Exercise.
Jim Goldberg. Open See.
This exhibition is a new avenue for documentary photography and its display. The items are a mixture of Goldberg’s photographs, found images, found objects, and personal stories. The Polaroid pictures with the subjects input are, to me, the most interesting as Goldberg as involved the participants of this sorry tale in a very personal way. In an interview in The Guardian in 2009 Goldberg is quoted as saying, “"In Europe, I am an outsider, I don't really understand anything that I am seeing”. It is probably this that allows Goldberg to approach this subject without any obvious bias.
As a documentary series in the gallery these images work well, but only as a whole. It is the number of images and their attached stories that give them relevance. Without the stories the pictures, for me, don’t hold up.
The short film and commentary about the sinking boat worked well, especially as the story is told by a voice that did not not survive the sinking.
Whether this exhibition worked in the real world can be seen in the number of people, deserving and underserving, who still risk, and lose, their lives in their attempt to enter Europe.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/nov/01/jim-goldberg-open-see-review
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