The V&A Photography Centre

I decided to actually explore a bit more of the Victoria and Albert Museum when I went up to London to see the Tim Walker show. I went up to the photography centre seeing as this is the specialism that I want to pursue within the course. It was far more interesting than I had initially thought it would be and had such a wide range of work and techniques within photography. As I already know that I want to base my research around memento mori I was specifically looking at the pieces that I could see might link to my research.

The following photographic pieces are the ones from the centre that I found the most relevant:

Irving Penn, Camel Pack, 1975

It greatly interested me that this piece was by Irving Penn who I know only as a fashion photographer from the sixties. As I found out from this work, he was also interested in still life and thus piece depicts a disintegrated packet of cigarettes. I saw this as a way of thinking about memento mori from the standpoint that cigarettes can slowly kill their users over time, and modern packets often have photos depicting the ways in which cigarettes do this which to me is a way of symbolizing ‘remember you must die’. The way the packet Penn has pictured is also disintegrating to me is its own metaphor of death.

Bill Brandt, Eyes, 1960-3

This piece stood out to me mainly from an aesthetic point of view. I’m a big fan of high contrast black and white photography and the way Brandt uses this to show human features and age up close was interesting to me. I also like that these photos were taken over the course of a few years as a way of showing aging, this isn’t necessarily something I can do within my own project as I don’t have the timescale but maybe is something I can look at in terms of still life concerning plants and matter that ages quicker than humans do.

Madame Yevonde, Solarised Portrait of Two Women, 1960

Again, this image I like purely for the aesthetic. The way the photograph has been solarised ads a ghostly quality to it, something that I could potentially experiment in to make my memento mori images more eerie and surreal.

Cecil Beaton, Self Portrait, 1930

Just like the image by Irving Penn, I was surprised to see an image by Cecil Beaton who I also know only as a high profile fashion photographer. This one caught my eye as it was the only one that I would directly call a memento mori image due to the depiction of a skull in the middle of the image. Again it is a high contrast image which is pretty creepy to look at but is basic in the way that it is of a model in character dress with a skull but it still creates such a great effect.

Rudolf Koppitz, Betegungsstudie, 1926

This image by Koppitz depicts some ballet dancers frozen mid-movement, I particularly like his process of transfer printing which has led to an almost sepia-toned print from what originally would have been a black and white negative. I also think his use of a fully nude model against fully clothes models is very effective in showing the human body and how interesting it is to photograph.

Anna Atkins, Festuca Ovina, 1854

The simplicity of this print is key to me, obviously it is far more simple than the rest as it was made in 1854 when photographic processes were at their absolute beginning stages. Cyanotype was the process used to create this image, where an object is held on photographic paper and then exposed to sunlight. I could possibly use this within my own work by exposing significant objects related to death and have them simply presented as a very 2D image to give a bit more of a variety to my work.