Art reviews: Nathalie Vucher | Holger Mohaupt
Two very different photography exhibitions are among the visual art highlights of this year’s Fringe by the Sea festival, writes Susan Mansfield
Nathalie Vucher: From Milsey Bay, A Scottish Story in Portraits, Freemasons Hall, North Berwick ★★★★
Holger Mohaupt: To Think of Time, 82 High Street, North Berwick ★★★★
While the biggest, craziest Fringe in the world gets under way in Edinburgh, North Berwick’s Fringe by the Sea goes from strength to strength. Beyond the performance programme, several exhibitions and open studios around town provide a visual art element.
At the Freemasons Hall, French photographer Nathalie Vucher has created an unusual collection of portraits. Vucher, who likes to made candid images with a long lens, put out an open call for redheads to come to North Berwick’s Milsey Bay and, on a blustery day in June 2024, captured a collection of local men, women and children.
While her subjects knew they were being photographed, the images lack the static nature of some formal portraits. Rather, there is a brief exchange with the camera in which something of themselves is revealed. An artist’s talk on 2 August will be accompanied by the screening of a film about the project by local writer and filmmaker Matt Thompson.
Meanwhile, North Berwick-based artist and photographer Holgar Mohaupt shows a collection of photographs of New York in the offices of Sutherland Roper Architects at 82 High Street. Taken while visiting the city in 2023, it’s hard not to read them in light of the current political moment. A sign proclaims Times Square a gun-free zone; two Muslim women chat on a bench; the Mexican chefs in a food truck serve that most Manhattan of foods, the poppyseed bagel.
Mohaupt seeks out the unusual image: a tattooed runner, a shot through the window of the E Train bound for the World Trade Center, a shelf of Statue of Liberty souvenirs. In New York Library, visitors study their mobile phones under a large painting of newspaper makers. No collection of pictures could sum up New York, but these photographs show how a collection of fragments begins to make a portrait of a city.
Nathalie Vucher until 6 August; Holger Mohaupt until 11 August
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