You could do this…no really you could

I found this article on the BBC website about Richard Bevan who having moved to small town USA decided to photograph as many of the residents as he could.  As Phil Coomes says in his article

“Photographers love to travel but sometimes it pays to look at what is close at hand and document the community you live in. Richard Beaven has done just that, turning his lens on the residents of Ghent, about 120 miles north of New York.

Beaven has worked on the project for a year or so and in that time he has made 275 portraits, about 5% of the population of Ghent.

“The catalyst for the project was the town’s bicentennial in 2018 and creating an archive for it,” says Beaven.

©Richard Bevan

News of the project spread through the town, with one shoot leading to another and only a handful declining the opportunity to take part.”

©Richard Bevan

It reminded me of Martin Stott, a long time friend from the old days of the darkroom. He has recently rediscovered his photography by embracing digital and has been on a few courses with me. I always preach that finding a project is the way to make your photography important to you and to others. Martin lives on Divinity Road in East Oxford and has started a project to photograph everyone who lives on his street. If you know Divinity Road you will know this is no mean feat.

Back to Richard…Each portrait is accompanied by the subject’s name and the amount of time they had spent living or working in Ghent at the time of being photographed….”The portraits are of individuals. While I take care to select appropriate environments, I provide minimal direction in terms of clothing or what the subjects happen to be carrying at the time.”

©Richard Bevan

©Richard Bevan

So what is stopping you from doing this? You live somewhere, a street, a village, a block of flats, where you live is a place you can build a project around. For Richard the motivation was “The catalyst for the project was the town’s bicentennial in 2018 and creating an archive for it,”  

But for Martin it was as much about meeting the neighbours he didn’t know and to build a picture of where he lives,

“My aim with this project is to photograph everybody who lives on Divinity Road, Oxford, over about a two year period. I started in July 2018. This may be as individuals, couples, families or groups of people living in the same house such as students. Divinity Road is a long street and a diverse one. As a resident for over 31 years I still only know a relatively small proportion of the people who live on it. As well as making a photographic record this helps me to get to know more of my neighbours.”

Sources:

BBC

Richard Bevan

Martin Stott

 

 

Kim Leuenberger – photographer

The BBC website has an article on photographer Kim Leuenberger. Phil Coomes writes

Kim Leuenberger is covering the Goodwood Revival, which starts on Friday, where she will be photographing some of the most expensive cars ever produced, as well as capturing the nostalgia of motoring. Yet she is more used to shooting far smaller models – toy cars set in the landscape.

The series, called Travelling Cars, began more than four years ago when, having received a camera for her birthday, Leuenberger took some pictures of toys, including the blue van as seen above, for a project to raise awareness about autism that was running on image-sharing platform Instagram.

“When I posted on Instagram the feedback was so positive that I continued taking that blue van everywhere I travelled. Then with time, I bought more cars,” says Leuenberger .

You can read the full article here or better still visit Kim’s website and see more quirky pictures featuring toy cars and and landscapes.

Instagram: The ‘homeless’ chief executive

I have said in the past how I find the excuse of ‘art’ or worse ‘arty’ Instagram pictures pointless and irritating. The application of filters to a dull image does not make it art. However if it encourages people to take more pictures and to do that with purpose and seriously then I have to concede it is a positive thing. This story found on the BBC and written by Phil Coomes is interesting in that the protagonist uses his Instagram daily posts to ensure he gets out and looks.

Cillin Perera travels a lot. As the chief executive of a couple of companies, he is constantly moving from one place to another and, like many others, has turned to photography to record his journeys and keep in touch with family and friends.

He began taking pictures on his phone and rediscovered his love of photography, something he had not done since his days at Harvard in the late 1990s.

Soon he was using an iPod to shoot, with the results being uploaded to Instagram under the name @homelessCEO – his username reflecting his nomadic existence.

see the rest here

 

Ten photos capture the UK in 2014

From Phil Coomes at the BBC

As we reach the end of 2014, Milica Lamb, picture editor at the Press Association (PA), selects some of the best shots captured by the news agency’s photographers across the UK.

“PA produced close to a quarter of a million images in 2014, so, as always, being tasked with selecting an editor’s choice for the year has proved incredibly hard – there are just too many amazing images I have had to leave out,” says Lamb.

“This year proved to be an eventful year, and with the general election, Rugby World Cup and the appearance of a new royal baby to look forward to, I expect next year to be even more exciting.”

Here is Milica Lamb’s selection with comments from the photographers.

see the rest and explanation of the shots by the photographers here

Understanding a photograph…Picture power: Pausing the moment

So often people when viewing an image on screen or in a newspaper fail to understand that what they are looking at is an instant, a moment in time. Either side of that fraction of a second there could be a different scenario unfolding. It is the wonder of photography that we are all so adept at assimilating information from an image. But are we coming to false assumptions? This interesting article on the BBC website by Phil Coomes addresses this when considering images taken by Carl Court in London last week during a march by thousands of students protesting against education cuts, tuition fees and student debt.

But what was happening moments either side of when the frame was shot? What is going on just out of frame? Is this man alone, or with a group? And so on…

Here we have a young man about to strike at the window of a Starbucks coffee shop with a wooden stick, and inside two women are seemingly unaware of what is about to happen.

Initially that is it, and our reaction, or mine at least, is to wonder if the glass will break and when the women are going to look up and focus on what is happening outside……

Each of us will see something slightly different in a photograph and will interpret it in our own way.

This then brings into play the other key figure in a picture – you, the viewer. Your views and beliefs will affect the way you see a picture. Is this a justified moment of protest against a multinational company, just mindless hooliganism, or even a gesture in the heat of the moment?

So whatever the subject matter it does no harm to look at the forces at work behind images you see in the news, or indeed elsewhere. How was it taken? Where would the photographer have had to be and how did they get there? Who is publishing it? What of the people in the picture? How are they influencing an image? And lastly, are you giving the picture a chance or have you made up your mind about it already?…

images by Carl Court

Read the full article here

Remembering the work of Shirley Baker

I was at a talk recently where it was said that there no places for a discussion or reporting about serious photography. In some ways I agree, newspapers have yielded to the might of the blog but each of our major broadsheets still feature photography, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent , The Denver Post,  On the BBC website Phil Coomes writes so well and brings new work to our eyes. This week he has an article about Shirley Baker, a photographer I had never heard of before.

One of the leading photographers of the past century, Shirley Baker, sadly died towards the end of September. Here Tom Gillmor, of the Mary Evans Picture Library, who are guardians of her archive, pays tribute to her work.

Shirley first contacted Mary Evans Picture Library in early 2008. From looking through the first few printed pages she sent to me, featuring a mass of small contact photographs, I was immediately struck by a body of work of terrific quality and amazing potential. Shirley’s work in Salford and Manchester (shot mainly between 1960 and 1973) captured a time of rapid social and economic change in the lives of working class people in Manchester and Salford.

Read all of the article here

Is Photography Art?

That old chestnut, what do you think? Fortunately you don’t have to spend too much time on it as it is a questions addressed in an article on the BBC website

Is photography art? Today the answer is simple, indeed photography is more popular than ever and arguably the visual art of choice for the masses, but half a century ago the debate still raged.

In a new book, Photography Today, writer, artist and lecturer Mark Durden analyses more than 500 works by 150 artists from the past 50 years, exploring the impact of various genres, from pop art to documentary.

Here Durden offers his insight on ten important photographic works from the book. There is an investigation into 10 photographers which you might like to look at and read the justifications for this being art…go here for the full article

Here are images by some of the photographers discussed,

Audience 1 Florence, 2004 by Thomas Struth

The Museum Director, 1998 by Erwin Wurm

L’eau, 2007 by Saidou Dicko

Lament of the Images (detail), 2002 by Alfredo Jaar

Dining Room (Francis Place) (II), 1997 by Sarah Jones

 

Yes I agree….. read the justifications here

After The Apology – Photographer Aletheia Casey

Phil Coomes, picture editor, on the BBC usually has excellent article and this about Australian photographer Aletheia Casey is another.

Photographer Aletheia Casey recently returned to Australia after living abroad for five years and began work on a project looking at the process of reconciliation and apology to indigenous Australians. To mark National Sorry Day in Australia, Casey writes about the work.

Shortly before I left Australia in 2008, the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology to the First Peoples of Australia and recognised the ongoing trauma and dislocation that the colonisation of Australia has had on the Indigenous Peoples of this land. He also made a specific formal apology for the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their homes which occurred from the 1920s until well into the 1970s in Australia.

I was struck by what an important statement it had been for the government of Australia to recognise the trauma that it had directly inflicted in the past. I did wonder, however, was it, as many people felt, simply an acknowledgment of ‘White Guilt’? And did this Apology have long-term healing effects on the people who had been directly affected by the laws of the past?

Photographer Aletheia Casey recently returned to Australia after living abroad for five years and began work on a project looking at the process of reconciliation and apology to indigenous Australians. To mark National Sorry Day in Australia, Casey writes about the work.

Shortly before I left Australia in 2008, the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology to the First Peoples of Australia and recognised the ongoing trauma and dislocation that the colonisation of Australia has had on the Indigenous Peoples of this land. He also made a specific formal apology for the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their homes which occurred from the 1920s until well into the 1970s in Australia.

I was struck by what an important statement it had been for the government of Australia to recognise the trauma that it had directly inflicted in the past. I did wonder, however, was it, as many people felt, simply an acknowledgment of ‘White Guilt’? And did this Apology have long-term healing effects on the people who had been directly affected by the laws of the past?

Kim Hill

Eliza Pross

Jenny Moylan Coombes

Jasmine Haby-Atkinson

Caroline Glass-Pattison

I would recommend you go to Aletheia’s website here and see more of her work

Phil Coomes

 

Britain’s piers in focus by Simon Roberts

Phil Coomes writes on the BBC website about photographer Simon Roberts and his series of photographs of British piers

Southwold Pier, Suffolk, June 2012

Brighton West Pier, East Sussex, April 2011 (Lost Pier)

 

 

Britain’s obsession with the coast is an understandable one given its geography and naval history, yet the coast also played an important part in the country’s social history.

It was here that millions of workers first enjoyed time away from the tough working conditions of Victorian towns, and any self-respecting resort would require one key ingredient, a pier. Their popularity lasted well into the middle of the last century, but since then, many have struggled to survive the changing holiday habits of the nation, and in some cases natural disasters.

Yet in some way these structures jutting out into the ocean reflect the nation’s one-time desire to spread its influence, for good or ill, around the globe. Today those that still stand have mixed fortunes, with some like Ryde Pier reborn and others still seeking regeneration.

“These pictures may encompass some of the seaside things we know best through such photographers as Tom Wood or Martin Parr, but they put those scenes in a broad context where people live in a landscape and a country, not just a car park. They also derive something from that quite different tradition, of the wild skies and unquenchable nature that we find in Turner. ” Francis Hodgson, 2013

Photographer Simon Roberts has spent the past three years creating a comprehensive survey of Britain’s piers, depicting all 58 surviving pleasure piers along with a handful of those lost in photographs marking where a pier once stood.

Read and see more pictures more here

Related articles

• Britain’s piers in focus (bbc.co.uk)
• Piers of the realm (ft.com)

Press Photographer of the Year Awards

Phil Coomes on the BBC website has a feature on the Press Photographer of The Year Awards

Press photographers are a talented bunch. Day in, day out they give life to photographs that capture the world around us. From the front lines to the backstreets, from breaking news to sport, they are charged with making a captivating picture from a wide variety of situations, all usually against a tight deadline.

The Press Photographer’s Year competition is run in association with the British Press Photographers’ Association (BPPA). Now in its seventh year, it sets out to “demonstrate that even in an age of rolling television news, internet and satellite communication, the traditional still image burns the keenest, fastest impression on the public conscience and is the most effective way to show the world the world as it really is”. I can agree with that…...MORE

Here are just a few images to whet your appetite

David Levene’s picture of U2’s Bono for the Guardian was awarded first place in the Arts category.

Laura Collett jumping Stonehenge on Natterjack at the Barbury International Horse Trials in Marlborough by Andy Hooper took first place in the Sports Feature category.

 

While covering the conflict in Syria, Rick Findler photographed a group of members of the Free Syrian Army launching concrete blocks into a compound housing President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Aleppo.

 

Andrew McConnell’s pictures from Gaza were awarded first prize in the Photo Essay section.

See the rest of the winners here

 

Related articles

• The Press Photographer’s Year (bbc.co.uk)
• Times photographer Jack Hill wins Press Photography Award for news images (thetimes.co.uk)
• The Press Photographer’s Year (thelizardinlondon.wordpress.com)