London exhibitions
With snow on the ground and the news full of misery, it's all too tempting to lie slack-jawed on the sofa watching Extreme Makeover, covered with a blanket, chin speckled with biscuit crumbs and a half-finished mug of tea lying unfulfilled on the coffee table. Well fear not and get off your arse, because optimism comes from the most unlikely source, in the guise of a slick new photography exhibition at HOST Gallery. Photographer Vanessa Winship has created some heart-warming documentage for Sweet Nothings, which features intimate and honest portraits of schoolgirls from Eastern Turkey.
Winship directly addresses issues of sexism and the vital role that education plays when progressing in a society which has struggled with ideological and domestic conflict. Winship's girls face the camera head-on, in pairs and alone, dressed in the same loose-fitting cotton shifts and placed in front of plain buildings or vast landscapes. Their expressions are sombre and they look as though they exist in a time warp that imbues their uniforms and surroundings with pre-war ghetto connotations.
Although this may not sound particularly optimistic, it is these bleak details which set the backdrop for the human element. In near identical guises and with nothing but the bare compositional elements in the frame, the girls' faces and the details on their clothing bring out sparks of individuality, and personalities emerge. In Winship's book, critic Max Houghton states that through the photos 'a thousand faces appear, from generations past, present and future'; the legacy which the girl's faces project is a changing entity as this generation bridge the gap between strict tradition and modern ideas.
The exhibition brings to mind an enduring image from my gap-year travels - a male taxi driver in Mexico wearing a Winnie the Pooh t-shirt with the words 'Hunny Bunny' embroidered on it. Whether it was the curious juxtaposition of culture, the naïve choice of outfit, the adorably embarrassing Dad syndrome on display or the blasé cheeriness in the face of complex socio-economic struggles, it stuck with me. This illustrates the positive and negative aspects of this exhibition. Whilst these portraits show the bare-faced defiance and endurance of young women struggling in a patriarchal and conflict-riddled culture, with the gangly, awkward charm of girls on the verge of adolescence; the only real language they can express within the images is through trite and sentimental details such as a lace collar or embroidered hearts. On the one hand, this denies the potential for narrative within the frame and patronizes the subjects; but it is this which also allows the viewer to empathise with an unfamiliar subject and to understand women through the universal language of identity (or through the dialect of accessorising if you want to get girly about it).
Winship manages to sidestep these pitfalls thanks to the charm of her muses. The poorly fitting dresses and mismatched accessories simply show girls growing into prospectively bought outfits and creating their own personalities rather than the accoutrements of poverty. Above all, these girls are photographed at a crucial time in their lives where their futures are as blank and full of potential as the sand banks surrounding them. The nostalgic excitement and innocence of school-day youth radiates through the frames with no language or boundary and no excessive sugar coating. Which makes it all the sweeter.
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