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23/5/2011

Peter Marlow

The Wapping Project Bankside, London

Peter Marlow is a Magnum photographer, joining the agency in 1980. One of the pre-eminent British photojournalists of his generation, Marlow has developed a parallel body of work over the course of twenty years. Point of Interest is a rigorous edit from several thousand images taken down to twenty seven colour works and ten small black and white prints.

This body of work has been made alongside major projects and is an oblique look at the world which never made it into his photojournalistic images. It is photojournalism turned inside out, where the geography of where he is in the world, and the narrative context, becomes an irrelevant and unnecessary detail the title Point of Interest is surely ironic– these images capture the overlooked, the abandoned, the derelict and the detritus of contemporary life and would rarely be the focus or centre of anyone’s point of interest. It is Marlow who places them centre stage in a sequence of masterly but disturbing photographs. Masterly because one could not imagine the framing to be bettered, disturbing because this is an apocalyptic vision – no people, no emotion, no sentiment, but a factual record of something left behind. Marlow’s work has tension built within each image. A crashed car, one only, no passengers, no victim, no perpetrator. There is, however, a strong narrative drive– one imposed by the viewer in a struggle to come to terms with where the camera points, at what and why... This forensic eye was in evidence in early exhibitions such as London by Night first staged at The Photographer’s Gallery in 1981 and shown as a series of vintage prints in 2009 at The Wapping Project Bankside.

There is a sense of continuity in an obsessive re-visiting of subject matter and tone but something quite new in his approach to colour that has a distinctive voice and signature. The ten small black and white prints included in Point of Interest constitute an album of fragmentary landscapes, made in square format, each image exploring an undramatic space between events. These empty moments, shot at airports, motorways and factories, on city streets and in suburban homes, give some clues as to how the colour work evolved. The colour of incidental things became more central to Marlow’s work just as their shape and mark was to his black and white work.

Marlow’s most startling images involve an absorption in peripheral detail and a take on the landscape that we can recognise, and identify with, but can’t quite put our finger on. He is an observer of the video monitored places in which we work, travel and wait: non-places, of transit, approach roads and places at the edge. This work, shown for the first time has a febrile darkness and sense of foreboding, leaving room for the night time corners of the viewer’s imagination, but paradoxically possessing a calm beauty.

Biography
Born in England in 1952, Peter Marlow studied Psychology at Manchester University before embarking on his professional photojournalistic career. This started inauspiciously in 1975 when, with a borrowed portfolio from a wedding photographer he knew, he secured a job as a cruise-liner photographer on an Italian ship in the Caribbean. Once on board, the first thing the resident photographer had to do was to show him how to use a camera.

With the money saved from this he spent most of 1976 travelling through Central America via Haiti, Colombia, Venezuela, to New York taking photographs. On showing his work in New York to the newly formed photo agency Sygma, he accepted a contract to be part of it's team covering world news events, based in London. During that period he worked on a vast variety of news and feature assignments in Africa, South and Central America, and travelled extensively in the countries of the Eastern Bloc. Marlow joined Magnum Photos in 1980. He became a full member in 1986, and held the post of President of the agency from 1990-1994.

As a member of Magnum, Marlow has continued to work internationally for many of the world’s leading magazines, but his major projects have been more concerned with aspects of contemporary British life. In 1993 he published Liverpool - Looking out to Sea (Jonathan Cape), the culmination of a six-year project photographing the city, and a book regarded by many as the defining work on Britain under Mrs Thatcher. The pictures reveal a deep attachment to the country he grew up in. In recent years, Marlow has worked more extensively in colour and concentrated on his exploration of the physical and personal landscape. His work has become highly recognisable for its unique sense of atmosphere, focusing not on the picturesque, but on the less obvious non-places in which life is acted out. He is presently editing and selecting this new work in preparation a new book, which has the working title Point of Interest. More recently Marlow has worked on many colour projects related to contemporary urban life, especially in Japan, but also in regions of England, France, Spain and Greece.

Notes to the Editors
The Wapping Project Bankside is a gallery focusing on lens –based media founded by the Director of The Wapping Project, Jules Wright. Artists represented include Elina Brotherus, Susan Meiselas, Lillian Bassman, Deborah Turbeville, Annabel Elgar, Peter Marlow, Stephen J Morgan and Jeffrey Stockbridge. Peter Marlow joined the gallery in 2009. His fine art work is available for purchase through the gallery and includes the photographs in Point of Interest.

For press information and images please contact:
press@thewappingprojectbankside.com
Priscilla Granozio, Gallery Manager
020 7981 9851/ 0780 9601 635

Private View: 24th May, 6pm.

The Wapping Project Bankside
65a Hopton Street - London
open Tue-Sat from 10am to 6pm and Monday by appointment
free admission

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