I spent a free evening taking in a couple of shows yesterday.
One was at The Photographers Gallery - my first visit since the relocation to Ramillies Street, a great venue. Katy Grannan’s The Westerns is a striking collection of large format portraits focusing on the lives of three West Coast residents, two of whom are transexual best friends. The organising thought is clearly transformation, and the portraits play with the uneasy relationship between fixed photographic representation and shifting personal identities.
Grannan’s visual approach is very warts and all, and although she describes her subjects as ‘new pioneers’ the photographs bring out the grotesque as much as the empowered. The collection puts an emphasis on the otherness of these fringe characters, which was a pity in a way because what I was left with was slightly cold and staged. The muted palette and bleaching Pacific light enhances this sense of removal, and although the results are powerful - visually rich yet bleak - the subjects only ever came across as actors to me. The Westerns runs until 8 February, entry is free and more info can be found here.