Over the past 6 months, Olafur Eliasson has had his exhibition ‘In Real Life’ at the Tate Modern in London, and it’s been an exhibition that I couldn’t stop visiting. I must’ve been through it over 150 times and on more than one occasion I spent the whole day in there. I know many photographers who went to this exhibition, but to my knowledge, nobody spent as much time there as I did!
It was a challenge to create photos that looked different from what I was seeing online and my hope is that I’ve done that. The exhibition had many parts to it and I was drawn to ‘The Fog’ more than any other part (it was called ‘Your blind passenger’). The room was 40 metres long and on most days you couldn’t see more than a metre in front of you; it was a lot of fun camping out in there for 30-40 minutes a time even if it was a little disorientating when I came out. Looking at my photos, I know it was worth it.
I shot the exhibition with 2 cameras - my Fujifilm X-T2 and the Ricoh GRII. I’ll say that the Fujifilm wasn’t great in ‘The Fog’, but the Ricoh GR was amazing in there, so all the photos were taken in there were shot with the GRII. I was surprised by how bright the room was: I didn’t need to push the ISO above 200, which helped to keep the photos clean.
The next room I spent time in was called ‘Beauty’ and it was composed of a waterfall in the centre of the room with different coloured lights shining through it that created rainbows. As this was a dark room, I shot in there with the X-T2 and 56mm which was perfect for isolating people against the water.
Like I said I was on the lookout for a different view to some of the exhibition and I found it in the ‘In Real Life’ part of the Exhibition, a wall that projected people’s shadows. I was able to sit on the ground with my back to the wall, shooting people’s legs walking past the coloured lights that were being used to create the shadows on the wall and, as far as I know, I was the only person to get photos from this perspective. The 56mm lens at F1.2 was perfect for this and I was also able to capture the light bursts.
Overall I will miss the Exhibition and I look forward to seeing what Eliasson creates next.
Thank you, Hannah, for the help with the blog
