Constructing a Decade: Mister Sixties, Philip Townsend’s Portraits Of A Decade at the Arts Institute Bournemouth

The newly opened expanded Text&Works space at the Arts University College Bournemouth is hosting the Lowry’s roaming Philip Townsend Mister Sixties Exhibition. I managed to go along to the introductory talk from Philip Townsend and Jim Merce last Thursday.

The exhibition is excellent and is running from the 24th – 4th March and is free and open to the public. The images themselves are not ground breaking, and his photographic style is fairly safe for the era. (David Bailey name is now thrown around when the sixities are mentioned and so seems very familiar to us but his style is far more outgoing Townsend’s)

What makes the images interesting is the access Townsend enjoyed in London to the the key players that we now associate the sixties with. The Stones, the Beatles and other key players dominate his images.

The lecture was open and packed, but the audience reflects really why Townsend’s images are so poplar. People interested not so much by the photography but by the Nostalgia industry in general.

I am a little put off by the 60′s nostalgia belonging to the generation who enjoyed it. People who were born immediately before or during the war who albeit grew up with the hardship of rationing and post-war repair but who found themselves enjoying the hey-day of the welfare state, a cheap step onto the property ladder and who reminisce about the 60′s being the creation of culture. Its an interesting generation and it powers a whole industry of books, television programs and films that reinforce that this was a ‘wonderful’ time.

Tellingly question from the floor came as people told anecdotes they were not present for, or asked questions about people who they had never met but instead only read about. People claiming a stake in a decade which they viewed photographically in magazines and newspapers from their bedrooms with music blaring out on cheap and easily accessible LPs. Leaps forward in technology allowed music and image to flow together into peoples homes and infuse their lives and make them feel part of something from which they were geographically and socially far removed.

Townsend is quick to point out that he sees the 60′s applying to only 300 or so key players who lived the lifestyle. With life outside a small area of London continuing on much the same as it had done in the 40′s and 50′s. Yet, his images perpetuate a cultural myth that has become important to many people. This isn’t to say that its a bad thing, but simply to say his images have contributed to a time when photography, music and video combined to alter our collective memory of a decade. They are important images because of this, as well people and places they document who contributed to creating the myth of the 60′s.

You can see information on this and future exhibition on the AUCB website and in the 2010-2011 gallery guide.

There is a video of Philip Presenting his limited editions exhibition on youtube, which is also interesting

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