From the Roster

About

Hamiltons Gallery is delighted to present From the Roster. An expansive and evolving exhibition, From the Roster features significant works from many of the artists Hamiltons has had the privilege of exhibiting over its long history. Artists such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton and Sir Don McCullin are presented alongside rare and unique works by Horst P. Horst, Steven Meisel, Sante D’Orazio, Peter Beard, Daidō Moriyama, Andy Warhol and many more. Ever in the pursuit of quality the gallery is pleased to showcase new works by represented artists Murray Fredericks, Roger Ballen and Philippe Garner.

A number of the selected artists have been featured in major exhibitions over the past year, including Richard Caldicott, Herb Ritts, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn in Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection at the V&A Museum. 2024 also saw a major retrospective of Irving Penn at de Young Museum, part of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, as well as Daidō Moriyama’s first UK retrospective at the Photographers’ Gallery.

All of the works in From the Roster are connected by a sense of the extra-ordinary. Important works by Steven Meisel, Herb Ritts and Sante D’Orazio encapsulate an unwavering commitment to capture untouchable glamour. More confronting is the provocative gaze of photographs by Nobuyoshi Araki, one of Japan’s most renowned – and controversial - photographers. In addition to these intense studies of the human form, From the Roster contains selections from Guido Mocafico’s Serpens series of still lives which confronts the glittering darkness and danger pulsating beneath beauty. The selection also extends to stunning works of landscape photography by the great masters Albert Watson and Sir Don McCullin. United by their mastery of the craft and influence on the medium, the artists represented in the exhibition provide a thoughtfully curated overview of the modern masters of photography.

The selection of works prompts reflections on changing tastes within not only the photography market but the art world at large. By bringing these works into conversation with each other, From the Roster traces a lineage of taste-making and prompts ever-relevant conversations about capturing the evolving world we live in. Ultimately, the exhibition returns to the essential question- where do we look and how?