Paul Kenny

One 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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Edge – Sophie Rickett

Suddenly remembered this from last year – can’t remember why we were looking – but  Sophie Rickett’s work is all about exploring things at the edge of light and dark.

http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/sophie_rickett/

Do keep me in touch with your ideas and preparatory work – I’m happy to give feedback by email in between lessons. Working on using Flickr as an easy way to have images to look at in class and get peer feedback – watch this space.

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Chaos/Edge

Anyone out there doing something with rain patterns?  Just looking out the window at the squalls coming across Swanage Bay (OK, I have to squint between the buildings on the other side of the road, but the Isle of Wight is there some days…), and if you’re up for braving the weather, and take care to keep camera dry (thick bin liners are good), then there is much work to be done.  Lens hoods help keep rain drops off the lens too. really important – it’s very hard to clone drop marks off an image – just easier to keep lesn cap in hand and shut up lens in between shots.  that and keeping lens pointed down is good.

This would be a chance to practice with some Harold Edgerton high speed flash stuff – something Ross seems to have mastered, if you want to know how to do it.  Er – flash and water.  How can I put this…?  Keep everything very very dry – lots of volt things flying around in an electric flash. Maybe look for a puddle just by the door….

Patterns made and broken, colours and form distorted through vertical water on glass.  There is a part of Swanage beach where – if the swell is just swell – we get a cruciform wave, as two waves at right angles run through each other.  Ok – that’s not chaos, but just before or after?

Maybe waves have an identity too.  Wave forms underlay the identity of all energy and matter in the universe, apparently.

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Responding to a Theme

This website is quite fun – www.visualthesaurus.com – it creates a sort of mind map from a thesaurus.  You could try this sort of thing yourselves – visual is good for photographers?

Was wondering this morning – might ‘Edge’ imply a contrast between two things? Light:Dark, Life:Death, In:Out?

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Text Portraits

Remember 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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Rhythm

Just a few images from this morning that work with our short discussion around Rhythm as a possible theme last night…

Gazillions of starlings by Fi and He

Scenes from North Korea by Eric Lafforgue

Mars - from Orbiter

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Photography and the Law

Some recent stories to get you thinking…  I would be really interested to hear your views on these – remember you can add your own comments once you have logged in.  Why is it worth thinking about these things?  Remember the bits in the marking schedule that ask you to demonstrate awareness of artists’ concerns?  Photography’s freedom of action in this country might be considered under attack at the present.  There are arguments on both sides to take into account.  Does any of this have a possible link to Sanctuary?
‘Foolish’ photography condemned…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6069995.ece
Photography crackdown on London Underground…
http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/Photography_crackdown_on_London_Underground_news_280480.html
When can papers you’re carrying be snapped?…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7991754.stm
Question one: Stop and search..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/jan/19/stop-and-search-civil-liberties-law
Photographing America’s war dead…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/feb/27/obama-dover-coffins-photographs-iraq

and in a different vein, I caught this on radio 4 yesterday morning.  I’m including it here for you to ponder becasue the mother of one of the victims in effect said the work was fine until the identity of the artist was known – it’s this larger question i would like you to ponder. To what extent is the identity of the artist important in our response to a work?
Anger over child killer’s artwork…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/7992941.stm

Complicated, isn’t it?

[important to add this one - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/11/public-camera-video-technology]

Just to cheer ourselves up, here’s the time lapse image I mentioned yesterday.

The annual Mount Ogiyama No-Yaki fire festival in Beppu, a city in Kyushu, southern Japan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/inpictures

And finally one for Chris – a new twist on the Robert Capa ‘Falling Soldier’ image story…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/27/photography.pressandpublishing

Have a good Easter!

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Night Time Photography

I have long been enthused by the idea of photography with the minimum of available light.  It’s not just the challenge of the technical, but how the slow pass of street and star light add something surreal to the everyday.

there are others, and possibly better, to explore, but these are intriguing: http://library.duke.edu/exhibits/nightvision/index.html

Lynn Saville has some colour work on her website – http://www.lynnsaville.com/index.html

Let me know if you want to have a go at this [pretty easy to fit into 'disintegration'?] – i have some other reference material that might be more useful, if i can find it…

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