I Dreamed My Genesis Photography in the Arts Photojournalism & Documentary
IDreamedMyGenesis.com
Foreword
Words borrowed from the impassioned poetry of Dylan Thomas provide an evocative title, or an unorthodox starting point, for an exhibition of contemporary photography: I Dreamed My Genesis… A paradoxical proclamation that may allude either to nostalgic perspectives on past beginnings, or pre-emptive visions of an unknown future.
saturation - Walter Benjamin’s concept of ‘the fog that spreads its mist and interrupts the dream of knowing and seeing’ seems more relevant than ever.
This exhibition (and publication) marks the end of one journey and the beginning of another for all of the artists involved. The shared philosophy of the photography courses at Swansea College of Art is fittingly reflected by the innovative, diverse works on show, which address subjects ranging from global misunderstandings of the state of our environment, to national misconceptions of our individual states of mind, employing techniques from both the near future and the distant past.
We hope that on viewing these works the fog will occasionally be interrupted by a flash of bright light or gently lift to offer a fleeting, lucid, pensive moment. Along with a core belief in personal development and expression, we also see it as our students’ responsibility - as emerging practitioners - to interrogate and challenge existing processes and systems, and to cultivate new strategies for photojournalism and photographic art.
First steps can soon become a distant blur, and photography’s origins have forever been shrouded in an evocation of fog. In our contemporary, digital condition - of photographic image
As Eduardo Cadava has commented: ‘In the twilight zone between seeing and not seeing, we fail to get the picture’.
The photography staff wish to congratulate all involved for creating stimulating and thought-provoking bodies of work, and to wish them much success with their onward journeys and future endeavours.
Hamish Gane & Siân Addicott Programme Directors MArts (Hons) & BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts MArts (Hons) & BA (Hons) Photojournalism & Documentary Photography
Contents 10.
Chloe-Lee Hughes
30.
Mitja Zupanc
12.
Dylan Thomas
32.
Naomi Jane Broome
14.
Eden Jones
34.
Roseanna Wilson
16.
Erin Jayne Lloyd
36.
Rumer Lewis
18.
Jason Kostromin
38.
Susan Adele Hughes
20.
Lauren Tyler
40.
Ellen Sheehan
22.
Luisa Jones
42.
Emily Harris
24.
Marina Lennon
44.
Francis Williams
26.
Melawin Rai
46.
Sara Assebab
28.
Melissa Gillespie
48.
Toni Osuji
Chloe-Lee Hughes Ironhaven The series Ironhaven interweaves photographic documentation with constructed imagery to produce a semi-fictitious narrative exploring themes relating to science fiction, such as extra-terrestrial activity and secret religious cults. Drawing on the visual descriptions of sites found within popular Sci-Fi literature, these images represent a photographic figment of the artist’s imagination.
chloehughesphotography.com clhughesstudio@gmail.com
10
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Dylan Thomas Cymuned “The portrait is a sign whose purpose is both the description of an individual and the inscription of social identity.� - Amelia Jones, 2016 Fifty-one years have passed since the partial decriminalization of homosexuality in the Sexual Offences Act in England and Wales, and although our society has progressed, discrimination still exists, both at home and abroad. The portraits in this series showcase some of those whose identity is connected to contemporary LGBT+ culture, with an aim to celebrate queer individuality and diversity in South Wales.
dylanlwthomas.com dylanlwthomas@gmail.com
12
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Eden Jones The Psychopath’s Diary Through a combination of real and fictitious elements, including scrawled notes, drawings, contact sheets and photographs, this body of work attempts to evoke the obsessive mindset of a potential killer. Exploring some of the processes employed by those with murderous intentions, the work taps into our fears by referencing the stalker/victim dichotomy.
edenjonesphotography.wixsite.com/home edenjonesphotography@outlook.com
14
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Erin Jayne Lloyd My Body is the Canvas The series, My Body is the Canvas originates from the artist’s recent experience of being turned down for a job in London for having a visible tattoo. The prejudice that surprisingly still exists towards tattooed skin seems more profoundly directed towards women, especially women with large, wide-covering and prominent pieces. As images of tattooed women are reproduced onto the thin skin of light-sensitive emulsion applied to stretched canvas, associations between heavily-inked skin and concepts of masculinity and femininity are called into question.
erin1991.wixsite.com/erinjaynephotography erin1991@live.co.uk
16
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Jason Kostromin Dai the Spy The work, Dai the Spy, playfully utilises self-portraiture to explore complex concepts of personal and cultural identity. Secret service agent, Dai Davies, is currently working undercover in an unspecified village in the Welsh Valleys, investigating seven suspects for various potential serious crimes. Whilst his search becomes ever more obsessive, what Dai doesn’t realise, is that every one of his evil suspects is just another version of the very same person‌ himself.
jasonkostrominphotography.co.uk jasonkostromin@hotmail.co.uk
18
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Lauren Tyler Perfect is Overrated, Perfect is Boring. We live in a society where women’s voices are becoming louder and more powerful, yet this has not translated into the mass media. Social media is bombarded with hyper-sexualised images of women depicting unrealistic standards of beauty rather than celebrating those that speak out for women’s issues such as period poverty, pay gaps and the different attitudes we have towards men and women. This work explores this false representation of women in art and society. Focusing on advertising in both high-end fashion and in gossip magazines, Tyler creates Hannah Höch inspired pieces that juxtapose often overlooked political issues with hyper-sexualised female images.
laurentylerphotography.myportfolio.com lephotography96@gmail.com
20
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Luisa Jones Among My Souvenirs What do domestic photographs tell us about memory, and why are they so important to us? Among My Souvenirs explores how domestic photographs function as relics; how they project time and reflect the past as a narrative, not necessarily the way it was but the way we choose to remember. By chemically exposing, freezing, then re-freezing 35mm reversal film that depicts sites of personal memory, the work aims to replicate how the progression of time and exposure to damage affects our personal memories.
lpjonesphotography.wixsite.com lpjones.photography@gmail.com
22
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Marina Lennon What Remains? This work addresses how the improper disposal of man-made objects and materials is having a negative impact on the Earth, and more specifically, the world’s oceans. By focusing on small areas of a specific discarded object, Lennon creates an image that is almost unrecognizable as the original object and becomes something else that mirrors the natural terrains around the world as it would be seen from a satellite.
marinatlennon.wixsite.com/mlennon marinawells@mail.com
24
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Melawin Rai Vortex Strategem Rai’s work is an intimate study of space, light and scale. In our contemporary digital condition, where virtual and actual are almost interchangeable, this work reminds us that the photograph has forever been fugitive testimony. Employing very simple household materials, such as recycled cardboard and plastic, plain flour and milk powder, and then lighting them with a handheld torch, these realistic landscape simulations call into question our relationship with the ‘real’.
melawinrai.co.uk raimelawin@gmail.com
26
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Melissa Gillespie Place is a Shadow My work has revolved around how humans interfere with nature, by causing the current state of our eco-system because of the destruction of our lifestyles. I mimicked this action when developing my work. I work traditionally in the Black and White dark room with digital negatives of landscapes and pictures of nature. Creating work this way enables me to choose how my work develops. I interfered with the development by applying the chemical by brush, rather than soaking the paper with it. The results are abstract marks and shapes only revealing small areas of the original image underneath - reflecting how over time areas of our planet have changed, because of humans and all that is left in its place is a shadow of what used to be.
melgillespie10.wixsite.com/mysite melgillespie10@gmail.com
28
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Mitja Zupanc Une Ondulation, Weltschmerz, Pruety Zupanc’s body of work consists of three separate projects that utilise both still and moving image to explore the rhythm-analysis of memory, time and perception. Une Ondulation is a short film that through the Deleuzian concept of recollection-image, implants a narrative and labels the photographic content. Weltschmerz is a reflection on world-pain in the contemporary world and the lack of identity in everyday events. Pruety is a collection of prints that deal with the ‘mise en abyme’ of the medium and the memory’s deed of indemnity that perhaps only a photograph can assure.
zupancmitja.wixsite.com/website zupancmitja@gmail.com
30
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Naomi Jane Broome Venenum Victu Single-use food packaging is one of the major contributors to the plastic crisis that we are currently encountering. In the 1840’s Anna Atkins famously created cyanotypes to document British Algae, and by ironically employing the same photographic process first used to record the natural world, this work highlights how deeply plastic is ingrained into today’s society. As a conscientious consumer, the artist has documented each piece of non-recyclable food packaging she has been unable to avoid, over an extended period. The title Venenum Victu is Latin for ‘poison diet’ and refers both to the deadly effect of plastic on the Earth and the potentially deadly chemical that forms part of the compound needed to produce cyanotype prints.
naomijanebroome.co.uk naomi.broome@gmail.com
32
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Roseanna Wilson I Dreamed My Genesis Perhaps there is no more eventful period in the history of woman than that in which she first becomes conscious that the existence of another being is dependent upon her own and that she carries about with her the first tiny rudiments of an immortal soul. By documenting expectant mothers during their birthing hour and reflecting on the artist’s own experience of becoming a mother, I Dreamed My Genesis explores this phenomenon through representations of pregnancy, labour and parturition.
roseannawilson.com roseannaccwilson@gmail.com
34
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Rumer Lewis Looking Glass Looking Glass is a project that looks to Drag Culture to explore concepts of identity and perception of the self. Through photographic portraits of the subjects both in and out of drag, alongside recorded personal interviews, this work attempts to question what exactly identity means.
rumerlewis.wixsite.com/mysite rumerlewis@gmail.com
36
BA (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Susan Adele Hughes Black Gold Black Gold is a body of work that explores themes such as memory, history, belonging, absence and change. The work focuses on Aberpergwm Colliery in South Wales, a working drift coal mine that reopened, after years of closure, in March 2018. The rare opportunity to see behind the scenes, go underground and spend time with the miners who work in the largest working mine left in the UK, provides an insight into the incredible solidarity and comradery so associated with this unique profession and way of life.
behance.net/sahughesphotography sahughes.photography@hotmail.com
38
MArts (Hons) Photography in the Arts
Ellen Sheehan The Box In her project, The Box, Ellen Sheehan has created a photo essay that documents participants of a cross-fit training regime at a South Wales gym. In this intensive environment, men and women compete against each other and themselves. Sheehan examines the process that the clients go through in both training and competition but, although she photographs both the men and women, her photographic gaze is directed very much toward the women, as their ambition to succeed reflects female empowerment on a broader societal basis. In a world in which women have traditionally been portrayed as inferior, this environment presents a community of men and women who work hard together and compete equally.
ellenjsheehan.com ellen.sheehan07@outlook.com
40
BA (Hons) Photojournalism & Documentary
Emily Harris Caring Photographer, Emily Harris, has been a full-time carer for her mother – caring for her physical and mental health needs – since the age of fourteen. A series of documentary projects concerning her mother’s condition and Harris’s relationship to her family, and her role as carer, have led to this current project. Harris continues to document her situation by looking outward, albeit with an insider’s perspective, photographing other carers who meet for mutual support at Swansea Carers’ Centre and the ‘safe space’, Carers’ Cwtch; a venue where events and meetings offer support and respite for the hard and often societally undervalued work that carers do. This is a documentation of the kind, inspiring and selfless individuals that Harris has encountered.
ejaynephoto.wordpress.com emilyjayneharris@outlook.com
42
BA (Hons) Photojournalism & Documentary
Francis Williams The Hidden Epidemic “Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.” – Marcus Aurelius Francis Williams’s work explores some of the darker aspects of the human psyche: despair, misery and isolation. This series looks at people and asks the viewer to contemplate a sense of empathy for others through awareness of ourselves. Williams attempts to break through the barrier that the camera creates, where photographic observation is often separated from the humanity depicted. In doing this the artist, and by extension the viewer, addresses fundamental psychological, metaphysical and above all human relationships with individuals who are isolated or in a state of despair.
aledwilliams96.wixsite.com aledwilliams96@gmail.com
44
BA (Hons) Photojournalism & Documentary
Sara Assebab Lost In her project, Lost, Sara Assebab explores the relationship between family life and identity. Starting from the position that identity, despite its apparent complexities, simply defines how an individual perceives the world from their own perspective, Assebab uses a combination of selective framing and cropping alongside constructed image-making to create narratives that suggest different moods and feelings. The choice of black and white as a medium directs viewers toward the formal construction of the image while echoing the narrativity of the documentary tradition that is crucial to the reading of the work.
saraassebab.com saramave@live.co.uk
46
BA (Hons) Photojournalism & Documentary
Toni Osuji Between Two Fires Between Two Fires is a reflective personal project commenting on society’s perceptions of what an ‘ordinary’ family should look like. Osuji looks specifically at the influence of genetics within her own immediate mixed-race family and a sense of longing. Longing to explore the exoticism associated with her father’s Nigerian heritage, and the notion of ‘other’ heritage perceived by viewers of her work.
toniosuji.com toniosuji@gmail.com
48
BA (Hons) Photojournalism & Documentary
Acknowledgements
All of the students of Photography in the Arts and Photojournalism & Documentary have received outstanding support and guidance during their degree studies and would like to thank all the staff at University of Wales Trinity Saint David. There have been some special people whose support, advice, inspiration and encouragement have made all the difference.
Hamish Gane
Holly Davey
Special Thanks to:
Siân Addicott
Sarah Tierney
Copeland Gallery
Paul Duerinckx
Christine Shaw
Ryan L. Moule
Dafydd Williams
Paul Jeff
Design by: Calum Lewis designbycalum.com
In memory of Alan Whatley