Pete McGovern
National Media Centre
Aug 2010, Bradford

With its public face hidden away at the back of a car park the National Media Centre actually resides inside a multiplex cinema complete. As it turned out one of the two photography shows currently being exhibited there was compelling enough to make me just miss the afternoon showing of Toy Story in 3D on an IMAX screen - and not feel too anguished at this fail.

Gallery One hosts Simon Roberts: We English. Fine colour prints celebrating the naffness of our country at leisure. Epsom and Aintree race-goers, golfers dwarfed by Radcliffe on Soar power station, go-karts at Westward Ho, big bellies and tats at Keynes Country Park, ramblers at Scafell Pike, ice cream vans and car boot sales, a middle-aged disconnected couple, opera fans entombed in the leafy-ness of Grange Park, Hampshire. Hewn from sheets of ten by eight inch film the emphasis here is on pictorialism and sly social comment executed with technical virtuosity and the metre-wide prints in particular buzz with the fineness of detail, if occasionally a small blurred face reveals the limitations of long exposure times. Oddly it's the empty shots that impress the most. The high-key Saunton Sands image is almost reminiscent of a bleached-out Paul Graham 'American Night' image but rather than actually being over-exposed (and incandescent with indignant rage) it simply captures the white-out of sky and sand and sea dotted with the tiny specks of surfers in their black wetsuits, persevering despite the lack of any actual surf. A similar effect is achieved with Tandridge Golf Course, under snow it results in an almost blank white sheet of print paper. Compared to a similarly monumental image-maker such as German photographer Andreas Gursky, as a series they lack the sense of uninhibited evolution in both vision and technique. Nevertheless Camel Estuary, Padstow with its cool yellow sand and emerald sea (beneath a Stephen Shore-esque cloud-laden sky) and Lingmell Fell, Cumbria are simply outstanding pictorial achievements. The tradition of social comment (usually tackled with small format cameras) within which the bulk of these images negotiate their viewpoint is mapped out by surrounding archive images, such as from the late, great Tony Ray Jones (a treat to see his notebook with its scribbled itinerary of planned shoots), John Davies' black and white Agecroft Power Station dwarfing 70's Sunday morning footballers and Martin Parr's 80's New Brighton, which remains ugly and depressing after all these years.

Gallery Two and hung on very dark olive painted walls two projects from Robbie Cooper: Immersion and Alter-ego. The first, Immersion, consists of curious intensely-lit hybrid studio/documentary-portraits. Single frames selected from a series of 30 fps high-defintion video recordings, blown up to make super-crisp 32" widescreen TV size prints encased in deeply glossy acrylic. As a way of working editing final stills directly from video challenges much that is at the heart of the photography - but is almost definitely the future. In itself this is a striking contrast to the work in Gallery One. That these final prints here are stunning as contemporary style objects that would compete with a big plasma screen adds to the many layers of meaning which unfold as you work your way through this important exhibition. The subjects, mostly toddlers and young people, are intensely engaged in watching programmes - cartoons or horror movies or playing computer games - projected onto a translucent screen so it was possible to position a camcorder behind and film them head-on, therefore managing to be fully engaged with people who are fully engrossed.

Tantamount to voyeurism this work may sit uncomfortably with some theorists here in Britain and will probably do so till those from the weary beaux d'art's tradition eventually decide to retire to a room with a sea-view on the hills outside Eastbourne - watching the world go by through an old pair of opera glasses. For the rest of us, simply looking at the face, that innate curiosity (if we still have a spark within us) that is a key part of being human, seen every waking hour in the vigilance of infants in pushchairs to the elderly on hospital wards - our search for connection and also, understanding. Cooper scores big on both counts. Recent evidence shows our daily lives are increasingly devoted to screen time and this modern cultural phenomenon is explored here without condescension or judgemental sentimentality for a 'golden era'. People might be say it is unhealthy and dysfunctional but this is the way it is, complex, acknowledged for what it is, and such a mundane truth that the impact is unexpectedly gripping. Compare with the mid-twentieth century lyrical images by Andre Kertesz of people observed reading to highlight some of the many implications of the shift from engaging with static print to dynamic pixels. The concentration in the faces here, the locked gaze is mirrored by our own. Satisfying, too that a montage of Cooper's actual video footage is beautifully projected at one end of the room and is compelling enough even to keep a bunch of unsupervised, slightly hyper kids watching for several minutes. The means of production are appropriately nu-tech and direct throughout.

His earlier Alter-ego works address the impact of the digital age on individuals with similar thoroughness if in a slightly more conventional manner. In contrast to the grimacing there is now passivity in the computer multi-player gaming addicts which were conventionally shot on location around the world. Diptychs then abut these fairly standard but large portraits with same-size blow-ups of their chosen sophisticated graphics avatars, alternate cyberspace identities. Each subject is profiled with key facts such as name, gaming identity and their average hours spent playing. It soon becomes apparent that for some the commitment to a digital reality far exceeds their involvement with this world of flesh and blood and impoverishment of one kind or another. One or two images stand out as exceptional pieces. 'Jason Rowe is Rurouni Kenshin in Star Wars Galaxies, 2003.' The fact that he spends 80 hours per week in-character pales beside the contrast of his child-like face- sadly with a ventilator strapped over it - and the straggly hint of beard which reveals he is in fact a man nearing 30 - and the powerful alien, robotic alter-ego he has adopted, which has its face enclosed, too, in this case within an armoured mask. In one world Jason exists as a frail person, in another as an ass-kicking pseudo-machine.

I stayed so long in Gallery Two of the National Media Centre that I didn't get to see Toy Story 3 (in 3-D and on an IMAX screen) but I left fully satisfied not to be distracted. It's not often you exit a show thrilled to have seen something remarkable. If the V&A or Tate aren't already finalising who gets to buy Immersion and Alter-ego for the nation - then somone needs to do some serious ass-kicking.

NMC show ends September 5th 2010.