This is a private blog site to support the Photography AS/A2 classes I run in Bournemouth - I use it to share ideas, research, useful (I hope!) material, and point out good photography stuff on the web.
When I can I will add other relevant content - exam materials, handouts, etc. If you can think of something that should be here feel free to let me know. Some pages may end up being password protected….
If you think you should have access to the site, please get in touch.
Richard
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Coming up… GCSE and AS/A2
Posted on February 21st, 2010 No comments
Nicholas Nixon's Brown Sisters - Woodstock, NY 1990
Nicholas Nixon has photographed his wife and her three sisters every year since 1975 – is that passion/obsession or rhythms/cycles?
http://blog.photoshelter.com/2008/08/nicholas-nixon-and-the-brown-sisters.html
Anyway – this week, please bring in workbooks for course work in whatever [hopefully quite close to finished] state they are in. We also need to decide which images you finally present as the finished prints for the coursework. It would be great to bring in all or some of your choices on memory stick so we can help you decide.
A lot of this will have to be 1:1, so suggest you bring in work to finish – either on photoshop, or research to do, stuff to write up, etc….
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Photography’s first footsteps: Points of View at the British Library
Posted on January 13th, 2010 No commentsMight be worth a trip… http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2010/jan/12/photography-british-library-points-of-view
Brian Duffy's photograph of Reggie Kray with his Grandfather, 1964.
And in case you missed it, http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pwsns/The_Man_Who_Shot_the_60s/ is a powerful review of Brian Duffy’s work – up there with Donovan and Bailey. As it says – strong language. You have been warned….
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Le jardin d’ébène
Posted on November 28th, 2009 No commentsLots of good photography blog sites out there – tripped over this one this morning when i should have been working… They are a good way of discovering photographers you might otherwise never have heard of through some more structured research. I found a reference to Francesca Woodman in another photographer’s work – Sara Ramo – which I found while i was on the Guardian site. Google did the rest.
Francesca Woodman
I wasn’t really up to speed with Jim Fiscus – this blog would make me go off and look him up.
Jim Fiscus
It’s all a bit dark – but that’s the idea… http://ebonygarden.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/francesca-woodman/
Bad ideas … a detail from Sara Ramo's Invasion of Everything That Was Restrained
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Paul Kenny
Posted on November 27th, 2009 No commentsOne of my favourite British B&W photographers – I found his work several years ago, then lost his name… found an article on him in a magazine this evening. Large Format, very old kit, great simplicity and dramatic printing.
Paul Kenny - sea stone no 7
See how long it takes you to articulate a connection between his work and the three themes – edge, chaos, and identity. Easy, isn’t it.
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A2, AS, Chaos, Edge, GCSE, Identity, Photographer, Theme Paul Kenny -
Martin Bogren
Posted on November 17th, 2009 No comments
Martin Bogren
Let’s see what you make of this – continuing the line of Scandinavian photographers… I would be interested to hear what you think makes up his style, and what might make up his working practice. What sort of camera do the image proportions of some of the series suggest? How does that fit with the movement?
The short essay ‘Ocean’ charts the first encounter with the sea of – hang on, let’s hear what the Guardian has written:
Martin Bogren’s Ocean (2008) is the photographic equivalent of a great short story: 16 black-and-white images of a group of Indian men frolicking in the sea. Bogren’s introduction tells you all you need to know. “There is no sea in Rajasthan. The journey from the inner [sic] of India took almost one day and a night. Thousand miles on lousy roads. The bus arrived an hour ago. A new day breaks over the Indian Ocean. It is the first time they touch the sea.”
The Guardian article is worth a look too – http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/nov/16/conceptual-photography-prizes
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Text Portraits
Posted on November 7th, 2009 No commentsRemember that newspaper advert last week? Don’t know who created that, but Ralph Ueltzhoeffer works in this arena – mixing portraits created by other photographers with biographical data on the subject drawn from the internet. Their life is writ large not just on their face but is their face… Their is a computer element to what he does too – a deliberate play upon the potential of the digital medium to go beyond the mere removal of the need to have a film processed.
Identity, anyone?
Ueltzhoeffer Ralph -Textportrait - Jenny Holzer
There is an English version of his website if you look hard.
Jenny Holzer, whose portrait this is, also works with text – projecting ‘truisms’ onto scenes and then photographing the result.
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Markus Amm -Photogramme meets Vortograph
Posted on November 6th, 2009 No commentsI was taken by Jeff’s comments on Alvin Langdon Coburn and his later Vortograph photos – I tried to work out how these had been done last year, and failed – so well done.
Then, in one of those serendipitous moments i really enjoy, this popped up today. Markus Amm isn’t creating anything like a Vortograph, but i think there is the sense of a parallel road being followed… See what you think.
Marcus Amm - Untitled, 1999
Don’t forget you can create photographic images without a camera, and digital photogrammes with a scanner.
PS – I found him from a mention in this article – you might look up the Wolfgang Tillmans ‘Mental Pictures’ too. They are better than you might expect…
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Paris, a city of pixels
Posted on November 2nd, 2009 No commentsStreet photography is a dying art compared with the 1940s and 50s when you couldn’t move in Paris, New York and London for snappers taking brilliantly spontaneous shots of everyday life. Michael Wolf has created what might be seen as either a joke about this, or a tombstone for the romance of city photography, or even – maybe – a new way of discovering the urban adventure….
Michael Wolf 2009
There is always another way, a new idea, a subversion of a technology…
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Little miss big shot: Fifties America exposed – by a French nanny…
Posted on November 1st, 2009 No commentsLike all headlines, this one is disingenuous – but it’s a great story. Maybe there’s always hope of your work being recognised one day…
‘In 2007, a Chicago estate agent stumbled across an astonishing visual archive of mid-century America. So began one man’s mission to rediscover Vivian Maier: nanny, eccentric and ‘photographer extraordinaire’ ‘ – or so it begins.
take a look at the story here – but do make sure you see the work here - some of it is really very good.
Now tell me why it’s good.
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DeCarava – photographer who recorded Harlem
Posted on October 29th, 2009 No comments
Dancers, uptown ‘club dance,’ New York, 1956/1981
Roy Rudolph DeCarava was born in New York City’s Harlem, on December 9, 1919. From 1938 to 1940 he studied painting at Cooper Union Institute, from 1940 to 1942 painting and printmaking with Elton Fax at the Harlem Art Center, and drawing and painting with Charles White at George Washington Carver Art School in 1944. He originally purchased a camera (in 1946) to document his work in printmaking, but by 1949 photography itself was his sole artistic focus. He went on to establish himself as a post-war street photographer of daily life, specifically African-American life in New York. DeCarava was not the first photographer to shoot Harlem, but his commitment to interpreting it in artistic terms sets him apart from the history of social documentary established there.
De Carava died last week.
We need to think about the role photography plays, has always played, in perpetuating stereotypes – maybe that’s all a photo can do… Anyway – here’s another chance to see things from a different perspective.
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Jane Bown – Portrait Photography
Posted on October 28th, 2009 No comments
“Jane Bown exposed: on photographing Beckett, Björk and the BeatlesThe Observer’s longest serving photojournalist and one of the UK’s pre-eminent portrait photographers, Jane Bown talks candidly about hanging out with the Fab Four and persuading Samuel Beckett to have his picture taken.
Her definitive collection can be seen in her new book, Exposures, and at an exhibition of her work at Kings Place in London until 21 November 2009. Then touring to University Gallery, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne from 8 January to 26 February 2010″
This is a delightful little video about Jane Bown that fits the idea of portrait perfectly – and if you are worried by the need for lights, most of her work is about using windows as a light source if you listen carefully. I’m delighted she’s still using an OM1 – my favourite little camera… actually, you need to see this just for the eyes of Beckett and Bacon.
And of course there is a huge resource of other photography -related videos – I’m typing this while watching Martin Parr – just given me an idea for a new project… so a useful resource.
While we’re at it canI add a final plug for the Purbeck Film Festival, which rumbles on to its grand gala finale on Saturday. That and Tarantino on this evening – what more could you ask?
I’m really looking forward to the Gustave le Gray work, and the portrait research next week…
I suppose a link would help – http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2009/oct/22/jane-bown-exposure-photography
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Jacques Henri Lartigue: The Boy Who Never Grew Up
Posted on October 25th, 2009 No comments
Bichonnade Leaping - Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Nick Danziger looks at the work of Jacques Henri Lartigue, one of the 20th century’s greatest photographers. Lartigue worked in virtual obscurity until 1962, when a chance meeting revealed his work to the world.
BBC 4 – 7.30pm this evening – just spotted it. I expect this is what iPlayer is for…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/lartigue.shtml
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Nadav Kander – Prix Prictet environmental photography award
Posted on October 24th, 2009 No comments“Sponsored by the Geneva private bank Pictet & Cie, the Prix Pictet is the world’s first prize dedicated to photography and sustainability. It has a unique mandate – to use the power of photography to communicate crucial messages to a global audience; and it has a unique goal – art of the highest order, applied to the immense social and environmental threats of the new millennium.”
These are also great examples of the photo essay – a small collection of images around a central theme or subject, reinforcing the core message. Nadav Kander is the 2009 winner, from an impressive shortlist which includes Andreas Gursky and Edward Burtynsky. His work on the changing face of the Yangtze river is part documentary, part landscape, all art. In fact it bridges these three so well we might discuss it in class, so worth having a look.
Kander’s website is a wealth of material too – I particularly like the Arctic Circle work – www.nadavkander.com
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Irving Penn, a giant of photography, dies at 92…
Posted on October 8th, 2009 No commentsPenn, who began as a fashion photographer, crossed the chasm that separated commercial and art photography. His works are considered icons… (read rest of report)
Much more than a fashion photographer, he shocked and annoyed the establishment by turning out equally immaculate prints of cigarette butts and rubbish from the late 60s onwards.
Marek has just sent me a link to another blog with a some better images – take a look at http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/10/irving-penn-fashion-photographer.html
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Peter Funch – Babel Tales
Posted on September 25th, 2009 No commentsHi Richard
just dropping by to forward a link i meant to send last week. (You’ve maybe already seen the content, but i thought it was an interesting idea..)
Peter Funch - Babel Tales - "Smoking Smokers"
Babel Tales : Surreal photography of Peter Funch
A Danish photographer, Peter Funch, who lives and works in New York City has created a photo series called “Babel Tales” which consists of pictures of people passing New York City street corners.
Every photo is an edit of several photo’s he took at exactly the same spot in a period of two weeks. He then Photoshopped the images he captured to create the Babel Tales…
Source: www.peterfunch.comTessRelated posts
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The work of Pascal J Sébah
Posted on September 23rd, 2009 No commentsPascal J Sébah (1823 – 1886) lived in Constantinople, Turkey possibly of French or Syrian origin. He owned El Chark (The Orient) , one of the largest and most prolific photographic studios in city.
Sébah achieved popularity because of his well-organised compositions, careful lighting and great attention to detail. He used the albumen print which was invented in 1850 by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard. It was the first viable means of making a print on a paper base from a negative. Egg albumen was used to bind the chemicals to the paper. Sébah used this to create “carte de visite” which proved very popular amongst wealthy travelers through Turkey and North Africa.
Sébah ran a very successful studio which he opened in 1857. He specialised in travelogue shots recording key scenes from the region including a good deal of portraiture of ethnic groups, local tradesmen, etc . The business was so successful that it was taken on by his son (confusingly J Pascal Sébah) to become official photographers of the Sultan on whose instructions an extensive collection of landscapes were taken from all over the Near East.
The picture below is Sébah’s rendering of the interior of the Mosque Amrou circa 1880. It is held in the The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Accession no PCD3149-2022-0252-94 and reproduced at http://www.si.umich.edu/History_of_Art/demoarea/details/1980_1.201.html.
I really love this on two counts. First it does much to bring history to life through its atmosphere. Whilst this is a bygone era it is as though you are standing there today. The glimpses of strong light from outside give a real impression of heat, glare and stillness. Secondly I love grand linear patterns in architecture which give real perspective.
Whilst capturing perspective ideas in architecture is something I’m already keen to do in my own photography I’m aware that it is this element of athmosphere that seems to be missing from my work. I need to be more aware about where light is coming from and the possible story it is telling.
Ian Finlay
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Willy Ronis
Posted on September 13th, 2009 No commentsFamous French photographer Willy Ronis made it to 99 – he died this weekend in Paris. Well worth looking up his work – many similarities with Robert Doisneau.
Willy Ronis - Le Petit Parisien, 1952
Willy Ronis - La peniche aux enfants, 1959
Images from www.hackelbury.co.uk, more at www.afterimagegallery.com
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Nick Brandt – Wildlife Photographer
Posted on September 12th, 2009 No commentsIf you’re wondering what relevance wildlife photography has to your fine art project, think again. It is an unforgiving genre that demands huge technical competence and the fleetest of reactions.
And just occasionally along comes a photographer who lifts the results out of the simple documenting of other species into something much, much more. Nick Brandt works in medium format black and white film, then retouches the scanned images in Photoshop. Websites don’t do the work justice because the technology cannot yet render the range of subtle tones on screen as well as a final print.
Giraffes In Evening Light, Maasai Mara, 2006 Picture: NICK BRANDT
I think this is one of my favourites – you can see a lot more at http://www.atlasgallery.com/atlas.php
Would you prefer to see these images in colour? you can read something of his working practice here.
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Rafal Milach
Posted on September 11th, 2009 No commentsFound this last night thanks to Google – I use iGoogle to constantly search for photography news items. I followed up original lead – http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS125883+10-Sep-2009+PRN20090910 – which isn’t very interesting, and found Polish photographer Rafal Milach’s own site at www.rafalmilach.com . Later you’ll be asking ‘How do I found out about contemporary photographers?’. Well – this works, amongst other more deliberate methods.
He works across Europe, with some very strong work from Eastern Europe and Russia. Easiest to think of his work as exploring as exploring social groups on the fringes of our expectations – an all women police unit in Poland, or illegal Vietnamese market traders, or the beach and fishing towns around Odessa. A range of approaches from grabbed night shots to wonderfully lit and composed [so go work out how he does this...] informal portraits – have a look at Olga, the Sevastapol waitress in the the ‘Black Sea of Concrete’ work.
It’s a Flash site, so I can’t link directly to images, but did find these elsewhere…
Komsomolsky district / Yelaterinburg - Rafal Milach
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SeeSaw online Photography Magazine
Posted on May 8th, 2009 No commentsSome good stuff here – http://seesawmagazine.com
There is a nice series by Andrew Bush on cars and their owners – works very well for the Sanctuary theme if anyone is still looking for ideas… lots of other stuff too. The magazine is run by Aaron Schuman who lectures at the Arts Institute.
Andrew Bush – Barbie
have a look too at http://www.photodebut.org/index.html
And finally – for those looking at caravans – http://www.mattburgess.co.uk/
Matt Burgess – Caravan
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