The Photographers' Gallery

posted by Fotofill on 03 Feb 12 11:11 

The Photographers' Gallery (London) has been closed for well over a year now (since 19th September 2010), for a general overhaul of the premises. The initial plans for the renovation had to be altered after funds could not be raised to implement them, and a less expensive design was conceived and implemented which was less costly, with a final price tag of £8.9m.

The Gallery was due to open late 2011, but now delayed until May 2012, tagged as conceding with the Olympic year.

As the world of photography continues to change at an increased rate, and it's acceptance within the art world grows, one would began to challenge the relevance of having a specific location dedicated to photography and after a year of closure if the relevance of the Photographers' Gallery has diminished.

In the art world, a year is a very long time, and lots of things can change very rapidly, we're beginning to see acceptance amongst the art world of photography as an art form, rather than as a quirky plaything that anybody and everybody can, and does do. We have seen increasing prominence of photography within the major galleries in London, from the Tate modern Voyeurism exhibition spearheaded by the near newly appointment curator Simon Baker, the Taylor Wessing portrait prize being hosted at the national portrait gallery through to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the natural history museum.

With the temporary closure of the gallery, any natural choice for hosting an exhibition has gone with it too, perhaps forcing potential exhibitions to look elsewhere to display their works, the examples stated above have been very successful in their own right from visitors, one would argue if any of these exhibitions have been hosted at the gallery if they would've been equally successful or if they would only achieved limited success being segregated away as photographic art in a separate purpose built venue, rather just being placed in a more general purpose art venue, next to paintings, sculptures and more traditional art mediums.

I would argue that the increasing success of photography being defined as a artist medium is thanks to the progressive thought of many of the bigger galleries not just dedicated to one single form of art, but willing to display photography in the same, un-discriminatory way it would display any other form of art, segregation of photography is perhaps not the best way to promote it.

The gallery has been subject to many criticisms over the years, from photographers with a wide variety of opinions, not least is that the gallery is detached from what happens in the "real" world of photography, choosing to exhibit self indulgent projects with little or no content beyond vacuous; to some photographers the gallery simple does not, and never will exist, having no relevance to the work they do - slightly worrying criticisms for an organisation funded by the Arts Council.

If the gallery is too succeed when it reopens, it will have to work hard to establish it's relevance not only in the photographic community, but also in the art world as a viable venue & alternative location to bigger art galleries for exhibitions, I would argue after being closed for such a long time it may never regain a foothold when better more wider appealing public art space can be found; after all photography is a medium that is very much owned by the people (ever since the cheap box brownie arrived on the market) having such segregation of photographic art is a contradiction of this solid foundation.