Trip to London

I fairly enjoyed this trip, even though it was slightly underwhelming. My theme is identity (strictly pertaining to self, but identity nonetheless), and there was a lot of that in these exhibitions. The first exhibit I saw was in the Photographer's Gallery in London, which was titled "Under Cover: A Secret History Of Cross – Dressers", and highlighted cross dressing in history. The exhibition was from photography collector Sébastien Lifshitz, who collected these photographs of European and American cross dressers from various boot sales and flea markets. The 'found' photographs mostly consist of unnamed subjects dating back as early as 1880. Even though the exhibition was fun and interesting, I had a hard time getting engaged with it because it didn't go the same direction that I wanted to in terms of identity. I feel like this one is a very positive hark back to the past, whereas I'd like my work to look at perhaps more negative bits.

I also went to the National Portrait gallery, and I saw Tacita Dean's PORTRAIT exhibition, which I really liked. Dean shot on 16mm film, so to watch the video portraits that she was putting on display, there had to be these fairly hefty projectors which made a constant clamour. The noise added to the whole experience for me, as it created an atmosphere. A lot of the portraits are similar to photographs, where the subject is very still. However, if you sit and watch, there are small movements that they make which makes the entire experience more personal and intimate. I really enjoyed this exhibition, and I might like to try to experiment with video portraiture in the future.