082 - Vanessa Winship: "And Time Folds" Special
© Vanessa Winship
This episode of A Small Voice celebrates the work and career of British photographer Vanessa Winship on the opening of And Time Folds, her first major UK solo exhibition now showing - in conjunction with a big retrospective of the work of Dorothea Lange - at London's Barbican Centre. You can hear Vanessa's earlier interview on Episode 3 of this podcast. Vanessa and I walked round the exhibition recording this chat as we went.
Here, more or less, is how the Barbican introduces the show: Vanessa's poetic gaze explores the fragile nature of our landscape and society and how memory leaves its mark on our collective and individual histories. Vanessa's oeuvre captures the ‘transition between myth and the individual’, revealing deeply intimate photographs that often appear to avoid specific contexts or any immediate political significance. The exhibition brings together an outstanding selection of more than 150 photographs, many of which have never been seen before in the UK, as well as a collection of unseen archival material.
Vanessa's practice focusses on the junction 'between chronicle and fiction, exploring ideas around concepts of borders, land, memory, desire, identity and history’. Having lived and worked in the region of the Balkans, Turkey and the Caucasus for more than a decade, her epic series' Imagined States and Desires: A Balkan Journey (1999–2003) and Black Sea: Between Chronicle and Fiction (2002–2006) investigate notions of periphery and edge on the frontiers of Eastern Europe, displaying the human condition through a vulnerable, yet intentionally incomplete, narrative. Capturing fragmentary images of collective rituals, means of transport and leisure activities, she presents a frieze of the human landscape in these regions, expressing society’s relationship to the terrain while remaining remote from any precise geo-political or historical events.
Also on display is the formal yet strikingly intimate series Sweet Nothings (2007), portraits of school girls from Turkey’s eastern borderlands. The series draws the viewer’s attention to the individual features of the girls, particularly the affectionate messages or ‘sweet nothings’ which are embroidered on their lace collars or the bodices of their uniforms. By making repetitious and formal portraits she emphasises the girls as individuals, ‘unified by many things including their history, their position in society, and the fact that they are little girls from a rural place’.
Vanessa is perhaps best known for winning the prestigious Henri Cartier-Bresson Award in 2011 which enabled her to undertake a new photographic series in the USA set against the backdrop of the economic recession, She Dances On Jackson (2011–2012) explores the basic human connection between people while tracing the history of violence that characterises the country, from California to Virginia, New Mexico to Montana, and still impacts the population today. Following the great photography masters including Walker Evans, Robert Adam and Robert Frank, Vanessa sensitively navigates the engrained scars of neglect which has transformed the once prosperous landscape; she includes timeless scapes of the American terrain depicting the lasting effects of a crumbling civilisation, resonating with the landscapes of her hometown estuary and discussing concepts of periphery and edge expressed in her series Humber (2010).
Turning to the eastern-European state of Georgia in her series Georgia: Seeds Carried by the Wind (2008–2010), Vanessa explores a country whose people celebrate the lush beauty of their land, but are also inherently melancholic due to the memory of conflict and weight of the post-Soviet economic collapse.
To coincide with the exhibition, Vanessa has also conceived a new and ongoing photographic series, And Time Folds (2014-ongoing). Shown for the first time at Barbican Art Gallery this body of work, largely inspired by Vanessa's relationship with her young grandaughter, combines black and white and colour photography with found objects to create a thought-provoking departure from her previous series.
In episode 082, Vanessa and I talk about, among other things:
Why the work also belongs to her creative and life partner George Georgiou (Ep. 2)
Ismail Kadare and the oral tradition
The inclusion of audio readings
The importance to her of the written word
What makes a 'good' portrait
Serendipity
Thinking about the sound in pictures
Her very different new work from which the title of the exhibition is taken
The book of the show, published by Mack
Musical soundscapes by Chris Brierley
Writers mentioned or influential:
David Chandler (read an abridged version of his essay on Vanessa here)
“People often say to me “oh your work is timeless” and in a certain way that’s how people read it, but actually it’s more about the folding of time; the here and now, but the going backwards and forwards and the doubling and the extending of time, the cycles of life.”
THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY THE CHARCOAL BOOK CLUB - THE LATEST AND GREATEST PHOTOBOOKS, EXPERTLY CURATED AND DELIVERED TO YOU DOOR WITH FREE SHIPPING AND NO HASSLES.
**VERY SPECIAL LISTENER OFFER TO COINCIDE WITH THIS EPISODE**
USE CODE 'ASMALLVOICE' TO CLAIM A FREE COPY OF VANESSA'S BOOK OF THE SHOW 'AND TIME FOLDS' WHEN YOU JOIN!!
INFORM THE MIND, INSPIRE THE SOUL
To access this episode and all other archived episodes sign up as a A Small Voice member here!
Tier 1 membership: complete archive of past episodes + exclusive subscriber-only content @ £5.00 per month.
Tier 2 membership: complete archive of past episodes @ £3.00 per month.
