Recent Articles
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Monday, January 25, 2016
Monday, January 25, 2016
- 0 Comments
My article on Map of Displacement at the British Journal of Photography:
To Western eyes, Iraq is a nightmarish hurricane of blood, bullets and bombs. We see it through the lens of a news media that still uses the motto “if it bleeds, it leads”. Editors salivate at shots of mutilated corpses, masked men committing horrific acts of violence and apocalyptic threats about the end of civilisation.
Yet amidst this carnage there’s a story going untold, one that could have broader consequences on the world than these acts of violence. It’s a tale of mass population displacement, of how conflict percolates into everyday life, of the consequences and reverberations beyond the news headlines.Full article at BJP-Online here.
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Thursday, December 24, 2015
- 0 Comments
"I like melancholy because it's a choice. It's not like depression. You can choose to be melancholy" says David George, whose new book, Hackney by Night, is a guided tour of a dreaming city.
From the hulking corpses of industry to serenely flowing canals to verdant parks, David George’s Hackney By Night captures a timeless, abandoned and eerie urban landscape, unfamiliar even to long-term residents. His photographs are accompanied by a short story by Karen Falconer: cryptic fragments of text that add equal doses of context and mystery."
Monday, October 19, 2015
Monday, October 19, 2015
- 0 Comments
"“Disgusting”. “Perverted.” “The British Judiciary should hold him accountable for what he’s doing.”
These are just a handful of reactions to Dougie Wallace’s new body of work: Harrodsburg.
Lauded for his documenting of the puke-tinged hedonism of Blackpool in Stags, Hens & Bunnies, the “total fucking chaos” of Shoreditch Wild Life and the Bombay cab driver portraits Road Wallah, Harrodsburg finds Wallace on the hunt for richer prey.
For Harrodsburg, Wallace prowled the pavements of London’s richest post-codes, flash and camera primed, waiting for a suitable subject. When he spots one, he approaches, snaps a quick close-up and is gone before they’ve had time to process what’s happened."
Friday, October 9, 2015
Friday, October 9, 2015
- 0 Comments
“Everyone can take great pictures,” Alec Soth tells BJP at the opening of his first UK exhibition, Gathered Leaves, at London’s Science Museum. “What’s hard is taking a collection of great pictures and making them work together. It’s like language: everyone can speak but putting the words together is the real challenge.”
Gathered Leaves meets that challenge head on. This is his new exhibition in London’s Science Museum, displaying a comprehensive set of pictures from a photographer widely considered the greatest contemporary explorer of the American psyche. Derived from his four books Sleeping by the Mississippi, Niagara, Broken Manual and Songbook, the work combines portraiture, landscapes and interiors, presented with a smattering of inspirational material. Though the subject matter ranges from portentous wide shots of waterfalls to bearded men clutching model planes to naked Neo-Nazi hermits it’s easy to deduce Soth’s common thread: we’re witnessing the less-travelled America."
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
- 0 Comments
My interview with renowned German fashion photographer Werner Pawlok for the British Journal of Photography:
"Werner Pawlok’s Cuba is curiously melancholy. Though his interiors pop with primary colours, golden sunlight and the scuffmarks of generations, they’re all infused with gentle sadness.Click here for the full article at BJP-Online.
Life in Cuba is changing: as the country’s relationship with the United States begins to normalise, decades of economic restrictions are beginning to ease. Now Pawlok, who’s been photographing the country since 2004, has returned for a new series of photographs exclusively for LUMAS gallery, Mayfair, London, in advance of the exhibition Viva Cuba!, opening this September."
Monday, April 21, 2014
Monday, April 21, 2014
- 0 Comments
Looking for Light is a confident and modest documentary structured with intelligence and close attention to detail. This buttoned-down precision matches the temperament of its subject: legendary Observer photographer Jane Bown. Bown, responsible for photographing the luminaries interviewed in the Sunday paper, appears to have shot every major personality of the last 60 or so years. From Winston Churchill, Aneurin Bevan and Elizabeth II to Björk, Jarvis Cocker and er, David Gray.
Born in 1925, the 2013 Jane Bown embodies some platonic Grannyesque ideal. She lives in a comfy house in the English countryside, replete with slightly faded black and white framed photos, china geegaws and a friendly cat. You almost smell the milky tea and taste the custard cream biscuits. She's an enigmatic woman, given to smiling at private jokes and staring off into the distance while making gnomic statements, the significance of which is obvious to her alone.
A decent slice of the documentary is devoted to unravelling the whys and hows of Jane Bown, trying to decode her personality from her personal history. At work she's quiet and unassuming, reporters tell us of her flitting around them as they conduct an interview, shooting pictures with cool, confident professionalism. Bown repeatedly explains that The Observer newspaper office was and somehow always will be her true home. She's apparently speaking literally, describing washing and drying her hair in the dark room. Even though The Observer has now moved to King's Cross she still spends time hanging out in the lobby, chatting to a steady stream of her former colleagues, all of whom are delighted to see her and happily stop to have a natter.
 |
| Bjork by Jane Bown |
Refreshingly (considering some recent art documentaries) Bown's work is presented beautifully and treated with the gravitas it deserves. It's a testament to her aesthetic skills that by far the best portions of the film are silent slideshows of her black and white portraits. This is brilliant minimalist cinema, the directors confident enough to let Bown's work stand alone without distracting commentary or even much context. As we lock stares with the leading lights of the 20th century, we sense that these portraits captures some essence of their being. Possibly this is us projecting what we'd like to see onto the subjects, yet there's a gleam in the eyes and a kind of statuesque permanence in the greys and deep blacks surrounding them.
The best is an astonishing portrait of a grumpy Samuel Beckett, snapped in a hurry outside a stage door. With a face like a beaten up leather glove, wiry hair and deep eyes he looks hewn from steel – simultaneously sad, confident and perceptive. I get a bit peeved at 'artist' photographers; an Instagram feed of squirrels in parks and boho junk shops tinted sepia does not an artist make. Yet confronted with this body of work it's impossible to deny that Bown has some unique combination of technical ability, aesthetic instinct and perfect timing that allows her to clearly capture the essence of her subject.
 |
| Samuel Beckett by Jane Bown |
This documentary aims for the same clarity, conducting a photographic archaeological excavation into Bown's past. This is where the film comes a little unstuck. Bown's childhood and ancestry is mildly diverting stuff, and her being shuttled from family to family as a child certainly impacted upon her adult personality – yet a touch too much time is devoted to it. There are moments where we're poring through boxes of dog-eared faded photographs of the long-dead when you feel as if you're trapped with an much-loved, yet slightly boring great aunt. It's a pity, Bown is by far at her most interesting when she's engaged in discussions of her work rather than her roots and the director's insistence on dwelling on gravestones and family trees feels a touch heavyhanded – forcing her into the role of a 'granny' rather than 'artist'.
Similarly slightly disappointing are the interviews with Bown's colleagues and friends. Bown admittedly seems like a lovely person to know and work with, yet the constant singing of her praises means that we all too often stray into the realm of hagiography rather than actual analysis of what her work and life add up to. There's also a somewhat odd out-of-place interview with Richard Ashcroft, who appears to have no connection to Bown other than being photographed by her once – he subsequently claims that they “fell in love” during the session, a claim that sounds a touch bizarre.
This the strength of the material shines through – how could it not? Though things are a bit padded at times, this is a film that knows its strengths lie in Bown's amazing black and white photography. When this is front and centre the film approaches the sublime, allowing us to drift silently in a sea of texture, shadow and gradients. Watching this in a cinema the size of the pictures only adds to their impact, trumping flicking through them in a book or online any day.
But in actually understanding the whos and whys of Mary Bown the film comes up short. By the time the credits roll we know about her childhood and her photographic commandments – but as a person she remains mysterious and opaque. In the end it's the newspaper she worked for that came to define her identity; she's not a participant so much as a quiet, attentive and artful 'observer' – no wonder she's such a such a successful photographer.
★★★
Looking for Light: Jane Bown is released April 25th
Monday, January 13, 2014
Monday, January 13, 2014
- 0 Comments
A nondescript van snakes through the lanes and squares of Anywhere, France. A man climbs out and painstakingly erects a tripod, upon which he perches an enormous obsolete camera. He waits, gazing at a tobacconist or a cafe until the street clears of people, then when the moment is absolutely perfect takes a photograph, gets back into his van and drives off. This man is Raymond Depardon, one of France's most highly regarded photojournalists: veteran of warzones, revolutions, friend to armed rebels and pioneering documentary film-maker.
Journal De France is less a documentary and more of a recap of Depardon's 'greatest hits', the bulk of the film composed of footage from his vast archive showcasing his travels around the world. Our guide through this man's life is his longtime companion and sound engineer Claudine Nougaret, who tasked herself with rummaging through hours and hours of dusty old footage in an attempt to showcase the work of a passionate and technically precise capturer of the world around him.
Depardon's past and present initially seem totally disconnected. His early work is soundtracked by the faint crackle of gunfire off in the distance as he films wars, revolutions and guerilla fighting, his technique creating a visceral 'there'-ness that's the mark of successful journalism. This footage is characterised by the hum of crowd as they surge around the camera, their eyes flicking to the camera lens in a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. Often Depardon's eye is captured by someone in particular (usually a pretty woman). He frames her within the picture, tracking her through the crowd until she's once again lost to anonymity.
 |
| One of Depardon's photos of contemporary France |
The young Depardon's fascination with vast seas of strangers bustling through the world makes an interesting contrast with his present work. While still photographing urban landscapes, he now waits and waits for the streets to be totally devoid of life, the pastel shades of the buildings and the cobbles of the winding streets looking austere and sterile under the precisely set up lens of his camera. This question of what changed Depardon's focus is never directly asked, yet it's always hanging gently over the film.
Though Depardon is most assuredly alive, there's a funereal quality throughout. Depardon always seems to photograph under fading light, or his interviews taking place to a sunset, creating a sensation that this journey is a wrapping up of loose ends. There's a vagueness to his quest, a journey with no urgency, no particular direction and no visible end-point. Happy to sleep overnight in his van, he continually works with a calm stoicism, the only faint glimmer of emotion we see is a craftsman's pride in doing a good job.
This all adds up to a rather numbly atmosphere, the real spice in the film coming from the astonishing footage shot during his travels around the world. Most eye-catching among these are images from Chad of AK-47 toting rebels silently staring at vast shimmering sands. Similarly hypnotic is footage taken in the Central African Republic chronicling the rise to power of dictator Jean-Bédel Bokassa, his coronation a whirl of flags, cheering and happy faces, all tinged with foreboding as we know about the murderous kleptocracy to come.
The most gripping the film gets is during Depardon's visit to Biafra. He interviews French Mercenaries; men who behave like true dogs of war, explaining that their bloody talents are always needed somewhere in the world, guffawing about how much they're being paid and praising the eroticism of the Biafran women. Chillingly, we next cut to footage of one the mercenary's bodies being dragged through the mud by the Biafran men, his jacket, money and equipment plucked from his corpse and his body apparently unceremoniously dumped for the jungle to reclaim.
These sequences are extremely disturbing and for precisely that reason they're the most interesting part of the film. Attention begins to waver a little as Depardon's focus shifts from the warzone to the mechanics of bureaucracy, examining French political, health and systems. These interviews seek to pinpoint the spot at which the dispassionate state interacts with ragged human emotion: footage of a woman apparently being sectioned for mental health problems, or a man caught without a license given a dressing down by a judge. Whereas the earlier footage worked as snapshots of Depardon's work this later material feels a bit disconnected. It's great, but stripped of its wider context it's difficult to ascribe meaning to it beyond "ooh, isn't this a pity".
By the time the credits roll it's difficult to say what Journal De France is all about. The endpoint of Depardon's career appears to be a quest for the perfect still image, which turns out to be depopulated urban landscapes lying under overcast skies. This conclusion appears to be borne of a philosophy that understands photography, film and journalism as strands of the same visual discipline, arguing that anyone seeking to accurately capture the world must avoid editing and shooting to further your own perspective, the ultimate goal being the viewer assembling their own subjective 'truth' from your footage, a technique Depardon refers to as "camera stylo". Perhaps it's this underlying philosophy - making the man wielding the camera invisible - that explains why Journal De France is so opaque, nudging us towards our own arguments rather than engaging in hectoring didacticism.
It's difficult not to recommend Journal De France. This film is stuffed to the gills with beautiful Kodachrome photography, moves along at a brisk pace and is suffused with an earthy and modest humanism. There are some stunning visuals on this round-the-world trip and by the final sequences you even find yourself seduced by the austerity of Depardon's current obsession to catalogue the unglamourous towns of France. But it's frustratingly ironic that, in a film so dominated by virtuoso examples of photographic technique, the end result should be so unfocussed.
★★★
Journal De France is on limited release from 31 January 2014
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
- 0 Comments
Clare Kenny's new exhibition at VITRINE is the art equivalent of a chameleon - blending seamlessly into to its surroundings. VITRINE is perfectly normal as far as galleries go - a big white room with a wooden floor - but even within this intentionally blank space, Kenny's work is minimalist and modest, almost shrinking backwards into the walls and corners. Now, art is under no obligation to call attention to itself with bold gestures, something cowering in a the corner of a room can be just as packed full of symbolism as whatever they chuck on top of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
Still, you quickly realise that you're going to have to do quite a bit of legwork to get something out of this. The press release helps: explaining some of the ambitions: "using photographic imagery as a means of navigation or a strategy to inform a three-dimensional piece" and that it "allows for the broader exploration of the decoy and draws from our routine efforts to screen a feebler truth with a fabricated reality". In practice this means chopped and screwed objects , things removed from their usual context and placed in new surroundings.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Saturday, October 5, 2013
- 0 Comments
.jpg)
Freaky post-humanism always appeals to me. From Cronenbergs "new flesh" to Giger's biomechanics to artcyborg Stelarc's self modification - throw technology and flesh into a cultural blender and what emerges is both pregnant with meaning and looks cool as hell. These combinations of human and machine usually tend towards horror: the subject often disgusted and alienated by the sanctity of the body being violated. While I guess this is understandable I've always been enthusiastic about these possibilities. Would becoming one with technology really be so bad? Anyway, aren't we already utterly integrated with technology?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)