New Publications Update

I've been extremely busy recently, working on some new ideas (which I'll update in some forthcoming posts), but most importantly, I've been finalising some images in preparation for 2 new publications. The first, entitled Dog Days Greece, is a metaphorical tale of where Greece has found itself economically. The images depict a journey through Greece that I undertook last year, but viewed through the eyes of stray dogs, alone and wandering, without the surety of a solid future or comfort.




The second project is called One For The Album, and ties together images taken from various parts of the world depicting people living their experiences through the back of a camera. With a 'nod' to Martin Parr's Small World it shows how we live in an image saturated world, with images rarely taken with artistic thought or composition, but merely to show that they 'were there'.




I hope to publish them through the online publisher Blurb as a 'Have Photography' limited-edition publication in the very near future.

V&A Photographs Gallery

Visiting the V&A's Photographs Gallery this passing weekend was an immense indulgence; like walking through a Who's Who of the photographic world. It is well worth a visit, and considering the vast archives that the V&A have and the fact that the gallery will be regularly changed, it is a visit that can be made time and again. From the daguerreotype images of Andrew Pritchard (Antoine-Francois-Jean Claudet for example), through the exquisite cyanotypes of Anna Atkins (British and Foreign Flowering Plans and Ferns) to the classic documentary of Henri Cartier-Bresson (in particular one of my all-time favourite images Allee du Prado, Marseilles), this was a photographic feast.

Photograph

Photograph - Title page of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns

Henri Cartier-Bresson. Allée du Prado, Marseille. 1932

I especially loved Harry Callahan's imagery depicting his family as 'points of interest' within a wider landscape, which reminded me of a project that I've been working on called Personal Space, and also the 'tourist' imagery of Francis Frith.


Francis Frith. Site of Petra, The Rock City of Edom (#549). c. 1860

It was also a great pleasure to discover some photography that I hadn't seen before, including the works of Marianne Breslauer and El Lissitzky.



All in all, they gave me confidence in my own practise and (especially with my affinity with Callahan's work) a certain historical context for my own ideas.

Ed Burtynsky Exhibition

This weekend I took the opportunity to visit the newly-opened Photographers' Gallery in London (which I have been aching to visit - to get a good 'photography fix' - since it closed last year) and wasn't disappointed. The gallery is superb; much more spacious than the cramped building it had been 'shoe-horned' into after moving from its previous location near Leicester Square (although I must admit to having an affection for the old venue, if nothing more than my own nostalgia). The bookshop (my favourite place in the world) is bright and airy, and the print-sales area is now much more accessible alongside the bookshop (although you would still need a small mortgage to afford the prints on sale).

Importantly, the Burtynsky exhibition, which the gallery had chosen for its reopening, was truly monumental and rather apt for the occasion.





It's difficult to describe how wonderful these images are in print - to view them in a large scale and as a 'whole' within the gallery setting was both pleasurable and (importantly) educational; especially in the guidance that Burtynsky has offered through his thought process (covering oil's Extraction, Detroit, Transportation and End-of-Oil categories). My favourite image (which was extremely difficult to choose amongst so many outstanding images) was a portrait of a shipbreaker titled 'Shipbreaking 23 (Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000)', the composition of which is exceptional. Altogether, an inspirational visit.