Highlights from the 2017 Sony World Photography Awards

by Coleen MacPherson

As I took in the images throughout this year’s Sony World Photography Awards at Somerset House, I was struck by the variety of photographic lenses presented to the viewer.   From Photographer of the Year: Frederik Buyckx, to images by youth and students.   There was a particular focus on England’s, Martin Parr, known for his satirical and anthropological lens, who was awarded Outstanding Contribution to Photography this year.   What struck me were the images by Parr, which are rarely showcased, and images by photographer Tasneen Alsultan of Saudi Arabia.

Martin Parr has been recognised for his particular ability to capture ordinary, everyday life in Britain, and to satirise images of cultures, people and particularly the tourism industry.  At the Sony World Photography Awards there was a special presentation of his work, including black and white photographs focused on abandoned Morris Minors set in the countryside along the West Coast of Ireland.  Unlike his other work, these photographs display a gentle and ethereal world, with a keen eye for humour. Mist, awestruck hills, ducks, chickens stare fondly out of the front windows; there is clearly a serene effect these pictures emit —contrary to Parr’s usual work.   

Another photographer of interest was Tasneen Alsultan of Saudi Arabia.  Her work: “Saudi Tales of Love” which won first place in the Contemporary Issues category, cracks open stereotypes in Saudi Arabia. In a country often deemed the international symbol of Islam, there exists a vast gap between the Qur’an and local traditions—which Alsultan eagerly revealed through her pictures. One can see this gap through her sensitivity to detail.

Alsultan was born in the United States and educated in England before moving to Saudi Arabia. for her undergraduate studies and began to study ethnography of Saudi women abroad.   She married at seventeen and lived as a single parent for six years of her ten-year marriage. was later looked down upon for her divorce. After her divorce, Alsultan realised there were many other Saudi women experiencing the same issues she was, and she became fascinated in uncovering these realities through the images. Alsultan followed widows and women happily married to women who were divorced; to weddings and intimate moments with strangers.  Gathering these stories was about exploring the concept of love and utilising her lens to capture expectations of marriage, through ritual and marriage ceremonies.

As I lingered in front of her images it seemed to me that Alsultan is asking us: is marriage the only path towards love?  Could there be other forms of love?  Does not being married mean that you will forever be lonely?  Her work at the exhibit clearly captures the dilemma between women and marriage and puts the viewer inside the question about our ready-made thoughts about Saudi Arabia and Islam.  In particular, there is a picture of a woman in her wedding dress, looking out the window, perhaps dreaming beyond the confines of marriage itself as her husband sits in the shadows in the background.  Another image that is striking is of a woman alone in bed with words scrawled above on the headboard:  “than be miserable with someone else.”   As the viewer, we complete the sentence and know that the complexities of our lives are sometimes too great than the confines of custom.  There is another way.   Alsultan states she wanted to answer questions that were shared by many such as: ‘do we need marriage to signify that we have love?’ and ‘do you need a husband to have a meaningful life?’

Both Parr and Alsultan’s work arrested me, and it is something special when a photographer can capture hidden stories of humanity from all corners of the world.

-Coleen MacPherson

Coleen is a Canadian writer and theatre director with a thirst to explore the world. She trained at École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, where she mentored with French playwright, Michel Azama. She has recently founded Open Heart Surgery Theatre:  a group of international theatre-makers, creating work in London at Camden People’s Theatre, Mimetic Festival, Old Vic New Voices; in Paris at Plateau 31 and recently presented ‘This is Why We Live’ in Toronto at The Theatre Centre and First Draft at Falaki Theater in Cairo.  She is constantly inspired by photography and the power of the image.

Belonging, Being, Becoming

Artists: Ana Escobar, Mamie Heldman, Yufan Lu, Bohyeon Kim
Curated by Bertha Wang and Yufan Lu, Head Curator Ivana D’Accico

Carmel by the Green

Exhibition dates: 4th May – 4th July, 2017

As anyone who has lived in a metropolis can attest, the speed of daily life can be relentless. We are often swept along with the crowd, mediated blindly down streets, onto station platforms and underground, up escalators to our place of work and home again, with such breathless pace that we often become indifferent to our surroundings. Technology has further exacerbated the issue, offering up constant distraction and connectivity, but distancing us from our immediate environment and those physically closest to us.

In his essay of 1903 entitled “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, German sociologist Georg Simmel theorised this ostensible aloofness as a mental coping mechanism against the overstimulation of city life (with its constant bustle, its crowds and rapid speed of change).  He termed this the “blasé attitude”, the essence of which is “an indifference towards the distinctions between things.” Acting as a corrective to this perceived sensory ennui is Brandon Stanton’s infamous photo blog “Humans of New York”, a point of inspiration for this exhibition, which details with warmth the depth of lived experience of individuals, privileging the richness of such one-to-one encounters. His ongoing project helps to illustrate that, in our modern quest to be constantly arriving “somewhere”, we rarely find the sense of contentment and connection we strive for, and in our hurry miss the beauty and humanity all around us.

*Text by Daniel Pateman

Ana Escobar – The Supernatural

Dark matter doesn’t bend to light is an on-going body of work. Through it, I challenge myself to explore photographically themes related to superstition, the unconscious, the supernatural. I strive to challenge the limitations of mental life brought upon by the conditions of contemporary life. I aim to create work that validates and re-enforces the value and needs of those very undermined concepts: the irrational, the unreason, the instinctual life. The piece develops from insecurities arisen from photography theory to the integration of that new knowledge, yielding a space where consciousness and intuition can cohabitate and flourish. The piece asks viewers to restore intuition as a valid tool to understand, critique and consume photography.

Bio: Ana Escobar was born in Huelva, Spain in 1975. She has a background in fine art, having earned her bachelor’s and her MA in Photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London in 2016. Escobar works predominantly with the medium of photography, including multi-media installations and live performance. Her main theme is the in-between space the artist inhabits, which is explored through the use of archetypes, alchemy, and mythologies in a psychoanalytical Jungian tradition.

Bohyeon Kim – Abstraction of Emotion

Inspired by my experiences as a painter and sculptor, my photographic practice embodies a preoccupation with how and where form is imbued with meaning. A site is the source of all the <abstraction of emotion> works and the place where creation and extinction of a city happen. I try to exchange with my subjects at each site through an artistic activity called an intervention. This records atmospheric emotion that was captured in the moment to moment of city life in order to interpret photography in diverse aspects, rather than limit it as a fact or historical reference.

Bio: Bohyeon Kim currently lives and works in London. She is studying at University College London, MFA Fine Arts and studied oriental painting at Chung-Ang University in South Korea. Bohyeon’s photographs aspects which act as puristic elements of emotional backdrops to her pictorial world.  Her resulting photographs creates visual works that blur the boundaries of photography and painting.

 

 

 

photos by Matteo Favero

The Art of Deception: Pictorial Acts of Post-Truth

Artists: Paige Megan Hawley, Michal Raz, Sebastian Wanke, Lili Holzer-Glier, Michael Davies

Curated by Ivana D’Accico

Carmel by the Green
287a Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 0EL

Opening reception: 23 Feb, 6pm – 9pm
drinks provided 

Exhibition dates: 23 Feb– 23 Apr, 2017

Opening times: Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm
Thursday 8am to 6pm
Saturday 10:30am to 3:30pm

Although the first known usage of Post-Truth dates back to 1992, the term’s popularity didn’t erupt until 2016; the result of a contentious electoral campaign in the United States, and the United Kingdom’s eventual cessation of membership from the EU. Oxford Dictionaries went on to crown it “Word of the Year”, defining the term as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” In both cases, highly-charged rhetoric that pandered to existing prejudices filtered down from numerous TV personalities and media streams. Exacerbated by a relentless 24 hour news cycle and the virulent spread of untruths on social media, corrective statistics and factual rebuttals failed to cool the hotbeds of political discontent. Donald Trump’s election as 45th president of the United States proved the apotheosis of these divided times.

In response to this on-going socio-political drama, The Art of Deception: Pictorial Acts of Post-Truth looks to explore, through the work of five international artists, how Post-Truth engenders a climate in which rhetorics of resentment –hate speech, misogyny, xenophobia –actively flourish. It investigates the power the media has, and visual media more generally, to (mis)represent reality; turning daily life into the power-hungry fever-dream of elites. Exhibiting a mix of documentary, digital and experimental work, the displayed photography walks the line between appearance and reality, language and image, fact and fiction, to analyse the divides and duplicities that this Post-Truth age creates.

The Art of Deception: Pictorial Acts of Post-Truth is curated by Ivana D’Accico and is the fourth in a year-long programme of exhibitions produced under The Photography Diaries platform. It follows Stereoscope magazine’s (University of St Andrews) No Strings Attached, New York Photography Diary’s Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror and London Photography Diary’s The Physical Fabric of the Cities. (see bottom of page for these exhibitions)

*Text by Daniel Pateman

Paige Megan Hawley

Paige Megan Hawley (based in London, UK) is a photographer specialising in the fine art industry.  Her practice’s central focus is photography as it relates to issues around historic and contemporary feminism, using a range of photographic styles, from 35mm to digital and medium format. Hawley’s work has been exhibited at Truman’s Brewery, Four Corners Gallery, Chatham Gallery and the University of Greenwich.

Hawley’s series “Take a Picture, It Lasts Longer” centres on female objectification and the theory of the male gaze, and is inspired by artists such as Sarah Lucas and Francesca Woodman. “I had the idea of the window in my head from the very beginning. I wanted the viewer to be shocked, to feel as if they were the male gazing in through the window; not only at the woman but at something more shocking than expected.” As well as being theoretically informed, her work also draws on her own experience of sexual violence: “My images aim to confront my enemy and any male that sees a woman as an object or a piece of meat […] I want to inspire women to go forward from rape and violence. Their voices are important and need to be heard.”

Michal Raz

Michal Raz (based in London, UK) is an Israeli artist, whose works combine painting, screen printing, digital images and collage, and who through the exploration of these different media seeks to unify the conflicting polarities of modern life. She is currently completing her MFA at UCL Slade School of Fine Arts.

With these collages Raz explores the dynamic interplay of language on the visual image, providing an imaginative re-interpretation of a selection of Donald Trump’s tweets. From each Twitter post she chose a few random words, entering these into Google’s search engine, and selected a few of the returned results, the result being colourful mixed-media collages. “They were inspired by the Rider Waite Tarot Cards, which are used primarily for divinatory purposes and foreseeing the future. These Trump-inspired versions present his often highly controversial statements in a humorous way, as well as offering a futuristic vision of a post-Trump society.”

Sebastian Wanke

Sebastian Wanke (based in Weimar, Germany) is a photographer and communication designer who holds a diploma in Visual Communication from Bauhaus-University. His works have been exhibited all over Germany (at Forum für Künste in Hannover and Kunsthaus Tacheles in Berlin, for example) as well as across Europe. They have also been featured in magazines such as Design Made and THINK TNK MAG.

Wanke’s series of photographs from the computer game Battlefield, developed in collaboration with Christopher Falbe, illustrate how much war and violence have become distanced from our conception of daily life. Representations of war are increasingly technologically mediated, with computer games presenting more and more realistic, domesticated simulations of war: “The environment of the game Battlefield consists of always active maps – the virtual world thus acting independently of the presence of players in the game. Within these realistic environments, the player is offered various possibilities to actively engage in a fictitious combat or tactical manoeuvres.” Despite the realism of such games, the consequences of the player’s actions in it are of course highly abstracted; indicating our modern disconnect with the often very real and lived trauma of warfare.

Lili Holzer-Glier

Lili Holzer-Glier (based in Brooklyn, New York) is a photographer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue and The New York Times. Her first book, Rockabye, documents the Rockaways post–Hurricane Sandy, and was published in 2015 by Daylight Books.

Holzer-Glier’s documentary photographs show the effects of a mental-health funding crisis in parts of the United States, in this instance the state of Illinois, as well as the effect of stigmatising rhetoric. “The Cook County Department of Corrections in Chicago is one of the largest single-site pre-detention facilities in the world, with an average daily population hovering around 9,000 inmates. It is estimated that 35% of this population is mentally ill.” It isn’t necessarily that incarceration has resulted in their crises, but that a closure of dedicated centres for those suffering from mental illness, due to lack of funding, has led to their admission. Her work serves to illustrate not just the lack of resources, but a propensity in the media to conflate mental illness with criminality, which in turn results in stigmatising rhetoric and behaviour. Commenting on this, Holzer-Glier notes that “more patients than ever are being treated in jail rather than at a mental health facility, with Cook County Jail becoming one of the largest mental health care providers in the United States.”

Michael Davies

Michael Davies (based in London, UK) is an artist and filmmaker whose practice is based in and amongst the creative milieu of Tottenham Hale International Studios. His work is predominantly based on analogue photography, painting, video installation and narrative film. With his photography, he documents those occurrences he encounters in everyday life, and which are often far stranger than any he could conceive through staging or in isolation.

A distillation of the nature of racial tension, which has seen a resurgence post-Brexit, Michael Davies presents a 35mm shot taken during the ‘Brixton Splash’ street festival in 2015. Here is “a lomo moment capturing the complicated relationship between the largely black community, centering around the ‘Barrier Block’ flats, and the local police.” The skillful composition of elements in the shot suggests an uneven power-play at work, and is indicative of the divisive effect xenophobic rhetoric helps engender.

Nature Continually Ablaze: Renata Buziak’s ‘Medicinal Plant Cycles’ @ Gaffa Gallery

You could be forgiven for thinking that the images on display in Renata Buziak’s exhibition Medicinal Plant Cycles, an exploration of decay and regeneration, were actually facsimiles of paintings.  One of the most striking things about them is their vivid colours, iridescent blues and purples vying with incandescent shades of orange.  Their incredible amorphousness makes them appear fairly abstract, but, with nature and natural processes as their subject matter they are simultaneously pictorial, especially where traces of decayed plant matter are evident to ground the work.  They could be the output of an earthy Jackson Pollock. Although, with their sublime level of detail, their textural range and freedom of form, one can’t imagine their conception by any human hand.  As it is, in these works nature is the one holding the paintbrush…albeit with a little direction.

Buziak has been creating what she terms “biochromes” for over a decade now, in an exploration of the overlap between art and science.  The production of these images involve the placing of organic material on photographic emulsions which, when exposed to the elements and left over a length of time (about five to eight weeks), create a dazzling landscape of shapes and colours, a result of the reaction between the photographic chemicals and the process of decomposition (the bacterial micro-organic activity) in the plant matter.  Exploring the outcomes of this rather unpredictable process, Buziak experiments with some of the conditions under which they’re produced, altering plant type, temperature, level of humidity and light, to achieve different results in her work.

The spirit of nature is omnipresent as you enter the first room of works in Gallery 4.  The caws and various calls of birds, the hush of the sea; all the sounds of Minjerribah/North Stradbroke Island on which Buziak carried out her research undulate throughout the space, helping to contextualise her images in their abstracted visual state. Starting with only a blank photographic backdrop and a sample of the island’s plant material, these biochromes have gone on to produce intricate and complex visions, beguiling to the eye and imagination. The first work (of Carpobrotus glaucescens, a plant with antiseptic properties) displays thick sandstone ridges, traces of the decaying plant, while surrounding this fossil-like outline, seas of cobalt blue swirl around orange abysses that encircle starry black islands. Other works similarly present a conflagration of colour. The leaves and stems of Abrus Precatorius are flanked with fiery gradients of red and orange, giving the impression of the expiring plant ablaze. There is something cosmic in the burgeoning of multi-faceted life across the dark photographic paper; the works suggestive microcosms of creation.

Gallery 3 presents a curtained off area containing Buziak’s forays into time-lapse photography, along with a greater selection of her biochrome work. Among a selection of six singular pieces, a large moody panorama arrests the attention, showing the decomposing matter of Malaleuca quinquenervia and Corymbia intermidia swept up in a black and white storm of transformation, while to its right are a trio of smaller, iridescent and microscopically detailed images that invite you to look closer. While these biochromes are only suggestive of transformation – freezing on a fixed moment – her time-lapse work documents the process of decay usually unperceived by the human eye. Further blurring the artistic and the scientific, they illustrate just how intertwined organic degeneration and creation are; not antithetical at all but co-dependent processes. As the artist states, “we are part of the cycle of life. Through this decay, the regeneration at the same time of microbes, of different life, is visible.”  It is a magnificent metamorphosis to behold.  One of several videos shows the slow inferno of Centella Asiatica as shadow spreads through its leaves, gradually losing their solidity; the growing flicker of orange in outline around the plant as it turns charcoal black, the frame, however, still full of activity. The images glow hot and cold as energies transfer and states continually change; the aurora of colour evidence to us that, through dissolution, micro-organic life flourishes, eventually creating its own self-sustaining eco-system.

As we watch these displays play out in front of our eyes, snippets of conversation between Buziak and members of the Quandamooka community break through from the overhead audio, describing the healing properties of the titular medicinal plants native to North Stradbroke Island. These dialogues underline the anthropological as well as the aesthetic nature of Buziak’s project. Her own upbringing in Janów Lubelski, Poland, inspired her interest in the medicinal properties of native flora, and led her to investigate the plant life of the aforementioned island. It is the inhabitants we hear detailing the varied uses of local plant life. Most memorable are the practice of mixing herbs with boiled “flying foxes” (bats) to ease asthma, and the addition of crystallised sap from the blood wood tree in tea to purify one’s blood. The importance of passing on this ancient knowledge to new generations, of keeping the culture alive, is clearly and earnestly stated.

Cycles are obviously central to Buziak’s work, and her fascinating biochrome and time lapse experiments exemplify this through their depiction of nature’s recycling of organic matter. There is a slight disconnect in Buziak’s joint aim to “promote the recognition, appreciation, and value of local medicinal plants in the context of Aboriginal knowledge” at the same time as revealing “a beauty in decomposition, and rais[ing] notions of transformative cycles”. Though not incompatible, the two facets don’t quite unite, and perhaps a sole focus on either aesthetic displays of decay, or a documentation of the island’s culture, would further enhance the exhibition’s impact. However, if this dual approach jars slightly, it is not an unproductive union. The specific use of medicinal plants from the island as subjects of decay and regrowth only further highlights the enterprising and regenerative powers of nature; something Buziak elucidates with great insight and profundity in her work.

By Daniel Pateman

Exhibition runs from March 16^th until March 27^th 2017 at:

Gaffa Gallery
281 Clarence Street
Sydney
NSW 2000

And @ WM Gallery in Amsterdam from September 2^nd until October 6^th 2017:

WM Gallery
Elandsgracht 35
1016TN
Amsterdam
Netherlands

http://renata-buziak.com/

Image Captions:

Installation View, Gaffa Gallery, Sydney March 16 – March 27 2017 © Renata Buziak
Acacia Concurrens…anaesthetic, 2015 © Renata Buziak
Installation View, Gaffa Gallery, Sydney March 16 – March 27 2017 © Renata Buziak
Abrus precatorius, 2013 © Renata Buziak

Daniel Pateman studied Humanities and Media at Birkbeck University, with an emphasis on visual culture and spectatorship.  He has embarked now on the next step of his academic journey and is currently undertaking an MA in Contemporary Literature and Culture.  A keen writer from an early age, he produces articles for the London Photography Diary and a number of other online publications.  He also maintains a blog of personal creative work entitled The End of Fiction; a mixture of poetry, prose and film.

Not Your Photographer’s Photographer:

A Review of Henry Wessel’s Traffic/ Sunset Park/ Continental Divide

Opening the front cover, I find myself driving through traffic on the way to work. The sun is blinding my eyes as I roll to stop at a light. A car pulls up next to me.

Grabbing a handful of pages, I flip forward to find I’ve just finished dinner. The dog wants go out for a walk and so, in a half-tired daze, I pull on my jacket to walk among the small glowing bungalows; the dog occasionally stopping to sniff under fences or bark up a tree.

Now I’m driving across the American West, but I don’t stop to gaze up in wonder at the redwoods, or the mountains, or the canyons – instead I’ve been lulled into a stupor by the radio and the winding road. I’m mesmerized by the sparse trees poking out of the landscape, and a huddle of hitchhikers who disappear into the landscape as I pass them.

Such is the wandering mood of Traffic/ Sunset Park/ Continental Divide, a re-print of photographer Henry Wessel’s work set to be released by Steidl this month. In 228 pages and 105 black and white images, we people-watch out the car window of Wessel’s daily commute in Traffic. We wander up and down residential streets, breathing in the suburban noir in Sunset Park while noticing the twisted branches of trees, and the trickling light of living rooms. Then, with renewed wonder, we get back into Wessel’s car in Continental Divide to drive across the mountains and down into the desert – this time looking out at vast stretches of road and the patterns of telephone poles.

A member of the New Topographics, Wessel is famous for his photographs of the American West which eschew emotionality in favor of a deadpan, purely topographic style.

Unlike the dramatic tonal contrasts of Ansel Adams’ mountain ranges and sweeping vistas of California redwoods, Wessel surveys his surroundings via the lineage of Walker Evans; documenting shop fronts and picket fences, while paying tribute to the significance of the mundane.

But it would be a disservice to Wessel’s work to argue that it simply flattens and distills the world into architecture and form. A heart beats beneath this critical catalogue. On an opening page, Traffic/ Sunset Park/ Continental Divide borrows a stanza from Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” to prime the reader for Wessel’s poetics of perspective:

“Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?”

Rather than reaching for lofty heights, Wessel turns his gaze on the grounded and what is already at his feet. But this book does more than collect blackbirds. Wessel’s arrangement of images provides rhythm, rhyme, and movement to his series. The images hum, repeat themselves, bump shoulders, and call out to each other; revisiting the same ideas again and again like mantras — becoming totally strange, then familiar once more. Wessel reaches out into the world and unifies it around his lens. As Stevens writes,

“A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.”

But the egalitarianism of Wessel’s gaze and his meditative tone can also serve as a barrier for his viewers. Sometimes Wessel stops the car. He stares into a landscape for what seems like forever and we stare with him, having no idea whether he’s seen something rustle in a bramble, or if the unremarkable view triggered a memory that we’ve never had. Occasionally, Wessel stays out so long under the porch lights that we shiver beneath the night breeze. Our fingers go cold. In our impatience, sometimes people in traffic are just people in traffic.

For all its poetry, the mundanity of Wessel’s photography occasionally exhausts its project; leaving the viewer to wonder if they’ve perhaps missed some central point – overlooked some key thesis of the New Topographers, or failed to pick up breadcrumbs of extra-textual reference. Wessel’s aversion to the tropes and frills of commercial photography and his renowned reputation in the art world invites him to be labeled as a “photographer’s photographer” – a term as exclusionary as the concept itself. When the democracy of his vision collapses on us in a moment of confusion we’re left to wonder whether we’ve fallen short of expectations. We wonder whether a “photographer’s photographer” believes that knowledge of the language established by Evans’ slanting sidewalks, or Eggleston’s cacophonous road signs is necessary to recognize the significance of these symbols, and to read them in the world.

Ultimately, there’s no secret decoder or cypher to hold up to Wessel’s work. Wessel’s photographic journey doesn’t unfurl into a manifesto, or a universal guidebook on how to twist the world into the fantastic. Wessel doesn’t even suggest that there is magic to be found everywhere. Instead, his photographic journey feels fundamentally personal and wholly unconcerned with whether his photographs will resonate. Henry Wessel simply leaves his house with a camera in hand and invites us to come along.

-Sasha Patkin

****

Like zen koans or visual haikus, Henry Wessel’s photography creates an archive of meditative sensations which perplex as much as they enlighten.

More information: https://steidl.de/Buecher/Traffic-Sunset-Park-Continental-Divide-0224303543.html

photos by Matteo Favero

The London Photography Diary is pleased to collaborate with guest curator Stereoscope magazine at the University of St Andrews for the exhibition No Strings Attached, at Carmel by the Green in East London.  This exhibition follows The Physical Fabric of Cities—organized by London Photography Diary and Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror, curated by the New York Photography Diary—and is the third in a year-long program of shows being organized by The Photography Diaries. No Strings Attached is curated by Stereoscope magazine and the head curator for this exhibition is Ivana D’Accico.

Carmel by the Green
287a Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 0EL

Opening reception: 15 December, 6pm – 9pm
drinks provided

Exhibition dates: 15 Dec – 15 Feb

Opening times: Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm
Thursday 8am to 6pm
Saturday 10:30am to 3:30pm

NO STRINGS ATTACHED

The American artist Chris Wiley proclaimed: “It is indisputable that we now inhabit a world thoroughly mediatised by and glutted with the photographic image and its digital doppelganger. Everything and everyone on Earth and beyond, it would seem, has been slotted somewhere in a rapacious, ever-expanding Borgesian library of representation that we have built for ourselves.”

It is true that a casual, transient and less committed mindset pervades the nature of modern photography, and indeed the wider actions of the millennial generation. The phrase No Strings Attached has become a hallmark of this generation, and this exhibition explores how a flippant attitude within youth culture has translated into its relationship with the camera.  In a world where the mechanisms to capture images are so readily available, photography has become dispensable. This theme discusses the notion of whether we are less inclined to enter into a serious relationship with the medium?

Entering its sixth year as a publication, STEREOSCOPE was founded as a means to celebrate the history of photography in St. Andrews by aligning the famous Special Collections of Photography and current St. Andrews photographer’s work. Under the theme No Strings Attached the magazine has provided a platform for students in St. Andrews to showcase their work and discuss the current nature of photography.

STEREOSCOPE photographers Kate Engleman, Lallie Doyle, Lauren Santucci, Meleah Moore and Sophie Levine present five idiosyncratic approaches to the physical process surrounding contemporary photography. With settings ranging from rural Kolkata to Los Angeles, this collection of photographs demonstrates the modern romance between today’s youth and the camera.

ARTISTS

Kate Engleman

I have always been technologically inept. This may be because I just don’t understand the technological equipment, or because I choose to not learn how to use the new mediums. I have always valued film photography, shooting on my grandfather’s tempestuous Canon AE-1.

As someone who loves constant stimulation, it forces me slow down. With the incredibly clear images phones can now produce, and the endless forums that allow people to share those images instantly, the committed relationship between man and camera has become a thing of the past. My images were taken in Los Angeles, my home city, a place I have always felt very detached from. I have started to shoot more around LA, reconnecting with my city through exploring with my camera. Having recently begun to travel alone, I have found great solace in shooting film. My camera has become my favourite travel companion as it enables me way to connect with the places in a way I wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

Lauren Santucci

Photography right now is flexible—we have the luxury to experiment and be relaxed about the medium. I photograph the minor movements and brief moments that illustrate a comparable and relatable human experience. In chaining these instances together, we can remember and celebrate our humility despite the conflicts and structures that estrange and divide us. It would be difficult to distinguish the refugee from the privileged and the free in these photographs. Whichever camera I use, whether it is a clunky DLSR or a £5 disposable camera, I am shy about taking photographs of people. I take photos of the lovers or friends I feel intimate with—but I do not want them to know I am taking their photo. These photographs were taken both in my home town of Detroit and in a refugee camp in Athens where I have worked for the last year. They are casual and unplanned due to my efforts to remain unnoticed and to my treatment of photography as unforced and informal.

Meleah Moore

I was trying to add up the visual sources I have encountered today and got frustrated by the superfluity; hitting and quitting photos on my newsfeed without a second thought. The inquiry as a photographer has become how to make an image more indispensable, to warrant more than a glance. Though this idea has some irony; I photograph glances, quick encounters, short-lived beauty. I like pausing movement because something draws me in, feeding on the energy of observation. It’s the subtleties that are alluring, catching people in their element without changing it. This became my approach to my photographs taken during a period working with a sustainable energy company in Kolkata, India. I photographed moments which were brief and unaffected, but stay for a minute and they might reveal more.

Sophie Levine

This series holds its interest in the relationship between nature and the human touch, attempting to deconstruct the normalities of our everyday world. The images obscure, fragment, and isolate—allowing the viewer to assign their own narrative. I look to the medium of photography in a formal way, but am influenced by and seek to evoke a more playful sense of the bizarre. In using analogue photographic processes and originally printing these photographs myself, I was looking to explore a less dispensable and instantaneous side of the medium. The compositions were made from a bit of card and the help of a pair of scissors—no hidden strings or Photoshop. The idea of ‘No Strings Attached’ manifests in many different ways, but it is the intersection between analogue and the instantaneous that I am interested in exploring—the spontaneity of our generation applied to concentrated processes.

Lallie Doyle

I am in a deeply committed relationship with photography; a relationship that, like my other human relations has had peaks and troughs. Photography is used as a way to cement my stream of consciousness. My works, in general, are staged: they are not constructed in a callous and whimsical manner, but rather meticulously put together to recreate a pre-envisaged narrative. I photographed Brooklyn band The Britanys in Williamsburg this summer: I love to photograph musicians because I find music very visual. While music is meant for the ears, for me music is seen just as strongly through the eyes – it conjures up images of past memories, of colours, of the thrashing of limbs in a dark club to the creeping of light through the blinds in the morning. This series conveys the intersection between music and photography, because, in a post-depression era where the creative drive has become stunted by mounting student loans, it is important to unite the arts. These photographs represent my more old-fashioned relationship with the camera, one that is more carefully considered and planned, rather than the laissez-affair attitude that has come to define modern photography.

Roaming Projects’ debut exhibition Mercury is the result of a six-year photographic and anthropologic project by London-based artist Lewis Chaplin that seeks to uncover the truths and mysteries that have shaped the representation of British-occupied Tristan da Cunha. The body of Chaplin’s work demonstrates his searching for, and creating of, a history of this South Atlantic island, drawing from material that is archival, imagined, and ethnographic and provoking questions surrounding cultural memory, territory and national identity.  

Tristan da Cunha is one of the most remote islands in the world that is only accessible with permission, and the first room of the exhibition presents a series of 5 photographs (Untitled, 2016) of the island. Its inaccessibility prompted Chaplin to equip the inhabitants with disposable cameras, enabling him to pursue his anthropologic study via an ethnographic practise. This detached mode of photography echoes the physical distance between artist and island, raising questions of authenticity and agency. This array of photographs presents the viewer with a strange juxtaposition, varying from a lush green volcanic landscape, a cruise liner in the distance, and a collection of bungalows. The recognisable architecture evokes the familiar portrait of a small British town. The grey and gloomy clouds are present in each scene and provide another affinity, this time between the all too familiar English weather and that of Tristan. The combination of recognisably ‘British’ tropes with a raw volcanic landscape feels uncanny; the viewer sensing both a connection and disconnection to this strange yet familiar place. 

As the viewer moves through the exhibition they encounter the installation Group-of-men-sit-together-after-a-wedding-in-Tristan-da-Cunha (2017), where a print of a sky-blue cottage window shot in the UK hangs, printed in a large format on poster paper that scales an entire wall of the gallery space. Its colour resonates with a 4 x 6 photograph hanging on the adjacent wall. Chaplin found this image in an archive of Tristan; it depicts a doctor, who had devoted much of his time researching the island, with his back to the camera. He seems to be bending over, revealing the sky-blue wall in the background. The viewer is denied access to what this doctor looks like; we can barely get a sense of what kind of person this is. This inaccessibility echoes the denial of admission both to the island and to its history. By coupling this actual archival image of the island with a disparate yet formally similar photograph, the viewer is prompted to consider how the artist is playing with the archival role in historical and cultural memory. The photograph of the cottage in the context of this exhibition acts as an archival image and therefore is contributing to the both the real and imagined archive of Tristan da Cunha. 

The closing section of the show consists of Untitled (Horizon) (2017), a series of damaged film that forms part of the body of photographs taken by Tristan’s residents, and Untitled (Southampton) (2015), a video and sound piece that echoes throughout the exhibition space. The video is shot in low-resolution; the black and white pixelated images of the Southampton Sea alongside the broken noise of the wind hitting the microphone resonates the fragmented memory and imagination of Tristan. This simultaneously seems to evoke further Chaplin’s inaccessibility to, and physical distance from, the island, forcing the artist to produce his own archive in order to imagine Tristan. The aforementioned damaged photos intensify this continuous search as they visualise the problems of inaccessibility faced in the duration of this project. These impaired images attempt (but fail) to reveal the alien landscape of Tristan, and thus highlight the lack of visibility that the island maintains, yet their production and their placing within this exhibition aligns them with the history of Tristan and contribute to its archive. 

With Mercury, Lewis Chaplin has synthesised imagery of Tristan da Cunha, both real and imagined, to explore and create a history of the island. The exhibition explores the implications that subjectivity has on both the archive and perception of an unknown place, its people and culture. Finally, Roaming Projects are hosting Mercury in a disused rubber clothing shop in central Somers Town, a space that echoes with the same sense of Strangeness or Otherness that is prevalent within Chaplin’s artwork.

‘Mercury’ @ Roaming Gallery exhibiting until 19th February 2017 (http://www.roamingprojects.com).

 – by Alexandra Hull

Image Captions:

Installation View # 1, ‘Mercury’ © Roaming Projects Gallery
Installation View # 2, ‘Mercury’ © Roaming Projects Gallery
Installation View # 3, ‘Mercury’ © Roaming Projects Gallery
Installation View # 4, ‘Mercury’ © Roaming Projects Gallery

Alexandra Hull is currently studying an MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths and previously completed her BA in History of Art at the University of Manchester. She is a part of curatorial duo ‘g_URL’ who are collaborating with young female creatives who are working in the intersection of art and tech.  

Alexo Wandael has been harassing and cyber bullying us for the past year. It is in my opinion that he  displays sociopathic behaviour and cannot accept criticism on his artwork. Below are a few of the emails he has sent us:

poor sad lesbian…

---

U r CC others… and talking about growing up???

what a poor creature… I will pray for you as well…. so sad….

childish… stop writing back and this will stop…

LOL

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u r pathetic…

shame on yourself…

LMAO

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u r like a mushroom….

LOL

resilient and still hiding in my lists…

nice energy…congrats…

LOL

photos by Matteo Favero

The New York Photography Diary is pleased to host its inaugural exhibition, Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror, at Carmel by the Green in East London. This exhibition follows The Physical Fabric of Cities—organized by London Photography Diary—and is the second in a year-long program of shows being organized by The Photography Diaries. Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror is curated by New York Photography Diary editors Daniel Pateman and Will Fenstermaker .  The head curator for this exhibition is Ivana D’Accico.

Inspired by the shock of Brexit in Britain and corresponding xenophobic, nativist tones in US and European politics, Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror features the work of eight international artists who responded to the set theme of Borders. Each photographer explores boundaries in the midst of a reconfiguration, provoking a reconciliation with the limits at which one defines identity, homeland, and ontological frameworks.

The exhibition title comes from a dialogue between the Venetian merchant Marco Polo and Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1972) and speaks to the way communities define themselves in opposition to other people. Polo, an exile—albeit a voluntary one—tells Kublai of a peculiar sensation: the recognition of oneself in the otherness of those who live beyond the border. Coming upon daily life within an unfamiliar city, Polo recounts that “the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”

To this, Kublai responds that travel brings one into contact with one’s past, one’s possible futures, and all the presents that could have been.  “Elsewhere is a negative mirror,” Polo says. “The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering much he has not had and will never have.”

These photographs, like negative mirrors, show what is familiar in unfamiliar places. In them, one finds home in a world that has been divided into parts—conquered, nationalized, and quantified—its distinctions marked by thresholds that have only the illusion of inviolability.

“Elsewhere Is a Negative Mirror” will run from October 6th to December 13th, 2016 at Carmel by the Green, next to Bethnal Green tube station in East London. Please join us for our opening on October 6th from 6–9pm, or as part of Whitechapel’s First Thursdays in November.

Carmel by the Green
287A Cambridge Heath Road
London, E2 0EL
020 8616 5750

ARTISTS

Clement Valla

Clement Valla’s “Postcards from Google Earth” depict moments where Google’s two-dimensional imaging software has misaligned with the three-dimensional mapping software, marking a boundary between actual and representational nature. “These images are not glitches,” Valla says. “They are an edge condition… They reveal a new model of representation: not through indexical photographs but through automated data collection from a myriad of different sources constantly updated and endlessly combined to create a seamless illusion.”

Clement Valla (based in Brooklyn, NY) works with computer-based picture-producing apparatuses, and how they transform representation and ways of seeing. His work has been exhibited at XPO Gallery, Paris; Transfer Gallery, Brooklyn; The Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis; Museum of the Moving Image, New York; Thommassen Galleri, Gothenburg; Bitforms Gallery, New York; Mulherin + Pollard Projects, New York; DAAP Galleries, University of Cincinnati; 319 Scholes, New York; and the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, Milwaukee. His work has been cited in The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, El Pais, Huffington Post, Rhizome, Domus, Wired, The Brooklyn Rail, Liberation, and on BBC television.

COLIN EDGINGTON

Colin Edgington’s work explores ash as a symbol of state changes, particularly of the boundary between the visible and the invisible, the living and the non-living. In this way, he says, “it epitomizes transience.” Drawn from his upbringing in the American southwest, the ash structures are built to resemble demarcations of place, and are ultimately destroyed after photographing.

Colin Edgington (based in Greater New York) is a visual artist and writer. His work has been exhibited internationally and published nationally. He was named the winner of the Iowa Review Photography Prize, judged by Alec Soth, for his seemingly authorless body of work titled [umbrae] in 2012. He holds a BAFA in studio art from the University of New Mexico, an MFA in studio art from the Mason Gross School of Arts, Rutgers University, and an MFA in Art Criticism & Writing from the School of Visual Arts, NYC.

GRISELDA SAN MARTIN

Griselda San Martin’s series “The Wall” documents families separated by their immigration status, who gather to meet at Friendship Park, located along the border between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico. What started out as a simple barbed wire fence in the 1970’s has been expanded into an imposing metal wall, which extends some three hundred feet into the ocean. On the American side, patrols runs the border, while in Mexico, families roam freely and eat at restaurants nearby. At the wall, families meet, whispering to each other between the stakes, poking their fingers through the stakes and steel mesh to touch their loved ones.

Griselda San Martin (based in New York, NY; Tijuana, Mexico; and Barcelona, Spain) is a documentary photographer and visual journalist. Her documentary work explores transborder and transnational issues and focuses on concepts of identity and belonging in diasporic communities and ethnic minorities. She has been photographing and documenting the U.S.-Mexico border for the past four years. In June, 2015 she graduated from the the Photojournalism and Documentary photography program at the International Center of Photography in New York.

NETTA LAUFER

Netta Laufer (based in New York, NY) was born in Israel (1986), and raised in both Jerusalem and New York. Laufer’s “Black Beauty” was exhibited in a solo show at the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem (2013), and at Fresh Paint 7 art fair in Tel-Aviv (2015). Recently Laufer exhibited the work “Cells” at Alfred Gallery, Tel-Aviv (2016). Her latest work “25FT” granted her the SVA Alumni Society Scholarship (2016)

JURAJ STAROVECKY

Juraj Starovecky presents a photographic recreation of Iron Curtain-era Czechoslovakia in his series “The Curtain”.  While skillfully placing the contemporary viewer in the shoes of those who risked their lives to cross the state border, he also encourages us to remember the human outrages of recent history.  “Over 866 people were killed while trying to cross the state border via the so called Iron Curtain between 1948 – 1989 in former Czechoslovakia. The purpose of this apparatus of absolute power was to kill and terrorize trespassers and to preserve fear inside an omnipotent political system, which had been denying basic human rights and freedom for 40 years. The contemporary status of social awareness about this significant problem of the past era is alarming. Instead of facing our own past and dealing with its traumas, collective amnesia is manifesting.”  Starovecky’s triptych Untitled (Alert) depicts the sort of warning signal deployed by guards to help apprehend trespassers, and places the viewer within a visceral dynamic of hunter vs. hunted.

Juraj Starovecky (based in Bratislava, Slovakia) works as freelance photographer. He finished his MFA at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in 2015, where he studied Photography and New Media. Juraj took an internship at Fachhochschule Bielefeld in Germany in 2014 and has also participated at several international workshops in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany.  He has hosted 4 solo shows and been involved in more than 30 group exhibitions (including MARTa Herford Museum in Germany, MUSA’s European Month of Photography in Vienna, Institut Francais’ Month of Photography in Bratislava, Fotosommer Erfurt and more).

ERLEND LINKLATER

Erlend Linklater’s series “Borderline” follows the artist’s tracing of one of the world’s oldest extant borders: that between England and Scotland. Linklater, who followed the border with an Ordnance Survey map, says its “significance in shaping cultural identity, nationalist aspiration and bureaucratic wrangling was never more obvious than during the Independence Referendum of 2014 and continues following the UK’s vote to leave the European Union.”

Erlend Linklater (based in Kampala, Uganda) wonders what shapes us and why we are like we are—what is the tapestry of stories that moulds identity while influencing behaviour and belief. His photography seeks to explore these themes informed by his experience as a Scot living and working across Africa, South America and Europe for more than 20 years.

DAQI FANG

Daqi Fang’s “Plastic Utopia II” is the second phase of a three-part series, in which the artist recreates landscapes first seen in dreams from satellite images drawn from Google Earth. These photographs speak to the disconnect between an absolute, quantified nature and the surreal plasticity of such data—which, as in Borges’s Library of Babel, can be rearranged in infinite possibilities, but only once it begins to resemble something of natural beauty does it take on significance. By including figures of himself, he also suggests the possibility of inhabiting this immaterial realm.

ABDULAZEZ DUKHAN

Abdulazez Dukhan will exhibit nine photos from his project “Through Refugee Eyes,” which documents his ongoing experience as a refugee of the Syrian civil war.  His intention is to help amplify the voice of refugees, to draw the world’s attention to their desperate situation.  “Your eyes are the way toward the truth, you can realize everything through them,” he states.  “Through photography and through art I am trying to connect with your eyes.  I am trying to tell you a thousand words, a thousand stories from the other world!”  Having fled their war-torn homes, they now find themselves trapped between borders, in the bewildering no-man’s-land of the camps.

Abdulazez Dukhan is an 18 year old Syrian refugee from Homs who, since his arrival in Idomini, Greece, has been detained in numerous camps within the country.  After being gifted a laptop and camera by a voluntary aid group, he has used his photography to provide a passionate voice and platform for displaced Syrians.  His project “Through Refugees Eyes” has attracted international attention, and his work has been exhibited in countries as diverse as Spain, Italy, Jakarta, China, Canada, and the US.

SPONSORS

New York Photography Diary would like to thank our generous sponsors, without whom this exhibition would not be possible.

An East London Fine Art Trade Guild-accredited photographic and fine art printer, and champion of emerging artists.

Elegantly simple professional picture hanging systems.

Terms and Conditions

General

• Terms and Conditions

  General

  • Deadline is 28th May

  • No entry fee

  • This exhibition on Gender Performance will take place at Carmel by The Green, located near Bethnal Green tube station, from July 6th until September 6th, with a Private View event on July 6th.

  • Entrants are not guaranteed inclusion in the exhibition by submitting an entry. Depending on

  the number and the quality of the entries received, the work of an entrant may or may not be

  curated into the final display.

  • Selected artists will be notified by 1st June and artwork must be delivered to Carmel by The

  Green by 1st July. Artists may either ship their work directly to the gallery or arrange to have it

  printed in London, and are responsible for costs incurred with either method. Works that arrive

  at Carmel by the Green after 1st July cannot be guaranteed to be exhibited in the show.

  • Selected artists are must have the works framed if they are small to medium sized and this is at the cost of the artist. London Photography Diary can supply resources for obtaining inexpensive, ready-made frames in London. Large works can be unframed and either pinned to the walls or mounted.

  • If selected artists desire to have their work printed in London, LPD can provide a list of trusted

  printers. However, London Photography Diary will not be responsible for ensuring the quality of

  the prints. Any works printed through such an arrangement will be subject to the terms and

  conditions set forth by the independent printer, and we encourage artists who choose this route

  to begin working with a printer as soon as possible.

  • All photographers must be 18 years or older worldwide and enter by submitting their own,

  original work. London Photography Diary (LPD) welcomes submissions from, and exhibits work

  of emerging as well as established photographers.

  • By entering, entrants automatically accept the conditions of the call; they grant London

  Photography Diary and Carmel by The Green non-exclusive right to use and reproduce

  submitted photographs (with the name of the photographer and the title of the work indicated)

  for promotional (e.g.: website and social media page of the London Diary and Carmel) and exhibition

  purposes. No royalties or compensation will be paid for these purposes. All copyrights and

  ownership of the works are retained by the photographer. Entrants assume and accept all legal

  and financial responsibility for any infringement on the privacy rights or copyright of others,

  caused by creating or presenting their work in public. London Photography Diary retains the

  right to exclude from the exhibition entries that violate the conditions of the call and ones that

  violate any human or privacy rights.

  • All works will be available for sale during the exhibition, unless the artist chooses to not sell their work, and a 20% commission will be taken on any sales, which will go to the editors and curators who have organized the show. Selected artists will set the price of their own works.

  • After the exhibition’s closure, the artists will be contacted by London Photography Diary to

  arrange for the collection or return of unsold works and the artist will be responsible for this cost.

  • London Photography Diary archives all photography exhibitions electronically, allowing us to

  promote our exhibiting photographers to curators, collectors as well as the viewing public.

  Requirements

  • PREPARE YOUR IMAGES

  • All layers must be flattened.

  • Images must follow the following format: 8 bit JPEG; Adobe RGB or sRGB; longest dimension

  maximum 1280 pixels (preferred width for landscape orientation: 1000 pixels; preferred height

  for portrait orientation: 775 pixels); 72 dpi; maximum 2 MB. Please include a maximum of three

   (3) works.
  • An image title is required upon upload, as well as an artist statement of up to 500 words.

  • Please submit your images by e-mail to: editors@london-photography-diary.com, indicating the

  theme of the exhibition in the subject line.

  • In the body of your submission e-mail please include

  • your full name;

  • your city and country (with state abbreviation if USA);

  • your portfolio link (if any);

  • the exhibition theme;

  • titles of all included photos with the corresponding file names (in case of a series, please

  number the photos of the series, and indicate the title of the series, if it has one);

  • the actual or desired print size (in centimeters or inches) of each photograph

  • FILE NAMING

  • lastname_firstnameinitial_LPD_worktitle_XX.jpg

  • For example lee_s_LPD_hate_2.jpg

  • No symbols or spaces in the file names

  • TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS

  • Titles are required at the time of upload. The description area is for a brief statement,

  description of an alternative process, unusual size or installation etc.

  Contact information

  For any questions and to submit your work, please email us at: editors@london-photography-diary.com