Vice Photo Exhibition 2009

Vice Photo Exhibition 2009

13 August, 2009
by: Rose

Vice magazine is celebrating the launch of its annual photo issue tonight with a photography exhibition at the Printspace on Kingsland Road. The theme is portraiture, and collections will include both unseen archive material and newly commissioned work.

I'm waiting at Old Street station for a characteristically tardy friend.  I start speculating as to which passers-by might be on their way to Vice, it seems there's a mini exodus of lumberjack shirts, Doc Martens and biker jackets, from underground. Admittedly, I've been relishing the thought of reviewing the exhibition, and the chance to lambast the magazine's stereotypical Old Blue Lastian reader.

I'm probably being unfair and hypocritical, and approaching anything with narrow expectations is hardly good practice. But the self-perpetuated association of Vice with contrived, anarchic, promiscuous fashionistas is inescapable; and this alluring but somewhat vacuous aesthetic is as visible in the queue to get into the gallery, as it is on the exhibition walls.

The first collection I see is 'Jail-Bait Core' by Dara Goldstein, a set of portraits of adolescent boys in punk clothing. One stripling is smoking a cigarette, wearing black denim, and a black baseball cap with 'suicidal' written on the peak. He doesn't look like he tidies his bedroom very often. Another boy wears a Black Flag t-shirt with cut off sleeves, he too is smoking. Goldstein's blurb explains, 'There are heavy metaphysical, theosophical and occult undertones in my work. It's about the absence of fear and the pursuit of happiness'. They are powerful photographs, shot naturalistically, and the facial expressions they capture do typify a youthful punk spirit. But the swelling hubris of the photographer insults the photos, which seem so monstrously pretentious when attributed with a theological dimension.

Another exhibitor, Maggie Lee, has created a collection entitled 'Frenching', which frames couples kissing. I quite like it for its intimacy. One particularly delicate shot shows two girls mouth to mouth, almost silhouetted against rayed sunlight. Lee describes the impetus behind the collection, 'I work on a zine called 'Frenching', an idiosyncratic visual diaristic publication on crazy, sexy, cool, wayward youth'. If ever a phrase crystallised a Vice stereotype, Ms Lee has just topped it with that utterance. The magazine markets 'crazy, sexy, cool, wayward youth' like a product, and this gallery is high with the funk of it. Maybe I'm overlooking an editorial subtlety, though; maybe Vice is taking an ironic jab at artistic pretentiousness rather than whole-heartedly buying into it. If Lee's collection isn't a case of the latter, then the joke's on me.

Indeed, Jamie Taete's, 'Chubbs' (2009) collection expresses Vice's self consciousness of its own sexed up image.  'Chubbs' contains portraits of obese naked men in their domestic surroundings: lying on beds, on sofas, or standing in the living room shielding their genitals with teddy bears. 'I wanted to take pictures of fat men to try to counteract some of the pictures of skinny naked girls that I assumed (correctly, by the way) would be dominating the pages of this year's photo issue'. Two men stand out in particular: the buxom, ginger haired Joe, who sits on the toilet; and Jonathon, who reclines on his single bed in a Shoreditch uniform of Levi's denim shirt and that Morrissey haircut. The self parody is pleasing.

It would, therefore, be a massive oversight to regard Vice as perpetually swimming in the shallow end of the journalistic pool. For all its fluff and fucking, there is a raw, subversive ballsiness about Vice which I admire, and its immersionist style of photo journalism is something which commands respect. Maybe it's also more difficult to be sarcastic after my fourth free beer.

My favourite collection is Martynka Wawrzyniak's 'Kids' (2009). She has photographed the faces of several children against a white background. The children look variously manic, angry, bored, macabre, venomous, and sombre, and I see myself as a child, in my back garden, giving dead insects burial ceremonies, complete with Gregorian chants and the laying down of flowers. So if Vice indulges our voyeurism by showing us breasts bound in bondage rope, it also addresses the innate perversity of children. And that takes balls. 

Whilst admiring Wawrzyniak's work, I'm approached by a stranger. I don't think the temperature in here quite justifies his excessive sweating. 'Who are these kids?', he asks, half smirking, as if pre-empting a punch line. I don't react and he thinks I haven't heard him, so he blunders on, 'Who are these kids?...Baby P's brothers and sisters?'

I wonder, staring dumbstruck at the clammy gizzard of this arch-arsehole, whether I have come face to face with Vice's famous 'Dos and Don'ts' man.

Time to leave.


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Rose