Bid to foster friendship on pointe

by Amit Roy

THERE is an unusual photography exhibition, United in Love, at the Alon Zakaim Fine Art Gallery in Dover Street, Mayfair.

It is certainly worth popping into if you have been lucky enough to get a lunch booking either at Rohit Khattar’s recently opened Indian Accent or Karam Sethi’s Gymkhana.

Photographer Natalie Goldstein is so dismayed at the deteriorating state of relations between the UK and Russia that she put together a set of 12 black and white images of ballet dancers painted silver so as to strip them of any notion of race, colour or creed, but bearing the flags of nations in a virtual state of war. It apparently took ages to stick on the coloured feathers.

What caught my eye was the photograph of UK and Russia to­gether, and another of the United States and Russia.

Natalie spent a long time photo­graphing the dancers from the Roy­al Ballet, the Conservatoire de Paris and the English National Ballet.

Part of the money from the sale of the photographs – mostly costing around £3,000 – will go to several international refugees’ charities in some 40 countries that come under the umbrella of David Miliband’s New York-based International Res­cue Committee.

The idea is to “raise awareness of the plight of the orphaned children, as well as displaced adults, who slip through the cracks in the interna­tional refugee camps. The national flags of the USA, the UK, Russia, Germany and France have been chosen in this first exhibition to il­lustrate the international unity needed to achieve a permanent so­lution to this human tragedy.”

Natalie tells me that she would one day also “love to” photograph “India and Pakistan” and “Israel and Palestine”.