminist’ age. Simon Watney weaves a fascinating narrative of the Madonna figure through the centuries. Nick Johnstone looks at the presentation of the mother from the perspective of the father, and considers how images of fatherhood compare, while Stephanie Chapman lays out the moving history of London’s Foundling Museum through photographs and repositions the mother in a story of loss where she is strangely absent.

Presenting contemporary thinking on motherhood through an exploration of its changing representation in photography, Home Truths provides a fresh and unique insight into one of the most universal and well documented of experiences.

Susan Bright is an independent curator and writer based in New York. She was formerly Assistant Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, Curator at the Association of Photographers and Acting Director for the MA at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, all in London. Recent exhibitions include Something Out of Nothing, Fotogalleriet, Oslo (2007), How We Are: Photographing Britain (co-curated with Val Williams), Tate Britain, London (2007) and Face of Fashion, National Portrait Gallery, London (2007). Her books include Art Photography Now and Auto Focus: The Self Portrait in Contemporary Photography.

Stephanie Chapman is the curator of exhibitions and displays at The Foundling Museum, London.

Nick Johnstone is the author of fourteen books of non-fiction. As a journalist specializing in lifestyle and culture, he has written for the Guardian, the Observer, The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Irish Independent and the Huffington Post.

Simon Watney is the author of several books, and writes regularly for the Art Newspaper and the Burlington Magazine, of which he is a member of the editorial advisory committee.

What others say

‘Gorgeous and brave … painfully revealing … Motherhood has too often gone unnoticed, especially in an art world that to this day regularly tells artists — female artists, on the whole — that they must choose between having children and having a career. “Home Truths” gives the lie to that fallacy, and plenty of heroic honesty along with it.’ — Chicago Tribune

‘Reveals surprising, stirring and provocative angles on relationships between mothers and their children.… The overall effect of this fascinating collection not only exposes home truths, it also suggests intriguing fantasy in the maternal links.’ — Evening Standard

‘Playful and eloquent, unsentimental yet deeply moving, this is a welcome reassessment of maternal iconography.’ — Time Out