PHOTOGRAPHY SEASON
National Museum Cardiff
Sat 26 Oct-Sun 1 Mar (Martin Parr section until Mon 4 May)
Wales’ National Museum is to launch a photography exhibition running through winter and into spring, presenting work from four photographers who are variously hugely influential in the history of the medium: August Sanders, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and Martin Parr.
Sanders, a renowned German photographer during the early 20th century, was persecuted by the Nazis and lost a large percentage of his prints during World War II. The work being shown is from his People From The 20th Century collection, consisting of different types of people from different backgrounds and categorising them into groups of profession and social class.
Married couple Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photography portrayed different buildings and structures around the globe, with mining regions such as Manchester, Sheffield and the Rhondda featuring prominently. Their inventory of pictures focused on imposing industrial structures: blast furnaces, cooling towers, grain elevators and lime kilns. Sadly, the collection is also the last one that Hilla chose before her death in 2015, but it should be a worthy testament to a duo whose photography collected the physical memory of the structures and buildings around us that define and develop our social lives.
The season will also feature Martin Parr, showing in the gallery for a further two months. A professor at USW, Parr has long been fascinated by Wales and his style of photography has a tendency to approach the mundane from a new point of view. His subjects include working men’s clubs to coal mining and his contribution to this exhibition explores many different aspects of Welsh culture and life, from national sports and hidden beaches to food and festivals.
Supported by the Colwinston Charitable Trust, The Photography Season looks to be a fascinating and wide-ranging vision of the breadth and variety of the artform – and one that the National Museum has a good track record of promoting, with a major David Hurn retrospective in 2017 followed by a close-up look at female photographers last year.
words ROSE BUCK
Admission: free. Info: 0300 1112333 / www.museum.wales