Image Magazine #01 by The Association of Photographers UK

COMMENT

WELCOME TO THE NEW-LOOK IMAGE Welcome to the new-look Image, brought to you by the Association of Photographers and made by the makers of British Journal of Photography. Aimed at image-makers in advertising, editorial and design, this magazine is about both art and commerce, and celebrates both visual elan and creative business solutions. We don’t shy away from fine art but we know that images shot on commission can be interesting, intelligent and directional; we also believe that images shot on commission are being used in some of the most creative ways. Brands and advertisers know that images are being used differently now that they are digital and we all have computers, and the most savvy among them are using this to good effect. A tiny LA clothes label, Wren, managed to create a video that went viral for just $1300; Katy Perry’s management commissioned a moving still for social media, after realising fans make knock-off gifs from her music videos. Up-and-coming photographers, meanwhile, are creating constantly evolving streams of images on social media, promoting themselves this way and winning big commissions off the back of it. It’s a fast-moving world, and one that’s making the limited-edition, fine art print world of the galleries look more than a little staid. For our part, we’re happy to present this magazine as an app and tap into some of that energy. But that’s not to say we’ve abandoned print. As our article on food photography shows, the most interesting work in this field is being promoted through a new wave of food magazines, which are aimed at the cutting-edge minority rather than the mass market. And as Julia Fullerton-Batten shows, photographers with courage and conviction can use the fine art market to realise personal projects, taking the lead rather than working in collaboration with others. Perhaps it’s a mistake to make too much of the difference between commissions and self-started, digital and print photography. As Erik Kessels, the award-winning ad agency founder points out, the best work has a sense of authenticity that can only come from the photographer himself. “There are still professional photographers who shoot only ads but they are, with respect, master copiers. They can see a sketch and make it,” he says. “I find that, personally, I’m looking more for people who have an authentic style.”

Diane Smyth Editor Portrait © Jonathan Worth www.jonathanworth.com

CONTENTS

6 EXHIBITIONS PHOTOGRAPHY ON SHOW IN BRITAIN AND BEYOND

16 BOOKS NEW PUBLICATIONS, FROM SELF-PUBLISHED ZINES TO THE LAST PHOTOBOOK BY MARTIN PARR AND GERRY BADGER

26 EVENTS THE PHOTO FESTIVAL SEASON KICKS OFF WITH PHOTOESPAÑA, ARLES, VISA POUR L’IMAGE AND UNSEEN

31 IT’S NICE THAT THE DIVERSE PUBLISHING PLATFORM NOW RUNS A BLOG, A MAGAZINE, AN ANNUAL AND AN EVENT

Cover Ji Soo Choi, from the series Korea, 2013. Image © Julia Fullerton-Batten

37 CREATIVE REVIEW SENIOR WRITER ELIZA WILLIAMS ON GETTING INTO THE COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY BIBLE

43 GOING VIRAL FIRST KISS IS THE MOST-VIEWED FASHION SHORT OF ALL TIME – AND IT COST JUST $1300 TO MAKE

Image Magazine is the publication of the Association of Photographers, UK.

46 SOCIAL LIFE YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHERS ARE USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO GET THEIR WORK OUT AND WIN FAT COMMISSIONS

55 THE NEW FOOD FOODIE FADS AND ACID BRIGHT STILL LIFES COMBINE FOR A NEW WAVE OF FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY

75 STAGED REALITY JULIA FULLERTON-BATTEN’S PERSONAL PROJECT, KOREA, MIXES FACT AND FICTION

93 KEEP IT REAL ERIK KESSELS, FOUNDER OF THE KESSELSKRAMER AD AGENCY, SHUNS PHONEY CONFORMITY

107 COMPUTER HOTEL A CORPORATE COMMISSION TAKES THREE MAGNUM PHOTOGRAPHERS DEEP INTO TELECOM ITALIA

127 MOVING ON RYAN ENN HUGHES SHOOTS KATY PERRY FOR QUIRKY VIDEO LOOPS DESTINED FOR SOCIAL MEDIA

The Association of Photographers (AOP) is a not-for-profit member organisation representing commercial photographers, agents and assistants globally. Based in London (UK) the AOP supports its members with business and legal advice, workshops and talks, a member forum and an annual Awards programme to spotlight the best in commissioned and noncommissioned photography. For more information go to www.the-aop.org Contact us at info@aophoto.co.uk Office +44 (0) 20 7739 6669 Image magazine is the publication of the Association of Photographers, UK.

EXHIBITIONS

BP Spotlight: Chris Killip Tate Britain, London Until 28 September www.tate.org.uk

Chris Killip is one of the UK’s greatest photographers, and – in the absence of the major solo retrospective Arbeit/Work shown at the Reina Sofia Museum and the Museum Folkwang, Essen – this exhibition provides a good opportunity to see his work. Including images from the now-classic series Isle of Man (published as a book in 1980) and In Flagrante (1988), it also includes images of seal coal scavengers in Northumberland and photographs of the Pirelli factory in Burton-on-Trent, which Killip was commissioned to take by the tyre manufacturer. Tate Britain recently acquired a body of work from Killip and this exhibition is taking place because of it; The Manx Museum acquired 250 of Killip’s images of the island in June 2013 and is planning to exhibit a selection of this work in 2016. Moira hand-picking in the very good fur coat, 1984. Image © Chris Killip

EXHIBITIONS

Urbes Mutantes: Latin American Photography 1944–2013 International Center of Photography, New York 16 May – 07 September www.icp.org

Taking the ‘mutant’, constantly evolving and occasionally chaotic Latin American city as its focus, this exhibition is a major survey of photography from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. Particularly drawing on street photography, it shows these countries during decades of political and social upheaval, via sections that explore public space as a platform for protest, popular street culture, the public face of poverty, and more. The images are drawn from the collection of Leticia and Stanislas Poniatowski, and the exhibition was first shown at Museo de Arte del Banco de la Republica in Bogota, Colombia. Caio Reisewitz, Paraíba I, 2014. Courtesy Luciana Brito Galeria, São Paulo

EXHIBITIONS

Joan Fontcuberta: Stranger Than Fiction Media Space Gallery, London 23 July – 09 November www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

Winner of the 2013 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, Joan Fontcuberta is a giant of the medium, but this is his first major exhibition in the UK. Featuring six different narratives, it mixes fact and fiction, science and art, to test the limits of photography and our credulity – Fontcuberta grew up under the Franco dictatorship and spent his early career working in advertising, both of which piqued his interest in photography as persuasion. “Photography is a tool to negotiate our idea of reality,” he has said. “Thus it is the responsibility of photographers to not contribute with anaesthetic images, but rather to provide images that shake consciousness.” Alopex Stultus, from the Fauna series by Joan Fontcuberta and Pere Formiguera, 1987. Image © Joan Fontcuberta

EXHIBITIONS

ARTIST ROOMS: Robert Mapplethorpe 2014 at Tate Modern Tate Modern, London On show until 26 October www.tate.org.uk

Anyone who has read Just Kids, Patti Smith’s excellent account of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, will know how important self-portraits were to both his practice and to his conception of himself as an artist. Tate Modern is showing a selection of these iconic images, including a poignant shot taken shortly before his death from an Aidsrelated illness in 1989, along with flower studies and portraits of artists, writers and musicians of the period (including Patti Smith), and sexually explicit photographs. “I don’t like that particular word ‘shocking’,” said Mapplethorpe in 1988. “I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before... I was in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them.” Patti Smith, 1975. Image © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, courtesy Tate/National Galleries of Scotland. Acquired jointly with National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation, with assistance from National Heritage Memorial Fund and Art Fund 2008.

EXHIBITIONS

Primrose: Russian Colour Photography The Photographers’ Gallery, London 25 July – 19 October www.thephotographersgallery.org.uk

Colour photography didn’t become widespread until the mid-20th century, but it began in the early 1850s, almost at the same time as photography itself. Early colouring techniques relied on traditional craftsmen who hand-tinted the images, and the popularity of this approach in Russia meant that colour photography had an important independent history in the country. This exhibition gathers a disparate group of artists working in colour – from Alexander Rodchenko to Boris Mikhailov – and covers everything from picture postcards, Soviet propaganda, avant garde art and reportage. Curated by the Moscow House of Photography. Ivan Shagin, student, beginning of 1950s Collection of the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow/Moscow House of Photography Museum. Image © Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow/Moscow House of Photography Museum.

EXHIBITIONS

(Mis)Understanding Photography – Works and Manifestos Museum Folkwang, Essen 14 June – 17 August www.museum-folkwang.de

This huge exhibition includes more than 50 image-makers whose work has been accepted into the contemporary art canon, including Wolfgang Tillmans, Gillian Wearing, Tacita Dean; perhaps even more interesting, it also includes 60 manifestos written by photographers. The texts are drawn from the history of photography as well as the present day, and include radical statements of intent from László Moholy-Nagy, Alexander Rodchenko, Paul Strand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Victor Burgin and Lewis Hine, plus Thomas Hirschhorn, Nobuyoshi Araki and Chris Marker. The manifesto exhibition is produced in co-operation with the Fotomuseum Winterthur and will be shown there from 13 September – 23 November. New York State, 1970. Image © Kenneth Josephson

EXHIBITIONS

The Great War The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa 27 June – 16 November www.gallery.ca/en

The First World War wasn’t the first conflict to be documented in photographs, but it did mark a turning point for the medium. The official photographs reflect the planning, censorship and propaganda required to gain support for the military action; more secretly, the Triple Entente and Central Powers also used images to spy on citizens and combatants and develop strategy. This exhibition takes a good look at both and adds images made by individuals for personal or domestic purposes, such as studio portraits of soldiers and family albums, made to create permanent records of lives at risk – or already lost. The exhibition includes images from the Archive of Modern Conflict and the Wilson Centre for Photography, two of the most influential private collections in London, as well as public archives. Stretcher bearer and German prisoner dressing a wounded Canadian at capture of Arleux, France, April 1917. Unidentified (Canadian War Records Office).

EXHIBITIONS

Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness MoMA, New York 27 July – 02 November www.moma.org

Christopher Williams was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize back in 2012; this retrospective at MoMA is the first retrospective of his work ever mounted. Spanning his 35-year career (so far), the exhibition’s title comes from a documentary by French director Jean-Luc Godard, in which an amateur filmmaker compares his daily job as a factory worker with his hobby of editing his films of the Swiss countryside as “the production line of happiness”. Williams, who often takes images from consumer culture as his starting point, studied at the California Institute of the Arts in the 1970s under artists such as John Baldessari and went on to become the leading conceptualist of his generation. He is currently professor of photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Bergische Bauernscheune, Junkersholz/Leichlingen, 29 September 2009. Image © Christopher Williams, courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner, New York/London, and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne.

EXHIBITIONS

The Scene of the Crime Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi Until 07 December www.museephoto.be

Crime scene photographs are rarely seen by members of the public – taken by the police as part of their investigations, they usually remain stored in confidential files. These images were taken nearly 100 years ago by Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, founder of l’Institute de police scientifique of the Université de Lausanne and a pioneer in his field. Showing the scenes of violent crimes that transgress society’s usual moral boundaries, they retain an emotional punch of their own. This exhibition was put together by the prestigious Musée de l’Élysée in collaboration with the Institut de police scientifique of the Université de Lausanne. Empoisonnement à l’acide de Mme Bollo, empreintes de mains contre le mur, Bière, Janvier 1910. Shot by Rodolphe A Reiss. Image © Musée de l’Elysée/Institut de police scientifique, Lausanne.

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BOOKS

Book Du Jour: SPBH Book Club Volume V Esther Teichmann SPBH Book Club Edition of 500 www.selfpublishbehappy.com/bookclub

The Self Publish, Be Happy Book Club launched in 2012 with an interesting proposition – members pay £100 per year and receive three limitededition artists’ books. Volume I was put together by prestigious duo Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin; Volume V, just published, is from Esther Teichmann. Like the other books, it’s a modest size at 15cm x 20cm, but this small size fits Teichmann’s topic well – female pleasure. Including backdrops and shells, sculptures and the sea, as well as nudes, women are depicted as lovers and mothers, all in the grip of the sensual world. Small images are pasted into the leaves and the cover is an original, hand-printed cyanotype, making for a book that’s as tactile as its subject.

BOOKS

Maidan – Portraits from the Black Square Anastasia Taylor-Lind GOST books £35 Limited edition of 750 www.gostbooks.com

Anastasia Taylor-Lind is best known as a documentary photographer, whose quiet, observational images and environmental portraits have won her representation by VII, as well as numerous awards and exhibitions. This series is a little different. Shot in Kiev’s Independence Square, it shows the protestors demonstrating against their government, or mourning their dead, but it detaches them from their surroundings. Working in a makeshift photo studio a few feet from the barricades, Taylor-Lind shot the protestors at moments of repose, drawing attention to their improvised body armour, sad bunches of flowers or, most importantly, their expressions: the images seem to speak of how they’ve been changed by their experiences rather than recording the action. The book is released in July but can be pre-ordered now; 30 collectors’ editions will also go on sale, including two prints, starting at £300 for the first 1-10.

BOOKS

Food Henk Wildschut Post Editions £28.95 www.post-editions.com

Back in 2011, Henk Wildschut was commissioned to photograph contemporary food production for two years by the Rijksmuseum and NRC Handelsblad; this book is the result. Before shooting, Wildschut believed the food industry to be dishonest, unhealthy and unethical, and some of the images are hair-raising – one shows a man leaning over a plastic crate full of fluffy yellow chicks, for example, the title reading simply “gassing”. Many of the images look as if they’ve been shot in laboratories, not farms. As Wildschut points out, these images are worlds away from our idealised view – propagated through advertising – which depicts food production in terms of wholesome country farming. But that doesn’t necessarily make the 21stcentury farms bad places – just ones governed by 21st-century standards of hygiene and economics. Food was highly recommended in the 2014 Krazna Kraus Foundation Book Awards.

BOOKS

Guapamente Issue 02 Ewen Spencer ES Books, in conjunction with We Folk, £5 Limited editions of 300 www.ewenspencer.com/blog

“Is it a book? Is it a magazine? Is it a fanzine? Is it a Mook? Who gives a Fook!” writes Ewen Spencer of his new project Guapamente. Whatever it is, it’s a limited-edition publication he’s producing himself every quarter, with the support of his agency We Folk, taking a look at youth culture. Spencer is well-known in this area, having started out photographing for SleazeNation and The Face, and published books on The White Stripes, London’s grime scene and UK Garage; he’s also got form in self-publishing, having started to do it at the turn of the century, long before it was fashionable. Guapamente is “a positive reaction to the absence of open editorial pages in the UK magazine culture, where photo essays used to be regularly commissioned”, writes his agent, and each issue presents a different story – Issue 01 documented Italian youth in summer, for example; Issue 02 was shot in Marseille.

BOOKS

Toilet Paper: Issue 9 Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari Damiani www.toiletpapermagazine.org

The date on the magazine reads February 1981, but it’s the new edition of the biannual artists’ magazine; even still, the date tells you all you need to know about this maverick, wilfully strange publication. Put together by an artist and a photographer, Toilet Paper is bright, bold and influential – the duo have recently shot an ad campaign for Kenzo and a fashion story for New York Magazine, images from which appear in this edition. Their credits include thanks to ‘food magician’ Chiara Maci and ‘lasagne expert’ Carlo Cracco, and there are a number of acid-bright, entirely unappetising images of food, including shots of takeaway chicken covered in gold paint, a shot of a model lying in French fries and a shot of a multicoloured cake shaped like an exploding volcano. Perhaps the new wave of food photography can also be traced back to them.

BOOKS

The Eyes: No 2 Europe and Photography Spring-Summer 2014 Aman Iman Publishing £18 www.theeyes.eu/en

It’s ambitiously priced and still in its infancy, but The Eyes is shaping up to be an interesting alternative to the established photography journals. Put together by a Paris-based company that also publishes photobooks, its insider knowledge is evident in its choice of photographers and subjects. There are interviews with curator Clement Cheroux (from the Pompidou Centre) and photographer Guido Guidi, articles on Fotodok and the Circulation(s) festival, texts by Francois Cheval (chief curator of the Musée Nicéphore Niépce) and Simon Baker (curator of photography at Tate Modern), and photographs by Martin Kollar and Stephen Gill. This issue has a focus on London, too, with a useful map of photography-friendly bookshops, galleries and organisations. It’s published in French and English, and as an iPad app and in print.

BOOKS

The Photobook: A History Volume III Martin Parr and Gerry Badger Phaidon £59.95 uk.phaidon.com

Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s The Photobook: A History Volume I and Volume II need little introduction – the pair weren’t the first to put together a compendium of photobooks, but they are the people who put them on the map. Now photobooks are hot property, and they have updated their reference works with Volume III, picking out the best in 20th-century publishing and – especially – recent publications. It includes big names in self-publishing, such as Stephen Gill, Cristina de Middel and Ryan McGinley, as well as lesserknown books and historical publications such as Gian Butturini’s London (published in 1969) and Heinrich Hoffmann’s Winterhilfswerk-Heftchen (Winter Relief Fund Booklets, published 1937-41). Phaidon is charging a hefty price for Volume III, but it’s the last in the series and makes a convincing end point to their history (though not to photobook publishing).

BOOKS

COS Spring & Summer 2014 Gert Jonkers & Jop van Bennekom, in collaboration with COS Free in COS stores www.cosstores.com/gb/Magazine

Made by the people who make Fantastic Man and publish The Gentlewoman, COS magazine has high production values, and the Spring & Summer edition is a blinder. Featuring images by Collier Schorr, Wolfgang Tillmans, Alasdair McLellan, Jason Evans and Daniel Riera, it’s like a who’s who of high-end contemporary commercial commissions, and also features an interesting mix of paper stocks and sizes. And the best thing is, it’s free! Pick up a copy from any COS store in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow or Brighton, or in major cities around the world. Spread from the story New Season. Image © Ben Allen

BOOKS

The Age of Collage – Contemporary Collage in Modern Art Dennis Busch, Hendrik Hellige, Robert Klanten Gestalten £34.99 shop.gestalten.com

Collage has been around since the Cubists but, as this publication shows, it’s having a moment right now. Starting with an essay on the history of the collage, which discusses its origins, and key figures and movements such as the Futurists, the Pop Artists, Hannah Hoch and John Heartfield, it collects together 80 of the best contemporary collage-makers, from giants of the field such as John Stezaker, Martha Rosler and Linder Sterling, to young artists such as Ruth van Beek. Giving each artist at least a DPS and usually much more, and including a brief biography as well as plenty of images, this book shows how widespread and diverse contemporary collage-making is. Shot of heads is YUL, 2012. Image © Matthieu Bourel

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EVENTS

PhotoEspaña Madrid 04 June – 27 July www.phe.es

PhotoEspaña takes over Madrid for the 17th time, kicking off a new cycle of the festival that will see it celebrate photography from specific regions rather than grouped into conceptual themes. This year is devoted to Spanish photography, which is arguably undergoing a renaissance at the moment. Horacio Fernandez presents 40 exceptional photobooks from 1905-1977, the festival presents the best photobooks of 2013, Joan Fontcuberta picks out a new wave of images taken or collated from digital sources, and Charlotte Cotton curates an exhibition of 30 photographers under 30. Visitors at PhotoEspaña 2013. Image © Julio César González

EVENTS

Rencontres d’Arles Arles, France 07 July – 21 September www.rencontres-arles.com

Arles is probably the biggest and best-known photography festival in the world; this is the last year it’s running under the directorship of Francois Hebel, who has helped make it so over the past 13 years. Next year the reigns are handed over to Sam Stourdzé, the 41-year-old wunderkind who is currently the director of the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne. The exhibitions this year include David Bailey, Raymond Depardon and a show devoted to Chinese photobooks. But the exhibitions are almost not the point – go in the first week to meet professional photographers, curators and picture editors, and to take part in portfolio reviews. Matt Beaman, photography editor at Forward Group, gives advice at Les Rencontres d’Arles 2013, PhotoFolio Reviews. Image © Agathe Lacoste

EVENTS

Visa Pour l’Image Perpignan, France 30 August – 14 September www.visapourlimage.com

It’s shaping up to be a good year at Visa Pour l’Image, with exhibitions by Don McCullin, Jerome Sessini, João Silva and Goran Tomasevic, plus the World Press Photo 2013 show. Visa focuses on photojournalism and is also running several interesting lectures and debates on the subject, including a symposium on the psychological challenges of covering wars and disasters. Like Arles, it’s preferable to go in the first week, when these debates take place and when it’s easy to meet fellow professionals. The exhibition at the Couvent des Minines at Visa Pour l’Image. Image © Mazen Saggar

EVENTS

Unseen Amsterdam 18 – 21 September www.unseenamsterdam.com

Unseen is an art fair, but it’s an art fair with a difference. Focusing on photography by up-and-coming image-makers, it pitches itself as “the fair with festival flair” and runs a comprehensive programme of talks and events. It also hosts a book market and a dummy awards, all of which make it an interesting event, even if you’re not in the market to buy prints. Unseen is organised by Foam Magazine, and also hosts the launch of its annual ‘Talent’ issue. The Unseen Collection at the 2013 Unseen Photo Fair. Image courtesy of Unseen Photo Fair

ITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S NICE THAT Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Nice That started life as a blog, but is now online, in print and in person at regular talks and events. Its annual symposium, Here London, will take place on 14 June. Image caught up with editorin-chief Rob Alderson

IT’S NICE THAT

IMAGE: Why did you start It’s Nice That? ROB ALDERSON: It’s Nice That was founded in

IMAGE: How do you choose the work for Printed

Pages?

2007 by Will Hudson while he was a student at Brighton University. He was set a brief – to put something in the world to make it a better place – and came up with the idea of a platform that would showcase creativity in an entirely positive way. Since then it has evolved into a publishing platform committed to “championing creativity” online, in print and via our events programme. We also have a sister agency, INT Works, that works with clients including Nike, Unilever and Converse.

ALDERSON: The guiding principles are depth

IMAGE: Who reads it?

down and each of us provide a list of the work from the site we believe is worthy of the annual. It can be quite testy and people really fight for their favourites. Once we have a long list we look across and start to see where we have things that are similar; these are then decided between us. Then everything goes up on the wall and we have a final selection meeting. Seen as a whole it isn’t too hard to whittle it down to a final selection, although there are always things you lose with a heavy heart – 130 from 2500 is a tough ask!

ALDERSON: Although a large proportion of our

readers come from the creative industries, we are very big on accessibility and try to provide coverage that anyone interested in art and design can engage with. Although we can act as an industry resource, it’s very important for us to also have broader appeal.

IMAGE: How many people read it? ALDERSON: Our current readership is about

350,000 unique users a month. About a quarter of them come from the UK, followed by the US, France, Germany, Canada, The Netherlands and Australia. Google Analytics records visitors from 211 countries, though, including Niger and the Solomon Islands.

IMAGE: Why have you started up a printed

magazine [Printed Pages]?

ALDERSON: There are three reasons we are still

committed to print. One is that the tactile qualities provoke a visceral reaction in readers that cannot be replicated digitally. Secondly, we live in a cultural age in which we define our fields of interest by the people we follow on social media and the feeds we subscribe to. On top of that, algorithms second guess what we want to see and read based on what we have seen and read recently. A magazine still has the power of serendipity; we stumble across something we never thought we were interested in, something we’d never have thought to Google. Finally, there are some stories that are simply better suited to being told in print.

IMAGE: Why did you start the annual? ALDERSON: Every year we post around 2500

articles on itsnicethat.com. We loved the idea of giving around 130 of these a second life in a beautiful hardback form. It presents a year of creativity as curated by us – from silly blogs to great graphic design, and people seem to buy into that.

and discovery. We are drawn to stories that have never been told, or twists on stories you think you know. From there it’s about getting a good spread of creative disciplines and things that we’d want to read.

IMAGE: How do you choose the work for the

annual?

ALDERSON: Every month the editorial team sits

IMAGE: Why did you start up a conference [Here]? ALDERSON: There are amazingly inspirational

and creative people for whom the best way to showcase their talent is to give them a stage. We also thought that although there are lots of excellent art and design events in London, there was a gap for something with our tone and our approach to curation. Also, it’s great to meet and mingle with like-minded people. And everyone likes a goodie bag.

IMAGE: What do you look for in the photographic

projects you feature?

ALDERSON: A combination of technical skill and

concept. The balance can be skewed one way or the other, but we like to see evidence of both and we’ll try to look at work in the context both of its creation and its intended use. We post loads of photography, but we also turn down quite a lot; there are certain trendy setups and tricks that we’re pretty weary of seeing.

IMAGE: How can photographers get in touch? ALDERSON: They can email submit@itsnicethat.

com, which gets checked every day, or there are author emails at the bottom of every post.

www.itsnicethat.com

Spreads from the Spring 2014 issue of It’s Nice That’s magazine, Printed Pages, showing images from the series Street Fight © Luca Sage (top and middle); Scotland v Wales © Jane Stockdale, and a portrait of footballer Peter Crouch © Spencer Murphy

Above: It’s Nice That’s 2013 Annual, featuring the best work from the year. Spreads (clockwise from top left) show images by Elisa Noguera Lopez, Mark Leary, Haw Lin, Vincent Fournier.

Next page: 2013 edition of It’s Nice That’s annual symposium, Here. Images © Cat Garcia

CREATIVE REVIEW Creative Review is a monthly magazine for the advertising and design industries; it produces a photography special every April and a photography album every November. It also runs a monthly magazine called Monograph, plus an app, a blog and a Twitterfeed. Image caught up with Eliza Williams, senior writer on the magazine and author of This is Advertising and How 30 Great Ads Were Made

CREATIVE REVIEW

IMAGE: How would you describe Creative

Review?

ELIZA WILLIAMS: The magazine covers the best creative work across advertising, design and visual culture. IMAGE: Who reads it? WILLIAMS: Industry people mostly – those at

IMAGE: How do you find photography stories? WILLIAMS: We keep in regular contact with photographers’ agents and galleries, and also look for stories that might be right for us across other sites. IMAGE: How do photographers get into the

annual?

ad agencies, graphic design studios, etc – but we also have a broader readership of people generally interested in visual culture (especially online), and a big student audience.

WILLIAMS: The Photography Annual is a paid-for awards scheme; winners are chosen by a panel of judges.

IMAGE: Who’s the best contact for photography-

IMAGE: What trends do you see in commercial

WILLIAMS: Antonia Wilson writes a lot of the photography stories online, but you can also speak to me, or Patrick Burgoyne, the editor.

WILLIAMS: There seems to be an emphasis on the ‘real’ – images that are natural rather than a lot of CGI or retouched imagery. This has been the case for a while, but it seems to be ongoing.

related stories?

IMAGE: What kind of photography are you

interested in?

WILLIAMS: We cover advertising photography

especially, but also regularly run stories on photography exhibitions on the website. Anything that is really striking visually is always appealing for our audience. IMAGE: What’s the best way for a photographer to

get in touch?

WILLIAMS: Via email is best – it’s good to send images of the project, plus basic information, and we can then go from there.

www.creativereview.co.uk

photography at the moment?

IMAGE: What tips do you have for commercial

photographers?

WILLIAMS: Try to find your own distinct look so that you stand out from the crowd. Present your work well online and try to get it in front of art buyers at ad agencies, as well as photographers’ agents, of course. Be flexible and easygoing – photographers are being asked to do more varied work for jobs these days, rather than just shooting stills (this regularly includes film). They have to work with a wider variety of people so need to be articulate about their work.

Creative Review’s Photography Annual 2013 – front and back cover. Panda image © Tim Flach

Creative Review Photography Annual 2013. Images ÂŠ James Newton, from the series To/From

Creative Review Photography Annual 2013. Images ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten, from the series Blind

Image ÂŠ Tomasz Gudzowaty | www.gudzowaty.com

SHOOT AFTER READING Available now for the iPad. Tap here to download. Tap here to see video preview

GOING VIRAL One-hundred-million views for a fashion film made in one day for just $1300? Wren, a small but savvy clothing brand based in Los Angeles, explains how itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s done

GOING VIRAL

First Kiss, which was directed by Tatia Pilieva and features Wren’s Fall 14 collection, was a runaway success for the LA-based clothes label, viewed more than 100 million times online. Video © Wren TAP TO PLAY VIDEO

At the last count, 100 million people had seen it, making Wren’s First Kiss the most-viewed branded fashion film of all time. You’ve probably seen it yourself because the three-and-a-half-minute video, which shows 20 strangers kissing for the first time, became an online sensation, linked to and reposted over and over again on social media including Facebook and Twitter, and picked up by outlets such as Buzzfeed. Not bad for a short made for $1300 in one day by a clothing company that employs just three people. “This shows that if your ideas are great, you don’t need a huge marketing budget to connect with consumers,” says Wren founder Melissa Coker. “The online space is a great equaliser in this sense.” But while Coker “never expected” the video to be so successful, she did plan for it to go viral from the start. Having worked in editorial on magazines such as Vogue, W and Details, she has always been savvy about marketing and has made a fashion film every season since setting up Wren in 2007. Previous fashion films have featured celebrities such as Kim Gordon, Karen Elson, Julia Restoin Roitfeld and Tavi Gevinson, and have been shared “just through the fashion space”, as she puts it; this time she decided to bring the video “directly into the hands of people”. This made the models involved with it more important than ever, as Coker wanted to include people who would be compelling to viewers and who would be able to help seed the story. Fortunately, based in Los Angeles, she and her company have many connections in the music and acting industries, and were able to feature what she terms “influencers”. “They [the participants] are friends of mine, or friends of the brand, such as singers that Wren has provided clothes for in the past,” she says. “I chose

people who I thought would be compelling and interesting to the media and the consumer at large. “Many people who participated are very influential in the fashion and music world,” she adds, “for example, Damian Kulash of OK Go, who has had many viral videos himself. We put the video on YouTube so that it would make for easy sharing, then passed the link to all participants, and it went viral from there. Subtle message Coker also posted it on dozens of media outlets, including Vimeo, Into the Gloss, Facebook and Interview, and launched it as part of Style.com’s video fashion week in place of a traditional presentation. The video isn’t plastered with marketing messages, but it’s clearly branded Wren at the start and end, and all the women featured are wearing Wren clothes. “If your ideas are good, people will find your message,” says Coker. “Subtlety is much more appealing than heavy-handed ‘by me now’ comeons to consumers. Further, this subtlety worked wildly to our advantage in the media – it created an unprecedented level of debate within the advertising and marketing communities, which drove the video to become even more popular.” Shot by Tatia Pilieva – another friend of Coker’s – and inspired by Richard Avedon’s photographs of people kissing, Coker knew the video would work because “it was a lovely, simple idea that I could execute in an appealing way. If your content is emotional and authentic, people will share it. It is a means to connect with one another through the typically faceless and impersonal online world,” she says. “I knew that I could cast influencers in the shoot and the media would want to tell our story.” www.wrenstudio.com

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SOCIAL LIFE A new wave of photographers and magazines are using social media such as Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram to publicise their work â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and they say theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re winning great commissions off the back of it. Joanna Cresswell reports

I think social media is very, very necessary for what I am trying to do,” says David Brandon Geeting, a New York-based photographer who has shot for The Fader, Nylon, New York Times T Magazine and Bloomberg Businessweek, among others. “I am not one of these people who works on a long, drawn-out, heavy series only to have it sit and collect dust on my website. “I am constantly tinkering with new ideas and experimenting with ways in which an image can be made and still be accepted as part of my ongoing archive. Tumblr and Instagram are both great because they allow me to post whatever I want at any given time, without this sense of finality.” Geeting is not alone. He’s one of a new wave of photographers using social media such as Tumblr, Instagram and even Facebook to promote their work, accompanying their traditional sites with more laissez-faire, constantly updated, accumulations of images. Amanda Jasnowski has more than 43,000 followers on her Tumblr alone and says social media has helped her win commissions from Absolut, Converse and Native shoes. Nico Krijno has shot for Wallpaper*, Apartamento, Dazed & Confused, Nike, Urban Outfitters, Mercedes-Benz and Levi’s, and says his Tumblr – Nico Krijno on the Internet – is his business card. “I don’t spend a lot of time on my website, or feel that I should,” he says. “Maybe when I’m older I’ll have things neatly categorised in chronological order – different series and eras, like a retrospective ‘best of’ website – but for now I much prefer social media platforms to share my immediate updates and what I’m working on.” Cutting-edge photography collectives, organisations and magazines are also adopting this approach, favouring pace and informality over what look like increasingly ponderous alternatives. Feature Shoot, Self Publish Be Happy and Wandering Bears all favour blogs; Max Marshall, founder and editor of The Latent Image, “never considered presenting artists in anything but a blog”. “I’m less interested in crafting large articles in order to explore trends or tropes in contemporary photography,” he says. “I’ve found that through the practice of searching and posting every single day, the same result can be achieved over time.” Luke Norman, one of the founders of Wandering Bears, agrees, saying he and his co-founders used a blog from the outset that reflects how they prefer to view content. “We started Wandering Bears in 2009, at a time when we felt there were no other sites that really offered this kind of experience,” he says. “We wanted to make a space that highlighted fresh talent in an approachable way.” Paper Journal, meanwhile, launched in 2013

as a traditional online magazine, with articles, interviews and essays, but established itself as a frontrunner by plugging into social media. It includes a ‘hot on Tumblr’ section, inviting a different photographer to take over its Instagram page each week, and it runs its own Tumblr blog. “I started the Tumblr as an inspiration board and a way to promote Paper Journal as I was preparing for its launch,” say editor Patricia Karallis. “It’s a way to post work that wouldn’t necessarily fit on the main site.” Interconnectivity These photographers and editors are all under 40, but Marshall says their approach reflects a wider shift online rather than their youth. “I’m not certain the surge in blog growth that’s going on now is directly correlated with the age of its users,” he says. “I’d say it’s more associated with the current boom in connectivity and networking that the internet is going through. The internet is quickly becoming the most democratic way to share art. Not everyone can discuss contemporary photography within his or her social circles; with the internet all of that is now collapsed at your fingertips.” “The internet has definitely connected a creative community of photographers like never before,” agrees photographer Lydo Elise Le, who has 20,000 followers on Instagram. “I’ve met some incredible friends on Instagram, and their feedback is something I really value.” Jasnowski agrees, saying, “It’s incredibly insightful and helpful at times.” Wandering Bears and Paper Journal see their role as fostering that sense of community, creating a space to grow in a particular direction. “The whole inspiration behind Wandering Bears was to create a space for emerging photographers to showcase their work, contact one another and to be informed on like-minded practice,” says Norman. “I’d like to think of Paper Journal as a place that promotes collaborations,” says Karallis. “A good example of this is the In Conversation series, which sees photographers get together to discuss thoughts and ideas about photography, art, life and food.” Perhaps there is a danger that this sense of community can morph into “art by committee”, in which photographers create eager-to-please, instantly shareable images stripped of any sense of individuality. Norman has already noticed a distinct style of “internet-friendly” work, for example, saying, “Simply look at Instagram or Tumblr and the images with the most notes are those of immediate visual gratification – bright colours, plants, fruit and textures. “Work is becoming more disposable and more ‘of the moment’,” he adds. “I also question the effects this will have on future work. Will artists

be producing work in a way that they know will achieve more likes, thumbs-up and reposts?” Le acknowledges that it can “be problematic if photographers begin to take [these sites] too seriously and start believing that these ‘likes’ and ‘notes’ equate to critical acclaim and recognition, in turn directing their work in a more ‘social’ aesthetic’’; even so, she admits it has already affected her own approach. “I have a different perspective when taking photos now, especially on the iPhone, when I know they are going to be consumed by many different people all at once,” she says. “We live in a society where television shows are required to change the shot every seven seconds to prevent people from getting bored,” explains Geeting. “Instant gratification is so necessary that if something is not ‘liked’ within the first few minutes of being posted, the author will assume it’s ineffective and that they’ve made a huge mistake by posting it.” Krijno puts a more positive spin on this, saying that “it’s speeding up the development of my personal language”. Jasnowski, however, says it’s about “learning how to not let your audience dictate and influence the things you share but rather sharing what you truly enjoy, regardless of how you think it may be received”. Finding work Either way, perhaps what’s more important is how well online sharing translates into paid work and commissions. Jeff Hahn, a Swiss/Chinese photographer who has shot for Versace, Atlantic Records and Dazed & Confused since graduating in 2011, says it’s difficult to quantify but “it does lead to that”; Krijno is more emphatic, stating that he owes most of his commercial and art career to Facebook and Tumblr. “As soon as I get a commission, I always ask the

editor or client how they found me,” he says. “Nine times out of 10 they say, ‘My assistant saw your work on Tumblr’, or ‘I saw it on Facebook’.” “If it weren’t for Tumblr, I would never have landed a single editorial or commercial job,” agrees Geeting. “Emily Keegin, deputy photo editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, discovered my blog two years ago. This would lead to more commissions from the same magazine, which I would then post on Tumblr, which would lead to even more commissions – Levi’s commissioned me to shoot something for their Tumblr because they liked my Tumblr. “If you are a creative person looking to gain some attention and eventually get paid for what you love to do, you are actually obliged to use social media,” he adds. “I blew a bunch of money going to school for my ‘craft’ and I don’t regret it one bit, but without maintaining a consistent internet presence throughout that time, I would not be where I am today. For me, Tumblr was just as, if not more, important than the classroom.” Even still, these photographers don’t recommend ditching the old-school website just yet. Jasnowski thinks it’s “not nearly as necessary now” but adds “in the cases where work clients are involved, having a website is ideal – you can’t expect a client to bother digging through pages and pages on your Tumblr blog”. And, as Hahn points out, having a formal website also helps anchor images that have cut loose from their creator online. “I think a lot of people have problems with the way images are shared anonymously on Tumblr without any credit,” he explains. “Personally, I have no problem with that. If a million people see an image I’ve taken and don’t know that I’ve taken it, it’s fine – if they happen upon your website they’ll recognise the work you’ve done.”

Feature Shoot

David Brandon Geeting

Self Publish, Be Happy

Amanda Jasnowski

Wandering Bears

Nico Krijno

The Latent Image

Jeff Hahn

Paper Journal

Lydo Elise Le

A new generation of photographers is using social media such as Instagram and Tumblr to promote their work – and winning prestigious commissions off the back of it. Click on the icons to view these photographers’ online presence. Cynthia, November 2013. Image © Amanda Jasnowski

Gordon with Ombre Chainlink, which was exhibited at Art Basel in Miami Beach in 2013, in a group show called Preservation. Image ÂŠ David Brandon Geeting

Photo shoot for Tank Magazine. Image ÂŠ Jeff Hahn

Image ÂŠ Lydo Elise Le

Outline Release #2, 2013. Image ÂŠ Nico Krijno

NEW EDITION – OUT NOW The latest edition of the ‘industry bible’, Beyond the Lens, is available to buy now. Beyond the Lens is recognised as the essential guide to rights, ethics and business practice in professional photography. It is

This latest edition has a foreword by Terry O’Neill and is split into 3 parts: + The Law and the Photographer + The Business End + Making a Living

used by colleges and universities as part of their courses and widely used as a reference point by photographers and commissioners.

The appendix includes three sets of photographer’s terms and conditions for those based either in England & Wales, Scotland or Eire; model release form; template business forms and agents agreement.

The cost is just £10 for AOP members or £30 for non-members. Beyond the Lens is available to buy from the AOP website: http://dataware.the-aop.org/Shop/tabid/90/product/4/Default.aspx

THE NEW FOOD A new wave of food magazines has helped spearhead a new wave of food photography – it’s bright, graphic and not necessarily appetising

THE NEW FOOD

Food is having a moment. From pop-up burger bars to farmers’ markets, it seems everyone is a foodie now, and when we’re not eating food, we’re talking about it. There are so many blogs about food you can now win awards for them, and posting food photos on Instagram is so common the service has written a how-to guide. Magazines have been quick to tap into the trend and a slew of trendy journals devoted to food have appeared, including Lucky Peach in San Francisco, Put A Egg On It: Tasty Zine in Brooklyn, The Gourmand in London and Alla Carta in Milan. Magazines that aren’t devoted to food have also started running features on it, with Wallpaper* including a regular item on artists’ recipes on its back page, and titles such as Die Zeit, Neon and New York Magazine publishing articles on food aimed at a more general reader. Hip and written for a savvy audience, these publications steer well clear of recipes and how-to guides in favour of a more highbrow approach, inspired by sociology, history, art and literature. Gastronomica, one of the first to break ground in this new market in 2001, pitches itself as ‘the journal of critical food studies’ and, according to photographer Maurizio di Iorio, is “an absolute reference for scholars of history and anthropology of alimentation”. These titles are also carving out a new visual identity to accompany their articles, rejecting the bright, descriptive, shallow depth-of-field style popularised by food stylist Donna Hay in the 1990s in favour of a graphic, often acid-bright style. Food is often presented in its raw form rather than as the final dish, and whether it’s influenced by Martin Parr’s eye-popping pictures of food, or Juergen Teller’s iconic shot of Bjork with black spaghetti, it can look distinctly unappealing. Stephanie Gonot shot a bog-standard Chinese takeaway against a clashing red and green backdrop to illustrate an article on ‘office lunching habits’ for Neon, for example, while Bobby Doherty’s tastes run towards cheap sushi, brightly coloured sardine tins and classic greasy doughnuts. “I don’t photograph food to display how tasty the dish is, how beautifully it is styled on the plate, or according to the wishes of a chef or stylist,” says Lauren Hillebrandt, whose images of food have appeared in indie publications Diner Journal, Canteen and Waterfall magazines, as well as supplements for Die Zeit and De Volkskrant. “I use food as decoration for my own vision and imagination. [It is] ‘food photography’, which isn’t about the goal (the dish, the taste) but about detail and abstraction.” “I’m more concerned with creating a sense of experience around the dish that sits on the table, than showing how succulent and delicious it is,” says John Short, who regularly shoots for

Wallpaper*. “A lot of my food work is not just about the food itself, it’s about scenarios. So, if what I’m trying to convey is about how good the food looks, then I’ll make sure it looks appetising, but if the story is about excess, then I’m just as happy to make it look unpalatable.” Beyond food Neither Short, di Iorio nor Hillebrandt describe themselves as food photographers; they shoot still lifes and more – and, unsurprisingly given the highbrow ambitions of the publications they work with, their photography sits as comfortably in galleries as it does in food magazines. Hillebrandt is represented by Galleri Tryffelgrisen in Stockholm, for example, while The Gourmand has shown photography and illustrations in London’s KK Outlet and is currently on show in the Design Museum’s Designs of the Year exhibition. Disturber Magazine, meanwhile (which is run by di Iorio with Cecilia Manfredi), recently curated an exhibition devoted to ‘New Tastes in Contemporary Food Photography’ that included work by di Iorio, Brandon Geeting and Gonot, plus Daniel Evans and Brendan Baker, Pietro Cocco, Bea de Giacomo, Go Itami, Aaron Tilley and Wyne Veen, which went on show at Pomo Galerie in Milan. In fact, this new wave of food photography has much in common with the new wave of graphic, brightly coloured still life photography currently so popular among young artists. Hillebrandt, who studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, is part of this current vogue and says that it was perhaps inevitable that its aesthetic would start to merge with the fad for all things food-related. “People are really into food these past few years – it’s all about putting food on Instagram, growing your own herbs or vegetables, learning about organic food and using all fresh ingredients,” she says. “I think this obsession with food, in combination with the new wave of still life photography, has resulted in a new food photography.” For Hillebrandt, these images don’t just look different to mainstream food photography, though – they have a totally different goal. Where the images of food used in traditional magazines and books show how the recipe should turn out and try entice the reader to try it, she says her work attracts the reader in a more general way. “The assignments I do are never commercial in the sense of food photography,” she says. “They are always about my interpretation, not about the food I show. “For De Volkskrant, for example, I had to take some photos for an article about healthy food, and I made a really bizarre little vegetable garden that didn’t look like one at all,” she adds. “That’s what makes it

THE NEW FOOD

fun – it’s something you know, but different enough to make you look twice.” Short agrees, laughing that “most people, when confronted with the words ‘food photography’, still think drop focus, daylight and a reflector – three things I never use in my food photography. But this is still how commercial food photography is often shot, both for packaging and for the lifestyle food magazine market,” he says. “There’s a reality to this style of photography that sells the food and, in a market where the consumer needs to be seduced, I don’t see this shifting any time soon.” Even so, commercial sponsors have started to come knocking – Stephanie Gonot put together a site-specific installation for The Box at The Standard hotel in Hollywood, for example, showing classic fast food from LA, while di Iorio has been approached by “a well-known New York agency”. At the other end of the scale, Juergen Teller shot Hotel Il Pellicano’s food for a book published last year, and Martin Parr has been commissioned by Birds Eye. Mainstream food photography has been stuck in a rut for a while; maybe now the zeitgeist is shifting. www.mauriziodiiorio.com www.laurenhillebrandt.com www.johnshort.com

Food is having a moment, and a wave of magazines devoted to food rather than recipes has helped kick off a new style of food photography that is bright, bold and not necessarily mouth-watering. This is from a shoot for Wallpaper*. Image © John Short, courtesy We Folk

From a shoot for Wallpaper*. Image ÂŠ John Short, courtesy We Folk

From a shoot for Wallpaper* Image ÂŠ John Short, courtesy We Folk

Peaches. Image ÂŠ Lauren Hillebrandt

Tape. Image ÂŠ Lauren Hillebrandt

Garden, shot for the V supplement of De Volkskrant. Image ÂŠ Lauren Hillebrandt

Pak choi, shot for the V supplement of De Volkskrant. Image ÂŠ Lauren Hillebrandt

Watermelon, shot for Diner Journal. Image ÂŠ Lauren Hillebrandt

Image ÂŠ Maurizio di Iorio

SHOOTING THE MOVING IMAGE

“On most ad shoots that we work on, there is a behind-the-scenes video,” says Steve Knight, managing director of Direct Photographic. “Whatever the brand or product [being advertised], the client usually requires behindthe-scenes footage showing the workings of the shoot which they can show online. “And the flip side is that when there is a moving image shoot, it is common that the client is now shooting stills at the same time. The two disciplines are moving together, so that the studio time, the talent and so on can be shared. Brands are now producing mixed media campaigns and shooting them together.” This shift is an opportunity for photographers, because where stills and moving footage were once shot by different outfits, they can potentially now be shot by one crew. High-end fashion photographers are regularly directing their clients’ TV commercials , but photographers in all areas of the industry are now offering to shoot video, he says. “What’s really opened up in recent years are the emergence of the sports brands,” he comments. “They are huge now. Whether it’s the brand who made the clothes, or the company advertising on the strip, we now regularly travel around Europe with photographers shooting sports, and the TV commercials are usually shot at the same time.” But if it’s big business it’s also a big change, and many photographers need help – and kit – to make the transition. Direct Photographic is

happy to help, says Steve , whether that’s by talking through what they need or putting them in touch with assistants to help on the day, and they’re welcome to have a chat without any pressure to spend. “We regularly get kit lists that are incomplete and we will fill them in for photographers,” he says. “Whether that’s advising on whether they can use a Canon 5D MkIII or making sure they have enough cables and extension leads.” Direct Photographic can also advise on equipment such as stabilising rigs, sound and continuous lights, he continues - which although less obvious is essential to shooting video. “It used to be that we supplied 60% flash to 40% continuous lighting,” he says. “Now it’s continuous lighting that’s becoming more in demand especially the newer LED technology, Shooting with continuous means that the photographer can shoot moving image as well as still as long as they have enough light.” And if photographers are welcome to come in for a discussion, they’re also welcome to do so on an ongoing basis, he adds – because they’ll probably find they like to do it to keep up to speed with the latest kit. “The technology is moving so fast, it’s not like in the past where a photographer could invest in a single camera and be sure that they would be using it for the next five years,” he says. “We can make sure they get the right kit for the job and – although they’re not under any pressure – it does mean it makes sense to hire this fast moving kit rather than own it”

STAGED REALITY Julia Fullerton-Batten often combines elaborate sets with carefully posed subjects, costumes, props and meticulous lighting to create her images. Gemma Padley speaks to the London-based photographer about her recent series, Korea, in which she draws on Korean history and its cultural traditions

JULIA FULLERTON-BATTEN

Julia Fullerton-Batten’s images tread a fine line between reality and fantasy, so much so that you’re never quite sure what’s real and what’s staged. There’s something make-believe about the huge, open-mouthed, fish-shaped food stall in the recent series, Korea, for example; another image in this body of work shows bird-shaped pieces of coloured paper perching on tree branches. “I had an exhibition in Stockholm recently, Staged Reality,” says the 43-year-old, Londonbased photographer. “I take something real and play around with it to make it a bit more theatrical, perhaps by bringing in props or making the images a bit like stage sets. Some of my images are also quite surreal – for example, in one from the Korea series, two women walk in front of a billboard poster of a forest carrying firewood on their backs.” Korea Fullerton-Batten had the idea for her series while in Korea for Dong Gang International Photo Festival; the images show Korean women dressed in traditional garments known as Hanbok, which are traditionally worn on festive occasions, but they are photographed against the futuristic architecture of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. These juxtapositions bring history and the present sharply into focus, but they also contrast human beauty with the built landscape. “I wanted to make a project about modern-day Korea including its history and customs, mixing these aspects together,” explains FullertonBatten. “For example, I included the political tensions between South and North Korea, also the occupation by Japan from 1910 to 1945. I did a lot of research into the country’s history and traditions before the shoot. The editor of Korean magazine Blink blogged that I was looking for local Korean women to photograph, and many came forward. I also worked with a producer, location finder and hair and make-up team; Hasselblad kindly loaned me a digital camera back.” Fullerton-Batten uses props in many of the images, choosing the objects for their resonance in Korean culture. In one image the women carry badminton racquets because the sport is popular in Korea; in another they drink tea, because tea ceremonies are so important there. Other props have a more idiosyncratic significance: a ladder symbolising the Korean resistance to invasion, a game of tug-of-war emphasising the ongoing political struggles between North and South Korea. These setups took a while to plan, but that’s par for the course for Fullerton-Batten – her shoots always take several months to develop, she says, from coming up with the idea to casting, location scouting and styling the finished shot. “Once I start a project, it takes over my life,” she says. “The shoot itself doesn’t take very long, perhaps three or

four days, but the pre-production process takes a lot of time. “Once I’ve sourced everything, it’s a case of thinking about what I’m trying to say with each image. I don’t just turn up to a location with a crew and not know what I’m doing. I know exactly what prop will be used in which setting, what the people will be wearing, what story I’m telling with that image. In a way, I approach each shoot like an advertising job – I have a mood board and I’m my own art director. “I tend to work with a big team of people when I’m shooting,” she adds. “I have my favourite stylists, who I may change depending on the look and feel I want for the image, and perhaps five assistants. My assistants know how I like to light, and are mentally prepared for very long shoot days. I use a lot of lighting, and as time has gone on I tend to use more and more, with cross-lighting and mixing daylight and artificial lighting.” Commercial beginnings Fullerton-Batten began her career in commercial photography and worked for several years as an assistant to landscape, still life and fashion photographers in London. “When I was an assistant I worked for all kinds of photographers,” she says. “I was working non-stop. But because I was so busy I wasn’t taking any of my own photographs. “After a few years I got tired with lugging everyone else’s gear around so I went off to Vietnam with my boyfriend, who is now my husband, and went photography crazy. We had a Hasselblad, and drove around on a motorbike. We stopped along the way and I took photographs. When we returned to London, I entered and won the 1998 AOP Assistant Awards. I was signed up by a German agent and shortly afterwards began shooting commercial commissions.” Fullerton-Batten swiftly established herself in advertising photography, and now shoots for clients such as BMW, Siemens, Roche, and Canon, but found she wanted to have more time for her own work and set about forging a parallel career in the art world. “I became increasingly frustrated with art directors commenting, ‘We’d love you to shoot this in your style, but we want it to look like this,’” she says. “In the end, I felt like I was just the tool to create images that I wasn’t really proud of. I reached the point that I went off and shot my first project Teenage Stories (2005), which featured girls in model villages. I won an HSBC Foundation for Photography Prize in 2007 for this series. With Teenage Stories I had five exhibitions around the world, including one in New York, and also published a book with Actes Sud. I was then approached by an art gallery in London, and

JULIA FULLERTON-BATTEN

with that began to enter the art world.” It sounds like the ideal combination, but Fullerton-Batten says negotiating between the two can be delicate. “The gallery world doesn’t like it if you shoot advertising, and the advertising world… well, some art buyers think that I’ve entered the fine art world now and assume I’m not shooting advertising any more,” she says, adding that art buyers can also be put off by a portfolio or project they don’t understand. “On first sight they do seem to be two completely separate worlds, but my attitude is, ‘If you love taking photographs, why not combine the two? However, I would say that I’m becoming more of a fine art photographer. I concentrate on my own projects, exhibit all around the world, and collectors and museums buy my prints. I’m doing fewer commissions, but when I do get commissions they tend to be bigger projects, more creative and more in my style – something I can really put my whole heart into, which is great. I really enjoy both worlds, but for me in recent years it’s primarily the fine art side of the industry.” Today’s industry It is a success story, but Fullerton-Batten is candid about the difficulties that photographers face, commenting that you have to really believe in yourself because you’re very much on your own. “You can be flavour of the month for six months and then, nothing,” she says. “It can be really hard because obviously you have to make a living, especially if you’re supporting a family. Better to spend money on building your portfolio than on camera gear. Some photographers feel they have to do really big shoots, but it doesn’t have to be complicated and expensive.” You also need to keep evolving, she adds, and make sure you attract attention to yourself, especially if you want to work in the art world. “Art galleries don’t like it if you approach them, they’ve got to approach you – but how will they be aware of your work? One way is to create a really interesting project, win a big award with it, be interviewed a lot, and somehow get your name out there, which is easier than in the past because of the internet. “To become properly established and to develop a hallmark – where people look at your images and go, ‘Ah that was shot by so and so’ – takes years. You have to keep moving forward and creating something new and different; you should never stop doing that, whatever age you are.” www.juliafullerton-batten.com

Julia Fullerton-Batten made her name in commercial photography but has successfully entered the fine art market with projects such as this one, Korea, made in 2013.

Ji Soo Choi, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Forest, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Eun-Joo Park, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Jun Hye Lyn, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Fish, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Ladder, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Rickshaw, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Birdcage, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Badminton, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Le Go Eun, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Soohee Oh, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Yehi Kim, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Ikebana, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Present, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

Yehi Kim, from the series Korea, 2013. Image ÂŠ Julia Fullerton-Batten

KEEP IT REAL Erik Kessels hates phoney photography in which people and products look perfect, shiny and new, and has founded a cutting-edge advertising agency, KesselsKramer, on a different sense of authenticity. Diane Smyth reports

ERIK KESSELS

KesselsKramer has created ads for MTV, Vitra, Diesel, Absolut Vodka and The Standard hotel; it has also published Advertising For People Who Don’t Like Advertising, and its co-founder, Erik Kessels, is a famous fan of amateur photography. It sounds like a surprising approach, but it has stood the ad agency in good stead with edgy brands because, by lambasting fashion’s obsession with youth, or taking its cue from the visitors’ comments book, KesselsKramer creates quirky, funny campaigns that stand out from the crowd. The secret, says Kessels, is to strive for authenticity, a word that’s a running theme in my conversation with him. “It’s very frustrating when everything looks like a big cliche and stereotype, and so polished,” he says. “Car adverts with photographs of cars where nothing is real – I hate that stuff... Sometimes you have to find a mistake for a job and a photographer. “A long time ago, when I studied, you had this kind of pool of ad photographers; at that time it was a supported profession,” he adds. “Now it’s changed quite a bit – there are still professional photographers who shoot only ads, but they are, with respect, master copiers. They can see a sketch and make it. I find that, personally, I’m looking more for people who have an authentic style.... Of course ads and authenticity are always a little bit like opposites, but even though you can never be 100 percent authentic, you can at least try. It’s always interesting.” Beyond the ads In practice this means he often works with photographers best known for non-commercial work – French artist Thomas Mailaender shot the recent The Standard hotel ad campaign, for example, and Kessels has also used documentary photographers Carl de Keyzer, Mitch Epstein, Bertien van Manen, Jacqueline Hassink and Hans van der Meer. Van Manen “never did a job before” he worked with her; perhaps surprisingly, he says the best approach is to leave these photographers to it. “It’s rare I go to a shoot,” he says. “There came a certain moment when I couldn’t attend all the shoots [because the agency got so busy]; then I thought, ‘Hey, that could be a nice way to work because I’ll be surprised.’ It’s nice if a photographer comes back and it took a surprising turn. When I’m there they constantly check [if what they’re doing is right] and it also changes my perception for the edit. “Another thing, of course, is that you should not bring these people into the pre-production meetings. That always kill it because they’re not used to it – ad photographers are used to being in PPMs and they know the tricks. Usually there is of course a sketch or example picture, but often when

I brief them I take that away, or show them very quickly, [so that it’s] more about the idea. Instead we talk for a long time and make sure they know what they want to make. It’s for them to interpret the idea and make their photographs.” It sounds like a high-risk strategy, but Kessels says it has only gone wrong once – and even then the images didn’t work out because of a technical fault, which he wouldn’t have spotted anyway. It’s also not a hard-and-fast rule, but if he does go on a shoot, he always leaves some space for the unexpected. Kessels went along with Mailaender for The Standard campaign, for example, but the two went completely unprepared, simply staying at the hotel for a couple of weeks and seeing what happened. “We reconnected the guest comments [to the hotels] – maybe not to free them all up but also to let things happen. We just needed to make sure we had 12 images, and we could play with that. For example, there’s one image where a guy is standing on water looking like Jesus – we bumped into him at breakfast and he was wearing the Jesus robe, so we thought, ‘You know....’” Persuading clients to work in this way can be more difficult, though, and Kessels says you need to “educate the client” and “explain that it’s a different way of working”. He will turn down work if he feels they don’t get it (and says it’s much better doing that at the outset than realising he should have done it halfway through), but says most are very happy with the end result. “Sometimes it’s quite strange because it takes me an hour, then another meeting, to convince a client with the photographer, maybe because they don’t find the image they want in his portfolio,” he says. “Then I put the prints on the table and within 20 seconds they say, ‘Fantastic, we love it’. It might have taken them a week and a half to sign off, and even then they still weren’t convinced when they said, ‘OK go for it’, but then they love it. It’s bizarre when there’s such a difference.” And, unfortunately, clients are being very safe at the moment, he adds, partly because each ad now has to work so hard – put to use both in print and online, “every campaign can now have 15-20 exits” – but also because of the recession. “Clients are less brave,” he notes. “It doesn’t help – when the economy is very good, creativity is better. It’s almost like a decadent thing – you need to be a little bit decadent to create good work, to create something that’s not necessary, but special and extra.” Extracurricular Of course, as Kessels points out, few photographers work back-to-back in advertising these days – most shoot personal projects, make books, do editorial and exhibit, winning the occasional commission on

ERIK KESSELS

the back of it all. He’s taken a similar tack with his own career, taking time out to curate exhibitions for prestigious institutions such as Foam in Amsterdam or Les Rencontres d’Arles. He was one of the curators of the landmark exhibition From Here On at Arles in 2011, for example, which considered photography in the digital age; his installation at Foam, Photography in Abundance, featured printouts of every image uploaded onto Flickr in a 24-hour period, heaped up in the gallery in mini mountains. He has also published many books, often through a publishing wing he set up at KesselsKramer. The Useful Photography series presents images originally taken for functional purposes, for example, such as selling on eBay or for wedding albums; the In Almost Every Picture series takes amateur images from found photo albums or blogs, charting the lives of two women shown together over and over again, for example, or showing the same rabbit depicted multiple times balancing objects on its head. “[The rabbit blog] was one of the first ever – it was 1994/95 when that happened,” says Kessels. “[The man behind it] made photographs every day with a very small Sony Mavica, which made very small files. The site was very colourful, with coloured type and a new image every day, and I followed it quite a lot. I put a collection together and put the files in sequence – it took a long time to put it into this series.” The series ends with the death of the rabbit; the images of the two women also reach a poignant climax, with one of the women disappearing after the war, never to return. These narratives are in the images Kessels collects but, as he points out, he also pushes the edit in that direction. And for him, that is what’s important in photography – the idea behind the images, not just the images, and he believes the ideas are more important now than ever. “Cameras are so good and dependable now – they record dark as dark and light as light; they make a picture better than what you’re looking at, which is bizarre,” he says. “The craft is very accessible now; you can learn it fast. So the idea and motivation, the ideas behind the photographs and the story, become more important. Fifteen years ago, even 10 years ago, it was all about the man with his machine – all the talk was of the camera and totally macho. Of course, that’s still important, but now you have to fight and find an idea.” Internet memes The internet, he adds, has only made this more obvious because so much gets rehashed online. Ideas pop up and are endlessly repeated, by both professionals and amateurs – so much so that there is a name for the phenomenon – memes. “One guy

thought it would be nice to have a picture of how we were when we were young, reshot when we were old; now in every country in the world, people do the same,” he says. “When we make family pictures we make pictures trying to imitate advertising images – family albums are always collections of smiling faces with everybody looking nice. “And take the way girls picture themselves in their Facebook profiles,” he continues. “They’re perfect. It’s bizarre how they depict themselves, and how good they are at it, but it’s not the real world. They’re just copying images from advertisements or from fashion.” As with generic advertising, Kessels dislikes this sense of phoney conformity and is deliberately fighting against it. In his family photos, he shows his kids crying, or with the inevitable bumps and scratches, for example; similarly, what he values about amateurs’ work is its flaws. He likes the fact that amateurs put their fingers over the lenses, or obsessively photograph the same boring things, he says, because they add an idiosyncratic sense of authenticity. As such he’s used them when briefing photographers for ad campaigns, and has also used amateurs’ work. “Amateurs are the ones who can make the real special,” he says. “Professionals can learn from that.” www.kesselskramer.com

96 French artist Thomas Mailaender shot the recent calendar for The Standard hotel. Kessels went along with Mailaender for The Standard shoot.

This ad was put together for the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel by KesselsKramer and features an image shot by Jacqueline Hassink.

An ad for Diesel, by KesselsKramer, featuring an image by Magnum Photosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Carl de Keyzer.

An ad for Bavaria beer, by KesselsKramer, featuring an image by Mitch Epstein.

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Erik Kesselsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; photographs of his children go against the usual picture-perfect family album shots. Images ÂŠ Erik Kessels

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Spread from In Almost Every Picture 4, edited by Erik Kessels, and published by KesselsKramer Publishing.

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Spread from In Almost Every Picture 8, by Erik Kessels/Hironori Akutagawa, and published by KesselsKramer Publishing.

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Spread from Useful Photography 2, which shows images culled from eBay. Edited by Erik Kessels, Hans van der Meer, Julien Germain, Hans Aarsman, Claudia de Cleen, and published by KesselsKramer Publishing.

104 Spreads from Incredibly Small Photobooks, edited by Erik Kessels and Paul Kooiker, and published by Art Paper Editions.

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A shot of the exhibition From Here On at Les Rencontres d’Arles 2011, which was curated by Joan Fontcuberta, Clément Cheroux, Joachim Schmid, Martin Parr and Erik Kessels. Installation shot © Anne Foures

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COMPUTER HOTEL Magnum is best known for its independent documentary photography, but it also shoots commissions, and one of its most recent took three photographers deep into Telecom Italia Data Centre in Rozzano

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“Magnum is generally considered to be a noncommercial, independent co-operative of worldclass photographers, but we are also interested in working on corporate projects – particularly when these projects allow us to make very good work,” says Giorgio Psacharopulo, chief executive officer of the agency. “We make about 10 commercial projects each year, carried out from the Paris, London and New York offices.” These projects have included some classic campaigns and portfolios – from Steve McCurry’s ‘India’ ads for Louis Vuitton in 2011, to Josef Koudelka’s Limestone book, published in 2001, shot over two years for Group Lhoist. Magnum separates its advertising and corporate commissions divisions, though generally working with ad agencies on the former but directly with companies and NGOs on the latter. One of its most recent corporate projects came about in a particularly personal way. “I was invited to participate in a convention about the cloud organised by Telecom Italia about two years ago, representing Magnum as CEO,” says Psacharopulo. “I met Paolo Teoducci from Telecom Italia and we thought about a common project to show, through Magnum’s eyes, the real activity that is behind an immaterial service like a data cloud…. For the majority of the public, the cloud remains something abstract. The idea was to make it ‘visible’.” “We found some similar projects in the world of data centres and major structural works, and realised it was necessary to approach the project in an artistic way,” says Teoducci, brand strategy and media manager at the company. “It was not enough to simply show it; it was also necessary to perceive the complexity and not trivialise the hardware and space. Only photographers with worldwide quality and experience would have made this industrial site enjoyable and unique; that’s why we chose Magnum.” Telecom Italia also had a specific project in mind – partnering with Milan’s Expo2015, it is creating a virtual version of the fair (a ‘cyber expo’) that can only exist thanks to cloud computing. It therefore wanted to showcase the people and technology behind this work, and the trade show got on board to support the production. After brainstorming with Christophe Rennard, artistic director at Magnum, the concept evolved into a mini group project in which three photographers would be asked to shoot different aspects of the Rozzano Data Centre. Rennard drew up a shortlist of photographers he thought would work well together, and Magnum Paris and Telecom Italia made the final selection together; in the end, Peter Marlow, Harry Gruyaert and Paolo Pellegrin were asked to spend two days each at the centre. Given a short brief about the

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project’s goals, and a more detailed brief about security concerns, they were assigned a subject area each to ensure they didn’t duplicate shots: Marlow shot the technology (especially the security), Gruyaert the people, and Pellegrin the architecture. “Each photographer had the mission to discover the ‘hidden secrets’ of the Rozzano Data Centre,” says Psacharopulo. “The idea was that of scouting for a burglary and to show the site, outside and inside, and the people working in it. We chose photographers in accordance with their style and their ‘eyes’.” Telling the whole story of Rozzano through their own eyes was crucial – each photographer needed to provide a different take on the project, explains Psacharopulo, so it could then be pieced together as a mosaic. “Working with Telecom Italia was actually very fluid; they trusted us to do what we do, with very little supervision or direction,” says Marlow. “Obviously, we hoped to show them in a good light, but they did not have a problem with anything we suggested. They had a sense of openness about their data centre, which was actually rather oldfashioned compared with places such as Google, and they were not afraid to show us anything we asked to see; they trusted us enough to work unsupervised.” Eye-catching In fact, this access is one of the things that attracted Marlow to the project – data centres are usually protected by a vast security network, he says, so “being a curious person, I was really keen to work on it”. He spent two long days in the data centre so he could see it at different times of the day, he adds – from early morning until darkness fell, “when the character and ambience took on a more sinister feel”. “To be honest, once inside, the hundreds of actual server rooms on the site looked almost identical, with long lines of black cabinets in what seemed like a ‘hotel’ for computers,” he says. “Most of the rooms were in complete darkness, as there is no need for light because everything runs remotely. As far as shooting goes, I did what I always do – I just moved around quietly with my tripod and camera, first observing, then photographing the things that caught my eye. “I always see this as a ‘tuning-in’ process – after a while it is almost like being on autopilot, as one situation leads to another, and one photograph leads to the next,” he adds. “I much prefer the challenge of working where not much is going on, as I have always found it more of a challenge, and ultimately more rewarding creatively to come up with a visual solution.” Marlow shot more than 1000 images during his trip, which he edited down to a final shortlist of 100 organised into a rough narrative; the other

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photographers also provided about 100 images, which were edited down by Rennard and Telecom Italia. The client deleted some straight away for security reasons and say they had full support from Magnum in doing so. “We signed an agreement [that they would not] shoot any part of the strict security system we are producing for all our building in order to protect our clients, including Expo2015,” says Teoducci, adding, “Consider that this is the first time Telecom Italia has allowed anyone to tape or shoot inside the data centre.” The images have already been used on the Expo2015 website and social media, and in Telecom Italia’s internal communications and annual report, but their big outings are yet to come, with exhibitions planned at La Triennale di Milano design museum and the Expo2015 itself. “To disclose the information, we chose to start making all the photos available in a web gallery and only later through exhibitions of print,” says Teoducci. “The goal is to multiply visits with the support of Telecom Italia and the Expo’s social platforms.” www.magnumphotos-commercial.com www.expodatacenter.it

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Known as the Fort Knox of Italian information, the highly secure Telecom Italia Data Centre in Rozzano, Milan, is like northern Italyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard disk, and is one of the most important central points for digital information in Italy. Peter Marlow, Harry Gruyaert and Paolo Pellegrin photographed it in a 2013 Magnum Photos group project called the Cloud Shelter. Pictured here is old analogue equipment inside the communications mast at Telecom Italia Data Centre. Image ÂŠ Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos

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Inside one of the many secure server rooms. New areas ready for the installation of servers at Telecom Italia Data Centre, Rozzano, Italy, 2013. Image ÂŠ Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos

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Air-conditioning and cooling water infrastructure at Telecom Italia Data Centre, Rozzano, Italy, 2013. Image ÂŠ Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos

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Security officer on site at Telecom Italia Data Centre, Rozzano, Italy, 2013. Image ÂŠ Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos

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Air-conditioning and cooling water infrastructure at Telecom Italia Data Centre, Rozzano, Italy, 2013. Image ÂŠ Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos

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