Jim Goldberg — Open See
Jim Goldberg
Open See
15 October 2009 - 17 January 2010
The Photographers' Gallery
16-18 Ramillies Street
London
W1F 7LW
‘Open See’, the first UK solo exhibition of Magnum Photographer Jim Goldberg, has opened at The Photographers' Gallery in London. The show documents the experiences of refugees, immigrants and trafficked populations with the help of small objects, photographic prints, polaroids, videos and written texts. Typically for Goldberg, the photographs are often defaced and written on by the people they portray. However, in contrast to other works (Rich and Poor, Raised by Wolves), the images in the show do not concentrate on a specific group of people. They show individuals as well as families and larger groups from a great variety of countries met by Goldberg on their journey(s) through the world. Nevertheless, the images are intimidating. They tell personal stories, although only as fragments that appear and disappear like the people themselves. One image shows for example a little girl in a pink dress that is standing in the middle of an abandoned place. Another image shows a man and woman who are having sex - hastily, without any romance. And yet another image shows a body full of bruises. Each story is unique, but nevertheless part of larger whole. As such, the show manages to give a glimpse of the live that happens outside of national boundaries. Goldberg shows people who are normally invisible — the ones who leave before they have arrived. The ones on the move.
There is also a book of the same title that gives an overview of Goldberg’s ongoing project, although with hardly any words apart from the ones written on the photographs themselves. As such the book leaves us, similar to the exhibition, with visual impressions of people in search of a better live. Nonetheless, it confronts us with the difficulties of migration — and life as a whole. It makes us think.
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