This morning I got the chance to know (East) London a bit more and I patiently waited for the Overground to take me to Wapping. This maritime borough hosts the latest travelling exhibition by U.S. photographer Annie Leibovitz, WOMEN: New Portraits. Starting off as a photojournalist, Annie (born 1949) has gained international recognition since the 1970s, specialising in portraits. She has worked for Rolling Stone and Vogue among others, producing some of the most famous pictures in the Western popular culture.
The WOMEN project was born some fifteen years ago, as the joint effort by Annie and the writer and activist Susan Sontag (1933-2004) to help women empowerment within contemporary society. The “update” I visited today actually deals mainly with portraits of famous women mainly coming from the U.S., whether by birth or education.
The arrangement of the display is very interesting. A former hydraulic power station gives an unusual the setting for the exhibition. Only a few photographs are actually pinned on a wide board in the main room, each of them carrying a biographical note on the subject, which helps situating her in contemporary history. However, I found the script to be quite small and difficult to read because of the natural light reflecting from the plexiglass.
Most of the works instead are displayed on two maxi-screens made up by different tv screens assembled together. Therefore, the images can result out of their axis at times, which cripples the quality of the experience. Moreover, the choice of video display doesn’t allow the viewer to behold a picture for as long as one wishes, and even if you wanted to wait for that same image to come back on the screen, you would wait at length because the queued works are so many!
Nevertheless, I loved the portraits as motivational pieces for everyone in the world towards gender equality, and the evolving notions of respect and self-consciousness during time. They also help people to get into contact with powerful female figures in today’s world, some of whom I wasn’t aware of. Maybe it is not surprising, but I felt more interested in the portraits of those women I didn’t know rather than in the familiar and almost always present figures of, just to pick two, Aung San Suu Kyi and Adele.
At any rate (passing over my personal ignorance), as mentioned all of the women portrayed for this new part of the project are somehow rich and famous, apart from Denise Manong, who deals with AIDS in South Africa. I do not know whether this was the artist’s intention or it was so by will of the commissioning Swiss finance firm UBS. This interest is only partly mitigated by a few pictures coming from the older part of the project, featuring four unknown casino dancers both in their costumes and as they appear in their daily life (many photos for the original project also had an important commissioner, e.g. Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue).
Overall the experience is enjoyable and enables some critical questions. What is the role of the woman nowadays? What makes a woman? How many stereotypes have been deconstructed, how many are still common? Is the dualism male – female a cultural tag? The foreword to the exhibition by feminist Gloria Steinem vividly paints an holistic approach to humanity and its affairs – I like to think that the ex-hydraulic power station was chosen as a metaphor of the fresh use that we can give to old, worn concepts. From the backwall of the exhibition space, as suspended between past and present, the still image of Queen Elizabeth II in her White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace towers on all the other all-shifting portraits, sending a somewhat ironic yet politically strong message.
And then, is photography art? Can we capture something of an individual’s personality from these mere instants? A bonus point is that the exhibition comes with no gift shop, giving some relief from having to pass through the commodified versions of these exquisite portraits. Instead, visitors can enter a second, smaller room furnished with a big wooden table, 1900 lamps and some very cosy armchairs, where you can enjoy browsing thorugh plenty of old and new catalogues of Annie’s work, as well as Cartier-Bresson’s and Cindy Sherman’s.
WOMEN: New Portraits is on until February 7th at
Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, Wapping Wall, London E1W .
Opening Times: from Monday to Sunday 10:00 – 18:00, except on Friday 10:00 – 20:00.
Entrance is free and there is no booking required.
Useful links:
UBS official exhibition page: www.ubs.com/microsites/annie-leibovitz/en/tour/london
Diotima in the Gallery 