Sunday, June 03, 2007

Found

Last week, I popped into the Photographers Gallery at lunchtime. I hadn't been there for a while, which is shocking considering how close it is to my office, but I have been so busy recently that lunchbreaks have become somewhat of a luxury (for me anyway - the Colleague still manages on average of 2 per day - he's taking mine as well as his own, ).

Anyway, the exhibition by Joachim Schmid was very interesting, in particular the section 'Bilder von der Strasse', which was a collection of photographs Schmid has found in the street. Apparently, he has found thousands since 1982 on his travels in various countries - lots of passport photographs, some pieces of torn up photographs, some poorly taken pictures, all discarded. He picks the photographs for the exhibition at random, by giving each one a number.

I found this fascinating - for a start, I was amazed at how many photographs he'd found - its not something I recall ever seeing thrown away myself, but perhaps that's because I've not been looking for them, although I will now. I am very interested in what people have thrown away, hence my love of the Abandoned Couches blog I always look at abandoned furniture in the street, wondering if I could take it in, find a new use for it - so far I never have done.

The OH has a thing for finding hats - he frequently brings home a hat he's found on the street or on the train. He doesn't wear them - he just washes them and stored them away like a hat-crazed Womble. So I was telling him about this exhibition and predictably he questioned whether such a thing really counted as art. His argument being that it would be like him putting on a display of his hats at London Fashion Week. I'm not sure it really is the same thing but perhaps it might be worth him trying it?

2 comments:

M said...

The key to being a successful artist in this genre is to be named 'Joachim' or 'Christo' or 'Gustav' or 'Johann'. People named 'Joe' or 'Bob' or 'Bill' never cut it.

So the OH's first step must be to acquire an unusual and exotic name (assuming he does not already have one), and then that hat thing could well be on its way to becoming all the rage in the art world. :)

SandDancer said...

Alas, he does not have the right type of name, but perhaps he can be persuaded to change his.