Hunger hiding in ‘The Haywain’

Constable’s Haywain is a famously popular painting.   It’s a chocolate-box idyll of rural English life Isn’t it? In some important ways, Constable was a true radical. His ‘ rough‘ painting techniques have been described as an important precursor to Impressionism. And he transformed landscape painting. Moving it away from classical Italy towards the English countryside   But his …

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Dorothea Lange and the Politics of Seeing

Barbican exhibitions of Dorothea Lange and Vanessa Winship 2018

I was excited to go to the Barbican exhibitions of Dorothea Lange and Vanessa Winship‘s photography. But what I found out is the Politics of Seeing can be just as rotten as any other Politics. Lange has been described as “principled .., a heroine of the lens“. After her most famous photo, Migrant Mother, was …

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