Curator of Exhibitions, Irish Museum of Modern Art
Overview: The selection I have made is clearly not an impartial one, but it is based on my own interests and prejudices. Of course only seeing the images online does not allow one to fully appreciate the range of photographic media and scale employed by the photographers. As such, much of this selection has been based on an evaluation of the content of the images, the references therein, the composition, light and texture. On one hand I felt that the broader selection represents a mature corpus of sophisticated practice, on the other were works which I found somewhat derivative or one-dimensional. As a curator who keeps his eye on the market it was clear to me that several of these photographers would easily compete internationally. It was surprising to me that few of the photographers employ digital manipulation of images as this is a clear trend at present, I was gratified however that several interrogate the medium of photography itself, as I feel this is a fundamental precept that links photography to wider artistic practices.
Selector's Comment: Although based on a highly theoretical premise, the images created by Tim Stephens are glacially seductive. Stephens creates a rigid framework on which he hangs the interrogation of his medium, yet the resulting image is flowing and poetic. Although painters in the past decades have grappled with the very nature of their materials, this practice is less common among photographers. Exceptions like Alison Rossiter 'paint' with photographic paper, but Stephens' visual representation of the theory itself stands out for its imagination and execution.
University of Westminster - MA Photographic Studies
Selector's Comment: The startling use of saturated colour is what first drew me to these images by Katarina Mudronova. They are still-lifes and memento-mori, but rather than simply alluding to the processes of death and decay her subjects are undergoing dismemberment and transformation. The dead-ness of the food that nourishes us is presented in its grotesque otherness then beautifully packaged in alluring Technicolor. From visual references to Flemish still life painting, through to 1950s food advertising and laboratory experiments, these are photographs of quiet cruelty.
University of Westminster - MA Photographic Studies
Selector's Comment: The attempt to work through one's own essentialist identity is always a challenge for any artist. While it is useful to let it inform the practice, it is important not to let it slip into navel-gazing art therapy. Paul Newman's images address one of the primary functions of photography - the creation of an image, and shows how when misused, these can have destructive social consequences. While Cindy Sherman is a clear antecedent, the gendered work of Yasumasa Morimura has closer affinities to Newman's studies.
Selector's Comment: Apocalyptic Millennialism is very much of our time. From Durer's work at the end of the 1400s through to the Y2K bug and the Mayan calendar, there exists a fear in the collective unconscious of magic and the unknowable. Yvette Monahan's photographs are called 'documentation' of a magical place, yet her very minor insertions into the landscape transform them into otherworldly spaces worthy of comparison with the set pieces of Gregory Crewdson.
Selector's Comment: In psychoanalytic categorisation it is rare to find an 'obsessive' female - obsessive behaviour is more usually expressed in male subjects. In these images the male sitter has created a life for himself in which the colour most usually associated with one side of a binary gender stereotyping (blue) dominates all. These photographs seem neither unkind nor voyeuristic, but say a lot about the perspective of the viewer. Giorgia Tobiolo walks a fine line between straight-forward, dry, portraiture and troubling studies of neurotic compulsion.
Seán Kissane is Curator of Exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) and Curator of the David Kronn photography collection which comprises more than 500 works by photographers as diverse as Irving Penn, Diane Arbus, Harry Callahan and Daido Moriyama. At IMMA he has organised photography shows such as: Isaac Julien; An Experience of Amusing Chemistry by McDermott & McGough; Magnum Ireland; Thomas Ruff; Out of the Dark Room; as well as many exhibitions incorporating major photographic components. Aside from these, he has curated exhibitions by major figures like Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera; Surrealist Leonora Carrington; and the retrospective of Alice Maher. A writer and editor, he has received awards for publications such as Iran do Espirito Santo.
