Saatchi online photographers find a chemical ally

And in this first collaboration between Saatchi’s virtual gallery and Hoppen’s traditional one, we are offered images transformed almost alchemically.  

The six emerging photographers chosen from Saatchi’s vast collection to fit the theme share a fascination with changing a photograph’s identity, composition or narrative. Starting with a found, forgotten or newly made print, a slide or Polaroid, the object undergoes radical change through chemical processes, scratching or repeated over-printing.

For Maurizio Anzeri, faded Italian family snaps are reinvented by embroidering skeins of coloured thread in geometric shapes over faces and bodies. The disguise adds a 3-D effect, beautifully surreal, with a single eye peering out from the gilded cages. 

Playing with memories held in a photographic image, creating new or even false ones, changing narratives and re-shooting, are common practices. Gabriele Beveridge’s mysteriously collaged and re‑photographed found images, re‑shot as Polaroids, smudge original meanings, while Robin Cracknell’s emotive childhood snaps, made movingly cinematic through chemical ageing processes and scratching, are pulled from their past. Layering is taken literally by Dong Yoon Kim. His breathtaking, almost psychedelically beautiful, over-printed scenes of London flats, trees, playgrounds (influenced by London artist Idris Khan) become rich, multi-dimensional views he calls "landscape with mess".

Dominating the gallery is a single formal, life-sized monochrome photograph by David Birkin, representing the Unknown Soldier. Here, reprinting lends an appropriately ghostly effect, the white-gloved, saluting hand glowing against the impressionistic human symbol of war.

This brief encounter with trends for physical involvement in the photographic process is an inspiring reaction to the fingers-on-keys digital domination.  

Until 12 October. Information: 020 7352 3649, www.michaelhoppencontemporary.com; www.saatchigallery.com.

Starting with a photograph - Saatchi online photographers
Michael Hoppen Gallery
SW3