Richard's Art Noticeboard: Dulwich Picture Gallery

Richard Learoyd, Poppies, 2019

Unearthed: Photography’s Roots is at Dulwich Picture Gallery until 30 August 2021

This exhibition looks splendid: a cornucopia of flowers, fruit and vegetables. With over 100 works by 41 artists, it traces the story of photography and still life, from the very earliest Victorian experiments – salt prints made by Fox Talbot in the 1830s and botanical cyanotypes by Anna Atkins in the 1840s and 50s – through to C21 digital installations by Ori Gersht and Matt Collishaw.

As Laura Cummings notes in her review: Photography’s first subject was the object – what else could sit so still? Early exposure times were around 40 minutes. Many of the first pictures were therefore still lifes: vegetables, flowers or fruit. Furthermore, she goes on to point out the affinity between photography and the vegetable world, between photography and photosynthesis. The very light that gives life to a rose, before its petals drop, is the same light that preserves it in a death-defying photograph.

So many interesting artists are featured. Familiar names in addition to those mentioned above include: Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, Roger Fenton, Karl Blossfeldt, Imogen Cunningham, Robert Mapplethorpe; amongst the, perhaps, less familiar are: Cecelia Glaisher, Charles Jones, Kazumasa Ogawa, Richard Learoyd.

I had feared that the opportunity to see this exhibition had been lost to Covid – the show’s original schedule was December 2020 to May this year; happily, the run has been extended until the 30th August. (And the Dulwich Picture Gallery is such a wonderful building that it is worth a visit on its own account.)

Reviews

Cumming, Laura (2020) “Cauliflowers saying cheese…”, The Observer

Thorpe, Harriet (2020) “Unearthed: Photography’s Roots”, Studio International

Anna Atkins, Plate 55 – Dictyota dichotoma, on the young state and in fruit, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, 1853, Volume 1 (Part 1)