The power of photography lies in its ability to ignite emotions across barriers of language and culture. The art of fashion in photography began as the earliest photographic images were made: clothing, stance and setting carefully chosen, and often elaborately constructed. Fashion and appearance in their broadest terms can express our individual identity, a sense of belonging, the spirit and mood of generations - a universal desire to look, to expose, to reveal, to bear witness. Our Cromwell Place exhibition includes a series of works by Cig Harvey, Sarah Moon, and Lillian Bassman, along with Michael Kenna, Pentti Sammallahti, and a selection of 19th and early 20th Century photogravures and hand-coloured albumen prints.
The Power of Photography is encapsulated in the words of Cig Harvey, talking about her most recent work featured in the exhibition,
"The ephemeral nature of flowers is a perfect metaphor for what it is to be human, what it is to feel. My pictures are often of flowers, but they are not about flowers; they are about living and dying.
Searching for and bearing witness to beauty to share it with others is a political act. The experience I want the viewer to have with this collection of photographs is the same as when I find the images—a feeling in the body, a witness to something rare in an everyday world. When I am dying, I want to think of the bounty of an orchard, a tree laden with one thousand apples, rosso corsa and bees abound.
There is war. There is a virus. In the time it took to write this sentence somebody died, somebody was born, a language disappeared, a mass shooting occurred, a forest burn begun, an insect crushed, an idea inched forward.
My pictures are an urgent call to live. A primal roar. Be here, now. Experience this. Feel this. They are an invitation to experience the natural world in an immersive way, to find and celebrate beauty in the everyday. I want people to see my work and seek more joy and appreciate and savor this day because tomorrow will be different. Time is the only currency."
Dive in to begin your own personal journey of collecting and appreciation, accompanied by the words of each photographer and the recollections and reflections of pioneering gallerist Peter Fetterman.
The full archive of The Power of Photography series can be viewed at www.peterfetterman.com or via the online viewing room
