Shoot! Existential Photography @ The Photographers Gallery – London

There is nothing sexier than being photographed in a shooting attitude, with all that confidence and aggressively that one may demonstrate (or pretend) in front of a camera, all that subtle roughness and decisive posturing that could be also be regarded as cowardice… so much sexual tension in The Photographers’ Gallery latest exhibition that we couldn’t say no.

“Shoot! Existential photography” takes us back to WWI, when photo-shooting galleries became extremely popular in most fun fairs and amusement parks. When the customer hit the bullseye, he or she woud trigger a camera, winning them a snapshot of themselves in the act of shooting. The metaphorical charge of the activity is obvious—upon looking at their portrait the shooter sees the gun, still trained in their hands a moment after its discharge, aimed at themselves.

An exhibition that showcases vernacular and vintage images alongside contemporary pieces, tracing back the history of this image making process from its days as a popular sideshow to its re-appropriation by various artists.

The exhibition will open with a collection of anonymous shooting-gallery photograph ranging from the 1920s to the 1970s, exploring not only the shooter’s pose and expression but also those of the people gathered round to view the spectacle.

Then a slide show installation entitled Celebrity Cabinet (1929-1955) will feature shooting portraits by some of the period’s most noted artists and intellectuals (from Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir to surrealist Man Ray or photographers Robert Frank, Henri Cartier- Bresson and Brassaï among others). Many of these famous figures were believed to be fascinated by the mechanical process…

Ideas that still captivate today’s artists…  In Just Because (2010) Emilie Pitoiset reprints photo-shooting gallery pictures on silver paper which she then cuts up to create the bullet’s hypothetical trajectory. The final piece recalls images of shattered mirrors and feelings of tension and imbalance. To artists Rudolf Steiner and Jean-François Lecourt the camera also serves as the target. In both Steiner‘s series Pictures of me, shooting myself into a picture (1997) and Lecourt’s Tirs (1985-2010) the artists use the bullet’s calamitous action to pierce the camera’s body and generate an image. This process results in self-portraits marked with bullet holes.

And because a good exhibition should always finish with a good souvenir… how about taking a portrait of yourself in a dedicated photographic shooting gallery?