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Indepth Arts News:
"Siren City : Photographs of Naples by Johnnie Shand Kydd"
2010-06-30 until 2010-09-12
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art
London, ,
UK United Kingdom
Some fifty striking and evocative black and white photographs of Naples by the acclaimed photographer Johnnie Shand Kydd will be shown at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, at 39a Canonbury Square, London N1, from Wednesday 30 June to Sunday 12 September 2010. Siren City: Photographs of Naples by Johnnie Shand Kydd is the first time that these works have been exhibited in the UK following their debut in MADRE, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Naples.
Johnnie Shand Kydd is probably best known for his portraits of his artist friends, especially the YBAs (Young British Artists) such as Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, before they became famous, many of which can be seen in the National Portrait Gallery. In 2000 he was invited to spend three months in Naples, a city he had never visited before, known as the Siren City because of the legend of the siren Parthenope who, having failed to seduce Ulysses with the beauty of her song, threw herself into the sea and was washed ashore at the place that was to become Naples.
Shand Kydd says “In time I developed a relationship with the city something akin to a drug habit, returning again and again over the next eight years. It is not by accident that Naples is known as the Siren City and I had fallen hook, line and sinker under the spell of her seduction.” He finds it a very sexy city where northern European reserve has no place but which also has a darker side, not only because of corruption and criminality but also through the paganism that is inherent in the city. He observes that while Naples is tough, dirty, noisy and anarchic, it is a city that never fails to make you laugh.
“Another gift for the photographer is the theatricality of the city which uses every street and piazza as its stage. Privacy is an utterly foreign concept here with every door open for those outside to glimpse in and those inside to gaze out. There is no barrier to speak of between the public and the private. I decided early on to always when possible ask my subject’s permission before taking a picture. Perhaps the price of this is a loss of spontaneity but the unexpected prize usually turned out to be a wonderfully theatrical swagger. Soldiers would strike a pose and old ladies reach for their fans with an odd mixture of pride and innocence which reminds me of much nineteenth-century photography when the camera still retained a whiff of the magical.”
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