Richard Renaldi - Touching Strangers

"The premise of this work is simple: I meet two or more people on the street who are strangers to each other, and to me. I ask them if they will pose for a photograph together with the stipulation that they must touch each other in some manner. " (taken from PetaPixel)

Richard Renaldi is another photographer that has twisted the traditional forms of portraiture, in his case by bringing strangers from the street together to pose in what seems an intimate portrait. Upon first glance we may try and decode the connection between the subjects, but after realising that the sitters have never actually met each other, i cant help but wonder about how they feel in that situation. To have a strangers arm around them, to be close and personal with them. The images for sure don't look awkward to me, what do you think?

Cheikh, Alloun, Gracy, Terry and Pape, New York, N.Y. 2007

Sonia, Zach, Raekwon, & Antonio Tampa, FL., 2011

Elizabeth and Brandon, Milford, Pa., 2010

The sentiment i love with these images is that Renaldi said "there is unlimited potential for new relationships with almost everybody passing by." So i think about what happened to these individuals after, did they maybe make friends with the people they posed with? will they remember them from the extraordinary moment? It makes me feel like i have a connection with everyone i walk past in the street, we are all the same and all on the same level, and these images by Richard Renaldi act as a humbling reminder!

http://www.renaldi.com/projects/#id=album-11&num=content-188

http://www.petapixel.com/2010/04/16/touching-strangers-by-richard-renaldi/

http://blog.renaldi.com/2012/02/touching-strangers-in-uk.html

http://lightbox.time.com/2011/10/04/strangers-touching-by-richard-renaldi/#1

NO DIVING by David Graham

"In 2003, my son, then aged 23, became paralysed in a diving accident. As a result I became a photographer and a book No Diving has been published. The book looks at how accidents happen and life thereafter."

It's just the way of life.. every body thinks 'well it wont happen to me' but whats different to the people these accidents do happen to, and to those that live scratch free? It really can happen to any one, and its moments like these that flip not only the victims world upside down, but every bodies around them. David Graham photographs the people who these accidents happen to, including his son Nicholas, and also the places where the accidents took place.

Whats striking about these images in the book is the juxtaposition between the sadness of the victim's scenario and the serene place where the incident took place.

Accompanying these images in the book are images of the hospital theatres and the situations these people have to go through and deal with in life now, because of that one moment. It's work like this that makes us stop and appreciate life, and makes us realise that too often we take things for granted. And for making me realise how lucky i am, i have a real respect for this work.

http://www.photograhams.com/Portfolio/Personal/No-Diving/1282509_ZM7g7B/1

Taryn Simon - A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters

I saw this work in the Tate Modern winter last year, and i stumbled across it again the other day when discussing with a friend photographers that we liked. And i have to say that since revisiting the work i feel a different connection with it. Originally in the gallery i feel i was overwhelmed, these large spaces, rooms that lead onto another room, with hundreds of portraits all composed in the same way and lined up in grids that explored heritage and consequence...

 But now when i think about the work, i think about the people more individually. Some portraits in the grids were left blank, and this was where a member of the bloodline was missing - and this depicts the consequence part of Taryn Simons work. Though we cannot control or have any decision on who is in our family by blood, we control the situations in life and have an effect on these things.

But it's not only human bloodlines that Taryn Simon has explored, she also looked at this collection of rabbits. "24 European rabbits introduced to Australia in 1859. Within one hundred years, the rabbit population grew to half a billion. We are looking at 108 rabbits, all destined for a premature death as the subjects of a test to determine the effectiveness of a virus used to control the explosive rabbit population. Some wide-eyed specimens look alert to their impending doom and others, innocently oblivious. Even the pragmatic observer, when faced with man’s control and mis-control of nature may feel their nose twitch. " (taken from Foto8) and this is one piece of the work that has stayed in my mind since seeing the exhibition because of the connection between nature and humans, the roles we play in the handling of lives, as if we are god.

http://www.foto8.com/new/online/reviews/1439-taryn-simon-a-living-man

http://tarynsimon.com/works_livingmanindex.php

Phil Anderson - Competitive Spaces

I first came across this work through Mint Magazine's website, and the first image i saw of the series caught me immediately, with out even knowing the background of it.

Phil Anderson wrote on his website about the set: "This series aims to explore the relationship that spaces have with its occupants. The locations that I have chosen are used solely for one purpose; to train, to compete. I wanted to explore spaces which were being used for something different to the original purpose and design of the space. I aimed to capture the small details, the evidence of how these spaces were being used. For this to be achieved It was best to photograph slowly using large format film, and exploring the spaces immediately after they were vacated by its occupants. The result is a set of images which attempts to reveal the unnoticed."

What i like about this work is the calm and peaceful tone the images seem to have, which contrasts with the intensity of the competition that takes place beforehand. Also the marks and objects that are left in the wake of the activities, the remainders and reminders of what this space is for, and this comes from capturing the space immediately after it has been vacated. I also like the idea of how the spaces were originally created for another purpose, yet society's needs have changed over the years and so this is often what happens to most buildings - it reminds me of David Spero's series of Churches and how those buildings range from things like garages that have been turned into churches!

http://www.mintmagazine.co.uk/art/photography-competitive-spaces-by-phil-anderson/

http://www.phil-anderson.com/index.php?/projects/competitive-spaces/

Show Studio - Selling Sex Exhibition

The exhibition as the title suggests, is all about sex - but the different thing with this show is that all of the pieces are exclusively from a females perspective. Immediately when we think of work on sex by women, ideas of feminism may come to mind, how women shouldn't be treated as objects nor deemed as sexual objects. Society debates over how women are sexualised, young women especially - in magazines they're forever seen in skimpy clothing - but this is not the way in which this exhibition works.. yes it is feminist - but it seems almost a celebration of sex from the female viewpoint. Some of the work feels as if to say 'hey women can do sex too!'

Installation view

UNA BURKE, RETREAT

SARAH LUCAS, PEPSI & COCKY 

Marianne Maric, Lamp Girls

Rebecca Wilson, Blow Me!

It's an empowering exhibition for women, and filled with delightful pieces of work. It challenges the views of gender roles and sex, and for me made me question why maybe it feels more acceptable in society for a male to create erotic work, and why when women create similar work they are seen in a different, tainted light.

I think its very fair to say that Laura Mulveys writings on the 'male gaze' and such are very connected with this work,  as they question the role difference between male and female when it comes to work like this.

http://showstudio.com/shop/exhibition/selling_sex#overview

selling_sex_receives_a_glowing_four_star_review_in_todays_independent

Apogee, Perigee - The supermoon!

An annual opportunity for great photographs of the moon took place on the 5th of May this year, when the moon is at its closest to the earth and is full (perigee - apogee is when it's furthest away). It's said that it is around 14% bigger and 30% brighter in appearance! However being stuck in Britain for this occasion means that our skies were cloudy and about to bring rain (what a surprise!) Although i caught a glimpse of it while i was eating dinner in the kitchen, the next time i looked it was behind the clouds and only the glow was visible! So for those of you who like me unfortunately didn't get to witness the sight, i found some pictures taken of the moon this night from around the world! (Thank god for photography!)

The moon appears behind statues of angels on the St. Isaak's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia on May 5, 2012. (Dmitry Lovetsky/Associated Press)

The moon rises over Vancouver on May 5, 2012. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press/Associated Press)

The supermoon appears above Phoenix, Arizona. Photograph: Darryl Webb/Reuters

Promoting my blog!

I linked a load of my blogs up on twitter including tweeting certain photographers and galleries i have written about, lets hope that brings up the page views :)

Katie Silvester - Photoshoot in Ikea.

When i first stumbled upon these pictures on my flickr i originally believed that they were real bedrooms until i clicked the thumbnail and saw the bigger picture. The red and white price labels dotted around the room suddenly came to the front of the image, and it was through this code of the font and label format that i immediately recognised it as Ikea - strange coming from something so simple. 

I really like how the work challenges the idea of what we call home. For me it outlines the difference between a house and a home. A house is space in which one lives - a general term. A home is a space that is ones own, that is their space and filled with not only the material possessions but their memories and life experiences. Here these spaces are set up to be like a home, and the people in them almost become part of the scenery - they seem to fit in. Yet the distant faces and sometimes awkward positions say otherwise. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/katiesilvester/

Graphic Design - Sagmeister Inc.

Obsessions Make My Life Worse and My Work Better - 2008

Made out of hundreds of pennys, carefully positioned on the ground according to the shiny-ness of the coin, this work fills me amazement and wonder as i connect with the words that speak so much truth. It makes me reflect on how i work at the moment, and also those around me on other degree courses. We as students become obsessed by what we do in order to get the results and satisfaction from the work we crave. We think about our work night and day, and physically make work so frequently that by the end of our project we've forgotten how little we've seen our friends and socialised, but boy do we have something to be proud of, especially when rewarded with a good grade!

Check out the video to see the work being created:

http://www.sagmeister.com/welcome

http://www.sagmeister.com/work/featured#/node/207

The Street Collection - Extended!

Get yourself over to The Street Collection website to grab yourself an affordable print in support of the PhotoVoice charity. With only a couple of days left it's for a great cause and the images are beautiful. Trust me, if i had £100 to spare i would be straight on that - but being a student means these funds are not available!

Shopping Trolley in the Lea River, Hackney (East End Ophelia), 2006 by Johanna Neurath

Shadows, 2009:07:11 by Maciej Dakowicz

Gare du Midi, Brussels, 2012 by Benoît Jourdai

The Dog (and The Cat) , Buenos Aires, 2011 by Ova Hamer

Click Images for link to page.

The PhotoVoice charity aims to encourage people who are disadvantaged or part of vulnerable communities to use photography as a medium of expression, to get there say and point of view out there. The experience becomes something positive in their lives and gives them a voice to be heard.

New iPhone app!

This article came up on my facebook news feed this morning, and though i dont own an iPhone i think it's still a brilliant idea and not something i have come accross before! The article states it has been 'developed for professional and serious amateur photographers' and while this is more than true i think it would be a great place for non-serious amateur's to get a taste for photography. Similar to the debate with the Instagram app i suppose in that people dont see it as valid photography work because they take a picture and stick a filter over it without being able to control any other element, but with this app you really can. But does it then become seen as invalid as it's images taken on an iPhone? Well look at the work of Thomas Demand which i have written about in a few posts below, they were taken with an iPhone, and i think they're great pieces of work!

People have become sceptical about photography and its ease of accessibility, which is not surprising as it's such a competitive field anyway, but i think its amazing that we have these new forms of communication through photography and can't wait to see what the reaction to this app is. It can be purchased in iTunes for iPhone 4 upwards for a small price of £1.99/$2.99 - enough to make me consider getting an iPhone myself! Or maybe i'll just borrow a friends...

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2171267/app-brings-lossless-developed-raw-images-iphone

Transmission: New Remote Earth Views by Dan Holdsworth at the Brancolini Grimaldi Gallery

For me, when i originally looked at this work online, i didn't get much of a kick and wondered what i would experience when i got to the Brancolini Grimaldi gallery in London, and in fact i was pleasantly surprised at how i responded to the work. 

The work is a series of images that is created digitally through the use of data surveys of certain terrains. They're not just any terrains, they are areas of Western America, that were once photographed by the likes of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, yet Holdsworth captures them in a completely different and technically updated way. Rather than beautiful landscapes caught on large format, we have these 'New Remote Earth Views' to gaze upon. These large grey prints that are accompanied by smaller prints of ground level views (they to me seemed like a back ground study piece, to show the smaller details) made much more of an impression on me than i had imagined.

There was certainly something about how the images were of a muted grey colour, which were surrounded by the vast white walls. For me this made it feel like a digital creation, and i think the colour is an important part as any element in this work. Should the colour be white, it would say something very different, like a connection to crumpled paper, or should the colour have been green, it would connote ideas of open fields for example.

Whether it was the way in which the images were created, or the link to older practices that have existed and captured by other great photographers i can't decide, but i really do like this work and think the new twist and 'Transmission' on the way we capture images now is something that will be pushed even more-so over the future years.

Yosemite, 2012.

Grand Canyon. 2012

http://www.brancolinigrimaldi.com/

http://www.brancolinigrimaldi.com/index.php?method=section&action=zoom&id=125&lng=1&forceID=b2ca328beda0e254726e952ef60aca6d

http://www.danholdsworth.com/

http://www.danholdsworth.com/transmission/

The Dailies by Thomas Demand at Sprüth Magers, London.

I took a trip to London with a group of people on my course and we went to see the Thomas Demand Exhibition at Sprüth Magers Gallery. The exhibition was called 'The Dailies', named after the raw footage that cameramen collect during filming, and the way in which Demand is showing us how the work is produced certainly has a feel of extra footage. 

The images are of paper model re-creations of real life objects and spaces, and at first when i went to the gallery i didn't know this, but upon looking at the work, i figured it out due to the subtle yet obvious clues that Demand leaves in the images. Things like the edges of paper and the grooves of the corrugated cardboard. What makes it feel like raw footage is the fact that these images are taken on an iPhone, which reminds me of the way people take things like location shots and images for a scrap/work book, however Demand's images become something special via the print process.

The process used is 'Dye Transfer' and while talking to the people at the gallery, one lady mentioned how Demand had basically used all the dye left in the world for this process, as the dye is no longer in production. The process gives more accurate and real colours and allows for more control of the colours in the image. It's this process, that gives the images the edge to make them what they are.

http://www.spruethmagers.com/exhibitions/304

http://www.thomasdemand.info/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/9208678/Thomas-Demand-The-Dailies-Spruth-Magers-review.html

ME

I suppose it would make sense for this to be at the beginning of my blog... but i'm one of those who doesn't like to talk about myself and so it makes sense to me that this wasn't my first post!

I started taking pictures around the age of 14, i bought my first SLR then and started photographing pretty much everything around me, as we all know this is how most photographers start out. I'd always be that friend in the group who would sit and take pictures of everyone else, i wanted to document these moments, they were and are my life.

From there i set up my Flickr account and felt proud at the response i would get to my images, friends of family started asking me to photograph for them and also for their businesses. My photographs of food are used on the Kinghams Restaurant website in Shere, where they serve amazing food may i add, and i feel proud to say that my work was almost published for a piece on them in The Sunday Times.

I studied photography for A-level at The College of Richard Collyer and received an A* and went on to study photography at foundation at UCA in Epsom and received a Merit. However, I use my flickr less frequently now, and only update it to keep my friends in knowledge of what i'm up to.

Currently studying at Southampton Solent University, and loving being surrounded by all things photography, i feel it's where i belong. Who wouldn't want to spend everyday of 3 years thinking, talking, writing and practicing something they love! For the future i'm considering a path in teaching photography, i feel passionately about sharing the knowledge i have learnt over the years, and i wish to immerse myself in that process, but who knows...

Right now i'm sitting in a digital suite, with 5 sheets of medium format film i've just processed and a smug smile on my face at how good they already look.... So for now it's time to head to the darkrooms and print, but who knows where i'll be in 5 years time....

Casey Dunn, Hoop Dreams.

Another piece of photography work i came across through twitter (it's becoming really rather useful actually) is the work of Casey Dunn. A set called 'Hoop Dreams' is a documentation of basketball hoops that have been left and abandoned, just like the chilhood dreams they represent.

Casey Dunn: "When I was 8 years old my dad came home with a fiber glass basketball goal and put it up in our backyard. After a couple of hours of grunting and swearing he tossed me a ball and said "shoot with your wrist" and walked inside. I spent hundreds of hours out there over the next ten years avoiding family functions and shooting hoops on that rim. I usually spent less time working on my game and more time daydreaming. Shooting hoops has always been my escape. As I started to travel a bit more, I started to notice more and more back yard goals that had fallen into disrepair the same way my childhood rim had. I loved the idea that some other kid had spent countless hours dreaming while shooting baskets the same way I did. This series is a collection of their basketball goals."

We've all had dreams when we were young kids about what we want to be when we grow up, and this set touches upon these 'goals'. Maybe they aren't so out of reach as we sometimes think, its just a case of dedication and persistence.

To me this work also makes a statement about the way the young generation are growing up in our society. When i was younger, i would have toys and games passed down to me from my siblings and cousins, and so i guess i'd expect that something permanent like these hoops would be passed down in the family and be in use by the children, yet maybe because society feels unsafe about letting their children play in the streets (for fear of attacks, kidnaps, bullying etc) they're sat inside infront of their video games? Maybe this work should make us question why this form of play is abandoned.

http://alexandsons.squarespace.com/

http://www.featureshoot.com/2012/01/photographs-of-abandoned-hoops-and-rims/

William A. Ewing, FACE The New Photographic Portrait.

I was recommended this book in relation to my current photography project based on representation and portraiture, and (in my short time of experience in the field) i haven't yet come across a photography book that i was so engrossed by. So much so, i bought myself a copy because i know that it will be so useful down the line.

Ewing dots the book with quotes by photographers, critics, theorists etc that are inspiring and thought provoking, as much as the work itself sometimes. The book itself promotes the question of what has a portrait become? How has it changed? And portraiture itself really has come a long way. From traditional full length, to head to waist length and just head and shoulders. And now these boundaries have been pushed, they're being taken even further step by step. People want to make new work that is contemporary and says something different. And to do this, work has to be made differently.

For example the work of Eva Lauterlein and her series 'chimères' (2002)

"Real, yes, but something tells us that these beings are not fully human. There is a disengaged, robotic quality to them. Yet Eva Lauterlein's subjects are real, and human - to a degree. Or rather to several degrees. Their faces and bodies are computer-aided reconstructions from photographs of real men and women she knows, with as many as forty different photographs employed. Lauterlein might well have gone on to create freaks, but in her eerie (re)creations she cleverly skirts the line between attraction and repulsion." William A. Ewing, FACE 2006

It's clear to see how contemporary photographers take a new approach to portraiture, new techiniques and technologies play a part in work such as Lauterlein's. Maybe we can only expect portraiture to become more ground breaking over the years!

http://www.evalauterlein.net/chimeres/index.html

Ewing, William A, FACE The New Photographic Portrait, Thames & Hudson, London. 2006

Jasper James, City Sillhouettes

I recently opened a twitter account, which was previously something i had said i would never do, but when someone mentioned how useful it was for contacts and seeing other peoples photography, i thought maybe it would be worth it, and it was! The amount of creativity i have seen just by following certain people and pages has amazed me.

For example the work of Jasper James, tweeted by Feature Shoot. A Set of portraits that are layered over city-scapes in the most beautiful way.  Subtle colours and tones that create a calm atmosphere but that makes me think and consider the work curiously.

What is the connection between these people and the city which they are blended with? Is it their home? Their future or past? Or is it a statement about society and its relationship to the city. The new world we live in. Our world has become hugely modernised and over-run with technology, and a lot of the buildings in these images represent that.

One final image that really held me from this set, was this one with the aeroplane. For me it has immediate connection with the 9/11 and i cant find out if this was the intention of Jasper James or not. But the sense of fragility from the image strikes something inside me. The fact that the plane is being controlled by something outside, a higher power if you like. The scale of the hand shows how it overpowers all that is within the frame and the reality of it something quite deep in comparison of how his other images affected me.

http://www.featureshoot.com/2012/01/new-city-silhouette-portraits-by-jasper-james/

http://www.jasperjames.co.uk/