“My God, this is going to be a disaster.”
These were the words Roy Thompson the owner of The Sunday
Times uttered back in 1962 when the paper became the first to include a colour
magazine. The idea was thought of as ‘barmy’
but within a short time quarter of a million new readers came on board. Fifty years on, the idea of a weekly paper
without some kind of supplementary magazine is incomprehensible.
The Sunday Times celebrated 50 years since it launched the
first colour magazine this January/February with an exhibition of some of its
most celebrated, iconic images at the Saatchi Gallery in London.
As I am studying narrative at the moment, I thought what
better time to go and see some of these images from the ground-breaking
magazine for myself.
I occasionally read The Sunday Times. These days it comes with so many supplements/magazines
it keeps me entertained way beyond Sunday and well into the week. I have enjoyed the magazine mainly for its
features on far off places, places and peoples we’ve forgotten exist and the realities
of war from a variety of perspectives.
The magazine buys into the cult of celebrity in a manner that is
tolerable for me. I cannot bear the
modern obsession with ‘celebrity’ and the never-ending tirade of drivel and tell
all tales about people that are famous for simply being famous. I don’t care where these people eat, what
their dogs are called or whether they’ve had plastic surgery. However, I do want to know more about my kind
of celebrity – someone who has performed an outstanding achievement who we can
look up to and admire. The Sunday Times
magazine in general embraces that type of celebrity.
The images in many of our best-selling magazines are more
preoccupied with revealing the shocking news that some celebrities have
cellulite, have put on weight or are wearing clothes from a high street
store. They don’t have much of a story
to tell. They are about unveiling
evidence that these people that the magazines idolise are flawed and
imperfect.
I want more out of what I read and see than that. I want to be able to produce better images that
that. I want to appeal to an audience
with more interests in life than that.
The exhibition included some of the work of the world’s
finest photographers to have worked for the magazine – Don McCullin, David
Bailey, Eve Arnold and Uli Weber to name a few.
Overall I found the exhibition very interesting as it was
less a trip down memory lane than a history lesson. I found myself recalling events I had
forgotten had occurred and asking myself was it really that long ago since such
an event occurred. With a good mix of good
photojournalism covering the landing on the moon, the Iraq war, and the fall of
Gadaffi to the rise of the Pop Princess Kylie Minogue and Prince Charles and
Diana, the images provided a balanced picture of life in the last 50
years.
Uli Weber's image of Kylie Minogue
The picture that will stay in my memory for years to come
will be of Jose Pequerio an Iraqi veteran who lost 40% of his brain in a
grenade attack. The photographer is
Eugene Richards and the image is taken from his series War is Personal. It is both shocking and thought provoking. It depicts sadness and hope, the human being’s
ability to survive and the power of a mother’s love.
The work of Eugene Richards
There were some
drawbacks though. The project rooms were
pretty small and had a lot of images crammed in which would be fine when the
gallery was quite. However I went on the
last Saturday of the exhibition (they’ve since extended it) and it was
packed. This made navigating the rooms
extremely difficult and left me wishing I was taller to be able to see over the
sea of people and getting a better view.
Perhaps the longer captions for the images further delayed the flow of people.
The combining of image and text in this exhibition provided the viewer with a greater insight into the work on display. The use of a caption which was printed as a header in bold acted as a teaser to encourage the viewer to read the text below it - some 100-200 words - depending on the piece displayed. This accentuated the picture narrative style which is something I hadn't experienced in an exhibition before.
On the plus side, it gave me some food for thought and a
good introduction to an iconic magazine.
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