The Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris has recently opened a new series of exhibitions, including William Klein's work from Rome in the late 1950s.
Having myself lived in Rome for six months and Italy for more than 4 years, it's always interesting for me to see photographs of Italy and the Italians. The cities, even when falling down, remain beautiful and the people always have a special charm.
Overall, I feel the exhibition is successful and interesting although I have a few issues, particularly with choices concerning style of presentation. That said, it's inevitable to compare this work on Rome with his preceding project on his native New York. And I must say that the Rome work, while interesting and with some very strong images, doesn't attain the same level of his work from New York. I'm not sure if this is a consequence of spending more time in New York, a better understanding of New York than Rome and Italian culture, perhaps his lack of a mastery of the Italian language or if it's simply a reflection of the different character of the two people and the two cities, but the Rome work, with exceptions, seems less powerful. Certainly it is much less edgy than the New York work. We don't have kids angrily pointing guns at the photographer or faceless adults pointing guns at kids but while the text presented with the exhibit (one of my biggest disappointments about the show) makes frequent references to the intense poverty in and around Rome after World War II we don't tend to sense the same kind of misery and hardship that the work from New York often shows.
In general, while there are some quite beautiful photographs in the exhibition, it sometimes did feel more like the view of a casual tourist who is enchanted with the Italians and the often beautiful Italian climate. While there are street shots of passersby--just as in the New York series--they don't always seem to have the same raw energy as the New York work.
Now, in terms of the actual installation of the exhibition, there were a couple points that I found a bit troubling. The main one was the handling of the text. Frequently photos were presented with large laminated sheets of rather voluminous text. It was never really clear what the exact relationship of this text to the photographs was. Mostly it seemed to present general commentary on Roman or Italian society. I found it to be much too wordy and I regretted that none of the photos had a simple label indicating the date and location of the photographs. Each gallery did have a plastified sheet that spoke of nearly all the photographs--and here one could find the location of the photos. However, this also was filled with lengthy texts which were primarily historical quotes from writers, historians, etc. commenting on something relating to the photo. While it was somewhat interesting to hear what Goethe or Dickins or some other literary figure had said one hundred or more years before Klein about the section of Rome shown in Klein's photograph, I generally found it irrelevant--only barely giving me a greater sense of understanding of Italian or Roman culture or history--and offering no insight into the work of Klein.
The other issue was the size of the reproductions. Many of these images where large poster size. They were good quality reproductions and some of the images held up well at this size but many of the images didn't live up to the scale. Clearly they're were some quick and minor snapshots that Klein took that the museum decided to present (already questionable in some cases) and at a size that their importance couldn't live up to. Clearly the museum was trying to present an exhibition that would seem to live up to Klein's reputation from his early photographic work. However, I don't think this work is always at the highest level and it may actually have come across more strongly if the photos had been presented at the much smaller size that they were undoubtedly printed in the late 50s and early 60s. In essence, I think the museum was trying to fill a big space and to suggest something like a blockbuster show and so they inflated the image sizes but the consequence is making the work actually look weaker and Klein more full of himself for wanting to present huge photos of some less than brilliant shots.
The exhibit is definitely worth visiting, there are many very strong and beautiful photos. In my opinion this is not the best work of Klein's career but it does give us a glimpse of Italy in the late 50s. It's not the powerful vision he had of New York but it's interesting although less resolved and less distilled. I'm not sure we really get to the heart of who the Romans are or what the reality of their world was in the late 50s. Maybe Klein didn't spend enough time in Rome, maybe his Italian language skills weren't strong enough to enable him to have the bantering interaction with his subjects one imagines he had in New York. In the end it's a "nice" show but not a great exhibition.
Michael McCarthy
Atelier Vagabond
Michael McCarthy writes photo- and arts-related reviews for the Atelier Vagabond blog while also offering short photo tours, workshops and classes in photography and art in the Paris, France region. http://www.ateliervagabond.com/. To see more of Michael's personal art work, visit his site: http://www.michael-mccarthy.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment