Blow-Up (1966) is Antonioni’s first film in English and has become one of the most important films of its decade. It is a seminal encapsulation of the vibrant and bohemian London scene in the mid-1960s. Even today, on its fortieth anniversary, it continues to influence many contemporary artists and film-makers.

At the heart of Blow-Up is photography itself. A fashion photographer, played by David Hemmings, takes a sequence of photographs in a London park apparently of a young woman, played by Vanessa Redgrave, in a tryst with her older lover. However, he realises on examining the film that their furtive behaviour perhaps hides a secret when he spots what appears to be a body in one of the photographs. The more he enlarges the image the more blurred and indecipherable it becomes. The film is a voyage in which the protagonist starts to doubt both what he actually saw, and his photographic record of it, as fact and fiction are ever more ambiguously intertwined.

Curated by Philippe Garner and David Allan Mellor.

For further information on this and past exhibitions, visit our Archive and Study Room.