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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
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A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
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Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
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London,
Sue Steward's rating
Reader rating
Description: Reportage and documentary photography, with installations by the British artist.
Phone: 0207522 7888
Website: www.whitechapel.org
Email: info@whitechapel.org
Trains: Tube: Aldgate East 
Intimate study: Fairies, London Fields, 2007, presents an idyllic afternoon in Hackney, typical of a photographer in tune with his locale
As the Whitechapel Gallery's space is restricted during its radical redevelopment, the onus is on curators to conceive exhibitions for the lecture theatre and temporary lobby only. Nick Waplington solves the problem imaginatively by splitting his exhibition on and off site.
In keeping with his international reputation for close studies of family, friends and neighbourhoods, he presents an on-screen slide show entitled You Are Only What You See, using 1,000 downloaded images of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, he displays his own recent work in 14 local cafés, shops and pubs.
The 1,000 photographs in the slide-show simulate a reality TV storyboard linking private mementos made by anonymous amateurs, preserved in the copyright-free, Creative Commons zone. Waplington edits these into a subversive documentary, accompanied by a booming soundtrack of FM radio phone-ins.
It reveals young men (mostly) posing: on and off duty, in Baghdad's Green Zone, with locals, near car-bomb destruction, in desert action. Fetishistic close-ups of weapons and guns used for pranks betray a chilling obsession. But snaps of girlfriends and sisters giggling, drinking and smoking dope were their poignant reminders of normality.
Waplington's edit inevitably reflects his aesthetic and political stance - and the subtle artistry of the images sometimes matches his own work. Among these hanging among the shops' or bars' décor, there is a large, deceptively bucolic landscape with grazing cows at Toynbee Hall, E1, which reveals a decommissioned nuclear power station looming from the mist.
But the set-ups - a body dumped in a bin, a farmer spreadeagled drowned in a pond - lack the lyrical sophistication of fellow Hackney photographer Tom Hunter. The impact of the slide-show resonates long after the effect of the off-site images.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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This project sounds fascinating. A point about your comment of the anonymous art in the copyright-free Creative Commons zone: Creative Commons does not mean copyright free. Instead of 'all rights reserved', it means 'some rights reserved', and affords creators protections consistent with their choice of licence. Since the first version of the licences, attribution to authors has been a requirement. Naturally, people can use other names as they would with avatars, and this is fine, as long as there is a link to their original work. You may be thinking of the public domain otherwise.
- Felix, Brisbane, Australia
