Bannan polaroid photos

Press, 29 February 1984, Page 22

Bannan polaroid photos

Peter Bannan. Polaroids at the Dux-de-Lux. Until March 7. Reviewed by John Hurrell. Peter Bannan is a photographer who initially became known in Christchurch through his Polaroid images. However, in recent group shows he has used Cibachrome enlargements of colour transparencies, and in his first one-person show he used laminated coloured photocopies. In this exhibition, about 15 immaculately presented Polaroid SX 70 images are shown on opposite walls of the smaller room of the Dux-de-Lux Restaurant. They look splendid in their silver-plated metal frames and silver cardboard mounts, but because they need to be looked at from close up, they require a visit when numbers in this restaurant are low. This is so that a visitor can unobtrusively squeeze past the tables beside the walls, in order to enjoy the details of these small, intimate works. Other Polaroids, positioned at an awkward height above a small stage, tend to cause the peruser to crouch or

kneel, which restricts their audience to those free from self-consciousness, but physically agile. These flashily displayed images feature a wide range of subjects, from women’s footwear and sunsets, to flowers in vases and kitchenware. Obviously much planning has gone into their organisation, for most of these photographs have their subjects carefully positioned in conditions of controlled lighting.

Some of these Polaroids feature simple objects organised in the manner of still-life paintings. They contain at times a piercing clarity and a lovely warmth of colour not usually associated with Polaroid photographs. Other images, such as the two works containing four photographs in each frame, are drearily predictable in their composition. Initially, they appear elegant, but they stop having interest quickly because they rapidly appear vacuous. Art of quality does not have to contain passion of an obvious kind. The latter may be present only as an intellectual preoccupation,

like Morandi’s still-lifes. Bannan’s works are too unfocused in meaning to emphasise any one theme as a group, and individually they have little to say beyond that of organisation.

Two visually exciting works are “Handbag” and “Green Spotted Glasses,” which contain swirling textures of blurred black and white lines, similar to the patterns used by Lucas Samaras in his Polaroids, but without Samaras’s distorted emulsion. They surprise by their manner of breaking down the clarity of outlines in a way similar to camouflage techniques, making the viewer look closely for the forms, and causing enjoyment of the dramatic lighting as well.

There are quite a few striking images in this show, but they rarely go beyond just looking good. Like many exhibitions, and certainly not just photographic ones, it demonstrates dexterity in technique but with no interesting ideas to be developed through the choice of images depicted.