The other week I wandered into the Photographer's Gallery, just off Charing Cross Road in London, and was wowed by the photographs of Danish photographer Jacob Holdt, who is on the shortlist for the Deutsche Borse prize.
Holdt travelled in the US in the 1970s taking photographs of the country's underclass and the super rich. I love the one of the Shell sign so much I may try and investigate how easy it is to buy a print of it.
Holdt has a huge website which seems to have hundreds, if not thousands, of his photographs. According to my sources at Wikipedia, Holdt stayed at somehting like 400 homes and his images of poor Americans were so powerful the Russians wanted to sue them as anti-US propaganda.
The Photographer's Gallery is one of the great usung treasures of London - and a great little refuge in the crappiest bit of the West End.
The Museum of Contemporary European Photography in Paris is nothing like as good, I can assure you - despite being about five times bigger. I've yet to see one really topnotch show there.
Posted by: Matthew Tempest | 03/27/2008 at 07:20 PM
I love Holdt’s photos so much and especially the S(h)ell one. Just have seen his work in Prague in January - exhibition at Langhans gallery www.langhansgalerie.cz - although little exhibits big pictures. and now writing essay on advertising, looking for this particular picture, type „Jacob Holdt Shell“ in Google, your blog is the first link. Thanks!
Posted by: Kamila Dohnalová | 04/13/2008 at 08:36 PM