RPS Journal January/February 2022

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The Journal of The Royal Photographic Society

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“I believe the history of photography for Black women is still being written” Tamary Kudita, IPE 163 exhibitor

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January / February 2022 Vol 162 / No 1 rps.org

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TAMARY KUDITA

The Journal of The Royal Photographic Society January / February 2022 Vol 162 / No 1 rps.org

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Contact the editor with your views rpsjournal@thinkpublishing.co.uk

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SCALING THE CREATIVE HEIGHTS

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When Jimmy Chin was little he found it hard to sit still at a school desk. Every impulse was to be outside seeking adventure.

He grew up to become a professional climber and skier, later adding photographer and filmmaker to his CV, almost by accident.

While Chin craved adventure and the adrenaline rush, his parents before him had risked everything to pursue a dream of stability and security. They had fled their native China for Taiwan during the turmoil of the Communist Revolution, later settling the family in Minnesota, America, and building a working life as librarians.

Turn to page 50 to find out more about Chin, who went on to co-direct the Oscar-winning film Free Solo.

To welcome in the new year, this issue we bring you a preview of 2022 (page 9), focusing on some of the photographic highlights of the months ahead. Among these is the International Photography Exhibition 163 (IPE 163). We are delighted to be featuring two IPE 163 exhibitors in this issue, Tamary Kudita and Rick Findler.

Our cover image, by Zimbabwe-based art photographer Kudita, forms part of her series African Victorian, exploring contrasting threads from Africa’s colonial history. Documentary photographer Findler, meanwhile, has looked at life in Afghanistan in a fresh and unexpected way. His starkly beautiful images show electricity pylons which stand unconnected.

Findler notes that only 35% of Afghanistan’s citizens had access to electricity by the time the allies ended their 20-year war effort in August 2021. Learn more about Findler and Kudita’s images on page 40, with a chance to see their work, along with that of the winners and fellow shortlisted exhibitors, at RPS Gallery, Bristol, from April.

For more groundbreaking image-making, turn to page 76 for an extract from the book Photography – A Feminist History, wherein writer and curator Emma Lewis explores the work of six highly distinctive female photographers, including Julia Margaret Cameron and RPS Hood Medallist Poulomi Basu.

Finally, we were honoured to be awarded Best Member Magazine at the PPA Scotland Awards 2021, with Best Writer going to Tom Seymour. We’d like to thank you for your role in that success – as one of our valued community of readers.

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KATHLEEN MORGAN Editor ‘Climber Sam Elias scales a wall in Geyikbayiri, Turkey’ by Jimmy Chin

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Contents Features

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Jimmy Chin – the climber, photographer and filmmaker behind Oscar-winning movie Free Solo – chooses the images that make him most proud. Prepare to scale Everest and leave your ropes behind for El Capitan

Childhood memories and family role-playing mix it up with a modern take on African studio portrait photography in the deceptively personal work of 2021 RPS Vic Odden Award recipient Silvia Rosi

BEST SHOTS

THE RPS AWARDS 2021

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With this extract from Brad Wilson’s latest book, The Other World, the animal portrait photographer allows us to exchange glances with some of the world’s most vulnerable and endangered species

Lockdown restrictions led wildlife photographer David Lloyd to take some stunning black-and-white studies of local oak trees – images that are deeply rooted in ancient British myth, magic and natural history

NATURE

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NATURE

BRAD WILSON; JIMMY CHIN; DAVID LLOYD; SILVIA ROSI

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DISTINCTIONS

Like fire and ice, oil and water, these two portfolios of abstract desert terrains and vast windswept seascapes couldn’t be more different – or more indicative of the vast possibilities on offer in landscape photography

Cover story IPE 163

Tamary Kudita’s awardwinning series African Victorian has put Zimbabwean art on the map. Two of her images have been chosen for the IPE 163, along with work in Afghanistan by Rick Findler from the UK

LORNA SIMPSON; ALISTER BENN FRPS; TAMARY KUDITA

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HISTORY

Tate Modern assistant curator Emma Lewis profiles six highly distinctive women photographers who deserve greater focus on their work, in this extract from her vital new study Photography – a Feminist History JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2022

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THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY RPS House, 337 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR, UK rps.org frontofhouse@rps.org +44 (0)117 316 4450 Incorporated by Royal Charter

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Patron HRH The Duchess of Cambridge

Editor Kathleen Morgan rpsjournal@thinkpublishing.co.uk 0141 375 0509

President and Chair of Trustees Simon Hill HonFRPS

Contributing Editors Rachel Segal Hamilton and Jonathan McIntosh

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Treasurer Position vacant

Art Director John Pender

Trustees Nicola Bolton ARPS, Gavin Bowyer ARPS, Sarah J Dow ARPS, Andy Golding ASICI FRPS, Mervyn Mitchell ARPS, Dr Peter Walmsley LRPS

Managing Editor Andrew Littlefield Advertising Sales Elizabeth Courtney elizabeth.courtney@thinkpublishing.co.uk 0203 771 7208

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Chief Executive Officer Evan Dawson Directors Development: Tracy Marshall-Grant Finance and HR: Nikki McCoy Programmes: Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS

Client Engagement Director Rachel Walder Circulation 10,604 (Jan-Dec 2020) ABC ISSN: 1468-8670

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Published on behalf of The Royal Photographic Society

by Think, 20 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JW thinkpublishing.co.uk

The Journal of The Royal Photographic Society

January / February 2022

Vol 162 / No 1

© 2022 The Royal Photographic Society. All rights reserved.

The ‘RPS’ logo is a registered and protected trademark.

Every reasonable endeavour has been made to find and contact the copyright owners of the works included in this publication. However, if you believe a copyright work has been included without your permission, please contact the publisher. Views of contributors and advertisers do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Royal Photographic Society or those of the publisher. All material correct at time of going to press.

CONTRIBUTORS

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Tom Seymour (page 40)

Graeme Green (pages 50 and 60)

Emma Lewis (page 76)

Associate editor of the Art Newspaper, Seymour received Writer of the Year at the PPA Scotland Awards 2021 and the Professional Publishing Awards 2020 for work with the RPS Journal

A photographer and journalist for media outlets including the BBC, the Guardian and the Sunday Times, Green is also founder of conservation initiative the New Big 5 project

Lewis is assistant curator, international art, at Tate Modern, London. She is the author of Photography – A Feminist History, published by Ilex Press

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Moso bamboo canopy

BY HEATHER ANGEL HonFRPS

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This serene image by wildlife photographer Heather Angel HonFRPS shows a canopy of mōsō bamboo in Shunan Zhuhai National Park, China.

Taken in 2009 on one of Angel’s 32 trips to China, the image was a finalist in the Earth Project’s COP26 photographic competition, themed ‘Nature under threat’. It speaks to one of the main goals of COP26 – to help protect and restore ecosystems in countries adversely affected by the climate crisis.

“Mōsō bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants in the world, capable of growing by up to one metre a day,” says Angel, RPS president from 1984-1986.

“In just five years not only can it be harvested, but each year it grows new shoots, so the older, fully-grown bamboo culms can be harvested. Eucalyptus trees take 15 years before they can be harvested, while coniferous trees take around 40.

“As it grows, mōsō bamboo fixes more carbon dioxide than it releases and is one of the world’s most sustainable resources, especially when it is cut and able to quickly regrow.” theearthproject.world/cop26/ heather-angel 6 RPS JOURNAL JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2022

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In focus NEWS, VIEWS AND EXHIBITIONS

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HOW TO BE FULLY IN THE DECISIVE MOMENT

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REMEMBERING TOM STODDART HonFRPS

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’S AMI VITALE ON THE RISKS AND REWARDS IN HER WORK

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From the series Belonging by Debsuddha Banerjee, winner of the Open category in the RPS Documentary Photographer of the Year 2021 competition

PREVIEW 0F 2022

Enjoy a feast of photographic events across the UK this year, from international exhibitions and prizes to inspirational industry fairs. David Clark is your guide

In challenging times, photography tends to rise to the occasion. It can deepen our understanding of humanity and our fragile environment, make us laugh, move us, entertain us, and shock us into action.

With uncertain times continuing into the new year, one thing is for sure – the world of photography is offering a calendar of events to inspire and entice audiences. Begin your journey at RPS Gallery, Bristol, with

Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors and the 63rd edition of the historic International Photography Exhibition. Visit Belfast Photo Festival and Photo London. See Amazônia, the most recent work by Sebastião Salgado HonFRPS, at the Science Museum, London. And catch the RPS Documentary Photographer of the Year 2021 exhibition on tour.

Find out about these highlights and more on the following pages.

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GENERATIONS: PORTRAITS OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

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RPS Gallery 27 January-27 March An early highlight of 2022, Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors opens at RPS Gallery, Bristol, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The exhibition, first launched at the IWM London in August 2021, comprises more than 50 portraits of Holocaust survivors by 12 contemporary photographers.

Among the pictures are works by The Duchess of Cambridge, Patron of the RPS, who returned to IWM London in November to visit Holocaust survivors.

See page 89. rps.org/generations

RPS DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR 2021

St John’s College, Oxford and touring 14 February-12 November The latest edition of the biannual competition showcasing documentary work attracted more than 3,500 images from across the world. Besides Members, two new categories were added – Open and Student.

The competition’s touring exhibition kicks off at St John’s College, Oxford, from 14 February until 10 March, and combines prints and projected images from the winning, commended and some shortlisted entries.

Debsuddha Banerjee won the Open category with ‘Belonging’. The project focuses on the photographer’s aunts, who were born in Kolkata, India, with the inherited condition albinism.

The Members category was won by anaesthetist practitioner David Collyer for his series All in a Day’s Work, documenting life in a south Wales hospital during the pandemic.

Aishwarya Arumbakkam, originally from Chennai, India, won the Student category with ka Dingiei, exploring themes of environmental conflict and indigenous identity. See the RPS website for more dates and venues. rps.org//dpoty

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Clockwise from left From ka Dingiei

by Aishwarya Arumbakkam; ‘Arza and Ben Helfgott’ by Karen Knorr HonFRPS; From All in a Day’s Work by David Collyer; HRH The Duchess of Cambridge, pictured with Jillian Edelstein HonFRPS and John Hajdu MBE, visits Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors at the IWM London

IWM LONDON

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Clockwise from top left ‘Hillary Clinton, Philadelphia, USA, 2013’ by Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos, from David Hurn: Swaps; ‘New York, 1980’

by Helen Levitt; ‘Cocoa’ from Contagion: Colour on the Front Line, 2020, by Aida Silvestri; ‘Ruins of sculptured terrace’ by John Thomson

HELEN LEVITT / FILM DOCUMENTS LLC / GALERIE THOMAS ZANDER, COLOGNE

CARE/CONTAGION/COMMUNITY – SELF & OTHER

Autograph Until 12 February Showing at Autograph’s gallery in London, this exhibition brings together the work of ten artists including Mohini Chandra, Poulomi Desai and Honorary Fellow Joy Gregory. Their images are a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and its impact on communities and social interaction. autograph.org.uk

HELEN LEVITT: IN THE STREET

The Photographers’ Gallery Until 13 February This major retrospective covers five

decades of work by Helen Levitt, an influential New York street photographer with an eye for the surreal. She consistently documented everyday life in neighbourhoods including the Lower East Side and the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1990s. thephotographersgallery.org.uk

CHINA: THROUGH THE LENS OF JOHN THOMSON

Heriot-Watt University Until 22 March Thomson (1837-1921), an early member of the Society, is best known for being a pioneering social documentary photographer in London. This exhibition, however, focuses on his fascinating

work in China in the 1860s and 1870s.

It’s on display at the James Watt Centre at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. hw.ac.uk

DAVID HURN: SWAPS

National Museum Cardiff Until 27 March Throughout his career, documentary photographer David Hurn HonFRPS has exchanged his own prints for those of other major photographers, resulting in a unique collection of work. On show at National Museum Cardiff, this exhibition presents a selection of those prints, focused on the swaps with his colleagues at Magnum Photos. museum.wales/cardiff

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The Photographers’ Gallery 25 March-12 June The shortlisted entries for this prestigious annual prize go on display at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. This year’s winner will be chosen from the four diverse artists selected: Deana Lawson, Gilles Peress, Jo Ractliffe and Anastasia Samoylova.

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Science Museum Until 27 March A new body of work by Sebastião Salgado HonFRPS is always a major event and this epic exploration of the Amazon took seven years to complete.

The resulting exhibition includes more

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Above ‘Reverence at the cove’ from the series Mo si ri omiran by IPE 163 exhibitor Àsìkò

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Right ‘Mount Roraima, Brazil’, 2018, from the series Amazônia

by Sebastião Salgado HonFRPS

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than 200 black and white images.

After being on show at the Science Museum in London, it will be displayed at Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum from May 2022. sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/amazonia

SONY WORLD PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS

Somerset House 15 April-2 May The annual Sony World Photography Awards exhibition this year includes the work of Edward Burtynsky HonFRPS, recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award 2022. The Canadian artist, best known for large-scale canvases depicting industrial landscapes and environmental crisis, has selected more than a dozen works from across his 40-year career. worldphoto.org

INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION 163 (IPE 163)

RPS Gallery 16 April-3 July Now in its 163rd edition, the IPE is open to photographers of all levels and this year received more than 8,000 entries.

A guest panel selected 100 images for the exhibition, which will be on show at RPS Gallery, Bristol.

See page 40. rps.org/ipe163

PHOTO LONDON

12-15 May Somerset House The UK’s biggest photography fair offers a range of events and talks, as well as a broad selection of exhibitors presenting their work. The 2021 event featured 88 exhibitors from 15 countries. photolondon.org

Clockwise from top left ‘Portrait of a young mother in exile’, 2013,

by Hannah Starkey HonFRPS; ‘The tea room’, 2018, by Anastasia Samoylova;

‘Phosphor Tailings Pond #4, near Lakeland, Florida, USA’, 2012, by Edward Burtynsky HonFRPS

BELFAST PHOTO FESTIVAL

Various venues 2-30 June Following its launch in 2011, the Belfast Photo Festival has become a major UK photography event attended by more than 80,000 people each year.

It celebrates contemporary photography across 30 museums, galleries and public spaces. belfastphotofestival.com

THE PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW AND THE VIDEO SHOW

NEC 17-20 September Having moved from its former March slot, the popular annual photography and video show returns to the NEC, Birmingham. Attendees can hear talks by major photographers and filmmakers, try out the latest kit, watch live technique demonstrations and more. photographyshow.com

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR COMPETITION

Natural History Museum From October Eye-popping images showing some of the wonders of the natural world will again go on show at London’s Natural History Museum after this year’s competition winners are revealed. The 2021 competition received more than 50,000 entries from 95 countries and was won by Laurent Ballesta’s striking image ‘Creation’. nhm.ac.uk/wpy

HANNAH STARKEY

The Hepworth Wakefield 20 October 202230 April 2023 The first major retrospective dedicated to Belfast-born photographer Hannah Starkey HonFRPS will be hosted at The Hepworth Wakefield.

The exhibition looks back over two

decades of Starkey’s work, which has consistently engaged with the question of how women are represented in contemporary culture. hepworthwakefield.org

TAYLOR WESSING PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT PRIZE

Cromwell Place November Celebrating the best in contemporary photographic portraiture and open to all, the annual Taylor Wessing prize offers £15,000 to the winner and draws entries from all over the world. With the National Portrait Gallery, London, closed for major redevelopment works until 2023, the exhibition of winning and shortlisted entries will again be held at the Cromwell Place arts hub in South Kensington. npg.org.uk cromwellplace.com

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‘Capitol crowd’ from American Protest. Photographs 2020-2021 by Mel D Cole

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FIVE HEAD TURNERS TO WATCH

‘Merna Beasley’ by David Prichard

‘Face-off’ by Angel Fitor

Mel D Cole

David Prichard

Angel Fitor

Amaan Ali

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PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER

ENVIRONMENTAL PHOTOGRAPHER

Cole’s work on Black Lives Matter protests culminated in his latest photobook, American Protest.

Photographs 2020-2021.

He was named Editorial/ Press Photographer of the Year at the 2021 International Photography Awards for his stark images of the US Capitol riots.

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The Sydney-based photographer won the 2021 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize for his series Tribute to Indigenous Stock Women. Prichard’s work focuses on Australian First Nations stock women who have spent most of their working lives on cattle stations in Queensland.

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Spanish photographer Fitor received the Portfolio Award in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2021 competition for his series Cichlids of Planet Tanganyika. You can see the competition’s winning and commended entries exhibited at the Natural History Museum, London, until 5 June 2022.

Delhi-based Ali was named Young Environmental Photographer of the Year 2021 at COP26 for his image ‘Inferno’. Shot at the village of Yamuna Ghat, India, it demonstrates the ferocious impact of climate change on the natural environment.

Headturners, 1 ‘Inferno’ by Amaan Ali

Mara Leite FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHER

Seattle native Leite was named the winner of the 2021 Landscape Photographer of the Year competition for ‘Morning at countryside’.

Depicting Mill Lane, a wellknown footpath in Halnaker, West Sussex, the image features in the Landscape Photographer of the Year Collection 14 photobook.

‘Morning at countryside’ by Mara Leite

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THE DAY MAY BREAK Nick Brandt Hatje Cantz Verlag (£54) SUBS ART PRODUCTION CLIENT

In this landmark body of work, the environmental photographer Nick Brandt addresses climate breakdown through a series of powerful portraits that challenge audiences to consider the consequences of humanity’s actions.

Showing how closely interlinked our fates are, Brandt portrays people and animals affected by environmental degradation and destruction, channelling his outrage with quiet determination to create a portrait of us all at this critical moment in the Anthropocene epoch.

Photographed in Zimbabwe and Kenya in late 2020, The Day May Break, the first part of a global series, collects 60 images taken at five sanctuaries and conservancies in Kenya and Zimbabwe.

The book features essays by authors Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and Percival Everett, as well as Brandt himself.

The animals photographed are invariably long-term rescues – victims of everything from the poaching of their parents, to having their habitats destroyed and poisoned.

The people featured are all negatively affected by climate change; some displaced after their homes were destroyed by cyclones, others enduring years of severe droughts.

Both subjects are photographed simultaneously in the same frame, as Brandt investigates and pleas for the conservation of the natural world.

Fog is used as a unifying visual motif to convey the sense of an ever-increasing limbo: a once-recognisable

‘Teresa and Najin, Kenya, 2020’ by Nick Brandt

world now increasingly fading from view.

In spite of their losses, the people and animals Brandt focuses on have all survived – and therein lies a future packed with possibility and hope.

Jonathan McIntosh

LONDON EXPLORED

DIGITAL NUDES

Peter Dazeley and Mark Daly Frances Lincoln (£35)

David Lynch Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (£48)

THE IMAGE BUSINESS

London Explored takes you on a tour of more than 60 of the capital’s most surprising and hidden places. This alluring visual guidebook features some 200 images by celebrated photographer Peter Dazeley FRPS, uniting him again with the journalist Mark Daly after London Explored and Unseen London.

“I hope this book will entertain and inspire people to go out and explore London for themselves,” writes Dazeley.

Digital Nudes is the esteemed director’s second photographic exploration of the female form – it follows 2017’s Nudes.

Bringing together a series of previously unpublished digital images (in contrast with Nudes’ analog photographs), Lynch gleefully experiments with the possibilities of digital technology.

The result is a mysteriously Lynchian, kaleidoscopic vision of undefined curves and chiaroscuro portraiture.

Drawing on his lifetime of telling stories through pictures, Steve Powell offers a fascinating account of photographing global sports events and how this led to the creation of the world-leading business, Allsport Photographic. Powell reveals how his independent photo agency gained recognition, broke the union stranglehold on Fleet Street, and established itself as the go-to source for the best in the industry.

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Steve Powell Mead Press (£25)

My place

By Robin Friend

RMS Mülheim

‘Shipwreck’ from the series Bastard Countryside by Robin Friend

The 2017 TPA/RPS Environmental Bursary recipient Robin Friend has long been haunted by the resting place of a wrecked ship. He tells Jonathan McIntosh why The wreck of the German cargo ship RMS Mülheim rests on an inlet at Castle Zawn, Cornwall, after running ashore in March 2003. Robin Friend first encountered it almost 20 years ago as an undergraduate in BA Photography and Design at Plymouth University.

It has remained a constant source of inspiration, and appeared in his 2018 photobook Bastard Countryside.

“For me, the Mülheim is a muse that’s growing older,” Friend says.

“And naturally, as you age, you mature as a person and an artist.

“My first shots of the Mülheim focused on capturing the whole landscape, with the vessel being a small additional detail.

Then later on, I thought more about landscape as a portrait and framing objects within their environments.

“Fast-forward to the March 2020 lockdown – when my family and I found ourselves stranded in Cornwall – and I started considering mortality and the future we’re leaving behind for my kids. I visited the ship each night to document how nature and time were reclaiming the vessel.

“For me, the Mülheim is a metaphor for our relationship to the natural world.

Humanity always tries to conquer it, but nature will always win in the end.

“There’s something really beautiful about photographing how a location changes. It slows down time and forces us to be more present. I think lockdown reminded us of the importance of this.”

Apiary, the latest book by Robin Friend, is published by Loose Joints Publishing, £40. robinfriend.co.uk JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2022

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WEATHER “The pinkish cloud in the top left corner really helps the composition. If it was just blue sky your eye would sort of leak out of the image. That cloud brings the viewer back into the image. The cloud behind the tree is also important because it helps separate it from the background.”

‘A passage of time’

by Nigel Danson

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HOW I DID THIS Nigel Danson was in pursuit of perfection when he captured this landscape The ‘decisive moment’ is an idea most often associated with street photography or photojournalism. Landscape photography, though, can also have its decisive moments. This photograph, which features on a 2022 calendar by Nigel Danson, was taken when the light, the clouds and the camera angle came together at just the right time. He explains how. nigeldanson.com 18

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LIGHT “It was important for this shot to be at sunrise because I wanted the sun on the left-hand side. I felt that would look better because it would light up the left side of the tree and provide some nice light on the mountains in the background. I was lucky that I got a really beautiful sunrise.”

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LOCATION AND SUBJECT “This was taken in December 2020 on the island of Madeira, which is a pretty amazing place.

It’s quite high up – about 3,000m – and there are dead trees everywhere. I’d scouted the area a few days earlier and found this tree. I hiked up there early in the morning to get the shot.”

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EXPOSURE “The image looks bright but it was actually quite dark, so I used a long exposure – 2.5 seconds. I shot it at f/8. I wanted to keep the slight blurriness in the cloud.

As I was using a wide-angle, 14mm lens, it was easy to get that depth of field, with everything in focus.”

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PHOTOGRAPHER’S POSITION “I had to stand in a really awkward place to get this shot, facing the tree but slightly higher – on a rock. I wanted to ensure the branches of the tree didn’t protrude above the mountain in the background or into the foliage in the foreground.

They needed to fit perfectly into the mountain.”

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‘THIS IS WHAT I WAS PUT ON EARTH FOR’

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The photography world is mourning Tom Stoddart HonFRPS, a courageous photojournalist and inspirational mentor. In this extract from the book Photographers on the Art of Photography, he discusses his extraordinary career

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I’m not a war photographer or a conflict photographer. That’s one of those things there are very few of. The people who focus purely on war end up chasing it and become quite unwell.

You want to be on the biggest story in the world. If you look at any conflict – take, for instance, Rwanda – and look around the room, it’s the same 20 or 30 photographers every time. James Nachtwey, David and Peter Turnley – great guys. I could go through a list.

It was always the same photographers who would travel, because at that time, Time magazine was very strong and you had

Newsweek, US News/World Report, Paris Match, Stern, Life, Le Figaro, The Sunday Times … All these guys had budgets to send wonderful photographers to the biggest stories in the world. I would sit around, maybe in a hotel in Johannesburg for Mandela’s election, and think, “This is what I was put on Earth for.

This is where I want to be.”

We realised it was quite a special time. It wasn’t Vietnam, where you had Larry Burrows; we were the generation after. We knew that if you put the time and effort in you could make photo essays to be proud of, and if they were

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Clockwise from above A Kurdish refugee at a camp in the mountains near Işikveren, Turkey, 1991; Sheltering from a heavy mortar bombardment, 67-year-old Antonia Arapovic hugs her neighbour’s terrified child in the darkness of an underground cellar in Sarajevo, 1992; Crowds gathering on top of the Berlin Wall on the morning of 10 November 1989, when East Berliners were allowed to cross into the west for the first time

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Meliha Varesanovic walks defiantly to work during the siege of Sarajevo in Bosnia, 1995

good enough, they would get run by the papers and the magazines.

I understood the importance of photojournalism, and that a great still photo was incredibly important. If you look at some of the anti-Vietnam images […] they resonated with people. You saw them carried on signs, and you realised a great still image in a magazine stays in your head. You can look at something, put it down, go make a cup of tea, pick it up again, and see something else in that same image.

Whereas television visuals flash in front of your eyes and don’t embed; they’re gone. Obviously, things like 9/11 are different. But by and large, TV news goes straight out of the brain.

In many ways, that’s what we are all aiming for; pictures of our time, the picture of Liam Gallagher with the Union Jack; great portraiture, John Lennon and Yoko, goofing around on a bed. There are pictures that resonate throughout history, and if you’re lucky you might get one or two that stand the test of time.

In Bosnia […] all the other guys were working for the big magazines, so they had armoured cars, and massive day rates because they were in danger.

But they were all crammed in together, shooting the exact same story, getting the same shots each week, whereas I could basically walk down the street and maybe see a lady cooking or arguing about buying some leaves from a seller, because there was no food. And that to me was a more valuable scene.

I was building a jigsaw, whereas the other guys were just trying to get their ten rolls and then have them shipped to New York or whatever. So, I think the pictures that were shots of everyday life certainly have a longer lifetime.

Most of the time I was lying on the ground, waiting for people to run to me.

But I tried to interact with people as much as possible. The images I’m most proud of are ones where I stood in front of someone, four or five feet, took the shot and then left.

There’s an image of a lady crying in Sarajevo, when she’s about to put her

boy on a bus. That’s the kind of thing I was trying to do; tell a story, but through them.

Photojournalism for me is about having the privilege to go somewhere that millions of others can’t and having the experience, and through that, bringing back images that are truthful, informative, educational.

They can be entertaining as well, because not everything is bad … in extreme situations you see great love, you see great humanity.

Things go on: love, sex, generosity.

People adapt, and I think it’s just as important to show that side of it whenever you can.

Tom Stoddart HonFRPS, photojournalist, born 8 November 1953, died 17 November 2021.

Photographers on the Art of Photography by Charles Moriarty, and Sarajevo Women by Tom Stoddart HonFRPS, are both published by ACC Art Books. tomstoddart.com JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2022

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TAKE NOTE Name: Dexter McLean Age: 28 Base: London, UK High point: Receiving the 2021 RPS Hood Medal and launching first solo exhibition, Tower Avenue, in March 2022 USP: Documentary and portraiture representing the Black community and depicting the challenges disabled people face

Operating between the genres of documentary and portraiture, Dexter McLean is a London-based artist with cerebral palsy. His mission is to bring a realistic portrayal of the Black and disabled communities into the mainstream.

The 2021 recipient of the RPS Hood Medal speaks with passion about staging Tower Avenue, his first solo exhibition, advocating for the disabled community, and challenging media misrepresentations.

“Tower Avenue – named after the street I grew up on and where the majority of the exhibition’s images were taken – distils my identity as a Jamaican-born artist who has grown up and lives in London,” he says. “The individuals featured in the show are not only my people, they are the voices and

stories that are never shown.

Representing my roots and culture, this exhibition is an important way for me to showcase my community to a UK audience.”

For McLean, the only way to effect change is to tell people’s stories, which is why he has made it his mission to accurately represent marginalised communities.

“Fighting the stigma around disability is difficult and photographing people who are marginalised can feel pointless when there’s no guarantee of real world change,” he says. “But you change people’s attitudes by exposing them to that which is unknown. That’s why I’ll continue to push these issues into people’s consciousness through my work so that conversations about making the world a more inclusive place can continue apace.”

Beyond Tower Avenue, being staged at Orleans House Gallery, Dexter has other ambitions for 2022.

“I face problems when working with young disabled people due to consent and safeguarding procedures,” he says, “so I’m trying to represent this community from a new angle. I’m also at the early stages of a portraiture project capturing Black community leaders, and am hoping to return to Jamaica to continue using my platform to ensure the voiceless and underrepresented people are seen and heard.”

Tower Avenue is at Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham, 18 March-12 June dextermclean.com orleanshousegallery.org

“They are the voices and stories that are never shown”

‘Untitled’ by the 2021 RPS Hood Medal recipient Dexter McLean

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Five questions 1

Which project makes you most proud?

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Those that are both creative and have a positive impact. My latest film, Shaba, explores the unique bonds between orphaned elephants and their Samburu women keepers. We launched a campaign for World Elephant Day 2021 and raised over $250,000 with $10 downloads –

which went directly to the sanctuary.

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What project are you working on right now?

I’ve created a non-profit called Vital Impacts to support grassroots organisations worldwide working to sustain our planet. Vital Impacts’ first initiative in December 2021 was a sale of prints by prestigious

Samburu warriors touch a black rhino for the first time, northern Kenya

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photographers committed to safeguarding the environment. Dr Jane Goodall DBE – the world’s foremost chimpanzee expert – Daniel Beltrá, Cristina Mittermeier and Xavi Bou were among the 100 photographers.

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How can photography protect the environment?

J Bar L Ranch in the Centennial Valley, southwest Montana

Photography transcends language and helps us understand our connections to all life on this planet.

It’s the ultimate tool for building empathy and cross-cultural understanding, and teaches us that the planet’s survival is intertwined with our own.

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What’s been your toughest moment behind the lens?

‘Yeye in the mist’, Wolong National Nature Reserve, China

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I’ve been shot at,

narrowly missed a missile that vaporised a nearby building, threatened and learned quickly – especially as a woman – that I have to be thoughtful about how and where I work.

No picture is worth my own personal safety.

I’m lucky to be alive and grateful for the courage and resilience others have shown me.

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What’s in store this year?

I’m documenting how science is working to save the last northern white rhinos from extinction. More Vital Impacts projects are launching too – creating more opportunities for photographers and conservation organisations fighting to protect our habitats and wildlife. amivitale.com vitalimpacts.org

AMI VITALE

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‘Burgess Park’ by Liz Johnson Artur, 2010, from Photography – A Feminist History by Emma Lewis

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“I have always been interested in the precision that creates and reveals beauty”

“The only rule I have for myself is if it looks good in a frame on a wall, it makes me happy”

BRAD WILSON

DAVID LLOYD

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“We’ve turned our back on the people of Afghanistan and left them to fend for themselves”

“I found myself growing fascinated by how repetition and storytelling becomes part of the collective memory”

RICK FINDLER

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“From an early age I had a hard time sitting at a desk at school.

I was drawn to the outdoors”

“I learned that I have within myself the same as you do.

I am you”

JIMMY CHIN

MARI KATAYAMA

“The question of who is telling whose story has taken on fresh urgency” EMMA LEWIS

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‘IN EACH ANIMAL’S GAZE WE SEE A PART OF OURSELVES’ What began with a passing interest in nature became a decade-long fascination once he took his first animal portrait. In an extract from his latest book, The Other World, Brad Wilson explains why he can’t look away WORDS AND IMAGES: BRAD WILSON

Mandrill, West Africa. Conservation status: vulnerable

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Baboon, North and Central Africa. Conservation status: least concern

This project began more than a decade ago with a seemingly simple thought that quickly turned into a creative imperative: I want to do portraits of animals. What followed was anything but simple, and from the start I was immersed in something far more complex and meaningful than I could have imagined.

My initial attraction to these subjects was purely visual – the bold patterns and intense colours expressed in fur, feathers, scales, and skin, the extraordinary range of body types and musculatures, and most importantly, the strikingly distinct and powerful eyes. This was my beginning, my way in, yet immediately I understood that merely recording their beautiful form was not nearly enough. But what was beyond this form

that had been objectified and anthropomorphised for so long? And what did it really mean to do a portrait of an animal?

Right away I discovered the answer through the process of the work itself. I found it impossible to stand a few feet away from any wild animal, with no barriers between us, and remain unmoved.

There was something deeply resonant about this type of encounter that was profound in the moment and primal in its roots, and I knew I was entering a rare and fragile territory. Despite the physical closeness, my first reaction was not one of fear, but of fascination and admiration. Each animal had a uniquely commanding presence and consciousness that seemed as real and significant as my own, and it became clear that some sense of

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Black leopard, Africa and Southern Asia. Conservation status: vulnerable

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“Up to that point, I had spent my career photographing people ...

Now I was facing animals who did what they wanted with no regard for me”

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this would need to be conveyed if the final work was going to be a portrait, and not just a picture.

I have always been interested in the precision that creates and reveals beauty – the exact instant when mood, stillness, lighting, and composition align to make something common suddenly uncommon, something expected suddenly unexpected. In many ways, my entire life in photography has been about trying to find these few elusive moments and record them. While this has always been a challenging pursuit, with animals it seemed even more daunting. Up to that point, I had spent my career photographing people, subjects I largely controlled. I told them what to do, and because we shared a common language and a general spirit of collaboration, they complied.

Now I was facing animals who did what they wanted with no regard for me or my artistic agenda. Specific verbal directions were replaced by patient waiting and observation, a level of intention and focus that bordered on meditation.

That in itself was exhilarating, but there was something more. What I discovered was a world that we, as humans, have largely abandoned, a place of powerful present moment awareness ruled almost entirely by natural intelligence and intuition.

Without much effort, my subjects pulled me in to this other world with them, discreetly demanding my full attention, and everything else fell away. I was no longer thinking of myself or the environment around me. I was only focused on my immediate experience with each animal and finding some compelling visual connection to them, something that went beyond straightforward documentation and created a feeling of authentic encounter.

The destinies of humans and animals have been, and will continue to be, inexorably linked. We have lived in close proximity for our entire terrestrial existence, with hunter-gatherer lifestyles that once were not all that dissimilar. We roamed the same ancient forests and sweeping savannas and drank from the same lakes and streams. Sometime around 12,000 years ago, however, our lives diverged when homo sapiens began to experiment 32

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Chimpanzee, West and Central Africa. Conservation status: endangered

with farming and animal domestication. Over the centuries that followed, as this new survival strategy became more successful, our ancestors largely abandoned their nomadic way of life and started to build versions of the villages and towns that we live in today. This agricultural revolution changed our species and our planet, and the resulting development of a new human culture

transported us further and further away from our wild relatives.

Nonetheless, we continued to have a vital relationship with the wildlife around us, casting them in layers of myth and mysticism as allies, enemies, gods, and food. Often these roles existed simultaneously across vastly different cultures and continents, and they endure even in our modern age.

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Tiger, Indian subcontinent. Conservation status: endangered

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PROFILE

Brad Wilson

Giraffe, Africa. Conservation status: vulnerable

Based in New Mexico, Brad Wilson straddles the worlds of commercial and fine art photography. After studying art history and studio art at The University of North Carolina, he settled in New York City, working as a photographic assistant before establishing his own career. His images have been published by brands including Paris Match, CNN, World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, Wildlife Conservation Society, Microsoft, Apple and Sony.

Snowy owl, northern Arctic. Conservation status: vulnerable

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African elephant, Sub-Saharan Africa. Conservation status: endangered

“Although animals remain an integral part of human society, they have been relentlessly pushed to the margins of our ever-expanding civilisation”

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Orangutan, Borneo and Sumatra. Conservation status: critically endangered

Today, despite the fact that animals remain an integral part of every human society, they have been relentlessly pushed to the margins of our ever-expanding civilisation. For many of them this is a perilous and often impossible place to exist, and thousands of species around the globe are currently endangered. Their fate is fundamentally tied to our own and we must realise that our ascendency can no longer continue at the expense of all wildlife around us.

Conservation is now critically important, not just to save animals, but to save ourselves.

I hope this body of work can stand as a worthy testament to these vanishing faces, a bridge of sorts, to remind us that we are not alone, we are not separate; we are part of a profoundly interconnected diversity of life. In each animal’s gaze we see a part of ourselves and catch a fleeting glimpse of another world, a world we once fully inhabited. In many ways they are what we used to be, and like us, they deserve to follow their own unique path into the future, wherever it may lead them.

Bison, North America. Conservation status: near threatened

This is an edited extract from The Other World

by Brad Wilson, published by Damiani at £50. bradwilson.com damianieditore.com JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2022

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‘I SAW THIS AS A MOMENT TO REFRAME HISTORY’

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To celebrate the International Photography Exhibition 163, over two consecutive editions of the RPS Journal we feature four photographers whose work is inspirational in contrasting ways WORDS: TOM SEYMOUR

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It was always going to be as challenging as it was exciting to select just 100 photographs for the International Photography Exhibition 163 (IPE 163).

The open-call attracted more than 8,000 submissions from photographers across the globe. The results will be exhibited at RPS Gallery, Bristol, from April.

A panel of five selectors including creative producer Sebah Chaudhry and Joy Gregory HonFRPS pored over prints of the shortlisted entries. The final line-up features genres from art to landscape, with exhibitors based in locations including Iran, Chile and Nigeria.

The overall winner is French-Polish photographer Tim Franco, who received the IPE Award for his series Unperson – Portraits of North Korean Defectors.

KyeongJun Yang, a US-based South Korean, achieved the Under-30s Award for the project Men Don’t Cry, exploring masculinity and emotion.

Following on from our coverage of the IPE 163 winners in the November/December 2021 RPS Journal, four more exhibitors have been selected to have their work featured in this and the following print edition. This time, we meet Zimbabwean photographer Tamary Kudita and UK-based photojournalist Rick Findler.

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‘Roots II’ from the series African Victorian by Tamary Kudita

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‘The gathering’ from the series African Victorian by Tamary Kudita

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Tamary Kudita (Zimbabwe) “Our self-perception has mainly been shaped by our representation,” says the Zimbabwean photographer Tamary Kudita. “But the Black identity is undergoing significant changes.”

In April 2021, Kudita was chosen as the creative award winner in the open competition at the Sony World Photography Awards. Then she was given the overall open competition honour, the award’s biggest prize, for an image from her series African Victorian. Kudita is the first African photographer to win the coveted title – a remarkable achievement for a 27-year-old with little formal training in photography.

In her award speech, Kudita spoke of her pride in “putting Zimbabwean art on the map”. But she didn’t mince her words either, instead providing a rallying cry for what she describes as “the importance of African representation”.

Now, two images from African Victorian have been selected for the International Photography Exhibition 163 (IPE 163), the latest edition of the world’s longest continuously running photography exhibition. Her work will be exhibited alongside that of 56 other photographers, having been selected from more than 8,000 images submitted to the IPE 163.

Kudita has not always focused purely on photography; nor does she necessarily define herself as a photographer.

She studied fine arts at Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, where she learned to embrace the identity of “a visual activist who uses a camera as a tool,” she says in an interview from her home in Zimbabwe.

African Victorian is an expression of her dual heritage. She was born in Zimbabwe but has ancestral roots in Orange Free State, the historical Boer state of South Africa. These photographs, then, are a way of better understanding the colonial histories that have literally created her body and

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defined much of her life, as well as her work as an artist.

She describes her images as “a blend of the heritage of the Shona culture I was born into and the Western culture into which I have assimilated”.

“By foregrounding the personal and the self,” she says, “I look at the ways in which forced migration and our unchosen histories have shaped our contemporary state.

“As a Black female photographer, I believe that the history of photography for Black women is still being written. I needed to ask myself: ‘What am I adding to the history? What am I doing to tell the stories of Black women?’ With this in mind, I went beyond the aesthetic norms of photography.”

The series has been long in the making, and involved an immersion in the history of Western and African art.

Kudita began work on it in 2019, when she decided to create what she calls “a direct response” to the Rembrandt painting Saskia as Flora, a 1634 oil-on-canvas portrait of the Dutch painter’s wife, Saskia van Uylenburgh, depicted as the goddess Flora. The portrait is held in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, but was taught on Kudita’s fine arts course in Cape Town.

“I decided to use Rembrandt as a point of reference because he is a masterful storyteller,” she says. “His themes of portraiture, landscape and narrative painting epitomise mainstream art history. So I thought about the image of the Black female in Western art, and then I asked myself: ‘What would it mean to place an African woman in the realm of mainstream art history?’ I essentially saw this as a moment to reframe history.”

During the shoot, Kudita made the most of costumes designed by Angeline Dlamini and worked closely with the model Nothando Chiwanga. Kudita describes Chiwanga as “essentially an extension of myself”.

The image, featured on the cover of the RPS Journal, won the Sony open award. It was the last photograph from a two-hour shoot, both women in the windswept wilds of Zimbabwe with the sun starting to dip in the sky. It was a moment of serendipity; Kudita saw the dramatic background and located her model in position; Chiwanga instinctively placed the materials on her head and looked into the distance.

“I asked her to turn her head towards the camera and I took the shot,” Kudita says. “And in that frozen moment, the individual and the environment became one within the frame.”

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‘Vessel’, 2020, by Tamary Kudita

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Rick Findler (UK)

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In March 2021, the British photojournalist Rick Findler found himself standing shivering on a snowy mountainside in Afghanistan’s highland province of Bamiyan. The altitude of the rolling mountains around Bamiyan easily tops 3,000m – roughly the same as Mount Etna in Sicily.

The city of Bamiyan itself, with a population of more than 100,000, is traditionally known in Afghanistan for its liberal, multicultural perspectives. It is particularly renowned for two colossal cliffside statues of Buddha, thought to date from the 5th century and destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.

Two decades later, Findler was at the Bamyan Ski Club, ready to photograph a commission for the Guardian. The occasion was a remarkable one. Nazira Khairzad, 18, and her sister Nazima, 19, were about to take part in the national Afghan Ski Challenge – and they were permitted to ski alongside boys.

Speaking today, Findler expresses disbelief at the tragic changes that have rocked Afghanistan in the short few months since he watched Nazira and Nazima course joyously through the snow. In the interim period, the US-led Western forces launched an abrupt, full-scale withdrawal from the country after a 20-year war, and the Taliban swept through the country again, taking back control and forcing the nation’s youth, including Nazira and Nazima, to live again under a medieval interpretation of Sharia Law. “A lot of the people in Afghanistan are scared out of their minds,” he says.

While in Bamiyan back in March 2021, Findler’s eyes were repeatedly drawn to strange, Obelisk-like structures that reached out of the arid land. They were electricity pylons, he learnt, constructed by Bamiyan’s mayor a year previously – but never connected to the country’s electricity grid. After a 20-year Western occupation, during which infrastructure creation was often used as a selling point for the war in the British media, only 35% of Afghanistan’s citizens had access to electricity, Findler notes.

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‘Pylons 01’ from the series Lost Connection by Rick Findler

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‘Pylons 06’ from the series Lost Connection by Rick Findler

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“There were thousands of these pylons,” he says. “The mayor of Bamiyan had promised the town would get electricity, and put the pylons up in the hope of remaining popular with the people. But when he got voted back in, he did nothing with the pylons. They’ve remained there, completely unused, and it’s become a bit of a joke among the people.”

Findler photographed the pylons over the course of 12 days.

The result is Lost Connection, a series of simple, austere still lifes, carefully orientated in the landscape, each of which represent the tragedy upon layered tragedy that is a reality for many in Afghanistan. Two of these images will feature in the International Photography Exhibition 163 (IPE 163), opening at RPS Gallery, Bristol, in April.

“I started to view the pylons as microcosms of the problems that persist in Afghanistan,” Findler explains. “Before the Taliban was in power, this was a story about the loss of basic amenities for the people of Afghanistan. But now the Taliban have taken control and the Western armies have left, the pylons have taken on another meaning – the abandonment of the Afghan people by the West.”

In comparison to the pictures of Nazira and Nazima skiing, Findler describes the pylon pictures as odd and unsettling.

“Especially now,” he says, “after we’ve turned our back on the people of Afghanistan and left them to fend for themselves.”

One of the images from Lost Connection has been included in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition 2021, which runs until 2 January 2022.

“I’m pleased with that,” Findler says, “not because I have a picture in the RA, but because people will go and see a simple photo of a standalone, empty pylon in a remote region of Afghanistan. They will see that image alongside a lot of artwork. And they will look at these pictures and ask: ‘What does it mean? And what did we have to do with this?’”

The International Photography Exhibition 163 launches at RPS Gallery, Bristol, in April 2022. Meet two more IPE 163 exhibitors in the March/April issue of the RPS Journal. rps.org/ipe163

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The son of librarians who fled revolution in search of security, Jimmy Chin carved his own dream out of ice and rock. Meet the Oscar-winning filmmaker and climber behind Free Solo WORDS: GRAEME GREENE IMAGES: JIMMY CHIN

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“Shooting on Everest while trying to ski at the same time was difficult,” says American photographer Jimmy Chin. It is a modestly delivered line that still sounds extraordinary – but then Chin is a photographer who has made an art of going beyond the ordinary.

A pro climber and skier, as well as a National Geographic photographer and Oscar-winning filmmaker, Chin has spent 20 years producing epic adventure images from physically and mentally demanding expeditions to some of the world’s most challenging and dangerous locations. As well as skiing down from the summit of Mount Everest, he has completed first ascents on all seven continents – including Pakistan’s Karakoram Mountains and the Garhwal Himalayas in India – and crossed the Changtang Plateau in Tibet on foot.

“No, I’m not very good at a desk job,” he says, laughing.

“Even from an early age I had a hard time sitting down

at a desk at school. I was drawn to the outdoors and always looking to do something exciting. Boredom felt to me like death.”

As the son of immigrants who escaped from mainland China to Taiwan during the Chinese Communist Revolution before moving to the US, a life of adventuring was neither an easy nor an obvious path.

“My parents, because they were Chinese immigrants, were more focused on a very traditional upbringing, and I felt pretty constrained as a kid,” he recalls. “At college, it all came together when I found climbing. I loved the mental toughness and physical challenge, the problem-solving, and that drew me to places where you’re interacting with the landscape, putting your hands on the rock and climbing. It was a very nomadic lifestyle that took me to some of the most beautiful national parks in the country.”

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“At college it all came together when I found climbing. I loved the mental toughness and physical challenge, the problem-solving”

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The Getu Arch, 2016 “That’s Alex Honnold and Felipe Camargo rappelling down after climbing one of the longest, hardest and steepest routes in the world that goes up across this big overhanging arch. It’s in Getu, a remote valley in China that’s really famous with top climbers. The figures of Alex and Felipe really give the arch scale, and from the surrounding landscape there, you get a sense of the lower part of the arch, too, which is just stunning.”

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Previous spread Will Gadd on ice, 2015 “Will Gadd is one of the most prolific ice and mixed climbers of my generation, pioneering difficult new ice and mixed routes around the world.

He lives in the Canadian Rockies which has a high concentration of great ice climbing. Here Will is ice climbing Wicked Wanda, an ice route in the Ghost River Valley of Alberta, Canada.”

Alex Honnold soloing the Enduro Corner, 2017 “This is rock climber Alex Honnold free soloing on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, a vertical rock formation that was the focus of our film Free Solo. That pitch he’s climbing is called the Enduro Corner. This is from Free Solo.

I was filming, and my assistant had bolted a stills camera on top of my film camera, so I was filming and shooting stills simultaneously at this point.

We knew we couldn’t get Alex to go back there and do it all again, so we had to get film and stills at the same time.”

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Previous spread Skiing the Lhotse Face, 2006 “This is Kit DesLauriers skiing down the Lhotse Face of Everest, a 5,000ft face. A lot of it is very steep, around 50 degrees. Kit is the first person to ski the Seven Summits, which means the highest peak on each of the seven continents.

We skied a line on the Lhotse Face called the South Pillar route, which is the direct fall line from Camp Four on Everest. It’s a photo that’s all about scale and an individual in the landscape.”

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Climbing One World Trade Center, 2016 “I shot this image for the cover of The New York Times Magazine. I was asked to take a photograph for their story called ‘New York above 800 feet’. I proposed shooting from the top of One World Trade Center (One WTC), since the city skyline reminded me of a mountain range with One WTC at its apex. I took this photo of Jamison Walsh inspecting the tower at the top of One WTC in 2016.”

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Charakusa Towers, 1999 “This is one of my photos from the Vital Impacts print sale. It’s from one of the first rolls of film from my first expedition to Karakoram in Pakistan, an area that has massive walls and alpine towers, so it’s great for climbing. The picture is of the Charakusa Towers. The far-left pointy tower is one we climbed the first ascent of a new route on.”

“With some shots, I’m standing on an edge on a 50-degree slope of ice at 26,000ft trying to take a photo” Climbing was Chin’s first love. “I was a climber before I was a photographer,” he says. “I picked up a friend’s camera in Yosemite. He taught me how to shoot it. My friend only sold one photo from that season, and it was the photo I took, so I took that money and bought a camera.

“Photography wasn’t a noble calling – it could just support my climbing and life of adventure. But that evolved over time, and I started photographing my friends and the adventures I was going on. It turned out that many of those friends I met in Yosemite, like Leo Houlding, became some of the great explorers, adventurers, climbers and skimountaineers of our time.”

Chin’s job demands that he keeps up with some of the world’s elite climbers and adventurers such as Houlding, Kit DesLauriers or Alex Honnold, while carrying camera gear and producing photos even on skis or during snow storms.

“I get a lot of calls because these athletes know I’m not a liability in the mountains,” he explains. “You have to be highly efficient and able to move with them. Expedition photography

is the purest form of photography that I do. It takes a refinement of all the crafts, not just photography but climbing and logistics. I’m often a participant in the expeditions, and I’m shooting moments as they happen. It’s challenging because you’re actually climbing or skiing. With some shots, I’m standing on an edge on a 50-degree slope of ice at 26,000ft trying to take a photo.”

Chin picks out Antarctica, Everest and Meru as some of the toughest places he has worked, with highlights from these and other challenging shoots gathered together in his new book There and Back: Photographs from the Edge.

“Skiing down Everest there was bulletproof ice, on a 50-degree slope, on a 5,000ft face,” he says. “Once we dropped into it you were totally committed to it – you were going down to the bottom one way or another. You have to take your poles off, unzip your bag, and try to shoot on the slope. On Meru, you’ve pushed at the edge of your physical and mental capacity every day, and then you add the weight of a camera and shooting in those conditions. It’s very hard.”

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Jimmy Chin

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A photographer, filmmaker and mountain sports athlete, Jimmy Chin is renowned for being able to create striking images in high-risk environments. In 2006 he was part of the first American team to ski off the summit of Mount Everest. His 2019 film Free Solo, made with his wife, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, won an Academy Award for best Documentary Feature.

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Getting these photos is not just about being there and surviving, but composition and storytelling, Chin explains.

“The origin of my photography comes from those big landscape shots with a human to give it context and scale.

The biggest thing is when I feel an image can transport somebody to a place they’ve never been before. And I’ve been spending a lot of time on ideas about human potential and human spirit, what people can achieve. Every generation we have new athletes who achieve things that previous generations thought were impossible.”

One of those incredible achievements was rock climber Alex Honnold’s free solo (climbing without ropes or safety gear) ascent of El Capitan, a 7,573ft vertical rock face in the US’s Yosemite National Park, the focus of Chin’s film Free Solo.

Co-directed with his wife Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Free Solo won Chin the 2019 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, a BAFTA and seven Emmys. But climbing and filming weren’t the only challenges. “We had a newborn and a two-year-old on location when we were working 18-hour days,” he says.

Chin and Vasarhelyi recently released another film, The Rescue, about the 2018 rescue of 12 boys and their football coach from a flooded cave in Thailand. There are more films in the works for 2022, including a documentary set in Patagonia about explorers and conservationists Kris Tompkins, her late husband, Doug Tompkins, and Yvon Chouinard.

Before 2021 comes to an end, though, Chin is one of 100 photographers supporting Vital Impacts, a print sale fundraiser from fellow National Geographic photographer Ami Vitale (see page 24) and journalist Eileen Mignoni.

With images available from Chin, Vitale and other renowned photographers including Paul Nicklen, Beth Moon and Nick Brandt, the international initiative is raising funds for conservation organisations including Jane Goodall Institute’s Roots and Shoots, Big Life Foundation and SeaLegacy.

“A lot of the photographers, myself included, spend their lives outside in wild places,” Chin says. “When you spend time in these extraordinary landscapes, you feel a responsibility to protect and preserve them. There’s an interesting and eclectic swathe of photographers 58

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who are part of Vital Impacts, but they all have something in common – they want to protect what they love.”

Prints in the Vital Impacts fundraiser are available to buy from vitalimpacts.org until 17 January, a deadline extended exclusively for RPS members. There and Back: Photographs from the Edge by Jimmy Chin is published

by Ten Speed Press at £35. jimmychin.com

The end of the Earth, 2017 “This picture is of Conrad Anker, an incredible American climber and mountaineer, on the ridge of Ulvetanna in Antarctica. Antarctica was one of the toughest environments I’ve worked in. Conrad and I climbed a route on Ulvetanna, which is the largest formation in Queen Maud Land, a 4,000ft rock tower. Conrad and I have been climbing together for years. Leo Houlding is one of the few other people who have climbed it.

It’s a beautiful landscape. It very much has that end of the Earth feel, because it is the end of the Earth, literally.”

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Ancient oak, approximately 650 years old, near Queen Elizabeth’s Plantation, Richmond Park

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THE ANCIENT ONES What does a leading wildlife photographer do with lockdown?

David Lloyd began a new chapter in his photographic journey after uncovering a magical world of historic oak trees on his doorstep WORDS: GRAEME GREEN IMAGES: DAVID LLOYD

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“The trees I’m interested in are the ancient ones,” says photographer David Lloyd. “These ancient oaks take 300 years to grow, 300 years to mature, 300 years to die. It’s incredible to look at them and know they’ve been there for so long.

Oaks are the most common trees in Britain but they really capture the imagination.”

Lloyd’s obsession with trees is a result of the global pandemic. For many photographers whose livelihoods and photographic pursuits require travel, Covid-19 created a serious problem. Lloyd, one of the world’s leading wildlife photographers, with more than 200,000 Instagram followers and 400,000 Facebook followers, usually spends around a third of the year in Africa, mainly Kenya, leading wildlife photography workshops in the Maasai Mara National Reserve or working on his own photography.

With travel to Africa restricted for much of the last two years, all that ground to a halt.

But if every cloud has a silver lining, Lloyd was prepared to find it, dedicating himself to a new project: photographing the ancient oaks of Richmond Park in London.

Originally from New Zealand, Lloyd has lived in the UK on and off since the 1990s, permanently settling there in 2003. He has been visiting Richmond Park for 30 years. “I lived in Kingston, very close,” he recalls of his first encounter.

“I don’t think I even had a camera. I just went through there for a walk. We saw some deer.

It was marvellous.”

Richmond Park, a National Nature Reserve and London’s largest Site of Special Scientific Interest, has protected status as a habitat for wildlife including deer. As with many photographers,

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“These ancient oaks take 300 years to grow, 300 years to mature, 300 years to die. It’s incredible to know they’ve been there for so long”

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Ancient oak, High Wood, Richmond Park

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David Lloyd, 2 This hollowed out oak at Richmond Park is likely more than 500 years old. The cavity is a self-contained ecosystem, home to hundreds of animals

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The Royal Oak, approximately 750 years old, near Queen Elizabeth’s Plantation, Richmond Park

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David Lloyd An internationally recognised fine art wildlife photographer, David Lloyd was born in New Zealand and is now based in the UK. He first discovered Richmond Park when he arrived in London in 1989 for a six-month sojourn – and made the city his home.

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“Richmond Park’s most famous tree, the Royal Oak, is a classic ancient oak tree personified”

Lloyd found the park’s deer the main draw at first, a chance for him to cut his teeth.

“I realised there were photo opportunities there, especially the annual deer rut in October,” he says.

“Whenever I get new gear, I still go down there to try it out. But I got some very satisfying pictures back then. I went once a year, maybe more during the rut season. I’d go there early morning and walk into the park before the sun came up, find my spot, wait and see what happened. One out of every three visits I’d get something satisfying. But even if I didn’t, it’s a wonderful place to be.

“I’d always intended to return, but Covid renewed my interest in the park and bred a new interest in the old oaks. I was always aware these ancient trees were there. I’d read about them and thought it would be cool to see them, but I didn’t realise just how many there were.

“Early on in the pandemic, because I live so close, I made a point of going down to the park to look at the old trees. I got on the internet and found out everything about them.

I looked up a photographer called Beth Moon who does a lot of black and white photos of old trees around the world. I saw photographing Richmond’s oak trees as something completely different from what I’ve done.”

Lloyd’s wildlife photos are marked by an authentic feel and simple, uncluttered compositions, whether portraits or singling out moments or interactions. That uncluttered feel can be hard to find in forests.

“Some of these trees are difficult,” he says. ”I can’t go to any tree and get a picture. Some trees just don’t work for me as there’s too much clutter in the foreground or background. The ones I’ve found best to photograph were trees where I could get less clutter, more sky. I found a way to photograph the trees that appealed to me.”

One of his favourite trees is Martin Oak, named after the English Romantic painter John Martin who painted Richmond’s trees in the 1800s.

“It’s a favourite because of the aesthetically pleasing shapes,” Lloyd says. “I find the best time to photograph trees like this is when it’s leafy. I’ve photographed them all year round but I like the texture of the leaves at Martin Oak. It’s a popular tree, so I put my take on it.”

“But another favourite hasn’t got a name,” Lloyd continues. “I’m yet to put a name on it, but it looks like a bit of a monster. It has a big grin and a big tooth, a stumpy old tree with arms coming out of it.

I keep telling myself I need to broaden my horizons and find more trees, but I keep going back to that one. It’s quite close to Richmond Park’s most famous tree, the Royal Oak, which is a classic ancient oak tree personified. Mark Frith drew a picture of the Royal Oak and I used that as inspiration.”

Photographing trees and landscapes is a different discipline from wildlife photography.

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Ancient oak, High Wood, Richmond Park. The largest oak in the park by trunk circumference

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Whereas animals can move in a blur, moments of drama or humour passing in an instant, landscapes usually allow for a less time-pressured process. In this writer’s experience, trees run a lot slower than cheetahs or antelope …

“Well, yes, these ancient oaks don’t run at all,” Lloyd laughs. “But you see figures and faces in them. For me, it’s that they’ve been there for so long. These old oaks have a remarkable life and history. The park was formed in 1637.

Trees are considered ancient when they’re 300, so these trees, at 750 years old, were already deemed ‘ancient’ when the park was formed.

King Henry VIII would’ve seen them as he went through the park. It’s that aspect I find intriguing.

It’s a part of London that’s changed very little. You walk past these trees and your mind goes back.

They say if trees could talk, they’d have some stories … A lot has happened there.”

There were several lessons to be taken from the pandemic-induced time out, including the value to photography of repeat visits. “I’ve always believed in the importance of going back to a place, getting

to know it in depth. It’s also, for me, about the fact you don’t need to go travelling far away to find wildlife or enjoy your photography. I thoroughly enjoyed photographing in the park, which is ten minutes from me. I went back every single week for nearly a year.”

The pandemic period has also been a chance to get outside of his comfort zone. “I like all photography, street photography, landscapes … not just wildlife,” says Lloyd. “I know an awful lot more about trees, especially oak trees, than I did before. But because there was a pandemic and we couldn’t travel, I saw an opportunity to develop other skills, trying out HDR, working on video, timelapses and all sorts of things. You need time and space to learn new skills, and there wasn’t an opportunity for that before. If it wasn’t for the pandemic, I wouldn’t have these pictures.”

With travel more possible again, with some restrictions, Lloyd has returned to Kenya and his first love: wildlife photography. He also regularly visits Uganda, India and other wildlife-rich countries.

“These trees, at 750 years old, were already deemed ‘ancient’ when the park was formed. Henry VIII would’ve seen them as he went through the park”

Ancient oak, near Sawyer’s Hill, Richmond Park

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Black rhino, Maasai Mara, Kenya CLIENT

River crossing during the great wildebeest migration, Maasai Mara, Kenya

“It’s not just about getting pictures of the animals but also about their welfare, what they mean to you and how they belong”

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“I’ve been into wildlife since I was five years old,” he says. “It’s about the animals themselves. They have lives, as we do … They’ve all got personalities and characters. You grow up with photos in books or on TV, and then when you see an animal in the wild for the first time, it’s exhilarating. When I go back now … you develop a deeper appreciation.”

Over time Lloyd has become more concerned for animal welfare and conservation efforts, including using his work to raise money for wildlife charities such as African Parks.

“It’s not just about getting pictures of the animals but also about their welfare and what they mean to you and how they belong. They’re not just there for you to observe. They belong. Animals don’t always get the same respect we’d put upon ourselves. They need to be looked after more.”

Before he was a photographer Lloyd worked in graphic design in New Zealand and the UK. As with other photographers, such as Marsel van Oosten, who also worked in graphic design, or Art Wolfe HonFRPS, who studied fine art, this education or ‘state of mind’ has likely had an impact on his photographic style.

“I always just took pictures that satisfied myself,” Lloyd says. “People told me they liked the simplicity, shapes and lines in my photos.

Lions enjoying a feast, Maasai Mara, Kenya

I hadn’t looked at my work that way but I thought it probably subconsciously came from my time doing graphic design: keep it simple, don’t be afraid of white space. It definitely has an influence, the training and the experience you get from all that. But I also think it comes naturally, in the same way music comes naturally to other people – not me.”

“The only rule I have for myself is if it looks good in a frame on a wall, it makes me happy,” he adds. “My father taught me that. He was a camera club photographer, a hobbyist. His first experience with wildlife was when he and my family came with me to Kenya three years ago.

They had one of the best times of their lives.”

Beyond being able to work in Africa again in 2022, Lloyd is also formulating a plan, most likely involving other wildlife photographers, to produce a code of conduct or guidance for visitors, especially photographers, in the Maasai Mara.

It’s been on his mind for some time, having seen the traffic increase since he started working there, and particularly witnessing a rise in “crazy” incidents, where photographers get too close to animals, even allowing animals onto or into vehicles, or vehicles crowd around animals in ways that cause stress and sometimes harm.

Rules already exist, as does common sense, but Lloyd hopes to raise awareness on why more careful behaviour matters. If successful, it’s possible this guidance could be rolled out to other national parks or reserves.

“This conservation initiative is about the traffic in the park and what people are doing,” says Lloyd. “The key to it is that it benefits everybody: people who work in the park, people who visit and the wildlife themselves. I’d like to see less of that crowding and getting so close, even letting animals up to the vehicle. There’s no excuse for that. It’s just crazy.

“Every time I go back, I see something else, and it just can’t happen any more. Photographers can be the worst, because they want their prized picture and interfere with the wildlife. The only way to deal with it is to create an awareness of why it’s not good for the animal.”

Even though international travel looks to be more of an option this year, Lloyd plans to keep revisiting Richmond’s ancient trees.

“It’ll not be as regular as before but I do want to go back,” he says. “There’s a whole forest there …

There’s plenty more to see.” davidlloyd.net @davidlloyd JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2022

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‘Portrait of my grandmother’

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THE STORYTELLER Diving into her mother’s family history has opened up a whole new world for Silvia Rosi, recipient of the 2021 RPS Vic Odden Award WORDS: TOM SEYMOUR IMAGES: SILVIA ROSI

Shortly after graduating from photography school, Silvia Rosi remembers sitting on the sidewalk in the midst of a market in Lomé, the capital of Togo, as her mother shopped, spoke with old friends and recalled her life there.

As a child, Rosi’s mother worked as a seller in Asigamé market. She did so from the age of ten – waking up in the darkness, collecting her produce at daybreak, carrying it on her head and heading to the neighbourhood to sell it before arriving at school with the day still new.

Rosi grew up in Modena, a small Italian city near Bologna – her parents had emigrated there before she was born. As she was growing up, they would take her to Lomé to visit her Togolese family.

“I noticed we spent a lot of time in the market,” she says.

“It was the centre of life in Lomé. And I realised I didn’t really ask my mother that often about her early life. I had never really thought about this chapter of my mum’s life – working as a market trader.

“My grandmother would prepare a basket for my mother in the morning, then my mother would walk around the streets selling the produce. Her day started with this work before school. She had loads of responsibility in her life when she was still a child. Head carrying was rooted into her life from a very young age.”

Rosi remembers watching the women around her.

“I sat there as my mother shopped, and this parade of women walked past me with different produce, these incredibly heavy loads they were able to carry on their heads.

I remember sitting there and watching these women casually walking past with pyramids of goods balanced on their heads. So I got my phone out and took a series of photos.”

Once home, she used the images to apply to the Jerwood PhotoWorks Award, proposing a series that would “use head carrying to reflect on female labour in West African markets like Asigamé”.

She wrote in her proposal of head carrying acting as a “metaphor of struggle which is present in the market and resonates in the act of migration”.

Out of 450 submissions, the 2020 edition of the Jerwood Award jumped at the chance to support the budding series, and so Rosi began work on Encounters.

Rosi’s success continued in 2021 when she received the RPS Vic Odden Award, which recognises art photography by an under 35-year-old. She follows in the footsteps of Daniel Castro Garcia, Alix Marie and Juno Calypso.

Rosi went to university at the London College of Communication (LCC) and graduated in 2016. Today, she splits her time between Modena and London. She remembers, at university, focusing intently on the practical side of photography – what to do in a dark room, how to process and print to a highly technical degree. Prior to university, Rosi’s experience of photography was limited to the one-year Spazio Labo photography course in Italy, “where I got a grasp of what it would be like to work on a series. Before I was just working on single images.”

In London she was taught by “loads of lecturers who were active photographers”.

“It was very hands on,” she says. “But we also had tutorial groups where we would talk about our work on a daily basis.

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‘Self-portrait as my father’

so they reflect on and inform the project.” It was an intensive experience, but when she graduated she felt she still “didn’t have a consolidated practice”.

“I remember putting on our final year show,” she says.

“It’s high pressure. You have to produce the work for the show, then you get people from the industry in to see the exhibition.

I thought something would come out of that, but that didn’t quite happen. It was a successful show but, afterwards, I suddenly realised I was on my own in the big wide world.

I was so exposed to so much different work and I realised I didn’t have much of a strategy when it came to developing my own place in photography.”

Rosi worked in restaurants and became interested in pottery and ceramics. For a time her camera lay unused at home.

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again, ready to push on with Encounters, she found that the series she had developed in her mind was a lot more challenging than she had realised.

“When I travelled back to Togo I found many of the women in Asigamé did not want to be photographed,” she says.

“They were in their work environment and they felt they were not well dressed enough to be in a photograph. I realised they had a very distinct idea of photography, which comes from West African studio portraiture. You have to look your best.

“And that’s especially true if you’re a European photographer – a lot of the African women I spoke to were aware of how Africa is often represented by European photographers. For a long time European photographers have gone to Africa, reflected the worst side of the continent, and brought that back. People are aware of that.”

‘Self-portrait as my mother’

“For a long time European photographers have gone to Africa, reflected the worst side of the continent, and brought that back.

People are aware of that”

Rosi had to find another way. Once home she began to immerse her work in the lineage of the great African studio photographers like the Cameroonian-born Nigerian photographer Samuel Fosso and the Malian photographer Malick Sidibé. And she also began speaking to her mother about their shared history.

Rosi’s father was from the same neighbourhood as her mother. He had grown up in the heart of Lomé, but was ambitious and wanted a better life. So he left for Europe, promising to bring Rosi’s mother with him once he was set up.

“He was an educated man from a good Togolaise family,” Rosi writes in the introductory text to Encounters.

“He arrived in Italy in 1988 with a few clothes in his suitcase, some books, and the dream of finding a good job.”

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When her mother arrived a year later she found her husband exhausted from back-breaking hours working as a tomato picker on an Italian plantation.

When Rosi was aged two her father left Italy for a life in the Netherlands, but her mother did not follow.

Instead she remarried, and Rosi was raised in an Italianspeaking home, her African heritage abstracted to her.

Rosi was never able to meet her father, who died when she was young. She found, growing up, that her mother could be reticent about the past.

“I realised photography was a way for me to access my history,” Rosi says.

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‘Self-portrait as my mother on the phone’

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Rosi began to ask her mother about her family history, using Encounters as a reason to bring the subject up. She would take notes as her mother spoke before composing intimate self-portraits that reflected the stories, using the technical skills she had learnt at LCC. Rosi’s photographs, beautiful to behold, would not look out of place in Samuel Fosso’s studio.

Rosi’s self-portraits are clearly inspired by the West African studio tradition. But these are multivalent portraits, in which prominent props and dress are used to communicate a narrative about Rosi’s history.

In one image she wears her mother’s school uniform.

In another she holds a radio, symbolising the way her mother first heard the news Italy would legalise every migrant in the country, allowing her to live freely in the country.

The first time Encounter was exhibited, Rosi included a video of her mother and grandmother in Lomé demonstrating the subtle technique of tying fabric rings.

In doing so, she was able to communicate a maternal lineage through image-making.

One day, her mother mentioned the griot that lived in the village she grew up in. The role of a griot in a community is to memorise significant stories which are then often recited at collective events and moments of celebration.

“Griots are the gatekeepers of village stories,” Rosi explains. “I found myself growing fascinated by how repetition and storytelling becomes part of the collective memory. I started to think of myself as a photographic griot.”

If Encounter is a deeply personal exploration of migration, diaspora and one family’s history, it feels like the beginning of a journey. And Rosi still has far to go.

Silvia Rosi will be in conversation online with Renée Mussai, senior curator at Autograph, at 1800 (GMT) on 15 March as part of the RPS Awards Talks series. rps.org/awardstalks silviarosi.com

‘Self-portrait as my mother in school uniform’

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‘TRACING MY OUTLINE’

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Since the birth of photography, women have used the camera to define their world. So why have they been so invisible, asks curator Emma Lewis in an extract from her book Photography – A Feminist History

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In 1839, in the rarefied halls of the Académie des Sciences, Paris, photography was introduced to the world in the form of the daguerrotype, marking a technical and cultural milestone that would forever change how we see the world – and with that, how we see ourselves. The announcement coincided with major international political shifts: continued colonial expansion into Asia and Africa, the abolitionist movement to end slavery in the US growing strength, and the early days of the struggle for women’s rights.

In the same year, also in Paris, a philosopher named Charles Fourier had coined the term feminism, which put a name to the intellectual debates that had been gathering momentum for the past century and would soon coalesce into something we recognise today as modern feminism.

For the past 200 years, these histories have run in parallel. A task of feminism is to make women credible and audible; photography has done both. It has been a reliable witness to women’s movements and made the causes for which they fight visible.

Likewise, feminism has shaped how photographers have approached their medium – and how the rest of us have made sense of it. Yet the traditional history of photography

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tells us that all too often, these ideas are overlooked.

You might be familiar with how that account goes. It is white, Western and overwhelmingly male.

Over time, attempts have been made to restore women’s names into that history, and indeed some have stuck.

But for every Julia Margaret Cameron or Lee Miller – two women who have finally received due recognition – many thousands have been ignored, or their biographies flattened and told as though they were appendages to the men in their lives.

The same old stereotypes persist – the genteel lady hobbyists photographing to while away the hours; the gung-ho pioneers blazing a trail to the front line. Where are the workingclass women who set up studios to make ends meet? The ordinary folk quietly recording their communities because they knew no one else would? Where are the thousands of others whose stories did not quite fit the mould?

It’s time for some new narratives.

Photography – A Feminist History explores the kinds of work women have made and how their stories have been told. This edited extract focuses on five photographers from across centuries and social strata, bound together by their determination to record the world around them.

‘Grew feathers’, 2016,

by Lorna Simpson

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‘I’m wearing little high heels’, 2011,

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LORNA SIMPSON Born: 1960, New York City, USA Lives and works: New York City, USA Lorna Simpson traces her long-running interest in found images back to her grandmother’s collection of old Jet and Ebony magazines. Seeing in them memories of her childhood and a means to examine modern American history, Simpson would later employ the magazines in her practice alongside other found visual materials, including press photography and old photo booth portraits. “I think all of it [is] … an influence, beckoning me to steal or admire,” she has said.

Jet and Ebony were both published with a Black American readership in mind. Alongside contemporary culture, politics and interviews, they also included advice on fashion and beauty products. In ‘Grew feathers’ (2016), Simpson layered images from Ebony and similar archival sources to reference the enduring importance such publications placed on grooming.

Simpson’s work ‘Photo booth’ (2008) gathers portraits of Black men (and one woman) from the 1940s, which the artist bought in bulk. Framed and hung in a gallery, the photo booth images are no longer personal keepsakes. Instead, they transcend singular identities as distance becomes an anonymising force. At the same time, Simpson invites us to think about the specific context in which these portraits were made and to consider their possible purposes at a time when segregation laws divided communities, and African-Americans feared lynchings and similar attacks.

For Simpson, utilising popular and historical images of the Black body becomes a way to reflect on a shared history, culture and existence in the world.

Simultaneously, they work to deconstruct and challenge how ‘whiteness’ wrongly becomes the default lens through which these histories are usually told. In borrowing from archival materials, Simpson suggests how the supposed universality of white history (and white art history) is a construct.

“She would place herself in the centre, ‘shooting my body as a mannequin’”

MARI KATAYAMA Born: 1987, Saitama, Japan Lives and works: Gunma, Japan Mari Katayama began working with textiles – soft sculptures featuring crystals, printed images, lace, shells and hair – as a teenager.

Seeking out readily available materials such as second-hand clothing and components purchased from DIY stores, she wanted to push back against the idea that art is only for the privileged few. She has described using needle and thread as an act of “connecting family, neighbours, life and society”, saying, “I learned that I have within myself the same as you do. I am you.”

At first, Katayama began photographing as a means of sharing her hand-stitched works on social networking sites such as MySpace and Mixi. A student of programming, she saw the internet as an “open stage for me as a teenager with no friends and nowhere to go”.

She would arrange her textiles and collages around her bedroom and place herself in the centre, “shooting my body as a mannequin”.

For Katayama – who was born with the developmental condition congenital tibial hemimelia – making objects and selfportraits in this way, or “tracing my outline” as she puts it, was a means of “pursuing the beauty that everyone contains”.

The photograph ‘I’m wearing little high heels’ (2011) connects to High Heel Project, Katayama’s mission to design and wear a pair of bespoke high heels on stage.

One evening, in the jazz bar where she sang, a drunk customer told Katayama, “a woman that doesn’t wear high heels isn’t a woman” and threw his drink in her face. She says that abuse made her feel deeply frustrated, not so much with the man as with herself, as though as a prostheses wearer who has decided not to wear high heels, she had somehow “given up”.

Katayama collaborated with a prosthetic limb factory in Tokyo to create her heels.

From an online journal, High Heel Project has now grown to become a form of performance art, as today Katayama gives lectures and sings on stage wearing her high heels.

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MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE 1904-1971 Born: New York City, USA Lived: Ithaca, New York and Cleveland, Ohio, USA Worked: USA, Europe, Russia, North Africa, India, Pakistan and Korea

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Margaret Bourke-White was a photographer of firsts: the first Western photographer permitted to enter the Soviet Union, the first US accredited woman war photographer during the Second World War, the first woman photographer at Life magazine – for which she shot the first cover.

Working for Life and, before that, Fortune, her work took her to some 45 countries. From photographs of German industry to the effects of drought in the American Midwest – which she chronicled in a publication with her husband, the novelist Erskine Caldwell, called You Have Seen Their Faces (1937) – Bourke-White captured some of the largest political and social shifts of the 20th century. “To discover and disclose is essential, and that’s what stirs me when I look through the camera,” she said.

Like Lee Miller, Bourke-White travelled with the US army in an official capacity.

Capturing war zones and conflict areas, she survived heavy artillery shelling in Italy and a torpedo attack off the coast of North Africa. In 1945, she recorded the liberation of Buchenwald

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concentration camp and documented the Nazi atrocities committed there.

The direct and haunting images were circulated widely, revealing the reality of the Holocaust that few had previously allowed themselves to believe true. Two years later, she produced what would become another iconic body of work when she photographed the disruption caused by the partition of India, including a famous portrait of Mahatma Gandhi.

Bourke-White was working when magazine readership was booming.

It is estimated that by the 1950s, over 20 million people saw each weekly issue of Life. Her photographs brought images of events abroad and at home to the masses.

The photograph reproduced here was shot for the magazine’s story ‘South Africa and its problem’, an assignment that she said “required all my powers in diplomacy. What are you going to do when you disapprove thoroughly of the state of affairs you are recording? What are the ethics of a photographer in a situation like this?”

In the end, this image – like that of Gandhi – did not make the editor’s cut.

The article focused on the racial oppression experienced by the Black population under apartheid, but omitted Bourke-White’s photographs of Black activism and organising.

“What are you going to do when you disapprove thoroughly of the state of affairs you are recording?”

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Carpenter Phillip Mbhele wearing a ‘We don’t want passes’ tag while speaking against the Afrikaner’s pass system that required all native South Africans to carry one or more passes, Johannesburg, 1950, by Margaret Bourke-White

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SIM CHI YIN Born: 1978, Singapore Lives: Berlin Works: London, UK and Beijing, China

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“The story of sand is, to me, that of the global income gap writ large,” writes Sim Chi Yin. “Wealthy states buy up land from their poorer neighbours and move it to where they want it.”

Shifting sands (2017-ongoing) is her visual investigation into this story of enormous demand for a finite resource and the problems caused by its global shortage. Since 2017, the project has taken her to Malaysia, China, Vietnam and Singapore.

A small but densely populated citystate, Singapore is the world’s largest importer of sand per capita. Over the past 60 years, it has reclaimed almost a quarter of its territory from the sea. Sim’s images of the island show the sand being transported and stored behind high-security fences.

Elsewhere, she presents the urban expansion projects that are creating the demand for this resource.

While some photographs are direct and illustrative, Sim also favours abstracted images, including aerial views that transform the scene into seductive fields of colour. She is unapologetic about their beauty.

Here, as elsewhere in her practice, she is aware of how to seduce or intrigue her viewer into paying attention to the global issue at stake.

In her 2017 series Fallout, an exhibition commission for the Nobel Peace Prize, she paired nuclear-related landscapes on the North Korea–China border and in the United States, inviting viewers to discern their location and perhaps “suspend moral judgement”.

The images in Shifting sands make clear that this global business (which is so lucrative it has created ‘sand mafias’) goes hand-in-hand with the devastating consequences of environmental degradation.

On the Mekong River in Vietnam, Sim pictures a woman in what was once a room in her home before it collapsed into the river. This devastation is not uncommon.

The country takes its river sand to support the construction of its fastgrowing cities and, as it ships its precious commodity further afield, its economy.

In doing so, citizens lose their ancestral homes, their land and their livelihoods. According to a 2018 National Geographic article on which Sim collaborated, an estimated 500,000 people in the Mekong Delta alone have been moved out of landslide zones.

“She is aware of how to seduce or intrigue her viewer into paying attention to the global issue at stake”

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‘Malaysia’, 2017, from the series Shifting sands by Sim Chi Yin

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“Swirling shapes, streaking and fingerprints are all visible in Cameron’s prints” JULIA MARGARET CAMERON 1815–1879 Born: Kolkata, India Lived and worked: Freshwater, Isle of Wight, UK and Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon)

‘Pomona’, 1872, by Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron’s close-up portraits, use of soft focus and inclusion of ‘blemishes’ were a radical departure from what was deemed acceptable in photography during the Victorian period. This approach attracted praise from artists – and would see her become one of the most important photographers of her time – but it also drew fierce criticism from some of her contemporaries. “We must give this lady credit for daring originality,” read one review of Cameron’s work in the Photographic Journal (1865), “but at the expense of all other photographic qualities.”

Cameron was given her first camera in 1863 as a birthday present. In her homemade darkroom and studio (formerly a coalhouse and chicken coop) she set to work making prints, the sale of which granted her some financial stability. While her oeuvre included ‘celebrity’ portraits of the pre-eminent Victorian thinkers and artists from her social circle, she also asked family, friends and house staff to pose for her in recreations of biblical or allegorical scenes. Through Cameron’s carefully staged choreography, her models such as Mary Ann Hillier, May Prinsep and

Alice Liddell became the Madonna, an androgynous St John, or the Roman goddess Pomona respectively. Liddell, pictured here, was a favoured model of Cameron’s and also the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

The photographic processes Cameron used were all prone to revealing signs of the artist’s hand. Swirling shapes, streaking and fingerprints are all visible in her prints, having been captured as she developed her glass-plate negatives.

The reasons behind Cameron’s refusal to correct these imprecisions are ambiguous, but she was certainly transgressive in her rejection of the precision of mechanical reproduction in favour of something less well-defined.

As with the Pictorialists, who held her in high regard, Cameron saw photography as an art form, aspiring to “secure for it the character and uses of high art by combining the real and ideal, and sacrificing nothing of truth by all possible devotion to poetry and beauty”. Perhaps, in these human touches, we see this truth made manifest.

Confident in her abilities, winning accolades internationally and with high demand for her prints, Cameron had every right to be nonplussed by the Photographic Journal’s comments.

Indeed, she notes wryly in her biography that these views would “have dispirited me very much, had I not valued that criticism at its worth”.

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POULOMI BASU, RECIPIENT OF THE RPS HOOD MEDAL 2020 Born: 1983, Kolkata, India Lives: London, UK Works: London, UK and Kolkata, India Poulomi Basu, recipient of the RPS Hood Medal 2021, is drawn to “ordinary women who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances”. In her first series To conquer her land (2009-2013) she documented the lives of women soldiers stationed across the Indo-Pakistan border. In Centralia (2010-20) she explored an ongoing conflict for land rights in central India, focusing on the stories of women guerrilla fighters and highlighting human rights violations including extra-judicial killings.

It is Blood speaks: a ritual of exile (2013-19), however, which is the most explicitly activist of all her series. Here, Basu examined the centuries-old Hindu practice of chhaupadi: the exile to makeshift huts of women and girls who are menstruating or experiencing postpartum bleeding and therefore believed to be ‘impure’. In Nepal, Basu – who is herself Hindu – photographed and filmed those in exile and maintained dialogues with them over years, collecting their written accounts. The result was a nuanced account of the threats chhaupadi poses to the female body, not only through lack of medical support, but also through rape and murder (instances of which often go unrecorded), and the dangers of being out in the elements. The project resulted in Basu collaborating with several charities, including WaterAid for their ‘To Be A Girl’ campaign. In 2018, the Nepalese government passed a new law enforcing existing legislation around chhaupadi with a jail sentence and fine.

Basu emphasises that she is not a journalist but an artist, meaning she uses whatever means necessary to capture – and sustain – her viewer’s attention: photographs, spontaneous or staged, archival documents such as news reports, firstperson testimony and transcriptions of interviews, virtual reality installations and soundscapes.

Likewise, the diverse platforms through which she shares her work are all part of the same strategy for making issues visible to different audiences.

Working in this way creates conversations, helps shift mindsets, and can ultimately forge access to those who have the power to legislate change.

‘Untitled’ [Ranga Joshi, 42, and Minu, 14], 2016, from Blood speaks: a ritual of exile, 2013-2019, by Poloumi Basu

This is an edited extract from the book Photography – A Feminist History by Emma Lewis, published by Ilex Press, £40.

Lewis is assistant curator, international art, at Tate Modern, London

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LAND AND OCEAN PORTFOLIOS

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OF THE BEST SOCIETY EVENTS

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DEVELOP YOUR CREATIVE EYE Mon 24 January – Mon 28 February, 6.30-8pm, £18 From identifying how to control camera settings to learning how to compose dynamic photos, this series of sessions offers ten easy ways to make your photos more interesting.

Online via Zoom

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WORKING IN ANOTHER LIGHT WITH PAUL GALLAGHER Fri 4 February, 4pm, £3 In this hour-long talk Paul Gallagher – one of the world’s most accomplished landscape photographers – demonstrates just how beautiful infrared photography can be.

Online via Zoom

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Clockwise from above: Eve Kugler by Jane Hilton HonFRPS; Siggi Ciffer by Tom Hunter; Freddie Knoller by Frederic Aranda FRPS

LEST WE FORGET

Evocative survivor portraits on show at RPS Gallery

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It features more than 50 contemporary images of Holocaust survivors and their families, with each portrait made by an RPS member or Honorary Fellow.

Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors is opening at RPS Gallery on 27 January 2022, Holocaust Memorial Day. The photographers include Honorary Fellows Jillian Edelstein, Anna Fox and Joy Gregory, and the RPS Patron Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge.

Among the survivors featured are Arza and Ben Helfgott, photographed by Karen Knorr HonFRPS; Eve Kugler, whose portrait was made by Jane Hilton HonFRPS; and Freddie Knoller, whose 100th birthday celebrations were captured

GO TO rps.org/whatson for the latest updates

by Frederic Aranda FRPS. On social media, Tom Hunter, who photographed Siggi Ciffer, commented: “So honoured to be a part of this important exhibition, it was a real privilege to meet these incredible survivors of the Holocaust. Hearing their stories first hand will stay with me forever.”

The exhibition was created by the RPS in partnership with the Imperial War Museum, Jewish News, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and Dangoor Education.

Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors is at RPS Gallery, Bristol, 27 January-27 March 2022. rps.org/generations-2022

JACK LOWE – THE LIFEBOAT STATION PROJECT Thu 10 February, 6pm This Engagement Talk focuses on Jack Lowe’s Lifeboat Station Project.

Created over the past eight years, Lowe has utilised photography, audio recordings and film to record all 238 RNLI lifeboat stations on the UK and Irish coast.

Free online via Zoom

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TELLING STORIES WITH YOUR CAMERA – EDITING AND SEQUENCING Sat 12 February, 10am-3pm, £56-£75 Led by RPS Documentary chair Mark Phillips FRPS and Jon Cunningham, founder of award-winning education company Creative Escapes, this course offers advice on how to properly edit, sequence and showcase your work.

Online via Zoom

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DAVID STEWART – DOCUMENTARY PORTRAITURE Tue 1 March, 8pm Stewart is the 2016 recipient of the RPS Award for Editorial, Advertising and Fashion Photography.

Presented by the Scotland Region, this masterclass will provide an overview of the best techniques and approaches to adopt to capture compelling documentary portraiture.

Online via Zoom. Tickets on sale from Wed 19 January

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Enjoy the results of the bimonthly online members’ competition, themed around ‘Street activity’

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WINNER ART

Now that’s rain

by Mark Penwarden

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This photograph was entirely serendipitous. While visiting New Orleans on a tour of some American cities, this torrential downpour came and went within five minutes.

It was hot and humid, but no one seemed prepared for the heavens to open. I was sheltering in a door front when this hardy lady made her ‘run for cover’.

Unfortunately, I only had an old Bronica camera with me, so was limited in technical flexibility. Luckily the shutter speed was dialled in to allow for a sense of movement and enabled me to capture the heavy rain on the road and pavements.

It was really a ‘see and shoot’ moment. I suppose it supports the adage that the best camera is the one you have with you. There was only time to capture a few shots and, although a couple of people ran for it, the yellow shirt this lady was wearing stood out and gave an added sense of colour to an otherwise overcast scene.

Then the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started – right place, right time.

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NEXT COMPETITION

Submit your photography on the theme ‘Winter’ by 14 January 2022 at exposure.rps.org for the chance to be published in the RPS Journal, and showcased on our social media platforms and website

COMMENDED

Tête-à-tête

by David Boam

THE SELECTOR

Stephen Smith FRPS on ‘Now that’s rain’ A social documentary and street photographer, Stephen Smith FRPS is best known for his work in Cuba. He has achieved Fellowships in Visual Arts and Travel and specialises in producing monochrome prints from film and digital capture.

“As I look at this image I immediately think of Saul Leiter, the American photographer who was an early exponent of using Kodachrome 35mm film on the streets of New York.

“By day, Leiter was a fashion photographer for more than 20 years, working for Harper’s Bazaar, British Vogue, Elle and many more.

He would also take his Leica on to the streets of New York,

photographing the latest fashion styles being worn.

His use of colour drew the attention of Henry Wolf, an art director at Esquire, and the rest is history.

“The limited colour palette here – except for the striking splash of bright yellow – immediately draws the viewer’s eye to the woman running across the road, seemingly in contravention of the ‘Walk’ sign.

“I get the impression the photographer was struggling for light, resulting in a slow shutter speed and a wide aperture which has helped the image. The torrential rain clears the streets of all except those in a hurry to get somewhere. The use of a slow shutter speed cannot freeze the movement of the woman or the rain and this only adds energy to this picture.

“The depth of field softens and simplifies the background, and the composition is completed by the small figure on the left-hand side, and this is important as it anchors down that side of the picture.

“This is a street photographer’s image of the type we all strive for.

Rarely do they come along, but when they do it’s wonderful.”

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Ian Walton Platt FRPS (1932-2020)

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Ian Walton Platt, who has died aged 87, joined the RPS in 1964, gaining his Associate in 1968 and Fellowship in 1971.

He was invited to join the RPS assessment panel for the newly introduced Distinction of Licentiate, where he served for seven years. He then joined the Associate and Fellowship panels for Pictorial, completing a 10-year term. He was a member of the RPS Travel panel from 1999 to 2004.

Ian was involved in organised amateur photography from 1960.

He was active as a club lecturer and judge, and belonged to United Photographic Postfolios (UPP) from 1962 until his death.

He had been active with several camera clubs and federations and was made a PAGB Honorary Life Vice President.

In 1999, Ian was awarded the HonEFIAP in recognition of his exceptional services to international photography. In 2003, he was presented with the PAGB’s J S Lancaster Medal, for exceptional service to the PAGB. Ian is survived by his second wife, Patricia, his daughter Jackie, two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Patricia Platt

Keith was particularly interested in photographing wildlife and flowers, whether wild or cultivated. But he had a quirky side, suddenly taking up other photographic interests, which he would share with his fellow email circle members. A dentist by profession, practising in Kingsbridge, Keith spent most of his life in Devon and Cornwall where he and his wife Tricia raised three children. His photography reflected his love of the Devon countryside and of its wildlife.

Gill Dishart ARPS

Dr Charles Keith Millman MBE ARPS (1932-2021)

Arthur Bower ARPS (1932-2021)

Charles Keith Millman, who has died aged 89 years, was a member of the RPS for 45 years, an active member of the Visual Art Group and before that the Colour Group for well over 20 years. He achieved his Associate in 1988.

He was a regular and popular attendee with his wife at the twice-yearly weekends organised by the Visual Art Group. He was also a member of the Visual Art Group’s first email circle.

Arthur joined Heswall Photographic Society in 1964 just after its formation the year before. He was a regular attendee at meetings and was twice president of the society, the first time in 1968-1969, and then for a further two seasons in 2004-2005 and 2005-2006.

Arthur achieved an RPS Associate Distinction and had a passion for monochrome film photography and darkroom work,

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‘Blue mood’ by Ian Walton Platt FRPS

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though in later years he became skilful in digital photography too.

He produced outstanding prints, mainly of architectural images or of mountain peaks, with a distinctive style that fellow members came to recognise and applaud.

Arthur was a qualified accountant and held senior posts in the Liverpool City Treasurer’s Department over many years.

Martin Yves LRPS

Anthony Wharton FRPS (1932-2021) Tony Wharton was a longstanding member of the RPS. He gained his Associate in Pictorial photography in 1971, a Nature Fellowship in 1978, and was awarded the Fenton Medal in 2007 for services to the Society.

He was active on the Natural History Distinction panels from 1988.

Born in 1932 in the West Midlands, Tony excelled at art and languages at school, then studied Russian and French during his National Service and at Birmingham University.

Tony taught English, French and

Russian at grammar/secondary schools in the Birmingham area until his retirement.

He was bitten by the photographic bug in the 1960s, being fascinated by natural history. A member of Smethwick Photographic Society, he served as president and was an active member of their Natural History group. After retiring from teaching in 1982 he became a self-employed natural history photographer supplying picture libraries and leading workshops and tours.

In later years Tony and his wife, Doreen, who passed away in 2020, moved into a care home and enjoyed being looked after in their twilight years.

Andy, Simon and Mike Wharton

Ron Smith (1920-2021) The much-revered photography teacher Ron Smith died on 14 September 2021, aged 101.

He taught at the new Holland Park School in Kensington, London, between 1958 and 1983 with an enthusiastic and engaging style. Holland Park was the first purpose-built UK comprehensive school to have dedicated photographic departments with its own studios and dark rooms.

Amusingly, it later became known as the socialist Eton.

As one of his pupils in the 1960s, Ron was an inspiration to me with his support and mentoring. His total service to education lasted more than 70 years and in 1977 he was awarded the Hood Medal by the RPS for his services to photographic education. In the following years it was won by Jacques Cousteau, Lord Snowdon and Sir David Attenborough. Ron was awarded it again 30 years later, in 2006.

He was also a long-term stalwart member of the Crewe

SIMON HILL HonFRPS President, The Royal Photographic Society

VOICEBOX

There’s lots going on within the RPS family Photographic Society, giving many fascinating and informative talks. He was made a life member of the society.

During his career, Ron was such a wonderful role model for photographers everywhere with his enthusiasm for photography and giving back.

Peter Dazeley BEM FRPS

Max Melvin ARPS (1925-2021) With the passing of Max Melvin in October 2021 aged 96, the RPS and its Australian Chapter have lost a highly-valued member who made many notable contributions since joining the Society in 1975.

With wide-ranging interests in life and photography, Max read extensively and brought to his image-making a background in science plus a deep interest in history and art.

With his keen interest in photographic history he led the Chapter’s Photo-History Group and initiated its Woodbury Project, a detailed study into the life and work of the 19th-century photographer and inventor Walter Woodbury. Working with the late Alan Elliott ARPS, Max then ensured the project came together successfully in the 2008 RPS publication Walter Woodbury: A Victorian Study.

A founding member of the Australian Chapter in 1986, Max served on its committee right up until his passing. He gained his Associate in 1988, and especially enjoyed photographing the Australian bush, aiming to capture its essence.

Max recognised the potential of digital imaging techniques to aid that, and belonged to the Landscape and Digital Imaging groups, contributing to their exhibitions and publications.

Elaine Herbert ARPS

The Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year exhibition at RPS Gallery, by Simon Hill HonFRPS

It is no overstatement when I say the past few months have been the most enjoyable of my time as a Trustee.

In early October, our new Trustees met for the first time and I have no doubt they will prove to be a great asset to the Society. In mid-October, the Yorkshire Region invited me to attend a presentation by Tim Flach HonFRPS to coincide with the publication of his book, Birds, and it was my great pleasure to give the vote of thanks on behalf of the Region.

On the subject of books, a few days after Tim’s presentation our hugely successful Books on Photography (BOP) festival took place at Paintworks in Bristol. Then in late October we announced the RPS Awards 2021, which demonstrates the enormous cultural diversity and extensive international reach of the Society in the realms of photographic art and imaging science.

In early November, I met our Patron for the first time, when HRH The Duchess of Cambridge visited our

Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors exhibition at IWM London.

At the end of November, the Board of Trustees met for the second time.

They began to get to grips with the RPS Strategy and perhaps realised just how much work will be involved. As some light relief from its duties, the Board had an opportunity to see the Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year exhibition at RPS Gallery.

As we begin to host more in-person and hybrid events, I am looking forward to the lecture by Pankaj Chandak, the recipient of our 2020 Combined Royal Colleges Medal. And to round out the year, in early December the RPS Journal earned another accolade, winning Best Membership Magazine at the PPA Scotland Awards.

The Board and the executive team will strive to maintain this momentum in 2022 – there are exciting times ahead for all of us as members of the RPS. rps.org/about/president-news JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2022

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Reports of Meetings of the Board of Trustees 8 October 2021

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Present: Simon Hill (Chair), Nicola Bolton, Gavin Bowyer, Sarah Dow, Andy Golding, Mervyn Mitchell, Peter Walmsley Attending: Evan Dawson (CEO), Nikki McCoy, Michael Pritchard

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The first meeting of the newly elected Board of Trustees was scheduled for the day following a full-day induction for new Trustees held on 7 October.

The induction event, held at RPS House, was the first of its kind. It was designed to introduce new Trustees to each other and the staff team, to the structure of the RPS, to the processes and policies of our Society and the Board, and to give an insight into the challenges facing the RPS over the coming months and years. Having participated in the induction event, Trustees were better informed and more able to contribute effectively and at pace to the business of the Board.

At its first meeting, on 8 October, our President (as Chair of Trustees) welcomed the Elected Trustees. The new Board considered and agreed the Standing Agenda and the form of document control that was introduced in January 2021. To encourage a more beneficial team ethos and to mitigate any potential for Trustees to ‘overstep’ the line between governance and operational roles, the new Board agreed to invite all members of the RPS senior leadership team to attend, and contribute to this and future Board meetings. The Board also agreed to appoint a Minute Secretary for all meetings and this role has been taken by our Volunteer Manager Kate Constance.

The Board reviewed the minutes of previous meetings, 19 August and

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29 August, and of the AGM, 23 September, picking up any actions and addressing any issues that had been raised by former Trustees at earlier Board meetings, as well as addressing any comments and suggestions that had been received from members at the AGM. Trustees received from Evan Dawson a high-level report on the implementation of the Strategic Plan and identified those Strategic Programmes (from the 21 included in the Plan) for which each Trustee could act as a ‘Champion’. The role of a ‘Trustee Champion’ is to maintain oversight of the implementation and, with the Programme Managers drawn from the staff team, to ensure that such implementation is consistent with the wider development of our Society in line with the longer-term ambitions of the Strategic Plan. A review of strategy is a substantive item on the Standing Agenda.

The meeting included a review of progress of the CRM Project.

Sarah Dow is now joined by Peter Walmsley as Trustee representatives on the CRM Project Board. Trustees received and discussed a report on the draft Distinctions Regulations.

Significantly, to ensure independence and avoid any conflicts of interest, it was agreed that Trustees should no longer be permitted to take any role on Distinctions panels.

Considerable discussion was had on the subjects of membership and finance. Trustees noted that the membership had declined by 6% during 2020 but that, due to the pandemic, this is a similar pattern to that experienced by many other organisations. Income generation and a rigorous membership recruitment and retention strategy will be the main objectives of the

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new Director of Development.

The appointment of an Honorary Treasurer and of Appointed Trustees – which will bring the Board to full strength – was discussed by Trustees and a recruitment process is to be proposed by our Nominations Committee.

A wide-ranging restructuring of RPS financial management, particularly for Groups and Regions, was considered and this will be discussed and developed with input from our Members and Representatives committees. The Board received a paper from the Environmental and Social Responsibility Committee concerning travel policies and this is receiving further consideration.

On matters of governance, Trustees considered the draft Member Code of Conduct and Trustee Code of Conduct. These will be considered further at a future governance-focused Board meeting scheduled for December and, when approved, will be included in the Volunteer Regulations which are currently in draft form.

Trustees also reviewed the draft Terms of Reference for every committee and approved them in principle. Some minor revisions were agreed and the final Terms of Reference will be presented for ratification to the Board meeting in November. Trustee representation on committees was discussed and the decisions will be reflected in the final Terms of Reference, all of which will be available to download from the RPS website.

The identification and management of risk is an important responsibility of the Board. Trustees Nicola Bolton and Peter Walmsley agreed to undertake an assurance review of our Risk Register and

the results of this review will be considered at the Board meeting in December.

The Board agreed that its November meeting would focus on the Strategic Plan, particularly a review of implementation and future actions. The December meeting will focus on finance, risk and governance, with a more detailed focus on finance scheduled for January or February, by which time we hope to have recruited an Honorary Treasurer.

Simon Hill HonFRPS, President and Chair of Trustees

22 November 2021 Present: Simon Hill (Chair), Nicola Bolton, Gavin Bowyer, Sarah Dow, Andy Golding, Mervyn Mitchell, Peter Walmsley Attending: Evan Dawson (CEO), Tracy Marshall-Grant, Nikki McCoy, Michael Pritchard Trustees welcomed Tracy Marshall-Grant, our newlyappointed Director of Development.

The meeting was structured to consider governance matters during the morning session and the Strategic Plan in the extended afternoon session. Evan Dawson (CEO) presented his report which included an update on operational matters, financial performance, fundraising and exhibitions. The operational report described the extent to which the staff team had been affected by cases of Covid-19.

Trustees were informed that the Books on Photography (BOP) festival, delivered in association with the Martin Parr Foundation, was a tremendous success and particular thanks was given to

A private view held for survivors and their families of the exhibition Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors at IWM London, by Simon Hill HonFRPS Michael Pritchard for his work on the festival.

The financial performance of the RPS was considered at a fairly high level in anticipation of a more detailed review in December and, it is hoped with a new Honorary Treasurer in post, at a finance meeting in January or February.

Evan and Michael reported on the recent donation of £50,000 (plus gift aid) which was made following the donor’s review of and support for our Strategic Plan.

This donation is to enable the Society to recruit a new member of staff to lead our Young Photographers programme.

In addition to this financial donation, we are anticipating a significant donation of a collection of cameras that covers the entire history of photography up to the dawn of digital.

Trustees received a report on our International Photography Exhibition 163. The exhibition received 8,246 images from 3,944 individual photographers – an increase of almost 200% – from 114 countries. The exhibition attracted

1,075 entrants under the age of 30 – an increase of over 500%. The exhibition also exceeded its financial target which helped make this the most successful IPE in the event’s history.

Michael Pritchard reported on our Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors exhibition which went on display at IWM London.

A private view of the exhibition was arranged for survivors at which our President spoke on behalf of the RPS. In late October our Patron, HRH The Duchess of Cambridge, also visited the exhibition and was introduced to our President, some of the survivors and to two of the contributing photographers, Jillian Edelstein HonFRPS and Tom Hunter HonFRPS. Trustees were briefed on the 2022 plan for exhibitions which includes the transfer of Generations to RPS House in 2022.

On governance matters, the Board reviewed and approved the final drafts of Terms of Reference for all committees. The process for recruitment and appointment

of an Honorary Treasurer and of Appointed Trustees was presented in a paper received from our Nominations Committee. The process was agreed and will now be actioned. The Board received a report on the recruitment process for a new Chair of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Trustees congratulated Mervyn Mitchell on his appointment which was ratified by the Board.

The Board considered and approved a revised proposal for the design of a new Official Seal which is based on the ‘Helios’ design of an earlier seal. This will now be commissioned and will be phased in to use on our Distinctions certificates. Trustees agreed to the format of a standard template for papers submitted to the Board which will increase the efficiency with which the Board can consider and decide upon actions. The use of this template will be promoted through our Representatives Committee and other forums.

The Board received a paper from the Environmental and Social Responsibility Committee

concerning our association with a global technology and retail company. This will be considered further, in the context of governance and financial matters, at the Board meeting in December.

During the afternoon session, the senior leadership team gave a presentation on the operations surrounding the implementation of each of the 21 programmes of the Strategic Plan. Trustees engaged in substantial discussion on the form and content of this presentation.

They agreed to work with the senior leadership team to devise a consultation and reporting process that would enable more effective input by Trustees and other stakeholders.

Trustees also provided some guidance on how reporting might facilitate more informative reporting to the Board and to members.

This will be developed apace, and a further review of operations and implementation will be included in the Board meeting cycle.

Simon Hill HonFRPS, President and Chair of Trustees

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Fellowship Landscape

Alister Benn FRPS

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Discover how these successful Fellowship and Associate portfolios reveal humanity’s connection to land and ocean

I got into photography in 2001 and became interested in landscape via my travels in Canada and the Himalayas, and living in China. My relationship with the genre really came into focus in 2004, and by 2009 I moved away from my previous

passion for bird photography to focus on landscape photography completely.

For me, the landscape is somewhere to escape to and relieve stress. Landscapes show us we’re part of something bigger and photographing them helps me understand who I am.

Working for a Distinction takes you on a personal journey which will improve your technical skills, develop your creativity and broaden your understanding of photography

Opposite page clockwise from top left ‘Out of Darkness I, XII, VII and XVI’ Above ‘Out of Darkness IV’

LICENTIATE (LRPS)

Applicants must show photographic competence in approach and techniques

ASSOCIATE (ARPS)

Requires a body of work of a high standard, and a written statement of intent

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WHAT ARE RPS DISTINCTIONS?

FELLOWSHIP (FRPS)

Requires a body of work of distinctive ability and excellence, plus a written statement of intent

“Landscapes show us we’re part of something bigger and photographing them helps me understand who I am”

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When I’m shooting it’s less about capturing subjects in the landscape and more about understanding my own inner emotional landscape.

There’s an extremely close relationship between my emotional state and the landscape. Some places make you feel calm, others leave you thoughtful or energised. My whole philosophy with my photography is about finding that connection between the stimulation in the landscape

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and our own inner landscape and emotional preferences.

Landscape photography is my therapy these days. I feel different when I get out into the landscape – and not necessarily with a camera in hand. Being in the landscape, we look and we engage.

For the past four years I’ve been producing a book, Out of Darkness, an extension of the themes my Fellowship panel explores. Prior to beginning the project I captured photographs

in a formulaic manner. I knew how to take photographs that would be deemed pretty or popular, but I didn’t feel like the landscape images I enjoyed capturing for myself fit this structure. My version of landscape photography is less about rules and more about personal and emotional engagement.

I went to the Gobi Desert for the first time in January 2017 – I’ve been seven times since.

It’s a desolate and hostile

ART

“There’s a close relationship between my emotional state and the landscape. Some places make you feel calm, others leave you energised”

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Left ‘Out of Darkness XIII’ Opposite page clockwise from top left ‘Out of Darkness IX, XV, VI and X’

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Statement of intent In January 2017 I made the first of seven expeditions into the Gobi Desert of northern China.

Having travelled hundreds of miles off-road I found myself in a remote and hostile environment where at night the temperatures fell to -26°C. The emptiness of the landscape, while at first daunting,

seduced me, asking questions and demanding engagement on an intimate level. Leaving my tent in the dim light before dawn, I would climb to 1,600ft above an endless vista, devoid of scale apart from the occasional scrubby bush.

For a while the cool, frosted shadows would resist, but finally

succumb to the delicate kiss of sunrise and daybreak. I became very much aware of my changing emotions and perspectives as I watched the landscape emerge from darkness into light.

The interplay of luminosity, contrast, colour, geometry and space opened my eyes to a new way of seeing and photographing.

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Below clockwise from top left ‘Out of Darkness XIV, II, XX and III’

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environment that doesn’t lend itself to that templated, rule-ofthirds, leading lines mantra that gets drummed into photography students’ heads.

For Out of Darkness, I started making photographs on a very intuitive level and came to understand that my landscape photography was a counterpart to my own inner landscape.

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I suffered with anxiety and depression for about 30 years prior to starting work on Out of Darkness in 2017. As I spent more time in the Gobi Desert I began writing about and meditating on my experiences there. I realised the work I was producing was giving me a different perspective on my own mental health. Linking in

with its title, Out of Darkness, the creative approach behind this body of landscape photography was the catalyst that literally led me out of my own personal darkness.

I’m no longer affected by depression or anxiety, and I have a different approach to the world, my creativity, and my personal development.

WHY THIS PORTFOLIO WORKS Joe Cornish FRPS, Chair of the Landscape Distinctions panel This outstanding portfolio presents images framing the sinuous, sensuous landscape of the Gobi Desert. These are the distillation of many journeys there, and of a life immersed in image-making.

The simplified forms and shapes of the desert sand transform light and shade into metaphor, into a journey from dark to light, emotionally and literally. The rhythm, flow and pattern of this portfolio appeals as visual art, yet the photographer’s editing, intent and experience remain firmly connected to the desert geography where the photographs were made.

These images are evidence of an authentic photographic vision.

“The creative approach behind this body of landscape photography was the catalyst that literally led me out of my own personal darkness”

Above ‘Out of Darkness V’

I credit my landscape photography for leading me to where I am today, mentally and emotionally.

The difficulty of dealing with your own work is that it’s almost impossible to be objective. Every image to me is important and has value. This is where the help of the Society’s Susan Brown FRPS was invaluable.

Discussing my submission with an objective outsider was vital

to me putting forward a body of work and statement of intent that captured the essence of my relationship with the work.

Getting feedback is hugely valuable. I’ll admit I was sceptical at first because I know my own mind, but that external point of view from someone who understands cohesiveness and the objectives of my work was so valuable.

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THE LAST BASTION

This Associate photographer explains why he is drawn to the raw, unharnessed power of the ocean – and why seascapes are not for the faint-hearted REPRO OP SUBS ART PRODUCTION

Associate Landscape Alphonsus McCarron ARPS

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I took up photography when I retired eight years ago. I’ve been driven by a passion to capture the aquatic images of horizons and seascapes I’ve held in my head since childhood.

When I retired, I wanted a hobby that I could enjoy improving upon day by day.

Seascape photography provides me with this challenge and sense of achievement. This was the creative driving force behind My Joy of the Atlantic – with which I achieved my Associate in October 2021.

Photography has given me such immense pleasure.

Capturing the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, its colours,

never-ending horizons and the wonder of nature is inspiring.

To me, the seas and oceans are the last bastions of the natural world because it’s so untouched.

It took quite a bit of effort to pull My Joy of the Atlantic together. I’m based in Carlow, a four-hour drive from the Atlantic Ocean’s dramatic scenery, so the project involved a lot of planning. Often I’d spend entire weekends shooting seascapes and return home from each trip with just one image I felt met the criteria for an Associate.

Seascape photography is not for the faint-hearted. The weather is unpredictable and it

gets extremely cold, which can make shooting that bit trickier.

It’s a difficult genre to capture, so you really need a passion for it.

Achieving my Associate has been a major goal since joining the Society in 2019. I now hold an Associate with the RPS and the Irish Photographic Federation (IPF) and these achievements have given me the momentum to aim for Fellowship.

The support I’ve had from the RPS and the IPF, and from my local camera club, Carlow Photographic Society, has been brilliant. They have played a major part in shaping my photographic identity and I’m humbled to have received guidance from such experienced photographers.

My Associate isn’t an individual success, it’s a collective success shared with everyone who helped me along the way.

Opposite page ‘Arches honed by the forces of nature over millennia’

Above ‘Last light of day glowing behind the sea’

Below ‘The bleakness of an approaching storm’

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Above ‘Arches honed by the forces of nature over millennia’

Below ‘First light of dawn peering over the distant hills’

Opposite ‘Times of calm on those smooth beaches’

Statement of intent I was born off the North Atlantic coast of Ireland and ever since I can remember my imagination and soul have been captivated by the constant meeting of water and land, the spellbinding bays and beaches – always changing and never reaching the end.

This panel of images is an attempt to interpret my joy of the Atlantic in which I capture the amazing horizons defining the edge of change where the sea ended, and the sky began.

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The first light of dawn peering over the far distant hills, or the last light of day glowing behind the sea.

The bleakness of an approaching storm and the stillness at times of calm.

The amazing light and colours sometimes reflecting on the smooth shores and sea, disturbed only by a piece of driftwood, seaweed, or a lone rock.

The architecture of arches honed by the forces of nature over millennia.

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Above ‘Spellbinding bays and beaches’

Below ‘The bleakness of an approaching storm’

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WHY THIS PORTFOLIO WORKS Joe Cornish FRPS, Chair of the Landscape Distinctions panel This portfolio is consistent and cohesive, but also varied in perspective, mood and framing. Its consistency is rooted in the sea and sky, which are ever-present and compelling. The colours vary with the weather and time of day, yet blue hues are always there, giving the portfolio a distinctive identity. Some images are calm and tranquil, while others are dynamic with surging waves whose speed and power is softened by a time exposure. The images successfully fulfil the statement of intent, and reflect a palpable love of nature.

Distinctions successes

Congratulations to these RPS members ACCREDITED IMAGING SCIENTIST & ARPS Abhishek Goswami, France GRADUATE IMAGING SCIENTIST & ARPS Yasseen Hardcastle, Oxfordshire ARPS VISUAL ART JUNE 2021 Alan Haden, Worcestershire

DISCOVER more about the Distinctions one-to-one portfolio review service at rps.org/advice

LRPS SEPTEMBER 2021 Sameh Ahmed, Egypt Rosalind Alcock, Hertfordshire Jane Berrisford, Crewe David Britain, East Sussex Amber Burton, Dorset Samantha Chippington, London Steven Clennell, Buckinghamshire Sophie Collins, Surrey Richard Dean, Essex Richard Gibbs, Norfolk Keith Gordon, Derbyshire Les Gordon, Oxfordshire Lesley Hall, Kent Jay Hallsworth, Gloucester Kevin Harwood, West Sussex William Wilfred James, France Dennis Jeffrey, Berkshire Helena Jones, Derbyshire Colin Lamb, Banbury David Lane, Derbyshire Greg Lovett, Bath Patricia Mackey, County Down Steve Malone, East Sussex Peter Ottley, Weston-super-Mare Nathan Russ, Bristol Martin Sharrock, Kent Stan Shaw, South Africa Niall Teskey, Oxfordshire Tom Walton, Sheffield Stephen Wilder, Surrey Chris Worsley, Surrey Sarah Zipfell, Hampshire ARPS EXEMPTION SEPTEMBER 2021 Ian Fletcher, Lancashire Paul Greenfield, Bucks Angela Lam, Hong Kong

Ned Mahon, Kildare Robert McMillan, North Yorkshire Colin Pickett, Tyne and Wear ARPS FILM SEPTEMBER 2021 Beth Staley, Oxfordshire ARPS NATURAL HISTORY SEPTEMBER 2021 Shibu Mathew, Dubai Alison Mees, Essex Stephen Rodger, West Lothian ARPS TRAVEL SEPTEMBER 2021 Albert Yim Fai Kong, Hong Kong FRPS FILM SEPTEMBER 2021 Judith Kimber, Northern Ireland Michael Timney, Bristol FRPS NATURAL HISTORY SEPTEMBER 2021 Richard Kay, Bristol Victor Wong, Hong Kong FRPS SCIENCE SEPTEMBER 2021 Jeremy Poole, Dorset LRPS OCTOBER 2021 Jürgen Blenk, Germany Mike Brown, Dorset Ted Burchnall, Canada Peter Bushby, Essex Marlies Chell, Nottingham Dilip De Sarker, India Geoffrey Denman, Clwyd Brian Doyle, Kincardineshire Dinah Haynes, Berkshire Andrew Hayward-Wills, Hampshire Nick Hepworth, Hampshire Christine Holt, Hertfordshire Peter Iles-Smith, Cheshire Lawrence James, West Yorkshire Sheila McKenzie, Sutherland John Nash, Weymouth Steve Peel, West Sussex

Laura Pilon, Leicestershire Peter Rooney, Warwickshire Boskee Selarka, United Arab Emirates David Shardlow, Derby Jim Sharrock, Gloucestershire Antony Stewart, West Midlands Randal Tajer, Surrey Bill Tilstone, Perthshire Claude Trew, Hampshire Nigel Wall, Stockton-on-Tees Cathy Warne, Dorset Andy Webber, Dorset Jiaping Xing, China Peter Zhou, China LRPS EXEMPTION OCTOBER 2021 Phil Banyard, Hampshire Bernie Kelly, County Wexford Clive Williams, Kent ARPS APPLIED & PORTRAITURE OCTOBER 2021 Sarina Au-Yeung, Hong Kong Venkata Ramana Gollamudi, India Habip Kocak, Oxfordshire Andrew Pountney, West Yorkshire Robin Price, Wigan Lynne Williams, Mid Glamorgan Shaoping Xuan, China ARPS CONTEMPORARY OCTOBER 2021 Susan Evans, Norfolk Charlotte E Johnson, New Zealand ARPS EXEMPTION OCTOBER 2021 Mike Pickwell, Grimsby Veronica Worrall, Suffolk ARPS LANDSCAPE OCTOBER 2021 Simon Cotter, Anglesey Paul Graber, Surrey Alphonsus McCarron, Ireland

Neil Mountford, Berkshire Nicky Rochussen, Surrey Martyn Scull, Gloucestershire Tina Westcott, Somerset ARPS PHOTOBOOKS OCTOBER 2021 John Roy Frankland, Tyne and Wear Francesco Marchetti, London FRPS APPLIED & PORTRAITURE OCTOBER 2021 Matt Jacobs, Edgware Simon King, Gwent Mike Kwasniak, Ipswich Tamma Srinivasa Reddy, India Colin Trow-Poole, Worcestershire David Wragg, Hampshire FRPS CONTEMPORARY OCTOBER 2021 Charles Ashton, Worcestershire Ken Holland, Devon Paul Mann, Worcestershire Carol Olerud, the Netherlands Alexandra Prescott, Newcastle upon Tyne Simon Street, Surrey FRPS LANDSCAPE OCTOBER 2021 Alister Benn, Argyll Edward Anthony Hyde, Surrey Stephen Alan Lewis, Ellesmere Port FRPS PHOTOBOOKS OCTOBER 2021 Fiona McCowan, Wotton-under-Edge

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The V&A’s Lydia Caston applauds this sumptuous theatrical portrait by successful commercial photographer Walter Bird FRPS

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greens of the opulent fabric on Arnaud’s dress and vivid red Pianist, singer and actor Yvonne Arnaud was of her lips and rosy cheeks are typical of the Vivex process. celebrated for her flamboyant style and extensive career on Bird was closely connected to the London theatre scene, the stage. Born in France, she became well known in the frequently publishing his work in the periodical Theatre 1920s and 1930s in Britain, and acted in musical World. This connection perhaps brought him to comedies and film and theatre dramas of the time.

In this photograph by Walter Bird FRPS, photograph performers such as Arnaud and to stage Arnaud is most likely wearing her costume from scenes reminiscent of the actors’ famous roles. a production of Shakespeare’s Henry V in which Bird later became known for his nude portraits The RPS Collection is at and rivalled the work of photographers John she played the role of Katharine, the young the V&A Photography Centre, London French princess known for her beauty and charm.

Everard and Horace Roye, leading them in 1939 vam.ac.uk to set up a joint company, Photo Centre Ltd. A fashionable London commercial and portrait photographer, Bird made innovative use of the newly In 1936, Bird was elected a member of the RPS available Vivex colour process and embraced its and became an Associate a year later. By 1948, he was a jewel-toned colours.

Fellow and later held a show of his work at the Society’s house.

As with his contemporary Madame Yevonde, Lydia Caston is assistant curator, photography at Bird’s pictures came in an array of vibrant tones that gave the V&A Museum his portraits an alluring and surrealist quality. The rich

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“The rich greens of the opulent fabric are typical of the Vivex process”

CLIENT THE RPS COLLECTION / V&A MUSEUM, LONDON

‘Yvonne Arnaud’, 1930s, Vivex colour process,

by Walter Bird FRPS

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THE COLLECTION

Backstory

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A pivotal moment in Scottish rugby captured by an ambitious young sports photographer now graces a commemorative stamp

This 2021 Royal Mail stamp shows Kim Littlejohn (far left) helping Scotland complete a five-year journey from novices to best team in Europe. The original image, above, is by Marc Aspland HonFRPS

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It was a decisive moment if ever there was one. Marc Aspland HonFRPS had been at Murrayfield to cover the 1988 Six Nations Championship. But it was a trip to Inverleith RFC to photograph the 1998 Women’s Home Nations Championship that gave him his most memorable image of the trip.

Scotland stormed to an 8-5 victory against England, winning them the Grand Slam title. Aspland was delighted to discover that, 23 years later, his picture would grace a Royal Mail stamp.

His motivation for visiting the Inverleith pitch that misty March morning, though, had been personal rather than professional.

“Kim Littlejohn went to Edinburgh University with my wife and she’s been a family friend ever since,” explains Aspland. “Women’s rugby was in its infancy then, but when the-then Times rugby correspondent David Hands said that the Scotland team could win

the Grand Slam despite being absolute amateurs five years previously, I knew I had to support Kim.” Littlejohn went on to captain the Scotland women’s national team and has been a trailblazer for the sport, while Aspland became chief sports photographer at the Times.

The series of stamps was released in October 2021 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the formation of the Rugby Football Union. Aspland’s image was selected by the Scottish Rugby Union after it had been displayed in their Murrayfield boardroom for years.

“It’s surreal having my work used to commemorate this milestone anniversary,” says Aspland. “My job as a sports photographer is to tell the story of those pivotal moments in time in one single image. I think this image does this. And the Royal Mail’s stylisation for the stamp makes it more powerful and evocative than ever.”

MARC ASPLAND HonFRPS / TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD. INTERVIEW BY JONATHAN McINTOSH

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