Author: Héloise Winstone

Earth from Space: behind the scenes with Sent Into Space

Last year, BBC One broadcast Earth from Space. Across four episodes, cameras in space told stories of life on our planet from a brand new perspective: cities sprawled while forests and glaciers shrunk. China turned yellow with rapeseed flowers while mysterious green lights appeared in the ocean. Elephants struggled through drought while strange ice rings endangered seals. From start to finish, Earth from Space revealed the sublime array of colours, textures and patterns visible from the stratosphere — and crucially, it showed us just how fast our planet is changing. British Journal of Photography went behind the scenes with Sent Into Space – the company responsible for capturing the striking spectacle of a solar eclipse for the BBC series – to learn about the process behind the footage. Sent Into Space are regarded as the ‘Near Space experts’; in the last decade, they’ve launched over 500 flights taking images of the Earth from the edge of space. Whatever the project, every shot is taken against the spectacular backdrop of the curving horizon of our planet, detailing …

2020-02-27T15:20:11+01:00

Announcing the judges for Female in Focus 2020

Flossie Skelton

Having launched to international acclaim in 2019, Female in Focus is back to celebrate exceptional women in photography. Following last year’s finale exhibition at United Photo Industries in Brooklyn, New York – which was extended due to popular demand – 2020 will see 1854 Media and British Journal of Photography continue their commitment to discovering, promoting and rewarding new generations of women photographers whilst working to combat gender inequality in photography. Female in Focus welcomes entries from women-identifying and non-binary photographers based anywhere in the world. Presiding over this year’s winners is a judging panel of editors, directors and curators from leading global institutions: Sandra M. Stevenson – Assistant Editor, Photography Department, New York Times Kate Bubacz – Photo Director, BuzzFeed News Chiara Bardelli Nonino – Photo Editor of Vogue Italia and L’Uomo Vogue Elizabeth Houston – Owner and director, Elizabeth Houston Gallery Laylah Amatullah Barrayn – Documentary photographer & co-author of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora Gulnara Samoilova – Founder of @WomenStreetPhotographers Carol Allen-Storey – Award-winning photographer, curator and educator The panel will select two bodies …

2020-03-04T14:45:49+01:00

Female in Focus: Increasing work for women photographers

Flossie Skelton

Female in Focus is an award purposed to discover, promote and reward a new generation of women-identifying and non-binary photographers around the world. In Linda Nochlin’s seminal 1971 essay Why Are There No Great Women Artists?, she poses a presiding explanation as to why, throughout history, those of us lacking the good fortune to have been born white, middle class and above all, male, have remained so steadfastly on the back foot (in the arts, as in a hundred other areas). “The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces,” says Nochlin, “but in our institutions and our education”. How, then, do we – as an industry, and as a society – collectively unlearn the centuries of artistic and cultural erasure of women? With the last decade’s unprecedented rise in popular feminism, wider attitudes are ostensibly changing. But the numbers? They’re just not. Between 2013 and 2017, men made up between 89% and 96% of commercial photographers. Less than 14% of leading US fashion magazine covers are shot …

2020-03-04T14:45:45+01:00

Female in Focus: championing a gender-equal photography industry

Flossie Skelton

Female in Focus is a platform purposed to discover, promote and reward a new generation of women-identifying photographers around the world In 1985, feminist art collective the Guerilla Girls famously posed the question on a public billboard: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?” At the time, less than 5% of the artists in the Met were women. Meanwhile, 80% of the nude bodies depicted were… You guessed it. Women. It’s no secret that women have been gravely underrepresented throughout art history. From literature through to painting, photography and beyond: since storytelling began, the masculine experience has consistently framed and filtered how we see the world. The meteoric rise of popular feminism in recent years might reasonably lead one to assume things are changing. In the art world? Not so much. Almost three decades after their original campaign, the Guerilla Girls revisited the Met’s numbers: in 2012, only 4% of artists in the Met’s modern art wing were women. 76% of the nudes were still women. In 2019, Huck reported that …

2020-03-04T14:45:29+01:00

Portrait of Humanity: You Have Nothing to Worry About

Sarah Roberts

In 2017, Melissa Spitz was named TIME Instagram Photographer of the Year, for her deeply personal Instagram account, cataloguing her mother’s struggles with mental illness. Spitz employs the platform to open up a conversation about mental health. One of her captions begins: ‘The first time I thought my mom killed herself I came home to find our house in a mess…’. Her account comprises beautifully shot portraits, screenshots of personal conversations, and archive footage of her mum from Spitz’s childhood. The work is arresting in its honesty; “I’ve been embarrassed by my mum for my entire life,” says Spitz. “So it’s been very liberating to say ‘fuck it, this is my mum, this is my life’.” Through her Instagram account, Spitz has built the community and support system that she lacked growing up with a mentally unwell parent. “I think about when I was a teenager and my mum was really bad, and I spent my time locked in my room to hide away,” she explains. “Had I had a community, I wouldn’t have felt …

2019-12-19T15:18:44+01:00

Portrait of Humanity: My Americans

Sarah Roberts

“In Chinese, the name for the United States of America translates to mean ‘the beautiful country’,” explains An Rong Xu, who has been documenting Chinese Americans for the last seven years, as part of his ongoing series My Americans. “Chinese people have been migrating to America since the 1800s, and their history has been intertwined ever since.” Xu was drawn to photograph America’s Chinese population after realising the extent to which they have been historically overlooked. “No Chinese workers are shown in the photograph of the Golden Spike when the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, although it was largely built by them,” he says. “They have been considered the perpetual foreigner. Regardless of how many generations and countless contributions they have made to American history, they will never be seen as American.” Xu’s photographs acknowledge and celebrate the enormous contribution the Chinese population has made to American society. The series is largely shot in New York City, where Xu resides. The images depict the city’s vibrant Chinatown, where traditional New Year celebrations involve Americanised floats, and …

2019-12-19T15:18:43+01:00

OpenWalls Arles 2020: Singapore’s growing population

Sarah Roberts

As part of OpenWalls Arles 2020, we are highlighting photographers whose work is connected to this year’s theme: Growth. Find out how your work could be exhibited alongside Les Rencontres d’Arles 2020 at openwalls.co. “Singapore has very little natural resources,” explains Amrita Chandradas. “Its resources are its people.” Several years ago, Singapore’s government pledged to increase the country’s population to 6.9 million citizens by 2030. At the time, Chandradas was studying in London, but these plans to increase the country’s population called her back to her home in Singapore, to document the changes happening there. “My friends and family were telling me about lots of landmarks and places of great historical significance that were disappearing,” says Chandradas. Singapore is nicknamed “Little Red Dot” in reference to its small size. Despite having a very low birth rate, it is the third most densely populated country in the world. When plans to increase the population were unveiled in 2013, there was outrage. “Everyone was asking the government where they were going to fit people into such a …

2019-07-29T11:21:00+01:00

EyeEm Photographer of the Year announced

Beth Ryan

The winners were announced during Berlin Photo Week in Germany (10 – 14 October) where all 100 finalists were exhibited in Supermarkt, a repurposed supermarket and exhibition space. Pachnanda received a trip to Berlin for the event, as well as a Sony Alpha camera. As part of the award, Pachnanda will act as the EyeEm ambassador during 2019. Much of his work centres on bold portraits of unusual people, often in urban areas of London. On receiving the Photographer of the Year title, Pachnanda said, “winning an award with so much calibre from an organisation so pivotal to the world of 21st century photography is amazing”. The EyeEm Awards, run by global community and marketplace for photography EyeEm, currently stands as the world’s largest photography competition. This year marked its fifth edition, and it welcomed a record 700,000 entries from 100,000 photographers, hailing from more than 150 countries across the globe. Covering nine diverse categories – ranging from ‘The Creative’ to ‘The Great Outdoors’ – the award attracts a huge breadth of subject matter. This …

2018-10-31T14:36:52+01:00

La Fábrica and PhotoLondon: Book Dummy Award 2018

Héloise Winstone

The creation of a dummy is an integral process for any photographer with aims on publishing their own photobook. It is a visual mockup for a proposed project, created before being sent to the publishers. Organised by La Fábrica in collaboration with Photo London, the Book Dummy Award selects a entry that is renowned for its quality, uniqueness and international scope, the winners of the award will then have their dummy physically realised. The competition encourages photographers from anywhere in the world to submit a physical copy of their dummy, under the rule that no digital copies may be entered. One winner from 20 finalist dummies will then be selected by an international jury. The winner’s work will be published with a print run of at least 1000 copies, and distributed worldwide. Photographers submit entries from all over the world, as in 2017 there were participants from 45 countries and every continent. The winner of the 2017 edition was Iranian-born, Swiss photographer Arunà Canevascini. Nominated as one of British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch …

2018-09-26T17:13:46+01:00

Organ Vida: Engaged, Active, Aware – Women’s Perspectives Now

Héloise Winstone

Last week, a group of Croatia’s leading cultural pioneers welcomed the 10th jubilee edition of Organ Vida photofestival. Co-curators, Marina Paulenka and Lea Vene were joined by Nataša Ivančević, Paola Orlić, Morana Matković, Nevena Tudor Perković and Veljko Mihalić to address visitors and guests at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb for the grand opening, getting the festival underway for the tenth consecutive year. The opening of the festival signalled the announcement of the second annual Marina Viculin prize to photographer Denis Butorac. Using personal experience as a driving force behind his work, he focuses on family, intimacy and the sense of ‘(not) belonging’. Following the opening week, the exhibitions are now open to the public, free of charge, during the month of September. Hosted by a number of galleries throughout Zagreb as well as in the Croatia’s biggest and most modern museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the works on display explore creative interpretations of the contemporary female experience. Each show follows the main theme, borne out of a desire to combat modern …

2018-09-21T17:29:14+01:00

BJP Staff