Last Friday, on the 28th June, accompanied with my classmates, we had a meaningful experience to visit the Photographers’ Gallery located in Ramillies St. London, to participate the exhibition hosted with the theme of “ABOUT THE PRIZE”. As it is in it’s seventh continuous year, this time, the sponsor ,the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2013 rewarded a living photographer, of any nationality, for a specific body of work in an exhibition or publication format, which has significantly contributed to photography in Europe between 1 October 2011 and 30 September 2012. During the exhibition, I found arrangements of entire space for each individual photographs was significantly appropriate. Especially for those works on the 3rd, 4th and 5th floor. Interestingly, there was also a rotatable projector on the 2nd floor, which drew much attention from every visitors.

Although there were a various of art works with different themes in the exhibition, I did not find much of them impressive enough to shock me. Personally, I prefer those photographic works with strong vision wallop in unique style of expression. Even if each of those photos contains a specific story, in my opinion, they still need a novel technique of expression to be demonstrated. The reason why I did not enjoy the exhibition that much might also because I did not really understand what is the actual meaning of those photos.

However, there was one significantly impressive work No Man’s Land by Mishka Henner that inspired me a lot. The work represents isolated women occupying the margins of southern European environments. Shot entirely were taken with Google Street View, which was very specific and interesting. And as I know, it has been any familiar forms of expression before No Man’s Land emerged. Google map has become a popular navigation tool worldwide, but unfortunately Chinese users do not know much about this application due to unavailability of Google Map View in mainland of China. After I came to London, with a number of times attempts on Google Map View, I found it interesting in this application and thought about if it can be related with any art works. And if it can be accomplished, what would it look like? Luckily, Mishka Henner’s work gave me a satisfied answer in such a short time, with his intelligence of use on Google Map View, he showed people a fantastic and novel journey combined in TV screen. Thus, I have to say No Man’s Land was the most memoried work in the exhibition, and also the bright spot since I came to London.

Overall, it was a fun experience to participate the exhibition. Without any influence of rainy weather, I believed everyone benefit from what we have seen, regarding our excitement and enthusiastic discussion between each other during the tour. As the first time to visit photographic exhibition after I came to London, there is no doubt that, it had given me a good start to participate more exhibitions in the days to come. Moreover, it is absolutely meaningful as useful reference in my future creations.