Tate Tell Tales

Hi, Tonight we was entertained by David Lambert.

We started off slowly, our machine didn’t want to play any sort of PowerPoint Show. A lot of sweating, swearing and making a promise to the machine that we wouldn’t beat its sorry ass, we finally downloaded a program that would play David’s file.

David’s tale was of his beginnings in the heart of Essex, an article in the local rag (the Chelmsford & Essex Weekly News … remember that?) with an article about twins.

Due to circumstances beyond his control, he ended up in a boarding school on the other side of London, and under the guidance of a teacher, turned his interest for Photography to an extent where he managed to get a job in a laboratory, photographing experiments & being taught  the tricks of the trade by the old hacks (I don’t mean that disrespectfully) he learnt his trade the hard way, rather than this modern era, where it’s considered if you get a BA, you must be good.

David eventually blagged a job at the Tate Gallery in the early 70s. With plenty of anecdotes and photos, he took us on a trip of his working life. Which of course took in The Tate, Tate Modern, the one in Saint Ives and Tate Liverpool. We learned about the vast amount of ‘objet d’art’ being held by the museum, and the procedures used to record the aspects of said pieces. A never ending process.

Using cameras as diverse as 10X8 plate to digital Hasselblads, with lenses that could tilt and shift to the nth degree, we learn’t how they would photo it, trying to catch it in the best light (you might have hard or soft blacks, does it’s lustre give it a different perspective) How he despairs at the modern generation of photographers with no feel for the object, save a set of scientific numbers to describe the colours & shades.

They would then photo it with a harsh sidelight, to show a totally different version of an object in sharp relief. Of shooting it with UV or infrared light to show non visual details or previous restoration projects. How they’d photograph the back of the picture & any provenance, the frame too to give a total record of an object, be it a meat a meat dress (weird right?) or a Picasso, which … under x-rays revealed another head which the artist deemed wasn’t good enough so it disappeared under a layer of paint.

Though this was only part of his remit.  The Tate produces many pamphlets and books about art in the gift shops. There’s posters & postcards for the visitors to take home with them. What’s on the menu in the cafe … exhibitions, firework displays, workshops for teachers during the school breaks … often being thrown in the deep end to sink or swim. The life of an art photographer seemed to be vary varied, from photographing a Hockney under a stair to loading a car full of gear for a three day shoot up in Liverpool!

Speaking of Hockney, he told the tale of him wanting to do a short film about the etchings of Picasso, about trailing the guy about the museum with a movie camera, helping him with the project (which to his knowledge, came to nothing) A couple of days later a colleague taking a phone call for him, from a David. Wracking his brains for who this David was who was phoning him at work "David who?” He asked … "Hockney” came the reply "There’s an exhibition on in Paris of more of Picasso’s early etchings, want to go?”

Another tale of how he dragged the barn doors of a studio light across one of the works of a very prominent artiste, whilst doing the relief shoot. Makes you cringe just thinking about it!

Finally, he showed us some of the stuff he’s doing now. After a lifetime of photographing other peoples work, he now has absolutely no time at all to take photos of patterns and shapes and the day to day detritus that is modern life.

Thank you David. Two hours for a lifetime doesn’t seem to do it justice.

Perhaps Val can persuade you to come back and regale us again.