Category: Politics and Activism

  • Francis Frith

    Francis Frith postcards website

    edited from Wikipedia article

    Francis Frith Images

    Francis Frith  (1822 –1898) was an English photographer of the Middle East and many towns in the United Kingdom. Frith was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire.  In 1850 he started a photographic studio in Liverpool, known as Frith & Hayward. A successful grocer, and later, printer, Frith fostered an interest in photography, becoming a founding member of the Liverpool Photographic Society in 1853. Frith sold his companies in 1855 in order to dedicate himself entirely to photography.

    Frith was “recorded” as a Quaker minister in 1872 (at this time there were little more than 250 recorded ministers in England and Wales). He served on numerous committees, and frequently spoke in favour of pacifism and abstinence.  In 1884, he published (with William Pollard and William Turner) A Reasonable Faith, a highly controversial pamphlet which challenged evangelical orthodoxy by questioning the factuality of the Bible. Francis Frith and his co-authors who began the liberalisation of the Quaker movement and paved the way for the philanthropic and educational reforms for which the movement is well known today.

    Middle East Travels

    He journeyed to the Middle East on three occasions, the first of which was a trip to Egypt in 1856 with very large cameras (16″ x 20″). He used the collodion process, a major technical achievement in hot and dusty conditions.

    During his travels he noted that tourists were the main consumers of the views of Italy, but armchair travellers bought scenes from other parts of the world in the hope of obtaining a true record, “far beyond anything that is in the power of the most accomplished artist to transfer to his canvas.” These words express the ambitious goal that Frith set for himself when he departed on his first trip to the Nile Valley in 1856.

    Restored albumen print of the Suez Canal at Ismailia, c. 1860

    The Hypaethral Temple, Philae, by Francis Frith, 1857; from the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland

     

    He also made two other trips before 1860, extending his photo-taking to Palestine and Syria.

    In addition to photography, he also kept a journal during his travels elaborating on the difficulties of the trip, commenting on the “smothering little tent” and the collodion fizzing – boiling up over the glass. Frith also noticed the compositional problems regarding the point of view from the camera. According to Frith, “the difficulty of getting a view satisfactorily in the camera: foregrounds are especially perverse; distance too near or too far; the falling away of the ground; the intervention of some brick wall or other common object… Oh what pictures we would make if we could command our point of views.” An image he took known as the “Approach to Philae” is just one example which elaborates his ability to find refreshing photographic solutions to these problems. (cited from “A World History of Photography”)

    Survey of Britain and Francis Frith & Co. 

    When he had finished his travels in the Middle East in 1859, he opened the firm of Francis Frith & Co. in Reigate, Surrey, as the world’s first specialist photographic and postcard publisher, a firm that became one of the largest photographic studios in the world. In 1860, he married Mary Ann Rosling (sister of Alfred Rosling, the first treasurer of the Photographic Society).

    The same year he embarked upon a colossal project—to photograph every city, town and village in the United Kingdom; in particular, notable historical or interesting sights. Initially he took the photographs himself, but as success came, he hired people to help him. Frith’s ‘views’ were predominantly of places with social or historical significance but also included a great number of more mundane but equally valuable street scenes.

    Frith died in Cannes, France at his villa on 25 February 1898.

    The ten-part BBC series Britain’s First Photo Album, presented by John Sergeant, was first shown on BBC2 in March 2012 and takes a look at the history of Francis Frith’s pioneering photographic work. A 320 page book also entitled Britain’s First Photo Album has been published. The Frith and Co. brand continues today, and it’s possible to purchase prints and other merchandise from the online store.

    Graham Clark (1997, p.73) remarks:
    “… the landscape photograph implies the act of looking as a privileged observer so that, in one sense, the photographer of landscapes is always the tourist, and invariably the outsider. Francis Frith’s images of Egypt, for example, for all their concern with foreign lands, retain the perspective of an Englishman looking out over the land. Above all, landscape photography insists on the land as spectacle and involves an element of pleasure.”

     

  • Paul Shambroom

    website

    Shambroom is conducting a long-term investigation of power. This started with series on nuclear weapons, factories and corporate offices. He then focused on homeland security training and preparation. His images are influenced by painting traditions, including Dutch landscape painting.

    Meetings Series

    These photographs emphasize the theatrical aspects of meetings: There is a “cast”, a “set”, an “audience” (sometimes) and a “program” (the agenda). Seating arrangements, clothing and body language all provide clues to local cultural traits and political dynamics. The subjects play dual roles as private individuals and (sometimes reluctant) public leaders. Power may be relative, but the mayor of a town of 200 has much in common with the President of the United States. We see ourselves reflected (either positively or negatively) in our leaders, exemplifying both the highest ideals and lowest depths of the human spirit. Our reactions to them help define our perceptions of our own place in society, as insiders or outsiders, haves or have-nots

    Homeland Security

    This work examines issues of fear, safety and liberty in post-9/11 America. From 2003 – 2007 I am photographed facilities, equipment and personnel involved in the massive government and private sector efforts to prepare for and respond to terrorist attacks within the nation’s borders. First responders and law enforcement officers train in large-scale simulated environments such as “Disaster City” in Texas and “Terror Town”, an abandoned mining community in New Mexico purchased with funds from the Department of Homeland Security. Training scenarios, by necessity, involve simulated environments and threats. This blurring of fiction and truth mirrors the difficulty we have discerning between legitimate safety concerns and hyped-up fear.

    Treasure: Landscapes of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

    Shambroom photographs the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) – emphasising the way that this is hidden – as ‘critical assets’ public attention is discouraged although access is not illegal. The Department of Energy agreed to let him photograph from outside the sites without hindrance and allowed me to visit inside one site, but only after lengthy negotiations.

    How does one photograph something that can’t be seen? My approach was to work from a distance to incorporate the land and water over the storage caverns, and include lots of sky. I took inspiration from 17th century Dutch landscape paintings, whose fluffy clouds and bucolic countryside spoke of that nation’s prosperity. For a while back in the twentieth century the United States enjoyed similar prosperity, with a seemingly limitless supply of petroleum to power industry and automobiles. The oil supply was truly “out of sight, out of mind”.

    Today it is very much on our minds. The hundreds of millions of barrels of oil beneath these idyllic landscapes offer a very thin veneer of protection to our economy and way of life. By government estimates, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could replace foreign oil imports for 59 days. Then the tap would be empty.

    Lost

    “Lost” is a series of photographs derived from missing pet posters placed by owners in public places. These images have been degraded by environmental factors or printer malfunctions, resulting in serendipitous and unexpected color and texture. The additional partial loss (of the image) mirrors the ambiguous loss of a beloved family pet. The incorporation of short selections of text from the posters introduces unintentional humor and beauty in the form of found poetry. The words and images combine to transcend the particular family dramas represented in each image, and address more universal themes of loss and uncertainty.

  • Willie Doherty

    Willie Doherty (born 1959) is an artist from Northern Ireland, who has mainly worked in photography and video.

    His website images

    Doherty was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, and from 1978 to 1981 studied at Ulster Polytechnic in Belfast. Many of his works deal with The Troubles. As a child he witnessed Bloody Sunday in Derry, and much of his work stems from the knowledge that many photos of the incident did not tell the whole truth. Some of his pieces take images from the media and adapt them to his own ends.

    His works explore the multiple meanings that a single image can have. Some of Doherty’s earliest works are of maps and similar images accompanied by texts in a manner similar to the land art of Richard Long, except that here the text sometimes seems to contradict the image.

    Doherty’s video pieces are often projected in a confined space, giving a sense of claustrophobia. The videos themselves sometimes create a mood that has been compared to film noir.

    Doherty has acknowledged the importance of the Orchard Gallery in Derry as a venue where he could see modern art in his formative years. Doherty was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1994 and 2003, and has represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1993, Great Britain at the São Paulo Art Biennial in 2003 and Northern Ireland at the 2007 Venice Biennale. He was a participant in dOCUMENTA

     

  • Sophie Ristelhueber

    Sophie Ristelhueber (born 1949) is a French photographer. Her photographs concern the human impact of war, and she has photographed extensively in the Balkans and Middle East. She was born in Paris, where she still lives.

    Tate Shots video with transcript

    I had strongly in mind the idea that I was not going to document this war. Though we have very few images of it, I wanted to do a statement on how little we see…So this work is entitled Fait, which in French means done, and a fact…I was not so much interested in that conflict, which was for me an oil problem, but through an image I’ve seen in a magazine of the trenches, that I imagine like being wounds in the desert… My decision when I arrived in Kuwait was to take an aerial view… a way to talk about the fact that we see everything with satellites, or all the technical data we have now, and in a way, we see nothing.

     

  • Mitch Epstein

    [wpdevart_youtube]PeKiZUgzrr8[/wpdevart_youtube]

    Mitchell “Mitch” Epstein (born 1952 in Holyoke, Massachusetts) is an American photographer. His best known work on landscape is American Power (2009). From 2004 to 2009, Epstein investigated energy production and consumption in the United States, photographing in and around various energy production sites. This series questions the meaning and make-up of power—electrical and political. Epstein made a monograph of the American Power pictures (Steidl, 2009), in which he wrote that he was often stopped by corporate security guards and once interrogated by the FBI for standing on public streets and pointing his camera at energy infrastructure. The images also reflect the political climate of fear and paranoia across America in the wake of 9/11.

    The large-scale prints from this series have been exhibited worldwide, and a selection won the Prix Pixtet Award among others.

    Google Images for American Power 

    Epstein collaborated with his second wife, author Susan Bell, on a public art project and website based on American Power. The What Is American Power?project used billboards, transportation posters, and a website to “inspire and educate people about environmental issues.” The website: http://whatisamericanpower.com (a Flash-based display that I find somewhat annoying)

    Wikipedia review quotes:

    In his Art in America review, Dave Coggins wrote that Epstein “grounds his images…in the human condition, combining empathy with sharp social observation, politics with sheer beauty.”

    In an essay for the catalogueContemporary African Photography from The Walther Collection: Appropriated Landscapes (Steidl, 2011), Brian Wallis wrote, “Epstein has made clear that his intention is neither to illustrate political events nor to create persuasive propaganda. Rather, he raises the more challenging question of how inherently abstract political concepts about the nation and the culture as a whole can be represented photographically…But equally significant is the unique form of documentary storytelling that he has invented in American Power—colorful, sweeping, concerned, intimate, honest.”

    In the New York Times, Martha Schwendener wrote: “What is interesting, beyond the haunting, complicated beauty and precision of these images, is Mr. Epstein’s ability to merge what have long been considered opposing terms: photo-conceptualism and so-called documentary photography. He utilizes the supersize scale and saturated color of conceptualism, and his odd, implied narratives strongly recall the work of artists like Jeff Wall.”

    His other work

    (Wikipedia)

    Epstein graduated from Williston Academy, where he studied with artist and bookmaker Barry Moser. In the early 1970s he studied at Union College, New York; Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island, and the Cooper Union, New York, where he was a student of photographer Garry Winogrand.

    Epstein’s eight books include:

    •  Berlin (Steidl & The American Academy in Berlin, 2011);
    • American Power (Steidl, 2009);
    • Mitch Epstein: Work (Steidl, 2006);
    • Recreation: American Photographs 1973-1988 (Steidl 2005);
    • Family Business (Steidl 2003), which won the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award.

    1970s United States

    By the mid-70s, Epstein had abandoned his academic studies and begun to travel, embarking on a photographic exploration of the United States. Ten of the photographs he made during this period were in a 1977 group exhibition at Light Gallery in New York. Ben Lifson wrote in his Village Voice review: “Mitch Epstein’s ten color photographs are the best things at Summer Light…. At 25, Epstein’s apprenticeship is over, as his work shows. He stands between artistic tradition and originality and makes pictures about abandoned rocking-horses and danger, about middle-age dazzled by spring blossoms, about children confused by sex and beasts. He has learned the terms of black-and-white photography, and although he adds color, he hasn’t abandoned them, loving photography’s past while trying to step into its future.”

    India

    In 1978, he journeyed to India with his future wife, director Mira Nair, where he was a producer, set designer, and cinematographer on several films, including Salaam Bombay! and India Cabaret. His book In Pursuit of India is a compilation of his Indian photographs from this period.

    Vietnam

    From 1992 to 1995, Epstein photographed in Vietnam, which resulted in an exhibition of this work at Wooster Gardens in New York, along with a book titled Vietnam: A Book of Changes. “I don’t know that Mitch Epstein’s glorious photographs record all of what is salient in end-of-the-twentieth century Vietnam,” wrote Susan Sontag for his book jacket, “for it’s been more than two decades since my two stays there. I can testify that his images confirm what moved and troubled me then…and offer shrewd and poignant glimpses into the costs of imposing a certain modernity. This is beautiful, authoritative work by an extremely intelligent and gifted photographer.” Reviewing an exhibition of the Vietnam pictures for Art in America, Peter Von Ziegesar writes, “In a show full of small pleasures, little prepares one for the stunning epiphany contained in Perfume Pagoda…Few photographers have managed to make an image so loaded and so beautiful at once.”

    United States 1990s

    Having lived and travelled beyond the United States for over a decade, Epstein began to spend more time in his adopted home of New York City. His 1999 series The City investigated the relationship between public and private life in New York. Reviewing The City exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins in New York, Vince Aletti wrote that the pictures “[are] as assured as they are ambitious.”

    In 1999, Epstein returned to his hometown of Holyoke, Massachusetts, to record the demise of his father’s two businesses—a retail furniture store and a low-rent real estate empire. The resulting project assembled large-format photographs, video, archival materials, interviews and writing by the artist. The book, Family Business (Steidl), which combined all of these elements, won the 2004 Krazna-Kraus Best Photography Book of the Year award. In reviewing the book, Nancy Princenthal wrote in Art in America, “The family business chronicled by Mitch Epstein was a small-town retail furniture with a sideline in real estate, and his patiently plotted bell curve of its history is worthy of Dreiser….” In 2004, his work was exhibited during evening screenings at Rencontres d’Arles festival (at the in Théatre Antique), France.

    Google Images for ‘Family Business’

     

    Berlin

    In 2008, Epstein won the Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters from the American Academy in Berlin. Awarded a 6-month residency, he moved to Berlin with his wife and daughter from January–June 2009. The photographs he made there of significant historical sites were published in the monograph Berlin (Steidl and The American Academy in Berlin, 2011).

     

     

     

  • Peter Kennard

    Peter Kennard (born 17 February 1949) is a London born and based photomontage artist and Senior Research Reader in Photography, Art and the Public Domain at the Royal College of Art. Seeking to reflect his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement, he turned from painting to photomontage to better address his political views.He has often worked in collaboration with writers, photographers, filmmakers and artists such as Peter Reading, John Pilger and Jenny Matthews.

    He is best known for the images he created for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the 1970s–80s. This includes “Haywain with Cruise Missiles“, a cut-and-paste photomontage of Constanble’s Haywain – a symbol of Britain’s rural idyll with American missiles used by CND to highlight the threat of installation of cruise missiles at air bases across the UK, such as Greenham Common.
    “ Photomontage may not be subtle but it is effective as a tactic when the aim is to make a point quickly and directly. We grasp immediately that Britain is under threat.” Liz Wells (2011, p.21 quoted Alexander 2013 p98)

    Because many of the left-wing organisations and publications he used to work with have disappeared, Kennard has turned to using exhibitions, books and the internet for his work.

    In “Dispatches from An Unofficial War Artist”, his 2000 autobiography, he writes about the possibilities of undertaking an aesthetic practice in relation to social change, and considers how his art has interacted with the politics of actual events.

     One of Kennard’s latest projects is 2011’s @earth, a story without words told in the language of photomontage. It takes the form of a small book priced at £9.99, published by the Tate Gallery, which Kennard believed was a reasonably cheap and accessible way of getting his message to young people outside the artworld. The book contains a variety of images from Kennard’s 40-year career and, as a result, attracts the criticism that its targets are too general. Kennard’s reply was that he wanted “to encourage people to think about their own situation and activate, but I’m not trying to tell them to do this or that. I’m just trying to show how I see the world at the moment.”

    The idea has expanded to a re-appropriation and re-distribution of his images through online platforms such as Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter. G8 Protest Posters is the latest of these projects that shares images “designed for protest”. Created in 2013 in reaction to the 39th G8 Summit in Enniskillen, Kennard has encouraged the public to “print, Tweet, Facebook, email and share these images as a sign of protest”. He sees online distribution sites as “a valuable addition to the dissident artists toolbox. G8 is a charade masquerading as a serious conference, my posters attempt to rip through the lies and point to the world as in fact it is.”

    He has also executed a number of guerrilla street installations and has said “if world leaders insist on assaulting our lives and livelihoods, let’s hit back by assaulting their eyes.”

    The first major retrospective of Kennard’s work will be held at the Imperial War Museum for one year from May 2015.

    Source: edited from Wikipedia

     

     

  • James Morris

    In Wales, particularly South Wales, the idea of ‘post-industry’ is poignant in the light of the well-documented, widespread decline in industrial activity in recent decades.

    In A Landscape of Wales (2010), James Morris explores the diverse landscape of the country, including the Gothic-looking remains of slate quarries and other sublime-inspiring features. Most interestingly, Morris looks at how the tourism and heritage industries, which continue to play a major part in the Welsh economy, relate to the landscape. Morris provides an excellent example of the inextricable link between topography and industry, which have in turn shaped the identity of a place and its people.  (Alexander course text p105)

    See Google Images

    See more from this series at:
    http://www.jamesmorris.info   (Flash-based site)

  • John Davies

    [wpdevart_youtube]BW44iNga8Fk[/wpdevart_youtube]John Davies website

    See more of Davies’s work

    John Davies (born 1949 in Sedgefield, County Durham, England) is a British landscape photographer. He is known for completing long-term projects documenting Britain and its industrial and urban landscape. He juxtaposes elements of history, industry and social activity within a single composition to critically examine our social geography.

    The British Landscape is his best-known body of work

    Fuji City Mount Fuji, Japan is a meditation on the balance between nature and industry.

    The shift in subject matter also developed into a fascination with urban regeneration and work on this includes his Metropoli Project, City State, and Cities on the Edge, the latter of which he curated, in addition to contributing images of his own.

    Not judgemental – ask questions. People have different reactions to different images. Doesn’t include many people, but images are about what people have done in the environment.

    The caption to Davies’s Ffestiniog Railway image reads:
    “The Ffestiniog Railway was originally built to transport local slate, but in
    1964, following new connections to the national railway network, trains
    began serving the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station. Although the
    decommissioning of Trawsfynydd began in 1991, the railway continued
    to be used daily to transport 50-ton flasks of nuclear fuel and waste to
    the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria. Sellafield stopped taking
    waste from Trawsfynydd in 1997.”

    Technique

    He is known for producing large photographic prints of images produced from high vantage points, using traditional darkroom techniques. His work in the 1980s primarily used medium format cameras, and work from the 1990s alarge format camera, although in recent years he has begun using dSLR and digital medium format cameras in his work as well.

    The stylistic components reference – with irony – the picturesque:

    • Davies’s photographs are nearly always taken from high vantage points that hint towards a welltrodden, formalised ‘viewpoint’, looking out across views with foregrounds, middle distance and backgrounds (usually a rolling hill).
    • He continues to work with black-and-white film, linking his work to the classical aesthetics of Adams and Weston.

    Liz Wells (2011, pp.170–71) identifies a potential problem with Davies’s relation to the picturesque:
    “… his work operates as a visual archive of post-industrial Britain. But his personal style is so marked that content risks becoming subservient within a generalised vision of industrial legacy in ways that work against any sense of the specificity of each site. There is a risk that political commentary is diluted rather than distilled, as the industrial becomes a strand within a new picturesque.”

    Biography

    Davies was born in Sedgefield, County Durham, in 1949. He grew up in coal mining and farming communities, and this combination of open space and industry was to become a persistent motif in his creative work. His early life was spent living in industrial landscapes in County Durham and Nottinghamshire.

    He studied Photography, first attending Mansfield School of Art to complete a Foundation Course, then studying at Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University), graduating in 1974. Following this, he began working on long-term projects, seeking commissions and arts funding to support his work. He has worked closely with Amber/Side Collective on a number of commissions. In 1981, Davies won a one-year Photography Fellowship at Sheffield Polytechnic, and he became Senior Research Fellow at the Art School of University of Wales Cardiff (UWIC) in 1995.

    He has also become involved in local politics, as his interest in the use of public space has been both personal and professional. He lives with his partner and their daughter Alix in Liverpool, England.

    Books by Davies

    • Aggie Weston’s no.13. Belper, Derbyshire: Stuart Mills, 1977 ASIN B0007C4X2C.
    • The Valleys project. Cardiff: Ffotogallery, 1985.
    • On the edge of White Peak. Derbyshire Museum Services, UK, 1985.
    • In the wake of King Cotton. Rochdale Art Gallery, UK, 1986.
    • Mist Mountain Water Wind. London: Traveling Light, 1986. ISBN 0-906333-18-0.
    • A Green & Pleasant Land. Manchester: Cornerhouse, 1987. ISBN 0-948797-10-X soft cover ISBN 0-948797-15-0.
    • Autoroute A26, Calais – Reims. Douchy, France: Mission Photogaphique Transmanche, 1989. ISBN 2-904538-16-X.
    • Phase 11 (eleven). London: The Photographers’ Gallery; London: Davenport, 1991. ISBN 0-907879-27-6.
    • Broadgate. London: Davenport, 1991.
    • Cross Currents. Cardiff: Ffotogallery; Manchester: Cornerhouse, 1992. ISBN 0-948797-32-0.
    • Linea di Confine della Provincia di Reggio Emillia Laboratorio di Fotografia 5. Arcadia Edizioni & Assessorato alla Cultra del Comune di Rubiera, Italy, 1992.
    • Skylines. Valencia University, Imp. Mari Montanana, Spain, 1993.
    • Through fire and water: River Taff. Oriel (The Arts Council of Wales’ Gallery, Cardiff); National Museum & Galleries of Wales, 1997. ISBN 0-946329-45-1.
    • Sguardigardesani. Milan, Italy: Charta, 1999. ISBN 88-8158-223-6.
    • Temps et Paysage. Tarabuste / Centre d’art et du Paysage, 2000. ISBN 2-84587-010-8.
    • Visa III, Littoral / Le retour de la nature. Filigranes, 2001. ISBN 2-914381-17-4.
    • Seine Valley. Le Point du Jour Editeur / Pole Image Haute-Normandie, France, 2002. ISBN 2-912132-21-5.
    • The British Landscape. Chris Boot, 2006. ISBN 0-9546894-7-X.
    • Cities on the Edge. Liverpool: Liverpool University, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84631-186-4.
    • Urban Landscapes / Krajobrazy Miejskie. Poznań, Poland: Centrum Kultury ‘Zamek’, 2008.
    • European Eyes on Japan / Japan Today volume 10. EU-Japan fest / European Eyes on Japan, 2008.
  • Luc Delahaye

    !!To be done

    Luc Delahaye (born France 1962) also describes history painting as a point of reference to his practice, although his process is very different to Wall’s. Delahaye, whose earlier career was in photojournalism, continues to make work around current, ‘newsworthy’ stories across the globe. Throughout his ongoing History series, Delahaye has attended political ceremonies and meetings, as well as recent and current war zones. Instead of using high-end digital equipment
    and hurrying to transmit his images to agencies before his competitors in the field, Delahaye uses large format analogue cameras to make large-scale gallery prints. His approach goes very much against the grain of modern photojournalism. While his images are not typically as sparse of people as the work of ‘late photographers’ working with similar equipment, they all have the
    presence and communicate the gravitas of the scenarios he depicts. Unlike photojournalism, there is no conspicuous attempt to reveal a ‘decisive moment’. Delahaye photographs at a discrete, but not disengaged, distance:
    “As Delahaye points out, his pictures highlight ‘the insignificance of my
    own position.’ They also entail a reversal of the history paintings they
    call upon, where the grandeur, spectacle and glory of war and figures
    of power were celebrated. There is little that is glorious here. Instead, his
    views show up the scale of things, very often putting them in perspective.”
    (Mark Durden ‘Global Documentary’ (2005) in Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2005. London: The Photographers’ Gallery, p.13)