Exposed at the Tate Modern

Weegee (Arthur Fellig) – Lovers at the Movies (detail) c1940, SFMOMA
© Weegee / International Center of Photography / Getty Images

Regular readers of Heat magazine will no doubt have enjoyed a recent spread of  ‘Exclusive Pics’ of Charlotte Church enjoying a ‘boozy girls’ night out’ following a hard day’s work recording Over The Rainbow. The images are low-resolution and starting to pixellate; they look to have been made with a mobile phone; and Charlotte appeared unaware that a fellow-clubber was recording her for posterity, and a few quid. Inasmuch as they result from nefarious snapping by an unobserved perp, and to the extent that they constitute a peculiarly modern form of intrusive (citizen) surveillance, the pictures could qualify for inclusion in Tate Modern’s latest photography gusher, Exposed – Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera. Those who survived Street and Studio’s (Tate’s 2008 ‘urban history of photography’) sprawling inclusiveness will be well-placed to negotiate this vast survey comprising albumen stereographs, DVD projections, prints of every description, daguerreotypes, a CCTV installation, newspapers (‘Diana Dead’), cameras, video, and so on…

Harry Callahan – Untitled (Atlanta) 1984, Dye transfer print, SFMOMA
© The Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York 

That said – thematically speaking, Exposed is better conceived and more sharply focused than previous Tate blockbusters, Cruel and Tender, Street and Studio or How We are. The premise here is that the camera has facilitated, encouraged or licensed various forms of (previously) illicit, voyeuristic looking. Voyeurism is only loosely defined as a form of invasive spectatorship thereby allowing its application to a wide range of photographic genres roughly corralled into five sections. ‘The Unseen Photographer’ collates examples of (mainly) surreptitious documentary and street work ranging from snatched nineteenth century streetcar interiors, and Walker Evan’s oblivious subway passengers, to the more elaborate and controlled Heads series by Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Something of the moral ambiguities involved can be gleaned from a display of antique tools of the trade, including a shoe and walking cane with concealed cameras. 

Walker Evans – Street Scene, New York,1928, Gelatin silver print, SFMOMA
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Moving on, ‘Voyeurism and Desire’ undertakes to examine photography’s role in codifying an ‘intrusive, and sometimes forbidden, view of sex, either for private delectation or to share and perhaps profit from it.’ Though there are one or two examples of nineteenth century porn, the insistence that – to some degree – the photography must be intrusive has tended to rule out inclusion of consensual, commercial work. So instead we get Miroslav Tichy poking his dirty lens at the swimming pool bathers; Susan Meiselas’ hard-working Carnival Strippers; and Kohei Yoshiyuki’s infra-red scenes of groping Tokyo doggers – truly alarming for anyone not from Essex. Of course, some photographers resist categorisation more effectively than others –  neither Goldin nor Mapplethorpe (both included) would agree that their work was invasive or voyeuristic. Nor is it immediately apparent that Helmut Newton explored voyeurism as a theme except in the most pedestrian, albeit well-heeled, manner.

Weegee (Arthur H. Fellig) – Marilyn Monroe, ca. 1950s, Gelatin silver print, ICP, New York, Gift of Wilma Wilcox, 1993
© Weegee / International Center of Photography / Getty Images

Light relief is provided in the form of ‘Celebrity and the Public Gaze,’ an untroubling historical foray into the world of paparazzi provocation and tabloid excess. ‘Witnessing Violence’, by contrast goes to the heart of the exhibition’s argument that photography has been instrumental in building an appetite for the consumption of what previously would have been literally ‘obscene’ – ‘We look at sex or death with the same prying curiosity, knowing that these were once privileged views.’ At the same time the point is made that violent images need not necessarily appeal only to the voyeuristic, passive spectator; iconic photos from the Vietnam era – including Malcolm Browne’s self-immolating monk, Eddie Adams Viet Cong execution, and Nick Ut’s children fleeing napalm – all testify to photography’s productive potential.

Shizuka Yokomizo – Stranger No. 2, 1999, Chromogenic print, SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase
© Shizuka Yokomizo

Finally, ‘Surveillance’ compiles examples of official covert (and sometimes overt) information-gathering and, more recently, pictures by photographers who have used the look or thematic of such work as a resource for their own images. Amongst the latter we find Jules Spinatsch watching the detectives at Davos; Sophie Calle snoops on hotel guests while disguised as a chamber maid; Shizuka Yokomizo rather creepily writes to strangers requesting they pose at nightime windows; Jonathan Olley documents the British Army’s Castles of Ulster; and Sophie Ristelhueber flies over the scarred landscapes of post-Gulf War Kuwait, in the name of art not surveillance, mind.

There is of course plenty here: each of the show’s categories might readily have furnished enough material for an exhibition in their own right, but that’s not Tate style. This more closely approximates military aerial reconnaissance – an encompassing magisterial overview of sometimes disputed territory. Essential viewing.

Guy Lane

Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera

Tate Modern. 28 May – 3 October

Admission £10