All That I Am: New Portrait Photography – Julie Cook, Jane Hilton & Nancy Newberry
14 July 2012 - 14 September 2012
Departure Lounge opens its new Luton space with an exhibition of works from three of the most innovative emerging artists currently working in photographic portraiture.
London based photographer Jane Hilton’s series Dead Eagle Trail provides a highly individual visual testament to the fast disappearing cowboy culture of the American west. US-based Nancy Newberry’s staged and orchestrated portraits present Texan teenagers marking rites of passage with ‘MUM’s (short for Chrysanthemums), an intricate sculptural rosette worn for college graduation or the homecoming parade. Hackney resident Julie Cook presents Beauties of Todaya strikingly warm and engaged portrait of London’s burlesque performers and the environments in which they work.
Redefining the relationship between art and photography, the artists pose searching questions about how we understand and digest our own likeness, and how contemporary photographic portraiture is co-opting the approaches of contemporary art to represent human culture in all its beauty, diversity and vulnerability.
