Narcissa

I’ve been experimenting with pinhole photography for a while; I love its simplicity and unexpected results. It was with great interest that I read about camera-less photography exhibition at V & A and decided it was one not to miss.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/photography/shadow-catchers-camera-less-photography/

It’s not a very large exhibition, but all the photographer’s represented: Floris Neusüss, Pierre Cordier, Susan Derges, Garry Fabian Miller and Adam Fuss are of great interest.

Floris Neusüss has devoted his career to photograms, some of which are real life scale portraits with contrast of shadow and dark and black and white.

Pierre Cordier has explored chemigram process in an experimental and artistic way. I have never seen or heard of a photographer treating darkroom chemicals like they were artistic materials to be mixed and painted on a canvas. The results are very fascinating and unique.

Susan Derges is well known for photograms of water where paper is submerged under water in the night, and torch and moon are used to expose the paper. Results are fascinating, unique and beautiful.

Garry Fabian Miller experimented with printing natural objects such as leaves directly onto photographic paper using darkroom enlarger. His more recent work is more abstract yet very simple.

Adam Fuss employs a range of techniques to capture the unseen. His Butterfly Daguerrotype is exquisitely beautiful.

Vision is an annual event organised by British Journal of Photography with photo related stalls, portfolio reviews and well know speakers. Last year it was Steve Bloom, Eugene Richards and Martin Parr. This year they had Jonas Bendiksen, Tom Hunter and George Georgiou.

Jonas Benediksen http://www.jonasbendiksen.com/ is utterly inspirational with his Satellites work in Russia and former Soviet Republics, as well as his latest project and book The Places We Live about ordinary lives in some of world’s largest slums. He’s a engaging speaker, and with his easy going way and sheer honesty, he wins trust of the people and manages to show us their everyday lives.

Tom Hunter http://www.tomhunter.org/html/news.php is very down to earth photographer doing work with very interesting projects mainly based in Hackney. He was the first photographer to have a solo exhibition at The National Gallery. He manages to find inspiration from the old masters, and combined with local events (such as local paper stories), re-enacts them in a very unique way. It weas very refreshing to see a photographer who does not care what his equipment is (some of his work is done using pinhole camera) but cares more about how to convey the atmosphere of a place and his vision of it in the best way possible for the viewer. Tom has that very rare gift of being able to find and depict the world at his doorstep which is an enviable ability, for most photographers it is hard to really see what is right in front of us.

George Georgiou http://www.georgegeorgiou.net/projects.php has spent a lot of time travelling through Balkans, Turkey and more recently Georgia and Ukraine looking at ordinary people in everyday space, national individuality as well as some of the shared past. His work shows beautiful use of light, colour and composition. His photographs made me feel like I was right there in the scene as he manages to go unnoticed by his subjects.

 I’d done a few classes with a couple of members of Uncertain States collective, so when I found out about their exhibition at East Gallery in Brick Lane, I didn’t want to miss it. Private view evening was very busy, but well worth seeing – guys have done a great job of setting up and all the prints were beautifully printed and displayed.

I Could Have Been Anyone I Wanted by Spencer Rowell http://www.spencerrowell.co.uk/ seemed to be a 3D, although it wasn’t advertised as such. However, there was someone there that night with a 3D glasses so we borrowed those to have a look. Print worked very well in 3D but it was quite interesting as well even without it.

I also liked David George’s work: http://www.david-george.co.uk

Work I liked most that evening were prints which had slightly destructed look, and interesting mix of colours. I really can’t do it justice by description, you should see it in person to appreciate.

Check out Uncertain States website: www.uncertainstates.com 

Magnum Print Room in London took a bit of time to find and get to, but I was not sorry for time spent getting there. Elliott Erwitt’s 30”x40” platinum prints are the largest platinum prints I’ve ever seen, and beautifully made. Being monunted next to similar silver prints, you can really compare the two types and appreciate the maginificence of platinum prints in that size.

It was very interesting to see film prints of old Hollywood stars (Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren). Exhibition also had several photos of dogs, some very humorously observed. Well worth seeing this legendary photographer in print.

See Magnum website for more details about the exhibition:

http://events.magnumphotos.com/exhibition/elliott-erwitt-platinum-prints-classic-snaps

http://2010.photomonth.org/listings#409

Managed to squeeze in visit to Photomonth Photofair on Saturday despite hectic family plans. There was a lot of interesting work, thought it was better than last year – although I did really like The Young Masters work shown last year. This time, my eye got caught by a beautiful handpainted albumen print, it was a genuine 1890. Absolutely stunning.

Finally got around to seeing Exposed exhibition at Tate Modern. Some very big photography names there so it was great to see their prints in person.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/exposure/default.shtm

I attended launch event for Tim Rudman’s “The Master Photographer’s Toning Book”. He has teamed up with Silverprint to re-print this book. Tim was very generous with his time and speank 3 hours talking about toning, lith and showed some of his work, some of which was previously unseen.

It was a very informative talk and invaluable for those with not a lot of darkroom / printing experience. I can’t wait to try some of the toning techiniques he’s talked about. Combined with lith printing, effects achieved can be very striking yet subtle with rich dark tones, yet soft subtle hightlights.