Tucked away in the heart of the Brixton market an exhibition has been running in the Photofusion gallery that redefines the power of portrait photography.
Without reading any of the painfully placed typography on the walls. I faced the portraits in the eye. I felt compelled to do so as the shear amount of eyes and faces that bombarded me when I entered seemed to walk me towards the framed despair. The images didn't list any photographers. These images were simply a selection of negatives that were found on a secret interrogation prison set on the borders of cambodia. The images were a documentation of the exiles that were due to be executed at the prison, some 15,000 individuals.
It didn't take an historian to know that the people who were now hanging on the walls of, dare i say, 'trendy' gallery were once subject to intense torture and inevitable death. The essence of death is communicated through-out the exhibition in wave after wave of hopeless eyes baring their souls in that captured moment. Composition and framing push the people into the heart of the image, no escaping from the lens, these people seemed to have been stripped of all dignity and hope.
A truly grueling experience. Raw, honesty and brutality make these portraits compelling and at the sametime a disturbing observation into the barbarism of man. At the cusp of photo-journalism and portraiture combined, these images are a real journey well worth experiencing.
Visit our events page for more details. http://www.photographyandmash.com/events/show/17-Facing-death-Portraits-from-Cambodia-s-killing-fields-
I was delighted to find a little kitch and rustic deli behind the back of the gallery for all those fanatic photography theory readers who need a table. check it out.