World Photography Festival - London

Source: http://www.photographyblog.com/news/world_photography_festival_2011/

The World Photography Festival 2011 runs from the 26th of April to the 1st of May at Somerset House, London. The Festival is set to be an exciting week of workshops, seminars, photo shoots and talks led by the international photography industry such as Bruce Davidson, Francis Hodgson, Tom Stoddart, Yasima Reggad, Foto 8, Panos Pictures, Blurb and iStock. Somerset House will be a hub of photographers sharing their work, learning from the experts and being critiqued. In addition the Sony World Photography Awards Gala Ceremony will take place at the Odeon cinema on Leicester Square in London on Wednesday 27th of April.

The World Photography Festival are offering Photography Blog readers a 10% discount on the price of the festival tickets. To benefit from the discount, please enter the following promotional code MAG10 in the box ‘Gift Voucher’ under the following link: http://bit.ly/h2gavQ

I found this quite exiting and I think it will benefit my knowledge of photography substantially. I find events like this inspiring and they always get the ball rolling. 

Key points from research

Through my research I have spotted a few key points which do not differ. They all co-insider to create the mood and atmosphere of the photographs. These being:

• Emptiness
• Desolation
• Desertion
• Mist/fog
• Rain
• Extreme weather
• Texture
• Action shots - movement 
• Colours (black and white or the reverse, deep/bright)
• High connotations 

I will use these points when shooting my own photographs and that will help me to create similar effects to what I have witnessed myself.
 

Rinko Kawauchi

Harry Calahan

 

 All of the images are in black and white and instantly that stikes atmosphere. the photographs are very empti and still and are very landscape based. the horizon lines are always very distinct add to the endless feel of the images. i feel peaceful when looking at these images. i think the photographer may have felt as ease in these locations and he has captured that emotion and longing through his photography.

I love the sea and the desert, the texture and movement that they produce is quite chilling and always adds interests to images. here they add to the intensity and detail within. they are very typical landscape shots. the images make me feel very similar to William Chirstenberrys photographs as they involve the same emtiness and serentity that makes me feel peacful and in awe. 

William Christenberry

These images all have quite eerie components to them. I think that may be something to do with the backgrounds and the emptiness withing them. William intends to stir up emotions through seemingly ordinary photographs. these images certainly strike some form on be wilderness in me. they seem so serene and simple yet he has managed to capture some element from the surroundings with strike me. I think the colours and the orientation of the photos enhance the mood and atmosphere of the photo. I can always see atleast one striking colour in his images and that pushes it. they are very mellow and relax me which is because of the silentness of them and the desertion surrounding the buildings. buildings were built to hold people and that it how we all associate them so when you see a building completely desolate it causes a stir. You can see that all the images were taken in good lighting and the skies are normally very chilled colours which enhances the serenetiy of them. 

All of the images are the same. they include one focus subject - the buildings - and a small amount of landscape which are always empty and calm. they are all shot straight on which in a way adds some intensity to the images. it reminds me of fond memories where i have been at peace in a beautiful location on my own and at the will of my surroundings, i had time to think and was not discracted and shackled by societys forceful expectations and culture - although i love busy scenes and citys where i am emersed in wonderful sights it can often prove difficult to pull yourself away from all the technology and modern addictions that pull us in so tightly but really are absolutely useless. I think this is why i feel enlightened by these images.

I think it will be very interesting to approach this style of photography in my own way. i can pick and choose appropriate buildings that compel me for my personal reasons and i can attach connotations to those locations. I think i will prowl Brighton as it is my nearest city and is home to some very impressive locations. I will follow my emotions and photograph places that make me feel how i do when i look at these images, serene, intrigued, wondrous, compelled and  invigorated. I want to find somewhere that is very eerie and of course it must have an interesting atmosphere. i may approach this using a film camera as i think they capture so much more texture for shots like this. Also the black and white could create interesting results. 

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Ori Gersht

‘The series calls into question our familiarity with our own natural habitat, pointing out the gulf between the sky that we believe we know, and that of the photographs: a gap between the mechanical, attentive and assumptive vision of the camera, and the presumptive and subjective vision of the human eye.” Ori Gersht.

I studied Ori Gersht in my AS first year. Now I understand photography a lot more I understand that he is truly talented. These photographs are taken from a series called 'Rear Window'. if you look in to the bottom of the photos you can just make out the tops of houses which is a lovely addition to the contrast of the colours. The photos are so simple but the simplicity is compelling and so powerful I can't describe it. When I see colours like this in the sky I really do feel like I am on another planet. There is something other-worldly about them. The soft, natural blend of colours is so relaxing and wondrous. I have always loved colour photographs as if you use them correctly they are simply mind blowing.I have also always been a lover of natural elements. The countryside, mountains, rivers and the sky. These images remind me of fond memories when I have been on my own in the south of France in the middle of the mountains gazing at the multi-coloured sky, it has some form of magic about it that just puts me on edge. 

Ori Gersht is a photographer and film maker that was born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1967, and now lives and works in London. He has an extensive and quite diverse series of beautiful projects going from panoramic images of European football stadiums, images of buildings scared by the war in Sarajevo to pure abstractions like the series “Rear Window” where he captures the beautiful light at twilight in London as seen from a single window in his apartment.

The dramatic skies in London create the illusion of abstract paints with an intricate blend of color and light in the polluted atmosphere of London. All the images were taken through the same window at different times of the year and at different times of day. It is quite amazing how the same place, the same view with different light, can produce such distinct images like they were taken in different locations (see two more examples below). The images were shot with no filters and the saturated colors are a results of cloud formations and light accumulation.

Richard Avendon

I absolutely adore these images. They are full of energy and character. His work is clearly fashion photography and Avendon is a noted fashion photographer. He has worked with the likes of Vogue - prestigious. All of his photos are in black and white and all of the poses/postures and extravaghent and exotic. I think the Avendon is trying to make a bold statement with his photos as they are very dramatic and he has certainly captured true emotion in them.

All of the subject in the photograph are women and very strong, beautiful women. I believe Avendon wanted the element of femininity and elegance in his photos and this coincides with the very fairy like feel. He likes to focus on action shots - a lot of movement and a sense of reality. All of the images are uplifting and invigorating to look at.

The way in which the women float around and almost fall to ground gives me a sense of helplessness. Also the black and white help to freeze frame the situation as if the moment has just been suddenly torn from reality. 

William Christenberry - Research

William Christenberry

photography, painting, sculpture, and audio commentary by the artist

“It is the genius of William Christenberry to stir up intensely evocative emotions and meanings from common, even humble, pieces of the world.”

— Howard N. Fox, curator of modern and contemporary art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

If you call the current comprehensive exhibition of William Christenberry's work a "retrospective," he will politely correct you with his charming Southern drawl: "It's not a retrospective, because I'm not dead yet."

Nevertheless, the show at the Smithsonian, and the accompanying book by Aperture, show the artist and his evolutions and variations and recurrent themes in near encyclopedic form. We discover his strong reliance on photography dating from his first photographs from 1961 (used primarliy as source material for his painting and sculpture), through his instant leap from a brownie camera to an 8 x 10 view camera (at the insistence of his friend Lee Friedlander) in the mid 1970s.

His professional interests have remained intensely personal throughout his career. He values vernacular architecture and signs from the southern United States. And he continues to document these kinds of subjects year after year, to show the deterioration and changes brought about by time and nature and human intervention.

The book itself is beautifully designed and printed. The sequencing of material allows you the shock of recognition at the passing of 20-plus years of time, year by year, of some of the same subject matter. And we are able to experience how a talented painter and sculptor like Christenberry can use these captured fleeting moments of time to create paintings, sculptures and collages.

Christenberry spoke to an audience of photography enthusiasts on December 1, 2006 at a presentation for San Francisco's PhotoAlliance and Aperture West. Here you can listen to some choice bits from that presentation:

- Jim Casper

Inforamtion from:
http://www.lensculture.com/christenberry.html

Richard Avendon - Research

http://www.vogue.co.uk/biographies/080422-richard-avedon-biography.aspx

Richard Avedon said of his photography: "A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's being photographed and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks."

• Born in New York on 15 May 1923, Richard Avedon was in possession of a Kodak Box Brownie camera by the age of 12
• Having studied philosophy at Columbia University in the late Thirties, Avedon went on to study photography under Alexey Brodovitch at the Design Laboratory of the New School of Social Research
• Richard Avedon shot the Paris collections for almost 40 years, and was staff photographer for Vogue from 1966 until 1990
• Richard Avedon became the first ever staff photographer for The New Yorker in 1992, at the age of 69

From the start of his career, Richard Avedon's name became synonymous with fashion as well as portraiture. He photographed everyone from Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Parker and the Duchess of Windsor as well as a lot of "unknown" people. Known for bringing the fashion models of the day, including Suzy Parker and Sunny Harnett, to life, Richard Avedon injected a previously unseen vibrancy into the medium of fashion photography.

Richard Avedon married twice and has a son. Perhaps the most poignant set of photographs Avedon ever produced were those of his dying father. He died in 2004 of a brain haemorrage.

Gregory Crewdson

I really enjoy Gregory's work. He features a lot of mist in his photos and this is incredibly effective. All the images have an element of mystery in them. 

(http://www.vam.ac.uk/index.html)

Born Brooklyn, New York, 1962

'I have always been fascinated by the poetic condition of twilight. By its trans formative quality. Its power of turning the ordinary into something magical and otherworldly. My wish is for the narrative in the pictures to work within that circumstance. It is that sense of in-between-ness that interests me.'

Gregory Crewdson reworks the American suburb into a stage-set for the inexplicable, often disturbing, events that take place at twilight. In creating what he calls 'frozen moments', he has developed a process akin to the making of a feature film. Operating on an epic scale, he uses a large crew to shoot and then develop the images during post-production.

Every detail of these images is meticulously planned and staged, in particular the lighting. In some instances, extra lighting and special effects such as artificial rain or dry ice are used to enhance a natural moment of twilight. In others, the effect of twilight is entirely artificially created.

All the images propose twilight as a poetic condition. It is a metaphor for, and backdrop to, uncanny events that momentarily transport actors from the homeliness and security of their suburban context.

Sarah Hobbs - Research

Before Sarah Hobbs begins staging scenes in her Atlanta home (which doubles as her studio), she first researched such human behavior as phobias and obsessive compulsive activity. Small Problems in Living, her sixth series to explore the psyche, is also her first solo exhibition. It ranges in subject from claustrophobia to vanity but consistently constructs acute tableaux within domestic settings. Obsessiveness is seen as a room painted in chocolate, the empty candy wrappers clustered in a mound on the drop cloth. Insomnia is a bevy of yellow notes suspended just above an empty bed. These neuroses and mental disturbances manifest themselves in objects cluttering otherwise sparsely furnished rooms, multiplied to overtake if not quite overwhelm the space. There is just enough space left to allow the room an occupant (though one is never pictured), one who could hardly help but notice the unique elements featured there but would not yet be immobilized by them. 

Sarah Hobbs was born in Lynch burg, Virginia in 1970, and began to photograph when she was seven years old. She earned both her BFA in Art History (1992) and her MFA in Photography (2000) from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Her solo exhibitions include Sub Urban: Sarah Hobbs at Knoxville Museum of Art in Tennessee, Small Problems in Living at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, and Small Problems in Living at Solomon Projects in Atlanta, Georgia. She has also exhibited in Chicago at Woman Made Gallery; in Poughkeepsie, New York at Barrett House Gallery; in Athens, Georgia at Athens Academy and Georgia Museum of Art; and in Atlanta at Georgia Stage University Gallery, Artwalk, The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Upstairs Gallery, and Trinity School Art Auction. Her work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey. Hobbs lives and works in Atlanta.

Sarah Hobbs

Sarahs images definitely portray a sense of mood and atmosphere. All of the images are deserted and some what odd. I like the eerie sense that I get from them. I also notice that she uses multiple objects in her images - masses of one thing. 

I got these images from - http://theexposureproject.blogspot.com/2008/02/sarah-hobbs.html - and this is what they said:

''Sarah Hobbs photographs address the psychology of human behavior, specifically focusing on the phobic, obsessive and compulsive tendencies that pervade daily life. Each meticulously constructed tableaux focuses on a different psychological ailment, rendering subjects like claustrophobia, insomnia, overcompensation, perfectionism and paranoia. Hobbs' photographs enhance these neuroses by inundating otherwise sparse interiors with the byproducts of these disturbances. Ironically, her compositions possess their own claustrophobic tendencies, limiting the visual space that's explorable within each frame.''

http://www.artic.edu/aic/resources/resource/702?search_id=1 - Click here for a detailed explanation of the project by the photographer her self. 

From Top To Bottom:

Untitled (Over Compensation)

Untitled (Fate Compulsion)

Untitled (Insomnia)

Untitled (Obsessiveness)

Lucinda Chua - Other

This is a random selection of Lucindas work. I find these images quite compelling and I love the techniques and composition that she has used.

Lucinda Chua - The Still Point

This is project 2/2 of Lucindas. Both present elements of mood and atmosphere that I think would be beneficial for me to draw from. I retrieved these images from http://www.lucindachua.co.uk/.

This is what she said:


''The photograph is incapable of conveying a moment in its entirety, all it can show is a fragment of a narrative. The picture captures characters, trapping them in the frame where they remain bound to their pose, incapable of completing their journey. Whilst the photograph is still and silent, each tableau is a performance that is pieced together and constructed.
At the still point, there the dance is.''

Lucinda Chua - The Preludes

This is one of two projects that Lucinda did that I enjoy. 

This is what she said:

''From the day I was born, my father wanted me to play Chopin's preludes. This became a imprint on my life defining a childhood of piano practice and music lessons.
This series questions the concept of childhood; a world that has been constructed and defined by adults.''

Lucinda Chua

I went on to Lucindas website - http://www.lucindachua.co.uk/ - to do some research on her work. I was impressed by the quality of her work and the photos definitely left a sense of atmosphere. Some of the images are quite awkward looking and some are intriguing, leaving you asking ''what is the meaning behind?''. 

This is what she said:

''I was born in London and raised in the rural countryside bordering Milton Keynes. In 1998 I was granted a musical scholarship by the Milton Keynes Music Service to study the piano, cello, singing and composition and was afforded the opportunity to perform in venues including the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall and the Birmingham Symphony Hall.

In 2007 I graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a first class BA with honours in photography and have since exhibited my work both nationally and internationally. My visual practise has grown to encompass still photography, moving image, performance and musical score. I currently live and work in London.''

What exam question have I decided to study?

Mood and Atmosphere

On Friday 4th I was in a lesson with Sarah - one of my photography teachers. We used the lesson to tear apart and analys all of the given exam question. 

At the beginning of the lesson I was very torn and confused as to what exam question I wanted to take on but when we did brainstorms on all of the questions it really helped for my ideas  to flow and showed me what questions i would be able to exell at. 

Evidently, the question I chose was Mood and atmosphere as when I approached the question I immediately had images forming in my head.

I have a really good feeling about this project and I hope that by the end I can use all of my talents rather than wasting them as I have done in previous projects.

My first ever Blogger post

I've have created this blog for my Photography exam (A2, UNIT 4). I will document my project with thoughts, videos, interviews, photographer research, reflective logs etc. I do have another, personal, blog. http://nocomplicationsplease.tumblr.com/ - feel free to check it out. Also I think it is relevant to add that I have not used Blogger before, only Tumblr. Enjoy.