Artland Gallery, Quaker Meeting House (Bootle St), Manchester
Until 13th December 2008
Contemporary urban photography focuses primarily on people - witness Martin Parr’s recent Guardian features on British cities. Jan Chlebik’s highly graphic view of the city operates at a much more macro level, and yet his sweeping, sometimes near abstract vistas often succeed in eliciting more emotion than much of the day-in-the-life photojournalism in vogue today. Whether using very high contrast, very soft focus, or deftly manipulating extremes of light and shade, he employs a range of devices to produce (sometimes hugely) successful cityscapes. The common stylistic thread which runs through Cheblik’s photographs is an experimental spirit, a laudable willingness to test the formal limits of the medium. The monochrome prints themselves are in such a range of styles, sizes and prices that you could be forgiven for thinking you’d walked into a group exhibition – a refreshing change from the usual self-importantly uniform nature of single photographer shows.
Making inventive use of a quirky subterranean space, Artland is an unusually welcoming and very welcome addition to the Manchester gallery scene. It will host all kinds of work from the pleasantly decorative to the heavyweight political (such as its next offering early in 2009, the young German photojournalist Christoph Bangert’s work from Iraq). It will also show other media, notably painting, so get down there soon while there is photography on show.