Magpie 003 • People in an exhibition
In late 2023 my dad took me and my cousin Stan to two London exhibitions of Japanese master photographers: Daido Moryama and Hiroshi Sugimoto.
The Moryama exhibition at The Photographers Gallery was chaotic, overwhelming, overstimulating. It had the unanticipated effect of dredging up many grinding and painful feelings from deep within me – feelings I had been grappling with in relation to my career choices and where to go next with my revived and matured passion for photography. I found myself in tears while I sat under Waterloo Bridge, having a coffee with my dad and Stan and explaining to them that I felt certain I would never pursue photography as a full-time profession and, even worse, that I would never again love filmmaking as I once had. The limits and pressures of earning a living in our modern economy were throttling two of the most important things in my life and I did not know what to do with my career or my passions.
Moryama had rattled me apart and I needed someone to put me back together again. Sugimoto did not resolve my crisis of uncertainty but he did help me regain my composure.
I felt an instant calm come over me as I entered the Hayward Gallery's exhibition of major and lesser-known projects by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Still, the heat in my veins and my skin needed to be channelled into something. Without thinking much about it, I used my iPhone (an SE for those who care) to capture the following images of other people in the gallery as they became absorbed in Sugimoto's work. Taking these pictures was almost like a having a quick breather in between my own absorption of each of Sugimoto's totemic series.
While editing the snapshots (just crudely on my phone) I felt that I'd captured a pleasing cross section of the postures and characters of my fellow gallery visitors.
More of Sandy's things:
Current project: TELEFOTON
Online portfolio: sandyconnell.photography
An object of mine:
This is one of my favourite pictures that I have stuck up on my wall – torn from the pages of the free magazines provided for passengers on China's highspeed rail network.
