Exhibition: New York Arbor, Brussels

This was an exhibition by Mitch Epstein, which I was in June. It was a series of trees, similar to Eugene Atget's work with trees in Paris taken at the start of the 20th Century. It was portrait-style placement of trees in New York and showed the diversity of the city - what is behind the trees and who is there. It showed the huge amount of urban development. There were texts about the roles of the trees and how necessary they are for human life.
The work was presented as fairly large prints, 3 large ones greet you as you enter. They do, however, lack some contrast and some are quite grey and lifeless depending on the subject.
As you go through and look at locations familiar from TV, it gives a different insight into each neighbourhood, by making us focus on the trees rather than people to depict it. 

TV Show: David Suchet People I Have Shot

This was on ITV 3 in May, where David Suchet went around taking some shots as taken by his grandfather, many years later. His grandfather was James Jarche. David Suchet showed us lots of the original negatives, the main one I remember was an image of a man in Berlin which used only available  light. He mainly took people shots. David Suchet had never done an assignment shoot before this programme.
He talked about using a Leica as it is good for stories. He talked about layouts - starting top left to bottom right to show the story. He also talked a lot about how stories differ from single images. He followed the stories his grandfather took, he went and found the places, found out the history and talked to locals to try and recreate the images.
Mining was still going on in one area of North Wales, he followed miners who work in one of the mines his grandfather photographed. This part of the show really highlighted the power of images to help us remember things, he showed locals the images his grandfather had taken and this sent them down memory lane and he heard so many stories. He also showed us images from Libya and went to the Imperial War Museum archives. He talked about how it felt as he took Army images of a 'fake war;' feeling removed as he took photos, and said it was odd that he was taking photos as there was shooting all around him and people potentially being killed.
He went to the Senetaph to recreate an image for the Weekly Illustrated and also took lots of backstage images in a theatre. He showed us colour images from 1944 at a show 'Lilac Domingo.' the images were incredibly sharp. He also talked about 'being invisible' and how this is the best way for a photographer to be.
His exhibition at the end was amazing and really consolidated what must have been an amazing personal journey. 

Exhibitions: Deutsche Börse Prize and Studio Works

I went to the Photographer's gallery at the end of May and was pleased that I was there for the Deutsche Borse prize exhibiton as I know Mishka Henner from uni and wanted to see his work in print. There were 4 exhibitions in this part which I will describe individually.

War Primer 2 - Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin - this was from a book originally by Bertold Brecht from 1955, War Primer, which had photos, fragments and newspaper clippings with 4 line poems. The new edition layered google search results for the poems over the originals, modernising the book and giving it a complete new look. I am not particularly interested in War photography, but enjoyed seeing how this project had been 'modernised.'

No Mans Land - Mishka Henner was an extremely though provoking set of images, of women in Southern European streets. He used google street view to take the photos of women as they waited on 'street corners.' He researched sites talking about where prostitutes can be found, then used street view to find them. Looking at the images and knowing how they have been taken leads to a real sense of voyeurism, there is a definitive sense that these images could not have been taken by someone using a camera. This also raises issues of image taking and privacy, and CCTV too. I wonder if these women have any idea about it and think this is a great social experiment with a type of photography that has been made possible with new technology.

What Happened - Great Britain 1970-1990 by Chris Killip was a set of black and white images of working people in the North of England. The photographer immersed himself in the communities and by doing so was able to document the lives of these people in striking images. Nothing is hidden from the camera it seems, the images show how tough life was for these people.

The Afronauts by Christina de Middel was a fun take on documenting the story of Zambia's space programme, which started in 1964. The portraits showed the people involved, often wearing their space helmets in the images, or a version of a space helmet in some cases.

The other exhibition in the gallery was Studio Works by Claire Aho. This was a real selection of her studio shots, some taken for ads and magazines, some showing originals before they were cropped for use, which showed how images are really taken for these situations. This gave us an idea of the process involved. Some images also showed the lighting set ups, and many displayed a great sense of humour. 

Exhibition: Travel with Me

I saw this exhibition and met the photographers at Lancaster Children's Centre in May. First I was shown original books from the 1980's where traveller children had been given disposable cameras to depict their life, to show others how they lived and educate them. Someone at the Children's Centre found albums which had space for recording a voice over for each numbered photo. They gave cameras to children living on traveller sites all over Lancaster. The result was an eclectic mix of ages represented and varying aspects of their lives shown in print. It was interesting to see what they do both on and off site, setting up travelling circuses for example. Hearing them speak about their images was inspiring. They were also given a party to celebrate their work, local librarians and teachers were invited. They decorated covers to keep their work in and it was great to see how proudly they did this. 

Exhibition: portraits

This exhibition was at Bridport medical practice. There were some very striking black and white images of people in various situations, mainly outside. They did not appear to have been taken in the UK, but as there was no information to be found I am still not sure where they were from! Some images were on what appeared to be farms, with animals in the back or foreground (llamas appeared in one!). The photos were very detailed and high contrast. I initially wanted to find out more information about where they were taken but then realised that not having the information was a little more exciting, we can draw our own conclusions. 

Nikon Club - Video Workshop

This workshop was the first I had been to in KL, and I have to say the experience was much better over in Sabah for workshops! The teacher was awesome but the classroom was way too small for everyone and it didn't feel as friendly. I learnt heaps though, and for me the highlight was seeing a video of time lapse made for yahoo and maybank that took 5 months to make! We were shown various tools we can use for taking videos, remote control skateboards for example. We got to try out a few things at the centre, and left with a lot of notes on how to make videos and some basics about editing. I haven't yet done much with video, but now have a lot of ideas......

Exhibition: Nikon Centre, Kuala Lumpur

While I was in KL, I went to the Nikon Centre for the video workshop, and also saw their exhibition which had various themes. Most photos were street photography involving locals, and were taken for nikon competitions. There were some interesting scenes and it was a good introduction to towns I have not yet visited in Malaysia. There was a real mix of colour, black and white and HDR. The HDR images were still a little surreal though, I still am not sure what my thoughts are on that!

Exhibition: Cold Comfort, Kota Kinabalu

I saw this exhibition in January at Suria Mall in KK. The photos were taken by Mathias Heng, and were displayed by Leica. The photos documented 5 visits to Japan, where the author visited to document the lives of local people following the 2011 Tsunami. The photos gave an insight into what the people were going through and showed also how some areas are now being rebuilt as people start to put their lives back together. The suffering was evident as was the resilience of people from the images.