Tiny Vices London
GWB Operative Josh just sent me this dispatch from London:
Former Vice Magazine Photo Editor and Tiny Vices proprietor Tim Barber opened a new exhibition at the Gallery Soho in London tonight. Because I love my friend Greg a great deal, I flew out to see it (don’t worry, he promised he’d pay me back for the ticket). The exhibition is set over two floors in London’s Covent Garden neighborhood, not in Soho as the name of the Gallery suggests. Despite this semantic disturbance, the show is pretty interesting. The first floor is about what you’d expect at something curated by Tim Barber: lots of bright, punchy shots of young people in varying levels of nakedness, plus a few drawings and a badass picture of a van on fire.
The second floor, though, is where the action is. The uncredited photo series appears to have been taken almost entirely in Germany onboard subways or on their platforms. The photos are arranged either alone or in groups of two or three, in neat rows contrasting the scrapbook feel of the first floor. This ordered style gives the impression that the entire scene is visible from within one train car, and what a scene it is. A few large, central figures — mostly locked in embrace with a loved one — capture the attention of the people in the images around them. A covetous feeling exists within the exhibition, as though everyone in the smaller images wants to be the people in the bigger ones. Or maybe I just wanted another one of the free canapes.
There you have it, sounds like a great time. Thanks, Josh; I feel like I was there. And your check is in the mail.