The Easel

26th February 2019

Don McCullin talks war and peace

Colin Jacobson | British Journal of Photography | 5th February 2019

Few exhibitions get called ‘magnificent’. McCullin modestly doesn’t think himself an artist, even though Henri Cartier-Bresson likened his work to Goya.  The curator has no doubt. “[McCullin] was always doing things that you wouldn’t consider photojournalism. If you take the most historic notion of genres in art, [portraiture, landscapes] he was always engaged in that”. A good video (4 min) is here.

How Laurie Simmons’ Photographs Opened Our Eyes

Sara Radin | Observer | 21st February 2019

How much of what we see is real, how much cultural myth? Throughout her career Simmons has used props, dolls and makeup to create images of domestic tableaux. “I knew that I wanted to stay in my studio and tell a certain kind of lie, to create a kind of ambiguity”. The linked piece covers her career highlights while a piece that delves into Simmons’ outlook is here.

19th February 2019

Diane Arbus: In the Beginning, Hayward Gallery

Waldemar Januszczuk | The Times | 17th February 2019

Is Arbus’s photography sympathetic or voyeuristic? Her friends thought her “hugely empathetic”, an impression also conveyed by a show of her early work. Sentimental, though, she was not. Just like her celebrated later work, her early images support the view that Arbus is among the greatest of twentieth century photographers, “prescient [for her] acceptance of difference.”

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