Oxford School of Photography

insights into photography

Tag Archives: Mary McCartney

The power of photography: time, mortality and memory

Leave a comment Posted by oxfordschoolofphotography on May 23, 2013

In the Guardian there is a really interesting article featuring a selection of artists, writers and photographers showing a photograph and talking about it’s importance and the importance of photography to them.

We take thousands of pictures nowadays, but do we still cherish them? We asked writers and artists, including Grayson Perry and Mary McCartney, to pick a shot they treasure – and tell us the role photography has played in their lives

Grayson Perry in his Camden squat in 1985, making a Super 8 film

When I was about five, my mother made a bonfire in the back garden and burned a suitcase full of family photos taken by my father. He had been a keen photographer with his own dark room. I don’t know why she burned them, but it coincided with them getting divorced and my stepfather moving in.

 For the rest of my childhood, no one in the family possessed a camera, so I have very few photographs of myself before art college. Family snaps are somehow celebratory of the good times so there was little motivation to record our lives. As soon as I could afford it, I bought a clunky Russian Zenith SLR….read more of what Grayson Perry and the other contributors say here

The Guardian has followed up this article with a space where mere mortals can share their most important pictures,

Photography – share your most precious photo

Share with us your most memorable photograph with a line to tell us what or who we are looking at and why the image is so special to you

You can do that here

Art Photography, Photography Arts, Grayson Perry, Mary McCartney, oxfordschoolofphotography.co.uk, Photograph, Photographer, photographersworkshop.co.uk, Photography

Renaissance Photography Competition 2012

Leave a comment Posted by oxfordschoolofphotography on June 16, 2012

I am really sorry not to have known about this before and to have failed to alert you to the exhibition at The Mall Galleries, London SW1 that closes today. If you are in London and have the time go and have a look, it is always so much better to see photographs as prints than viewed on a screen.

The Renaissance Photography Competition is in support of young women with breast cancer, a very worthy cause and one to give your time to. Set up in 2007 by Fiona Gifford, an amateur photographer who survived cancer after being diagnosed in 2006.

Many photography competitions in support of causes seem to attract rather dull images, nothing to shout about, that is definitely not the case with Renaissance. As soon as I saw some of the winning images I was struck but how intelligent and mature the art of photography was being used by the entrants. The website has all the winning entries for you to see and buy as prints and your love of photography would have to be a moribund husk not to find something that you would want to own.

Exhibition

100 photographs selected by judges Monica Allende, Michael Hoppen, Brigitte Lardinois, Mary McCartney and Brett Rogers will be exhibited in the Mall Galleries, Pall Mall, London.

The exhibition will be open to the public from 11 June to 16 June 2012 (admission free).

Photographs will be available for purchase.