a language still in its infancy

A rather nice quote from a while back by the late Mr Leonard Freed:
"Photography is a visual language still in its infancy. Just as the poet adds meaning to words, so the photographer adds to visual symbols. But, whereas the other arts developed in time over centuries, photography has yet to mature and define itself. The fact that millions of people can see the same visual images on television, in films or photography is communication. It is a language. To be a poet-photographer is both saddening and challenging. Saddening to think that literary traditions are being lost to a language that is only in its infancy. Challenging in that one is free to be original...."
Photo by Bill Jay

Cry Wolf......

The Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award has had an interesting turn of events when judges it seem cried WOLF! ... Read more here....

Camera Club

JM Colbergs blog recently posted Chris Verene's work, which reminded me what an important photographer he is...
I became aware of his work simply through the fantastic books which Twin Palms publish...
I cant recommend highly enough looking at this book....
Anyway below is from his body of work Camera Club, it speaks for itself really but here also is an explanation from Verene's website....
"..In the mid-nineteen nineties, Chris Verene sought out photography clubs that advertise to aspiring models offering them a career in the modeling industry. These clubs have been in the US since the 1940’s—often seen as groups of male photographers huddled around swimsuit models in studios and on beach locations.

The project sought to document the photographers who join a club as way of access to women who would be willing to pose in lingerie, swimwear and nude. Verene joined these clubs in a number of American cities and surreptitiously made pictures of the men and their equipment while they were distracted by the models. Verene also conspired with a female friend who applied to the clubs as an aspiring model as a way of investigating the system that drives the organization. The two found that the clubs were never a real route to becoming a fashion model, and such promises were often offered in lieu of payment.

Verene’s “Camera Club” project is unstaged, and is a real document of how the clubs truly feel. It stands as a caution to young models—suggesting to all such people that they be careful who they trust with taking off thier clothes for pictures, and that they not always believe all the stories that such clubs tell..."

Stephen Gill: Haiti Appeal Print

Stephen Gill has produced an editioned print from his series Hackney Flowers whereby all proceeds will go to aid the people whose lives have been devastated by the earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12th...
From an edition of 100, 12"x10" print...
And great value at £40.00
More info here....

Dead Eagle Trail

Here are some examples from photographer Jane Hilton's work Dead Eagle Trail, which excitingly will be in book form early next year, and also will be exhibited in the gallery in its entirety in April 2010, so watch this space....

28 Stories...

28 Stories if the MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Graduate Degree Show at LCC, it opens next week, It runs from the 10th - 23rd December, and then the 4th to the 15th January 2010, and is sure to be well worth a look. More information can be found here...
The picture below is by Poulomi Basu from the series To Conquer Her Land...
Also on the 9th December David Campbell, Telegraph Picture editor Lucy Davies and Photographers Ed Kashi and Simon Norfolk will be discussing The New Ecology of Photojournalism from 6pm.
From the series Tsang's Odyssey by Lee Wing Ki

Glen Denny

Here are some examples of Californian photographer Glen Denny's 1960s work of pioneering mountaineers tackling the slopes of the Yosemite... A golden age of climbing...

Projected Landscapes

If you are in central London I have curated a small show at the Architects Association, its on till the end of December and features some great photographs... More info can be seen here..

I Saw You

Recently New Zealand Photographer Bruce Connew was over in London with lots of new work, and new books (all of which are well worth seeing. One of these little books is I Saw You, 2006-2007 and here is what Bruce says about the work….:
“For twelve months, from the top floor of home, veiled behind an apron of black velvet, through double-glazing and a long lens, I photographed the comings and goings of a car park, an ample piece of reclaimed Wellington land that juts out into a bay, a family beach to one side…”
“Surveillance is routine nowadays. It’s everywhere. We’ve come to expect it; we’ve even come to embrace it. It promises social order. It makes us feel safer. Its premise is creepy….”
“I peered in on people’s lives, sneaked up on their susceptibilities as they busied themselves mostly in ordinary ways, minding their own business and perhaps a little of yours, when they could reasonably expect no one to be watching — private moments in a public space. Then I took away some of their identity and shuffled them together. …” Bruce Connew

The Quest for the Man on the White Donkey

The Quest for the Man on the White Donkey is the title of a piece of work that photographer Yaakov Israel has been working on since 2002, the title refers to belief that in the Jewish tradition the Messiah will arrive riding a white donkey.... Below are just a few examples of the work and Yaakov in his own words...:
"A few years ago, as I was taking photographs near the Dead Sea a Palestinian man rode past me on his white donkey...
It is after having developed this plate that I’ve realize that I had encountered my “Messiah”; this meeting brought me to initiate the body of work that carries the name: “The quest for the man on the white donkey”...."
"The American tradition of the great photographic journeys served as a blueprint for the initial phase of the “quest”: with the definitive difference that in such a small Country the size of the territory in which my hunt was pursued would have shaped my proceedings. ...
What otherwise in the documentary photography genre spans over months of continuous traveling, was confronted with a territory in which no matter what destination I had chosen it would have brought me back home by midnight the latest...."
"Then, as I’ve found myself passing through same places over and over again, the personal identity of my project was revealed: I had to let go the idea of narrating the physical journey itself but rather concentrate on the intimate, emotional reactions to those places; how I was reacting to the occasional encounters with people and scenarios..."
"As my “Messenger” revealed himself, the search for a deeper understanding of my Country and what defines me as an Israeli became an urge to look for the in-between places, the non-usual; suddenly a detail requested my attention as I stood for hours waiting for a meaning to reveal itself: or pushed me away, puzzled. But in the end I had to hold to it. I cannot let go until that detail is made mine, until the allusive and enigmatic find their place in my understanding of what I deem as authentic, real....." Yaakov Israel
Click here to see Yaakov's website...

The unnapointed guardians of morailty

A great quote from the legendary John Morris:
"The Picture Editor is the voyeurs' voyeur, the person who sees what the photographers themselves have seen but in the bloodless realm of the contact sheet... and now pixels on the screen. Picture Editors find the representative picture, the image that will be seen by others perhaps around the world. they are unwitting (or witting, as the case may be) tastemakers, the unnapointed guardians of morality, the talent brokers, the accomplices to celebrity. Most important - or disturbing - they are the fixers of 'reality and of 'history'.".......
John G Morris

Dave Wyatt

Last Saturday during the Cultivate Reviews (Organized by the Rhubarb folk) held at LCC I was lucky enough to see the work of Dave Wyatt, Dave recently finished his MA at Dalian Medical University in Dalian, North East China. He showed me a couple of projects, the following images are from Captive, images from Dalian Forest Zoo..."Our relationship with the natural environment has always been a fragile one and this is best exemplified by our need to encage and exhibit animals in zoos. On the one hand, zoos offer a valid opportunity for education for the young to learn about the animals they cannot see and yet their future actions serve to protect....
"By seeing these animals in the flesh it helps people relate to the animals they hear about in the wild facing extinction unless they adapt their consumption...."
"On the other hand holding any animal captive, including the process of breeding them for captivity surely cannot be argued to be anything but morally corrupt...."
"The portraits of the animals of Dalian Forest Zoo presented in this project depict not only the physical and mental situation of the zoo’s inhabitants but also allude to how the Chinese people are embracing the rapid transformation of their country. Importantly the work also addresses my own feelings of isolation living in a country as foreign as China for someone of British origin. This isolation I felt on an individual level is very similar to how the Chinese as a population feel as a country that only within the past 30 years since the end of the cultural revolution is starting to find its own voice in the world..." Dave Wyatt

Thunderbolts Way

Excitingly David Gray's new book is available,again from the series The Dreams That Day Break and I should have copies in the gallery very soon, as usual they come with a 10"x8" print are are typical of David's Fictitious photographic story telling...

"Thunderbolts Way is both real and imagined. It straddles the last few
kilometres of the habitable interior of New South Wales, a place where soft
tarmac dives for cover under the hot tundra of red dust and parched grass.
Where global capital meets the Kelly gang legend, where Melbourne Cup
winners are bred and a gambler’s dreams begin...." David Gray

New Cliches in Photography

This is quite funny from the Manchester Photography Blog, read it all here...
My favorite has to be:
Cliche #2: Mounds and Heaps

Work in Progress: Caroline Molloy

Here are some examples of Caroline Molloy’s work in progress from India:
"Over a number of visits I have been researching and photographing traditional photographic studios in Kerela, which were once an integral part of the venacular language of studio photography, steeped in both tradition and a colonial history.
With the introduction of modern technology, they are now rapidly becoming remnants of a time gone by...."These static pictorial spaces, now more or less ornamental, were symbolic of an idealised ‘fantasy’ background and a preferred space to record the ‘inspirational’ portraits. My intention is for the spaces void of sitter to act as a portrait in their own right.."