All posts tagged: feature

A Portrait of Queer Britain

Britain, for all its charms, can be dominated by grey skies and gloomy headlines. So it’s uplifting to come across the work of Charley Williams, whose portraits of drag queens and LGBTQ party-goers show Britain as the joyful and free place it can be. Her work is rooted in Bristol, where she lives. This small city, in England’s West Country, is famous for being progressive, and it has a vibrant and liberating spirit that abounds in Williams’ work. Dominique Fleek, the image that made the Portrait of Britain 2018 shortlist, captures a drag artist transforming into character. Williams tends to find her subjects in nightclubs and at festivals, and as such, her portraits explore a queer and carnivalesque world. Ahead of Portrait of Britain 2019, we spoke to Williams about how photography can tackle intolerance and can move us towards becoming a more open and accepting society. What did you want to capture about your subject, and about modern Britain, with the portrait that you entered into Portrait of Britain 2018? The subject of my …

2019-03-04T13:00:54+01:00

Portrait of Britain: Carly Clarke on documenting a life-changing journey

Beth Ryan

Documentary photographer Carly Clarke has shot a remarkable array of subjects. One of her projects explores the modern epidemic of India’s ‘forgotten elders’, a generation neglected and abused by their adult children. An earlier project, in contrast, explores the lighter topic of a Sussex brewery, while a third gives a behind-the-scenes view of a group of UK fishermen at work. Though her subjects differ hugely, the common thread is Clarke’s fascination with the way communities live across the globe. Clarke creates her most compelling portraits, however, when she turns the camera on herself. Last Day of Chemotherapy, the image that was shortlisted for Portrait of Britain 2018, is part of her series Reality Trauma. Clarke started the series after being diagnosed with cancer, and the result is an unflinchingly honest stage-by-stage account of her chemotherapy treatment. This deeply personal, contemplative work, is proof of Clarke’s absolute dedication to photography, the art form that gave her hope during an extremely challenging time. The image that was shortlisted for Portrait of Britain 2018 is a self-portrait taken …

2019-04-11T11:45:36+01:00

The thin blue line: Combining Russian policewomen and the criminals they capture

Gemma Padley

Social networks allow us to project whatever image we choose onto the people we’re connected to, and images – those we take of ourselves and of others – form a central role in the way we perform for others in the online space. And this sense of performance lies at the heart of a project by Russian photographer Anastasia Rudenko, which features images of policewomen and criminals she has found online. From 2011 to 2014, Rudenko, who was born in the South Kazakhstan region of the former Soviet Union, collected images sourced from Russian social networking sites, including Odnoklassniki.ru, a social network for schoolmates past and present, akin to Friends Reunited. These kind of sites are everywhere in Russia, she says, and they provide an “avalanche” of images that can make a useful starting point for her personal projects. “I collect snapshots and then decide how I can use them, either as found images or as material for my own photography. In my work, I try to analyse sections of modern Russian society from different angles. …

2015-12-16T12:22:18+01:00

Inside View: Todd Selby

Alex Godfrey

It’s 9am in Todd Selby’s Brooklyn studio, and he sounds like he’s bouncing all over the shop, full of the joys of winter. Since moving to New York from California in 1999, he’s milked the city dry. He’s been a professional photographer since 2001, and the website he began a few years later, TheSelby.com, was originally a local endeavour – a showcase for the area’s creative wonderkids – but he has since expanded his brief. Bustling workspaces and busy living rooms are still celebrated, but Selby has more recently been travelling the globe in pursuit of portraiture in food and fashion. He has also turned his hand to filmmaking, bringing his subjects to life with such joy that their enthusiasm – and Selby’s – bursts from your screen. “I thought of this idea, people in their spaces, and put it on the internet; it was just fun, and then it took off,” he says, jazzed that what was a personal project that saw him photographing his friends’ homes now takes him around the world, allowing him to meet incredible …

2015-11-03T12:53:20+01:00

BJP Staff