moments captured
November 10th 2023
Capturing the Moment, now there’s a click-bait title of a show for any photographer. The concept is to explore how photography and painting have shaped each other. It seemed a good time to visit it, following my recent look at the emerging relationship between AI and photography in a similar way.
Despite starting with another echo of a recent discussion, Dorthea Lang’s Migrant Mother, I found myself taken by the paintings in the show. The luxury of exhibition space at Tate Modern lends itself to using the walls for insta-friendly quotes and I confess I feel straight into that particular rabbit hole, tenuously justifying it by framing it as an artwork in its own right. The quote from Alice Neel was for me an introduction to an artist I knew nothing of but whose practice connected with me. The concept of ‘paint my time’ supports the theme of the show but for me there’s a challenge too. It plays on the idea of who is the work actually about, the subject or the artist?
Puerto Rican Boys on 108th Street, 1958, Alice Neel
Discovering more about the life of Alice Neel I can see her motivation was to represent the unrepresented, in reaction to the usual suspects/subjects of portraiture. Making ‘pictures of people’ and calling herself an ‘anarchic humanist’, telling descriptions of street photography too!