The Photography Pages » exhibitionists

Ephemera Display

TPP — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:56:52 +0000

There’s a display of some of the ephemera from my studio at Seaham’s Courtyard Gallery this month. Some interesting darkroom guides from the 50s and 60s, a box of glass slides and some contact prints from them, a jar stuffed full of leader ends, backing papers, film containers and slides.

People pour over the contact sheets. These days I tend to print all my film rolls as black & white contact sheets, just because I can. The fascination with which Sam Taylor Wood’s contact sheets were received at Baltic in 2006 is memorable. I do wonder whether people know what they are, but perhaps if they don’t, they’re trying to work out where the photographs have been taken, since they are immediately local.

The cameras and large format film backs also garner lots of attention, more so than the photographs. Off to do a stint of ‘invigilation’ there this morning. Thursday mornings are a good time for me. The MacBook goes along for three hours of photo editing/selection interspersed with a variety of interesting conversations with visiting members of the public.

Come and see the work, say hello and stop for a while for a coffee if you’re in the vicinity.

There’s an huge amount happening at the moment. Busy, busy, busy. Lots of fab stuff to go and see. Rob Hornstra, Martin Parr, the great landscape photographer John Davies, Sirkka Liisa Kontinnen are all showing new work at the moment. It’s a great time for photography here in the glorious sacred north.

Will post the reviews as soon as a spare moment becomes available. An update on the Germany work, the Kalapremi photographs and other exhibiting miscellany is also due and overdue. And a couple of interviews, a new collaboration and my notes from the DCAPS conference last weekend.

Liminal. That’s all for now.Similar Posts:

Hidden Hendon at Raich Carter

TPP — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:25:54 +0000

Scrambling the north-east’s hidden beaches and forlorn concrete commercial sites at midnight may not be for everyone, but some of Andy Martin’s photos were apparently found on the internet, and fast forward some months, there’s a small gallery of maybe 8 of them, hung with an emphatic lack of pretension or ceremony, in a sunny corridor in the local sports centre.

Bulldog clips. We’ve written about them before. Marvelous things.

The pictures themselves are really worth seeing: poster size prints on soft museum rag style paper, of milky long-exposure seas and blue hour skies enclosing the crumbling debris of the once-prosperous commercial heart of a changed city. This one, or one like it, with less colour, was a favourite:

They look to be Holgas or Dianas, with that heavy vignette, although many of them are also made with a V Series Blad, some are polaroids, and lots are transparency film. Andy is young, and seems happily bemused by this success – film is coming back, as Graham Lowe (and I) keep saying. And showing a sample of your work in the huge new sports centre, with a footfall most galleries would die for, is inspired, too. People will see it, the people who play 5-a-side footy, the fitness fanatics and the swimmers. Great.

The hardworking people at Back on The Map seem to have had an outburst of cultural flowering and have employed a couple of wideawake new resident consultant/artists to create a better buzz around the place. In an initial chat, I misinterpreted what was being said and made some comment about finding a local photographer on the beach, and for that I unreservedly apologise. Working in the area, and with all sorts of complex bureacracies, must present considerable difficulties.

Hendon is the strip of Sunderland from Ryhope Road eastwards, towards and including the beach, with gasometers, bits of dock, the occasional battered Victorian manufactory, the once-familiar lone pub stranded in a blitzed acre of rubble. It’s had a raw deal in recent years. In the 60s and 70s, Commercial Road carved its slice through from the docks to Vilette Road, housing all the country’s mail order catalogue employers. Janet Fraser, Littlewoods – every order from each big fat book that thudded onto pre-internet doormats throughout the land was filled by the women of Hendon.

Now a second, brand new ‘link’ road joins this empty stripe of commercial dereliction, this and the railway line creating great linear swathes of nothing at all but the occasional lost car zipping between snug blocks of trim terrace and sturdy brick semis, and the sea. Even the Raich Carter Centre faces away from the people of Hendon, the nouveau flatpack architecture turning its back on them all.

It’s a road built from an urban planning model so outdated, so void of humanity, that credit crunch or no credit crunch, its rubble-strewn verges will stay potential and empty for many years to come. Footballing hero Carter also has a road named after him in Hull. Who knew?

As well as this lovely wee exhibition, there’s also a Hendon history talk with old photos collected from people living and working in the area, on Thursday 24th September at the Holy Trinity Church from 6.30. Map below, so you have no excuse. Go and support these lovely people.

View Holy Trinity, Hendon in a larger mapSimilar Posts:

Reinventing the City

TPP — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 07:55:20 +0000

Something interesting is coming to Newcastle from 19th September, including, we hear, some new work from the great landscape photographer John Davies at the Lit & Phil looking at the T Dan Smith era and its influence on our urban skylines. Can’t wait to see it. Click through to sign up.Similar Posts:

The Lidingtons at F Stop

TPP — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 07:25:15 +0000

“An exhibition of stunning x-ray images created by the late Peter Lidington. The work on show is a series of finely-detailed and delicate radiographic images of botanical subjects.”

They’re x-rays, and exquisite. F Stop is a small but airy gallery, part of Digitalab, where everyone in and around Newcastle gets their 120 and E6 film developed. They normally show traditional landscapes and views of the Tyne Gorge: pretty in their own way, and always expertly executed, but not the kind of work we’d jump to recommend. This is different.

Sue Lidington continues to sell limited edition prints of these lovely works from the website where you can see more prints selected from Peter’s work.

Not sure how long these prints will be on show at F Stop but I’ll ask. If this isn’t your usual sort of thing, drop in anyway. It’s lovely.Similar Posts:

Pierfrancesco Celada’s Last Step

TPP — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 07:22:53 +0000

An exciting opportunity to see Pierfrancesco Celada’s latest body of work in his modern pilgrimages series is beginning on Monday evening with an invited preview.

Italian photographer, Pierfrancesco Celada, presents a new part of his ongoing investigation into the concept of modern pilgrimages. Every year, driven by both religious and cultural beliefs, thousands of pilgrims walk different routes through Spain from all over Europe to the shrine of St. James, in Santiago de Compostela. The last 100 km is where all these routes cross, and where tourists and the curious increase in number; especially in the summer months when St. James’ festival takes place. After weeks of solitary pilgrimage, because of this multitude of tourists, visitors and pilgrims the return into society is sometimes challenging.

Celada won this year’s Michael Ormerod Travel Award, an annual competition held in memory of the Newcastle photographer who died tragically whilst on one of his US road trips. Dan Prince was this year’s judge, and we hope he’ll be there at the opening with a few words about what made Pier’s work stand out among the high standard of entries. We will ask him, although the St James’s Park photographs that won Pier this award are distinctive and compelling. There’ll be an interview with Celada here soon. Milan to Newcastle – hmm. Why here, why now?

See you on Monday.

Mandela Building,
School of Art and Design
Newcastle College
MAP

October 13 – October 31 2008
Opening October 13: 18:00 – 19:00Similar Posts:

Portrait at Coombe End

TPP — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:29:22 +0000

Laura Goodman’s photographic exhibition continues its UK tour in Glasgow at The Gallery at Mussel Inn.

The Coombe End Preview is on Thursday 4th September: mail Laura if you’d like an invitation. The work will be on show until 30th September, and then we’re hoping Laura will come and do a talk about her methods and practice at Number 7, the new private gallery space.Similar Posts:

Time-For-Prints

TPP — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:23:30 +0000

Trailer for a new documentary about the practice of swopping a model’s time for a print of the shoot. Of course it goes on all the time in photography schools, where there is a (more) equal relationship in which both photographer and model are learning. Chris Frampton writes:

“The modeling industry has been wildly transformed by the digital age. Inexpensive camera and computer equipment has created an amateur photography boom that floods the internet with hundreds of millions of images a year.”

Read the rest..Similar Posts:

Shot Up North Deadline 30th June

TPP — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:04:34 +0000

From comment from ‘Ed’ at the Sun Awards on the Newswire today:
“Call for Entries for the SUN Awards 2008 are open until 30th June. Categories include BEST IMAGE; BEST USE OF IMAGE; BEST PROMOTION of a PHOTOGRAPHER; and a special category for this year The DIGITAL INNOVATION.”

Thanks for the reminder, Ed.

John Baxter won in 2007 with this garden landscape replete with topiary, caravan, garden shed, domestic pet and fifty-somethings. A killer combination, wouldn’t you say, with echoes of Crewdson? All it needs is a sleepwalker in slippers for the requisite Looking Glass effect. Lovely. Click through the photo to Baxter’s website for more.

Similar Posts:

Picturing China in Durham

TPP — Sat, 31 May 2008 23:18:50 +0000

Until 30th August there are “More than 100 photographs of everyday life, fashion, industrialisation, crime and punishment, foreigners in China and the Chinese abroad, including many images of contemporary events and personalities by Government Minister and later Ambassador Fu Bingchang (1895-1965)” at the Oriental Museum in Durham.

From an informal review [via my email inbox]:
“The Picturing China exhibition is accompanied by a free news-sheet with articles by a number of people who have studied in particular the photographic contributions to our understanding of pre-revolutionary China. Some of this comes from photography by westerners living there for periods, some from the work of Chinese photographers. I would strongly suggest you give yourself a half hour to read this before going around the exhibition as it is extremely illuminating.

Many of the images are absolutely haunting.”Similar Posts:

Summer Degree Shows 2008

TPP — Fri, 30 May 2008 07:27:00 +0000

Cleveland College of Art and Design’s photography degree show opens on Thursday 5th June and runs until 11th. The Rye Hill Gallery launches Newcastle College Photographers’ work on 9th June for a week. The University of Sunderland’s show opens on 21st June until 27th in the beautiful Backhouse Park building on Ryhope Road.

These shows are an excellent opportunity to see new work from the region’s emerging image makers and a great chance to buy work or hire artists while they’re still affordable. If your work is being shown, we’ll write about it if you mail in the details, and if you go along to one of these, tell us what you think.Similar Posts: