It’s always intriguing to visit the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize, there appear to be trends each year that connect each artist and hold the room. Themes of connection, the human spirit, the human condition, moments in time, chapters of lives.
This year felt no different yet amongst all the work on display two artists stood out for me - I enjoyed the use of shadows, photography is all about light after all and how we as photographers and artists choose to embrace it / shy away from it/ harness it and the mood it creates / dictates / expresses.
As authors and expressive beings, the stories we edit and create through the choices made in a split second / through intuition or more exactingly curated, assemble their own journey to the viewers that receive the images we create. Control is not ours on how it lands.
Sometimes we are drawn towards the content of an image, sometimes the colour / black and white, sometimes the familiarity and sometimes its dramatic angles.
The images by Nick van Tiem caught my attention because of the light illuminating certain areas, the angle at which they were taken. I felt as if I was looking at film stills, I was intrigued. (images above)
an image of a figure kneeling on a bed in white thong in a white room, window crack ajar, mind the gap box on the shelf behind by Jack Davis as part of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize, on display at The National Portrait Gallery, London.
then ‘Chlo Mydia, 2023’ by Jack Davis caught my attention
having only just read the title of the work today - 2 days after seeing the image, I write with a wry smile. Art should have a voice and catch us by surprise or give us something new each time we return to it. On Friday evening, I simply enjoyed how this image stood out against the others in its curated simplicity when clearly it has been carefully positioned. The background window ajar, glass vase of stones, mind the gap on the shelf, human arm attached to what feels like a cyborg and the sterility of the room. I loved it because it was different to everything else in the room and now I love it because on a Sunday morning it’s made me look a little harder, question what I didn’t see on Friday evening and why and promise myself next time I go to an exhibition I either take longer to look or go back a second time to see.
