maps-photo.com
Contents Foreword Introduction Essays
The future is unwritten Universal Photographs The subject of photography the impact of the cosmopolitan
Author Biographies Exhibitor List Projects Exhibitor Biographies Panel Discussion Acknowledgements
FOReWoRD The work shown here is a guide to the 2013 graduates of the University of Westminster MA Photographic Studies (MAPS). The participants in this catalogue and the show that accompanies it have been keen to stress the international and ‘global’ dimension of the group. Twenty-seven people from seventeen countries is an impressive mix of cultures, social habits and image values. This consciousness of the global is embedded in much of the work too, serving to inspire questions about our modern conditions and the way we ‘see’ things, whether it is urban life, regional practices or the movement between them. Cinema, television and the internet play their roles in fixing social values, but the new visibilities in the practices here embody the work of investigation, re-thinking and asking different questions. Each to their own, the works here are pensive and give the spectator ‘images of thought’. We are far away from that idea of the ‘global village’ that was once vaunted as a new technological utopia. David Bate
INTRODUCTION I am delighted to have been invited to curate maps, the 2013 degree show for the MA Photographic Studies at the University of Westminster. It is the programme’s 18th degree show, and the seventh that is professionally curated and designed. In these last seven years, the annual exhibition has become a major springboard for graduate photographers and photographic artists worldwide. Media attention from prominent publications in the art world and beyond (the BBC, the Telegraph and others) testifies to the strength of the exhibitors and to the developing prominence of the exhibition. This year’s show features 27 exhibitors from 17 countries. The individuality and diversity of their projects reflects the programme’s emphasis on cultivating each participant’s unique interests; the artworks are both diverse and high calibre. In addition to traditional photography (however it is defined), the exhibition includes projects as diverse as video art, cross stitch, physical immersion in an alternate universe, an installation exploring the devaluation of women’s bodies, books as objects and the celebration of a rediscovered episode in the history of queer visual culture. It presents not only the exhibitors’ art, but also their hard work in every aspect of the planning and installation, from crafting the press release to building the walls. Happily, MAPS, whose title is an acronym of the course (MA Photographic Studies) has found a home in Ambika P3; this 14,000 square foot venue in central London is a highly flexible space in which I have designed the exhibition to showcase each contribution to its best advantage.
Like everyone at maps, I am grateful to Charlotte Cotton (Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Sue Steward (Photographic Critic, Evening Standard; Member of the World Photographic Academy), Diane Smyth (Deputy Editor, British Journal of Photography) and David Bate (photographic artist and Course Leader, MA Photographic Studies) for contributing to the catalogue. I am also delighted that artist Simon Terrill, Nick Kaplony (Programme Co-ordinator, Artquest) and Miranda Gavin (Deputy Editor, Hotshoe Magazine) are participating in a panel discussion, chaired by Daniel Blight (writer, curator; The Photographers’ Gallery). Finally, I would like to thank the photography technicians for their guidance and their support and all of the sponsors for their generosity. It is thrilling to be involved with such a motivated group in such a dynamic programme, and I look forward to celebrating the successes of this year’s graduates as their careers progress. Dr Elizabeth Upper Curator
The future is unwritten In his 1996 book Gargantua – Manufactured Mass Culture, Julian Stallabrass includes a chapter on amateur photography called Sixty Billion Sunsets. Funny but sniffy, this title seems a little unfair to me. After all, sunsets show off all the colours of the spectrum and remind us we’re living on a spinning globe illuminated by a celestial ball of fire; both these facts are everyday yet they’re anything but mundane. Sunsets are the kind of universally impressive phenomenon Kant discussed in his Critique of Judgement, and even Penelope Umbrico, whose ever-changing image Suns from Flickr is a kind of visual representation of Stallabrass’s chapter title, shows a grudging respect for so much “prescripted collective content”. “I think it’s peculiar that the sun, the quintessential life giver, constant in our lives, symbol of enlightenment, spirituality, eternity, all things unreachable and ephemeral, omnipotent provider of warmth, optimism and vitamin D, and so universally photographed, finds expression on the internet, the most virtual of spaces equally infinite but within a closed electrical circuit,” she writes in her statement. “Looking into this cool electronic space one finds a virtual window onto the natural world.”
as Rinko Kawauchi, Harry Callahan and Nan Goldin show. Even so, it’s also easy to think of more esoteric subjects, from Roger Ballen’s nightmarish mise-enscene to Bernd and Hilla Becher’s industrial structures, and if Kawauchi, Callahan and Goldin have all shot those near and dear, they’ve done so in wildly different styles. We’re not all reading from the same script or singing along in some visual karaoke, perhaps to Stallabrass and Umbrico’s relief. There are differences in our images, partly because we’re all individuals and partly because we’re all shaped by the time and place in which we live. Paradoxically this “spirit of the age”, as Hegel put it, means that even the most unoriginal amateur’s work is of its time; in art photography whole schools or movements rise up from the zeitgeist, from the “New Photographers” of Weimar Germany to post-war Japan’s Provoke generation.
Using the New Photographers and Provoke as examples suggests nationality is key but in an increasingly globalised world, in which it’s increasingly commonplace to move from country to country, I suspect that’s no longer the case. The students graduating from this course come from 17 But while Stallabrass, Kant and Umbrico might have different countries, for example, something unthinkable their differences, what they all seem to suggest is just a generation or two ago. These days I think the a homogeneity in our priorities, a shared sense of era in which you are working may be more relevant what’s impressive or worth noting. It’s hard to dispute – partly because it means living in a time when that sunsets are universally popular in photography, nationalities mix and combine, and partly because and friends, family and lovers are another perennial technology is moving so fast. When I was at university subject – and if there’s any residual sniffiness, I’ll point digital cameras and the internet were obscure; now out they’re just as popular with artists as amateurs, kids grow up using both, and Penelope Umbrico
can find literally millions of online shots of the sun in seconds. That’s a very different image environment to be working in, and it’s constantly mutating. Good, bad or indifferent, this class of graduates is indelibly linked to a time and a place – University of Westminster, and the year 2013. Part of an everchanging zeitgeist, they face a rapidly evolving visual culture and art market, in which long-established traditions are rapidly breaking down. Some will no doubt hope to ‘make it’ internationally, but frankly I’m not even sure what that means any more. For years it was synonymous with getting into the big institutions in the West, but with Europe on the skids and China poised to become the world’s biggest economy, that won’t last for long. In this environment I can’t offer much advice because, while I could recommend that these graduates contact this curator or that picture editor, I suspect that what’s worked before won’t work again in future. Perhaps that’s always been the case. The big artists have never been the ones who’ve kowtowed to what already exists, they’ve been the ones who’ve embraced what made them different and done something radically new. The Provoke photographers in Japan didn’t find their place in history by following established paths, for example, they did it by ripping up the style guides and making, and disseminating, their own aesthetic, and the voice of a generation. Back in March 2011, I attended a conference at Amsterdam’s Foam called ‘What’s Next?’, in which image experts from around the world debated where photography was going in future. The deepest insight
I gleaned from it was from a throwaway comment made by Thomas Ruff, who looked around the room of well-established critics, academics and artists and laughed that he didn’t know what was next and they probably didn’t either, because what was next was “in the minds of the next generation”. In September 2012 meanwhile, I interviewed Juergen Teller for the British Journal of Photography, and asked him if he’d been lucky to have been around for first the style magazines and then clients such as Marc Jacobs, all of whom had backed his wayward, instantly recognisable style. “I don’t think it’s a particularly good time or bad time,” he replied. “It’s just your time. You just have to take control of what you want to do and what you want to achieve in all this.” For the students just leaving Westminster that’s probably a scary prospect, but I hope it’s a liberating one too. There are no rules, and no right or wrong approach; the future is unwritten, as Joe Strummer put it, now’s their chance to get out there and write it. Diane Smyth Deputy Editor, British Journal of Photography
Universal Photographs* A common fear about globalization is that everything will become the same. This is an idea found in any location and regardless of whether the uniformity is thought to come from the West, the East or from anonymous technology. The invention of photography quickly became a global form of picturing during its nineteenth century expansion, first following the trade routes of colonial power and then the paths of European culture that followed in it. Photography was then brought back again to Europe in the twentieth century from other centres of technology and culture (primarily Japan and the USA) who had adapted and developed it in new ways. It would be hard to say that ideals of ‘cultural value’ and ‘taste’ are indifferent or not affected by all these different processes of change. In the same way that the English language is mutated by the variations of speech and writing in the ‘global English’ who speak it (‘Globish’ as it has been called), might we ask whether the same has not also happened to photographic images? That is to say, has not photography also been universalized? For a start, today the different centres of manufacture of cameras, seems indifferent to the uses that photography is put in practice, practices that transcend national boundaries or the niceties of local language. Photography is so ubiquitous that almost nowhere is free of photographic images. Now established as a dominant consensual mode of picture making globally, photography is thus also an aspect of ‘worldmaking’ too, via its very repertoire of depictions and significations (events, objects, spaces, things). And then it is clear that the shape of this world-making process is often informed by categories of genre embedded in cameras themselves, which are ‘universal’. The
genres are adaptations of older categories from art: landscape, portraits, events, still-life objects, etc. In this way, is not a universalization of photography also the Westernization of all visual form into its ‘language’? While it is true that the categories of genre embedded in cameras usually as ‘scene modes’ can be traced back to hierarchies of aesthetic value established by the West in eighteenth century art academies, it is also true that these forms were already found elsewhere in the world, especially in antiquity: the famous landscape carpets of Persia, portraits in the Egyptian language of visual hieroglyphs and so on. So it is not simply that the computer has now homogenized those forms, but rather that already global forms have become universalized in one form: the photographic image. Translated into global data codes, the semi-automated scene modes of popular cameras point to this universalization. Here are the categories of one digital camera’s scene modes: • LANDSCAPE with sub-categories of Architecture – Urban Landscape, Night Landscape, Illuminated Scenes, Sunsets • EVENTS – sub-divided into Sports, Party, Baby 1 and Baby 2 • PORTRAITURE – sub-categories of Soft Skin, Night Portraits, Pets • STILL LIFE – sub-divided into Objects, Flowers and Food These scene modes are an indication of the universalization of photographic imaging as specific modes of pictures, of ‘seeing’ as a set of prescribed visual forms of knowledge. Phone cameras also generalize the data capture values in the automation
in a genre, and acquiring a knowledge of the visual principles through which they worked, then by making a break, with a new invention within the genre. Today the uniformity of genres offers a similarly comfortable framework to any photographer and viewer, either to protect them as users from the anxiety of the unknown, Does or could (assuming a sceptical reader on whether or as someone who can go on to break with them – to make innovations that are not just for the sake of formal universalism has happened yet) the universalization invention, but is involved in the impulse of an intellectual of photographic picture-making lead to a common ‘language’: a visual image system that is not dependent curiosity. Lets hope it turns out to be the latter. upon linguistic language? Is the photograph now (to That is to say, it is not just a matter of aesthetic uniformity invert Roland Barthes’s famous phrase) a universal (genres) being used as a means of inclusion, entitlement ‘code without a message’? We might imagine that and belongingness to a certain universal identity, but Hipstamatic or Instagram type software is seen as an rather, as a centre from which a deviation is possible. alternative, that those who apply them to their pictures Such deviations should not fear aesthetic uniformity feel they are, in some eccentric way, avoiding the universal image by appealing to another ‘code’ – even as the fantasy of a multinational global ‘citizenship’, but rather, create a contest to this identification. Work if it is still a preconceived universal code. Are these must be done ‘locally’. Locally, that is, in the sense of needs for ‘something different’ occurring because the look of DSLR pictures have now become something too a specific set of interests, worked on, worked through, generic, so that a universal fatigue is setting in, a weary and worked on again to develop a specificity, so that the work signifies for others the particularity of itself, yet repetition of the same? is there for ‘all to see’ too. This, at least, is the ethos of a practice informed by praxis rather than ‘influences’ Yet like nation-states, genres or ‘scene modes’ also or fashionable themes. In this ‘data information’ society, have difficulty in maintaining their boundaries. What uniformity and universalism become ways to avoid fear is constantly surprising is how the same evolving of dissimulation, difference, or disintegration. Standing technological systems continue to enable some of their up for singularity, is not a way to avoid being part of the users to throw up images that go completely against its masses, as ‘above’ them, but to avoid the assumptions consensual tendencies. Uniformity avoids the tyranny that we will or must ‘all be the same.’ of uncertainty, but ‘multiformity’ also avoids certainty. In the old art academies the use of genres offered a formal discipline to the students in the school. They could master David Bate their skills through the framework of a genre, a set of rules, principles by which a visual ‘speech act’ could be * This text is loosely based on a lecture presentation on ‘Globalization and made, first by imitating the existing accomplished works Photographic Genre’ at the Royal College of Art, London, October 2012. of the image processing. Although these different modes are integrated into the camera software, the ‘user’ does not necessarily have to follow them (other Automatic, Aperture, Manual or Program settings are often featured too).
The subject of photography It is human nature to want to narrate our contemporary circumstance as a moment of pivotal change. But in the field of photography – as a cultural and pedagogical subject – we can be confident that the extent of change is real rather than merely desired. To say the least, it is a specific moment in the cultural life of photography and one that impacts greatly on the motivations and practices of contemporary art photographers graduating from photography programmes. We are beginning to see that the very mechanisms of photography located in established publishing houses, museums, and higher education institutions are reflecting upon how to better support and represent photographic practice in its current iterations. Of course, photography’s 20th century network of organizations – both commercial and not-for-profit – that can take the credit for legitimizing photography as a contemporary art form are slow to change and unwittingly risk placing a stranglehold upon the cultural appraisal of fast-moving area of creative practice. The ecosystem of image making continues to evolve, however, much of which does not require the validation of art galleries, museums, and university qualifications and finds its own audiences and collaborators without an institutional conduit. The arrival of the first wave of independent photographic practices that do not look like and are not intellectually modeled upon the separatist story of photography that institutions have already told makes for an exceptionally creative moment. Rather than establishment institutions creating the framework for future practices, and inevitably determining a somewhat measured creative epoch, the challenge is for our cultural and pedagogical institutions is to
meaningfully support and interpret what is already happening quite dynamically outside of its parameters. As the University of Westminster’s graduates can attest, this creative energy around the subject of photography is being played out internationally, and this will be a generation of photographic thinkers and makers who will create their own critical frameworks. Photography is, and has been since its conception, a fabulously broad church and contemporary photographic practices demonstrate all the vital signs and characteristics of the medium since its conception. Contemporary photography is a wonderful amalgam of enduring and also new practices and processes that animates the full scope of this pluralistic subject. Photography is a prompt to action, a vehicle for ideas, an empirical mass, a material form as well as palette or vocabulary of artists. This broad notion of photography is precisely what independent art photography graduates are inventively working through. Rather than simply tailoring their photography to operate within the existing conventions of art galleries and artists’ books, the best of today’s graduates are manifesting a range of strategies for exploring the subject of photography. Just as the character of photography is currently faceted in a pronounced manner, contemporary practitioners also take multiple stances. Specifically, we are seeing photographers being more explicit about the different roles they can move between, not restricted to the heavily authored practices of creating a body of photographs made with the conventions of an artist’s studio practice. We are increasingly seeing contemporary artists working across the
platforms of publishing, on-line, live events as well as gallery spaces where their role is better defined as an editor, curator, collaborator, facilitator and critic. With this shattering of a fixed identity of the artist and their practice, comes an even more pronounced understanding of the creation of a photographic print as something more specialised and rarefied than it has been so far in the story of photography as contemporary art. The first general trend that we have seen in contemporary art photography in light of Web 2.0 and the phenomenal growth in imageled social media has been to reinforce the notion of photography as a material form and a somewhat rarefied artisanal gesture. The active preservation of photography’s physical printmaking in the 21st century has become the almost exclusive concern of artists (and sections of amateur photography culture still promoting the craft of photography), which in part reflects how most workaday types of photography no longer automatically result in the production of actual photographic prints. What has happened in the 2010s is that the inherent ‘objecthood’ of the photographic print – a physical form rather than a neutral or invisible framing of a real moment – has become really obvious to us. Many contemporary art photographers are using and contemplating this fact, and creatively working with the idea that photography is an active process of choices and decisions of the maker who renders a photograph. Contemporary practitioners are creating work that actively encourages us to think about the making of photographs, including using digital image-making tools in a manner that is clearly manipulated and authored in ways that are fundamentally connected to an older, unreconstructed Modernist appreciation
of both uniquely photographic visual language and the artist’s capacity to craft a signature style from it. There are other artistic strategies that represent how photographers are inviting us into gallery and artist book experiences that animate our symbolic knowledge of the media environments in which we live. Significantly, photographic language is in constant conversation with sculptural conventions within the field of contemporary art. Similarly, the concentration upon abstraction in new photography and painting that we are currently experiencing, speaks loudly of how the subject of photography increasingly and seamlessly operates within the discourses of contemporary art. Within such practices we can observe the movement away from photography as a discrete discipline of art and into a long-awaited and very timely creative moment where photography is a constellation of materials and palettes, from which artists can render works of art, which speak eloquently of our mercurial visual culture. Charlotte Cotton
the impact of the cosmopolitan One of the most notable elements of student photography today is its cosmopolitanism and the effect that has on the diversity of work being created. Not surprisingly, ‘Migration’ is a universally popular theme while others include documentaries about elderly people, landscapes intervened, families and memories, the increasing reworking of 19th century processes (particularly wet-plate collodion portraiture), and the manual transformation of print surfaces by stitching, painting, cutting and disfiguring for collages, etc. A prime example of the latter is the Italian artist Maurizio Anzeri whose skillful embroidery on found portrait photographs, was displayed at Cardiff’s ‘Diffusion’ festival this summer. Anzeri removes the subjects’ original prettiness and memories by morphing them into dark, gothic characters with a 3-dimensional effect. It represents an interesting evolutionary path, a contribution to a new photographic genre. Also significant at Cardiff were the young photographers exhibited in a group show titled ‘European Chronicles’. Arriving from EU countries including Lithuania, Scandinavia and Austria, they formed part of the Director, David Drake’s ongoing mission to forge links and open windows onto the less familiar countries barely noticed by the dominant London scene. At a different level, student graduate exhibitions are exploding around the world. In Glasgow each year, those chosen from every Scottish university are shown at the Street Level gallery, and in London, the ‘Fair Trade’ exhibition in a hangar-like space introduces the many UK-based university graduates to each other to
compare and discuss work over several days – and bring in visitors from the art market and industry, as well as curious, established photographers. Such experiences offer overviews of photography today and of the diversity of international students at universities everywhere. At the same time, graduates are questioning their future survival in today’s volatile economic climate, a concern most obviously applied to students from Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland. Changing world economies pose an international threat to student mobility, especially those in the developing world. For any students of any level, and particularly those graduates moving to new towns, cities or back to home countries, such groups can be created along similar lines. On the broader, more ambitious scale, online photography competitions are creating vital global links. The [Sony] World Photography Organization (WPO) is a model example with an increasingly significant position on the international circuit. Its Student Focus project sees one short-listed university student per continent brought to the London award ceremony and exhibited then toured to each continent alongside the professional winners. Their UN-like demographic mix creates excitement, sees ideas swapped and shared, and opens up their cultures and photographic practices to each other, and links retained after the event. This year’s Rencontres d’Arles festival (France) saw 27 graduates’ from Arles School of Photography exhibiting under the title WIP (Work in Progress). It offers a fascinating cross-section recognizable in many countries
and revealing influences from the internationalist zeitgeist. Portraits of every variety are popular; misty views through glass or a fogged landscape recall Michael Wolf’s poetic images of travelers on the Tokyo underground. But the classic, staring character studies – from teenagers to the elderly – recall the only subtle changes at the National Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing annual competition. Defying such facial portraits, the collagist John Stezaker deforms the beauty preserved on Hollywood prints and operates his clinical cut-ups like a plastic surgeon, work now inspiring young photo-collagists worldwide.
summer at Liverpool’s Look 13! festival, accompanied by her soundtrack of voices, chants, screams and music which add to the subjects’ emotional expressions.
Travel often does and always should play a part in student and graduate photography to counter-balance the static, digital, on-line viewing of the world’s image-makers. Sheyi Abelade, publisher and founder of Next Level magazine, opens windows onto often unfamiliar festivals and local photographers. So far, his themes include Budapest, Pittsburgh, Copenhagen and Glasgow; next stops are Montreal and Toronto. In each place, he researches, makes contacts and resides within the photographic population, then The explosion of international Photography Festivals draws in local writers and photographers to create a spans from the original, pioneering Houston Fotofest, panoramic of the cities’ cultural and social identities (Texas) to Paris Photo, PhotoEspaña, Photo Ireland which are spread abroad in print and online. At (Dublin), Format (Derby), Kaunas (Lithuania), the the annual PhotoEspaña, a selected group of young newcomer Guernsey – and scores more. Each city photographers from around Latin America, are reflects its own demography, topography, social, exhibited under the title ‘Descubrimientos’ (Discovery), industrial and labour identities and a diversity of photographic processes whilst also introducing selected a presence which contributes to the recent expansion international exhibitors. Houston also launched portfolio of interest in the UK for that continent. reviews – a money-spinner today but also an invaluable From another angle, there is a new enthusiasm system for students and working photographers – and from Cultural Attachés at several London embassies also some established names who drop in to hear including the Brazilian, Lithuanian and Russian. They detached observations about their work and the general mood of the times. Of all the recent, important are eagerly exposing their arts cultural genres and with photography – current and historic – engaging in free festivals, Photo Bamako was shut down by the talks, discussions, exhibitions and films. The Instituto atrocities in Mali and lost a key event linking African photographers to many significant Western visitors who Cervantes in Manchester and London and around Latin would often exhibit their work outside Africa. In Cairo, America, has been conducting similar evenings rather quietly for years and are expanding works at this time the photo-journalist Laura el Tantawy photographed nightly in Tahrir Square but like many, couldn’t continue of growing thirst for international photography. because of its dangers. Her close-up portraits of men and women protesting in the Square were exhibited this Sue Steward
Author Biographies Dr Elizabeth Upper
Dr Elizabeth Upper, Curator of maps, has designed and curated the MA Photographic Studies degree show since 2007. She is Research Fellow in History of Art at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. She contributes to publications including Apollo, and her publications include a co-edited book, Printing Colour: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions (Brill, forthcoming 2014).
Diane Smyth
Charlotte Cotton
Charlotte Cotton is a writer and curator. She is the author of The Photograph as Contemporary Art and founder of Words Without Pictures and eitherand.org. She has held positions including Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Head of Programming at The Photographers’ Gallery and Head of the Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Sue Steward
Sue Steward is a writer, broadcaster and independent photography curator. She is photography critic for the London Evening Standard and a feature writer for national newspapers and specialist photography magazines including the BJP, 1000Words, PhotoMonitor, the Next Level, and Eye. She regularly presents talks, conducts portfolio reviews and leads photography tours. She has been a member of the World Photography Organization from its launch five years ago, and is a regular contributor of articles on its website. Sue’s recent curated exhibitions have included ‘Between two Worlds: Contemporary Latin American Photography’, Edel Assanti, London, and the David Bate David Bate is a photo-artist, writer and Course Leader of the London Art Fair’s Photo50 exhibition, ‘The New Alchemists – Contemporary Photographers Transcending the Print’. MA Photographic Studies and Professor of Photography at the University of Westminster. His many publications include Sue is a Trustee for PhotoVoice and a member of the Steering Committee for Format International Photography Zone (2012), Photography: Key Concepts (2009) and Biennial of Derby. Photography and Surrealism (2004). Forthcoming essays include ‘The Digital Condition’ in Photography in Digital Culture, ed. M. Lister and ’The Syntax of Photography’, Hasselblad Foundation. Diane Smyth is the Deputy Editor of the British Journal of Photography, and has also written on photography for Aperture, PDN, Creative Review, Photomonitor, Philosophy of Photography, The Guardian and The Times. She has spoken on photography at The Photographers’ Gallery, The Frontline Club, University College Falmouth and the London College of Communication, and curated exhibitions for the Flash Forward Festival and Lianzhou Foto.
EXHIBITORS Guangxi an DILARA ARISOY Mia Cuk Nhung Dang Frida Edlund Nick Grigg Maria Kapajeva Luba Kozorezova Katerina Kremasioti Helen Marshall Roy Milani ˇ ová Katarína Mudron Sharon Mutch Paul Newman Simon Olmetti BEATRIZ PEREZ Ochi Reyes Marko Righo Enrica Romagnoli Hannah Samuell Nasreen Shaikh Jamal al–Lail Ilektra Stefanatou Katie Stretton Jayne Taylor SARAH TUBBS Johanna Ward Dafydd Williams
My home
Restaurant
Guangxi An The city you cannot go back to This is a story about collecting memories. In China new buildings, roads and cars are viewed by the governors and the people as a source of wealth and happiness. Destruction and reconstruction is rapidly increasing in the cities. These changes harm people who have lived there for years. There are memories in these locations; memories of childhood, working, living and loving. As homes, schools and workplaces are destroyed so too are the memories attached to them. These images attempt to protect personal memories by preserving fragments of my past places, spaces and objects. My friend’s home
DILARA ARISOY 3 AY The ritual of traditional fortune reading from coffee grounds, and believing in the promises given by the fortune teller, work as a medium to deal with the uncertain reality called ‘future’. The idea of our past, present and future are tied to each other, giving this ritual a more effective role in Turkish people’s lives. Dreams, thoughts, beliefs, hopes and expectations are shaped by the metaphorical figures of coffee residues on the saucer and the significant words spoken from the mouth of the fortune teller. Every other interpretation comes to explore the subjectivity of both the subjects and the fortune teller by an intuitive language. I tried to explore the subjectivity of each Turkish person in this project, who are temporarily living in London and believing in those temporary promises. Like the promises given, the significance of portraits also becomes temporary as subjects choose to believe and rely on them. From the moment one is told his or her fortune, they become someone else, quite a new person with different expectations and dreams. The semantic dialogue between the individual and the practice of fortune reading from the black residues of coffee grounds, renders the coffee saucer to a respective secondary portraiture. Yet only for the next 3 MONTHS… Because Every coffee saucer is qualified to denote just the next 3 ‘AY’
the dog: loyalty
common future
Mia Cuk Where I Am Not “There are travellers who no longer even know they are traveling.” Gaston Rageot
The idea of traveling without a single movement is not unfamiliar. A journey can happen in a variety of ways, and on different levels. Making still images of moving subjects was one of mine. Instead of enduring architecture, I focused on brief fragments – people’s gestures and especially looks, using this as an alternative means of exploring the city. A kind of isolation very close to privacy I found in the atmosphere of an upper deck of a bus, where people seemed to be climbing while leaving a piece of themselves on the ground. My interest was precisely that other piece, carried like a burden or a light object, depending on each individual. The glass between us was a fragile boundary between two worlds, making the categories of inside and outside physically clear, but still enigmatic.
Rosina
Nhung Dang Dramas of the Soul How does a person respond when their mind is invited to explore a ‘past life’ under hypnosis? Is the origin of their experiences a product of fantasy, repressed memories or a metaphor for themes occurring in their everyday life? Presented as a series of videos, this project sets out to witness from the outside signs of the vivid internal narrative taking place within the unconscious mind of the subject. This work reflects upon Nhung’s personal lack of a historical narrative due to displacement as a refugee in her early life.
Sally
Frida Edlund Urban Lady In this series I am focusing on the encounter between an older generation of women and the city. This body of work represents how these women are moving within the metropolis, thus being a substantial part of its pulse, and the way in which they inconspicuously take on the urban environment, owning the streets with their vitality, pride and individuality. While I am observing these women, capturing them without their knowledge, I feel curiously close to them, even though they are strangers. In a time when youth is idealized, women belonging to an older age group are not often represented in the contemporary image world. ‘Urban Lady’ aims to make these marvellous flâneuses visible. These women are a metaphor for strength and inspiration and this is why they deserve to be seen.
Nick Grigg The Passenger Counter Insurgency was a term used in the latter stages of the coalition invasion of Iraq, it was officially no longer a war. Although the threat was still present it was no longer visible. It had shifted, hidden throughout a broader landscape that for many provided a stage for theatre to continue. However the very same landscape holds a much deeper connection for the people who inhabit it. It represents a deep cultural history providing a stage for a very different theatre, one of reflection, anticipation and hope. However what remained constant throughout this vast landscape were reminders of the reason why we, as passengers, were there in the first place. Inspired by The Mirror Of Turdin, a mythical short story written by author and Basra resident Muhammad Khudayyir, the work is a re-appropriation of images from my archive which were taken in the final months of the Iraq war, whilst on assignment as an embed with a British Regiment. Due to the nomadic nature of the operatives, nearly all of our time was spent in armoured vehicles. Most of the images were taken from the rooftop of a travelling vehicle. My deepest gratitude extends to the author and Banipal magazine for use of the text.
Safwan Hill Rebro
Maria Kapajeva 50/50 “Every time we meet up with his friends, some of them come to me and ask: ‘You are so beautiful woman, why are you with him?’ Even his best friend has asked me the same thing. But what can I say? I don’t discuss it with anyone. I don’t have anyone to talk about it at all. I cannot talk about my marriage even with my mom. You know, mothers are just dreaming to marry their daughters off and that’s it…”
Luba Kozorezova Uncertain Uncertain is a project about reflections. First, specular ones, as the people from these portraits did not see the camera when being shot. They were looking into the mirror that was placed between them and the photographer. Initially, it was an attempt to observe their behavior in the situation, when they were faced with their own gaze, the gaze of someone behind the reflecting surface and finally the mechanical gaze of the photographic apparatus. In the case of the viewer it is a reflection of another sort: on the differences and similarities between the natures of the still and moving image. The technologies of film and photography that have been tightly bound together throughout history, here are juxtaposed. Their coexistence in one piece allows us to explore the two ways of our perception of time, showing something that has once happened and something that is happening right now, when we are looking at it.
Katerina Kremasioti False Awakening This project revolves around a series of fabricated, imaginary landscapes. The images are created by photographing three-dimensional models which I handmake in my studio using a variety of materials. With the addition of lighting, painted backgrounds and special effects but, most essentially, through the view of the photographic lens, the sets transform into illusionary spaces where the boundaries between reality and fantasy, fact and fiction, dream and awakening become uncertain. The process becomes as equally important as the outcome itself; it is a slow, meticulous journey during which I learn by trial and error, testing the strengths as well as the limitations of the photographic medium. In the end, this journey has always been full of revelations and surprises. The images emerge from my own conscious and unconscious mind, in the shape of memories and dreams. At this point, I invite the viewer to engage with the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of the photographic still, in order to form a sequence of events according to their own perception and interpretation.
Helen Marshall Mumming Ron Shuttleworth is the keeper of costumes of the Coventry Mummers, and of the Morris Ring Folk-Play Archive. These portraits have been made over time with Ron at his house and always in the same location. “The wallpaper was the only thing my wife ever let me choose. We have been going since time immoral, and there are damn few of us left.
Above left: Big Head Above centre: Devil Doubt Above right: St. George Right: Besom Bet
Mummers are not pretending to be something they are not. We make no attempt to impose belief. When the public go to the theatre they suspend their disbelief in reality to accept what they are seeing. However in real life there are many people trying to con them; politicians, estate agents, salesmen, advertisers, etc. Mummers try not to convince or be convincing, it’s unconvincing, it’s not
possible to define, I know it when I see it. You get to the point where you don’t give a toss and as a consequence you acquire confidence in your whole life.“ The custom of Mumming was a rural activity and players performed from house to house, once a year only. This work is the first part of a larger series of Mummers across England.
Richard
Roy Milani Now You See Me. Now You See Me started out as a project about age. Hearing people speak of feeling less visible as they grow older I wanted to explore this sense of invisibility. I decided to consider notions of age, the body and beauty in this work and challenge the tropes commonly used in representing older people. So this became a work about making the invisible visible and as it progressed it became clear that it was also about revealing an emotional space inhabited at one singular point in time within the continuum of a life.
Angela
ˇ ovĂĄ KatarĂna Mudron Strategic Cooking This series of images is neither a critique nor a description, but rather a reflection on the impact of globalization and how humanity is dealing with this phenomenon. Technological progress, everincreasing interconnectedness and economic interdependence serve to compress, to constrain, to cut, to remove and to heat. My work shows simple domestic objects taking on new and unexpected meanings. I am using the subject of food and its preparation to create a dialogue about everyday living, on a global and local level. The domestic object can then appear in its true context as the product of an increasingly homogenised world.
The Harvest, detail 2
The Harvest, detail 1
Sharon Mutch The Harvest Young women all over the world are being solicited by a multi billion dollar industry to help infertile couples have a baby. Egg donation agencies are advertising via college campus bulletin boards, social media and online classifieds, promising large sums of money and assurance to the young women of the safety and nobility of the cause. However, egg donors are not tracked and monitored for short and long term risks that are associated with the powerful drugs taken to boost ovulation for harvesting multiple follicles (eggs). “Girls who donate eggs, after they are done with her: there are no numbers. There is nobody asking – How many of those girls have gone on to have complications or problems? – She is nameless, she doesn’t appear anywhere. She doesn’t appear in the medical literature, she doesn’t appear in any kind of tracking or oversight. She is gone.” (Suzanne Parisian, MD: 2010)
The Harvest is not only a place for us to hear the moving stories recounted by young female donors but it is a memorial wall for the stories that may never be heard.
Paul Newman Mutant Mutant is a series of self-portraits in which I portray gay characters from comic books. My performances explore the homophobic and hetero-normative discourse of the genre. They are a protest against the stereotypes and tropes that serve to warn against and to contain homosexuality.
Make-up design: Cesar Alonso Additional make-up: Tono Garz贸n Costume: Wendy Olver Special thanks to Kristyan Mallett for advice and support
Right: Self-portrait #1 Far right top: Self-portrait #6 Far right bottom: Self-portrait #4
Simon Olmetti It’s not you, it’s me I started this project gathering people who were experiencing some sort of transition and I soon realised that what I was actually creating was a piece of work about me through them. Identity, gender, sexuality are not fixed but in fact something fluid; they cannot be forced in strict boundaries but they exist as a cultural construct. The real self cannot be revealed through portraiture but only projected through performance. This series is a succession of self-portraits.
Untitled #3
BEATRIZ PEREZ Misshapes The series Misshapes is a critique on the media misrepresentation of the female ‘social’ body in contemporary society. The commercial campaigns of the beauty and dieting industry in the 1980s and 1990s imposed unrealistic standards of thinness and beauty on contemporary women in first-world countries. As countries become more cosmopolitan and westernized, so grows the cult of thinness. Within that sort of commercialization and commoditisation of the female body, there is also a proliferation of imagery – particularly in
advertising – which fragments the body, takes it apart. There is a relentless focus on the body parts; as if identity is defined as being the body. Symptoms of this malign narcissism include the incidence of unhealthy dieting, a myriad of eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorder, and depression. This cult of thinness generates body anxiety which in turn has opened up a market for selfesteem that is being exploited by the image driven mass media. Thus, there is a circularity where women are ‘sold back’ to themselves.
Untitled #1
Untitled #2
Ochi Reyes Mother I have gone through the traces my mother left behind since she passed away almost a year ago now: her clothes, her shopping lists, the notes she wrote on her medication, her unfinished pieces of sewing and her photographs. In this search I have been using different lenses to get closer and closer until I finally used a microscope through which the referent disappears in what appears as a series of deserted and abstract landscapes, mirrors of my feelings. This process has been nothing other than a way to both understand her absence and to try to grasp onto whatever could hold her presence; a way to forget and to remember, a way to let emotions go as well as a way to constantly open the doors of these emotions to be able to feel. ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruin’ T.S. Eliot
Marko Righo GOD:DOG These collages are extrapolated subconscious representations of perceived realities. They are constructed out of found materials. Meditation is at the heart of my practice and these compositions happen automatically, they emanate. The input of the mind or ego is almost none but humor and balance are often present. The main theme of the works is creation itself. In these universes, the dogs/gods are our guides. We have created them to our own image. We are the creators. The collages are the first stage in which alternative realities are manifested. These works are shown either in handmade light boxes, projected in room-like structures or built into various immersive installations where our perception is challenged. From 2D collages to 3D installations and from 3D back to 2D, different works are built, photographed, and then built again in a cyclical, repetitive and infinite process of ‘mise en abyme’ or, the containment of an entity within another identical entity. Thus creating a sense of infinite repetition. Meditation leads to liberation from the bondage of these repetitions: to get out of our gross realities one needs to get inward.
Enrica Romagnoli This is confidential This is confidential questions the nature of what we consider private or public. Not so perfectly bounded, the two spheres find their own meaning in a common land, in which hues and individual judgement stand in place of strict dictionary definitions. Starting from recording private behaviours in public places, I focused on what people let transpire about themselves through gestures and expressions. Using a mobile phone camera allowed me to secretly collect a wide material from everyday life, elements then brought back to stage under the conventions of the tableau genre. Moving from archive to narrative, I created scenes with the intention of revealing the coexistence of spontaneity and ambiguity in human behaviours in places we, as a community, share on a daily basis. What we decide to show and share is often out of our awareness, and observation can lead to unexpected discoveries.
Hannah Samuell LDN “Go where we may, rest where we will, Eternal London haunts us still” Thomas Moore
This collection of black and white photographs is a visual and psycho-geographical chronicle of how I perceive this city, London. The images serve as a creative re-imagining of its doleful nature. I walked the streets, the veins of this beast, where I discovered London’s unexplored mysteries. With each tiny alleyway so different, yet eerily similar, I recognized the melancholy madness of the city. It is a place with an overwhelming vastness that cannot be contained. Rising from the flames and ruins, it cannot be controlled, not by its politicians, its people, its history, or even the elements; the fog is seemingly etched in the city’s unique texture. It is torturous, overpowering, and never-ending.
Inspired by English writers such as Arthur Machen and Charles Dickens, and visually roused by early 20th century street photography of the city, I set out into the streets, attempting to understand the monster that is deceptively unknowable. My travels took me through the strangeness of this city: under and over bridges, past crumbling brick buildings, through the cobblestone passageways, and into the vast, despondent metropolis. I gathered the notion that this city revels in its own darkness.
Nasreen Shaikh Jamal al–Lail Count to 9 (video installation) Duration: 1:55 (loop)
When lost between past and present, time and space take on a special significance. This dislocation in my life occurred at the age of 9, when I moved from Saudi Arabia to England, and my world was divided into two different linguistic spheres. In this work I create an abstracted language to show how I have struggled with this sudden shift. The dots are the linguistic medium, which embody the process of transition, capturing the constant state of change, the position and the feeling of being ‘in the middle’. That is, I count to 9 only to realize the gulf between who I was, who I am and who I will become.
Ilektra Stefanatou Hestia In the series Hestia I explored the idea of home. For many people home is associated with a warm and inviting feeling, while for others it is a desirable yet untouchable dream. The depicted domestic architectures also unravel the idea of hospitality, a concept interwoven with the Greek cultural identity since ancient years. Still very prominent in the Greek lifestyle, hospitality is expressed through the generosity and kindness shown to the guest by the host. I captured the interiors of two distinct mansions that were built in the 18th century in Siatista, a town located in the northern part of Greece. During this period Greece was under the Turkish occupation that led to a redistribution of populations. Despite the subjugation, in the 18th and 19th century Siatista experienced a remarkable growth on an economical and cultural level through international commerce and transactions. The owners of the depicted mansions, who were traders, would travel abroad and settle there for a long period of time as they engaged with trade and business. As migration is also an aspect of modern societies, the idea of home is becoming more and more vague. Quite often, the house you live in is not necessarily what you call home.
Katie Stretton Drift ‘We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.’ David Abram
To engage with what surrounds us is also to engage with ourselves. In phenomenology we are inseparable from the world around us. Inside and outside are inseparable. Events and interactions are recorded in many ways, be it visual, written or through the transformations and changes left in various manners. It is said that land carries the remnants of previous events, both of natural occurrence and from human intervention, as though scribed in prose. In negotiating our place and relationship with our surroundings we often seek to find familiarities and connections. Likening land to sea, trees to people, light to rivers and landforms to joints and limbs, we keep an ongoing reciprocity with the world around us. We have a human curiosity not just with how aspects of the world were formed, but also with how they share familiarities and similarities with other parts, both human and non-human.
Cleft
Clavicle
Laurence Sitch, of Sitch & Co. Ltd (Established 1776)
Jayne Taylor Where is Soho? Soho is a dynamic spirit that pervades a small nucleus of old streets at the heart of London. Soho is an enigma: A real yet semi-mythical village; a labyrinth of stories and histories, passages and alleyways; unmarked doors waiting quietly to be knocked on... Soho is familiar yet unknowable, a gem of a place projecting a different facet of itself at every turn. Soho’s enduring persona – colourful and wry, hardworking and unrepressed – has been shaped over centuries by the generations who have created their own currents in its flow of everyday life as it, in turn, continues to shape the people who are drawn there today. Soho is a dreamland for both the past and the future but, above all, it signifies life lived in the moment. (“In Soho,” as Jeffrey Bernard put it, “you’ll never look forward”.) Mr George Skeggs (iPhone shot)
As a Londoner, I thought I knew where and what Soho was. Having set out naively to create an affectionate portrait of the place (knocking on doors... spending time...), I now realise that my old pre-conceived, half-imagined version of Soho wasn’t fully tuned in to the real hum of its hive-like inner-life. “Where is Soho?” tourists ask (often when they’re standing in the middle of it). London’s heart can be spotted easily on the map, but to really find Soho is to recognise that it is so much more than just a location. Soho is a perpetual verve, a collective-life that breathes through streets of this place, through the walls of its buildings and through its people, above and below the surface.
Under Greek Street (iPhone shot)
SARAH TUBBS Lycanthrope Mythologies of the werewolf abound throughout the centuries and across continents in a myriad of slightly varying forms. Are modern media-driven equivalents of dangers at large part of the same tradition? No longer are children just advised never to stray from the path. The series explores whether these creatures are broken individuals of societies’ making, or representations of fear in the common psyche. To what extent does the concentrated population in the urban landscape or the isolation of the rural countryside feed such fears?
Johanna Ward I shall say goodbye with my strengthening love for you, forever and ever Exploring the possibilities of narrative with landscape, still life and vernacular photography, I shall say goodbye with my strengthening love for you, forever and ever, is a cautionary tale for certain symptoms that ail our time. Inspired by myth and fairy tales, emotion and destruction, this story spans many years, reflecting on love, land and control. With two strands intertwined, yet frayed at the edges, it questions our notion of what forever is, and the power of our morals to influence it, or undo it.
Dafydd Williams Y Lon Goed (The Lane of Trees) The series Y Lon Goed portrays the childhood home and the farm in Wales on which I grew up. In many respects the farm is an extension of the home. It is where I worked and played, laughed and cried. The photographs explore themes involving identity and sexuality. Who we are today is shaped and defined by the past. These images serve to chronicle the unconscious, through absence, fantasy, memories and forgotten realities. My work is strongly inspired by Queer theory. The adoption of the landscape and still life genre, different photographic formats reflect the notion of identity as a construct, but fluid and ambiguous, while sexuality is seen as a performance. Found objects of the everyday reveal the invisible. They are coded with language which informed my sexuality and sense of place in the world.
Exhibitor Biographies
Guangxi AN
Nhung Dang
After 10 years working as a prison officer in China, Guangxi An became a journalist for local newspapers, then the team leader of the photojournalism department of The Oriental Morning Post in Shanghai. In 2008, he began studying the MA degree in Photography at Bolton. He travelled to the University of Missouri as a visiting professional fellow in 2010.
Born in Vietnam, Nhung comes from a multimedia background and is a producer of award-winning digital projects, including BAFTA winning ‘Bow Street Runner’ for Channel 4. Her photographic work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as Tate Britain, De La Warr Pavilion, and Dimbola Lodge; and has been featured in various books and publications.
T: +44 (0)7917 105476 E: anguangxi@gmail.com
DILARA ARISOY
E: aridilara@gmail.com W: dilaraarisoy.com Dilara (born 1988) is a London and Istanbul based photographer. Her artistic medium focuses on the possible semantic meanings of photographic image. So that her emphasis is on the differing cultural representations of people, along with the occurrence of their subconscious relation to objects, rituals and beliefs. Dilara’s work has been exhibited in the UK and around the world.
Mia Cuk
E: miacuk.art@gmail.com W: cargocollective.com/miacuk Mia Cuk is a Serbian photographer with a background in fine art. She has won the award for the best graduate project at the Academy of Arts University of Novi Sad and the first prize for portfolio at NABA, Milan. In her photographic practice she explores fragments of the everyday life, mainly focusing on the street portraiture. Her photographs have been exhibited in Serbia and the UK.
E: mail@nhungdang.com W: nhungdang.com
Frida Edlund
E: post@fridaedlund.se Born in 1984, Swedish photographer Frida Edlund has a background in fine art and media. After completing the Art Teacher Program at Umeå University, Sweden, she pursued a teaching career, alongside developing her own practice. Through her photographic work she explores and questions established social structures, such as gender roles and their representation. Frida’s work has been exhibited in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden and London, UK.
Nick Grigg
T: +44 (0)7870 518402 E: nick@nickgrigg.com Over his 20-year career Nick has developed a strong interest in how, as artists, we present imagery pertaining to the human condition. Be it of global or local relevance, the manner in which we contribute to contemporary visual culture is vital. We need to continually look at ways of challenging the status quo of traditional genres in order to actively engage the viewer.
Maria Kapajeva
E: kapajeva@yahoo.com W: mariakapajeva.com Twitter: @mkapajeva Maria is a Russian artist from Estonia. Twice she won the British Council PMI2 Award to produce and exhibit work in India. Also she has been shown in Brazil, Hungary, Albania, Estonia and the UK including ‘The World in London’ at The Photographers’ Gallery. Her recent project was selected for two festivals: FORMAT and The Belfast Photo Festival.
Luba Kozorezova
Helen Marshall
E: mail@helenmarshall.co.uk W: helenmarshall.co.uk Helen Marshall has a track record in collaborative practice. Her portfolio includes commissions for BBC Television, Tate Britain, The Photographers’ Gallery and a recent Arts Council funded collaboration in Indonesia, to be showcased at the upcoming Delhi & Singapore Photo Festivals. Current work is investigating aspects of British vernacular customs and traditions.
Roy Milani
E: lubovkozorezova@gmail.com W: cargocollective.com/luba
T: +44 (0)7770 222123 E: roymilani@me.com W: roymilani.com
Luba was born in Russia in 1989. After graduating from the Lomonosov Moscow State University with a degree in International Journalism, she worked as a radio presenter and a picture editor before deciding to switch to photography. Her current photographic practice is mainly focused on the interrelations between time, memory and perception.
Roy Milani is a photographer, television producer and director. He has won UK and international recognition for his work including BAFTA and Royal Television Society awards. Roy’s work with still images aims to engage the viewer emotionally and intellectually whilst resisting the need for an overarching narrative.
Katerina Kremasioti
ˇ ová Katarína Mudron
Katerina is a London based visual artist. Since 1996, she has been freelancing on hand-drawn, traditionally animated projects, both for the big screen and television. More recently, she was one of the lead colourists on Channel 4’s ‘The Snowman and the Snowdog’. She is a fine arts graduate of Wimbledon College of Art.
ˇ ová is a London based photographic artist, Katarína Mudron originally from Slovakia. Katarina gained her BA in Digital and Lens Media at the University of Hertfordshire. Her work focuses on issues of identity and cross-culture, on states of belonging and of being ‘in-between’. Her work has been exhibited within solo and group shows in the UK.
T: 07967 735446 E: kat.kremasioti@gmail.com
T: +44 (0)7951 406 747 E: katarinamudronova@yahoo.com
Sharon Mutch
BEATRIZ PEREZ
Sharon Mutch studied Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan University and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Sharon’s photographic practice is a response to the stories of individuals she discovers through internet investigations. Her intentions are to interpret their recollections and create photographic installations – stage sets that enable their stories to be retold to a new audience.
Beatriz is a Spanish-born, Venezuelan photographic artist based in London. Beatriz’s work is concerned with the visual representation of the subtle, yet complex, interplay and ongoing dialogue of the inner self with the external environment. Her work explores the power of the subconscious mind where dialogues shift, fragment, interrupt, and expose emotional states. Beatriz has exhibited in London. She currently works at LA Noble Gallery.
T: +44 (0)7788 142795 E: info@sharonmutch.com W: sharonmutch.com
Paul Newman
T: +44 (0)7958 748582 E: paulnewman@dsl.pipex.com Paul Newman is a photographer whose work explores ideas of identity and sexuality.
Simon Olmetti
E: olmettisimon@yahoo.it W: simonolmetti.com Simon was born in Italy and graduated in International Marketing. After having worked in advertising in Milan, he moved to London to pursue a career as an artist and photographer. He is currently involved in the use of both modern and old photographic techniques including wet-plate collodion, with an interest in portraiture and the relationship between painting, photography and other forms of art.
T: +44 (0)7811 045118 E: bperezkhan@gmail.com W: beatrizperezphotography.com
Ochi Reyes
T: + 44 (0)7891 246509 E: ochi@ochireyes.com W: ochireyes.com I was born in Madrid and after studying Graphic Arts in Spain I moved to London to develop my career as an art photographer. My work reflects the way that identities are culturally constructed, exploring how outside events leave traces on the surface of the body. My photographs have been featured in galleries and festivals such as PhotoEspaña in Madrid, Feminist Art Gallery (FAG) in Toronto, and the Tate Modern and the Photographers’ Gallery in London.
Marko Righo Marko Righo was born in Marseille and moved to London 10 years ago as a self-taught photographer. Since then he has worked extensively as a commercial photographer, predominantly for the advertising and fashion industries. In 2008 he co-founded a photo studio and creative-community space in London called MKII where he is involved in running exhibitions, teaching, publishing and community based initiatives along with his own photography and artistic practices. He will be graduating from a Photographic Studies MA at the University of Westminster in September 2013.
Nasreen Shaikh Jamal al–Lail T: +44 (0)7708 643054 E: reen.shaikh@googlemail.com W: nasreenshaikh.blogspot.com
Nasreen Shaikh Jamal Al-Lail (born in Saudi Arabia 1990) is a first-class graduate in Photography BA from the University of Westminster, whose work has been exhibited in England and Saudi Arabia. Her main areas of interest lie in the connection between space and self-identity.
Ilektra Stefanatou Enrica Romagnoli
E: ilektra.stefanatou@gmail.com W: ilektrastefanatou.com
Enrica Romagnoli, born in 1989, decided to leave her hometown and life as she knew it to move to London last year. Coming from a design education, she turned to photography as her main dedication. She has exhibited her work in Europe and she had several commercial commissions in the UK.
Ilektra Stefanatou studied at the University of Portsmouth, where she gained an Honours degree in Photography. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in History and Archaeology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her work, which is often a combination of her two fields, has been exhibited in London and Portsmouth. Ilektra is particularly interested in the boundaries between architectural photography and heritage related issues.
Hannah Samuell
Katie Stretton
Originally hailing from small-town Ohio, USA, and inheriting (read: taking) her father’s old Nikon F3 at age 15, Hannah has seen the world mostly through a lens. Interested in how geographical places can influence thoughts and behaviour, she has been practising an innovative form of personal and psychological documentary photography.
Katie is a photographer and editor based in the UK. She graduated with a 1st class degree and academic scholarship from Nottingham Trent University. Her work has been exhibited and published around the world.
E: enricaromagnoli@gmail.com W: enricaromagnoli.com
W: hannahsamuell.com
E: katie.stretton@hotmail.com E: email@katiestretton.com W: katiestretton.com
Jayne Taylor
Dafydd Williams
Jayne Taylor holds a 1st class BA (Hons) from the University of Westminster and was awarded a scholarship for her postgraduate studies here. She works using the full range of photographic media, allowing the form of each new project to be motivated by its subject matter. Her work has been exhibited widely in London and across the UK, Europe and beyond.
Dafydd is originally from Wales. He graduated in European Studies and Modern History and has worked in the public and voluntary sector, before embarking on a career in photography. His work has been exhibited in London. Passionate about documentary photography his current practice explores themes involving identity and sexuality.
E: mail@jayne-taylor.co.uk W: jayne-taylor.co.uk
SARAH TUBBS
T: +44 (0)7768 585852 E: sarah@sarahtubbs.com W: sarahtubbs.com Sarah Tubbs gained a BA (Hons) in Psychology at Exeter University before embarking on a career in public relations. Based in London, she has studied photography while bringing up her four children. Her practice is inspired by myths, story telling and the collective unconscious.
Johanna Ward
T: +44 (0)7838 362218 E: johanna.ward@ymail.com W: johannaward.co.uk I completed my BA in Photography at the Kent institute of Art and Design, with 1st class honours. I work as a photographer and picture editor within the magazine publishing industry, while also working on personal projects. My work explores relationships; between humans and nature, and those between people.
E: dafydd71@hotmail.com W: dafydd-williams.co.uk
Mapping a Global Photography Practice Panel Discussion Saturday 7 September 2013, 3.30 – 5pm
Simon Terrill, artist
Miranda Gavin, freelance writer, blogger, photographer and educator
Daniel C Blight
Simon Terrill’s photographic practice focuses on the contrasting and oscillating spaces between the The exhibition programme will include a panel personal and the private, the individual and the discussion with Q&A session. This will explore some collective and the impact of these fluid definitions on of the ways in which expanding networks of global architecture, portraiture and the photograph. Recent opportunities might influence and inspire the paths exhibitions include ‘Crowd Theory Adelaide’, Samstag and practices of today’s emerging photographic Museum of Art, 2013 and ‘Balfron Project II’, National artists. The panel will be chaired by writer and curator Trust Erno Goldfinger House, Hampstead Heath, Daniel C Blight, who works in education at The 2012. A monograph of his work, Proscenium, was Photographers’ Gallery. Speaking will be: published in 2011 by M.33 books.
Miranda is Editor-at-Large & Blog Editor for HotShoe magazine, and Editor of Frame and Reference, a visual arts platform for the South East. She also runs photography-focused blog ‘The Roaming Eye’. In 2010 Miranda co-founded (with photographer Wendy Pye) Tri-Pod, a creative initiative that offers peer-group support and advice for the development of personal photographic projects. Nick Kaplony, Artquest Senior Programme Co-ordinator Having worked as Assistant Curator at the Arts Gallery at University of the Arts London, and Exhibitions Co-ordinator at Pump House Gallery, Nick went on to join the Artquest team in June 2007 where he now works as Senior Programme Co-ordinator. Nick also is a practising artist and freelance curator.
Daniel is a writer and curator based in London with a specific interest in the history and theory of photography and cultural and media studies. He currently works in the education department at The Photographers’ Gallery, as well as supervising dissertations and giving talks and seminars at various universities. He has contributed to several publications including 1000 Words Photography, The Guardian, Notes on Metamodernism, Philosophy of Photography and Source.
Acknowledgements Grazie. Спасибо. Tesekkurler. Ευχαριστω. Täname. Gracias.
The MA Photographic Studies 2013 group would like to express their deepest appreciation to everyone who has put in their time, talent, and energy into the past one or two years of our lives and into our final exhibition, MAPS. We have been warmly greeted by a staff of dedicated, brilliant, and professional individuals who have expanded our knowledge of photography, the world and ourselves. We would first like to give our sincere gratitude to the University of Westminster for the opportunity to meet and work with photographers from all over the globe.
and beyond, who have dealt patiently and expertly with us as a group of eager, if sometimes frantic, students. Cheers to Craig Austin, John Bunyon, Darrin Cobb, Rachel Cunningham, Dave Freeman, Aaron Kay, Georgie Matzko, Steve Moore, Eileen Perrier, Sam Rowelsky and Aethan Wills for your incredible expertise. It is our pleasure and privilege to have such a diverse range of writers and participants for our catalogue essays and panel discussion. Thanks to Charlotte Cotton, Diane Smyth and Sue Steward, for your essay contributions, and to Daniel Campbell Blight, Nick Kaplony, Simon Terrill, and Miranda Gavin for sharing their thoughts and ideas with us at the panel discussion. A massive thank you also goes out to all the contributors of our raffle prizes, including David Bate, Black Dog Publishing, Stephen Bull, Foam Magazine, Anna Fox, Karen Knorr, Andrea Morley, The National Portrait Gallery, Laura Noble, Rasheed Onogunlaru, Mitra Tabrizian and many others.
We would like to thank our ever-inspirational course leader, David Bate, for his constant guidance and endless encouragement. Thanks to the Head of Photography and Film Department, Andy Golding, for his devoted support and his exclusive ability for always being able to put a smile on our faces. Thanks to Mitra Tabrizian for her insight and keen understanding. All three of you always found a way to push us further than Our show would not have been whole without the we could ever imagine, and this exhibition is as much a help of our curator, Elizabeth Upper. Your advice product of yours as it is our own. and experience has been invaluable. Thank you for making us look our best. Thanks to the rest of the extraordinary staff that we have had the honour to learn from: Ulrike Leyens, Neil And finally, our exhibition coordinator Nhung Dang, Matheson, Shirley O’Loughlin, Allan Parker and Frank fellow students and colleagues, our friends and family, Watson. Extended thanks go out to Beatrix Campbell, and for those who are constantly close to us when Teemu Hupli, Nina Mangalanayagam, Andrea Alves we are far away from home, we would be nothing De Olivera, and Jelena Stojkovic for our essay and without you. lecture support. We have also benefited hugely from having an exceptional technical team in the darkrooms, studios
Tack. Diolch. хвала. 谢谢. Ďakujeme. Cảm ơn. . Merci. Thank you.
Special thanks for the generous support from our patrons and sponsors: Javier Alarcos, Ana Alcázar, Marta Aparicio Heras, Paula Beardsley, Oscar Benady, Omar Calvo, George Chatzopoulos, Carmen Corbalán Ciudad, Jose Corral, John Faulkner, Carlos García, Laura Garcia Alfaya, Alexey Gurov, Jason Hobbs, Nazmia Jamal, Yuichi Kimura, Karen Knorr, Mark Leman, Ros Murray, Margaret and Harry Newman, Paul O’Neil, Polina Razheva, Reyes Santos Family, Mabel Damunt Romero, Alain Righo, Phil Samuell, Egor Slizyak, Julian Thomas, Rosa Ureta Puerto, Will Voelcker, Janice Ward, Anna Zakharova, Alina Zmuda-Trzebiatowska. The Michael Dyer Prize Michael Dyer Associates have supported Artists & Art students for over 35 years. We realise the importance of supporting & encouraging the next generation of British artists. It gives us great pleasure in offering this prize to an outstanding student.
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Stephen Vallis Michael Dyer Associates
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Sponsored by:
maps-photo.com westminsterphotography.co.uk westminster.ac.uk/mad The University of Westminster is a charity and a company limited by guarantee. Registration number: 977818 England. Registered Office: 309 Regent Street, London, W1B 2UW 6307/08.13/HG/GP