Iconic photos covering four decades on view at Snap
A brand new exhibition highlighting the career of veteran photographer Gered Mankowitz is the subject of a major retrospective show running from 28 April to 16 June at the Snap gallery space at 12 Piccadilly Arcade.The exhibition features over 100 photographs from Gered’s entire career, spanning four decades of music photography. This is the largest collection of photographs Gered has ever exhibited, and it is his first career retrospective.
Mankowitz is best known for his 1960s photographs of The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix, and both subjects feature in this exhibition. During the 60s he also photographed Marianne Faithfull, Georgie Fame, Chris Farlowe, The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, Small Faces, Donovan, Spencer Davies group and PP Arnold to name a few, before moving into the progressive end of the decade with Free, Soft Machine, Traffic and The Nice. Guy Stevens, London DJ and scenemaker who did so much to promote the Sue Label, is featured in the show, captured sitting on the floor with his record player and a clutch of Sue label singles, originally shot as part of the cover session for the SUE STORY album. Gered continued photographing musicians throughout the seventies, eighties and nineties and the eclectic range of subjects in the exhibition include Kate Bush, Robert Palmer and Elkie Brooks, Sparks, Slade, The Jam, Generation X, Magazine, Duran Duran, ABC, Ride and Oasis.
The difficulty we faced – and believe me this is a good problem to have – was that Gered has an archive of such incredible breadth and depth that it was a challenge to come up with a final edit of around 40/50 pictures – a typical size for a gallery show – that did proper justice to his body of work. We came up with double that, around 100 images in the final cut. Clearly that’s a quantity more often associated with a major museum space than a relatively small privately owned gallery. As space prevented us from displaying 100 photographs in traditional large sizes, the solution became obvious. If everything in the show could be made in a very small size, then our problem was solved. Happily when I put this idea to Gered, he was as excited about it as I was, and the resulting exhibition, consisting entirely of beautiful 8×10 inch handmade photographs, is a fitting tribute to one of this country’s most important music photographers.
As Gered Mankowitz says himself: “This is my first ever retrospective, and we have gone right back to basics. It is entirely black and white, and every one of the 100+ photographs featured in the exhibition has been made by hand in the darkroom by Barbara Wilson using traditional wet processing from the original negatives. We were very strict – if there was no original negative, then a photograph could not be part of the show. The resulting 8 x 10 inch silver gelatin photographic prints are simply exquisite: their size really draws the viewer to examine the intricate details up close. I have never exhibited or offered my work in this size before, and they really are a delight to behold. In this digital age where the values of traditional photographic techniques have been eroded, it is very important for me to be able to produce an entire exhibition using traditional methods whilst the individual skills and materials are still available.”
Photo Jimi Hendrix by Gered Mankowitz
The exhibition runs from 28th April to 16th June 2012 Visit Exhibition