Exhibition Information Sheet

WE COULD
BE HEROES
6 FEB
12 APR 2015
The Photographers’ Gallery
16 - 18 Ramillies Street
London W1F 7LW
Oxford Circus
tpg.org.uk
© Weegee, Lovers with 3D glasses at Palace Theatre, c. 1945
PRINT SALES GALLERY
PRINT SALES GALLERY
WE COULD BE HEROES
2015
6 FEB
12 APR 2015
Print Sales Gallery presents We Could Be Heroes a group
exhibition that looks at the development of youth culture
and the bittersweet rites of passage towards adulthood
over the last century.
The term ‘teenager’ was coined during a new wave
of post-war optimism and freedom in which younger
generations in Europe and the US seized an opportunity
to turn away from tradition and assert new attitudes and
subcultures. We Could Be Heroes reflects the exuberance,
insouciance and rebellious bravado of this new tribe and
its predecessors through the work of leading international
photographers from the 1920s to the present day.
BRUCE DAVIDSON
Bruce Davidson (b. 1933, USA) embedded himself among members of the
Brooklyn gang the Jokers. The now legendary Magnum photographer spent
eleven months producing one of the first full-immersion photo essays about an
American youth subculture. Brooklyn Gang features everything from drinking in
back alleys, moments of rage, make-out sessions in the backs of cars and liaisons
under the Coney Island boardwalk.
Bruce Davidson, Couple necking in backseat, New York City,
from the series Brooklyn Gang, 1959
ED VAN DER ELSKEN
Ed van der Elsken (1925 – 1990, Netherlands) captured the reckless, carefree,
decadent and hedonistic lifestyle of Parisian bohemia in the 1950s. Artists,
hipsters, actors, dancers, jazz musicians, writers and poets in 1950s Paris lived
a wildly romanticised life — much as their contemporaries in America, the
Beatniks, were finding a new way to live after the second world war. In 1956 the
work was published in a groundbreaking photobook, Love on the Left Bank.
Ed van der Elsken, Vali Myers, Paris Saint Germain de Pres,
from the series Love on the Left Bank, 1950
BERT HARDY
Bert Hardy, The Gorbals, Glasgow, Europe’s Worst Slum, 1948
Bert Hardy (1913 – 1995, UK) is best known for his work as a staff
photographer for the iconic magazine Picture Post during and after the second
world war. Hardy worked in poor districts such as the Gorbals in Glasgow and
Elephant and Castle in London, documenting their social scene. The resulting
images are today considered classics that show the strength of the human spirit
despite the dire poverty found there. He is remembered as a photographer
devoted to his craft and a great recorder of social conditions.
JACQUES HENRI LARTIGUE
Jacques Henri Lartigue, Zissou et Medeleine Thibault dans le
bob, 1911
Jacques Henri Lartigue (1884 – 1986, France) set out to compile a
photographic record of the world around him from the age of six, creating an
incredible lifelong body of photographs. Lartigue captured the joie de vivre of
the world he lived in and his subject matter was rooted in the wealthy lifestyle
he originated from. He recorded famous sporting events, early flying machines
and fashionably dressed women of the day. His love of moving subjects, such as
automobile races and tennis players, reflected his fascination with the camera and
its ability to freeze unique moments in time.
ROGER MAYNE
Roger Mayne’s (1929 – 2014, UK) photographs of west London street scenes in
the 1950s depicted members of the first generation to be identified as teenagers.
The W10 (1956 – 1961) series, shot mainly in Southam Street in London – later
demolished as part of a slum clearance programme – contrasted young people’s
exuberance with the urban dereliction they inhabited.
Roger Mayne, Children in a bombed building, Bermondsey,
London, 1954
CHRIS STEELE-PERKINS
Chris Steele-Perkins’ (b. 1947, Myanmar) iconic series The Teds looks at Teddy
Boy culture of the 1950s in Britain and its revival in the 1970s. His photographs
showcase the group’s distinctive style through rough and ready portraits
alongside more naturalistic images of Teddy Boy meetings, weddings and dances.
Chris Steele-Perkins, Brothers, Red Deer, Croydon, from the
series The Teds, 1976
ANDERS PETERSEN
Anders Petersen (b. 1944, Sweden) often focuses on the people living at the
margins of society. This exhibition includes images from his seminal project
Café Lehmitz (1978) featuring late-night regulars in the Hamburg bar, alongside
pictures from his specially commissioned publication Soho (2012), documenting
the streets, pubs, cafés and private homes of residents in this famous London
district.
Anders Petersen, Untitled, Soho, London, from the series Soho,
2011
KAREN KNORR & OLIVIER RICHON
Karen Knorr (b. 1954, Germany) and Olivier Richon’s (b. 1956. Switzerland)
series Punk (1977) captures London’s punk scene in a series of posed portraits
taken in Covent Garden’s Roxy Club and the Global Village in Charing Cross.
Staying away from candid photography, Knorr and Richon instead chose to
directly confront their subjects, emphasising punk’s symbolism and making it
more readable to viewers.
Karen Knorr and Olivier Richon, Untitled, from the series
Punks, 1976-1977
AL VANDENBERG
Al Vandenberg, Untitled, from the series On a Good Day, c.
1975-1980
Al Vandenberg (1932 – 2012, USA) grew up near Boston and studied
photography with Bruce Davidson and Richard Avedon in New York. He
moved to London in 1965 and around this time collaborated as art director
on The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. During
a hitchhiking trip across the USA and Canada during the height of hippy
flower power, Vandenberg began photographing the unconventional people he
encountered, concentrating on making street portraits that allowed his subjects to
be themselves.
WEEGEE
Weegee (1899 – 1968, Ukraine), whose real name was Arthur Fellig, lived across
the street from a police headquarters in Manhattan. He listened to his police
scanner while lying in bed at night and was known to arrive on the scene before
the police. Between 1935 and 1946, Weegee most famously haunted the crime
and fatality scenes of New York, capturing often disturbing images of the dead, of
those gathered to watch, and of police attempts to investigate and clean up. He
Weegee, Lovers with 3D glasses at Palace Theatre, c. 1945
also drifted into the darkness and candidly captured cinemagoers in New York:
gangs of giggling kids, sombre popcorn eaters and lovers in the back row.
TOM WOOD
Tom Wood, Croxteth, 1986
Tom Wood (b. 1951, Ireland) has taken photographs almost every day for the last
40 years. Wood’s photographs are not organised in series, where one project has a
start and end date. Instead, he works daily on an unfolding, diary-like recording
of his observations and encounters. He will spend many years returning to
particular places and studying them in an attempt to refine and distil the essence
of them in his photographs. The result is a constantly evolving celebration of the
pleasures of photography and its potential to transform its subjects.
SELECTED PRESS
HUCK
9 Jan 2015
SELECTED PRESS
I-D MAGAZINE
12 Jan 2015
SELECTED PRESS
TELEGRAPH
17 Jan 2015
SELECTED PRESS
WE HEART
26 Jan 2015
SELECTED PRESS
THE GUARDIAN
29 Jan 2015
SELECTED PRESS
DAZED MAGAZINE (ONLINE)
3 Feb 2015
SELECTED PRESS
BLEND \ BUREAUX
3 Feb 2015
SELECTED PRESS
WE ARE SELECTERS
3 Feb 2015
SELECTED PRESS
AESTHETICA
Feb 2015