26 Different Endings by Mark Power often employs a specific strategy to take him to particular locations and make photographs. This series began as a response to the once ubiquitous – but perhaps soon to be a thing of the past – A–Z London Street Atlas. Power describes the work as a ‘system of edges’ and a tribute to the ‘unfortunate places’ that are excluded from the current version of the street atlas, which is an arbitrary decision taken by somebody from year to year. Power obviously had an infinite number of potential views to choose from each page, spreading outwards from the map’s edges, and his photographic responses to the places that he arrived at were of course subjective.
Tag: British
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John Davies
[wpdevart_youtube]BW44iNga8Fk[/wpdevart_youtube]John Davies website
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.
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Helen Sear
Creative Wales award.
Not just the eye. Uses the hand to pain in parts. Sculptural and 3D form. Liberate from computer screen. Different types of paper. Or use CAD.
Body in the landscape, or landscape in the body
What does it mean to be both human and animal?
Wants to concentrate on unremarkable landscape – portrait of a field over a year. Landscape as a living being. And walk to a particular part of forest that changes through being cut down and exposes a particular view suddenly.
Pond 2011 installation at Crescent Arts Scarborough, UK, March 2011. video of frozen winter pond and trees. Occasional birds. Sheep in silhouette on the horizon.
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Patrick Shanahan
Patrick Shanahan examines the transition from one post-industrial space into a new kind of industry in his series Paradeisos (2005), which explores the creation of the Eden Project in Cornwall. Commencing in 1998, Shanahan’s photographs document the transformation of a redundant china quarry into one of the UK’s most celebrated tourist attractions.
See the work at: http://www.ffotogallery.org/patrick-shanahan-–-paradeisos
Flash-based website.
Only work I could find on the web were ‘New Images’ seaside pictures that seem to question the seaside idyll – is this the same Patrick Shanahan photographer? But not as punchy as those of Martin Parr. Some a bit gimmicky with different angles. Need to look again
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Shirley Baker
Images on Mary Evans Picture Library
Shirley Baker, (1932-2014), was one of the rare female photographers who chronicled life in the north of England from the 1950s onwards. Her street photography was in the ‘flaneuse’ tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, whom she named as influences. Unposed snapshots of people going about their business were juxtaposed with telling graffiti. She had a great eye for composition that has been under-appreciated next to her compassionate documentation and concern for social injustice, with a particular focus on women and children.
From the 60s, Baker taught photography at Salford College of Art and would always carry her camera modestly stowed in her handbag. In free periods, she began a body of work, spanning 15 years, of the social housing in the area that was being demolished as people lived in semi-derelict slums. Shirley’s work in Salford and Manchester (shot mainly between 1960 and 1973) captured a time of rapid social and economic change in the lives of working class people in Manchester and Salford.”It was a time of much change: people were turfed out of their homes and some squatted in old buildings, trying to hang on to the traditional life they knew.”
Slum clearances, started in the 1930s, resumed in earnest in the 1950s, and in the twenty years between 1955 and 1975, around 1.3 million homes were demolished nationwide. When Shirley Baker began photographing the streets of her native Salford, it seemed that no-one was interested in recording the human story of these soon-to-be demolished communities. Old ladies sitting on doorsteps in a row of condemned houses, men with handcarts searching for refuse to be recycled, children playing inventively among rubble and abandoned cars. That she chose to preserve these moments on film, now seems like the only perceptive response to a vanishing environment. It was not until 1989 that her first book, Street Photographs: Manchester and Salford, was published and Baker began to be more widely appreciated.
In addition to her work in Manchester and Salford, she spent a considerable amount of time capturing Camden Market at the height of punk. Her work was often humorous and she added over the years to collections such as owners who look like their dogs and people falling asleep in public.
Remembering the work of Shirley Baker Phil Coomes BBC
Life
Born in Salford, to Alec, a furniture maker, and Josephine, a housewife, Shirley had an identical twin, Barbara, who would also become an artist. They both went as boarders to Penrhos College, in Colwyn Bay, from where during the second world war they were evacuated to Chatsworth House, in Derbyshire. Their parents were unfazed by their daughters pursuing the arts professionally after they left school.
Baker married Tony Levy, a GP, in 1957, and the couple eventually settled in Wilmslow, Cheshire, where their daughter, Nan, was born in 1963. Baker never displayed any of her photographs around their home, although she did like to take pictures of the family. This perhaps summed up the private, almost secretive, nature of her work.
When Baker studied photography at Manchester College of Technology, there was only one other woman on the course. On finishing, Baker’s plan was to work in-house at a company, recording processes and producing promotional images. She started at Courtaulds fabric manufacturers before freelancing for other businesses and doing some journalism, including for the Guardian. Baker encountered difficulties getting a press card, so was unable to pursue photojournalism seriously, and believed she was only given the assignments deemed unsuitable for men. From the 60s, Baker taught photography at Salford College of Art.
Baker kept photographing in later life and completed an MA in critical history and the theory of photography at the University of Derby in 1995. She joined the Mary Evans Picture Library in 2008, and in 2012 had solo shows in Oldham and Salford, with another planned for 2015 at the Photoraphers’ Gallery in London. She was always pleased when people who featured in her work came along to exhibitions. At the opening of the Lowry Gallery in 2000, the Queen not only viewed Baker’s photographs but met some of Baker’s subjects, too.
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Jo Spence
Jo Spence (1934–92) had a highly politicised approach to photography, creating photographs that run counter to the idealised imagery offered by advertising. Spence often worked collaboratively and sought alternative distribution models, laminating work for durability and renting out her photography to conferences, libraries, universities and public spaces to broaden its audience. She also documented her own struggles with cancer. Website: http://www.jospence.org ‘Putting Myself in the Picture’ (Camden Press 1986) brought together her raw and confessional works to inspire a younger generation of photographers. Remodelling Photo History (1982) a series of self-portraits in collaboration with Terry Dennett. The work consists of a series of diptychs where two photographs of Spence are juxtaposed. In some pairs, the first is a parody of a more traditional pictorial image; the second shot is less conventionally framed and the irony is articulated with less subtlety.
‘Industrialisation’ places the female figure between the viewer and the view beyond, challenging the male gaze and the objectification of women. 
‘Victimisation’ “Here we see that the estate will not admit trespass, and that it stands in for the heroic (male) defender of the ground, repelling weak opposition at its border. Jo Spence failed to cross the barrier, allowing the absent landowner (through his gate and sign) to become hero, male, the creator of difference… her mockery diminishes the victory won by the landowner.” (John Taylor 1994, p.282 quoted Alexander p133)
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Jo Spence (1934–92) had a highly politicised approach to photography, creating photographs that run counter to the idealised imagery offered by advertising. Spence often worked collaboratively and sought alternative distribution models, laminating work for durability and renting out her photography to conferences, libraries, universities and public spaces to broaden its audience. She also documented her own struggles with cancer.
Website: http://www.jospence.org
‘Putting Myself in the Picture’ (Camden Press 1986) brought together her raw and confessional works to inspire a younger generation of photographers.
Remodelling Photo History (1982) a series of self-portraits in collaboration with Terry Dennett. The work consists of a series of diptychs where two photographs of Spence are juxtaposed. In some pairs, the first is a parody of a more traditional pictorial image; the second shot is less conventionally framed and the irony is articulated with less subtlety.
‘Industrialisation’ places the female figure between the viewer and the view beyond, challenging the male gaze and the objectification of women. 
‘Victimisation’ “Here we see that the estate will not admit trespass, and that it stands in for the heroic (male) defender of the ground, repelling weak opposition at its border. Jo Spence failed to cross the barrier, allowing the absent landowner (through his gate and sign) to become hero, male, the creator of difference… her mockery diminishes the victory won by the landowner.” (John Taylor 1994, p.282 quoted Alexander p133) -
Martin Parr
Martin Parr (born 1952) trained in photography at Manchester Polytechnic. Described in the past as Margaret Thatcher’s favourite photographer, Parr caused a stir when he tried to join Magnum Photos. The issue was one of integrity. Photographers within Magnum’s ranks guarded their territory jealously and felt that the work that Parr offered was voyeuristic, titillating and meaningless. Parr was eventually accepted at Magnum in 1994 and went on to become one of the leading authorities on photography in the UK. Parr has an ability to turn the snapshot into art. There is however something of the satirical about this work – many of the images raise a smile. Parr worked mainly in colour and his approach was to over-light with fill-in flash, causing a frozen moment in time to be even more false yet far more real. His work is quirky and opportunistic. He makes no bones about the latter; invited to an event, he takes the opportunity to produce images that will lead to further projects. His approach is direct. He doesn’t ask permission and if someone sees that he is photographing them he will continue on the basis that it’s his job to photograph them, record their reaction, etc. The characteristic Parr style is still there 30 years on. Listen to Martin Parr talking about his images and practice: Parr has produced a wide range of work.- Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton (1986). One of his first major colour pieces.This style was to become synonymous with Parr and his ability to create from the ordinary. The little girl could be the focus of the image but the boy is also interesting. The car and the lighthouse are both essential to the composition.
- A recent project in the suburbs of Paris depicts ordinary life within a diverse, mainly immigrant, community.
- St Moritz series shows the rich at play in a way that only people who work there would normally get to see.
- Luxury – a recent Martin Parr project where he looks at the rich and their pastimes.
- Boring Postcards (1999)
- Boring Postcards USA (2000)
- Langweilige Postkarten (2001).
Exercise: Getting the Parr ‘feel’
For this exercise, photograph people engaged in a fun or social activity outdoors. For example, you could go to a seaside resort and photograph people having a good time. Or photograph people at an outdoor party or function. Try to capture the Martin Parr ‘feel’. Use your camera flash or a flash gun to balance the daylight. You need to take light readings from the ambient light and then set the flash gun to produce a small amount of flash – not enough to turn the scene into night – running the camera at a slower speed than the flash would normally synch at. Getting the flash /ambient light balance right is the key to the technical side of the whole look. This is the camera’s reaction under normal circumstances. A slower shutter speed than the recommended flash setting may help a lot. This will work very differently for a range of cameras and you may need individual support and advice for this relative to your personal camera equipment. Produce a set of eight colour images. Ensure that the colour is bright and reflects the nature of Martin Parr’s work. How does this lighting effect change the nature of your images? Make some notes in your learning log. ————————————————–Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in particular documenting the social classes of England, and more broadly the wealth of the Western world.
Martin Parr (born 1952) trained in photography at Manchester Polytechnic. Described in the past as Margaret Thatcher’s favourite photographer, Parr caused a stir when he tried to join Magnum Photos because many Magnum photographers felt that Parr’s work was voyeuristic, titillating and meaningless. Parr was eventually accepted at Magnum in 1994 and went on to become one of the leading authorities on photography in the UK.
He has a characteristic photography style and approach. Parr works mainly in colour, using fill-in flash to over-light the scene, causing a frozen moment in time to be even more false yet far more ‘real’. His approach is direct and opportunistic. He doesn’t ask permission and if someone sees that he is photographing them he will continue on the basis that it’s his job to photograph them, record their reaction, etc. His work is quirky and opportunistic. He makes no bones about the latter; invited to an event, he takes the opportunity to produce images that will lead to further projects.
See Tate Modern overview and links to Parr’s work.
Tate video overview of his approach to British documentary photography
Listen to Martin Parr talking about his images and practice:!! Insert sketchlog pages of analysis of his images and annotated flatpans of his photobooks.
Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in particular documenting the social classes of England, and more broadly the wealth of the Western world.
Martin Parr (born 1952) trained in photography at Manchester Polytechnic. Described in the past as Margaret Thatcher’s favourite photographer, Parr caused a stir when he tried to join Magnum Photos because many Magnum photographers felt that Parr’s work was voyeuristic, titillating and meaningless. Parr was eventually accepted at Magnum in 1994 and went on to become one of the leading authorities on photography in the UK.
He has a characteristic photography style and approach. Parr works mainly in colour, using fill-in flash to over-light the scene, causing a frozen moment in time to be even more false yet far more ‘real’. His approach is direct and opportunistic. He doesn’t ask permission and if someone sees that he is photographing them he will continue on the basis that it’s his job to photograph them, record their reaction, etc. His work is quirky and opportunistic. He makes no bones about the latter; invited to an event, he takes the opportunity to produce images that will lead to further projects.
See Tate Modern overview and links to Parr’s work.
Tate video overview of his approach to British documentary photography
Listen to Martin Parr talking about his images and practice:Technique: Getting the Parr ‘feel’
- Use your camera flash or a flash gun to balance the daylight. You need to take light readings from the ambient light and then set the flash gun to produce a small amount of flash – not enough to turn the scene into night – running the camera at a slower speed than the flash would normally synch at.
- Getting the flash /ambient light balance right is the key to the technical side of the whole look.
- This is the camera’s reaction under normal circumstances. A slower shutter speed than the recommended flash setting may help a lot.
- This will work very differently for a range of cameras and you may need individual support and advice for this relative to your personal camera equipment.
- Ensure that the colour is bright and reflects the nature of Martin Parr’s work. How does this lighting effect change the nature of your images?
Photobooks
!! To significantly update with notes to the videos and flatpan analysis in my sketchlog of photobooks I own: The Last Resport and Think of England
Parr has had around 40 solo photobooks published including:
- The Last Resort (1983–1985)
- The Cost of Living (1987–1989)
- Small World (1987–1994)
- Common Sense (1995–1999).
- Think of England (1999)
- The Human Condition
Other projects:
- Rural communities (1975–1982)A recent project in the suburbs of Paris depicts ordinary life within a diverse, mainly immigrant, community.
- St Moritz series shows the rich at play in a way that only people who work there would normally get to see.
- Luxury – a recent Martin Parr project where he looks at the rich and their pastimes.
Martin Parr as collector and curator
Parr has edited three volumes of his collections of postcards:
- Boring Postcards (1999)
- Boring Postcards USA (2000)
- Langweilige Postkarten (2001).
The subjects within Boring Postcards are what we judge to be mundane or prosaic, such as motorways, service stations, tower blocks, school and other modernist municipal buildings – structures that we take for granted and might even consider to be ‘eyesores’. They weren’t necessarily photographed for their beauty in any traditional sense, but because of their novelty value as photographic subjects. [Many of the images in the UK edition are attributed to the Frith photographic company.] They are in fact often quite unusual and remarkably intriguing.
The Parrworld (2008) show exhibited some of Parr’s extensive collection of kitsch souvenirs and other disparate paraphernalia: a watches with pictures of Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, bubblegum pop pin-up wallpaper. He compares photography to collecting: the world is out there for the having.
!! Photobook collections and his discussions of these.
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Paul Seawright
Paul Seawright is best known for his ‘late photography’ of battle-sites and minefields. He often uses vintage technology and a much older approaches to conflict photography. But rather than reportage, his images are made for museum-going audiences and gallery patrons by people who call themselves ‘artists’.
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If it is too explicit it becomes journalistic. If it is too ambiguous, it becomes meaningless…The constriction of meaning is done by the person looking at it. The artist has to leave space for that’
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‘Paul Seawright, Voice Our Concern Artist’s Lecture 2010’ is a 40 minute illustrated artists lecture by the artist photographer Paul Seawright given in the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in November 2010. Paul talks about the use of photography in conflict situations as often being unreliable and how his work as a photographic artist is a response to this. He presents photographs from the Crimean war and discusses the influence of photographer Paul Graham on his work. He describes the difference between photo journalism and art in the context of artists defining their subjects and in the construction of meaning. He goes on to discuss and present examples of his Sectarian Murder Work series. This Voice Our Concern lecture was a joint project organised by IMMA and Amnesty International Ireland.
The Forest 2001
17 photographs of desolate roadside lay-bys, ditches and car parks shot at night and lit by what we assume to be streetlights. By day they would probably be ordinary, but at night with the lighting they take on a sinister tone (like images we are used to seeing in detective TV series). ‘Because there is such a division between what we can see and what we cannot see (the fall off of the light does not allow for much penetration into the forest edge) what belongs there (the trees, underbrush and roadside curbs) and what doesn’t belong there (us), these are photographs that place the viewer into the shoes of the vulnerable’ (Paul Seawright’s website)
Hidden (2002)
In 2002 Seawright was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum London to undertake a war art commission in Afghanistan.In spite of the climate in which they were made, have a cool, Becher-like objectivity to them. Tension is created by concealing as much as is revealed in the photographs and their caption. Through unorthodox framing, selective focusing in places, and at times seemingly banal viewpoints, there is a palpable sense of unease in this landscape that is strewn with concealed lethal hazards. For example another image shows recently dug up mines – done by hand because they cannot be identified with mine detectors against the rest of the iron in the land., as well as America’s most wanted outlaw, who would take a further nine years to track down. His photograph of shells in Afghanistan explicitly echoes Fenton’s famous image from the Crimea.
For some of the main images and reviews (eg John Stathatos) see: http://www.paulseawright.com/hidden/
Invisible Cities 2007
after Italo Calvino book.
Seawright travelled to major cities in sub-Saharan Africa, exploring communities on the edge of conurbations, both geographically and socially. Comprises varied photographs, some of which are recognisable as landscape pictures, or environmental portraiture. None of the titles of the photographs refer to specific locations or people, which emphasises the indistinct nature and anonymity of these places and their inhabitants.
Bridge (2006) the road bridge, presumably an interchange of major roads on the edge of the city, cleanly divides the frame in two. A yellow bus heads along the road towards the city from, we suppose, the sanctuary of the suburbs, taking children to school or their parents to work. The sky is empty and bleak, echoed by the detritus that sprawls below, shielded by the flyover from the view of the bus’s passengers.
Things Left Unsaid
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Biography
Paul Seawright is Professor of Photography and Head of Belfast School of Art at the University of Ulster. His photographic work is held in many museum collections including The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Tate, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, International Centre of Photography New York, Arts Councils of Ireland, England and N.Ireland, UK Government Collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome. They have also been exhibited in Spain, France, Germany, Korea, Japan and China. In 2003 he represented Wales at the Venice Biennale of Art and in 1997 won the Irish Museum of Modern Art/Glen Dimplex Prize. He is represented by the Kerlin Gallery Dublin.
