Our new Summer Show is currently on !

Running from July 1st – August 26th

featuring lots of works from Slim Aarons, Dasha & Mari (new) and Duffy (new) as well as Stuart Christian Möller.

Come in and grab some sunshine! 🙂

GALERIE PRINTS

GALERIE PRINTS is delighted to present our gorgeous new exhibition

 “Maybe It’s Because I’m A Londoner!”

featuring stunning archival photography from the 1920’s

through to the present day of the changing face and faces of London.

Exhibition is from May 3rd – June 16th

Admission FREE

See you there! 🙂

Christmas is just around the corner – and we at GALERIE PRINTS have a wide range of exquisite prints to choose from as beautiful gifts!

You can ‘buy off the wall’ in store at our Gallery in Wimbledon Park, or order online.

Note to ensure pre-Christmas Delivery you need to

**order by December 5th latest for Framed prints – and by December 10th for unframed prints**

The Gallery will be open as per normal until 4pm on Monday, 24th of December on Christmas Eve 

where you will be able to purchase items in store.

Any questions or Special Requests – simply contact us !

Happy Holidays!

Your GALERIE PRINTS Team xx

August 18th – October 20th , 2018

Featuring Works by Elsa Leydier, Stuart Christian Möller, Baldur Tryggvason amongst others.

Images of and from Nature focussing on each artist’s interpretation of their subject.

GALERIE PRINTS Customers’ Reviews…

Jason M. /  Phillipines

Jose / West Palm Beach, FL

Louis-Wohnson / Los Angeles, CA

Biense / Haarlem, Netherlands

Barbara / Vienna, Austria

Tappan / New York, NY

Keith / Essex Fells, NJ

By Molly Gottschalk
Jan 12, 2018

Dorothea Lange ‘Migrant Mother’ ca. 1936 Galerie Prints

Too often, tragic events and periods in history remain overlooked until a photograph breaks through to humanize the fear and pain of their victims. In 1936, photographer Dorothea Lange captured an image of a mother and her children living in poverty that became one of the most defining images of the Great Depression and a lasting, infinitely reproduced symbol of courage and endurance.

This photograph was almost never taken. And the image that has continually proliferated through culture has meant very different things to different people.

In 1936, Lange was among a number of photographers working on assignment for the United States Government’s Resettlement Administration or RA (which would later become the Farm Security Administration or FSA) to document the hardship of migrant farm workers. The workers were among thousands of impoverished families who’d left their homes to seek work in California’s agriculture fields; the photographs had been commissioned to help illustrate their need for federal aid.

CHILD LABOR Motherless children after a day working

in the cotton fields in California.

Photograph, 1935 by Dorothea Lange.

As the story famously goes, after wrapping a one-month assignment spent alone in the field, shooting for the administration, Lange was driving home to her family when she came upon a handwritten sign for a pea-pickers camp in Nipomo Valley, California. She didn’t stop.

“Haven’t you plenty of negatives already on the subject?” she wrote, recalling her mindset at the time. And yet 20 miles later, gripped by compulsion, Lange turned around: “I was following instinct, not reason. I drove into that wet and soggy camp and parked my car like a homing pigeon.”

A family in the doorway of a tent in a camp for migrant workers in Brawley,

Imperial Valley, California, circa 1939.

Photograph Dorothea Lange.

At the campsite, Lange discovered that the pea crop had frozen; with no work available, many migrants were leaving. But the photographer encountered 32-year-old mother Florence Owens Thompson in a decrepit lean-to tent, surrounded by her seven children. “I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet,” she wrote.

With her 4×5 Graflex camera, Lange took six photographs of Thompson and her family, who, she learned, had been living on frozen vegetables and birds killed by the children. (Lange recalled that Thompson had just sold the tires of her family car to purchase food, though in later years, Thompson and her family described a different account: They were simply passing through the camp while fixing their car.) With each exposure, Lange moved in closer to her subjects, gradually tightening the frame until depressing the trigger on the final shot, known today as Migrant Mother.

In a single frame—capturing a mother overcome by worry and flanked by three small children—Lange encapsulated the hardship of migrant communities during this era of American history. And she humanized them. The family she photographed were among some 2,500 workers in the camp, most of whom Lange described as destitute, in addition to as many as 6,000 migrants reported to relocate to California from the Midwest, per month, during that time.

The photograph shows Thompson quite literally holding the weight of her family as two of her seven children burrow their faces into her sides and a baby, visibly caked with dirt, is sleeping in her arms. With the children’s faces turned away and Thompson as the focal point, it is impossible to miss the deep lines that pinch across her forehead as she stares off-camera, or the rips in her sleeve that exposes her forearm. (You cannot see their surroundings or any contextual clues to their lifestyle—like their ramshackle, makeshift living space, or the actual size of their large family.) It is an explicit representation of poverty that brings you uncomfortably close to a mother’s hardship and the will to survive during one of the most dire economic eras of American history.

Many have likened the composition to classical depictions of Madonna and Child, in which the Virgin Mary cradles her infant child, sometimes surrounded by smaller cherubs or angels. Whether or not this was Lange’s intention, it has been suggested that this quasi-religious imagery appealed to the middle-class audiences that her documentary photographs were intended to influence. “Images that inscribed the possibility of redemption reassured middle-class audiences that they could offer charity and be repaid with a cathartic measure of magnanimous gratitude,” Jacqueline Ellis writes in Silent Witnesses: Representations of Working-class Women in the United States (1998). Ellis also notes that images of strong women who appeared that they would protect their families in the face of poverty and homelessness “offered hope to middle-class Americans that traditional family life would endure and outlast the ravages of the Depression.”

However, it was learned many decades later that Thompson’s family did not fit the mould of the traditional conservative American family of the 1930s. Thompson was a Cherokee raised in a small Indian territory in Oklahoma. Her husband died of tuberculosis while she was pregnant with her sixth child, at age 28.

Some have pointed to the image’s absence of the husband and father for its ability to mobilize the public, who, as the viewer, may feel inspired to fill this paternal void as the traditional family provider. (Some reports suggest that Thompson’s companion, Jim Hill, had simply gone into town that day to fix the car.) “The question posed by the photo is, who will be the father?” write Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites in their book, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (2007). “Another provider is called to step into the husband’s place.”

And it worked. Lange immediately printed and delivered the photographs to an editor at a San Francisco newspaper, who subsequently published the images, and she submitted her negatives to the administration. The federal government delivered 20,000 pounds of food to the camp, though it is believed the Thompson and her family had already left at that point.

Migrant Mother went on to become the public face of the Dust Bowl migrants; help win Lange a Guggenheim fellowship in 1941; adorn U.S. postage stamps; and inspire John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Through extensive reproduction it became a symbol of endurance, one that could motivate and inspire Americans in a way that words simply cannot.

But while most people recognize the image, they’ve forgotten or never known Thompson’s name. The identity of Migrant Mother was not learned until 1978, when a reporter from the Modesto Bee newspaper located Thompson, then in her mid-seventies, at her mobile home outside of Modesto, California. (As a rule, RA photographers did not record subject names, and Lange had promised not to reveal Thompson’s identity.) Despite the notoriety and impact of her portrait, she had not profited from the image, a fact she made public.

When Thompson was unable to pay her medical bills following a stroke in 1983, her 10 children sought public help on the basis of her being the famous Migrant Mother.

They received around $35,000 in donations (though exact numbers vary).

Regardless, Thompson died that same year, but lives on in this photograph, which continues to serve as a classic image of strength and perseverance.

Molly Gottschalk is Artsy’s Features Producer.

Original article link: artsy.net 

We are delighted to open our new London gallery.

Nestled in London’s Wimbledon Park, easily accessible via London Underground tube,

and with easy parking – we are located at :

GALERIE PRINTS | 152 Arthur Road | Wimbledon Park | London | SW19 8AQ

Gallery Opening Hours

Monday 10am – 5pm

Tuesday 10am – 5pm

Wednesday 10am – 5pm

Thursday 12pm – 7pm

Friday 10am – 5pm

Saturday 10am – 5pm

Sunday Closed

Come see us and enjoy some beautiful new prints –

including from The Slim Aarons Collection and a selection of prints from our brand new

V&A Portfolio – selected from the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum,
the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance –

as well as from some of our other truly stunning Prints Collections.

GALERIE PRINTS

Explore Beautiful.

Galerie Prints is proud to present some of the finest rock images ever captured, courtesy of photographer Michael Putland.

Born in 1947, Michael grew up in Harrow where he took his first pictures at the age of nine before leaving school at sixteen to work as an assistant to various photographers including Time-Life photographer, Walter Curtain and the legendary motor racing photographer, Louis Klemantaski.

In 1969 he set up his own studio and by 1971, he was the official photographer for the British music magazine Disc &Music Echo.

His first assignment for them that year was to photograph Mick Jagger in London.

From the editorial work for Disc and Music Echo, Sounds and later Smash Hits & Q magazine amongst others, to the 1973 tour with The Rolling Stones that led to a long-standing relationship working with the band,

Michael has shot prodigiously including for major record labels including CBS, Warner, Elektra, Polydor, Columbia Records and EMI. Relocating to New York in 1977, it was here that Michael founded the photo agency, Retna.

It has been said that Michael photographed everyone from Abba to Zappa … when looking at his archive this is actually true.

Now living in East Sussex, recent 2016 exhibitions include “Off The Record” at The Lucy Bell Gallery in Hastings showing images both on and off stage including previously unseen contact sheets; whilst Ono Arte in Bologna, Italy is hosting a David Bowie show.

Autumn 2014 saw Michael’s 50 year retrospective at the Getty Gallery in London: “A life in Music, 50 Years On The Road”. 

Snap Gallery in London’s Piccadilly Arcade regularly have a selection of Michael’s work on show.

Michael continues to shoot the artists he most admires – likely to be jazz, classical and world musicians, who have always provided an alternative narrative to his rock music portfolio.

“It has been a fantastic ride through an incredible period of music history, which combined my two great loves … music and photography. Little did I appreciate, when my Uncle Alan encouraged my photography back in the 1950s, that this would lead me to photographing nearly all of my heroes … and thrilled to be still finding new ones. A great never ending journey.” Michael Putland

Galerie Prints is delighted to present this exquisite collection of photographs by Christopher Simon Sykes,

perhaps most famed for his unique coverage of the Rolling Stones’ 1975 American tour.

(visit our sister site – www.edge-prints.com to view)

However, these works are rather different.

A painting of a horse in Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, 1980s.

Born in 1948, Sykes left Eton to attend Ravensbourne College of Art and since graduating has worked as a writer

and photographer on a number of magazines including House and Garden, World of Interiors and Vogue.

He is also the author of several books.

Country Homes 

This beautiful body of work includes intimate photographs of some of Britain’s best-known Country Houses and their interiors.

The result is an exquisite glimpse into a world rarely revealed, of the beautiful homes of the sometimes almost mythical,

British upper echelons of society, deeply steeped in tradition, class and history.

Undeniably beautiful, grand and undeniably British.

These photographs are available to our largest Giant size, 60×40″ as beautiful C-type prints.

(also available as signed limited edition prints – contact us for details).

An oil painting, various saddles and an old trunk in Leixlip Castle, County Kildare, 1990s.

Bert Hardy rose from humble working class origins in Blackfriars. The eldest of seven children, he left school at age 14 to work for a chemist who also processed photos. His first big sale came when he photographed King George V and Queen Mary in a passing carriage, and sold 200 small prints of his best view of the King. Hardy freelanced for The Bicycle magazine, and bought his first small-format Leica 35 mm. He signed on with the General Photographic Agency as a photographer, then founded his own freelance firm Criterion.

In 1941, Hardy was recruited by the editor Tom Hopkinson of the leading picture publication of the 1930s and 1940s, Picture Post.

Hardy was self-taught and used a Leica —unconventional gear for press photographers of the era— but went on to become the Post’s Chief Photographer, after he earned his first photographer credit for his 1 February 1941 photo-essay about Blitz-stressed fire-fighters.

‘At The Embassy’ 1941 (Photo Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton/ Getty Archive)

Hardy served as a war photographer in the Army Film and Photographic Unit (AFPU) from 1942 until 1946: he took part in the D-Day landings in June 1944; covered the liberation of Paris; the allied advance across the Rhine; and was one of the first photographers to enter the liberated Belsen to record the suffering there. He also saved some Russian slaves from a fire set by German police in the city of Osnabrück, before photographing the aftermath.

Near the end of World War II, Hardy went to Asia, where he became Lord Mountbatten’s personal photographer. He later went on the cover the Korean War along with journalist James Cameron for Picture Post, reporting on United Nations atrocities at Pusan in 1950, and later and on that war’s turning point, the Battle of Inchon, photojournalism for which he won the Missouri Pictures of the Year Award.

Three of Hardy’s photos were used in Edward Steichen’s famous Family of Man exhibition and book, though not his favourite photo — which shows two street urchins off on a lark in Gorbals — it nevertheless has come to represent Hardy’s documentary skill. Hardy himself was photographed many times, including during the war; three very good photo-portraits of him are currently in the Photographs Collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

‘Gorbals Boys’ ca 1948 (Photo Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton/ Getty Archive)

Having written an article for amateur photographers suggesting that you didn’t need an expensive camera to take good pictures, Hardy staged a carefully posed photograph of two young women sitting on railings above a breezy Blackpool promenade using a Box Brownie in 1951, a photograph which has since become an iconic image of post-war Britain.

‘Blackpool Railings’ 1951 (Photo Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton/ Getty Archive)

Just before Picture Post closed, Hardy took 15 photos of the Queen’s entrance at the Paris Opera on 8 April 1957, which were assembled as a photo-montage by the magazine’s technicians. It was one of the most challenging photo-montages ever created, because there were a sizeable live crowd, guards, and other dignitaries, in front of his camera. After leaving Picture Post Hardy became one of the most successful advertising photographers until his retirement in 1964 to his farm in Oxted.

A memorial plaque honouring him is in the journalists’ church, St Bride’s, Fleet Street, London.

In October 2008, London Borough of Southwark unveiled a Blue Plaque on Bert Hardy’s family home at The Priory, Webber Street, Blackfriars. The plaque was erected following a popular vote.