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September / October 2021 Vol 161 / No 5 rps.org
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TIM FLACH HonFRPS
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Front cover and spine VERSION
The Journal of The Royal Photographic Society September / October 2021 Vol 161 / No 5 rps.org
Tim Flach HonFRPS
The Journal of The Royal Photographic Society
“Without this extended family we humans wouldn’t be who we are”
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Opening shot KEEP IN TOUCH WITH THE RPS
Contact the editor with your views rpsjournal@thinkpublishing.co.uk
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‘HE INVESTS HEART AND MIND IN HIS PORTRAYAL OF STREET LIFE’
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Holding up a camera to life is not only a privilege – it’s also an immense responsibility. Whether you are working with stills, moving images or words, documenting and framing the lives of others is a serious business. This issue, we feature two documentary image-makers who are helping us see the world differently, each with their own ethical approach to their craft. Khalik Allah is a New York-based filmmaker and photographer with Jamaican and Iranian heritage. A nominee member for the prestigious agency Magnum Photos, he documents life on the corner of Harlem’s 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, bringing the hopes and fears of homeless people and drug users out of the shadows. Allah calls his method ‘camera ministry’ – he invests heart and mind in making his intimate portrayal of marginalised people on the streets of his home city. Immerse yourself within his world in a feature by award-winning RPS Journal writer Tom Seymour on page 488. Smita Sharma is a visual storyteller based in Delhi who received the Amnesty International Media Award for Photojournalism earlier this year. Her work includes documenting the effects of pregnancy on girls’ education in Kenya, child marriage in Nepal, and sex-trafficking in India and Bangladesh. She speaks about the responsibility of covering such challenging issues in an interview with the RPS Journal contributing editor Rachel Segal Hamilton on page 508. Tim Flach HonFRPS is another image-maker who takes great care over how he represents his subjects – only this time they are avian. In an interview with David Clark on page 476 he explains how he created his delightful series Birds, which forms his latest book. “Sometimes I just couldn’t get access to particular birds and ended up lying down on a zoo path, shooting with a really long lens and trying to get the bird in the middle of the wire fence so it didn’t show in the picture,” says Flach. “Ironically some of those pictures were better than the highly set-up shots with studio lighting. When daylight works, you can’t beat it.” We hope this issue sheds light on a whole new world – seen through the eyes of some formidable image-makers.
KATHLEEN MORGAN Editor ‘Hospital (Frenchie), 2013’ from the series 125th and Lexington by Khalik Allah / Magnum Photos
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Take a nocturnal journey around the globe, from Iceland to Easter Island, via the latest collection of images from artist and photojournalist Art Wolfe HonFRPS
Edith Piaf. Albert Einstein. Joanna Lumley. All subjects captured by the everroving camera eye of Marilyn Stafford during her varied, often starry career
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Khalik Allah’s New York street photography has attracted acclaim and controversy for its unblinking gaze at the troubled and the marginal in society
TED Fellow Smita Sharma adopts an ethical approach to her photographic work, telling the stories of those who otherwise lack a voice – or an image
We present a mouthwatering platter of entrants from the 2021 Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year competition, including F Dilek Uyar’s ‘Drying okra’
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EXHIBITION
KHALIK ALLAH / MAGNUM; ART WOLFE HonFRPS; SMITA SHARMA; MARILYN STAFFORD; F DILEK UAR / PINK LADY® FOOD PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
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The theme of ‘Photography for everyone’ inspired a number of intriguing competition entries, including the haunting ‘Sailing’ by Spyros Gennatas LRPS
Working at the cutting edge of image morphing, Nancy Burson’s combined image of Trump and Putin represents political duplicity in a chilling new way
EXPOSURE
BACKSTORY
Cover story NATURE
‘Major Mitchell’s Cockatoo’ is just one star of Birds, the latest flight of fancy by renowned animal photographer Tim Flach HonFRPS. Prepare to get up close to the avian world
SPYROS GENNATAS; PAUL PARKINSON ARPS; NANCY BURSON; TIM FLACH HonFRPS
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DISTINCTIONS
A sparkling landscape portfolio from Paul Parkinson ARPS, and an inspiring conversation with Viveca Koh FRPS about her journey to becoming an assessor SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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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 Editor Rachel Segal Hamilton
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Treasurer John Miskelly FCA FRPS
Designers John Pender, Alistair McGown, Amanda Richardson
Trustees Dr Avijit Datta ASIS FRPS, Sarah J Dow ARPS, Andrew Golding ASICI FRPS, Janet Haines ARPS, Mervyn Mitchell ARPS, Sir Brian Pomeroy CBE ARPS
Managing Editor Andrew Littlefield
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Chief Executive Officer Evan Dawson
Editorial Assistant Jennifer Constable
Director of Programmes Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS
Advertising Sales Elizabeth Courtney elizabeth.courtney@thinkpublishing.co.uk 0203 771 7208
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Published on behalf of The Royal Photographic Society by Think, 20 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JW thinkpublishing.co.uk
Client Engagement Director Rachel Walder Circulation 10,604 (Jan-Dec 2020) ABC ISSN: 1468-8670
The Journal of The Royal Photographic Society
September / October 2021
Vol 161 / No 5
© 2021 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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David Clark (page 476)
Rachel Segal Hamilton (page 508)
Lucy Davies (page 520)
A freelance journalist and editor specialising in photography, Clark has interviewed many world-leading photographers. He has written for the RPS Journal since 2015.
A photography and visual arts writer, Segal Hamilton is contributing editor to the RPS Journal. She has also worked for titles including the British Journal of Photography.
A writer and editor for the Telegraph and a contributor to arts and lifestyle magazines, Davies specialises in articles about photography, art and fashion.
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Untitled #11, 2016 BY FABRICE MONTEIRO
Agbogbloshie in Accra, Ghana, has one of the largest electronic waste dumps in Africa. Here, some of Accra’s poorest workers have spent years dismantling, recovering, weighing and reselling parts and metals extracted from scrap devices and electronic waste. The main focus is on burning electronic cables to extract copper – a task largely undertaken by child labourers. This image by Senegal-based visual artist Fabrice Monteiro, from the series The Prophecy (2013-2020), has been shortlisted for the Prix Pictet. Each image in the series highlights an environmental issue in Senegal, personified by a figure inspired by West African masquerades and anamism. Monteiro collaborated with Senegalese designer Doulsy, who created costumes from rubbish and natural materials. The winner of the Prix Pictet is announced on 15 December 2021 at the opening of an exhibition of works by the 12 shortlisted photographers at the V&A Museum, London SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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In focus NEWS, VIEWS AND EXHIBITIONS
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WHAT A KIT BAG NEEDS FOR TAKING TINTYPES
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HOW TO GO MACRO WITH GERAINT RADFORD
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CURATOR FARIBA FARSHAD ANSWERS FIVE QUESTIONS
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‘On a train returning from a day of shooting for The Reader, Germany, 2007’ by Roger A Deakins
A JOURNEY IN PICTURES
With films such as Skyfall and 1917 on his CV, Lumière Award recipient Roger A Deakins has nothing to prove. So why is the cinematographer publishing his first photobook? He is acclaimed for cinematography on films such as 1917, The Reader and Skyfall. Among his accolades are five BAFTAs and two Academy Awards for his work with the Coen Brothers, Sam Mendes and others, as well as the 2009 RPS Lumière Award. Even so, Sir Roger A Deakins CBE has just published his first book of still photography.
Byways, released by Damiani, features black-and-white landscapes and street photography dating back to the 1970s, when Deakins did a year-long commission for the Beaford Arts Centre in rural Devon after leaving college. “I started taking photographs as part of the course and fell in love with it,” he says.
By the time Deakins completed his studies his heart was set on a career in film, but stills remained a side passion throughout the decades that followed. Whenever he travelled for work or leisure, he’d bring his camera. “I’d go off in the evenings or weekends by myself and just take pictures. It was an excuse to explore somewhere.” SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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The pace of this process was in marked contrast to the intensity of his day job on set. “Obviously there are aspects in common between cinematography and still photography in terms of framing, light, composition and observation,” he says. “But for me, stills don’t come as easily. I have to concentrate, take my time and slow down.” Leafing through his older images to produce this book prompted recollections, too. “I can look at some of those photographs and remember the day I took them and remember myself as a younger person and what I was experiencing back then,” he says. “I also remember the images I didn’t take.” With this collection published, he’s now moving towards colour photography. “Maybe that sounds weird at 72 years old to start working in colour. But it’s true.”
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Byways by Roger A Deakins is published by Damiani, £45. damianieditore.com rogerdeakins.com
‘I liked the dog’s second jump as it looked at the camera, Teignmouth, 2000’ by Roger A Deakins
“Stills don’t come as easily. I have to concentrate, take my time and slow down”
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‘Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2014’ by Roger A Deakins
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‘Canal Festival, 2018’ by Natalie Willatt
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‘Gwen sits beside Alan in his final hours’ by Mike Butt
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‘THE CAMERA BECAME A WAY FOR ME TO GRIEVE’ Documenting his grandparents’ daily lives and struggles has proved cathartic for award-winning photographer Mike Butt Photographers have always put their family members in the frame – proximity makes them natural subjects. When life takes a difficult turn, though, the camera can have an almost therapeutic role. Mike Butt spent three years photographing his grandparents following his grandmother Gwen’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia, and his grandfather Alan’s diagnosis of terminal cancer. His poignant series Sparrows, which won the Slim Hewitt Award for Photography and was shortlisted for the Tom Stoddart Award for Photojournalism in 2020, portrays Gwen’s gradual loss of memory and her love and care for Alan, who died this year. Butt had the idea for the project in his first year as a photography student at the University of Gloucestershire under Richard Billingham, who photographed his parents’ turbulent lives in a run-down tower block in the Black Country for the series Ray’s A Laugh.
Although Butt’s photographs of his grandparents at their home in Weston-superMare have a different feel, they do follow an observational documentary tradition. “I’ve always made a conscious effort to stay true to what I was photographing, without staging the images,” he says. Emotionally the process was not easy, but it provided some catharsis. “I was pushed out of my comfort zone having to transition between being a photographer and a family member,” Butt says. “I was able to observe their everyday life and traits on a much deeper level, and the impact of Alzheimer’s on their lives became more visually prevalent over the three years. “I found that once my grandfather had passed away the camera became a way for me to grieve. It was an honour to photograph the interaction with my grandmother and grandfather in his final months.” mikebuttphoto.com
Photographers Tim Mills, Natalie Willatt, Suzanne St Clare and Tony Mallon will take part in socially engaged residences for Picturing England’s High Streets. The project is run by Photoworks and Historic England in partnership with organisations including GRAIN, Open Eye and Photofusion. HIGH IMPACT FILM
In the Wake of Progress, a 22-minute film by acclaimed Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky HonFRPS, will premiere at the Luminato Festival in Toronto on 16 October. The work charts humanity’s impact on planet Earth. edwardburtynsky.com
BOP IS BACK
The annual Books on Photography (BOP) festival is being held this year in collaboration with Bristol Photo Festival. Book lovers, photographers and collectors can seek out new titles directly from publishers and booksellers. The event is at Paintworks Event Space, Bristol, with photographer and artist talks at RPS Gallery, 22-24 October. rps.org/BOP21
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From our kitbag View camera, shutter, lenses, plate holder, reducer, plate, collodion bottle, ferrous sulphate, sulphur hyposulphite
Plan ahead PORTRAIT OF BRITAIN
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The British Journal of Photography’s annual award aims to capture the portrait of a nation. The winning 100 images will also be exhibited outdoors on JCDecaux screens throughout the country. Closes 30 September. 1854.photography/awards/ portrait-of-britain
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CARMIGNAC PHOTOJOURNALISM AWARD
For this year’s award, one winner receives a €50,000 grant to spend six months working on a project in Venezuela, with the support of the Fondation Carmignac. There will also be a touring exhibition and book. Closes 18 October.
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Gideon Mendel HonFRPS, pictured left, creates tintypes with Jonathan Max Pierredon. Here they reveal some of the equipment they use
GIDEON MENDEL AND JONATHAN MAX PIERREDON / WELLCOME PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE 2021
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Gideon, how did you come to work with Jonathan, a tintype specialist, for the series Burnt Memory: Archaeology of a Climate Emergency? I first met Jonathan in 2017 when he took my tintype portrait after I’d wandered into his studio in Arles. We went on to collaborate on a project making tintype portraits of the residents of a village in France. When I was working on my series Hellfire, documenting the aftermath of the 2018 Carr Fire in California, I asked the families I was photographing to give me possessions that had been destroyed in the fire and I brought them back to Jonathan’s studio. What made the historic process well suited to this subject? We positioned ourselves as archaeologists of the future trying to understand why humanity had destroyed itself. The blackand-white, distressed quality of the tintype image enhances the destruction of the object and there’s a randomness to the process I found interesting. You don’t quite know what you’ll get. Jonathan, tell us a little about tintype It’s a 19th-century process. I pour wet collodion onto a metal plate which I dip into silver nitrate. This sticks on the plate and becomes sensitive to the light. I insert this into my camera and shoot one to 15 shots,
Fondationcarmignac.com
PINK LADY® FOOD PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR From the series Burnt Memory: Archaeology of a Climate Emergency by Gideon Mendel HonFRPS and Jonathan Max Pierredon, shortlisted for the Wellcome Photography Prize 2021
using flash. I use ferrous sulphate to develop the picture, which appears in negative. I rinse it with water and dip it into a fixer. It takes hours to dry and will last for centuries.
This is among the biggest and best-known food photography contests. The top prize includes £5,000 cash and an exhibition at RPS Gallery in November. Enter by 6 February 2022. See page 528 for more. pinkladyfoodphotographer oftheyear.com
What advice do you have for anyone interested in trying it themselves? There’s a lot of interest in older processes like this among young photographers. But instead of just making pictures in the style of old photographs we need to discover new ways to use it. It’s a process perfectly suited to certain contemporary subjects, as this project proves. Gideon Mendel HonFRPS is in conversation with Gareth Evans on 19 October 2021. rps.org/mendel gideonmendel.com see.myportfolio.com
‘Rhubarb tart and honey’ by Lynsey Cooper, finalist in the Pink Lady® Awards 2021
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‘The world is going upside down’ by Thomas Vijayan
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‘Samantha, Alexa and Escarle, 2019’ by Danielle Villasana, 2021 Women Photograph grantee
‘Untitled’ from the series Quinn, 2014-2020, by Lottie Davies
Thomas Vijayan
Daniella Zalcman
Lottie Davies
David Campbell
WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER
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WRITER AND PROFESSOR
Originally from Kerala but now based in Canada, Vijayan is an architect by training but has won accolades for his wildlife photography. Most recently he was named overall winner of the Nature TTL Photographer of the Year 2021 for his striking shot of an orangutan. 462
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Zalcman, the founder of Women Photograph, has been awarded a CatchLight Fellowship to build on her work championing inclusivity through a database of 1,300 female and non-binary photographers. The other fellows are Koral Carballo, Roopa Gogineni and Bayeté Ross Smith.
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After a show at the Herbert, Davies’s six-year project Quinn will go on display at Oriel Colwyn Gallery from 1 to 31 October. Also published as a book, Quinn is the fictional account of a young man’s journey from the south west of England to the north of Scotland in the aftermath of World War II.
The Australian writer, researcher and professor has been appointed managing editor of the interactive platform VII Insider. Campbell’s new role involves him developing a free educational resource for the photographer, curator and journalist communities.
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FIVE HEAD TURNERS TO WATCH
Headturners, 1 ‘Storming of the US Capitol, 2021’ by Ron Haviv for the platform VII Insider
Renee Osubu PHOTOGRAPHER
For her Witnesses of: the Everyday commission for Leica and 1854, NigerianBritish photographer Osubu has taken a number of portraits representing experiences of Black fatherhood. Fathers and Figures was inspired by her own father, who died in 2018.
From the series Fathers and Figures by Renee Osubu
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‘Mungoswells Malt and Milling, East Lothian’ CLIENT
BAKER’S DOZEN
Savour the results of a nationwide journey by Henry Kenyon to photograph 12 breadmakers It does what it says on the tin. The Tiptree World Bread Awards celebrates the best in breadmaking. This time a year ago, the awards’ official photographer Henry Kenyon spent 12 days travelling the length of the UK by bus, train, taxi and bike to photograph the UK’s ‘bread heroes’. Many of the breadmakers had adapted to new ways of working during the Covid-19 pandemic, serving their communities in lockdown, donating bread to the homeless or repurposing cafes as bakeries. “Some people bake at home, others have warehouses,” says Kenyon, whose photographs pay tribute to the graft, skill and dedication of these artisans. “The bakers, millers and
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farmers I met were artists who really lived their art.” Bread Heroes, an exhibition of Kenyon’s portraits, is showing at London’s Speciality and Fine Food Fair on 6-7 September, and at the Ludlow Food Festival 2021, Shropshire, on 10-12 September. worldbreadawards.com
‘Cathy Stevenson, The Daily Apron, Lisburn’
‘Osian Jones, Crwst, Cardigan’
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Catch a selection of the best UK exhibitions
I AM NOT INVISIBLE Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol 16 September to 19 December
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Danish photographer Thilde Jensen spent four years photographing homeless people in America. Exhibited as part of Bristol Photo Festival, Jensen’s series takes us from Gallup to New Mexico to Las Vegas, New Orleans and Syracuse, capturing along the way the experiences of those living on the margins of mainstream society.
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THILDE JENSEN; THOMAS JOSHUA COOPER; SADIE CATT; ROBERT CAPA / INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY / MAGNUMPHOTOS; LOUISE HUTCHINS
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‘Drake, “I spent time inside, so much human potential rotting away behind bars”, Nevada, 2017’, by Thilde Jensen
YOUTH RISING IN THE UK Side Gallery, Newcastle Until 3 October
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Curated by photographer and anthropologist Liz Hingley, this exhibition features the work of nine image-makers documenting youth culture between 1981 and 2001. The result is a fascinating chronicle of the passage into adulthood.
THE NORTHERN EYE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL
THOMAS JOSHUA COOPER: THE WORLD’S EDGE Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh Until 23 January 2022
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North Wales’s photography biennial returns with a line-up of great speakers at Theatr Colwyn, as well as free exhibitions and workshops at locations around the town.
CLOSE ENOUGH: ROBERT CAPA
This touring exhibition presents 50 vintage photographs by the great photojournalist. The title refers to Capa’s words, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.”
American-born, now Glasgowbased, Thomas Joshua Cooper is the only artist to have ever made photographs of both poles. This exhibition presents 35 of his images taken over three decades, across all continents, including previously uncharted islands and archipelagos.
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messumslondon.com
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Various venues, Colwyn Bay Main weekend 9-10 October, fringe events throughout October
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amber-online.com/ side-gallery Photo London, Somerset House, London 8-12 September Messums London 15 September to 1 October
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FACE TIME A History of the Photographic Portrait Phillip Prodger Thames and Hudson (£30)
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Of the 1.2tn photographs taken every year, 800m of them are of people. But this impulse dates back to before the current age of image abundance. For as long as the camera has existed we have turned the lens on ourselves and each other. Portraiture is such a mainstay of photography that we take it for granted. As Phillip Prodger, former head of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in London, points out, “We rarely stop to consider what it means, or how and why portraits are made.” Although Face Time’s sub-title refers to ‘a history’, Prodger takes an unabashedly non-chronological approach, moving through thematic chapters. Each one closely explores a selection of images, from the early pioneers of the medium such as Julia Margaret Cameron to major
figures of contemporary image-making such as Zanele Muholi HonFRPS. Prodger’s intent is to reflect the variety of this genre, which spans selfies and street photography, family albums and fashion spreads. A portrait can be a tool of oppression, used by 19th-century colonialists to categorise, or it can be a source of emancipation, as in the radical feminist selfportraiture of Jo Spence. A photograph always does more than simply record. It is imbued with the context of its creation, charged by the gaze of the photographer and changed by each environment in which it is viewed. The best portraits pin down something intangible about their subject, something that might otherwise slip away, unnoticed. “The portraitist is an excavator of truth,
‘Anonymous, Oakland, CA, 2011’ by Katy Grannan
revealing qualities of which the sitter might not even be aware, or may wish to hide,” writes Prodger. “A great portrait is a psychological exploration, an artistic journey into a person’s heart and soul.” Rachel Segal Hamilton
INTO THE WILD
CUT OUTS
A WOUNDED LANDSCAPE
Gemma Padley Laurence King (£40)
Jessica Backhaus Kehrer Verlag (£44)
Marc Wilson Two and Two Press (£50)
Not only is this history of wildlife photography visually delightful, featuring 250 images from the past 150 years, it is also rich in historical context. Writer and RPS Journal contributor Gemma Padley reveals the technological developments used by groundbreaking photographers, from George Sheras III, the first photographer to use camera traps, to the image-makers warning of ecological crisis today.
German photographer Jessica Backhaus arranged small pieces of paper in the blazing Berlin summer sun before capturing their curling forms to create these colourful and intriguing images. Her almost abstract style strips back the process of seeing to its most elemental experience, a dance between light and shadow. Cut Outs will also be on show at Photo London.
The moving stories of 22 Holocaust survivors form the basis of this book, shot over six years at 160 sites around Europe. Wilson’s disturbingly beautiful imagery depicts the places where Nazi atrocities occurred. Now eerily empty, they bear the scars of memory, and are made all the more powerful by the portraits of survivors, testimonies and maps that accompany these deeply wounded landscapes.
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By Victoria Hely-Hutchinson
Chatsworth House
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Left Portrait of William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington, 1999, by Tai-Shan Schierenberg
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Right Blocked and hand-painted Chinese wallpaper, late 18th century
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Below A window on Chatsworth, which has passed down through 16 generations of the Cavendish family
© VICTORIA HELY-HUTCHINSON, PORTRAIT OF VICTORIA BY JEREMY LIEBMAN
It took a woman for all seasons to capture the beauty and character of an Elizabethan stately home steeped in history She was only meant to spend a couple of months photographing Chatsworth, home to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. In the end Victoria Hely-Hutchinson spent a year, on and off, documenting the house and its extraordinary historical objects. “After the first visit it became clear that in order to capture the essence of Chatsworth you needed to see it in every season,” says the photographer whose work features in a book, Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now. “You needed to know how it looked at 4pm on a Tuesday in June and 8am on a Friday in November. “With every seasonal flower arrangement, new colors would be reflected on the walls, and freshly grown produce would waft their scent through
the house. I held peaches so large and so soft their skin broke from just resting in your hand, saw an oversized Hockney carried down the painted ceiling stairs at twilight and tried to capture the moon through a 17th-century telescope at 5am. “But what was most surprising about Chatsworth was that for a house of that scale and steeped in such history there was such a remarkable intimacy to it. It never felt overwhelming or impenetrable. I came in with an enormous reverence for such an institution but came away feeling like part of a family.” Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now is published by Particular Books, £50. vhely-hutchinson.com SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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WEATHERPROOF GEAR “Working in such a hot and humid location can bring challenges, like lenses fogging up and sweaty palms, but nothing could diminish the unforgettable experience of being there. All my photography equipment is fully weather sealed, which is important when photographing outdoors or in unpredictable climates.”
Right ‘Salapia glasswing’ by Geraint Radford
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HOW I DID THIS Macro photographer Geraint Radford reveals the secrets of an alluring image The Amazon rainforest is one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth, home to millions of creatures, 90% of them insects. These include the delicate Salapia glasswing butterfly, seen at close proximity in this image by photographer Geraint Radford. He will be sharing insights into his work at The Photography Show, returning to the NEC, Birmingham. Ahead of his talk, ‘First steps on your macro photography journey’, on 20 September, Radford here reveals how he achieved this shot. geraintradford.com photographyshow.com 468
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LIGHTING “The dense trees of the rainforest restrict the natural lighting. This can make images rather flat in terms of colour and contrast. I paired my camera with a 60mm macro lens, with a field of view of 120mm in 35mm terms – a fantastic focal length for insects – and added my trusty Olympus FL900r flash and 30cm diffuser to provide some soft lighting.”
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CONTRASTING BACKGROUND “Situations with low ambient light can offer interesting and creative options for close-up photography. I chose a low flash power of 1/32, ISO 200 coupled with a shutter speed of 1/100 to maintain a dark background, with just enough light reaching my subject to lift it from the background.”
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COMPOSITION “Flighty creatures can be tricky to photograph. My Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III has powerful in-camera stability which lets me compose freely, without the need for a tripod. Composition is the key to a beautiful image. Allowing space around the butterfly and including the dark areas highlighted the colours and iridescence of its wings.”
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SHALLOW DEPTH OF FIELD “The butterfly landed in a tricky spot, with leaves and distractions emerging out of the background. This limited how small an aperture I could use. Shooting a small focus stack of two frames, both at f/3.5, maintained a diffused background with more of the butterfly in focus.” SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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TAKE NOTE Name: Isadora Romero Age: 34 Base: Quito, Ecuador High point: Winning the Magnum Foundation’s Photography and Social Justice Fellowship 2021 USP: Documentary photography focused on social and environmental justice
Her documentary photography offers an antidote to hopelessness, in a genre often associated with human suffering, struggle and conflict. Isadora Romero, the recipient of this year’s Marilyn Stafford Fotoreportage Award, here tells us why collaboration and positivity are essential elements of her work. “The stories that interest me are those that narrate resistance, the stories of people making a community, their environment, their country or the world a better place. I hope that whoever looks at my work can be inspired by these stories as well and take action, to know that all is not lost and that we can build new paths, new relationships, between us and our environment.”
Romero will use the £2,000 award to continue her project Muyu Lab, documenting agrobiodiversity conservation in Ecuador. She began the series in 2018, photographing seed guardians and communities fighting against agribusiness in Paraguay, one of the world’s least equitable countries for land and crop distribution. Last year she extended this work to her homeland. “I was interested from a symbolic point of view what it means for ancestral communities to preserve seeds and what the same action means for science,” she says. “For the next part of this project I’d like to do a more collaborative process with both communities, integrating a narration based on their voices and needs.”
Not content with shooting her own projects, Romero also works on initiatives to make photography more inclusive. She is co-founder of Ruda Colectiva, a collective of female and non-binary Latin American photographers, and leader of the Women’s Photography Chapter in Quito. “I grew up in a world where it did not occur to me to think that I could win important awards like this one, simply because there was no Ecuadorian woman on my radar who achieved those accomplishments internationally,” she says. “I am proud to receive this recognition.” isadoraromero.com Marilyn Stafford chooses her best shots on page 518
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“I hope that whoever looks at my work can be inspired by these stories and take action”
Clockwise from above Marcela Quintana, undergraduate student involved in cedar research; germplasm seed samples at DENAREF; people from Camuendo Chico after the Kuya Raymi ritual, Lake San Pablo – all images from the series Muyu Lab by Isadora Romero
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What makes you get up in the morning?
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My cat, demanding breakfast at 7.30am on the dot. And the anticipation of navigating the challenges of the day – an ever-shifting tapestry of the predictable and the totally unexpected.
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What’s been the toughest moment in your career?
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Launching Photo London in 2014. We switched almost overnight from being a successful boutique cultural consultancy to custodians of a major international photography brand.
Brexit and the pandemic also delivered a tsunami of difficulties but we’ve weathered the storm and are contemplating a successful sixth edition.
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Tell us about a photography series you’d love to work with
There are two. Land of Dreams by Shirin Neshat HonFRPS, our sixth Master of Photography, an amazing series of over 100 photographs plus a two-channel film installation, focusing on the American West. And Graciela Iturbide’s Those who Live in the Sand. I hugely admire
‘Cut Out #18, 2020’ from the series Cut Outs by Jessica Backhaus
‘Mycelium Mongo’ from the series FLUX, 2021, by Alia Ali
‘Mexico State, 1965’ by Enrique Metinides
Graciela’s ability to weave poetry from the quotidian.
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Which project makes you most proud?
‘Simin’ from the series Land of Dreams, 2019, by Shirin Neshat HonFRPS
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I’m extremely proud of Burnt Generation, an exhibition of eight young Iranian photographers at Somerset House in 2014. The show was
designed to challenge lazy Western thinking about the scope of Iranian photography and it succeeded – Iran is now recognised as one of the world’s most vibrant photographic cultures.
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What next for photography curation?
Personally I’d love to
explore the notion of identity in relation to displacement and, more generally, I’m thrilled by the ways in which photography is endlessly pushing boundaries. Photo London 2021 is at Somerset House, London, 9-12 September. photolondon.org
JESSICA BACKHAUS / ROBERT MORAT GALERIE; SHIRIN NESHAT HonFRPS / GLADSTONE GALLERY, NEW YORK AND BRUSSELS AND GOODMAN GALLERY, LONDON
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‘Anjana Majhi, 17, with her one-year-old daughter Ishita at Malpur village, Chitwan, Nepal’ by Smita Sharma
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“Delving into something in depth allows you to find things you wouldn’t find otherwise”
“Cartier-Bresson was a good teacher because he would never say ‘do this’ or ‘do that’”
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“There’s a lot that doesn’t get captured on the emulsion, such as the conversations”
“The intention of my image is to evoke love and close ties of kinship”
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“I travel and gather images that are connected even though they may be at opposite ends of the Earth”
“It’s good to push outside one’s comfort zone and one never stops learning with photography”
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“We never heard what they felt, what they went through, their hopes” SMITA SHARMA
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‘Northern rufous hornbill’ from the series Birds
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‘IT’S BEEN A BIT OF AN OBSESSION’ The latest book by Tim Flach HonFRPS takes the viewer on a dazzling journey through the world of birds. It’s about creating a sense of empathy and wonderment, he explains WORDS: DAVID CLARK IMAGES: TIM FLACH HonFRPS
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“It's been a bit of an obsession,” says Tim Flach, looking back over the three years he has spent photographing birds for his latest project. “To do something like this I think you probably need that obsessional process, where you get into a subject and immerse yourself in it. I find delving into something in some depth allows you to find things you wouldn't find otherwise.” Flach is talking via Zoom from his studio in central London, where the walls are hung with prints of his ornithological subjects, while his assistants busily work on screens in the background. Like most photographers, he has had a “less complicated diary” since the pandemic began last year, allowing him to develop his work in other ways, including reflecting on his photographic processes. “Covid has stopped a lot of things happening,” he says, “but having fewer distractions from commissions and going abroad to do conferences allowed me to develop my post-production skills. It also gave me time to reflect back on the work of artists such as Rembrandt and Turner, and techniques such as chiaroscuro – use of lights and darks and countershading – which have allowed me to figure out how to create more luminosity.” Now aged 63, Flach became a professional photographer after graduating from Central St Martins College of Art and Design in 1983. Although he has concentrated on commercial work for most of his career, working with agencies including Saatchi and Saatchi, since 2008 he has spent around half his time on his own creative projects. These have focused on animals, examining one single species in depth or a range of different ones, and have included Equus (2008), Dog Gods (2010), More Than Human (2012) and Endangered (2017). Flach’s animal images are immediately recognisable. Subjects are shown in an arresting, original way, usually removed from their natural environment, and concentrate on the animal’s shape, texture and colour. One other aspect to his work, though, sets it apart – the way the images connect with the viewer, who is often invited to make anthropomorphic parallels with themselves. “The crux I’ve been working towards is to examine what sort of depiction of animals evokes the kind of connection with nature that allows us to entertain the story,” he says. “A lot of what I do is
‘Toco toucan chick’ from the series Birds
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trying to figure out how to elicit empathy and emotion around stories that wouldn’t otherwise touch the hearts and minds of people and make them take action.” Flach says his increased awareness of conservation issues continues to draw him back to animals as subjects. “You go on a journey and you begin to understand better some of the issues and debates,” he says. “When you do that it’s very hard to unsee what you’ve seen. When it comes to the kind of changes that have happened to the natural world and the pressure on those species – how some of them find themselves on the edge of extinction – you can’t really walk away from that. So, if you feel you want to do something with your medium, you’re almost beholden to have to do that as a result of being on that kind of journey.” Partly inspired by his childhood memories of seabirds on the Cornish coast, Flach’s bird project is a dazzling journey through the ornithological world, showing exotic and unfamiliar as well as better known birds in a new light. There are birds with amazing head and tail feathers or cobalt-blue wattles, enormous ruffs or heavy, multi-coloured bills. There are feeding flamingos, dark brooding ravens, perky parrots and watchful owls. All are presented against plain
‘Toco toucan adult’ from the series Birds
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backgrounds to focus attention on their appearance, while birds of the same species are juxtaposed to emphasise their differences. “I am trying to show these birds close up and almost separated from nature, but ironically almost bringing them back through the fact that I’ve taken this sense of otherness to a sense of sameness,” says Flach. “So, they gaze at us and we’re compelled to look back at them. “On one level I wanted to do something that was slightly indulgent – something that was more visual and decorative. I also had a romantic idea of 19th-century illustrators, such as John James Audubon and artists including Edward Lear, and wanted to produce something that was a continuation of that aesthetic tradition.” Although drawing influence from these sources, Flach is keen to point out his work is not intended as a field book or bird encyclopaedia. It’s more about distilling the birds’ shape and form, and using photography’s unique qualities as a medium for capturing what 19th-century drawing and painting didn’t or couldn’t show – birds in flight, or diving underwater, or sections of plumage in minute detail. There are more than 10,000 bird species and Flach had to limit his choice for the project to around 160 of them. The selection was made gradually over a long period. “When making a choice for a project like this there are the nice-to-haves, the ones you find en route, and the must-haves, the ones people expect to see in a book about birds,” he says. The musthaves included flamingos, penguins, eagles and birds of paradise, and locating specimens to photograph was essential. However, getting images of the nice-to-haves, such as the rhinoceros hornbill or Bulwer’s pheasant, depended on whether a particular species was available, given the limitations on travel during the pandemic. Flach was helped in both the selection and procurement of birds by the ornithological expert and ‘bird whisperer’ Daniel Cullen, who acted as producer and handler. Cullen advised him on the time of year to photograph individual species in peak condition, the design of purpose-built aviaries and turntables for the birds to sit on, and how to ensure the birds were relaxed and comfortable during the shoots. In selecting his equipment, Flach wanted to combine flexibility of use with the capability to produce a high level of detail. Accordingly, the majority of the images were shot using a 50-megapixel Canon EOS 5DS, while a small number were taken with a 100-megapixel Hasselblad H6D-100C. While many of the birds were photographed in controlled conditions, sometimes Flach had to shoot them in different environments for aesthetic or practical reasons. 480
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“On one level I wanted to do something slightly indulgent – something that was more visual and decorative”
‘Atlantic puffin’ from the series Birds
“Sometimes I just couldn’t get access to particular birds and ended up lying down on a zoo path, shooting with a really long lens and trying to get the bird in the middle of the wire fence so it didn’t show in the picture,” he explains. “Ironically some of those pictures were better than the highly set-up shots with studio lighting. When daylight works, you can’t beat it.”
In the case of gentoo penguins, Flach wanted to show them doing what they do best, diving underwater. Fortunately, he has a friend who is a curator at the Sea Life centre in London, which was closed to the public for several months due to the pandemic. This allowed Flach to set up lights and have krill thrown into the water to encourage the penguins to dive in. SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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‘Temminck’s tragopan’ from the series Birds
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‘Northern cardinal’ from the series Birds
“I like to create images that tell you something more about the birds,” he continues. “If you see penguins walking it doesn’t tell you much about their evolutionary morphology, but when you see them diving and you see these torpedo-like characters whizzing through the water, you absolutely understand why they are so extraordinarily designed. Swimming is their flying, isn’t it? And in a way it felt right to have them in their element. It was a unique shot to get.” One of the most difficult species to photograph was the Temminck’s tragopan, a type of pheasant with a vibrant blue bib-like wattle. The only problem was working out how to get the bird to drop the wattle down and display it. Flach made five separate trips to photograph birds in the UK and Europe and only on the final one did he get the shot he wanted with the bib being displayed – just a few days before deadline. Birds, the book that has resulted from all this work, is organised as a kind of evolutionary journey. It starts with an image of a 150-millionyear-old Archaeopteryx fossil, a species which proved birds evolved from dinosaurs. Following that there are chapters on ratites (flightless birds including the emu and the ostrich), raptors such as eagles and falcons, and ending with poultry – birds whose evolution has been shaped by humans.
‘Bulwer’s pheasant’ from the series Birds
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‘Red splash Jacobin pigeon’ from the series Birds
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“This sequencing is not absolute, because they’re clusters,” says Flach. “What we’re loosely saying is these clusters do represent what we see as the evolution of birds. What’s interesting, when you see them as evolutionary clusters, is that you start seeing different jobs the birds have to do, whether they’ve got to get through the water or get nectar, for example. “Evolution extends and shapes them according to the way they feed and their function. When you cluster them, you start making equivalent references between the pictures in those different groups, so I think it's quite productive.” While shooting, Flach was constantly bearing in mind how the images would appear in the final book. “There’s the pagination and within the pagination there’s the pace,” he says. “The real difficulty is if you’re turning the pages and all the images are really striking, but in some ways similar, you start to make comparisons – was that one as good as the one before? Sometimes it’s really good to be ambiguous, to be confusing, to present something that’s facing the wrong way or to show
an abstract, something that makes you think ‘what’s that?’ and takes you away from a direct gaze. It’s all part of organising an experience.” Although Flach’s bird project doesn’t have the direct conservation message of his previous book, which was about endangered species, his aim is to inspire us to value birds more by showing the kind of extraordinary creatures we will lose if the destruction of wildlife habitats continues at its current rate. “People have become more aware of birds recently,” he says, “particularly people working from home during lockdown. But this project is about showing the wonderment of nature, and giving these guys their personality and character so we empathise with their stories even more. Ultimately, I want to convey the idea that without this extended family we, as humans, wouldn’t be who we are. If it was taken away, we would be diminished.” Birds by Tim Flach HonFPRS is published by Abrams on 14 October 2021. timflach.com
“This project is about showing the wonderment of nature, and giving these guys their personality and character so we empathise with their stories”
‘Splendid starling’ from the series Birds
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‘USA, Harlem, New York City, 2018’ from the series 125th and Lexington
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He escaped a troubled youth thanks to the teachings of Islam and an immersion in New York street life. Now Magnum nominee Khalik Allah is among the leading image-makers of his generation WORDS: TOM SEYMOUR IMAGES: KHALIK ALLAH / MAGNUM PHOTOS
‘USA, Harlem, New York City, 2012-2016’ from the series 125th and Lexington
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‘USA, Harlem, New York City, 2014’ from the series 125th and Lexington
Just under a decade ago a young photographer and filmmaker, Khalik Allah, made a short film in his long-term home of Harlem, New York. In Urban Rashomon we see him photographing a homeless Haitian drug addict known as Frenchie, using an antiquated Nikon film camera. As Allah loads his camera Frenchie smokes spice, a synthetic and highly concentrated form of cannabis that has plagued the most poverty stricken of New York’s residents. When the high hits, Frenchie begins to dribble, a spindle of saliva hanging from his mouth. He starts singing without words, then performing – a form of interpretive dance, as practised by someone who has slept on concrete for a long time. “Yeah, yeah, hold that, hold that,” Allah instructs Frenchie as he twists his arms in the air. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t move, don’t move.” As the film continues, we realise Allah gave Frenchie some money, and that’s how he paid for the drugs. Though Allah’s work has been praised, some see it as walking a fine line between exploitation and raw depiction of the reality of street life in New York. In March 2021 Andy Day, a photographer and photo ethics activist, tweeted: 490
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‘Frenchie, USA, Harlem, New York City, 2014’ from the series 125th and Lexington
“The disturbing exploitation of a vulnerable person in the street photography of Khalik Allah. I’m lost for words.” The tweet, which Day had linked to Urban Rashomon, was published shortly after Allah’s most recent film, IWOW: I Walk on Water, was released in cinemas to critical acclaim. Day tweeted again: “Honestly the most brazen, profound exploitation of a vulnerable person I’ve ever encountered. Deeply, deeply disturbing. Why do people celebrate this? Why is he lauded?” In the film, Allah says of Frenchie: “Let me tell you something – I’ve been documenting this brother for two months now.” When Allah talks to me earlier this year – a few months after becoming a Magnum nominee member – he has just taken Frenchie out for pancakes in a Harlem diner. The pair have maintained a friendship since Allah shot Urban Rashomon. Frenchie, who still lives on the streets, is Allah’s muse, and a mediator to the other dwellers of Harlem’s homeless, somnambulist world. Allah spells out his ethical position – he has ensured Frenchie has capacity over his own decisions, and can coherently give permission to appear in his photographs.
The Harlem Hospital, where Frenchie has spent time over the years, considers him compos mentis. They have spoken at length about Allah’s practice; what he hopes to explore and communicate via his images. Frenchie is on board. Urban Rashomon moves to a montage of the resulting portraits of Frenchie. In voiceover, Allah begins to talk about his practice. “If Jesus held the camera and was walking the streets, that’s who I want to be,” he says. “Because Jesus spent his time amongst the lowly.” Allah is now recognised mostly as a stills photographer – indeed, he’s probably the best known among a new generation of millennial Magnum nominees, many of whom are artists of colour who stand apart from the traditional school of humanist photography that has normally formed Magnum’s mainstream. But, in a very contemporary contradiction, Allah considers himself first and foremost a filmmaker. His first film, The Absorption of Light, was released in 2005, made when Allah was just 21. It’s a form of autobiographical filmmaking, a loose, imperfect and often improvisational analysis of his own mentality as a troubled and instinctively rebellious youth. Allah’s teenage years were spent in Long Island. He had a SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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‘USA, Harlem, New York City, 2013’ from the series 125th and Lexington
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hard time at school – he was held back in eighth grade and on trips to Manhattan was mixing with the wrong people. Then he discovered the Five-Percent Nation. Based in Harlem, and founded in the 1960s as a splinter of the Nation of Islam, the Five-Percent Nation exists to educate young men of colour on how to live a good life; one that guards you against the darkness of the streets. There, Allah found “a refuge”, he says. The Five-Percent Nation offers its students lessons in how to survive – a “street curriculum. The Five-Percent Nation taught me not to take anything on face value.” Such teaching allowed him to navigate his world without being pulled into its traps. “I was just trying to save myself from a savage spell of ignorance,” he wrote in the introduction to his first photobook, Souls Against the Concrete. “The first thing black students are taught is that they were slaves,” Allah told Magnum when he joined the agency. “From second grade on, your self-esteem is a couple of notches below the white students because you’ve been told you are inferior. That sticks with you and follows you into your adulthood.”
‘USA, Harlem, New York City, 2017’ from the series 125th and Lexington
In contrast the Five-Percent Nation is, Allah says, orientated around gaining knowledge of one’s self, of one’s own history and lineage, “by restoring to us the awareness of black people’s contributions to world history prior to American slavery.” He hopes these lessons have “bled into my work”. The Absorption of Light used tunes by the Staten Island hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan as its soundtrack. Members of the Clan were affiliated with the Five-Percent Nation, and Allah, then working long shifts in an old people’s home in between shooting, was able to show his cultural heroes parts of the film. He has a distinct memory of drinking coffee on a break in the quiet monotony of the old people’s home, imagining his future. All he wanted to do was shoot movies. Bit by bit, it started to happen. The Clan invited the young Allah to work on the set of some of their music videos, and Allah, ambitious but not yet with the creative toolkit he needed, set out to make his own documentary of the group’s influence. The film, which took him many years to complete, centred on Popa Wu, the group’s spiritual and elder figure, who died in 2019 at the age of 63. Through the documentary
Allah, bit by bit, was able to consider the older men, denizens of the rap game, as mentors, friends and contemporaries. Photography was not, at this stage, part of Allah’s purview. That changed, one day, when GZA, a founding member of Wu-Tang Clan, suggested he pay a visit to Allah’s home. Maybe they could take some pictures? Allah agreed, of course, but he didn’t have a camera. His brother owned a Canon Rebel; Allah asked him to lend it for the day. “And my brother said: ‘Yo, man, I don’t let people borrow my shit,’” Allah says. Allah was stuck. He couldn’t afford a new camera, nor did he know anyone who owned one. Then he remembered the old, chunky, metallic object his dad had used to take family pictures when he was a kid. He hadn’t seen it for a decade or more. “I said to my dad: ‘Where is that camera?’” he says. “And he dug around and found it in the back of his closet.” Allah ended up taking photographs of GZA with his father’s dusty, unused Canon AE1, a 35mm film camera with a prime lens. Allah likens the moment to falling in love; realising that this would be what he would dedicate himself to next. From considering himself solely as a filmmaker, Allah SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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‘Frenchie, USA, Harlem, New York City, 2013’ from the series 125th and Lexington
began to focus on photography, learning how to make motion and still imagery one and the same; different branches of one pursuit. Or, “Different vibrations of the same thing,” as he puts it. His approach was entirely autodidactic. He learnt to use his new camera, to quickly load the film and focus the shot on the street, to learn what an f-stop was, or how ISO and shutter speed works, then how to process and scan the film at home. Later, he bought himself a manual Nikon and an f/1.2 lens, and moved from monochrome Ilford FP4 to Kodak Portra 160 film stock, a colour film. Yet he still worked in extremely dark conditions, often at ISO 125. He learnt that shooting at low speed, and at night, resulted in heavily contrasted images – a dramatic, cinematic style. “I wanted my approach as a photographer to be cinematic,” he says. “I envision my photographs to be films, but short films – one-frame films. I started to think of a roll of film as its own feature-length movie.” Allah has a knack for mechanical technology, and managed to find work as a broadcast technician at AMC Networks. In between shifts he would walk to the New York Public Library, where he would sit with books by some of 494
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photography’s most resonant names, and many of his future Magnum colleagues. He focused especially on the giants of New York photography – Diane Arbus, Bruce Gilden, Bruce Davidson and Joel Meyerowitz HonFRPS. Allah knew the same streets; was photographing them too – as have countless other people over the decades. What made Arbus, Gilden, Davidson and Meyerowitz special? What made their work in New York stand out? Each, Allah realised, was able to express their own personality, their own sensibility, through the portraits of others. And each, Allah noticed, would focus on specific areas of New York. Davidson in Allah’s same patch of Harlem (the pair will share an exhibition of Harlem work at Magnum’s new Paris gallery this October), Meyerowitz on 5th Avenue, Gilden in downtown Manhattan, Arbus often around Central Park. “So I decided to try and find my own piece of New York,” Allah says. “A place other photographers weren’t going to.” By the early twenty-teens, Allah was pulling the graveyard shift at AMC. He would finish work in the long, witching hours in the middle of the night. He would walk through the city to his home in Harlem, carrying his camera with him. And so he
‘Rondoo Allah, USA, Harlem, New York City, 2013’ from the series 125th and Lexington
“I decided to try and find my own piece of New York. A place other photographers weren’t going to”
began to photograph at night. But, unlike Meyerowitz and Gilden, Allah has never practised the shoot and move, or maybe the hit and run, approach. He talks to his subjects, introduces himself, shows them the camera, recounts what he’s trying to do – and he does so in places where many of us would probably fear for our safety. His images, then, take time, energy and emotional investment. Frenchie was integral to this evolutionary moment in Allah’s own practice. For Frenchie spent a lot of time on the corner of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue – the corner that Lou Reed sang of in The Velvet Underground’s ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’. Deeply vulnerable characters with resonant stories to tell spend time there, but photographers have never before dared to do so too – especially at night. Allah’s friendship with Frenchie allowed him to become part of the night-time ecosystem of that untrod corner. It gave him his voice. “To build those relationships, you have to have fortitude, be able to stand on your own, hold yourself down, and speak to people,” Allah says. “There’s a lot that doesn’t get captured on the emulsion, such as the conversations.” Allah wanted to find a way to communicate the seriousness of his practice with his subjects. To do so, as a form of easy SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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“During my interaction with people, I measure frequences of soul consciousness”
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shorthand, he began to walk out with a collection of his images printed on paper. He would hand over the portraits to a new subject as part of the process of building trust and seeking permission to photograph them. Even if they demurred, he let them keep the prints. It’s heartening to think, at a moment when an Allah print can be sold in a New York gallery for multiple thousands of dollars, that many rest in the possession of the homeless of 125th and Lex. But working in such conditions is tough. Harlem at night is, from one corner to the next, either awash with stark white light or garish neon – or soaked in shadows. The people he photographs are unpredictable. Moments of connection can be fleeting, by their nature difficult to capture. For many photographers, shooting bursts in digital, with a camera that automatically works out focus, ISO and contrast, would be an absolute necessity. Allah’s belief in film relates to his own education in motionvideo filmmaking. He gets 36 images on every roll of film. Each time he hits the shutter, he must wind on, re-focus his camera, and start the process of perfecting the next frame. And he cannot go back and review his images.
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‘Frenchie, USA, Harlem, New York City, 2012’ from the series 125th and Lexington
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‘USA, Harlem, New York City, 2017’ from the series 125th and Lexington
He must work chronologically, with a sense of continuity, before processing the entire roll. And he must get the lighting right each time. Many would find it too technically strenuous. For Allah, “it provides focus and calm. Working this way slows you down. It’s a form of meditation, because you have to be calm. To take portraits on the street, you have to learn how to observe, you can never judge, you have to have a very open mind, and you have to keep an open mind.” Allah’s first book Souls Against the Concrete, published in 2017 by the University of Texas Press, features images from his years spent on the corner of 125th and Lex. In the book’s introduction he compares the portraits to “psychic X-rays”. “I consider my photographs energy charts,” he writes. “During my interaction with people, I measure frequencies of soul consciousness.” Souls Against the Concrete led to his first New York gallery exhibition, in 2018 and, by 2020, an invitation to apply to Magnum. Allah says his present Magnum nominee member status is “a tremendous blessing”. With his feature film practice ongoing, and with Magnum actively platforming his photographic work, Allah is well
placed to become a mainstay of the photography scene. Yet he will continue to work where he has always worked, with the people he has always worked with. For this is like a calling for Khalik Allah. His subjects, he says, often hang back from the pavement on the corner of 125th and Lex. They stay away from the pools of light on the street, hanging instead in the darker spots where Allah’s camera can’t reach. So he finds himself often asking his subjects: “Walk with me into the light.” It’s a practical request, but one soaked in religious metaphor. It’s the perfect phrase for Allah, for his images do have a religious quality. He sees photography as a way of stopping us from considering ourselves different from our fellow man. “Taking the photographs, I don’t want to make a distinction between my subject and myself,” he says. “I wanted to treat them equally to how I treat anyone in my life, including my family and the people I love. We’re all God’s children.” magnumphotos.com/photographer/khalik-allah khalikallah.com SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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Renowned nature photographer Art Wolfe HonFRPS takes a different view of the planet for his latest book. He tells Kathleen Morgan why he is preoccupied with nightscapes and a fragile Earth
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‘Evening landscape, stars and cacti, Cataviña Desert, Baja Peninsula, California’
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‘Sea water surges over black volcanic rock, Southern Region, Iceland’
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Your latest book, Night on Earth, takes the viewer on a nocturnal journey around the globe. What inspired you to photograph the Earth after dark? After working on more than 100 books over my 40-year career I am always in search of new subjects, or even portraying old subjects in a new light – no pun intended. I have been photographing night-time scenes for years without ever intending or envisioning a book. Time progressed and the portfolio grew as photos collected into categories. These categories are often how book projects begin for me. My publisher was interested in this title, and with a couple of years of more intentional shooting on my various travels it really came together. Nocturnal views of wildlife, cities, landscapes and cultures are so different from broad daylight. Even with the most recent DSLRs that can capture the heavens like never before, our world at night remains an intriguing subject with its deeply rooted emotional impact. The night sky spanned by the Milky Way has an infinite vastness and depth that the sunlit sky just does not have. Which photograph best illustrates your love of the nocturnal planet – and how was the image created? This is an almost impossible question to answer and, of course, I have multiple favourites. I am jaded and human, so the more recent photos are to the forefront of my brain. One such image is the picture I created on Easter Island early last year, before the Covid pandemic shut everything down. When I visited the island in the early 1980s, these moai had been toppled for centuries by European colonisers and by 500
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‘Milky Way over moai, Ahu Tongariki, Rapa Nui, Easter Island, Chile’
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‘Base Camp, Mount Everest, Tibet, China’
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internecine warfare. In the 1990s Ahu Tongariki was restored by archaeologists and on this trip I was focusing on creating night images of surreal and mysterious subjects. What better place to do this than Easter Island, where the night-time skies are dark and unpolluted by light? I had a friend walk with a small light in front of each one of these tufa sculptures and bathe them in very low light. I emphasise this because in a long exposure bright light would 502
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have washed out the subjects. It took a couple of passes before we were able to dial in the proper light, perfect for both the moai and the Milky Way to shine. How did you decide which locations to feature in the book, and over what timescale were the images created? The earliest photos included in Night on Earth were taken in the early 1980s. One of those is of Base Camp and Mount Everest,
PROFILE
Art Wolfe HonFRPS Born in Seattle, USA, in 1951, to commercial artists, Art Wolfe graduated with a degree in fine arts and art education in 1975. His love of art has seeped into his photography during a career spanning five decades. He has published at least one book annually since 1988, including Earth Is My Witness and Human Canvas. An educator and broadcaster, he is a passionate advocate for the environment.
“Those early photos were taken with what we would now consider marginal equipment” ‘Cerro Torre, Los Glaciares National Park, Santa Cruz, Argentina’
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created when I was the photographer for the Ultima Thule Everest Expedition, the first Western climbing team permitted by China to attempt the famed Northeast Ridge route through Tibet. Those early photos were taken with what we would now consider marginal equipment and on film, but in accordance with the best standards of the day. Once I take on a book project I really focus my attention on gathering new images that will create a balance with those archival but unique images that add depth and dimension to any project I work on. This is especially important with a book that has many subjects taken with one overarching theme. Technology is always changing and mostly improving; I know there are even more recent developments with the sensitivity of infrared and other means to capture the night-time skies and activities both human and wildlife. I wanted this book to cover all facets of Earth at night, rather than just landscapes
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‘Ice formations (penitentes), Andes Mountains, Chile’
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with the Milky Way hovering above, which would be somewhat repetitious. Adding wildlife and culture gave Night on Earth a sense of pace and perspective. You say your goal is to “win support for conservation by focusing on what’s beautiful in the world”. Do we sometimes need to be shocked into awareness or action by seeing the uglier impact of humanity on our vanishing natural world? I think that many of my colleagues and certainly the media have done a pretty good job of concentrating on the uglier side of human overdevelopment. I almost look at humans as being a plague on the planet, consuming more than we conserve. This cannot go on forever and we need to shift how we utilise resources if we expect the next generations to survive in a rapidly changing world.
‘Volcanic eruption of Bárðarbunga, Vatnajökull National Park, Iceland’
“The media have done a pretty good job of concentrating on the uglier side of human overdevelopment”
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‘Lake Powell, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah’
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‘Double arch, Arches National Park, Utah’
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‘Thor’s Well, Cape Perpetua Scenic Area, Oregon’
“My goal is to inspire and strike a sense of awe in the beauty of Earth. I try to persuade people through positive stories” My own goal is to inspire and strike a sense of awe in the beauty of Earth; this is the way I am wired, and it is necessary for me to keep functioning at a high level of energy. I try to persuade people through positive stories, rather than all negative. Don’t get me wrong, I do photograph degraded environments, but those images rarely make it into my books. I provide them often to conservation organisations that can use those materials more effectively. Your work straddles the genres of photojournalism and art. How important is the storytelling element to your images – and how has your love of art affected your view of the world? That is an intriguing question simply because I do straddle the two genres. However, I am not a traditional storyteller, zeroing in on a subject and dissecting it. Rather I travel and gather images that are connected even though they may be at opposite ends of the Earth and years apart. I strive to make each book as graphically pleasing and stylish as possible. Wrangling all these disparate elements – the abstract, traditional, documentary, artistic – into one compelling layout is exhilarating work.
You have worked on every continent during a career spanning five decades. Where have you yet to discover? There are many places I have not been to. The Stans, Oman and Yemen are of major interest to me, as well as many other microregions within politically unsettled and war-torn countries. At this point in my life I do feel the clock is ticking. With the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) happening in Glasgow, UK, this November, do you have a message for the world leaders that will gather there? We need to take climate change seriously. We are seeing stronger storms whipping across the Atlantic, forest fires of unprecedented scale, melting sea ice in the polar regions, heat waves so severe they are called heat domes. The issue of climate change has been on the radar for decades and the window of action is closing. We have a very short time to slow the heating of the planet. It is not just a matter of personal choice – it must be addressed on a global scale. Naysayers be damned. Night on Earth by Art Wolfe HonFRPS is published on 5 October by Earth Aware Editions. artwolfe.com SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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HIDDEN LIVES Her visual storytelling uncovers inequality and exploitation, from sexual slavery to child marriage. But how does TED Fellow Smita Sharma ensure her award-winning work is ethical? WORDS: RACHEL SEGAL HAMILTON IMAGES: SMITA SHARMA
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“It is our responsibility to ensure nothing goes wrong with the people we photograph. We’re nothing without them”
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Anjali was 16 when she left the home she shared with her family in a makeshift dwelling in Siliguri, West Bengal, dressed in a new salwar kameez. She believed she was headed for a happily married life with her boyfriend, a young man she had met at the factory where she worked, having dropped out of school at the age of 13. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Together with another man, the boyfriend took Anjali to the port city of Haldia and sold her to a brothel where she was enslaved, held captive, beaten, and raped up to 20 times a day, before eventually being rescued. Photojournalist Smita Sharma met Anjali while working on ‘Stolen lives’, a story about sex trafficking in India and Bangladesh published in 2020 by National Geographic. Three years earlier Sharma had begun We Cry in Silence, a personal project on the topic which in April 2021 won her the Amnesty Media Award for photojournalism. Due to the hidden nature of trafficking, it is difficult to say with certainty how many children are affected. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Global Report on Trafficking in Persons estimates that 25,000 children were trafficked in 2016. The true figure may be much higher. In Anjali’s home state of West Bengal, 8,178 children were reported missing in 2017, according to data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau. In Sharma’s portrait, Anjali’s face is hidden in strong shadows. Anjali is not her real name. India has strict laws that prevent the victims of sexual crimes and their families from being identified. But for Sharma, protecting her subjects – often vulnerable women and children – is far more than a legal obligation. It is an ethical principle that runs to the core of everything she does. “At the end of the day it’s about your conscience,” Sharma explains over the phone from Delhi. “Photography is powerful. And as image-makers, as storytellers, it is our responsibility to ensure nothing goes wrong with the people we photograph. We’re nothing without them.” Sharma, a 2021 TED Fellow, documents hard-hitting stories across the global south for National Geographic, TIME, Human Rights Watch and others. Her subjects include child marriage in Nepal, sexual slavery in the Central African Republic, young mothers barred from education in Kenya, and commercial surrogacy in India. Her interest in under-reported human rights issues can be traced back to her childhood in Shillong, northeast India. “While I was growing up in the 1980s and 90s there was a lot of racial violence and tension in the region which never made the national headlines,” she says. “This whole area is really beautiful – mountainous, with many fine trees, 510
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Right From the series Stolen Lives. M, now 18, waits for a train with her cousin in South 24 Parganas, a largely poor district in West Bengal with a high incidence of trafficking. A man M met in a class sold her to a brothel in Delhi. She managed to call her father and was rescued by police with help from the nonprofit organisation Shakti Vahini. “This incident is a dark episode in my life,” M says. “When I came home, I was scared and ashamed. But I am not afraid any more.”
Previous pages From the series Stolen Lives. A, who is now 19, eloped with a man several years ago. After she overheard him making plans to sell her to a brothel in Kolkata, she managed to escape. She was found at the railway station in Canning, West Bengal, by representatives of Childline, an organisation that helps children in distress. She was then taken to a shelter where she was counselled by mental health experts. A few months later she was reunited with her family.
Smita Sharman, 2 Left From the series Stolen Lives. Anjali was 16 when she became involved with a man who enticed her to run away from her home in Siliguri, a city in India’s West Bengal state, with the promise of marriage. Instead, he and an accomplice sold her to a brothel in Mahishadal, near Haldia, an industrial town in West Bengal. She was forced to have sex up to 20 times a day until she was rescued. For a year and a half, she lived at a shelter among girls who she said understood her anguish. Now an adult, she’s living at home with her mother, who would like her to marry, but Anjali vows not to fall in love again. “I feel extremely lonely,” she says. “I miss my friends at the shelter.”
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Right From the series Not My Shame. Mansi, 13, was trafficked by a man from her neighbouring village in northern Uttar Pradesh in 2012. She was raped by her trafficker close to a railway station in Maharashtra. The man belongs to an upper caste and has significant financial influence. Mansi escaped before he could sell her to a brothel and reported the incident to the railway police. Instead of any action being taken, Mansi was held in custody for 12 days while the perpetrator and his influential family tried to coerce her to retract her complaint.
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Right From the series Not My Shame. A view of Priya's room. Priya was gang raped and choked to death at the Delhi-Haryana border. Priya, 24, was on her way home from her office when she was gagged by two men from her neighbourhood and taken to an under-construction site. Schoolchildren found her body two days later in a semi-naked condition.
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Below From the series Not My Shame. Relatives console Ruksana Bibi outside the Burn Ward of the Kabir Chaura Hospital in Varanasi. Ruksana’s daughter Shama, 20, was attacked by three men who tried to rape her when she had gone out to fetch water. Shama put up a brave fight. The men, unable to rape her, doused her in kerosene and set her on fire. Shama died a week later.
“There was this vacuum whereby the girls were nameless victims, and their experiences were not represented – we never heard what they felt” waterfalls and meadows. Shillong is known as the ‘Scotland of the East’. But this region was neglected by the Indian government because there was no major industry or development there.” Sharma started taking pictures as a teenager when her father gave her an analogue SLR but, initially, a career in photography wasn’t on the agenda. “My father told me ‘Photography is for rich people. You’re not a rich man’s daughter. Try journalism.’” Studying journalism at Pune University, she continued taking pictures as a hobby. “It gave me an excuse to meet new people and just talk to them. The camera opens up a window for you to peek through.” On graduating she worked in advertising and event management before landing a job at an English language daily newspaper. Her role didn’t involve
much reporting so, stuck on the news desk, she’d spend spare moments immersed in newswire images wishing it were her out there behind the lens. After six frustrating years Sharma took the plunge and went to New York to study on a three-month course in photography, before being accepted on the prestigious photojournalism and documentary photography programme at the International Center of Photography. Her final project, about competitive dog shows, was a world away from the work she does now. “It was quirky, a satire on a subculture, but there was an element of sadness too,” she says. In December 2014, she returned to India to begin Not My Shame, a major personal project on sexual violence. “Unfortunately there are thousands of girls and women who have to go through it. And I felt there was this vacuum SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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whereby the girls were nameless victims, and their experiences were not represented – we never heard what they felt, what they went through, their hopes.” Initially she contacted nonprofit organisations and lawyers specialising in this area, but she would also connect with people in less obvious ways – waiting for hours at state hospital emergency departments until a rape survivor came in. “Sometimes you would see this girl who was completely broken. You could tell that she had gone through something horrific,” she recalls. In these situations she would never bring a camera, she would simply start a conversation. “It was about building a relationship,” she says. “It’s scary for a girl who has been raped and brought to a hospital. Often the police aren’t very sensitive, and I didn’t want to put them into any further kind of trauma. I’m not that kind of photographer.” Following that first encounter Sharma would spend time getting to know the families before taking any pictures. “When something like this happens, a lot of ostracisation and stigma is attached to the girl and her family,” says Sharma. “I’d share who I am and why I was there – because there are so many girls who undergo this kind of violence and nothing really happens to the perpetrator.”
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Right From the series They Said We Are Their Slaves, on assignment for Human Rights Watch. Josephine, 28, was attacked by three Anti-balaka men during the conflict in Bangui, Central African Republic, in October 2014. They took her to a compound and raped her with a broken beer bottle. Her husband called her “a wife of the Anti-balaka” after the rape and left her. Josephine has suffered from constant headaches since the attack, and is haunted by memories of what happened to her. The predominantly Muslim Séléka and the largely Christian militia known as Anti-balaka are the two main parties in this conflict; both systematically used rape and sexual slavery as an instrument of war during the five years of the conflict.
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When visiting families, she would go to great lengths to avoid attention. Although she would dress simply it was obvious Sharma was from the city so sometimes she would tell people she was a researcher into female hygiene. “The men would be so embarrassed that they’d leave me alone. The women would give me tea and I’d sit and chat with them until they got bored of me. That’s when my real work began. The family knew there’d be no gossip about them as I’d been to 10 different houses already, so everyone in the village just assumed that I’d gone to theirs to talk about menstruation.” Each situation has its own unique sensitivities. Some of the adult sex workers Sharma photographed for Stolen Lives, who had been trafficked years ago as children, were comfortable showing their faces, for example. But while on assignment for Human Rights Watch in the Central African Republic, Sharma put into practice a policy of maintaining the subject’s anonymity that she’d agreed with her editor prior to travelling. “You are in a country in a civil war,” she says. “The women who come forward have been so brave to share their stories. You have to be mindful about things that might happen later, not just while you’re photographing them. Is there anything we’re doing that might damage their future?”
Right From the series They Said We Are Their Slaves, on assignment for Human Rights Watch. Arlette, around 60 years old, was returning from her fields with two of her sons when fighting erupted near Mbres, Central African Republic, in early 2014. As they reached their house, two Séléka fighters shot and killed Arlette’s sons, then aged 26 and 23, before one raped her. “He punched me in the jaw. I had a broken tooth. He threw me on the ground by force. He tore off my clothes and started to rape me,” Arlette says. The fighters set fire to her house, killing her ill husband who was trapped inside.
“You are in a country in a civil war. The women who come forward have been so brave to share their stories”
Left From the series They Said We Are Their Slaves, on assignment for Human Rights Watch. Angie, 27, with her child in Bangui, Central African Republic. Séléka fighters killed Angie's husband and parents and captured her in June 2014. They held her as a sex slave for nine months and raped her repeatedly. Angie became pregnant but still managed to escape. After initially struggling to accept her baby, Angie grew fond of the child.
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Above From the series Our Time to Sing and Play, on assignment for Human Rights Watch. Sarita Majhi, 17, with her five-month-old daughter Sumita at home in Malpur, Nepal. Sarita says she was not interested in her studies and eloped and married Shiva, 20, a labourer in Delhi, India. Right From the series Our Time to Sing and Play, on assignment for Human Rights Watch. Sharmila Gaine, 14, eloped and married Gakku Gaine, 18, and became pregnant. Sharmila now regrets her decision and doesn’t want to have a child.
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“I’d take small LED portable lights I could use to make shadows to hide their faces. Sometimes I’d use the window or other natural light and sometimes add a layer, for example a piece of fabric, or some kind of transparent sheet. Or I’d take a photograph through a water bottle. I used whatever was available. It was always like solving a visual puzzle.” Not all photographers are so conscientious and a debate has been ignited in recent years about the lack of ethics among some in the photojournalism industry. In 2017, DuckRabbit blogged that Magnum and LensCulture had used an image of a trafficked child being raped by a client to promote a competition. The image was by Souvid Datta, an award-winning British photographer who later admitted to manipulating his images by adding elements plagiarised from the work of other photographers, including Mary Ellen Mark. Three years later Magnum launched an internal review into their archive, the first in the agency’s history, prompted by allegations that it contained identifiable images of children who had been trafficked and abused. A 2018 investigation by CJR, meanwhile, uncovered a disturbing picture of widespread sexual harassment of young female photojournalists by their older male peers. There are guidelines for photojournalistic best practice such as the National Press Photographers Association’s Code of Ethics and, in the UK, the Editors’ Code of Practice. Even with the best intentions, though, in an overwhelmingly male, white and western-dominated industry there is often a chasm between photographer and subject.
The figures are stark – just 18% of the Association of Photographers’ accredited members are women, while advertising industry equality initiative Equal Lens found that less than 25% of the commercial photographers represented by 70 of the industry’s leading agents were female. “As journalists we have a responsibility and we can make an impact,” says Sharma, who is a member of Women Photograph and Diversify Photo, two organisations campaigning for a more inclusive image industry. “This is why we do the work we do. We want to engage people. We want to change mindsets, we want to keep a record of what’s happening.” Sharma is working on a We Cry in Silence book, to be published by Fotoevidence in 2022. As she looks to the future her focus remains firmly on social justice, gender and human rights. In contrast to others in her field, her work is proof that you don’t have to exploit and sensationalise in order to make an impact. Her images, of Anjali and others, reveal as they conceal. They are all the more powerful for their subtlety. Confronted with Anjali’s story and her youthful figure semisilhouetted against a peeling wall, the viewer is asked to identify with her unimaginable pain perhaps more keenly than if we could see her face. There is an empty space in the frame opened up by this absence that the audience is invited to fill with imagination and empathy. smitasharma.com
“As journalists we have a responsibility and we can make an impact. We want to engage people. We want to change mindsets”
Right From the series Our Time to Sing and Play, on assignment for Human Rights Watch. A girl plays in a public park in Patan. In Nepal, 37% of girls marry before the age of 18, and 10% are married by age 15. The minimum age of marriage under Nepali law is 20 years.
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‘PHOTOGRAPHERS DON’T GROW OLD. THEY JUST GROW OUT OF FOCUS’ She was friends with Cartier-Bresson, socialised with a young Princess Elizabeth and photographed Einstein. Marilyn Stafford remembers a century-spanning career that ranges from war to fashion WORDS: LUCY DAVIES IMAGES: MARILYN STAFFORD
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Model, Place Vendôme, Paris, 1950
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Models including Joanna Lumley at Jean Muir “Once I had established myself as a photographer on Fleet Street, I picked up quite a lot of fashion work – that’s what they used to give to women photographers at the time, fashion and portraits. One American newspaper sent me on a lot of fashion assignments, including this one for Jean Muir. Joanna Lumley is the model on the left. She was Muir’s star model at the time and I remember her as wonderfully caring.”
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Marilyn Stafford’s life reads like a draw-the-dots of 20th-century history. Dust Bowl midwest, postwar New York, 1950s Paris (where she hung out with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa), swinging 60s London (where she co-founded a photographic agency), African Independence, postcolonial India, the Arab-Israeli conflict. I’m exhausted just thinking about it all, but Stafford certainly isn’t. She worked until she was 80 years old and in 2017 decided to found an award for women documentary photographers, which she still co-judges. Now 96, she has recently raised more than £20,000 to publish a book of her best photographs, the planning for which, given that century-spanning, world-vaulting career of hers, “was a bit of a monumental task”, she admits. Today, Stafford lives on the West Sussex coast, not far from her daughter, Lina. Most days she likes to walk in her garden, but the wind is positively Wizard of Oz-like on the afternoon we speak, so she’s been inside supervising her cat, who tends to behave, she tells me, like a headstrong adolescent.
Stafford is sharp as a tack, her memory nimble, but she is losing her sight. Considering all that she has seen and how seeped her entire life has been in photography it seems a cruel fate, though when I ask if she is finding it hard, she brushes me off with an almost audible raising of her chin: “Photographers don’t grow old, they just grow out of focus – someone said that to me years ago and I remember thinking it was true. I still do.” Born in a leafy suburb on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1925, some of Stafford’s earliest memories are of leafing through the pages of her parents’ copies of LIFE magazine and “gleaning from it that something was not right in the world, even if I couldn’t have explained why in words”. LIFE, she now supposes, was also her “first introduction to photography, to storytelling, and I think because I was already always wanting to act up as a kid, the two combined in some way and subconsciously within me grew this need to tell stories”.
Her intuition concerning the world beyond her playroom only grew when “people began knocking on the door, selling awful tatty rags and scouring powders; people who had lost everything in the Depression and were just trying anything to earn a living.” As the 1930s advanced, the doorknockers began to include an increasing number of Jewish refugees, selling “very fine embroidered linen”. Stafford was old enough to go to the cinema by then, where the newsreels flickering on the screen confirmed her suspicions. What that prompted in her was rather magical: instead of feeling resigned to or crushed by what she saw, she took from it only “that terrible things happen, but good things can come out of it. I saw the changes that [President] Roosevelt was making with his Works Progress Administration – my father’s younger brother was given work on the roads, and that enabled him to go to university and become a doctor – and how theatres were being subsidised and how artists were being paid to go all over the US painting murals on the walls of
Indira Gandhi on tour in India, 1972 “I went to India in 1972 to do a story loosely titled ‘A day in the life of Indira Gandhi’, but when I arrived customs officers confiscated my camera film, thinking I was planning to sell it on the black market. Fortunately, Indira’s office got it back. During the drive from Mumbai to Delhi, where I was to meet her, she declared war on Pakistan, a 10-day conflict that led to the founding of Bangladesh. I met her on her plane after the war. She was on her way to Kashmir and a number of other places to visit her army and wounded soldiers. Later I photographed her at home with her family, too.”
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post offices and it was all to help people. It left in me this feeling that things could be made better.” These were the days when every family, rich or poor, had a Box Brownie, but although Stafford recalls attempting the odd snap, of family picnics and the like, initially she chose acting to find her way in life. Following a stint at a children’s theatre school in Ohio (the actor Paul Newman was a fellow alumnus), she studied drama at Wisconsin University, before heading to New York to pursue a career on Broadway. New York must have been exciting then, I say. “Not exciting, exactly, no,” she replies firmly. “More like a place in transition, and sort of controversial.” To help make ends meet she took a job assisting the American fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo (1921-2004), where, besides picking up pins and sweeping the floor, she learned to mix darkroom chemicals and process film. In 1947 someone gave her a hand-me-down Rolleiflex. Most of what she learned on it, though, was of little use on her first proper assignment the following year. In the car on the way to photograph Albert Einstein for a film that some friends of hers
were shooting in protest against atomic warfare, the director put an SLR in her hands and said, “‘This is what you’re going to use.’ I was shocked, terrified – I had never used one before. To be experimenting on the world’s greatest genius? But he was lovely.” By the time she accompanied a heartbroken friend on holiday to Paris in 1949, Stafford was photographing regularly, and smitten with the new voice that her camera gave her. It took only a few days in the French capital for her to understand “that I wanted to stay and have my say with my camera”. To pay for the rent on her small hotel room on the Left Bank, she sang in an ensemble at Chez Carrere, a dinner club off the Champs-Élysées. “It was very smart – the only place Princess Elizabeth was allowed to go when she came to Paris,” Stafford says. Stafford also met Eleanor Roosevelt, Noel Coward, Bing Crosby and Robert Capa there, plus, through a fellow singer in the ensemble, Edith Piaf. Stafford was part of a group that used to go back to Piaf’s house near the Bois de Boulogne for breakfast at the end of their shift.
“To be experimenting on the world’s greatest genius? He was lovely” PRODUCTION CLIENT
Edith Piaf, at home in Paris, 1950 “When I lived in Paris, I sang at a dinner club off the ChampsÉlysées, Chez Carrere. A young American who sang with us was earning money on the side translating English songs into French, and through that he got to know Edith Piaf. They became lovers, and she used to collect him every night after work. She had just bought a huge house in the Bois de Boulogne, and seven or eight of us would go there for breakfast after the clubs closed. Back then I was thinking like a singer rather than a photographer, but one day we were having tea at the Grand Hotel in Paris and I asked her if I could take her picture. She was a remarkable lady.”
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Albert Einstein, 1948 “Einstein met us at the door wearing very casual clothes and took us into his lounge. As we were setting up, he asked the director how many feet of film went through the 16mm camera per second, and when the director explained, Einstein said: ‘Thank you very much; now I understand.’ I thought that was pretty good – very humble. I have never tolerated people who think they know better than other people.”
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Baalbek, Lebanon, 1960 “I spent some time in Lebanon in 1959. It was an interesting time because the Lebanese Civil War of 1958 had ended, and people were hopeful for a new era of peace. A publisher invited me to make a book of photographs that he wanted to sell to tourists, and I travelled all over the country making pictures. I thought this landscape of the ancient city of Baalbek showed the feel of that new peace. In the end, the publisher refused to print the book because he said it wasn’t westernised enough; no good for the tourist market. It took quite a few years for it to get published.”
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PROFILE
Marilyn Stafford She had planned to be an actress and singer, but Marilyn Stafford, born in Cleveland in 1925, fell into photography. Between roles she assisted US fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo, though it was a 1947 portrait of Albert Einstein that got her noticed. Mentored by Cartier-Bresson, she later earned her own reputation as a photojournalist. In 2017 she set up the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award, honouring women documentary photographers.
Stafford met Cartier-Bresson through the Indian writer Mulk Raj Anand, who was, she says, her most ardent champion. “I was always shy about photography, and [Anand] would always say that’s a beautiful picture, blow it up.” Cartier-Bresson, too, took Stafford under his wing, and would often invite her along when he was out photographing. “I was a decoy of sorts because people would look at me when I was next to him. Not that he needed it. He was a good teacher because he would never say ‘do this’ or ‘do that’. Instead he would look at my photographs and suggest, ‘if you did this, this is the feeling you would get’.” It was Cartier-Bresson who sent the pictures that Stafford took in 1958, of an Algerian refugee during the African country’s fight for independence from France, to the Observer newspaper in London. They published it on their front page, launching her career in photojournalism. She was five months pregnant with Lina at the time. With her husband, Robin, a British foreign correspondent, Stafford moved to Rome and then Lebanon and then back to New York, photographing everywhere she went. When Robin was posted to Moscow the pair decided that, given the escalating Cold War, it wasn’t safe for her to come too. Plus, she says, the marriage had not been happy for a while, so they separated and Stafford took Lina to London with her, where she had friends. Fleet Street in the mid 60s was resolutely a man’s world. Only a handful of women were working there at the time, but there was little camaraderie among them, says Stafford, and it was incredibly difficult to find and maintain work. Fortunately her friend, the Hungarian-British photojournalist Michael Peto, stepped up. “He was beyond generous. He opened doors for me with a lot of newspapers, and even turned over some of the work he was doing for them to me.” SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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Ready-to-wear, Montmartre, Paris, 1950
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“I was battling this business of au pairs, jobs, a teenage child. It was hard. But I was never a fashionista” Because Stafford had experience in fashion (besides assisting Scavullo in New York, she had worked for the American photographer Gene Fenn in 1950s Paris) she immediately spotted a gap in the market. With the French photographer Michel Arnaud, she set up an agency that covered the biannual round of haute couture and ready-towear fashion shows in New York, London, Paris and Milan. “It was what kept me alive,” says Stafford. “I was battling this business of au pairs, jobs, a teenage child. It was hard. But I was never a fashionista. I admire the design, the fabric. I have an enormous admiration for the work that goes into it, but I never liked the industry. I didn’t want to be a fashion photographer, but it allowed 526
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me to make the kinds of documentary photographs I wanted to make.” It was her experience on Fleet Street, and her struggle as a single mother who needed to drop everything to pursue a story, that inspired her to establish the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award. “Women are traditionally the ones who take care of the children – how do you do that and still go out and be a photographer, a foreign correspondent? It’s a constant battle, and one that I hope won’t always be as hard.” Isadora Romero is the recipient of the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award 2021. See Talent, page 471
Algerian refugee, 1958 “Four years into Algeria’s fight for independence from France, the French strafed a Tunisian town near the Algerian border. A lot of people had been escaping over that border, and the 80 dead included women and children, as well as injured soldiers in a Red Cross hospital. It caused an international outcry. I travelled down there from Paris, and made contact with the liberation army, who took me in a bus to the border, where I took as many pictures as I could. I was five months pregnant at the time, and this picture, of an Algerian mother holding her baby, is particularly important to me.”
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Li Huaifeng, China ‘TASTE’ ART
A family in Licheng, Shanxi Province, prepare food. This evocative image won the overall prize and Food for the Family category.
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FOOD FOR THOUGHT A taster of the 10th anniversary Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year exhibition at RPS Gallery INTERVIEW: JENNIFER CONSTABLE
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It’s a scene that’s replicated in homes across the globe – a family gathers to share in the joy of food. This scene, though, is particularly special. ‘Taste’, by Li Huaifeng, was taken during a visit to the village of Licheng, China. It has been named overall winner in the 10th Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year Awards, as well as winner of the Food for the Family category. “The intention of this image is to evoke love and close ties of kinship,” says Li Huaifeng. “The family gathered
to make dumplings, a symbol of unity in Chinese food culture. People regard food as their heaven.” Li Huaifeng also won the Food for Celebration category with his picture ‘Happy birthday’. Caroline Kenyon, director and founder of the Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year Awards, describes ‘Taste’ as “technically outstanding in its use of light and composition”, adding: “But what raises it to the level of historic importance is the depth of
its storytelling and emotion. An exceptional shot which perfectly demonstrates that photography need not shock or disturb to be great or memorable, this exquisite image lingers in the mind.” You can see ‘Taste’ along with all the other winning images in the Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 10th anniversary exhibition at RPS Gallery, Bristol, 20 November to 12 December 2021. rps.org/food SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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Harry Williams, UK ‘FARMER WITH HIS LONGHORN CATTLE’
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This image of a farmer on horseback tending his rare breed longhorn cattle won the category Food in the Field.
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Marina Spironetti, Italy ‘FEMALE BUTCHERS OF PANZANO – MARTINA’
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Thong Nguyen, Vietnam ‘BREAKFAST AT WEEKLY MARKET’
People enjoy their pho – beef or chicken noodles – for breakfast at a weekly market. This image won first place in the Food at the Table category.
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F Dilek Uyar, Turkey ‘DRYING OKRA’
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Women in Tokat, Turkey, pick okra flowers and arrange them on a rope. After the dried flowers fall the okra is ready to be used during winter. This image won the Bring Home the Harvest category.
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Above
Sarah Blandford, UK ‘BEETROOT STILL LIFE’
Sarah Blandford was named Student Food Photographer of the Year in a category supported by the RPS for this image of homegrown beetroot ready for cooking in a copper pan.
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OPEN UNIVERSITY COURSES SUPPORTED BY THE RPS DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY: CREATING AND SHARING BETTER IMAGES
DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY: DISCOVER YOUR GENRE AND DEVELOP YOUR STYLE
Available worldwide for £200 Course starts 16 October. Register now OU course code: TG089
Available worldwide for £450 Course starts 25 October. Register now OU course code: TZFM201
This 10-week course for beginners to intermediate level provides a general foundation for anyone intending to tackle the Licentiate Distinction.
This microcredential is aimed at competent photographers who have mastered the technical basics of photography and wish to develop their creativity, knowledge and skills. Although not suitable for beginners, the course is an ideal next step for those who have completed Digital Photography: Creating and Sharing Better Images (TG089).
On successful completion each course will lead to an RPS certificate in digital photography*
For full details see rps.org/openuni * The certificate is available to non-members for a small fee
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OF THE BEST SOCIETY EVENTS
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PRESENTING THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY COLLECTION Tue 7 Sep, 6-7pm Continuing the RPS Historical Group’s series of online talks looking at photography collections and archives, Special Collections Curator Anne Anderton discusses the establishment of the visual collections at The John Rylands Research Institute and Library. Free online via Zoom
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‘BY THE SEA’ WITH ROBERT HARVEY ARPS Sun 12 Sep, 10.30am-1pm The Western Region will be hosting landscape photographer Robert Harvey ARPS as he talks about photographing the spectacular wild edge of Britain, including beaches, cliffs, sea stacks and lighthouses. Free online via Zoom
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4 ‘Out of the dark’ by Alfie Bowen
NATURAL TALENT
GO TO rps.org/whats-on for the latest updates
Meet an accomplished young photographer who has been drawn to wildlife since childhood
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Driven by sharp attention to detail and a determination to overcome preconceptions about autism, photographer Alfie Bowen has been making pictures since he was given his first DSLR in 2015. The 23-year-old is an accomplished wildlife photographer whose work is commended by such broadcasters and conservationists as Sir David Attenborough and Chris Packham.
On 11 September, Bowen will present a screening of his short film An Eye for Detail at RPS House, followed by a conversation about his photographic journey, experience of autism and debut book Wild World. Alfie Bowen: Autism and my Wildlife photography is at RPS Gallery, Bristol, 11 September, 3-4.30pm. The event is free but ticketed. rps.org/alfiebowen
PELT PHOTO FESTIVAL Sat 18-Sun 19 Sep Notenlaan 10, Pelt, 3900 Join the RPS Benelux Chapter as they partner with the Pelt Photo Festival to share an annual exhibition of members’ work. The Chapter will help judge one of the main exhibitions, and members’ work will be on display on the streets around Pelt.
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KIERAN DODDS – NONFICTION/ENVIRONMENT Wed 6 Oct, 8-9pm The Scotland Region invite nonfiction photographer Kieran Dodds, recipient of the 2015 RPS/TPA Environmental Bursary, to talk about his photography. Dodds’ work focuses on the interplay of environment and culture, and traces global events through daily lives. Free online via Zoom
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ANDREA HARGREAVES: THE ART OF METAMORPHOSIS II Sat 27 Nov, 3pm Self-taught photographer and digital artist Andrea Hargreaves joins the Creative Eye Group to give an insight into her creative journey and how her Valkyrie series came to life. She will explain how she built up her Photoshop skills, and share with us some of her favourite characters. Free online via Zoom
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Enjoy the results of the bimonthly online members’ competition, themed ‘Photography for everyone’
NEXT COMPETITION
Submit your photography on the open theme ‘Progress’ by 14 September 2021 at exposure.rps.org for the chance to be published in the RPS Journal, and showcased on our social media platforms and website
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WINNER
Sailing by Spyros Gennatas LRPS
In between the first two waves of the Covid-19 pandemic, we managed to visit the otherworldly Faroe Islands. This was a much-needed break, as working for the NHS as a medical consultant had been, and carried on being, quite intense.
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Photography has always been a means of escaping and looking at the world in a different way, whether it is the shooting of pictures or the post-processing. It goes without saying that this was an excellent opportunity to do both at a much-needed time.
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This particular image was shot while on a passenger ferry; the unusual window frame, the curtain matching the hills in the background and the battling waves – how could I resist? I took a single shot. Working for the NHS hadn’t broken me.
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Benedict Brain ARPS on ‘Sailing’ A UK-based photographer and journalist, Benedict Brain ARPS practises fine art and commercial photography. He leads the RPS workshop series Monsters, Myths and Metaphors from 2 September. rps.org/monsters-myths-02sep “There is a wonderful sense of place that oozes out of this image. I get a real feel for the vibe of the moment. I can smell the salty sea air mixed with the interior scent of an old boat. “I love the way this image captures a spirit of place. In a photographic world saturated with chocolate-box landscapes chasing kudos and likes on social, it’s wonderful to see an image that speaks on a more intimate level.
“The photographer’s approach reminds me of Robert Adams’s thoughts on what makes a good landscape image. ‘Landscape pictures can offer us, I think, three verities – geography, autobiography, and metaphor,’ says Adams in his book Beauty in Photography. ‘Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring, autobiography is frequently trivial, and metaphor can be dubious. But taken together …
the three kinds of information strengthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact – an affection for life.’ “There are aspects to the way the photographer has approached this scene that speak to Adams’s trio of verities and the three elements have come together artfully. The clever use of considered, formal framing using the window and a hint of curtain
creates a wonderful, theatrical tableau for the scene to unfold. The texture of the dirty window also adds to the narrative and provides a rich textural layer. The simple vista with the horizon in the middle of the frame helps create a sense of meditative calm for the viewer to contemplate. And finally, the handling of the tones and the subtle, near monochromatic hues are the icing on the cake.”
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Reach out by Anila Hussain
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This year’s RPS Annual General Meeting promises to be a day of discovery
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Members from across the globe will be welcomed to the RPS Annual General Meeting for the first time. And joining in the adventure on 25 September will be as simple as the click of a mouse. The AGM, titled In Focus, will be hosted at RPS House, Bristol, and online via Zoom. The results of voting for the new Trustees will be revealed in the opening stage of the meeting, beginning at 10am BST and open to members only. From 11.45am BST the AGM will be open to all, and will feature international speakers including fine art photographer Len Metcalf and David Tay FRPS, president of the Photographic Society of Singapore. Award-winning landscape photographer Paul Sanders will share his thoughts on mindfulness through image-making. Sanders was picture editor at the Times for seven years before anxiety and depression led him to leave newspapers in
2011 so he could reconnect with his love of nature and photography. He now runs photographic workshops and retreats promoting mental health. The RPS Distinctions team will introduce the new Photobook genre, while Tim Daly, an author and a lecturer at the University of Chester, will explain why photography should be a tactile experience. Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS will discuss the exhibition Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors, on view at the Imperial War Museum, London, and organised with the RPS, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and Jewish News. Closing the day, CEO of the RPS Evan Dawson will give an insight into the Society’s Photography for Everyone strategy. For details of In Focus and to book your ticket rps.org/rpsinfocus
‘Macedonia’ by Paul Sanders
‘Loch Etive’ by Paul Sanders
‘Bassenthwaite’ by Paul Sanders
Notice of the Annual General Meeting of The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain Notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of the Society will be held at RPS House, 337 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR on Saturday 25 September 2021 at 10am BST.
The business of the meeting will be: • to receive the minutes of the 2020 Annual General Meeting • to approve the Trustees’ report and accounts for the year ended 31 December 2020 • to authorise the Board of The Royal Photographic
Society of Great Britain to appoint and to agree a fee for the Society auditors • to receive the results of the 2021 Board of Trustee elections 2020 • to vote on any qualifying motions All documentation relating to the above,
along with a platform for casting your votes in the council elections and appointing a proxy for the AGM, may be found at mi-vote.com/rps/ If you would like to register for postal communication, or have any questions relating to voting or
the appointment of a proxy, please contact the appointed agent, Mi-Voice, by email: support@mi-voice.com Further information can be found at rps.org/agm-2021 By Order of the Trustees
The Royal Society of Great Britain is a company registered in England and Wales No RC000798 and a Registered Charity No 1107831. The registered office of The Royal Photographic Society is RPS House, 337 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR.
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SIMON HILL HonFRPS President, The Royal Photographic Society
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A Board of Trustees to deliver a new and reimagined RPS
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Only a few days remain for you to vote in the election for the six Trustees who will begin the formation of our new Board. You have until the end of August to decide which candidates offer the skills and experience best suited to the governance of our Society. The results of the election will be announced at our AGM on 25 September. The new Elected Trustees, working with our Nominations Committee, must then recruit four Appointed Trustees. With the incumbent President and Treasurer, and the six Elected Trustees, this will bring the Board to its full strength of 12 Trustees. In September 2019 I was elected as a Trustee for a two-year term. I had no idea that eight months later I would become President Elect and a further eight months later would be installed as President and Chair of Trustees. With this new Board, I am determined to bring positive and sustainable change to the way we work and to the quality of governance we provide.
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I look forward to continuing this journey with our new Trustees, as a team of equals; combining our skills and experience to collectively deliver the necessary change, while leaving behind the turbulence of the recent past. A few weeks ago, at a meeting with RPS staff, I was asked to describe my ‘vision’ for the Society. I explained that my ‘ambition’ – rather than my vision – is for the Board to facilitate delivery, at pace, of our strategic plan. My ‘vision’ is far more ambitious: I want to see the emergence of a new and completely reimagined RPS that will better fulfil its charitable objectives while at the same time provide greater opportunities to a more diverse, inclusive and international membership. To achieve and sustain this ambition, we need Trustees who will sacrifice personal ambition and work selflessly for the benefit of the Society of which we are all proud to be a member.
Desmond Groves FRPS (1925-2021)
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rps.org/about/president-news
PHOTOGRAPHS SUPPLIED BY THE CANDIDATES
“I look forward to combining our skills and experience to collectively deliver the necessary change”
Clockwise from top left: Trustee candidates Nicola Bolton ARPS, Gavin Bowyer ARPS, Dr Avijit Datta ASIS FRPS, Sarah J Dow ARPS, Steve Jupp LRPS, Dr Peter Walmsley LRPS, Professor Bob Ryan FRPS, Sir Brian Pomeroy CBE ARPS, Mervyn Mitchell ARPS, Andy Golding ASICI FRPS. Central image by Derryn Vranch
Desmond William Groves FRPS, who has died aged 95 at home in the Lake District, was a Fellow of the RPS and from the late 1950s to the 1980s one of the UK’s leading portrait photographers, specialising in child portraiture. He studied photography after leaving school and practised advertising, theatrical and fashion photography. Portraiture was his main passion and he opened a studio in Wilmslow. For a time he also shared a studio in London with Walter Bird FRPS. In 1968 he set up a studio in Harrods. He photographed the Queen in 1971 and his portraits were featured on British stamps. His work was regularly used by Kodak and other companies to promote their products. Desmond joined the RPS in 1954, gaining his Associate in 1957 and Fellowship in 1959. A show of his work was held at the RPS in 1965. He was chair of the RPS Distinctions panel for Portraiture, and lectured widely on portraiture. In 1992 he was awarded a Fenton Medal. He retired the same year. Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS and Michael Frost FRPS
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Learn from a Landscape success, and follow a journey from Licentiate to Fellowship
I started [photographing] in the early 1980s with a film camera but that fell away. I got back into it around 2006 when my oldest son took up freestyle snowboarding and it quickly became an obsession. I became that guy with the camera. They closed the ski slope and I drifted for a while, settling on extended exposures, then refined that into urban landscapes.
Some say you should write your Distinctions statement of intent and shoot to the brief. With Covid-19, shooting anything was a challenge so in my case, the statement of intent and the body of work worked with each other to create my submission. I already had many photographs with extended exposures, ranging from 30 seconds through to four-plus minutes in my collection.
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
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
FELLOWSHIP (FRPS)
Requires a body of work of distinctive ability and excellence, plus a written statement of intent
“The noise, traffic, lights, speed, congestion, rushing movement and more all combine to overwhelm the senses”
Opposite ‘Buildings in conversation’ Above ‘Trafalgar Square, Christmas’
With this body of work, I was able to create a balanced portfolio and, believe me, that was the hardest part. I’m used to creating single pieces for club competitions and salons but balancing a portfolio was a whole other ball game. I thought I had enough from this general selection of my London long exposure work, but when I was creating the submission I realised I needed to go out and shoot a couple of additional
photos to fill some gaps. I did that on my summer holiday in August 2020. As to why extended exposure and London, I think it’s more to do with what we are used to seeing with the city. The noise, traffic, lights, speed, congestion, rushing movement and more all combine to overwhelm the senses. I wanted to distil that – extract the movement from the surroundings, and focus on the buildings and the light. SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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WHAT ARE RPS DISTINCTIONS?
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WHY THIS PORTFOLIO WORKS Tony Worobiec FRPS As a newly created Landscape assessment panel, with its own clearly defined assessment criteria, there was a palpable sense of joy when viewing Paul Parkinson’s exemplary set of images. His submission was balanced and holistic, yet each image was unique,
Above ‘The Big Easy’ Opposite ‘Fairground reactor’
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visually interesting and aesthetically appealing. From a technical standpoint it was recognised that ‘cross-over lighting’ will always be a challenge, but Paul dealt with this quite superbly. Most impressive, however, was his willingness to familiarise himself with an area and, photographically speaking, make it his own.
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Below ‘Shard in blue’ Opposite ‘Millennium Bridge’
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“The normal flow of water stops, and it becomes a mirror, reflecting the lights and structures surrounding it”
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Statement of intent Our impressions of London are usually tarnished by comments about its speed and the hustle and bustle of city life. This panel seeks to show how, through extended exposures, a different London emerges. It is still a city of activity and movement but a usually unseen movement – on land, in the air and on water. There is motion in the clouds; in steam from air conditioning units; the faint impressions
aircraft leave in the sky and occasionally, very occasionally, a human being stops long enough to be recognised by the camera. However, with the River Thames and other bodies of water, the opposite happens. The normal flow of water stops, and it becomes a mirror, reflecting the lights and structures surrounding it. We see London differently in this way and an unseen tranquillity emerges through the stretching of time.
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A JOURNEY IN LAYERS
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She has gone from Licentiate to Fellowship and on to Distinctions assessor in nine years. Viveca Koh tells Jennifer Constable how she hopes her path will inspire others
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Fellowship and panel assessor Viveca Koh FRPS
How does photography fit into your life? Photography has always been in my life. I had access to a camera from a young age, first playing with my mum’s Box Brownie. I was around seven when I started to take photos on a Kodak Instamatic – little square snaps with white borders which I would organise in plastic sleeved albums of the same size. I remember my impatience waiting for developed photos to arrive in the post, running to the letterbox when I heard it clatter and experiencing extreme disappointment if the much-
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awaited packet of photos was not there. I purchased my first 35mm SLR when I left school – a secondhand Pentax K1000. I used to shoot mainly transparencies and grainy monochromes using a high ISO film. I later changed to an Olympus OM-4 Ti with spot metering, which really helped me understand light metering and exposure. In 2009 I bought a digital camera – a full frame Nikon D700 – and this is when photography really took off for me as I began sharing my images on Flickr, which opened
Below ‘The trick is to keep breathing’, 2010 Opposite above ‘No echo’, 2013 Opposite below ‘The princess’, 2013
up my work to a huge audience. I was receiving so many positive comments, after years of only family and a few friends seeing my photos. It was inspirational. What motivated you to begin your Distinctions journey? I had been aware of the RPS for many years but had never considered my photos might be of the standard for any Distinction. The feedback I’d had via Flickr made me consider the possibility, so after building up a reasonable collection of images shot in derelict buildings, particularly asylums, I put together 10 photos for a possible Licentiate submission and went along to an advisory day. I received feedback from three venerable Fellows – Richard Walton, Bill Wisden and Trevor Gellard – all of whom were extremely complimentary. I was given an application form for Associate, with the implication that I was already shooting at this level, but I wanted to start with the Licentiate and see where that led me. What draws you to fine art photography? I studied art at A-level, followed by Foundation at the then St Martin’s School of Art, and thought I wanted to become an illustrator. A crippling depression in my late teens and 20s put paid to all of that. I was to discover I’m a far better photographer than I ever was a painter, but that artistic eye has helped. My mum was a painter and I have been surrounded by art all my life, so I feel that has influenced my seeing and appreciation for the visual. What was the inspiration behind your Fellowship portfolio? This came from Star Blossom, a book of poetry and prose written by my uncle Fergus Chadwick. His words easily SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
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conjure pictures in my mind, so I began to create photo illustrations for the book and self-published it. I enjoyed the project so much I decided to create a second, larger book. At some point the idea came to me that this was potentially a Fellowship submission, and the Society allowed books to be entered for assessment. As the images would not have come into being without my uncle’s words I felt a book would be the perfect format to present the work, so the assessors could read the poems in tandem with looking at my illustrations.
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Which image best represents you as a photographer? One image immediately springs to mind, because it is quite striking, but it really represents who I was as a photographer rather than who I am now. It’s called ‘The trick is to keep breathing’ [see page 550], and I created it to try and show what depression felt like. Thankfully I have been free of deep depression for years so no longer identify with that aspect of the image, but it is hard to think of an alternative which represents me now.
CLIENT
How do you use technology to help create your images? I started learning Photoshop in 2000 and discovered the creative possibilities of layering images one on top of the other. Over time my techniques have become more sophisticated, as has the software, and when using a pen and graphics tablet it feels as if I am ‘painting with photographs’. In Photoshop I stack photographs and textures I’ve shot one on top of each other, and use layer masks to select parts of each of them to create the final blend. I went through a phase of only using my iPhone camera, while my Nikon languished in the camera bag, and found this to be a creative tool because it was so quick and immediate 552
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Opposite above ‘Sleeping avenue’, 2012 Opposite below ‘Shop window’, 2012 Above ‘Such tiny feet’, 2009
compared to manual camera settings. I especially enjoyed being able to shoot photographs in square format, to compose within the square at the time and not have to crop them after in post-production. Maybe it goes back to my childhood and love of those square Kodak prints, but the 1:1 aspect ratio is always a favourite I return to constantly. The phone is ‘the camera you always have with you’, and therefore I was able to capture many moments that I would have missed had I been relying solely on my DSLR. I liked the fact I could edit photos on the phone and upload them immediately to Instagram, my new choice of online platform.
What has been most challenging about your Distinctions journey? There was a lot of waiting involved at Fellowship level, as attaining the Distinction was a three-stage process. The assessments were held in-camera during October 2013, so I had to wait anxiously for an email the following day advising me of the result. I was pleased to be recommended by the Visual Art panel, but the work had to go to the Fellowship Board for consideration. The Board sat a month later, and my book submission failed to meet the criteria. It was felt not all of the 52 images within were of Fellowship standard, and the printing in the book
was not of high enough quality. At the time, one also had to submit three mounted prints, and these were perceived to be much better and meeting the standard. With hindsight I can see that the image quality in the book lacked the vibrancy and clarity of the prints. It was suggested that I choose the 20 best images from the book and resubmit them as prints. I was offered a one-toone session with a member of the Fellowship Board, to discuss the way forward. My work was re-assessed by the Board in May 2014, and while I was nervously waiting to hear the outcome, I received an email asking me to send the
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Left ‘Play it again Sam’, 2010
ART
Right ‘Shoes and stockings’, 2010 Below ‘Kill or cure’, 2010
PRODUCTION
Opposite ‘Smash me and laugh in my face’, 2009
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original files for four of my images, complete with all Photoshop layers. The Board were querying a couple of composited items and textures used, and wanted to ensure all elements were my own work. After an agonising further two-and-a-half weeks of waiting and hoping, my resubmission of prints was successful and I was officially a Fellow of the RPS. How does it feel to make the step from Distinctions candidate to assessor? If anyone had told me back in 2010, when I attained my Licentiate, I would be an assessor for the same Distinction nine years later I would have dismissed the idea as impossible. But having come through all three Distinctions in four years I can understand the effort and passion that goes into a submission. It was a tremendous honour to be invited to be an assessor, and I accepted with alacrity and a small amount of trepidation. To begin with it was incredibly nerve-racking being asked to stand up and assess
the work in a room vibrating with tense silence, and it was quite likely the applicant would be present and hanging on to my every word but, as with everything, it became easier with practice. Unfortunately, not everyone will meet the criteria and be successful, but we all want to help the applicants and encourage them to make some changes and have another go. It’s especially gratifying to see a resubmitted panel where the applicant has taken on board all the written feedback and come back with a stronger collection of images which then goes on to be successful. What’s next on your photographic journey? I am planning to submit another Fellowship application at some point, in a completely different genre. It’s good to push outside one’s comfort zone and one never stops learning with photography. My main aim is to always be taking photographs – to keep seeing with an open mind.
DISCOVER more about the Distinctions one-to-one portfolio review service at rps.org/advice
vivecakohphotography.com
Distinctions successes Congratulations to these RPS members LRPS JUNE 2021 Marilyn Adams, Bristol Simon Baker, West Sussex Gordon Bishop, Oxfordshire Jason Bunce, Surrey Elaine Butler, Ireland Jacky Chu, Hong Kong A C Elliot, Cornwall Martin Gray, Channel Isles Anne Haile, Derbyshire Sabrina Hopkinson, Shropshire Rebecca Johnson, Nottinghamshire Bernice Kelly, Cornwall Clare Kersley, East Sussex David King, Dorset Steven Mackay, Kirkaldy Harriet Morris, Devon
Adil Pastakia, Middlesex John Peters, West Sussex Robert Prenton Jones, Clwyd Nigel Puttick, Cleveland David Rippin, Cumbria Alison Sackett, Somerset Ben Taylor, Norfolk Thinesh Thirugnanasampanthar, Surrey Mark Wardle, Gloucester David Wilson, London ARPS DOCUMENTARY JUNE 2021 Natalie Foster, Isle of Wight Nicol Hockett, Virginia USA Maggie Jary, Berwick-upon-Tweed Edward Lai, Hong Kong
Katherine Maguire, Noord-Holland Julie McGuire, Marshall USA Carol Paes, Channel Isles Candia Peterson, New York USA Yilan Song, Fujian Rob Walker, Berkshire ARPS EXEMPTION JUNE 2021 Susan Baker, Nottingham Matthew Gammon, Roscommon ARPS VISUAL ART JUNE 2021 Carol Graham, Glasgow John Hayes, Dorset
Eric Hui, British Columbia Sharon Leighton, Stafford Ingrid Popplewell, Somerset David Rayner, Ivybridge Christopher Townsend, Bristol Shui Pui Wu, Hong Kong FRPS DOCUMENTARY JUNE 2021 Wolfgang Strassl, Bavaria FRPS VISUAL ART JUNE 2021 Michael Hayes, County Dublin Michael Longhurst, Devon Martin Parratt, Hertfordshire David Townshend, Peterborough
LRPS EXEMPTION JULY 2021 Kiain Balloch, South Lanarkshire David Blower, Birmingham Stephen Rodger, West Lothian Ruth Turner, Cheshire ARPS EXEMPTION JULY 2021 Barbara Sheldrake, West Yorkshire Bistra Stoimenova, Sofia-grad Victoria Stokes, Buckinghamshire Jane Weinmann, Switzerland
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Advertorial, 1
ADVERTORIAL VERSION REPRO OP SUBS ART PRODUCTION
‘Untitled, 2020’ by Dewald Botha
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INVESTIGATING PLACE WITH PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY Would you like to explore a sense of place on the next step of your photographic journey? Then this short course could be just the inspiration you need. Investigating Place with Psychogeography is a ten-week online course run by the Open College of the Arts and supported by the RPS. It will help you produce a portfolio that you can then present to a curator, take to a university interview, or use as the foundation for an RPS Distinction.
Discover how to express your findings using photography and other media. Rooted in the tradition of psychogeography – the effect of a geographical location on emotions and behaviour – the course explores how we can make practical work while investigating critical debates around the idea of place.
How do different places make us feel and behave? How are such things conveyed to an audience? Here is an opportunity to find out how ‘spaces’ become ‘places’, and how they affect us emotionally.
You need no qualifications – just a desire to uncover the secrets of your place. In a supportive online learning environment, supplemented by video calls with course tutors and discussion with peers, you will learn about psychogeography and place, and work towards a final group show online. Investigating Place with Psychogeography is accredited by the CPD Certification Service.
Begins: 10 January 2022 Register by: 13 December 2021
Price: £295 Apply: rps.org/oca
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UNIQUE OF ITS KIND
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This 1904 journal brought the world of European photography to South America, writes Jennifer Reeves
SUBS
For the annual sum of 2.5 pesos (around US$1), Revista offered The intricate art nouveau design of the January 1904 subscribers access to 10 pages of photographic news every edition of the Revista Fotografica Ilustrada del Rio de la Plata month. Regular features included a roundup of advancements forms a suitably grand cover for a journal which proudly in Europe, notifications of international competitions, and declared itself ‘Unica en su genero en Sud-America’. translations of articles from European journals. These Roughly translated as ‘unique of its kind’, translations brought the works of Sollet, Trutat, the surprisingly the Revista was indeed the only locally Lumières and many more to a South American produced photographic journal in the region for audience. Revista also included numerous adverts over a decade. The RPS Collection is at which reveal the range of equipment available in Preceded by the Boletin de la Sociedad Fotografica the V&A Photography Centre, London turn of the century Argentina. Argentina de Aficionados, which ceased publication vam.ac.uk Revista and Boletin are just two examples from a in 1893, Revista was published in Buenos Aires collection of international journals that were housed in from 1893-ca.1906 by Enrique Lepage and edited the RPS library and will be available to view from spring by Francisco Pociello. Lepage was founder of the 2023 in the reading room of the V&A Photography Centre. photographic equipment supply company Casa Lepage and went on to become a pioneer of cinematography in Jennifer Reeves is librarian, Word and Image department, Argentina through his relationship with the French at the V&A Museum, London company Gaumont.
VISIT
ART PRODUCTION
“Lepage went on to become a pioneer of cinematography in Argentina”
CLIENT THE RPS COLLECTION / V&A MUSEUM, LONDON
A 1904 edition of Revista Fotografica Ilustrada del Rio de la Plata
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The collection, 1
THE COLLECTION
Backstory, 1
BACKSTORY VERSION
TWO BECOME ONE
Is this Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin? Actually, it’s both, writes Rachel Segal Hamilton REPRO OP SUBS
This composite portrait by American artist Nancy Burson uses morphing software to blend the face of the Russian leader with the face of the former US president. The result is disarming and eerie, with serious political undertones. “The composite was an illustration of the alignment of the two leaders,” says Burson. “But the irony of the image is that democracies and dictatorships are not the same and should never be combined within one image.” Burson first pitched the idea to Paul Moakley, Photo Editor at Large for TIME magazine, in early 2018. She had met Moakley in 1982 when he had published another of her composites, ‘Androgyny (6 women + 6 men)’, in TIME’s book 100 Photographs: The Most Influential Images of All Time. When Trump and Putin met for a summit in Helsinki in July, the ideal moment had arrived. #HELSINKI2018 will be forever remembered for Trump’s insistence that the then ongoing Special
ART
Counsel investigations into Russian interference in US politics were a “witch hunt”. Appearing on the magazine’s cover, the image proved, according to Burson, “the perfect illustration for Trump’s apparent collusion with Putin to influence the American election”. Burson, who has been creating composite imagery since the 1970s, will be discussing her work on Zoom with the collector and curator WM Hunt as part of Photo London 2021. “My work has always been about allowing people to see differently,” she says. “The combining of faces together in one image is another way for people to see what they couldn’t see before.”
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‘Seeing beyond the tip of your nose’ with Nancy Burson and WM Hunt is at Photo London 2021, 16 September, on Zoom. photolondon.org nancyburson.com
NANCY BURSON FOR TIME
CLIENT NANCY BURSON PORTRAIT BY ARIF MINHAZ
Left to right: ‘Trumputin’ by Nancy Burson, and TIME magazine’s Trump and Putin cover, 30 July 2018
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