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26 March 2024

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10 April 2024

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11 April - 18 May 2024

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21 March 2024

Home. Ukrainian Photography, UK Words: Tour

4 March - 28 February 2025

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4 March - 8 March 2024

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CREATIVE SOCIAL: IN THE ABSENCE OF FORMAL GROUND

2 March 2024

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We Feed The UK @ Exterior Walls

8 February - 31 March 2024

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Contrail Cirrus: the impact of aviation on climate change

7 March 2024

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Tree Story @ Liverpool ONE

16 February - 1 May 2024

Open Source #27: Saffron Lily – In The Absence of Formal Ground @ Digital Window Gallery

6 February - 31 March 2024

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Contemporary Photography from Ukraine: Symposium @University of Salford

4 March - 5 March 2024

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Is Anybody Listening? Symposium: Commissioning and Collecting Socially Engaged Photography

29 February 2024

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Different approaches: Artists working with scientists

15 February 2024

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LOOK Climate Lab 2024: All Events

18 January 2024

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Diesel & Dust @ Digital Window Gallery

18 January - 31 March 2024

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Tree Walks Of Sefton Park with Andrea Ku

21 January 2024

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Artists Remake the World by Vid Simoniti: Book Launch

31 January 2024

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Shift Liverpool Open Meeting

6 February 2024

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We Feed The UK Launch and LOOK Climate Lab 2024 Celebration

8 February 2024

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Cyanotype workshop with Melanie King

17 February 2024

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End of Empire: artist talk and discussion

22 February 2024

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Book Launch: What The Mine Gives, The Mine Takes

24 February 2024

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Local ecology in the post-industrial era: open discussion

14 March 2024

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Waterlands: creative writing workshop

23 March 2024

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Plant a seed. Seed sow and in conversation with Plot2Plate

16 March 2024

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Erosion: panel discussion

9 March 2024

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Waterlands: an evening of poetry and photographs

23 March 2024

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Force For Nature Exhibition

27 March - 28 March 2024

Voices of Nature: Interactive Performances

28 March 2024

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Sum of All Parts: Symposium

27 February 2024

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LOOK Climate Lab 2024

18 January - 31 March 2024

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MA Socially engaged photography Open Day event

1 February 2023

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Tish: Special screening and Q&A

13 December 2023

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Book Launch: A Look At A New Perspective

23 November 2023

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Community workshops @ Ellesmere Port Library

6 November - 5 February 2024

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Book Launch: ‘544m’ By Kevin Crooks

30 November 2023

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Bernice Mulenga @ Open Eye Gallery Atrium Space

17 November - 17 December 2023

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Bernice Mulenga: Artist Talk

18 November 2023

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Local Roots @ The Atkinson

14 October 2023

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Community @ Ellesmere Port Library

26 October - 11 April 2024

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Critique Surgery for Socially Engaged Photographers

6 November 2023

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Deeds Not Words: panel discussion

12 October 2023

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Deeds Not Words @ Atrium Space

3 October - 22 October 2023

Ode To Our Space @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

A Look At A New Perspective @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

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Book Launch: Crow Dark Dawn

19 October 2023

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Exhibition Launch: A Place of Our Own

28 September 2023

Reflections

12 September - 22 December 2023

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Käthe Buchler
Käthe Buchler

REVIEW: ‘BEYOND THE BATTLEFIELDS’ AT GROSVENOR GALLERY

A classically posed portrait of a young boy, smiling into the lens; he clutches an almost comically large white rabbit in his lap. This is the image chosen to advertise ‘Beyond the Battlefields’, an exhibition of images made by Käthe Buchler around the timeline of World War One.
At a glance, the image could very well be a school portrait or even a family snapshot, the careful preservation made by mothers and fathers dutifully carried out in an attempt to elongate the unknowing delight of youth. Upon closer inspection, the boy’s smile is made up of twisted teeth. A rabbit’s claw appears extended. Accompanying wall text placed at intervals throughout the show introduce the boy as ‘Collecting King Willy von Hinten, the most diligent collector of 1915’. The title was most likely given by Buchler. The rabbit, however, was in fact awarded by local German authorities in exchange for his metal scavenging abilities. The text presents an altogether more harrowing image of food, labour and material shortages – Willy’s portrait was taken only a year before the ‘Turnip Winter’; the young scavenger’s previously unclenched grip appears much closer.

Käthe Buchler’s depictions of German civilians in wartime are tender, composed, and do not appear entirely out of place next to her early autochromes of flower arrangements; these are images of stillness in a time of agitated uncertainty, where any degree of normality suddenly becomes poetic. Read in the context of a gallery, the photographs are heavily symbolic, common visual metaphors such white rabbits, collected shoes and oversized soldier’s uniforms repeat through frames. A group of children in costume as goats and sheep kneel as a large figure dressed as a wolf looms, pantomime-style, towards the edge of the frame. Buchler’s images dissolve the expected male-centric spiel covering the glory, and tragedy of war – the gallantry of Buchler’s narrative comes from the prevailing sense of humanity of the women and children left behind. Those who, malnourished and tired, continued raising families, took on gruelling jobs and maintained society as husbands and fathers were fighting a failing war. As much as rabbits, wolves and empty shoes become poetic emblems of innocence, hunger and violence, a strictly historic reading of the images still offers a touching reality of theatre performances and small trophies continuing to exist during an impoverished time – revealing perhaps a more tangible romance.

Insulated by her position as a partially deaf woman of considerable wealth and status in a very disciplined society, Buchler approaches the everyday civilian as something of an outsider, a woman who can command sitters to pose and has the obvious technical ability to capture a striking portrait. Despite this, Käthe Buchler was described as an amateur; a title weighted with negative connotations, of incapability and lack of professionalism, an assumption that Buchler was of no threat. It was this degree of translucency, which allowed her to carve out a creative agency, challenging the regimented and established hierarchy of the time and recognising others doing the same. While the expectation of men was to fight for their country, it was left to women to take up roles usually denied to them. Buchler began a series of portraits recognising women pushing the boundaries of stereotype entitled ‘Women in Men’s Jobs’. There are images of female conductresses standing side by side in sharp uniform, a ‘Carrier’ hunched double under the weight of her cargo, grinning. The various backdrops of ladders and ascending stairs in each photograph appear to be specifically chosen.

‘Beyond the Battlefields’ exists as an exhibition caught between document and sentiment, this sense of duality lies in the contrasting voices of historian, Melanie Tebbutt and visual artist, Jacqueline Butler. As co-curators of the show, Tebbutt and Butler manage to balance two very different disciplines, neither does the show feel cold and factual nor does it belittle difficult subjects with whimsy: downfalls very much possible if approached from a singular angle. The accessibility of the show does not have to rely on an audience’s ability to read the nuances of symbolism, nor does the viewer have to have a wide knowledge of the First World War. ‘Beyond the Battlefields’, which runs until 2nd March at Manchester’s Grosvenor Gallery, exists as a point of dialogue that actively confronts usual gender and generational boundaries with an authoritative level of quiet all too often forgotten. The exhibition shows the faces of survivors and the impact small gestures and moments of ingenuity have in an otherwise desolate and unsure time.

 

 

 

Review by Declan Connolly

 

Images ©Estate of Käthe Buchler – Museum für Photographie Braunschweig/Deposit Stadtarchive Braunschweig

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