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The Filming of Atonement at Redcar, by Pam Ainsley (winner of the Professional Event Photographer of the Year 2006) has come to York after exhibitions at Kirkleatham Museum in Redcar and further shows in Middlesbrough and Stockton. It is exhibited at Art Circles until May 31.
It focuses on one scene from the film: the beaches of Dunkirk. This is the film’s most challenging shot and the scale of it made me wonder what could be captured by one photographer. The outcome was a very satisfying look behind the scenes of a mammoth undertaking. In August 2006, Redcar was transformed into Dunkirk: a desperate place under enemy fire with thousands of soldiers praying for rescue. It involved 1,000 extras and countless crew. Then there was Pam Ainsley with her camera.
The photographs vary from individuals such as lead actor James McAvoy and expansive landscapes including the big wheel and damaged fairground band stand. The most moving photographs, however, are the ones taken when the sun was setting. Silhouetted horses nobly striding in the red and orange of the last light of day. Fully uniformed extras having a game of football on the beach. The World War Two guns darkening the foreground of the seascape. As Ian McEwan put it, these are a “lovely set of pictures”.
The work is displayed in a variety of settings: black frames, metallic boxes, box lustre, acrylic, aluminium, even Perspex. The various forms accentuate the contradicting image her photographs portray: the scale of the shoot (and indeed Dunkirk itself) contrasted with close ups of individuals. She shot from the beaches itself but was also lucky enough to shoot from the window of a nearby resident.
The exhibition has some time remaining in Art Circles but the power of the collections comes not from what is up on the wall. Only a few photographs scatter the back wall of Art Circles: to see to exhibition in its best form, look at the album Pam compiled. A shame to see the exhibition quite so understated but worth seeing anyway.
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