Louisa Lee finds out if happiness really is a warm gun...
Shoot, aim, load - the analogies between a camera and a gun are endless. Mirroring philosophical debates over whether the act of photographing someone is a violent action of framing, cutting or dissecting a subject from their context, The Photographers Gallery exhibition, ‘Shoot! Existential Photography’, uses the history of the photographic shooting gallery as a starting point to explore the nexus between shooting somebody and actually shooting somebody.
I’d never heard of a photographic shooting gallery prior to this show, but the wall blurb describes it as an attraction which appeared at fairgrounds post World War I where people, who considered themselves good shots, would aim to hit a target with a gun. If the punter hit the centre of the target, a camera was triggered, taking a photo of themselves shooting. Therefore this is essentially a collection of photos of people shooting themselves. The idea didn’t enthral me initially and it took a couple of trips back and forth between the fourth and fifth floors and some re-reading of captions, before I got why this exhibition was so effective.
On the first floor, Erik Kessels’ series documents Ria van Dijk’s life year by year via her return to her local shooting range.The photographs are uniformly lined up, right to left, along the wall. Changing from black and white to colour, Kessels’ subject ages, her clothes change and her body stoops. Different groups of people accompany her, a walking stick appears propped on the shooting desk, a camera crew arrives, but van Dijk’s’s expression remains constant; fixed in utter concentration in the same solid stance. Her eyes fixed on the prize. This subtle work dominates one half of the lower floor.
Sprawled across the other half of the room, there are a number of anonymous prints of punters at fairgrounds in the act of shooting themselves. One enlarged image of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre at a shooting range stands out; an interesting slant on Sartre’s ‘Being and Nothingness’ seeing as the show exemplifies a propensity for enjoyment in self-annihilation.
Upstairs, the focus errs more towards pieces from contemporary artists who have examined this history and those who use guns or shooting in their work. The photographs on show mainly entail acts of shooting the camera, shooting themselves, shooting mirrors, cracked mirrors, generally lots of mirrors and guns. These masculine acts are juxtaposed next to Niki de Saint Phalle’s ‘Fire at Will’, a very stylised black and white video of Saint Phalle shooting at a board containing liquid, oozing pockets. The film makes Saint Phalle look like a French New Wave movie star, sexily wielding a gun while she artfully aims and fires.
To the left of this work is Agnes Geoffrey’s ‘The Female Shooter’; a woman is portrayed staring into the barrel of a gun, exploring ideas of the threat of one’s own gaze, or of objectifying oneself. These works not only point at a link between guns and sexuality but equally group together examples of women holding guns and wondering why this violent gesture becomes so different in the hands of a woman.
At the end of the show, Christian Marclay’s ‘Crossfire’ is an interactive opportunity to ‘shoot yourself’, bringing an element of fairground fun to what could otherwise be a relatively dry show. Ostensibly designed to turn the spectator of violence into the instigator or recipient of violence, Marclay’s video montage of Hollywood gunfire is a violent but mesmerising experience, which involves walking into pitch darkness to be met by the barrels from four guns in a cinematic show-down.
Outside, and separate to this work, a gallery assistant is stood by a shooting range with an air rifle and a box of pellets. For £3, the visitor has four shots at hitting a target with the prize of having an automatic photo taken of themselves amongst blazing action. I decide to have a go and miss four times but after the assistant shows me evidence of enthusiastic visitors’ successes, I decide to try again. It’s only in the action where the novelty of this game finally becomes apparent – missing my shots leaves me thirsty for another go, shuffling in my pockets for more shrapnel, I go to aim and shoot again. I miss another four times and decide that I’m a crap shot.
It’s a strange and unusual concept for a show – guns, shooting and violence - but the curator has effectively managed to combine subtle archival imagery with full-blazing spectacle. The wall texts pertain to death, nihilism and self-destruction - just enough to ground the essentially leisurely subject matter to the ‘existential’ part of its title. A title which is both so alluring and so off-putting.
Shoot! Existential Photography is at the Photographers Gallery until the 6th Januaruy 2013.
Photograph: Christian Marclay - Stills from Crossfire 2007, audio-visual installation on four screens.
Click here to see all London exhibitions.
Return to Spoonfed's London Art homepage.
Add an event
Scoping Out London’s Coolest Historic Bingo Halls
London’s bingo halls were once a bustling part of many of the city’s communities, but as...