Redshift
Millennium Images is proud to introduce Heather McDonough’s work "Redshift", part of "Inventory: An Exhibition of Photographs exploring Childhood", presented at the Spitz Gallery, 109 Commercial Street, London E1.

"Find me an uncomplicated child… When we are young we are a jungle of complications. We simplify as we get older" Graham Greene: The Quiet American.

In the early 20th Century astronomers noticed that certain galaxies had a reddish appearance, and in 1929 Edwin Hubble calculated that the amount of redness related to their distance from the earth and the speed with which they are moving away: the light of receding galaxies is pushed to the red end of the spectrum. In the late 20th Century Heather McDonough began to notice that small heavenly bodies close at hand also tend to take on a reddish hue. She documented this phenomenon as a book over a period of five years, 1998 to 2003.

In 2001, The Saatchi Gallery staged the ‘I Am a Camera’ exhibition that included fifteen images by photographer Tierney Gearon. The images of her family and friends elicited a strong public reaction that resulted in a police investigation. The News of the World branded the pictures as ‘grotesque’ and ‘child porn’ masquerading as art. Understandably the artist was deeply upset by such interpretations and the way in which her accusers had ‘polluted’ her images.

Such controversy, however, raises the problematic nature of photographing children and childhood. How should photographers represent these experiences? Tierney Gearon’s photographs were in fact shots taken at home, on trips and holidays, and are very similar in nature to those in millions of family albums everywhere. It was the making of the photographs as public art that seems to have ignited the furore.

The Photographers in the exhibition Inventory all use photography to explore the experience of childhood. Their approaches and intentions are as varied as is childhood itself, a vast repository of memories and fantasies. It is all-encompassing because nothing has come before it. As such, children live in the moment. As adults, we have learned that time passes for everyone: this is the knowledge that separates us from childhood. As photographers we collect, we document, we photograph, and we try to defy time, to reclaim what we have lost.

Heather McDonough studied at Sir John Cass School of Art before completing an MA in drawing at Wimbledon School of Art. She has exhibited at many major venues including the National Portrait Gallery, The Whitechapel Art Gallery and The Photographers Gallery in London, and has a permanent photo-light installation at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. Heather has curated shows at the Spitz Gallery and for Alternative Arts Photomonth in London. She is course leader for the Photographic and Digital Media BA degree course at Cambridge School of Art, and has been funded by the AHRB for current portraiture projects using a 100-year old Watson 10 x 82 plate camera.

For further Information about the exhibition, please contact Alternative Arts at info@alternativearts.co.uk
Tel: 020 7375 0441
Inventory: An Exhibition of Photographs exploring Childhood.
Presented as part of the Alternative Arts Women’s Literary Festival.
Spitz Gallery 109 Commercial St. London E1.
Sunday 7th March - Sunday 21st March 2004.
12.00 - 5.00 daily.