Exhibition visted 16th June 2018, Volcano Theatre, Swansea
WPF = Welsh Photographic Federation, This is the organisation to which most Camera Clubs / Photographic Societies (but not all) belong.
This is a yearly event in which members of each club are invited to participate, each member can submit a selection of prints or digital images for projection to the Salon where they will be judged by a panel, the results of the judging are place on public display and awards for various categories made.
Compared to the previous exhibition that I had visited (Diane Arbus at the Burton Gallery, Bideford) this was well presented and equally well lit making it easy to view the images placed on display. There were a wide variety of different categories of image on display ranging from heavily manipulated / photo-shopped images to wildlife, portraiture,sport abstract in both colour and monochrome formats.
Although the images were, on the whole, well edited and presented I did notice an increasing tendency towards very heavy editing, almost moving into the hyper-real – the images did not look natural. Conversations with several members of the public and a professional photographer confirmed that this was the case and not just a subjective interpretation of the work by myself. For myself, the most realistic of the images were those shot in monochrome – they seemed to have more ‘presence’ than the bright, extremely sharp and somewhat unreal colour prints (the wildlife prints were the notable exception to this rule).
I’m not sure why but I found the whole thing disheartning and a little unreal.
Photography was permitted in this exhibition – examples of the layout and display are shown below:-
Although it did not appear to have won an award, the best print / print with the most impact, for me, is the one shown below :-
To my mind there is a definite story attached to this image. I particularly liked the reflection in the window and the relationship that has been created between the bright, upbeat text and the sleeping figure. Of all the images that were on display this is the only one that kept drawing me back for a second look.
Hiraeth Photographic 