Review: RHS London Portfolio Photography Show

The Royal Horticultural Society used to have a Botanical Photography Show. What they now have is called a Portfolio Photography Show - and I'll comment more on what this means below.

This year the Show includes 19 exhibits - from submissions in 2020 and 2021 - in Gallery 3 - which is the smallest gallery at what's this year being called the RHS London Botanical Art and Photography Show 2021 at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea.

​Exhibits have been awarded medals and you can read who got what in the Portfolio Photography Awards list (155kb pdf)

Those winning Gold Medals and the Best Exhibit in summary are:

• Shelley Lawrence Kirkwood - ‘I’ll Follow The Sun’ - who also won Best Exhibit
• Jo de Banzie - TENDER. Love letters from the Garden
• Francesca Wilkinson - ‘Full Circle – Studies of Cyclamen coum and Cyclamen hederifolium’.

and you can see these three exhibits and some accompanying commentary below.

BEST EXHIBIT AND GOLD MEDAL: ‘I’ll Follow The Sun’ by Shelley Lawrence Kirkwood -

This collection of work looks closely at bits of debris and foraged plants from the Sonoran Desert and the forests and meadows of western Massachusetts — two distinct landscapes I have inhabited for most of my life. ....the objects photographed here are diminutive, their scale has been dramatically enhanced to suggest their echos within a larger system, as well as their monumental significance in my own history.

Shelley Lawrence Kirkwood work and life is divided between Arizona and New England and always been oriented around nature. Foraging has for many years, been central to her art practice. She has a Master of Fine Arts, Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ and a Bachelor of Arts, Photography, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA. It shows.  

​I liked this exhibit and thought it both very worthy of a Gold Medal but also the Best in Show.

GOLD MEDAL: 'TENDER. Love letters from the Garden' by Jo de Banzie

Jo de Banzie has a MA Photojournalism & Documentary Photography (Distinction) from the London College of Communication (UAL) and she has a Fellowship British Institute of Professional Photographers (BIPP) and a Fellowship The Master Photographers Association (MPA). She seems to have become interested in photographing gardens.

​The photographs were shot using a large format camera and the wet colloidal process.

Verges on the too much aesthetic / fine art and too little horticulture for me.

GOLD MEDAL: ‘Full Circle – Studies of Cyclamen coum and Cyclamen hederifolium’ by Francesca Wilkinson

To create her photographs, Francesca uses an improvised technique of camera-less photography using the flatbed scanner attached to her computer as a lens.

Francesca Wilkinson - ‘Full Circle – Studies of Cyclamen coum and Cyclamen hederifolium’.

Francesca graduated from the MA Photography course at the University for the Creative Arts with Distinction in 2013 as describers herself as a botanical photo artist. She's currently studying towards a BA(Hons) in Environmental Studies.

I just found it very difficult to see these plants. They look much better - and much clearer - on her website viewed using a high quality screen than they did in the Gallery the printed out. Mind you the light in the gallery is not great!

I really don't see what is improvised about her technique - it's been much used by others wanting to create images of plants and even I've used the black velvet scanning technique! Others have used a scanner for plants to much better effect.

I simply couldn't understand how you can be awarded a Gold Medal when your labels don't indicate which plant is which. She at least identified the plants in her main text - but not on the labels. However I'm suspicious that she actually doesn't know which is which - since it's not an editing issue as the website does not say either!
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RHS Portfolio Photography
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You'd think from the title  RHS London Botanical Art and Photography Show 2021 that this was a Botanical Photography Show. 

But it's NOT.  

​Neither is it intended to be a fine art exhibition.....

Here's my critique of the concept behind this exhibition followed by a commentary on this year's exhibition.

One wall in the exhibition which includes a bronze medal exhibit by one of last year's Gold Medal Winners - plus an exhibit which I'm not sure should have been selected for show.

Photography has always been exhibited at the RHS London Shows in the Autumn.
I've been viewing RHS Photography exhibits - alongside Botanical Illustration either literally or metaphorically - at RHS Shows for a number of years:

• starting with exhibits by the likes of Clay Perry (GM 2012) in the Laurence Horticultural Hall where he won a Gold Medal at the RHS Botanical Art Show in 2012 for his suite of photographs of Heritage Fruit and Vegetables which had both a strong horticultural theme and at the same time paid homage to the still life artwork of Juan Sanchez Cotan (1561 - 1627).​
• continuing through the extremely innovative and highly botanical exhibits produced by Laurence Hill GM (2014, 2017, 2018) - see this page on my website - and should have had a fourth in 2015 if the Judges had read and understood the text for his extraordinary exhibit.
• ​and others who have demonstrated techniques with different forms of photographic media and rather less with involvement with horticulture or botany.

There have been quite a few changes in organisation and nomenclature in recent years

• Prior to 2018 it was referred to as the RHS Botanical Photography exhibit and it was always part of one of the RHS London Shows. 
• In 2017, it changed
  
  • and became an exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show (which made it completely inaccessible to a lot of people given the competition and expense of tickets for Chelsea)
• ​In 2018, it was combined with the Botanical Illustration Show for a Joint Show (Plant and Art Fair 10-12 July 2018) - with photography held in the Lawrence Hall - with not a lot of visitors! Much the same as in previous years when held as part of the London Shows.)
• In 2018, the Portfolio category became part of the RHS Photography Competition and was held alongside the RHS Botanical Illustration Show as part of the RHS London Art and Photography Show 2018 - with Photography in the Lawrence Hall and the art in the Lindley Hall.
• In 2019, the art and photography show were held in the same hall - and all the trade / educational exhibit stands disappeared
  

Somewhere along this path, the emphasis has changed

• from being about a horticultural society having a competition telling the story of botany and/or horticulture - through the medium of photography (with skills in the latter being a given) 
• to some sort of photographic competition with the botany and horticulture vey much taking a secondary role to an emphasis on photographic techniques. 

I'm not sure 'Botanical Photography' per se is any sort of priority for the Royal Horticultural Society - at least if you go to its website - where absolutely nothing comes up if you put the term into the search box.

This is what the competition says it is about - in principle.

To my mind, "Portfolio Photography' seems to have morphed into a competition to provide a  source of photos to keep visitors to RHS Gardens entertained and a ready supply of images for The Garden Magazine. 

That might be a commercial imperative - but it would be nice to think that a Society as well endowed as the RHS doesn't need to sideline the technical botanical / horticultural issues / events / innovation in a photographic competition given these are also part and parcel of the work of people who are serious botanical photographers - rather than simply generalist magazine photographers.

Speaking personally, I don't get this and I think the emphasis is wrong.

• There's any number of photographic competitions where the emphasis is on photography and the subject matter can include plants or gardens. 
• There are extremely few where the emphasis is on the plants or gardens with photography used to tell stories about for example:
  • important heritage 
  • or plants winning awards of garden merit 
  • or innovation in the display of little known botanical or horticultural facts.

But, in reality, there's precious little of the latter in this exhibition - there's just too many 'pretty pictures' and 'conceptual art' and not enough horticulture.

​In my opinion, I think the RHS ought to place much more emphasis on the horticulture / botany / plants and have more botanical / horticultural expertise providing input to the Photography Portfolio Show - in terms of both those selected to judge, selected to exhibit and the medals awarded.

That way we might end up with

• rather less "emphasis on the aesthetic - arty party" exhibits being judged by people who are not experts at photographing plants
• ​rather fewer really weak exhibits - which really bore me
• rather more exhibits on a par with those seen in Botanical Illustration - with some serious credentials in terms of the horticultural story they tell or features of horticultural excellence they exhibit.

This is after all a Royal Horticultural Society not the Royal Photographic Society!

If you want to find out more about the show and its antecedents and associated medal winners - see my page dedicated to RHS Portfolio Photography (Botanical or Horticultural or Gardens) 

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RHS Portfolio Photography Show 2021
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These are the 2021 Guidelines for the RHS Portfolio Photography Exhibition.

According to the website "Portfolio is judged as a physical exhibition". Due to the pandemic, the RHS has been unable to do so for the 2020 and 2021 entrants - until this latest exhibition of those selected for 2020 and 2021 - held at the Saatchi Gallery.

However, the way the competition works is that all submissions selected for exhibition are based on digital submissions alone.

Bottom line - nobody sees any actual prints until they're on the wall. Which may account for why we have so many very dark photographs which don't reveal the plant well. (i.e. arty farty wins out over horticultural).

In my opinion, this is possibly the weakest show I've seen. Much of it bored me. I could probably count the exhibits which were interesting and which displayed the plants well on the fingers of one hand.  

I'm also not in the least bit interested in "pretty pictures" for the sake of aesthetics (although I gather the Judges think otherwise judging by some decisions in recent years). I want to see portfolio project with a good solid story and effort behind it which is emphatically grounded in plants / horticulture / botany. I expect to see labels which tell me what I'm looking at - which include the identification of plant material using the correct Latin name. If you want to attract RHS members to the exhibition then for goodness sake tell them what the plant is!

For example two with strong horticultural/botanical content and both based on solid and respectable projects included

• The UK's Most Poisonous Plants by Lindsay Harris (Silver Gilt) - based on 2,000 miles of travel across six counties over the course of four years to find and photograph some of the UK’s most poisonous plants growing wild in southern England. Heused a black background to much better effect than some others - I could at least see the plants in this exhibit - unlike some of the others!  You can read more about them in this pdf. 
• A Typology of British Cherry Blossom by Sam Vale (Silver) - beautiful clean images and a most attractive exhibit of different types of cherry blossom - which I've never seen done before but it seems like a very worthwhile project given the vagaries of some suppliers of plants these days. Vale is Programme Director of Photography at Canterbury Christ Church University - so I think he knows a thing or two about photography and I was very surprised so him only get a silver.

I found several other exhibits to be very weak - some woefully so. I don't think the Judges for the Photography competition understand the concept of "no award made".  Most (but not all) got bronze medals - including an ex Gold Medal winner who just labelled his photos as Tulip and a number. My jaw dropped. 

I want to see

• many more good people coming forward to submit photographic exhibits to this not well promoted portfolio competition AND 
• a really tough selection which rigorously weeds out the arty farty
• which then means I get to see rather more better exhibits and some really solid Gold and Silver Gilt exhibits!

The size of the exhibit (and associated photographs) was much smaller than previous years - due to the size of the space being constrained to 2 metres rather than the 4 metres originally advised. Hence most had to exhibit in two rows rather than side by side.

There were no large photos - or ones using unusual formats or media - which was a very  great shame.  This has been a feature I've aways looked forward to as some photographers have come up with some extremely interesting exhibits in terms of both horticulture and photography in past years. I'm assuming the space limitation had an influence on this. I know of at least one photographer who withdrew due to the limitations for exhibiting and I assume there may well have been more.

Plus the editing of the text is a real tragedy.....

Form over substance yet again......

One last question. If everything has to be digital why are the exhibits in this exhibition not online so those who can't get to the show can take a look?