Evidence in Camera, Mandy Lee Jandrell
Mandy Lee Jandrell’s exhibition ‘Evidence in Camera’ takes its title from the book of the same name by Constance Babington-Smith, published in 1957. Then Head of Photographic Interpretation at RAF Medmenham’s Central Interpretation Unit, Babington-Smith was one of several women – including the archaeologist Dorothy Garrod– involved in the highly-skilled interpretation of aerial reconnaissance photography during the Second World War. Jandrell’s two-part exhibition makes reference to aerial reconnaissance photography, and uses codes, fragments, deception and theatricality to interrogate our relationship to these images. Jandrell’s interest in surveillance photographs stems from an interest in their ambiguity, and the way in which they serve to trick our perception. The installation ‘Le Bibou n’est pas un Éléphant / The Owl is not an Elephant’, explores the ambiguity of aerial reconnaissance photographs, playing on the use of decoys to create deceptive images staged to mislead. The installation uses mirrors and ambiguous reflected imagery to create a theatrical set, which alludes to the illusive nature of photographic images and the way in which they serve not only to trick our perception, but also to show us things that our eyes are incapable of seeing. In the film ‘The Blue Hour’, Jandrell creates a fragmentary and disorientating narrative, using mirrors and light. The film uses unintelligible and fictional coded mirror- and torch-signals inspired by the secret coded signals used by the women of the Special Operations Executive, stationed in occupied France, to communicate with incoming RAF planes in World War 2. This exhibition was supported by funding from Arts Council England