Coming into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Condé Nast

An exhibition of images from the fashion world as seen at Conde Nast. The thing that is so wonderful about this exhibition is the amazing photographers who have contributed to the magazine over the years and the truly exceptional images they created.

Erwin Blumenfeld, American Vogue, March 1945Photograph: Erwin Blumenfeld/Condé Nas

A new exhibition in Edinburgh gathers the work of over 80 notable fashion photographers, including Edward Steichen, Norman Parkinson, Albert Watson and Sølve Sundsbø, to showcase their work for the publishing house.
Coming into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Condé Nast is at City Art Centre, Edinburgh until 8 September

Fashion photography – glamorous, provocative, beautiful, accomplished, and magical – has been associated with some of the most famous names in the history of the medium since the early years of the 20th century.

Monday – Saturday 10am – 5pm; Sunday 12pm – 5pm

Who is this for? – All
Dates: 15 June 2013 – 8 September 2013
Cost: £5; Concessions £3.50; £2.50 for children aged 5 to 16 inclusive; £11 for a family ticket for two adults and two children or one adult and three children. Other ticketing options are available; please ask at the venue.
The great American photographer Edward Steichen took what were probably the first fashion photographs in 1911. Since then it has become a unique platform for experimentation, balanced between commerce and creativity, recording the Zeitgeist and capturing individual dreams and desires.

The legendary publisher Condé Nast recognised this very early on and created a distinctive style for his magazines, elevating haute couture and turning fashion photography into an art form. With his keen sense for discovering new talents, he found the best photographers and promoted their careers, a tradition continued by subsequent editors and art directors at Condé Nast.

The exhibition shows early work by such luminaries as Cecil Beaton, Erwin Blumenfeld, Helmut Newton, David Bailey, Guy Bourdin, Corinne Day, Mario Testino and Sølve Sundsbø as it appeared in the pages of Vogue, Glamour and other Condé Nast publications.

With unprecedented access to the Condé Nast archives in New York, Paris, London and Milan, the curator Nathalie Herschdorfer has gathered original prints, as well as pages from the actual magazines. The exhibition provides a unique opportunity to see the work of over eighty photographers right at the outset of their careers.

This exhibition has been organised by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis/Paris/Lausanne, in collaboration with City Art Centre, Edinburgh.

Edward Steichen, American Vogue, December 1923Photograph: Edward Steichen/Condé Nast

Clifford Coffin, American Vogue, June 1949Photograph: Clifford Coffin/Condé Nast

Norman Parkinson, Glamour, October 1949Photograph: Norman Parkinson/Courtesy Norman Parkinson Archive

John Rawlings, American Vogue, March 1943Photograph: John Rawlings/Condé Nast

Image: Miles Aldridge, Vogue Italia, September 2002

See more images on The Guardian pages here

Vogue Magazine article
Glamour Magazine article

Lighting Up the Night

My other go to place for great photography is The Atlantic, another one you should bookmark for the future. This week they have images on the theme of Lighting up The Night

Around the world, people are using light to paint, perform, honor, work, and play. In villages and cities alike, lanterns and candles are used to celebrate and commemorate events. In Berlin, famous landmarks are currently being illuminated for the annual Festival of Lights. In Florida, a private spacecraft climbed into orbit atop a pillar of fire, and around the globe, dozens of buildings were bathed in pink for breast cancer awareness month. Gathered here is a handful of recent images of humans pushing back the dark and lighting up the night

Magician David Blaine performs his “Electrified: 1 Million Volts Always On” stunt in New York, on October 7, 2012. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Paper lanterns float on the Motoyasu River in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome (center) in Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 2012. Tens of thousands of people marked the 67th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as a rising tide of anti-nuclear sentiment swells in post-Fukushima Japan. (Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images)

Runners and walkers wearing light emitting suits and holding light sticks make their way up Arthur’s Seat as part of a dress rehearsal of a mass participation public art piece called “Speed of Light” on August 8, 2012 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The piece which forms part of the annual Edinburgh Festival is set to illuminate the iconic natural monument as hundreds of people make their way up and around, creating streaks of light as they go. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Go here to see another 30 of these special images

Norman McBeath – Photographer

This is part of our Photographers Workshop alumni series. I have known Norman for nearly 30 years and only ever as a photographer although there are rumours that he had a life before he picked up a camera although I would guess it was never as much fun as it has been since he did. Norman was one of the many people who came to our original incarnation at The Photographers Workshop where we hired darkrooms and taught people how to develop and print and how to be a photographer. As I have said many passed through our doors in the 25 years or so that we operated as a darkroom hire centre and some became professional photographers. Norman went from trade to art. Norman did a lot of work for various publishers and the university but his heart was always in the art sphere of photography. He moved to Edinburgh and there worked exclusively as an artist whose first medium was photography. This is what he has to say.

Professor Richard Dawkins, ethologist and evolutionary biologist ©Norman McBeath

My life changed forever after I came across The Photographers’ Workshop in Oxford. This happened twenty-five years ago, when I’d just moved to Oxford after seven years living overseas and at a time when I wanted to give up my teaching career to become a photographer. It was perfect timing and the perfect place – lots of very friendly, helpful people and a huge open-access darkroom where I could learn about printing and processing and so start to hone my skills as a photographer. Keith Barnes, who ran the place, was one of the first people I met there and he has remained a very close friend ever since.

There were always interesting prints being produced at the Workshop but there’s one which I watched appearing in the developing tray which I’ll never forget. It was probably the first really top-quality print I’d ever seen and I thought it was wonderful – the incredible range of tones, the deep blacks, the quality of the image and the powerful balance of the composition looking up at a military helicopter coming in to land. A month later I came across that same picture. This time it was the cover of one of the Sunday magazines and I learned that the person who had taken it and who had been gently rocking it into existence under the red light that day was Stuart Franklin, former President of Magnum.

 People have always fascinated me so right from the start I was drawn to reportage photography, then portraits after I’d had more experience. I worked a lot for the University of Oxford and Oxford University Press as well as covering glitzy events and parties for Harpers & Queen magazine in London. Although working in such different environments, a lot of the skills involved were very similar – the ability to be unobtrusive, to gain peoples’ trust quickly and to be ready at just the right moment.

Princess Margaret and Dame Elizabeth Taylor ©Norman McBeath

Baroness Margaret Thatcher ©Norman McBeath

 Dame Beryl Bainbridge ©Norman McBeath

My work at the university in particular brought me into contact with a lot of well known people which in turn led to me devoting more time to portraits. The National Portrait Gallery in London now have forty-four portraits of mine in their permanent collection. (http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp10633/norman-mcbeath). The Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh have fourteen works in their collection and two other portraits are in the Australian National Portrait Gallery’s collection in Canberra.

 

 Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger ©Norman McBeath

Sir John Tavener ©Norman McBeath

Things change though and about ten years ago I moved to Edinburgh – rather sad to leave so many close friends and such an interesting place as Oxford but at the same time very much looking forward to the challenge of new circumstances and living in another beautiful and characterful city. But I have to admit I was completely unaware and unprepared for the impact that the digital revolution would soon have on photography – clear evidence of which was the near bankrupting purchase of two new Leicas shortly before the move. I had thought these cameras would serve me well for the rest of my working life. However, not only had I failed to realise how soon they would be superceded but (apart from the lenses) they turned out to be the most unreliable cameras I’ve ever had.

 The new environment of Edinburgh had a huge impact on my life and work linked, in many ways, to a curious parallel with my time at the Photographers’ Workshop in Oxford. This time my epiphany was the result of contact with another open-access studio, Edinburgh Printmakers, a printmaking studio with a world-wide reputation in fine art printmaking. Here I discovered the incredible beauty of photogravures – one of the earliest techniques for printing photographs, relying on inked metal plates pressed onto dampened, hand-made paper using a traditional etching press.

 Photogravure – Ibis ©Norman McBeath

 I have recently collaborated with two leading poets: Plan B (Enitharmon Press, 2009) with the Pulitzer prize-winning poet and former Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Paul Muldoon and Simonides (Easel Press, 2011) with Robert Crawford, Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews. Both these collaboration have been exhibited as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival. Simonides is due to be exhibited at Yale University in September.

 I had a photograph showing, as an invited artist, at this year’s Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London and currently have four photographs showing in an exhibition called  Cast Contemporaries at Edinburgh  College of Art as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival. The next thing is a trip in mid-September to Yale with the poet Robert Crawford  to give a talk about our Simonides exhibition which will be showing there until October.

Norman McBeath 2012

Although Norman is serious about his work, his art, he also has, as anyone who knows him, a lighter, fey side that is full of humour and joy. When I speak to past clients about their time at the original Workshop they often comment on Norman’s explosion of laughter that could be heard above the excellent tunes we were always playing. Here are some from the section on his website called ‘Documentary”

Edinburgh ©Norman McBeath

Spider Boy, Paris (from ‘City Stories’) ©Norman McBeath

St. Mark’s Square, Venice ©Norman McBeath

Here are a couple of related posts about Norman’s exhibition and book Body Bags

https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/norman-mcbeath-edinburgh-arts-festival-body-bags-simonides/

https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/exhibition-by-norman-mcbeath-edinburgh-arts-festival/

You can see more of Norman’s work on his website here

Norman McBeath – Edinburgh Arts Festival – Body Bags / Simonides

I was talking to Norman today, he is a great friend and was an invaluable contributor to life at The Photographers Workshop when we had darkrooms and studios for rent. In recent years his star has risen in Edinburgh where he lives and works as a fine art photographer. He said, as you do, “my exhibition is next to Anish Kapoor’s” it is possible that he didn’t quite use those words because he is Scottish but any sentence that includes “my exhibition and Anish Kapoor” is bound to make me sit up. So I asked how his show had been going and he said really well and that The Scotsman Newspaper had given it a 5 star review so here is that review for those of you that enjoyed Norman’s laughter and good sense, nice to know him when he was a struggling nobody! This link is a downloadable pdf

090811 The Scotsman Review p10-11

and because I doubted the authenticity, not really, of the article Norman sent me this.  Here is a link to our previous post about this exhibition

 

 

New photographic portrait of The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh

A new portrait photograph of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, the first to be commissioned of the two together, has been released by the National Portrait Gallery in London, as part of an exhibition to mark next year’s Diamond Jubilee called The Queen: Art and Image.the exhibition information is

National Portrait Gallery

17 May – 21 October 2012

Porter Gallery

 

Queen Elizabeth II
by Dorothy Wilding, hand-coloured by Beatrice Johnson
1952
NPG x125105

Touring

• National Gallery Complex, Edinburgh
  25 June–18 September 2011 
• National Museums Northern Ireland
  14 October 2011–15 January 2012 
• National Museum Cardiff
  4 February – 29 April 2012

The new portrait by Thomas Struth can be seen on the BBC website and there is a recording of Struth talking about the image

Thomas Struth (born 1954) is a German photographer whose wide-ranging work includes depictions of detailed cityscapes, Asian jungles and family portraits. He is one of Germany’s most widely exhibited and collected fine art photographers. Struth currently lives and works in Berlin…more about Struth

If you want to see more of Struth’s work here is a link to his website

Portfolio Magazine last edition

Portfolio has decided that, after 22 years of continuous publication, this will be our final issue of Portfolio Magazine. More information is contained on the Editorial page of this website.

“Between 1988 and 2010, Portfolio Magazine collaborated with photographers and writers to present the most important developments in contemporary photography in Britain. In the early years Portfolio also staged workshops and courses in practical photography from our studio premises in Edinburgh, and from 1988 to 2001 Portfolio Gallery presented up to twelve exhibitions a year, with sales of photographic prints. Between 2003 and 2008 Portfolio organised the annual Jerwood Photography Awards, selecting five Award winners each year from over 500 applicants, whose work was then published in Portfolio Magazine and presented through UK touring exhibitions. We have decided that, following publication of Issue 52 in November 2010, the time is right to end this extensive project.”

Snow Photography Tutorials

So Oxford finally has a dusting of snow, not the knee deep stuff our good friend and photographer Norman McBeath has reported from Edinburgh but even so snow. Every time it snows in the UK photographers are compelled to go out and photograph it, once snow was a rarity but now it seems a too frequent occurrence. Well that is my take on the stuff. Here are a series of tutorials you might like to look at before stepping out into the cold, they may make your intrepid adventure more rewardinging.

Why Is The Snow In My Pictures Blue – a tutorial about white balance

This is from Canon and is about metering- and although aimed at Canon users is very informative

Snow Photography in Japan – slightly more technical and with details of equipment recommended

5 Tips, simple and untechnical – for those who don’t like to read much

If you need more search photographing in the snow, there are lots more tutorials although they cover much of the same ground as the above. Stay warm, stay safe. I will be staying indoors.