Once upon a time H e r e f o r d
P h o t o g r a p h y
F e s t i v a l
2 0 0 9
www.photofest.org Hereford Photography Festival: The Courtyard Centre for the Arts, Edgar Street, Hereford. HR4 9JR Festival Office: +44 (0) 1432 351964 Email: enquiries@photofest.org Charity number: 1078812
Main Exhibitions written and edited by Bridget Coaker, Troika Editions. Designed by: Daniel Simmonds, BA (Hons) Graphic Design.
Once upon a time John Bulmer Retrospective Photographs from 1959 to 1979 Hereford Museum & Art Gallery
Saturday 23rd May : Sunday 21st June
Seen but Not Heard Images of Children The Courtyard, Hereford
Thursday 14th May : Monday 15th June
1
Ledbury 17th February 2009
Picture Š Nick Davis
Students and staff from HCA One day in February 2009, the students from the BA (Hons) Degree in Photography at Hereford College of Arts, visited the town of Ledbury to make a comprehensive photographic record of life there. This exhibition has been curated by the second year students on the course. 2
We lcom e Photography is dead, long live photography. For as long as I have been a picture editor I have heard photojournalists debate that old chestnut, is photojournalism dead? This question is not new and was also asked in the late 1950s with the closure of Picture Post. Yet as Martin Harrison discusses in his book Young Meteors, as this and other publications closed, so new ones opened. The introduction of colour printing for the national newspaper supplements witnessed a new generation of titles that over the coming decades supported the work of photographers. The reputation of such titans of the genre, Don McCullin, David Bailey, Philip Jones-Griffiths to mention but a few, were all made after Picture Post printed its last photo essay. It was at this time that John Bulmer established himself as a prolific photographer, working for The Sunday Times and Town. Unlike many of his colleagues, John embraced the new technology of colour film and his work provides a wonderful legacy of Britain in colour in the sixties. In the new digital era, we are again asking whether photojournalism is dead. Screen grabs from TV, fuzzy phone camera images from the citizen journalist take the front page slot. Laws prohibiting the taking of pictures of police on the street, terrorism legislation and the fear of paedophilia all inhibit photographers from their daily pursuit of making pictures. And yet we live in a world that is more full of images than ever, and photography is even celebrated as an art form. So as one world passes we enter a new one, where creative minds find solutions, overcoming the hurdles and subverting objections. In our show Seen but Not Heard, nine photographers have found different ways of exploring childhood, both through creating fantasy worlds and by reposing reality. I hope very much that you enjoy the festival and are stimulated by the work we are showing. For me it has been a privilege to work with such talented photographers and I give them my sincere thanks for making my task such a wonderful experience. Bridget Coaker, Festival Curator 3
J o h n
B u l m e r
R e t r o s p e c t i v e
P h o to graphs from 1959 to 1979
A pioneer of colour photography in the 1960s, photographer John Bulmer began his photographic career at Cambridge where, along with Peter Laurie, Brendan Lehane and Adrian Bridgewater they founded Image. The magazine’s aim was to provide its photographers with experience to work as professional photographers in London and Bulmer duly joined the Daily Express in 1960. Bulmer was a devotee of the new photographic technology and quickly embraced the 35mm format. This enabled him to work with greater flexibility and faster than his other Fleet Street colleagues who were still shooting on Rollei cameras. From the Express, Bulmer started freelancing for Man about Town, later renamed Town, working alongside Terence Donovan, David Bailey and Don McCullin and it was here that he shot one of his most celebrated works on the North of England and, in particular his documentary of the town, Nelson. When in 1962 The Sunday Times became the first British Newspaper to produce a colour supplement, Bulmer was an obvious choice as a contributor to its first issue. Having experimented with colour early in his career, he was recognised for understanding and thinking in colour. This was in direct contrast to his peers who, dismissing colour as garish and cheap, argued that black and white produced images that had more truth and integrity. Bulmer worked for the Sunday Times for the next 10 years and during his time at the magazine was one its most prolific contributors covering stories both in the UK and abroad. With an end to post war austerity and the beginning of the swinging 60s, Britain was a place of extremes. While Carnaby Street fashions, The Beatles and the Mini quickly became symbols of modern Britain, a divide was opening up between the north and south of the country. Novels such as A Room at the Top, and the film Saturday Night Sunday Morning highlighted a romanticism of the north, where life was hard but real. For Bulmer this industrial landscape, with its gritty cobbled streets and back-to-back terraces was exotic. Although he found the voyeuristic nature of photojournalism increasingly problematic, it is his extended project on The North, shot for both The Sunday Times and Town magazine, that him has earned his reputation as a photojournalist. In 1971 Bulmer was given a visa to travel to Burma, one of the first issued to a foreign journalist since the end of the Second World War. With The Sunday Times more interested in crime at home, than military juntas abroad, he went to the BBC where he was handed some money and told to go off and make a film and then his career shifted from photojournalism to film-making. 4
1966: Priests take confession in Paraguay during an open air religious festival. Bulmer went to South America for The Sunday Times Magazine to cover the struggle for power between the Catholic Church, The Military, left wing political parties and the USA. 5
1966: Members of the establishment, the military and Catholic Church, attend the opening of a new road in Ecuador. Shot for The Sunday Times as before.
1968: A poor white family in east Kentucky as part of a series of white poverty in America. 6
1969: Young boys play in the street, Monrovia, Liberia, taken while covering an African Heads of State conference.
1973: Shot on the last assignment for The Sunday Times Magazine, Bulmer was one of the first foreign journalists to be given access to North Korea following the end of the Korean War in 1953. 7
1977: Commissioned by Geo magazine to document life in Manchester. Traditional backto-back terrace houses. 8
1964/1965: Bulmer was sent by The Sunday Times Magazine for its special issue “The North� looking at a country on the turn from post war austerity to the boom time of the swinging sixties.
9
1961: On commission for Town Magazine for a story called The Black Country, Bulmer went to an area north of Birmingham around Tipton and Bilston. A working family, living in a terraced house with no running water or inside toilet, prepare to go out to the pub.
Coal is unloaded from the canal barges and taken to the local iron foundry. 10
1961: Wearing traditional wooden clogs an old lady cleans her gate post in Nelson, Lancashire. Published in Town Magazine. 11
1977: Commissioned by Geo magazine to document life in Manchester. Traditional backto-back terrace houses.
1965: Miners with their pit ponies at a drift mine in Waldridge Co Durham, published as part of The Sunday Times Magazine story on The North. 12
13
S e e n
b u t
N o t
H e a r d
I mag es of Children
“Few questions are more contentious in modern day Britain than those involving children� wrote Simon Bainbridge, editor of the BJP, in June 2005. As new technologies make taking photographs easier, so too the social constraints that limit what we can take pictures of are expanding. The freedom that photographers such as Roger Mayne, Henri Cartier Bresson or Dorothea Lange had to document children, playing on the streets, at home or school has gone. Now photographers, both amateur and professional, have to negotiate the minefield of obtaining permissions, the risk of being branded a pervert and counter our increasing prudishness of what is thought to be an appropriate image of a child. For this year’s Hereford Photography Festival, I have selected the work of nine photographers, all of whom engage with this charged subject matter, each finding their own way to overcome an increasingly fearful sensibility that operates in our society. In making my decision about what to show I deliberately decided not to include anything that might cause controversy or be under threat of removal. My reason for this is simple. There have been many blank walls and empty galleries where work commissioned for exhibition has been taken down as a result of a complaint by a member of the public or an over anxious council worker. These removals are often covered in the media and we are made aware of the issues, but not the images. For this show I wanted the work to be seen and for the discussion to broaden out into an understanding of what our culture will allow to be seen. If we can permit ourselves to look at images of children, hanging on the walls of an art gallery, then perhaps we will also begin to discuss whether or not the act of taking a picture of a child is as dangerous as society seems to think it is.
14
The Astronauts from Dreams of Flying Jan von Holleben (2002 - 2008) Crossing the desert on the back of a dog, or searching for lost treasures on the bottom of the ocean. Jan von Holleben’s work Dreams of Flying is a playful invocation of the innocence of childhood and the games we all played. Taking classic childhood books and modern superheroes as the starting point for his stage sets, Jan began working on Dreams of Flying in 2002 with children from his local neighbourhood in South West Germany. His focus on the visual representation of childhood, ‘Child-History’ and concepts of ‘Playing’, comes from his experience on a teacher training course and Jan combines educational theories with his own personal experience and childhood memories.
15
Woolhampton from Playground Ali Richards (2004 - 2008) In Playground, Ali Richards explores the pursuits of teenagers and their engagement with their environment. Often fuelled by boredom and feelings of disenfranchisement, these teenagers seek their own destructive entertainment by stealing and burning cars. Increasingly engaged in activities of theft, violence and destruction and coming from poor areas lacking the facilities to entertain and stimulate, some teenagers think society has somehow failed them and seek satisfaction by appearing to challenge the system. Yet the object on which they vent their frustration is one with which they have a complicated relationship. The car, for many young boys is viewed as a souped up trophy object, an intimate place they can go with their first girlfriend or a private space for getting high with friends. But it is this same object that they destroy confirming an uncomfortable, contradictory and nihilistic outlook on society.
16
Adolescence is a complex and sensitive age when teenage girls begin to see themselves in the context of society and question their identity. It marks a time of important physical and psychological change. It is both a time of unease and expectation, as well as of incipient freedom. In Teenage Stories, Julia has captured this change. By using amateur models, placing them in an unfamiliar environment and suggesting certain poses, Julia creates that sense of awkwardness that is associated with being a teenager. Immersed in their own thoughts and fantasies, young girls daydream and stare idly into space, seemingly inhabiting their own imaginary world, out of place in the real one. Julia
Girls by Motorway from Teenage Stories Julia Fullerton-Batten (2004 - 2007)
employs a sense of scale to enhance the importance this make-believe place has for teenagers and their own position of power within it. Looking to her own experiences as a teenager this work is part autobiographical as Julia recasts the models in situations remembered from her own adolescence.
17
Girl in tree - XXXX11 from Harlemville Clare Richardson (2000 - 2003) Clare Richardson’s work ‘Harlemville’, was shot in a rural community where children are educated according to the principles of Rudolph Steiner. Through the encouragement of free expression, creativity and play, children are allowed to act without inhibitions, enabling them to explore their imaginative world. Documenting pre-teen boys and girls involved in various everyday activities and outdoor play, Clare’s images evoke a nostalgic sense of innocence. With a quiet visual pace Clare produces a gentle sensitivity towards her subject matter. Following the documentary tradition of exploring groups never quite in the mainstream and on the fringes of society, she implies an innocence and purity, reminiscent of a bygone era. Without any apparent fear of risk or danger, Harlemville becomes idyllic and challenges our fraught understanding of, and relationship to, children as well as our inability to permit them to run free in today’s society.
18
The literal translation of Hals über Kopf is neck over head, perhaps more easily described as topsy turvy or head over heels, but whether expressed in German or English Wiebke Leister’s work seeks to present visually the complexity of our emotional response to being tickled. Set alongside this, Wiebke introduces the intrusion of the voyeur, firstly the photographer and then the viewer into what is an intimate, private moment. Her interest lies in the ambiguity of laughter not just as pleasurable and exhilarating but also of despair, as a giggle can turn to a scream. When children are tickled it becomes unbearable yet they return moments later to be tickled again. As adults we employ tickling as a way to give enjoyment, yet our actions can produce tears, are these of joy or of pain? In capturing a moment when the child´s laugh is not simply joyful it explores the gap between (invisible) emotion and (visible) expression and opens up a space where we can provide our own
Hals über Kopf Wiebke Leister (2006)
imaginings and narrative.
19
Untitled #4 from Interface Michelle Sank (2008) Michelle Sank first started photographing adolescents in 2001 and much of her work, including Young Carers, portraits of children looking after a sick parent and Into the Arms of Babes, a study of young parents, are social documents of teenagers who live on the fringes of their peer groups, isolated from their contemporaries as a result of having adult concerns and responsibilities thrust upon them. In her latest series, Interface, commissioned by Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Michelle has looked again at a minority group, this time defined by religion and race. Her collection of photographic portraits looks at Sikh and Muslim teenagers living in Wolverhampton and explores issues of identity, gender religion and dress. Investigating the way young boys and girls interpret their understanding of their culture, religion and their personalities, Michelle’s portraiture reflects an interest with the human condition. It can be seen as a social documentary of Wolverhampton tackling issues around social and cultural diversity and, more generally, how traditional and Western values become entwined.
20
During her daughter’s 8th birthday party, Vee Speers observed the games the children were playing and was reminded of her own childhood when she became Robin Hood and her sister a damsel in distress awaiting rescue by the heroic knight. Vee realised that as we become adults we lose our ability to explore random ideas and a desire to play in make-believe worlds. Inspired to capture these moments of childhood, Vee held an imaginary party where children were invited to take on characters and identities from their own fantasy worlds. Against backgrounds stripped of any visual clues, the children pose for the camera. Some choose familiar role models, a nurse, soldier or princess, while others offer something more complicated - boys wearing tutus and girls assuming male identities in suits. A young boxer stands with a nonchalance that belies the macho connotations of the sport. There is a tension between the gaze of the child, staring intently at the camera and the viewer who returns the stare. We seek to interpret the child’s intention and also introduce a new narrative found in the personal
Untitled #16 from The Birthday Party Vee Speers
memories of our own childhood.
21
Don’t Call me Urban! The Time of Grime Simon Wheatley (1998 - 2009) Simon Wheatley’s project, Don’t Call Me Urban began as a documentation of the urban regeneration of Lambeth Walk in South London. Initially interested in ways in which design and architecture can contribute to how we live and behave, Simon’s chance encounters with members of the local burgeoning music scene gave him access to the gangs of teenagers living in South London. As So Solid Crew emerged from the council estates of Battersea, so too did the stark contrast between the material aspirations of teenagers and the grim social realities of their lives in this part of London. Our attitude to these kids is often coloured through coverage in the media of knife crime and shootings and while it is the case that teenagers are being killed, the actual numbers are low in relation to our perceptions. What is apparent though from Simon’s pictures is an underlying threat of violence. Etched on their faces we can see the stress of living on your wits. Body language and fashion portray an indifference to the rules of mainstream society. Desperate to “make it” these teenagers have music as the holy grail, with books of their rhymes taking precedence in their school bags. The alternative is crime. As one of Simon’s contacts said “ My dad’s a gangster, I reckon I’m gonna be a gangster too…it’s in the genes”. His dad is in jail.
22
Edmund Clark became interested in teenage fathers because so little was known about them beyond the preconceptions of them as a group of feckless, clueless young males, unwilling to face the consequences of their actions. Britain has one of the highest teenage birth rates in Western Europe. Many teenage parents are unemployed, suffer from poor housing and low levels of education; ninety per cent of teenage births are unplanned and occur outside of marriage. For the unmarried fathers, who have no direct legal right to contact with their children, it is difficult to take an active part in bringing up their children. But despite such challenges Edmund found an inspiring and a desire to have a positive
David, 18 years and Matthew, 8 months from Baby Fathers
relationship with their children.
Edmund Clark (2000 - 2001)
warmth and commitment to fatherhood
Reflecting the intimacy of fatherhood, the pleasure of holding and being close to their child this series of portraits undermines our stereotyping of teenage fathers.
23
H E REFO RDSHIR E
PR O J EC T S
Bromyard Forever
Labelled@Bromyard
Photographs of life on a rural high street, by Andrew Fox
International Artists Carl Beebee and Jaime Jackson have worked with young people to create their own questioning of stereotypes through making ‘labelled’; reformatted into art, text and photograph banners, video art and performance take over the town. ‘Labelled’ focuses young people’s perceptions of self-identity and placing these ideas back into the heart of the town.
Hereford Cathedral, 24th May - 21st June 2009 also in Bromyard Heritage Centre on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th July A celebration of local colour, resilience and unique personalities, alive and well in the rural high street. In these difficult economic times, Bromyard identified the urgency of valuing and supporting its local economy, and commissioned a top quality photographer to honour its distinctive nature. The High Street still includes 2 independent greengrocers, 3 butchers, 2 bakers of which one still bakes its own bread on the premises, 4 pubs, a busy joinery workshop and various other shops that sell anything you could wish to buy. The exhibition is ‘hot off the press’, with Andrew being commissioned and undertaking the work, all within May 2009. Led by Bromyard and District History Society. Supported by Rural Media and funded though grassroots grants.
24
Multi-site exhibition across the town from 28th May - 20th June with a Labelled art & performance event on Friday 29th May 6pm -10pm at the Heritage Centre, Bromyard Rowberry Street HR7 4DU A ‘Welcome To Our Future’ project produced in partnership with Herefordshire Council Youth Services, Bromyard and Winslow Town Council funded through Awards for All & Bromyard ACT.
OT HER
R E GIONAL
FE S T I VAL S
&
E V E NT S
The Guardian Hay Festival 21st - 31st May www.hayfestival.com
V E N U E
How the light gets in A Philosophy Festival The Globe in Hay 22nd - 31st May www.artandideas.org Wyeside Music Festival 5th, 6th June King George Playing Fields, Hereford www.wyesidemusicfestival.co.uk Leominster Festival 5th - 14th June www.leominster-festival.co.uk Ledbury Poetry Festival 3rd July - 12th July www.poetry-festival.com Boderlines Film Festival 2010 26th Feb - 14th March Nozstock Festival Nr Bromyard 31st July - 2nd August www.nozstockfestival.co.uk
Hereford Tourist Information Centre Telephone: 01432 268430 Visit www.myherefordshire.com for information on cultural activities in Herefordshire.
MA P
VE N UES
&
INFOR MAT I O N
Hereford Museum & Art Gallery
The Cider Museum & King Offa Distillery
Broad Street Telephone: 01432 260692
21 Ryelands Street, by Sainsbury’s and Travelodge approach Telephone: 01432 354207
Open times: Tuesday - Saturday 10.00 - 17.00 Sundays & Bank Holidays 10.00 - 16.00 Exhibitions: 23rd May - 21st June
Open times: Tuesday - Saturday 10.00 - 17.00 & Bank Holiday weekends
John Bulmer Retrospective
Exhibitions: 15th May - 21st June
The Courtyard Centre for the Arts
Pictures from Ledbury HCA Students & Staff
Edgar Street Telephone: 01432 340555 Open times: Monday - Saturday 10.00 - 22.00 The Courtyard has a bar and café Exhibitions: 14th May - 15th June Seen but Not Heard Edmund Clark - Baby Fathers Julia Fullerton-Batten - Teenage Stories Jan von Holleben - Dreams of Flying Wiebke Leister - Hals über Kopf Ali Richards - Playgrounds Clare Richardson - Harlemville Michelle Sank - Interface Vee Speers - The Birthday Party Simon Wheatley - Don’t Call Me Urban
Franklin House 4 Commercial Rd Telephone: 01432 354207 Open times: 10.00 – 18.00 4th, 5th, 6th, 11th & 12th June Exhibitions: Static3, Digital Media Artists Hereford Cathedral Broad Street Telephone: 01432 374202 Open times: Open: 9.15 until Evensong daily (Monday - Saturday 5.30, Sunday 3.30) Access to some parts of the cathedral may be restricted at short notice. The Cathedral has a café Exhibitions: 14th May - 15th June
E V ENTS
Hereford Photography Festival @ Guardian Hay Festival 21st - 31st May www.hayfestival.com
Static3
Wednesday 27th May 1pm
A program of contemporary art & audiovisual performances featuring regionally-based artists.
John Bulmer talks to Eamonn McCabe Retrospective
To celebrate his major show at the Hereford Photography Festival, the film-maker and photographer shows and discusses his colour work from the 60s and 70s
Saturday 30th May 5.30pm Meet the legendary Argentinian photographer Daniel Mordzinski at Richard Booth’s bookshop (Free but not ticketed) Born in 1960 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Daniel Mordzinski is known as ‘the writers’ photographer’. Based in Paris, he has worked for thirty years on an ambitious ‘human atlas’ of Spanish and Latin American literature. The official photographer of the Hay Festival, an exhibition of his portraits from all the Hay Festival venues taken over a single year will be showing throughout the festival at Richard Booth’s bookshop.
Saturday 23rd May 5.30pm Jake and Dinos Chapman talk to Tim Marlow The brothers make iconoclastic sculpture, prints and installations that examine, with searing wit and energy, contemporary politics, religion and morality. In association with The White Cube Gallery
Static is a yearly program of contemporary art & live audiovisual performances in Hereford. Static brings you some of the best photography, digital media, installation, video art, & vj performances Hereford and the region has to offer. Artists have taken over the inside of the shop at Franklin House 4th, 5th, 6th June and 11th,12th June (10am - 6pm) with a special Static3 end of show event on 12th June (6pm - 10pm) Static3 is created for the Festival by Mash Cinema and Praxis
Franklin House Shop windows are playing host to ‘Windows on Art’ part of ‘Seen it, done it, got creative’ campaign promoting art in the county by Herefordshire Council, in partnership with the ESG and Hereford City Partnerships. As well as a display of artwork by art students at Hereford 6th Form College.
Music Pool Events @ The Courtyard www.musicpool.org.uk The Julie Fowlis Band Wednesday 20th May 8pm £14, £12, under 18s £7 Lo’Jo Wednesday 3rd June 8pm £14, £12, under 18s £7, Students £2 Described in The Independent as “probably one of the best live bands in the world right now”, Lo’Jo formed two decades ago when singer, songwriter visionary Denis Péan met violinist Richard Bourreau in the Loire valley. This is music with space, spice and variety, supported by a fascinating surreal visual backdrop display. “If this group comes within 100 miles of where you live, make the trip to see them” - Charlie Gillett (BBC Radio)