The Urban Angel Gallery in London is delighted to be hosting an exhibition of erotic photography by the celebrated Alva Bernadine in collaboration with Tamara Seabrook at its Shoreditch gallery in August. This promises to be an exiting show that should keep this summer sizzling which Bernadine’s hyper-real highly coloured images contrasting Seabrook’s classic black and whites. The show aptly titled ‘The Sentiment of Love’ will open on August 13th until August 31st.
Alva Bernadine has an incomparable photographic signature. The worlds he creates are astounding, provocative and compelling but can also be filled with a twisted sense of humour. Their compositional strength and colour intensity always constitutes a visual happening, or as Alva Bernadine himself puts it: “I take the theatricality of surrealism, the elegance of classical haute couture photography, the narrative of reportage and the refinements of advertising photography and mix them all into a ‘Bernadinian cocktail’ — a radical photographic synthesis.” Bernadine’s photographs can be read on two levels: the surface is this feast for the eyes, but below that hover a wealth of sublime, ironic, and stimulating allusions. After the initial shock (accompanied by an uncontrollable chuckle) the spectator discovers the photographs’ narrative quality, unfolding between careful mise-en-scène and distorted alienation. Latex-clad women in their fitted-kitchens, manipulated female bodies with two lower or upper torsos — these are stories from the subculture of male fantasy, defused somewhat by self-mocking exaggeration and surreal form, but provocative and pugnacious.
While Bernadine’s work reminds of the excess, fun, and outrage of the fairground spiced up with Catholic kitsch icons, Seabrook’s photography is more in the tradition of early Surrealist photography of Andre Breton and his mad love for Jacqueline Lamba but these images are definitely 21st Century. Her black and white photography and highly staged poses are very aware of their audience. Seabrook is not just the photographer but also often the figure in the picture. Where Bernadine’s images are from a male dream world plunged into an orgy of colour, Seabrook twists this constellation. The figures in her photographs are submissive and objectified but it is really the woman who is in control. She is aware of the titillation and effect. She chooses how to stimulate. ‘I want to bring together the thought of the end of days with the beauty of sexual freedom,’ said Seabrook. ‘I am so happy to be showing together with Alva, I have always admired his photography.’
