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PHOTOGRAPHERS
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Jack Minto Callum Painter Amy Carpenter Sophie Draper Esme Bertouche Chloe Turvey Aleksander Kobaka Courtney Barnes Sharma Everson Ismay Byrne Dan Heesem Harry Flook Hannah Revill Georgia Male Megan Wilson-De la Mare Katie Dinnage Jess Pickford
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Gurveer Padhal Jacq Chamberlain Rosy Webb Elizabeth Ellis Ruth Baldry Kyle Hough Robbie MacKenzie Lilia Manninen Lucy Bliszko James Holliday Georgia Snell Lewis Brillet Kieran Day James Wilkinson Olivia Reeves Jack Green Credits
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Jack Minto WWW.JACKMINTO.NET
Jack Minto attempts to emphasize subject matter that he feels needs more attention in terms of societal awareness. His current series Maryland Parkway seeks to subvert external perceptions of Las Vegas, Nevada, a city known for its vast wealth and luxurious hyper-real tourism based on the gambling industry. This gloss overshadows the socio economic strife of the poverty stricken areas that surround the Las Vegas strip. Jack uses Las Vegas to highlight the stark contrast of wealth and poverty within American society.
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Cal l u m Pai nte r WWW.CALLUM-PAINTER.ORG
Callum Painter is fascinated by subcultural groups and the social structures that bring people together. This project celebrates Stafford’s MG car Enthusiasts, through photographing their group meetings and visiting their homes to figure out why they are drawn to the group and to MG cars.
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Amy Carpenter WWW.AMYDEMIPHOTOGRAPHY.CO.UK
Amy Carpenter is a photographer whose work revolves around telling the intimate, complex stories of human relationships. Her current work focuses on family life, depicting the phenomenon of specific inherited anxiety. More precisely the project is an exploration of the irrational fear of being inside the home alone and how it can then transform into a place of dramatic terror. It also looks further into mental health issues surrounding her brother’s struggle with depression and the impact that has had on the rest of her family.
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Sophie Draper WWW.SOPHIEDRAPERPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
Sophie Draper’s project, The Eyrie, considers the changing social history of Leeds. Her Grandparent’s pub, considered to be an important community hub, was the starting point for this project as the artist explores the changing sense of place of her home city through landscapes and portraits. Inspired by the redevelopment of The Eyrie’s site into new build housing, she walks the route from the pub into Leeds city centre, completing her journey at the old Tetley’s brewery site. Like many other spaces in the city, the purpose of the building has been altered reflecting the change in our lifestyles and habits.
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Esme Bertouche WWW.ESMEBERTOUCHE.COM
With a particular fascination for people’s ‘little stories’, Esme strives to better understand the psyche of herself and others through her practice. She explores both personal and political concepts; working through the mediums of photography, moving image, printmaking and collage. Her current series Emptying the Nest is an exploration of young women’s experiences of being the bird who has flown or been pushed. Upon return, the place no longer feels like home, but simply a pile of twigs and remnants of a life left behind.
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Chloe Turvey WWW.CHLOETURVEY.WEEBLY.COM
Chloe Turvey is a landscape photographer who explores her surroundings using a pinhole camera to capture atmospheric scenes. Her most recent project looks at the sense of place in unfamiliar environments, expressing the essential character and spirit of a location whilst focusing on what makes it special or unique, such as its natural identity. This project has led her to different parts of the South West including Somerset, Dorset and Cornwall.
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Aleksander Kobaka WWW.AKOBAKA.CO.UK
Aleksander Kobaka is a documentary photographer, with a particular interest in the impact of human activity and manmade structures on the environment. His latest work focusses on India, its customs, traditions and people. This project led him to Mumbai, where he documented a group of activists, who are raising awareness about socio-environmental issues the country is experiencing at the moment by creating murals in the cities around the sub-continent.
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Courtney Barnes WWW.COURTNEYPBARNES.COM
Courtney Barnes is a Photographer inspired by British popular culture, in all its diverse iterations, particularly as described through the media and the advertisement industry. This project explores the definition of Nude within the media, high street fashion and everyday life. Courtney challenges the nonsensical passive racism of a dictionary definition of nude as a pinkishbeige colour. Nude is and should be the colour of the wearers skin, therefore items should be readily available for people of all skin tones.
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Sharma Everson WWW.SHARMAEVERSON.WEEBLY.COM
Sharma Everson is a documentary photographer whose focus is using analogy photography to capture an essence of place. Through an exploration of Genus Loci she seeks to connect history, activity and place through a series of landscape images that look to combine significant detail with sublime beauty. A recent project looked at the terrorist attack on Paris in 2015. This action had a huge effect on Paris and its inhabitants, adding to an already vastly complex spirit of place. Her current project looks at the site of the Glastonbury Festival out of season and the marks made on the landscape by the machinery of its infrastructure and the imprint of the festival goers themselves.
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I smay Byrne WWW.ISMAYBYRNE.COM
Ismay Byrne is a social documentary and portrait photographer, who focuses on telling subtle stories, whilst giving a voice to individuals who are not usually heard. This project focuses on the subject of hair as a material object as it is used to decorate and adorn the body. Each participant involved has a personal connection to their hair/lack of hair. This project stemmed from personal experience of hair loss. Combining portraits and still life incidental photographs, this project attempts to understand why people wear their hair the way they do.
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Dan Heesem HEESEMDANPHOTOGRAPHY@GMAIL.COM
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Harry Flook WWW.HARRYFLOOK.COM
Harry Flook’s work explores subjects borne out of his own experience, a personal investment that has taken his projects in various directions. Through a focus on individuals’ and their stories, his current project is concerned with religion and it’s place within modern society - culminating in a chaptered body of work that addresses the subject from differing perspectives. His previous work has explored more abstract ideas surrounding materiality and ever more blurred boundary between reality and our imagination.
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Hannah Revill HANNAHREVILL1995@HOTMAIL.CO.UK
Hannah Revill’s project focuses on documenting the process of fundraising and charity work. She wants to portray the hard work and effort people carry out to aid others. She has been looking at all aspects of fundraising, from charity shops, to climbing mountains, to dressing up for world book day. At the end of her degree, Hannah is looking to go into the world of photojournalism.
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Georgia Male GEORGIALOIS@HOTMAIL.CO.UK
Georgia’s current project explores the curiosities of legislation through constructed tableau that relate to outdated laws, some of which are still in force. In order to fuel the imagination of the viewer, she has chosen to photograph these minor offences against surreal doctrine in a minimalistic and metaphorical fashion. She seeks to experiment both visually, through the use of a controlled studio environment, and conceptually, by engaging with a study of the social construction of photography and art history.
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Megan Wilson-De La Mare WWW.MEGANWILSON-DELAMARE.COM
Megan Wilson-De La Mare is a portrait and Landscape photographer. Built from personal frustrations with society’s disengagement and avoidance of those with a different appearance, her work seeks to subtly question and challenge the norms and prejudices embedded in society and human behaviour. Megan’s current project sets portraits of women and still lifes against a backdrop of powerful Icelandic landscapes, exploring and questioning our obsession with beauty and a contrived ideal form.
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Katie Dinnage WWW.KATIE.DINNAGE.INFO
Katie Dinnage explores, both outwardly and inwardly, issues surrounding people, identity, sexuality and the self. Emotions are central and essential to her work. This imagery is part of an ongoing series that represents a visual study of childhood trauma and its subsequent effect on the artists mental health now. The self-portraits are a therapeutic practice aimed at building selfvalue and taking control of her body and her life.
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Jess Pickford WWW.JESSPICKFORD.CO.UK
Jess Pickford is a photographer who predominantly works in portraiture. She draws inspiration from her own life, and the lives of those close to her, to create her work. Jess final project focuses specifically on the people that she grew up with and the values that have formed her outlook on life. All of the portraits in this project are taken in her hometown of Salisbury, where she wanted to create a sense of habitus through environmental portraiture. Through these images, Jess is able to show how she sees the people who shaped her life.
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Gurveer Padhal GSLAMBO@HOTMAIL.CO.UK
Gurveer Padhal is a London based photographer whose work seeks to capture the immigrant experience in urban communities throughout the UK. As a British Indian he has responded to individual narratives of social rupture and confusion amongst a displaced people, like stories of Sikh men coming to London in the 1950s and having to place rocks on their drive so that they could tell their house from the others on the street. And yet the spirit of Asian countries like India have flourished in the UK through the establishment and subsequent economic and cultural success of communities of colour. Gurveer’s goal is to tell the stories of working class people of colour, especially newly formed immigrant communities, through photographs that reveal elements of these people not often emphasized by a white hegemony.
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Jacq Chamberlain JACQ.CHAMBERLAIN@HOTMAIL.CO.UK
Jacq Chamberlain’s work has been described as being like a ray of sunshine from hell. It is paradoxical and compulsive and ultimately based on her own experiences. Her current project features bright colours and beautiful scenes interrupted by a barrage of chaotic thoughts and reactions to the trauma that is called ‘growing up’. The imagery is intuitive and affective, as the artist allows her state of mind to dictate style, concept and tone.
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Rosy Webb WWW.REW-PHOTOGRAPHY.CO.UK
This project looks into Rosy’s rural upbringing and focuses on some of the traditions and leisure pursuits that take place in the countryside. She finds beauty in the rituals, dress codes and landscapes of riding and shooting culture.
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Elizabeth Ellis WWW.ELIZABETHELLISPHOTO.CO.UK
Elizabeth Ellis is a writer and photographer interested in the social construction of gender. She has always been intrigued by the comparative construction and presentation of women’s bodies in the public and private sphere, and the lengths some women will go to produce the ‘public self’. As a result her ongoing photographic project critically assesses and highlights the reason for this and what it is that women hide and reveal. In her response to the construction of femininity she produced a photographic series to ignite further debate on the normalised male construction of femininity. Elizabeth wants individuals viewing her work, to question the feminine ideals that they abide by.
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Ruth Baldry WWW.RUTHBALDRY.FORMAT.COM
Ruth Baldry is a social-documentary photographer currently making a project about the Bristol circus community. The series has particularly focused on the performers’ alternative itinerant lifestyles. The desired intention is to combine the intimacy of their private home with their performative personality and identity through portraits in full outfit and makeup.
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Kyle Hough KYLE.J.HOUGH@GMAIL.COM
This work is a continuing investigation of Place. Place as location, place as home, place and family. How does environment influence the individual? Kyle Hough is a photographer interested in the physicality of space and its relation to the self and others. His current works explore both the personal ephemera that people surround themselves with and the contrasting practical functionality of both urban and rural spaces.
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Robbie Mackenzie WWW.ROBBIEMACKENZIE.FORMAT.COM
Robbie MacKenzie‘s work centres on themes of identity and femininity, questioning societal expectations of women. She is currently photographing women in pairs, exploring the dynamic of female friendship and its role in her life.
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Lilia Manninen WWW.LILIAMANNINEN.COM
Lilia Manninen is a documentary portrait photographer strongly influenced by her curiosity towards people and their personal environments. She is interested in creating subtle narratives with a combination of portraits, environments, details and text. This project, entitled No Junk Male, was shot whilst travelling in New Zealand and looks at notions of womanhood within this context. Combining portraits with landscapes and little details, Lilia responds to her experience of the confident, straight talking ‘kiwi woman’ identity, free from the needs of outside validation or male acceptance.
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Lucy Bliszko WWW.LUCYBLISZKO.CO.UK
Thinking about the politics of the past and its effect on the future, Lucy’s work examines the ever more dubious boundaries of fiction and reality. Her work is a playful reflection on and reaction to the delusional representation of our surroundings. Her current project examines past speculations of things to come, images and words that portray a life stuck in aesthetic purgatory both old and futuristic at once. The project considers a constructed image of the future generated in the 1960s. A sci-fi vision of space age utopian domesticity that sheds light on the needs and fears of the society that generated it. The photographs explore our relationship with time & technology. 60
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James Holliday WWW.JAMES-HOLLIDAY.COM
We know it’s bad, but we’re still having fun. Copper Rings. A follow on from the film Bottles of Squash, winner of the 2016 D&AD Black Pencil Award. Copper Rings is a book and film project, featuring emotive works that explore avenues of aspiration from contemporary British popular culture. It is the next chapter of an ongoing series in which we are invited to appreciate everyday life through a loose abstracted tableau. 62
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Georgia Snell WWW.GEORGIASNELLPHOTOGRAPHY.CO.UK
From an initial interest in Greek Goddesses this work has developed into looking at empowering women. The series ultimately portrays female identity and represents strength. Georgia’s passion has always been portraiture and she enjoys collaborating with models from all walks of life, but her interest in concepts of beauty and style have inevitably lead her towards a fashion idiom. Her work is predominantly studio based and shot in black and white, and it seeks to portray the inner strength of everyday women.
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Lewis Brillet LEWISBRILLET@GMAIL.COM
Lewis Brillet is a photographer based in Bristol. His projects and ideas stem from personal experiences, and often his urge to find human connections and visualize these experiences through others. This project explores the people and spaces connected to Studio Upstairs, an art therapy studio based in Bristol and London. Following a recent trauma in his personal life, he tries to find a relative connection to others, who find refuge in the artistic and psychological process involved in creating art. Studio Upstairs is a small and intimate insight into the art therapy studio environment.
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WWW.KIERANDAYPHOTOGRAPHY.FORMAT.COM
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James Wilkinson WWW.JAMES-WILKINSON.FORMAT.COM James Wilkinson is predominantly a portrait photographer, capturing everything from models in the studio to strangers in the street. Rather than corresponding to a particular specific theme, his current project is focused on the absurd characters and scenes found on the streets of the United Kingdom. Inspired by a traditional decisive moment style, this collection of photographs display themes and patterns of urban life in this country.
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Olivia Reeves WWW.OLIVIA-REEVES.COM
Olivia Reeves photographs individuals within different environments and asks how these environments clash with our identity. Her most recent project focuses on the bland typeform of hotel interiors and how these designed spaces make us feel. Do these generic interpretations of ‘good taste’ make us feel uneasy and out of place, or do they have a curiously liberating effect on our sense of self?
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Jack Green WWW.JACKGREENPHOTO.CO.UK
Jack Green’s work touches on a range of themes, relaying them in a meticulously fashion. Formally it appreciates and plays with the inter-relationships between lines and perspective. Past works has fragmented sections of crowded interiors such as garages and apothecaries, attempting to bring a sense of calm to chaotic places. Jack’s current project takes an interest in social, racial and economical dynamics within the Western Cape of South Africa, focusing upon positive actions being made to redress the residual impact of Apartheid.
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CREDITS
Jack Minto Callum Painter Amy Carpenter Sophie Draper Esme Bertouche Chloe Turvey Aleksander Kobaka Courtney Barnes Sharma Everson Ismay Byrne Dan Heesem Harry Flook Hannah Revill Georgia Male Megan Wilson-De La Mare Katie Dinnage Jess Pickford Gurveer Padhal Jacq Chamberlain Rosy Webb Elizabeth Ellis Ruth Baldry Kyle Hough Robbie MacKenzie Lilia Maninnen Lucy Bliszko James Holliday Georgia Snell Lewis Brillet Kieran Day James Wilkinson Olivia Reeves Jack Green
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www.jackminto.net www.callum-painter.org www.amydemiphotography.co.uk www.sophiedraperphotography.co.uk www.esmebertouche.com www.chloeturvey.weebly.com www.akobaka.co.uk www.courtneypbarnes.com www.sharmaeverson.weebly.com www.ismaybyrne.com heesemdanphotography@gmail.com www.harryflook.com hannahrevill1995@hotmail.co.uk georgialois@hotmail.co.uk www.meganwilson-delamare.com www.katie.dinnage.info www.jesspickford.co.uk gslambo@hotmail.co.uk jacq.chamberlain@hotmail.co.uk www.rew-photography.co.uk www.elizabethellisphoto.co.uk www.ruthbaldry.format.com kyle.j.hough@gmail.com www.robbiemackenzie.format.com www.liliamanninen.com www.lucybliszko www.james-holliday.com www.georgiasnellphotography.co.uk lewisbrillet@gmail.com www.kierendayphotography.format.com www.james-wilkinson.format.com www.olivia-reeves.com www.jackgreenphoto.co.uk
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DESIGN Francesca Bryan & Ruth Harris www.francescabryandesign.com www.ruthharris.site Cover Image by Megan Wilson-De La Mare Website www.tonic-photo.co.uk Copyright 2017 University of the West of England The copyright of the individual photographs in this book remains with the photographer unless otherwise shown. The compilation of the photographs remains copyright of UWE. No part of this publication may be reproduced. Stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. A big thankyou to all that have supported the exhibition. 78
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