Travels with Bob
19 – 25 November 2009 | ASD Gallery
An exhibition of photographs by Esther Whitby, and books and manuscripts by Robert Harbison. In conjunction with Travels with Bob, an evening celebrating the launch of Robert Harbison’s new book Travels in the history of architecture and his first twenty years as a teacher at London Metropolitan University, on Thursday 19 November 2009, 6.30pm in the Forum.
In a short essay for the catalogue of this exhibition of photographs by Esther Whitby, Robert Harbison speaks of art as ‘all human fabrications made in a certain spirit of play and freedom’. It would be a misunderstanding to read this as a general definition. It rather expresses a deep personal fascination with a particular way of seeing and being in the world. But it is telling that this is being said in the context of photography.
It is difficult to conceive of another medium that has had such a profound effect on how we look at landscapes, the city, the human form, the base of a column, and not least art itself. The personal computer maybe, the medium that seems to contain all presences: the camera’s natural offspring and another black box inhabited by a spirit too obscure for us to understand.
Both the camera and the computer emulate, or automate processes that used to require the greatest amount of skill. Both raise acutely the question of the artist as a craftsman. We still tend to say that most of the great photographers started out as amateurs. A recent and little known example here is the Austrian poet Karl Heinrich Waggerl, whose photographic work from the ’20s and ’30s only emerged after the death of his wife in 1990, to great critical acclaim.
Esther Whitby came to photography late in life, and to computers, still a great mystery to her, later still. For Robert Harbison, Esther’s husband, photography became a necessity when his move from the Architectural Association to the Polytechnic of North London required him to build up a slide library for a series of lectures on architectural history. For both, but particularly for Esther, the presence of the camera was an intrusion. Her response to this was to start taking photographs herself.
Like Waggerl, Esther Whitby would not refer to herself as an artist, and as a photographer only reluctantly. In her preface for the exhibition catalogue, she expresses great surprise at her images being the subject of an exhibition and a publication. But is it because we still cling to a view of art as intricately linked to craft and skill, something the camera seemingly bypasses for us, that this should be surprising?
In contrast to the photos Bob began to take which were all of buildings, the subject emerging from Esther’s images is the act of composing a photograph itself (sometimes in the form of Bob taking photographs). Many of the images in this exhibition, as well as the selection of Robert Harbison’s notebooks and manuscripts we see here, are highly expressive personal meditations on engaging with places. Together they form a retrospective kind of guidebook, an alternative way of travelling. Photography acts here as a simulacrum of being elsewhere. Photographic images are now so common that they form a part of the apparatus of our imagination, but only some photographs transcend the question of art and skill. It is no surprise for me to see Esther’s photographs on these walls, ready to surprise all those who see them.
Joseph Kohlmaier
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About Esther Whitby
Esther Whitby was born in London, read English at Oxford and spent most of her working life at the same publishing house, looking after authors many of whom became personal friends. Initially she turned to photography in self-defence, as she explains in the catalogue, and by this roundabout route arrived at a satisfying form of expression.
Catalogue
Travels with Bob, a catalogue accompanying the exhibition with 63 colour plates, a preface by Esther Whitby and an essay by Robert Harbison, is published by the Isle of Wight Architecture Centre Press. The catalogue will be available at a reduced price of £9.00 on the evening of the opening.
Limited edition of 300.
