Photographer Paddy Summerfield speaks to FullBleed about remembering his parents through photography.
Month: August 2017
“There is this feeling that if someone has won an award, then it will not be a mistake if they are awarded again. But unfortunately selecting this way does not highlight fresh gems and talents. It just creates trends, but not excitement and new-comers. We at Gomma are not afraid to prize unknown photographers,” says founder Luca Desienna. This year’s awards are now open for submissions with past winners boasting solo exhibitions, international magazine features and photobook publications since bagging the award.
Martin Parr, Bill Brandt, Karen Knorr, Shirley Baker, Brian Griffin, Daniel Meadows, Chris Steele-Perkins, Mark Power, Tom Wood, Roger Mayne, and Tony Ray-Jones are all showing work in a new exhibition hosted by Burberry during London Fashion Week (and beyond). Installed over three floors in Burberry’s new show venue – the 18th century, Grade 2-listed Old Sessions House in Clerkenwell, London – Here We Are will include over 200 images by more than 30 photographers from 18 September-01 October
“We are criticising everything; art, science, politics, animal rights, human rights, simply anything we can imagine. Yet we continuously declare our opinions as correct under our perfect profile pages. Are we really so good? I don’t think so,” says Karakas. Her project, The Anatomy of Things, transports her subjects to an altered reality, where everything is perceived to be perfect and everyone looks the same. This disquieting vision plays with our ideas of perfection and our global obsession with curating our lives online.
“The Hobbyist is the first major exhibition to explore the relationship between photography and hobby culture, focussing both on the photography of hobbies and photography as a hobby,” write curators Pierre Hourquet, Anna Planas and Thomas Seelig of the forthcoming show at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, The Hobbyist – Hobbies, Photography and the Hobby of Photography, which opens on 08 September. It’s a fair but also deceptively simple summary of this intriguing show, which is backed up by a busy events programme and a magazine (in place of a catalogue). “A phenomenon as diverse and participatory as the hobby can hardly be tackled through a classical exhibition alone,” write the curators, and the magazine reflects some of this diversity, including images by photographers such as Alberto Garcia-Alix, Bruce Davidson, Alec Soth, Mike Mandel, Ricardo Cases, and Kirill Golovchenko, vintage adverts for TVs, cameras and videotape recorders, an extract from Theodore W Adorno’s test The Culture Industry, a Q&A with Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane on their Folk Archive, and essays by contemporary cultural theorists such as Olivia Baeriswyl, Therese Steffen, and Doris Gassert.
Portrait of Britain returns for a second year with 100 more images that encapsulate life the length and breadth of the UK. From almost 8,000 entries this year, the final hundred will now be displayed in a digital exhibition across JCDecaux screens in shopping centres and commuter hubs around the country throughout September. In partnership with Nikon, the photography giant, Portrait of Britain aims to show the social and cultural diversity of people in the UK and showcase everyday citizens and unsung heroes in a gallery of the people, by the people, for the people. Simon Bainbridge, Editorial Director at the British Journal of Photography, was excited about the latest portraits for 2017, saying, “Collectively, the portraits celebrate the unique heritage and diversity of modern Britain, as much as its thriving photography culture and the myriad styles and approaches they employ in their work.”
The 22 year-old has shot Poundbury and Milton Keynes, among others, to pick out how we shape the environment – and how it then shapes us. “I quickly realised the importance of human presence within these urban environments; how we change them over time and how the environment changes us.”
When George Pitts died earlier this year, Vice photo editor Elizabeth Renstrom was struck by how much he had influenced her work and her approach to photography. Deciding the theme for this year’s photo issue seemed a natural progression: Idols. The issue presents up-and-coming photographers alongside the more established names that have made a big impact on their craft.
“The work that I make tends to comment on contemporary issues that disproportionately affect young people,” says Ollie Ma’, whose big projects to date were inspired by Grand Theft Auto and Adam Curtis
Malaysian youngster Daniel Adams came from Kuala Lumpur to Falmouth to explore identity and racism in photography. When embarking on his most recent project, Why Is Your English So Good?, the 21-year-old asked fellow Malaysian friends who were studying or working in the UK to recount their experiences of racism. Each crafted a one- or two-sentence anecdote and the images that Adams made in response attempt to visualise what it’s like to be on the receiving end of casual prejudice. Using constructed sets and make-up to bring the feelings at the core of each story to life, the photographs are visceral and emotive, harnessing the power of the image to express the indescribable.
