Henry Bond is an English writer, photographer curator, and visual artist. In his Lacan at the Scene (
Slavoj ŽižekSlavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
, series ed., Short Circuits,
MIT PressThe MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
, 2009), Bond made a contribution to
theoretical psychoanalysisPsychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
.
In 1990, with
Sarah LucasSarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s...
, Bond organized the art exhibition
East Country Yard ShowEast Country Yard Show was an exhibition of contemporary art organized by Henry Bond and Sarah Lucas. It was on view between 31 May—22 June 1990...
, which was influential in the formation and development of the YBA art movement; together with
Damien HirstDamien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
,
Angela BullochAngela Bulloch , is an artist who often works with sound and installation; she is recognised as one of the Young British Artists.-Life and career:...
and
Liam GillickLiam Gillick is a British conceptual artist who lives in New York City. He is often associated with the artists included the 1996 exhibit Traffic, which first introduced the term Relational Art.-Life and career:...
, the two were "the earliest of the YBAs."
Bond's visual art tends to
appropriationAppropriation is a fundamental aspect in the history of the arts . Appropriation can be understood as "the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work."...
and
pasticheA pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
; he has exhibited work made collaboratively with YBA artists including a photograph made with
Sam Taylor-WoodSamantha "Sam" Taylor-Wood OBE , born Samantha Taylor, is an English filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist. Her directorial feature film debut came in 2009 with Nowhere Boy, a film based on the childhood experiences of The Beatles songwriter and singer John Lennon...
and the
Documents SeriesDocuments Series is the overall title of a series of eighty-three fine artworks made collaboratively by Henry Bond and Liam Gillick between 1990 and 1995...
, made with Liam Gillick.
In the 1990s, Bond was a photojournalist working for British fashion, music, and youth culture magazine
The FaceThe Face was a British music, fashion and culture monthly magazine started in May 1980 by Nick Logan.-1980s:Logan had previously created the teen pop magazine Smash Hits, and had been an editor at the New Musical Express in the 1970s before launching The Face in 1980.The magazine was influential in...
. In 1998, his
photobookA photo-book or photobook is a book in which photographs make a significant contribution to the overall content. The most critically acclaimed photo-books celebrate the creative work of an individual photographer, but can also result from the collaboration between a photographer and a writer, an...
of street fashions in London The Cult of the Street was published. His Point and Shoot (Cantz, 2000), explored the photo-genres of
surveillanceSurveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
,
voyeurismIn clinical psychology, voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other activity usually considered to be of a private nature....
and
paparazziPaparazzi is an Italian term used to refer to photojournalists who specialize in candid photography of celebrities, politicians, and other prominent people...
photojournalism.
Early life and education
Henry Bond was born in Upton Park, in
East LondonThe East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
in 1966. He attended Goldsmiths at the
University of London-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
, graduating in 1988, from the Department of Art, with fellow alumni
Angela BullochAngela Bulloch , is an artist who often works with sound and installation; she is recognised as one of the Young British Artists.-Life and career:...
,
Ian DavenportIan Davenport is an English painter, and former Turner Prize nominee.-Life and work:Ian Davenport was born in Sidcup in London, and studied art at the Northwich College of Art and Design in Cheshire before going to Goldsmiths College from where he graduated in 1988...
,
Anya GallaccioAnya Gallaccio is a Scottish artist, who often works with organic matter. She was a nominee in the 2003 Turner Prize.-Life and career:...
,
Gary HumeGary Stewart Hume is an English artist. His work is strongly identified with the YBA artists who came to prominence in the early-1990s. In 1996, Hume was nominated for the Turner Prize, but lost out to Douglas Gordon. Hume was elected a Royal Academician in 2001.-Life and work:Hume was born in...
and
Michael LandyMichael Landy RA is one of the Young British Artists . He is best known for the performance piece installation Break Down , in which he destroyed all his possessions, and for the Art Bin project at the South London Gallery. On 29 May 2008 Landy was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in...
—each of whom was to participate in the YBA art scene. Bond attended
Middlesex UniversityMiddlesex University is a university in north London, England. It is located in the historic county boundaries of Middlesex from which it takes its name. It is one of the post-1992 universities and is a member of Million+ working group...
in
HendonHendon is a London suburb situated northwest of Charing Cross.-History:Hendon was historically a civil parish in the county of Middlesex. The manor is described in Domesday , but the name, 'Hendun' meaning 'at the highest hill', is earlier...
studying for an
MAA Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in
PsychoanalysisPsychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, where he was taught by
LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
scholar Bernard Burgoyne. Bond was a research student at the
University of GloucestershireThe University of Gloucestershire is a university primarily based in Gloucestershire, England, spread over four campuses, three in Cheltenham and one in Gloucester...
in Cheltenham Spa,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
between 2004–07; he received a
doctorateDoctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in 2007. Bond teaches
postgraduatePostgraduate education involves learning and studying for degrees or other qualifications for which a first or Bachelor's degree generally is required, and is normally considered to be part of higher education...
photography, in the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, at
Kingston UniversityKingston University is a public research university located in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, United Kingdom. It was originally founded in 1899 as Kingston Technical Institute, a polytechnic, and became a university in 1992....
; he is a Senior Lecturer in Photography, in the School of Fine Art.
East Country Yard
In 1990, working together with
Sarah LucasSarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s...
, Henry Bond organized the "seminal" Docklands warehouse exhibition of contemporary art
East Country Yard ShowEast Country Yard Show was an exhibition of contemporary art organized by Henry Bond and Sarah Lucas. It was on view between 31 May—22 June 1990...
which was influential in the formation and development of the YBA art movement. In July 1990, reflecting on the East Country Yard Show and Gambler—a concurrent Goldsmiths-oriented warehouse show—in
The IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, art critic
Andrew Graham-DixonAndrew Michael Graham-Dixon is a British art historian and broadcaster.-Education:Graham-Dixon was educated at the independent Westminster School and at Christ Church at the University of Oxford, where he read English...
said, "over the past few months ... in terms of ambition, attention to display and sheer bravado there has been little to match such shows in the country's established contemporary art institutions."
Exhibit A
In 1991, Bond was invited by Julia Peyton-Jones to select an exhibition for the
Serpentine GalleryThe Serpentine Gallery is an art gallery in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, central London. It focuses on modern and contemporary art. The exhibitions, architecture, education and public programmes attract approximately 750,000 visitors a year...
; a curatorial project that became the May 7—June 7, 1992, exhibition Exhibit A—a show on the theme of evidence and the scene-of-the-crime. One of the works on view was a slide-installation, shown in a darkened room, by artist
Mat CollishawMatthew "Mat" Collishaw is an artist based in London, and one of the Young British Artists.-Career:Collishaw attended Goldsmiths, University of London , alongside Damien Hirst and other YBA artists....
, which presented the viewer with a rapid-fire sequence of stills of Jodie Foster dancing as she appeared in the "rape scene", in
Jonathan Kaplan'sJonathan Kaplan is an American film producer and director.Kaplan was born in Paris, France. He is the son of film composer Sol Kaplan and actress Frances Heflin; the nephew of actor Van Heflin. He is the brother of actresses Nora Heflin and Mady Kaplan...
1988 movie The Accused. Writing in Volume II of the exhibition catalogue, art historian
Ian JeffreyIan Jeffrey is an English writer and art historian. He is the author of a series of illustrated books on the history of photography. In 1988, he authored the supporting essay in the exhibition catalogue of the contemporary art exhibition Freeze...
said, "Exhibit A crystallises a turning in the art world away from the egotistical celebrity mode towards impersonality ... its premises are anonymous, fluent, vertiginous, wary of values."
Selector and screenings
In 1990, Henry Bond and fashion photographer Richard Burbridge guest edited a double issue of
Creative CameraCreative Camera was a monthly magazine on fine art photography and documentary photography. The successor to the very different magazine Camera Owner , Creative Camera was published in England between 1968 and 2001.-Editorship:The first editor was Bill Jay...
showcasing emerging British photographers—"The New New" issue, October–November 1990; the selection they made included the first published examples of photo-based artworks by
Sarah LucasSarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s...
,
Damien HirstDamien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
and
Angus FairhurstAngus Fairhurst was an English artist working in installation, photography and video. He was one of the Young British Artists .-Life and work:Angus Fairhurst was born in Pembury, Kent...
. Bond's collaboration with the magazine continued as an ongoing series of artists' pages that ran as "openers"—appearing on the inside front cover and contents page. One spread, created by
HirstDamien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
, depicted the mutilated corpse of a young man with wounds to the eyes, and was captioned 'Damien Hirst: Fig. 60 Self-inflicted injuries...'; another introduced
Fairhurst'sAngus Fairhurst was an English artist working in installation, photography and video. He was one of the Young British Artists .-Life and work:Angus Fairhurst was born in Pembury, Kent...
self-portraitA self-portrait is a representation of an artist, drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by the artist. Although self-portraits have been made by artists since the earliest times, it is not until the Early Renaissance in the mid 15th century that artists can be frequently identified depicting...
'Man Abandoned by Colour.'
In 1993 through 1995, Bond organized a series of screenings of experimental film and video, Omron TV. The screenings were presented in bookable-by-the-hour
SohoSoho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
film preview theatres—including De Lane Lea (Dean Street) and The Soho Screening Rooms (D'Arblay Street); the project included presentations of works by
Merlin CarpenterMerlin Carpenter is an English visual artist. Writing in Frieze art critic Katie Sonnenborn stated that a recent exhibition "continued his nuanced critique of the condition of contemporary art-making," and that, "working within the framework of the gallery, he presented a suite of canvases that...
, the German artist
Lothar HempelLothar Hempel is a German artist based in Berlin. He attended Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1987 to 1992.-Artistic practice:...
, and the Slovenians Aina Smid and Marina Grzinic.
Visual art practice
During the 1990s, Bond made numerous artworks which used
appropriatedAppropriation is a fundamental aspect in the history of the arts . Appropriation can be understood as "the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work."...
visual material; in particular a series titled One Hour Photo which presented typical
snapshotsA snapshot is popularly defined as a photograph that is "shot" spontaneously and quickly, most often without artistic or journalistic intent. Snapshots are commonly considered to be technically "imperfect" or amateurish—out of focus or poorly framed or composed...
collected from wastebins of
High StreetHigh Street, or the High Street, is a metonym for the generic name of the primary business street of towns or cities, especially in the United Kingdom. It is usually a focal point for shops and retailers in city centres, and is most often used in reference to retailing...
photo-processing labs, across London. Bond also exhibited a collaboration with artist
Sam Taylor-WoodSamantha "Sam" Taylor-Wood OBE , born Samantha Taylor, is an English filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist. Her directorial feature film debut came in 2009 with Nowhere Boy, a film based on the childhood experiences of The Beatles songwriter and singer John Lennon...
, titled 26 October 1993, in which he pastiched the role of John Lennon as he had appeared naked, in a photo-portrait with Yoko Ono—shot by photographer
Annie LeibovitzAnna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer.-Early life and education:Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Leibovitz is the third of six children. She is a third-generation American whose great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants, from Central and Eastern Europe. Her father's...
—a few hours before he was assassinated.
Writing on Bond's art practice, artist and critic
Liam GillickLiam Gillick is a British conceptual artist who lives in New York City. He is often associated with the artists included the 1996 exhibit Traffic, which first introduced the term Relational Art.-Life and career:...
said: "Bond's art is fundamentally negotiated. No apparently given element of his subject at hand is allowed to proceed while maintaining any sense of an essentialist value. While on the surface his production may appear to re-present lucidly some chosen images of the world around us, it does so with a sceptical relationship to the way meaning is encoded and interpreted by us every day."
In 1995, Bond was included in a group exhibition at the
ICAThe Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
, in London, titled Institute of Cultural Anxiety, in which he presented all the
archival materialAn archive is a collection of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of an organization...
from the vaults concerning the events at an experimental
gigGig is slang for a musical engagement in which musicians are hired. Originally coined in the 1920s by jazz musicians, the term, short for the word "engagement", now refers to any aspect of performing such as assisting with performance and attending musical performance...
by Einstürzende Neubauten which took place at the
ICAThe Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
in January 1984, and during which the group used
jackhammerA jackhammer is a pneumatic tool that combines a hammer directly with a chisel that was invented by Charles Brady King. Hand-held jackhammers are typically powered by compressed air, but some use electric motors. Larger jackhammers, such as rig mounted hammers used on construction machinery, are...
s to drill into the stage. Examples of Bond's work were included in several museum exhibitions, such as
Brilliant!Brilliant! was a group exhibition of contemporary art held at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA between 22 October, 1995 and 7 January, 1996...
a survey of YBA art held at the
Walker Art CenterThe Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
, Minneapolis, in 1995, and
TrafficTraffic is the title of a group exhibition of contemporary art that took place at CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, France, through February and March, 1996...
, an exhibition introducing the Relational Aesthetics tendency, which took place at musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, France, through February and March, 1996.
Other Men's Flowers
In 1994, Bond made a work using a letterpress printing press for a portfolio commissioned by
Joshua CompstonJoshua Richard Compston was a London gallerist whose space, Factual Nonsense, was closely associated with the emergence of the Young British Artists . Compston graduated from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1992...
. The portfolio also included works by
Gary HumeGary Stewart Hume is an English artist. His work is strongly identified with the YBA artists who came to prominence in the early-1990s. In 1996, Hume was nominated for the Turner Prize, but lost out to Douglas Gordon. Hume was elected a Royal Academician in 2001.-Life and work:Hume was born in...
,
Sam Taylor-WoodSamantha "Sam" Taylor-Wood OBE , born Samantha Taylor, is an English filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist. Her directorial feature film debut came in 2009 with Nowhere Boy, a film based on the childhood experiences of The Beatles songwriter and singer John Lennon...
, and
Gavin TurkGavin Turk is a British artist and one of the Young British Artists . He often uses his own image in life-size sculptures of famous people.-Life and work:...
. The title of the portfolio drew on a quote by the philosopher Montaigne ("I have gathered a garland of other men's flowers and nothing is mine but the cord that binds them."). For his part, Bond supplied a text which describes a series of views in
MonacoMonaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...
, written in the style of a tourist guidebook. The portfolio was later acquired by
Tate-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
. In 2010, the portfolio was exhibited at the Courtauld Institute. Historian Elizabeth Manchester describes Bond's text as, "a page entirely filled with text apparently taken from a travel brochure or guide. It describes a fashionable and star-encrusted area in the south of France starting from the peninsula Cap Martin and including the Monte Carlo beach and the Riviera. Names of famous people, places and events, as well as geographical features, are capitalised for emphasis. The amenities provided by hotels, night clubs, casinos, museums and beaches, as well as a fish farm out at sea (producing the luxury fish, sea bass), are all named and occasionally described for the wealthy visitor."
Documents Series with Liam Gillick
Between 1990 and 1994, Bond collaborated with artist Liam Gillick on their
Documents SeriesDocuments Series is the overall title of a series of eighty-three fine artworks made collaboratively by Henry Bond and Liam Gillick between 1990 and 1995...
a group of eighty-three fine art works which appropriated the modus operandi of a news gathering team, in order to produce
relational artRelational art or relational aesthetics is a mode or tendency in fine art practice originally observed and highlighted by French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud...
. In order to make the work the duo posed as a news reporting team—i.e., a photographer and a journalist—often attending events scheduled in the
Press Association's The Press Association is the national news agency of the United Kingdom and Ireland, supplying multimedia news content to almost all national and regional newspapers, television and radio news, as well as many websites with text, pictures, video and data content globally...
GazetteA gazette is a public journal, a newspaper of record, or simply a newspaper.In English- and French-speaking countries, newspaper publishers have applied the name Gazette since the 17th century; today, numerous weekly and daily newspapers bear the name The Gazette.Gazette is a loanword from the...
—a list of potentially newsworthy events in London. Bond worked as if a typical photojournalist, joining the other press photographers present; whilst Gillick operated as the journalist, first collecting the ubiquitous
Press kitA press kit, often referred to as a media kit in business environments, is a pre-packaged set of promotional materials of a person, company, or organization distributed to members of the media for promotional use...
before preparing his audio recording device. The series was first shown commercially in 1991, at Karsten Schubert Limited and then, in 1992, at
Maureen Paley'sMaureen Paley is the American owner of a contemporary art gallery in Bethnal Green, London, where she lives. It was founded in 1984, called Interim Art during the 1990s, and renamed Maureen Paley in 2004. She exhibited Young British Artists at an early stage...
Interim Art —two of the galleries that were pioneers in the development of the YBA art movement. The series was subsequently exhibited at
Tate ModernTate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
, in the show Century City held in 2001, and at the
Hayward GalleryThe Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre, part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames, in central London, England. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings and also the Royal National Theatre and British Film Institute...
, in the exhibition How to Improve the World, in 2006. One example from the series, held in the
Arts Council CollectionThe Arts Council Collection is the largest loan collection of modern and contemporary British art in the world. With presently over 7500 works of art spanning more than sixty years, the Collection can be seen in exhibitions and displays at home and abroad, as well as through long-term loans to...
, titled 14 February, 1992, documents an auction of the contents of Robert Maxwell’s London home at Sotheby’s. A further example records the former
Governor of Hong KongThe Governor of Hong Kong was the head of the government of Hong Kong during British rule from 1843 to 1997. The governor's roles were defined in the Hong Kong Letters Patent and Royal Instructions...
,
Chris PattenChristopher Francis Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes, CH, PC , is the last Governor of British Hong Kong, a former British Conservative politician, and the current chairman of the BBC Trust....
, adressing the
Tory Reform GroupThe Tory Reform Group is a group aligned to, but independent of, the British Conservative Party, that works to promote the values of the One Nation Tory vision...
.
Video works
In 1993, Bond's short video work OTB was included in
Aperto '93Aperto ’93 is the title of an exhibition of contemporary art conceived by Helena Kontova and Giancarlo Politi, and organized by Helena Kontova for the XVL edition of the Venice Biennale, directed by Achille Bonito Oliva in 1993.-Concept and realisation:...
at the
Venice BiennaleThe Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
—a survey of international contemporary art. The short—which was looped and shown on a multi-screen system—showed grainy black-and-white footage documenting a flâneur's-eye-view of the day-to-day coming and going aboard the plethora of crowded "Vaporetti" or water buses, in Venice; Bond's deliberately down-to-earth perspective depicting humdrum daily life in the city was intended to oppose the iconic glamorized images of gondolas, etc. Bond's video works were included in the 1995 Biennale de Lyon survey exhibition. Between 1993 and 1994, "Bond made eight hours of video footage documenting his walks along the river Thames, resulting in a 26-minute film shown at the Design Museum, reformatted as inserts on Channel One, and finally as a book of stills, Deep, Dark Water."
From July through September 1994, Bond's video works were showcased in an eponymous four-person exhibition at De Appel an art centre in Amsterdam—i.e., Deep, Dark Water (1994), Torch (1993), On the Buses (1993), Hôtel Occidental (1993), Big Shout (1993), The Burglars (1992/4), The Softly Softly (1994), Walked (1994)—which was selected and organised by curator and theorist Saskia Bos (Dean of The School of Art at
The Cooper UnionThe Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...
, in New York). However, writing in his 1998 book Relational Aesthetics, Nicolas Bourriaud said, "video, for example, is nowadays becoming a predominant medium. But if Peter Land, Gillian Wearing and Henry Bond, to name just three artists, have a preference for video recording, they are still not 'video artists'. This medium merely turns out to be the one best suited to the formalisation of certain activities and projects."
Street photography
Beginning in the late-1990s, and continuing for approximately ten years, Bond's chief activity was street photography—which has been discussed in relation to the
dériveIn psychogeography, a dérive is an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, where an individual travels where the subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct them with the ultimate goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic...
(literally: "drifting"), as theorized by
Guy DebordGuy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
and the city walks of the
flâneurThe term flâneur comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks...
or psychogeographer. Monograph books of Bond's street photography include Point and Shoot (Ostfildern: Cantz, 2000), La vie quotidienne (Essen, Germany: 20/21, 1999) and Interiors Series (Antwerp: Fotomuseum, 2005). Characterizing his conception of street photography, in a 1998 interview, Bond said: "it is parallel to the psychoanalytic session, in that anything can be mentioned, anything can come up and indeed what seems too minor or too stupid is precisely the key to something significant. Like the urban flow of pedestrians and traffic, it really doesn't matter what passes through, because what is important is how you are perceiving the events. And that is often divergent from any initial aim or strategy."
Point and Shoot
Bond's book of street photography Point and Shoot, was published by Hatje Cantz, a German publisher, in 2000. It won Bond a Kodak Deutscher Fotobuchpreis in the same year. The many images reproduced in the book rely on photo-techniques associated with genres of photography that are often derided or taboo, such as
voyeurismIn clinical psychology, voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other activity usually considered to be of a private nature....
,
surveillanceSurveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
, and
paparazziPaparazzi is an Italian term used to refer to photojournalists who specialize in candid photography of celebrities, politicians, and other prominent people...
photojournalism—hence the book emphasizes the photographer as intrusive, vulgar, prying, a nuisance.
Writing in The Japan Times, in 2000, journalist Jennifer Purvis said, "Bond elicits a film noir quality from a city that prides itself on the worst side of its nature. It is contemporary London in all its banality and beauty, portrayed in heavy, highly contrasted black-and-white photographs that evoke nostalgia more keenly than an old movie ... the images all speak of the life, London life, captured by a peering, voyeuristic Londoner." Reviewing the book in
Frieze-Publication:frieze is published eight times a year and is based in London. As well as essays, exhibition reviews and columns by forward-thinking writers, artists, critics and curators, the magazine includes music reviews, artist projects, interviews and sections on design and...
, the critic Benedict Seymour said, "Bond jumbles up his subjects—street scenes, shop windows, night-clubs, posh parties, backstage fashion shows, intimate portraits and sex club sybaritics—as well as the composition, with the apparent intention of throwing our will to categorise, and so comprehend the image, into disarray." Printed examples from the book were exhibited in both commercial and museum gallery exhibitions, including a survey—selected and organized by curator Eric Troncy—which was on display at the contemporary arts centre Le Consortium in Dijon, France, March through May, 1999.
Interiors Series
Bond's follow up to Point and Shoot, Interiors Series was published in Belgium, in 2005, by Fotomuseum Antwerp. The photographs included in the book appear to explicitly and deliberately invade the privacy of the subjects, who are captured—unaware of the presence of a photographer—at leisure, in their private dwellings. Writing in an essay accompanying the photographs, Bond said, "for me voyeuristic 'fixation' and the 'photographic act' have become inseparable. It is the sense of 'the illicit' that these photographs are leveraging. I must not be caught taking them, and in a way, the viewer of the photograph is included in my anti-social activity, they too are looking when they should not be."
Fashion photography
In the late-1990s and early-2000s, Bond contributed fashion editorial stories to
The FaceThe Face was a British music, fashion and culture monthly magazine started in May 1980 by Nick Logan.-1980s:Logan had previously created the teen pop magazine Smash Hits, and had been an editor at the New Musical Express in the 1970s before launching The Face in 1980.The magazine was influential in...
,
i-Di-D is a British magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art and youth culture. i-D was founded by designer and former Vogue art director Terry Jones in 1980. The first issue was published in the form of a hand-stapled fanzine with text produced on a typewriter...
, Self Service,
Purple-History:In 1992, Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm started the magazine Purple Prose as a reaction against the superficial glamour of the 1980’s; much as a part of the global counterculture at the time, inspired by magazines like Interview, Ray Gun, Nova, and Helmut Newton’s Illustrated, but with the...
and the now defunct Nova. One fashion photograph made by Bond, originally published in the March 2000 issue of
The FaceThe Face was a British music, fashion and culture monthly magazine started in May 1980 by Nick Logan.-1980s:Logan had previously created the teen pop magazine Smash Hits, and had been an editor at the New Musical Express in the 1970s before launching The Face in 1980.The magazine was influential in...
, depicted the model Kirsten Owen revealing her
pantiesPanties are a form of underwear, usually light and snug-fitting, designed to be worn by women or girls in the area directly below the waist. Typical components include an elastic waistband, a crotch panel to cover the genital area , and a pair of leg openings which, like the waistband, are often...
in a manner typical of the derided and recently criminalized (e.g., in USA and Australia) voyeuristic
UppieUppie is a longest CGI web game site in South Korea, based in United States.Uppie Offered many web games past years and offers unique life game called People Game. Also Uppie offers search engine that searches Korean celebrities' Cyworld Minihompy . They offer forum based community for their users...
or
UpskirtUpskirt refers to the practice of making unauthorized photographs under a female's skirt, capturing an image of her crotch area and underwear. The term "upskirt" can also refer to a video, illustration or photograph which incorporates the upskirt image. The term is also sometimes used to refer...
er. In 2001, Bond was chosen by company director Roger Saul to photograph the commercial advertising campaign for a brand relaunch of
MulberryMulberry is a British fashion company known for its luxury leather goods.-Background:The company was founded in 1971 by Roger Saul and his mother Joan—in 1973 they opened a factory in Chilcompton, Somerset, England. Mulberry established itself as a British lifestyle brand, noted for its leather...
, a leather goods company—for which he used actors and celebrity couple
David ThewlisDavid Thewlis is an English actor of stage and screen. His most commercially successful role to date has been that of Remus Lupin, in the Harry Potter film series...
and
Anna FrielAnna Louise Friel is an English actress. She rose to fame in the UK as Beth Jordache on the Channel 4 soap Brookside.-Early life:...
, as models. In 2008, examples of Bond's fashion photographs from this period were included in an international survey exhibition of contemporary photography selected by Urs Stahel, Darkside: Photographic Desire and Sexuality Photographed, held at Fotomuseum Winterthur—the Swiss national museum and collection of photography.
The Cult of the Street
Bond's large book, The Cult of the Street, was published in 1998 by "posh West End gallery," Emily Tsingou Gallery, London. The 274 photographs included in the book depict daily life in London, the British capital, in the mid-1990s. The fashion writer and commentator, Tamsin Blanchard, described the book as, "a rich social document of the way we dress—rather than the way fashion designers like to imagine we dress". Many of the photographs included in the book were originally taken by Bond whilst shooting commissioned features for the now defunct fashion, style and culture monthly
The FaceThe Face was a British music, fashion and culture monthly magazine started in May 1980 by Nick Logan.-1980s:Logan had previously created the teen pop magazine Smash Hits, and had been an editor at the New Musical Express in the 1970s before launching The Face in 1980.The magazine was influential in...
—during the period it was under the creative direction of Lee Swillingham and Stuart Spalding, 1995—1999. The book includes a foreword essay, "A Response to the Photographs," by psychoanalyst and author
Darian LeaderDarian Leader is a British psychoanalyst and author. He is a founding member of CFAR, the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research.-Books:* Lacan for Beginners, 1995, later editions with a changed title: Introducing Lacan...
. It has been suggested that the title of the book is a reference to the 1926
Siegfried KracauerSiegfried Kracauer was a German-Jewish writer, journalist, sociologist, cultural critic, and film theorist...
essay The Cult of Distraction.
Writing in his commentary on the influence of the YBAs or Britart artists, High Art Lite, the art historian
Julian StallabrassJulian Stallabrass is a British art historian, photographer and curator. A Marxist, he has written extensively on contemporary art , photography and the history of twentieth century British art.-High Art Lite:...
said, "The Cult of the Street is telling of many characteristics of High Art Lite and its engagement with mass culture and the media. It takes as its subject not just the conventions of the street but youth and their modes of display in shops, clubs, parties, restaurants and even private homes ... they don't do much, Bond's people; they shop, of course, persistently, and present themselves to each other and the camera, dance sometimes, but the book is composed above all of an intricate fabric of exchanged glances and gazes." Writing in Art Monthly, critic David Barrett said, "values and meanings are constantly on the slide, be they the meaning of wearing brown instead of black, Airwalk instead of Airmax or including the subject's shoes in full-length photographs instead of cropping them. Bond sets out to document these fleeting social codes while also attempting to ride roughshod over the accepted conventions of photography." Several years later, in 2002, a group of large-scale printed examples from The Cult of the Street were included in the
Barbican CentreThe Barbican Centre is the largest performing arts centre in Europe. Located in the City of London, England, the Centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhibitions. It also houses a library, three restaurants, and a conservatory...
survey Rapture: Art's Seduction by Fashion Since 1970 and these were shown again, in 2004, at the
Museum of LondonThe Museum of London documents the history of London from the Prehistoric to the present day. The museum is located close to the Barbican Centre, as part of the striking Barbican complex of buildings created in the 1960s and 70s as an innovative approach to re-development within a bomb damaged...
, in an exhibition titled, The London Look: Fashion from Street to Catwalk.
Lacan at the Scene
Lacan at the Scene is a work of non-fiction by Henry Bond, published in 2009 by The MIT Press. The book consists of annotations of police photographs from twenty-one murder scenes from the nineteen fifties, in England. It is simultaneously an application of the theories of
Jacques LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
in relation to forensic investigation and an inquiry into the nature and essence of photography. The book considers the effects of photography on the spectator, the photographer and the photographic "subject". The book contains a foreword essay The Camera's Posthuman Eye by the Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist
Slavoj ŽižekSlavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
. Bond refers to a wide range of contextual material in his "investigatory process," including: "J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre and Slavoj Žižek ... and the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, Michelangelo Antonioni, David Lynch and Christopher Nolan, among many others." Many of the photographs reproduced in the book are sexually explicit—they depict murder victims who were raped or tortured before the killing. Describing his research, in a 2007 interview, Bond said, "the press reporter's access to a crime scene is restricted, it is literally blocked by the ubiquitous black and yellow tape emblazoned with the exhortation: CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. The photographs that I have worked with are documents made in a place that the press photographer or reporter cannot go."
The critical reception of the book includes Emily Nonko's observation that, "Lacan at the Scene ultimately presents a complex dynamic between both psychoanalysis and medium of the camera, the way that photography permits the viewer to delve into both the murder’s mind and the victim’s corpse, the psychological as well as the corporeal." Daniel Hourigan, writing for Metapsychology Online Reviews said, "for the vast majority of the discussions in the more applied third, fourth, and fifth chapters, Lacan at the Scene enjoys a lucid and precise execution. The early chapters help to bring together the theoretical, discursive, and political elements that make these later chapters capable of pursuing such a rigorous and insightful project." Writing in Time Out New York, Parul Sehgal said: "While Bond’s interpretations occasionally strain credulity, his sensibility enthralls. His goal isn’t police work per se, but to reveal how humble objects at the margins of crime scenes become powerfully allusive and lend themselves to a narrative." Writing in the peer-reviewed academic journal Philosophy of Photography, Margaret Kinsman said "Bond’s exploration ... reminds us of just how used to order we are and how shocking and easy its dissolution is ... his approach evokes a kind of aesthetic pleasure, which unsettles even as it satisfies."
The Gaze of the Lens
In July 2011, Bond's second book on the theory and philosophy of photography, The Gaze of the Lens, was self-published using the
KindleThe Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 which uses wireless connectivity to enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media...
direct publishing format; the book consists of one hundred "concise observations and statements on photography." In the book, Bond "activates, reconfigures, qualifies, and occasionally contradicts assertions made a diverse range of thinkers and practitioners including Rankin, Stieg Larsson, Antonioni, Charles Baudelaire, J.G. Ballard, Raymond Chandler, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan, Georg Hegel and Slavoj Žižek."
Personal life
In the early '90s Bond was in a relationship with artist
Sam Taylor-WoodSamantha "Sam" Taylor-Wood OBE , born Samantha Taylor, is an English filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist. Her directorial feature film debut came in 2009 with Nowhere Boy, a film based on the childhood experiences of The Beatles songwriter and singer John Lennon...
.
Together with his wife, private art dealer and former art gallery proprietor
Emily TsingouEmily Tsingou is a private art dealer who lives in London, England. She is the former proprietor of Emily Tsingou Gallery which was open 1998 through 2007...
, Bond is a patron of contemporary art, including supporting Whitechapel Art Gallery,
South London GallerySouth London Gallery, founded 1891, often known by the acronym SLG, is a public-funded gallery of contemporary art in Camberwell, London - exhibiting artists included Alfredo Jaar, Ryan Gander and Chris Burden...
and
Tate-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
. Together with others including Bina von Stauffenberg and Alexa de Ferranti, he is also a Patron of
The ShowroomThe Showroom is a not-for-profit art gallery at 63 Penfold Street, London NW8. The gallery puts on exhibitions by emerging artists. The current Director is Emily Pethick, who has worked at the gallery since May 2008. She was preceded by Kirsty Ogg, Kim Sweet and David Thorp.The gallery programme...
in
Lisson GroveLisson Grove is a district and also a street of the City of Westminster, London, England located just to the north of the city ring road. There are many landmarks surrounding the area. To the north is Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood. To the west are Paddington and Watling Street...
.
Published works
Non-fiction
- The Gaze of the Lens (Seattle: Amazon KDP, 2011)
- Lacan at the Scene (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2009)
Photography monographs
- Interiors Series (Antwerp: Fotomuseum, 2005)
- What gets you through the day (London: Art Data/Lavie, 2002)
- Point and Shoot (Ostfildern: Cantz, 2000)
- La vie quotidienne (Essen: 20/21, 1999)
- The Cult of the Street (London: Emily Tsingou Gallery, 1998)
- Documents (London: APAC/Karsten Schubert Limited, 1991)
- 100 Photographs (Farnham, Surrey: James Hockey Gallery, 1990)
Documentation of video works
- Safe Surfer (Lyon, France: Biennale de Lyon, 1995)
- Deep, Dark Water (London: Public Art Development Trust, 1994)
- Hôtel Occidental (Nice, France: Villa Arson, 1993)
Edited books
- Henry Bond and Sarah Lucas, East Country Yard Show (London: East Country Yard, 1990)
- Henry Bond and Andrea Schlieker, Exhibit A (London: Serpentine Gallery, 1992)
Essays in edited books
- "The Hysterical Hystery of Photography." In Urs Stahel (ed.), Darkside I: Photographic Desire and Sexuality Photographed, (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2008)
- "Comments on this Series." In Christoph Ruys (ed.), Henry Bond: Interiors Series (Antwerp, Belgium: Fotomuseum, 2005)
- "Montage My Fine Care: Five Themes with Examples." In Henry Bond & Andrea Schlieker (ed.), Exhibit A (London: Serpentine Gallery, 1992)
Journal articles
- "Things Happen Fast," Creative Camera, Issue 306, October–November 1990, pp. 4–5.
- "Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s Virtual Reality," Creative Camera, Issue 309, April–May 1991, p. 24-25.
- "Wegman's Ritual: William Wegman in London," Creative Camera, Issue 307, December–January 1991, p. 44.
- "Bradley, Collishaw, Stezaker: Haunting with Second-Hand Images," Creative Camera, Issue 309, April–May 1991, p. 48.
- "Henry Bond & Liam Gillick: Press Kitsch," Flash Art International, Vol. XXV, Issue 165, July/August 1992, pp. 65–66.
- "Andrea Fisher," Flash Art International, Vol. XXV, Issue 166, September, 1992, p. 133.
- "Alfredo Jaar," Flash Art International, Vol. XXV, Issue 165, July/August 1992, pp. 118–9.
See also
- Legality of recording by civilians
The laws regarding the recording of other persons and property by means of still photography, videography, and audio recording vary by location. In many places, it is common for the recording of public property, persons within the public domain, and of private property visible or audible from the...
- Model release
A model release, known in similar contexts as a liability waiver, is a legal release typically signed by the subject of a photograph granting permission to publish the photograph in one form or another...
- Photography and the law
Photography tends to be protected by the law through copyright and moral rights. Photography tends to be restricted by the law through miscellaneous criminal offences. Publishing certain photographs can be restricted by privacy law...
- Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
External links
Lacan at the Scene