Photographers Gallery - Andy Warhol and David Lynch Exhibition

Photograph by David Lynch, displayed in The Photographers Gallery
thephotographersgallery.org.uk

The Photographers Gallery were showing photographs made by Andy Warhol, William S Burroughs, and David Lnych all through March. I went on the last day to have a look.

I’m a fan of David Lynch’s movies, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart... But never bothered looking into any other aspects of his work he has made other than movies or his TV series Twin Peaks. I was excited to hear he had made some images around the same time he was making some of his biggest film in the late 80s and early 90s.

His photographs are very cinema graphic, there is a clear relation to how he visions his film shots and camera angles to and how he takes photos. He seems to like industrial shots, smoke, black and white, formal elements. He shows these in very beautifully but depressing as well. The Elephant Man is a clear example of this.

There was 90 images of his displayed in simple black frames that blended well with the photos inside of them. They are taken all over Europe in major cities including Berlin, London, and Paris.

The room where David Lynch’s photos were displayed in the photographers gallery.
www.wallpaper.com

Andy Warhol stiching photographersgallery.org.uk

Andy Warhol has a smaller gallery of his hand printed work and hand stitched montages that he made. I like these because unlike his pop art of people and objects. Although these are the same images just printed over again, if you look closely they are not perfectly alined or stitched together. However they are close to perfect, human error or mistake I think is sometimes is refreshing especially in art, but maybe it was done on purpose?

I don’t know a lot about Andy Warhol and his art, I know he managed The Velvet Underground and helped to fund them, as well as introducing them to models he knew for backing singing and  publicity.

His work was pretty much montages stitched together of the same picture just multiply exposures. You could argue that he was the founder or maybe experimenting the with the use of HDR (High Dynamic Range)   photography.




I don’t really know as much about him compared to my knowledge David Lynch’s work (which isn’t vast), I liked his idea of stitching but I didn’t think his images weren’t as strong as Lynch’s. The reason I also might favour Lynch more is because I know more about him and followed his career (in film) more than Warhol’s art. So my view is probably a bit biased. I think I’ll look up on Warhol more to even the ground a bit.

The Telegraph did comment Warhol’s work...

telegraph.co.uk
Andy Warhol Photography

“Andy Warhol’s late-career photographs show a surprising amount of heart, says Alastair Sooke, and outshine the efforts of William Burroughs and David Lynch” - The Telegraph, Alastaire Sooke

I think this reviewer has mistaken photography for sport rather than ... art, or personal taste. 

I really enjoyed the exhibition, and I will do a brief write up on William S Burroughs work who I went to see as well but go hungry and left shortly after entering his gallery. 

The whole exhibition was only £4 but with my student card it was £2.50, bargain especially after visiting the portrait gallery last week for £12 pounds (with student discount)!