grey
a black and white photobook
October 2013 #13
grey Σχεδιασμός /Design: Κωνσταντίνος Ανδρώνης [www.c-andronis.gr] www.greymagazine.gr |info@greymagazine.gr Τα πνευματικά δικαιώματα των φωτογραφίων ανήκουν εξ’ ολοκλήρου στους καλλιτέχνες.Απαγορέυεται η αναπαραγωγή των φωτογραφιών που δημοσιεύονται στο grey με οποιοδήποτε μέσο χωρίς την εκ των προτέρων γραπτή συγκατάθεση των κατόχων των δικαιωμάτων πνευματικής ιδιοκτησίας. All rights lie with the artists. No part of the material published in grey may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the artists.
Ρυθμίστε την οθόνη σας, έτσι ώστε να βλέπετε όλες τις διαβαθμίσεις του γκρι Adjust your screen settings, so that you can see all shades of grey
Blake Andrews Untitled Chris Shaw Weeds of Wallasey Junku Nishimura Untitled Krass Clement Venten p책 i g책r (Waiting for yesterday) Morten Andersen Snowflake
Issue #13 curated by Zisis Kardianos When I was asked to curate the present issue of “Grey”, I thought of it as a good opportunity to share with a wider audience my enthusiasm for some photographers that even though they have established themselves in the relative circles of their choice, whether these may be, the photo-book publishing world, the art galleries, the magazines or the social media and the web, I suspect that they remain undeservingly less recognizable outside their field. What these excellent photographers share in common, is their unflinching trust on the expressive potential of black and white. But beyond that, each of them has developed and continues to cultivate, a quite discrete, personal and fascinating voice of photography. ZK Όταν μου ζητήθηκε να επιμεληθώ το παρόν τεύχους του “Grey”, το είδα σαν μια καλή ευκαιρία να μοιραστώ με ένα μεγαλύτερο κοινό τον ενθουσιασμό μου για κάποιους φωτογράφους που αν και έχουν καθιερωθεί στους χώρους που ο καθένας έχει επιλέξει, είτε αυτός είναι ο χώρος των εκδόσεων, των γκαλερί, των περιοδικών ή των κοινωνικών δικτύων και του internet, υποψιάζομαι ότι παραμένουν αδικαιολόγητα λιγότερο αναγνωρίσιμοι έξω απ’ αυτούς. Όλοι αυτοί οι εξαιρετικοί φωτογράφοι μοιράζονται την σταθερή εμπιστοσύνη τους στις εκφραστικές δυνατότητες του ασπρόμαυρου. Αλλά πέρα απ’ αυτό, ο καθένας τους έχει αναπτύξει και συνεχίζει να καλλιεργεί, μια διακριτή, προσωπική και γοητευτική αντίληψη φωτογραφίας. ΖΚ
Blake Andrews
Untitled I’ve been shooting photos seriously for about 20 years now. The longer I do it the less I am concerned with the truth of what’s happening in front of the camera. I’ve come to realize that I’m not a reporter. Instead I’m a virus. My photographs invade the scene, remove reality, and substitute my own narrative in its place. I infect the original scene with my own story and, you know what? Sometimes it works. Not always, but sometimes, especially with black and white. And when it does, it’s like magic. I can create new worlds. I feel omniscient. But of course that’s silly. The reality of the original scene can never be erased. It always stares back at the viewer like a big steaming pile of freshly laid truth.
Chris Shaw
Weeds of Wallasey Weeds of Wallasey is a series of black and white photographs taken on the Wirral in the Bidston Valley which encompasses a docks system leading to the river Mersey in the north west of England. I observed and documented the battle between nature and a post industrial blight, to express my own feelings about a landscape I grew up in, my roots, my weeds...to document a time and a place...the feelings for lost family members, the association of death and departure with my home town. Recently, Peel Holdings signed a multi-million pound property development deal in conjunction with Chinese partners to redevelop this area (“Wirral Waters”). These photographs belong to the”before”and if the after is all brand new mirrored high rise glass and chrome- there will still be weeds.
Junku Nishimura
Untitled I was born and raised in a small coal-mining town. My mother ran a small door-to-door sales business, and I would spend my nights with her going around to coalminers’ houses on sales calls. After the mine was shut down, many of the people in the village that I knew from these sales calls who were kind to me left the village, and now all that is left is a village filled with old people. When I take portraits of people these days, I often recall and feel somewhat sentimental about the people from my village, and that feeling often comes out in my photos.
Krass Clement
Venten pü i gür (Waiting for yesterday) It takes place in the former German Democratic Republic and in the new Germany just after the fall of the wall and today, mainly in the former Eastern Germany. Pictures of more place specific places and pictures of the intimate life mixes so do the feelings that accompany them. The eye is not necessarily the eye of the photographer but more the eyes of a person who has lived in the DDR. This person has grown up in the DDR and believed more or less in that. At the same time this person has grown up and felt drawn to the other sex. The mother figure and other women are difficult to distinguish. It’s an awakening sexuality without a clearly defined object. The voyeur theme is very present throughout the book. The anonymous houses can be both the place the person lives or the house where the beloved on lives. The book stays very unfulfilled, very frustrated, like many former citizens of the DDR must feel in the modern eastern Germany without neither work nor a country they can call their own.
Morten Andersen - Snowflake Oslo, the capital of a small Nordic country perched on the western stretch of the Scandinavian peninsula (not counting some additional bits suspended in the sub-zero waters of the North Sea) is famous for several things: its noble Nobel prize-bestowing ceremonies, its distinctly patterned jumpers, the bands of marauding trolls that roam the streets of its centre on dark winter nights. It’s a compact, well-organised and easily navigable town, whose general vibe tends to swing between the utterly drab and dismal - it figures Munch and Hamsun did not live in Tahiti - and the light-dappled loveliness of a long summer afternoon, as it leisurely fades into a raucous white-night. Just when you’ve convinced yourself that you’ve arrived at the stifling nexus of middle-class, middle-brow, natural fabrics and untreated wood finishes, boom, there crops up a cluster of the deadliest death medal dudes the world has ever seen. With a baby pram in tow, complete with a very deadly looking mini-metalhead inside. When I first came to visit Oslo, it was late fall and I had just had an accident - my left knee had gone through a window pane of a door and I was sporting numerous stitches and an enormous black bruise that stretched from my lower thigh to my lower shin. I hobbled down the cobbles of the inner city in an unmistakably foul mood - my leg hurt, it was gloomy and cold, and the armies of industrious citizens in busy jumpers were vigorously on the move. As the time passed and I gradually recuperated, I moved slowly from one neighbourhood and street to another, unexpectedly and belatedly noticing the steely, bold beauty of Oslo’s autumnal landscapes. In the breaks between Vigeland and beer and Munch and beer and Viking relics, I’d hike up the leg of my pants and inspect the amazing transformation of the huge bruise, as the solid black of its original incarnation gave way to the startling beauty of its aubergine purples, mellow mauves, dusky blues and pink-inflected yellows. Inspired, I asked a friend to take some photos to preserve this transmogrification. Some of Morten’s severely gorgeous pictures in this collection are like that bruise - a record of transient and unexpected beauty, often captured at its very starkest. Blurred figures, smeared lights, desolate streets and the austere outlines of modernist buildings offer a succinct legend of the city in motion, often devoid of any human presence. At times, a portion of a startling profile or the curve of a woman’s body vanishing beyond a street corner confront these bold, self-contained cityscapes with an arresting human protagonist. Other photos proffer visions of Oslo’s thriving nightlife: your typical music venues and their nocturnal inhabitants are suddenly rendered piquant by the flash of Mortie’s camera, manifestly animated by the triple intoxicant of music, spirits and pheromones, as late night euphoria melts into early morning exhaustion. Yet other images selected in this volume present the viewer with the unadorned prettiness of natural landscapes, no humans or human-made artefacts present to distract us from the lucent purity of the vision.
Blake Andrews http://www.blakeandrewsphoto.com/
Chris Shaw http://www.chrisshawphotos.book.fr
Junku Nishimura www.junkunishimura.com junkuphotography@gmail.com
Krass Clement http://www.krassclement.com mail@krassclement.com
Morten Andersen http://www.shadowlab.no morten@shadowlab.no
grey is an online bimonthly black and white photography magazine. Its purpose lies in presenting portfolios of artists who express themselves through black and white photography. grey is free for anyone to download. www.greymagazine.gr
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