Visual Art
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HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 23 Oct .00.
Cartier-Bresson’s craft is slightly paradoxical: his images preserve and pin-down immediacy, and in this irony he finds the rhythms and subtle nuances of peoples’ faces or natural landscapes, even in the most minimal details. Yet what is quite extraordinary is the photographer’s range of style; he slides easily between the abstract and the concrete, shooting landscape then portraiture, and then capturing everything in between. Rooms crammed with photographs suggest that the photographer was attempting to acquire a kind of objectivity by simply taking pictures of everything. The works cluster and tile the walls of the Dean with an almost obsessive dedication.
His famous celebrity portraits, which range from Giacometti to Truman Capote, are still stylish. They haven’t dated, though they are a little contrived, revealing less about the sitter and more about Cartier-Bresson’s fondness for composition.
But it is the anonymous and socially themed works that remain the most striking. From his humorous images of crowds watching the British coronation of King George VI, to the sombre pictures of the homeless and destitute in Mexico, his gaze is rarely exclusive. In each unique subject he manages to uncover a humanity that is ennobled by his eye.
(lsla Leaver-Yap)
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Ledra Palace
PHOTOGRAPHY JIM HAROLD - ACROSS A FRAOTURED LAND(SCAPE) Street Level, Glasgow, until Sat 24 Sep O...
the s'it‘. beats down on a dusty landscape: you can smell the heat and hear only the nu// of insects and h.ss of wavering dry grass. Welcome to the eerie world of ()yprus‘ t)t.lit:t /one. l)l‘.’!(l(}(l follot'ring the wlurkish invasion in 1974. the country‘s hinterland bears the scars of conflict and the skeletons of abandonment planes l-e 'ustirng and grounded. houses crumble and Nicosia airport slowly falls apart. shedding its [05; (lecoi.
Glasgow based photographer .lim Harold managed to gain access to this guarded boundary space bets/een 1.908 and ’2()():'>. Maintained by United Nations forces. t is patrolled by the ()ypriot National Guard and the lur‘kish army. but l‘.. ostensihl; empty In one picture the airport facade stands at the end of a .‘fltlt: s.'./eep of cracked tarmac. 1 ohms are missing; the hollow shell of a place of {Alf/(Lil) annual and departure. ()ther pictures reveal the loss ol domestic human presence. 'lhe deserted .’lll£t(_](: of /\gios (.‘ieorgios. Skouriotissa area' rests on a hillside .t is peaceful and stuck :n time untouched from when its Inhabitants fled or unrere caught up in Violence. In many of the images. glimpses of the sea or mountains give a sense of the world beyond and emphasise the werrdness of this depopulated landscape.
llarold has also done text work on two of the gallery's walls. lhe names of people involgetl in the political situation in Cyprt s since 1954 are streaked in diagonal lines. corresponding to bullet marks recorded on a photograph of /\lt;lll)lf;llt)l/ ll/lakareios' palace in Nicosia. 19/4. lhis kind oi mapping highlights the mass colonisrng and sense of plotting territory. l'he photographs are stark sl'll toes of a space that represents tense peace. (Ruth l ledges)
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NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA - THE LAST TSAR AND TSARINA
Royal Museum, until 30 Oct 0..
Nikki arid Sunny. It has the satire ring to it as ‘Honnie and Clyde. It's surprising. then. to think that these were the pet names for the last lsai and lsarina of Russia. Nicholas Alexandrovich and Alexandra l eodoiovna. Both couples are equally notorious. legendary and tragic. although the imperial pair enjoyed an astonishing daily opulence. lhrough the painstaking cataloguing of royal paraphernalia famin photographs. personal belongings and reconstiuctions 7 this exhibition conveys a staggering degree of luxury
Willi an abundance of gold thread robes and gem encrusted crox'v'ns. the excess of imperial extravagance is alrnt )st nauseating. Yet this untouchable wealth is shrewdly contrasted with a detailed parallel h:stor\,« of the revolutionary backlash and the rise of l eniri and the Communist Party.
lhe information that accompanies the shon'J. ltt)‘.'.’(}\(?t, sometimes llt\.'lll()l()t}l53()8 as much as it informs. rriaking much cf bad omens forecast bi, the notorious Rasputin. and heroicising the acts of the l inneror. Next to iritiitiate group photographs. some taken bx. Nicholas lll"Tf;(}ll, the shot.» is perhaps a little over sentimental. Although it lltt‘lllltfl‘fS the stniggle of the aurorkeis who died at the hands of the Imperial government and its army. the exhibition remains largely uncritical of the gulf that existed heti.'.reen Nikki and Sunny at the top. and the shoulders on which they stood. Ilsla l eavei Yapi
Detail of Group Inside Balmoral