Saturday 31 October 2015

John Bulmer, Ivor Innes and Agnieszka Szczurowska at The Hull International Photography Festival 2015

This was my second visit to The Hull International Photography festival as I wanted to see a couple of things I missed the first time round at the central library: John Bulmer's The North and an exhibition of Food Photography.

John Bulmer: The North
John Bulmer helped pioneer British photojournalism and his work for the Sunday Times in the 1960s and 1970s has been collected into a book entitled 'The North'.  The exhibition blurb tells us that Bulmer was a leader in colour photography in the 1960s and, in this, was far ahead of such photographers as William Eggleston and Martin Parr.  For this project he deliberately chose to photograph in winter or wet weather, something I am considering in order to further develop my body of work on the River Witham.
The work in this exhibition is a mix of colour and black and white images simply and uniformly displayed against white mounts and in narrow black frames.  It documents life in the north of England during the 60s and 70s.  There are some very familiar fashions, especially the platform shoes worn by one of the men.  They portray the 'gritty north' in the raw.  I like the fact that they are taken in wet and wintry weather as it enhances the feel of that grittiness, as does the fact that some of the black and white shots are very grainy - real grain not digitally enhanced grain or noise.
I particularly like the black and white image of a bent old lady in clogs and the small boy going to the toilet in the gutter of a cobbled street.  The women's beehive hairstyles and curlers are very evocative of the era.

Food Photography

Innes Photography
Innes Photography was created by Donald Innes in 1947 in Hessle, Hull.  Donald's son, Ivor joined the company in 1971 and the team are still working in the same building.  They specialise in food photography, focusing on packaging for major supermarkets, companies and household brands.
Some of their work features in the exhibition comprising large scale canvases of mouth watering foods and kitchen utensils.  One could be in an M&S food advert - excellent still life work.

Agnieszka Szczurowska
Agnieszka takes a different approach.  Her work is inspired by that of group f64, in particular Edward Weston's images of peppers and nautilus shells.  Her 'Westonian Series' stimulates the imagination in a new way by presenting food items unconventionally.  The subjects are simple, yet their presentation attempts to give them new life and new meaning.
The images are very rich black and white with no mount and in simple, narrow black frames.  I think this enhances the atmosphere and mystery of the photographs.  They have been photographed on a shiny surface so there is a faint but definite reflection of each subject as part of the image..  They are all fruits or vegetables but some of them could be anything from gnarled hands to rocks.  I really like the low key detail and the depth of field, especially in the garlic bulb has been well employed.  A clump of mushrooms has absolutely fantastic detail with a rich deep black background.  A gourd, or is it a fruit, could be a deep sea creature.
I thought these photographs were amazing, reminiscent not only of the work of Edward Weston, but also the still life images of Robert Mapplethorpe.  They have inspired me to experiment myself.


Wednesday 28 October 2015

Possible Images for Assignment 2

My body of work for Assignment 2 is about The River Witham.  It rises in the limestone hills of the Lincoln Edge close to the village of South Witham, flows north and then north east as a fast flowing, chalk stream to Lincoln, where it enters the Brayford Pool and then  flows first east and then south to Boston, where after passing through the Great Sluice it becomes tidal and flows out to sea into the Wash.

I grew up on the banks of the Witham; travelled to Lincoln, Boston and Kings Cross on steam hauled and later diesel trains, fished in it, collected train numbers by it, ran in cross-country races beside it and swam in it.  Inspired by the Lincolnshire poet laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, The Brook, I see the river as a metaphor for life; mine and the river's. Tennyson's lines from the poem 'men may come and ,men may go, but I go on for ever' are a particularly poignant reminder of the transience of human life, when compared to that of the river as it flows out to sea to continue its infinite life.

I have edited 270 photographs down to 31 for this assignment but have produced them in two versions.  The first set are straight images, whereas the second I have used the 'aged photo' preset in Lightroom to give them an old feel as if I had just discovered them in my parents' attic.  The idea behind this is that this project alludes to my life and personal memory and I wonder if the aged photo look might evoke this idea.

Captions and references to The Brook are to be added later.

Set 1 straight images





























Set 2: Aged Photos
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At the moment my inclination is to use the first set as what I am trying to achieve in this assignment is a set of photographs that speak of the river's journey and past history and also of my memory and journey through life, but in a narrative documentary style.  The second set, whist being appealing, I feel represents memory and the past but not the documentary current story of the life of the river.  Either way Tennyson's The Brook will be the linking theme.