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Notes
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This close-up photograph of a billboard hoarding is one of a series of works featuring urban ephemera, which photographer Dorothy Bohm observed then captured after waiting (sometimes months) for it to 'mature'. The partly eroded and weather-ravaged poster resembles a multi-layered collage. Although the original meaning is lost, the possibilities are multiplied as each fragment hints at past dramatic events. The inclusion, for example, of a head thrown back in agony (lower left) from Picasso’s 'Guernica' (1937), expressing his horror at the bombing of the Basque town by Franco’s German allies during the Spanish Civil War, juxtaposed with the face of a woman wearing a soldier's helmet (upper right), is a disturbing intimation of conflict, somewhat offset by fragments of sky and landscape.
Title
Torn Poster, South Bank, London, 1984
Date
1984
Medium
photograph on paper
Measurements
H 64 x W 43.8 cm
Accession number
2008-12
Acquisition method
presented by the artist after her exhibition, 2007
Work type
Photograph
Signature/marks description
Signed (lower right corner): Dorothy Blum
