Imperial War Museum North Exhibition

[isanders]

Haven't been to see this yet, but thought it worth a posting.

Echoes of the Great War

Photography by Tony Linforth-Hall

18 October 2003 to 1 February 2004

Through photography and captions, Tony Linforth-Hall depicts the Western Front as it appears today, telling some of the history that overshadows the contemporary landscape.

[Ste]

Thanks for the tip, I'll certainly pop along to see that, and will post my impressions here.

S

[Chris_Baker]

I'll put it on the Forum calendar.

[Dragon]

I’ve seen it. There aren’t many photos at all.

A few are quite effective, but in my opinion, some are technically disappointing. I don’t know what sort of equipment he used, but I felt that had he used a large format camera, his pictures might have been crisper. There is a lack of clarity in some images, such as indistinct text on memorial stonework, or slightly blurred landscape, which seems to come from enlarging the photographs beyond their capacity to retain detail. The exposures used seemed to compound some problems (such as glare) and were inconsistent.

(I don’t mean deliberate haziness for creative effect.)

I felt that some of the images were sentimental. For example, a landscape over which had been superimposed a contemporary formal photograph of a group of officers, with red ?poppies pasted on the chests of some to signify those who had been killed, was clichéd, mawkish and cloying. It isn’t a particularly original use of semiotics and I felt it was unchallenging, easy and derivative.

I would have been pleased to have taken one or two, such as the stark picture of Thiepval memorial which seemed to bring out what Lutyens had in mind rather better than some photos do. It made the stupendously ugly structure into something frail and transparent, almost ethereal. He was lucky to be present at a particularly haunting light-time with interesting shadows.

The photos are accompanied by text clippings, such as iconic quotations (the inevitable Flanders Fields) and some letter extracts. I felt that his choice was rather lazy and didn’t reflect much searching.

I came away thinking that I’ve taken photos like those. I had hoped to be extended and emotionally moved by the selection, to find that a creative mind had penetrated insights which others haven’t; and I didn’t.

At least it was free; and the view from the adjacent restaurant was a pale water-colour wash of early morning cloud-light floating on the mirror canal, with a single stark finger of Victorian chimney trailing a vapour smudge over the silent sky and a dark cormorant spattering droplets of spraywater as it glided heels down in to the steely reflection of the Lowry.

Gwyn