black and white photography by rob gardiner.

The Citigroup Photography Prize 2004 is now showing at London’s Photographers’ Gallery in Great Newport Street. All landscape artists, but taking vastly different approaches to the genre, the four nominees stand in stark contrast to the controversial nominees of recent years.

A cramped exhibition space at the best of times, the organisers have cleverly placed Joel SternfeldÔøΩs visually arresting photographs closest to the entrance. Large, vivid, and funny, these are not photographs that you unwittingly walk straight past. Sternfeld traversed the United States in his youth with little more than a large view camera, photographing the American landscape along the way. A renegade elephant lays exhausted on a road, soapy water running off its back down a hill. A farmhouse burns in an autumnal field, while a firefighter in the foreground surreally finds time to buy a pumpkin. A Californian landslide leaves pristine houses in the top half of the picture, and devestation in the lower half. In an accompanying video for the show, Sternfeld admits that the public is probably sick of his irony-heavy images, but the clumps of people in front of each of these pictures indicate otherwise. Steadily Sternfeld has been photographing the march of time itself. With ÔøΩOn This SiteÔøΩ he revisits the locations of famous moments in American History, in ÔøΩStranger PassingÔøΩ he sets up his large camera in every day locations and asks passers-by to pose, and ÔøΩWalking the High LineÔøΩ chronicles New York City from an abandoned elevated railway line. Few New Yorkers know about the High Line, and fewer still have ventured onto it. SternfeldÔøΩs photographs force us to stop and consider the landscapes that are all around us, if only we took the time to look.

At the other end of the gallery are a selection of the works by Robert Adams. Taken in the 1970s as surburbia began to encroach on the wilderness of Colorado, there is little in the way of happiness or drama here. Printed rather small, the photographs invite you toward and into them, creating the claustrophobia that AdamÔøΩs must have felt himself while he watched land being replaced with concrete. For decades Adams has been relentlessly photographing the changing landscape, asking us if we even notice the changes happening. A prolific writer and teacher, it is Adams more than the other nominees that fits the PrizeÔøΩs purpose of awarding a photographer of great influence who has not received the recognition that his influence deserves, but he is perhaps the peast likely to be awarded it.

David Goldblatt has devoted his career to the documentation of everyday life during and after the decades of apartheid in South Africa, particularly to how it effects the landscape. Far from the front-page news photographs of violence and injustice, GoldblattÔøΩs photographs show the tedium and drudgery of life under segregation. A black youth with both arms in stark white plaster casts after being beaten by police, slave labour commuters passed out on a bus, and an impressionistic photograph of mine workers show what life was like for the majority of the population. But it is the people-less photographs that are most telling. A post office store front photographed in 1974 and then again in 1988. On the left, the 1974 photograph shows two entrances, one for whites, one for blacks. History has literally been walled over in the 1988 photograph to the right, the door for blacks replaced as if it had never existed. Little else is different in the two shots. In another photograph, bricks on the curved walls of a Dutch Reformist Church reflect light back in every gradation of black to white tones, an African identity shaping the landscape in the darkest days of apartheid.

Fifty years ago Henri Cartier-Bresson coined the term ÔøΩthe decisive momentÔøΩ to describe that fleeting instant when a great photographic opportunity materialises and then vanishes forever. Peter Fraser, in an accompanying interview, says that for him the decisive moment is that split second when his mind reaches such a clarity of vision that he realises the potential of an everyday scene to become something special. His large prints of small scenes are landscapes few of us ever notice. Vivid and saturated, the photographs remind me of a strange combination of Eggleston and Parr. A piece of paper lies on floorboards surrounded by dust and hair. A styrofoam cup is punctured by dozens of toothpicks and lies on a shelf catching the light. Constellations appear reflected in an oily puddle, and all sense of scale is lost. Like the other nominees, Fraser forces us to stop and consider not only the landscape around us, but the definition of landscape photography itself.

The winner is announced March 4th, and the nominees are on show until March 28th.

The 2004 Citigroup (ex-Citibank) Photography Prize nominees have been announced. The work of Robert Adams, Peter Fraser, David Goldblatt, and Joel Sternfeld will be exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery from the 29th January to 28th March, 2004.

Intended to honor photographers “who have not yet received the public recognition that their influence or work warrants”, the prize has always sparked more controversy than it has admiration. Think of it as a photography version of the Turner prize. The nominees this year are much more conventional photographers than in recent years, and all are more than 50 years old. (Read reaction on past years as seen from the ultra-conservative confines of photo.net: 2002, 2002, 2003)

I have long admired Sternfeld for the way he photographs history. Watch this video of Sternfeld and see how passionate he is about the medium. (My own High Line photo, while I am at it). And everyone is familiar with Robert Adam’s work. I’m looking forward to seeing the others and will post an update once the exhibit opens.

As its first ever major photo exhibition, the Tate Modern this year staged Cruel and Tender, themed on ÔøΩthe real in the twentieth-century photographÔøΩ. A massive exhibition, more than 700 prints of ÔøΩquiet documentationÔøΩ rather than ÔøΩdramatised scenariosÔøΩ were intended to invoke both ÔøΩengagement and estrangementÔøΩ in the viewer. In fact, it was far less coherent than billed. Who could describe Philip-Lorca diCorciaÔøΩs theatrically lit street shots and Andreas GurskyÔøΩs huge prints as ÔøΩquiet documentationÔøΩ? Still, thanks to Winogrand, Arbus, Frank, Evans, Friedlander, Eggleston, and Parr it was the standout show of the year.

At the other end of the scale, the Serpentine Gallery exhibited Hiroshi Sugimoto. With his long-exposure photographs of the open ocean (composed with the horizon perfectly bisecting the image), his exposure of a candle burning into nothingness, and his cold people-free exposures of movie theatres, Sugimoto single-handedly showed us photographyÔøΩs tender cruelty in a coherent way that the Tate Modern exhibition did not. The zen-like surroundings of the Serpentine were perfectly suited to Sugimoto’s style of photography.

The National Portrait GalleryÔøΩs retrospective of Julia Margaret Cameron was the surprise of the year. Cameron (at the age of 48) took up photography shortly after its invention, but the portraits she produced look as if they could have been made yesterday. The Tate Britain exhibited Wolfgang Tillmans. Though famous for photographs which are intended to shock (he won the Turner Prize in 2000), I found those the most banal of his otherwise poignant images of everyday life. And the Barbican dedicated a large show to the photographs of Sebastio Salgado. The Barbican has been a great place to view photography (highlight: the Martin Parr show last year), I hope when it re-opens in 2004 after a long renovation that it will be just as good.

The Photographers’ Gallery continued to the show strong, quirky, interesting exhibits that it is known for. I visited several times to witness the strangely beautiful accident-chaser photographs of Enrique Metinides. Kyoichi Tsuzuki’s portraits of fashion addicts in Japan made us question the stereotype we have of the Japanese aethetic. Walker Evans’ Polaroids and Frank BreuerÔøΩs urban landscape photographs were also noteworthy. As was the case the year before, the Citibank Prize 2003 was forgettable. Simon Norfolk’s pictures of war-torn Afghanistan were beautiful, for better or worse. Stephen GillÔøΩs The Wick showed what London is like away from the tourists. Located near Leicester Square, with one of the best photography bookshops in London, a cafe, and a public sale gallery, the Photographers Gallery is the place to visit if you are in London for only a short time.