Contemporary Photography, Spring 2016

Number 63 Spring 2016

Contemporary Photography

2 RPS Contemporary Group Journal

View from the Chair

Text should be in Microsoft Word and images are preferred in TIFF format, 300 dpi, file size guideline 10-20Mb. Images are also acceptable as high quality JPEGs, file size guideline 3-6 Mb. For other formats, please contact the Editor. Large image files may be supplied on disc or by use of on-line large file transfer facilities. Unless requested, discs will not be returned.DEADLINE for the Summer 2016 issue 30 June 2016

© The copyright of photographs and text in this issue belongs to the author of the article of which they form part, unless otherwise indicated.If you wish to submit articles for the Journal, please send all copy and images on disc to:Patricia Ann Ruddle, 28 Malvern Avenue, York, YO26 5SG. [email protected]

ISSN 0959-6704

Cover: © Oksana Yushko, from the series Toilers by the Sea.Journal fonts: general, Avenir Lt Std: author name, Letter Gothic Std

I am delighted that Sean Goodhart LRPS has joined us as Contemporary Group Webmaster. With Christine Pinnington LRPS as Editor of Concept, the online newsletter, and Duncan Unsworth organising the Postal Portfolios we have a stronger committee with fresh ideas.

The East Anglia Contemporary Group will be holding their first exhibition associated with their on-going Ipswich Waterfront project, entitled Contradictions. It will show the work of three members’ interpretations of the main theme. The exhibition is timed to coincide with the launch of the new PhotoEast Festival, located at the Beyond the Image Photographers’ Gallery at Thornham Magna, 27 May - 19 June.

The Contemporary Group runs two Facebook pages, both of which are open Groups. The RPSContemporary one encourages inputs which promote the ethos of the RPS Contemporary Group. The RPSPhotobooks Facebook group is about exchange of views and ideas on photobook design and creation, and also promotes the Royal Photographic Society 2016 Open International Photobook Exhibition. Their growing memberships are encouraged to contribute to discussions, post images and projects for comment and review. Links to exhibitions, photographers’ profiles, books and magazines about contemporary photography are always welcome. Some members live in the far flung regions of the UK and around the world. We think that our Facebook pages provide the benefit of an on-line community sans frontières and, like the Group Journal, attract readers and inputs from non-members of the RPS.

The third venue for the RPS International Photobook Exhibition 2016 has been confirmed; it will be held 29 -30 October 2016, in conjunction with Fotonow, at St. Saviour’s Hall, Barbican, Plymouth.

Those of you who may be interested please note that Photo London 2016 will take place at Somerset House 19 - 22 May. Photobook Bristol will take place 10 - 13 June and is included as an event on the the Group pages of the RPS website.

Plans are going ahead for a joint venture between the Historical Group and the Contemporary Group to view the Paul Strand Exhibition on a Friday evening (date to be announced) with a talk by Martin Barnes prior to the visit.

Best wishes,

Avril.

Contemporary Photography

3 Contemporary Photography

Contemporary Group ethos - Photography that conveys ideas, stimulates thought and encourages interpretation; photographs ‘about’ rather than ‘of’.

Number 63 Spring 2016

View from the Chair Avril Harris ARPS 2

Editorial Patricia Ann Ruddle ARPS 4

Toilers by the sea Oksana Yushko 5

Alien Resident: searching for San Diego

Julia García Hernández and Stephen Clarke

12

A narrative of complexities Simon Gomery ARPS 16

Heroes of Byron Mármol Séverine Grosjean 20

Wasteful Art? Rob Kershaw ARPS 24

Reactive Portraits Jeff Hutchinson 28

Look, Savour, Remember Gus Wylie Hon FRPS 30

Easter Mike Shanahan 36

Some Thing means Everything to Somebody by Peter Mitchell

Book Review by Brian Steptoe FRPS

38

Group Events 39

Committee 39

Duval, from the series ‘Syrcas’ Maud Sulter 40


Editorial

”I fell in love with the process of taking pictures; with wandering around finding things. To me it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance.”*

So said Alec Soth in an 2004 interview with the American photographer Aaron Schuman. An expressive sentiment and one with which I identify. On the prowl, anticipating the picture, then snap – the stimulating sound of the shutter. Got it. Captured forever, at one time on transparency or negative, now on memory card. After downloading to disk, not even uploading to computer, into drawers the disks go, cheek by jowl with their predecessors - the slide boxes and negative sheets. Job done. Performance over.

But now there’s the popularity and accessibility of the photobook. Independently published photobooks are flourishing, whether by small fine art publishers, handmade artists’ books and the use of the many on-demand printing services. Book fairs abound. Self-publishing is no longer a vanity. No longer are we at the mercy of the big trade publishers who are not willing to take risks on unknown photographers.

I had the good fortune to borrow a copy of Alec Soth’s Gathered Leaves. It’s a book that’s also a box that’s also a catalogue of his touring exhibition: a gem of a container that brings together four of his works – Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), Niagara (2008), Broken Manual (2010) and Songbook (2015). (The first three are now out-of-print.) The books are presented in miniature facsimiles along with 29 large format postcards with quotes on reverse.

Perhaps my photographs will see the light of day yet. I fell in love with the photobook.

Patricia Ann Ruddle, MA, ARPSEditor

*Soth, Alec (Introduction Kate Bush; Essays Aaron Schuman). Gathered Leaves. London: Mack, 2015.Note: The Gathered Leaves exhibition is at the National Media Museum, Bradford, until 26 June 2016. Also, Alec Soth’s publishing company has appealing information: http://www.littlebrownmushroom.com/


Toilers by the seaOksana Yushko

No, we are not on vacation. How to explain? No, we will not go swimming. We will not sunbathe. We try to earn a living. Does the government look after us? No, it’s not enough. What should we do? Do you see all of these people? They are vacationers. But what about us? We are the toilers by the sea. What will we do? We will offer many services to them. Miscellaneous ones. Every day. The whole summer. Then when all of them leave, we will go too. Next summer we will return again. To the sea.

Every year trains and buses bring vacationers with the first warm sun, and every year toilers by the sea appear just in time and busily begin their simple activities. They have no work, or they lack money because of scanty pensions or maybe something else has happened.

What with the political violence that has ravaged Ukraine recently, our image of the country is bloody. But with my Russian mother and Ukrainian father, I spent peaceful summers here when I was a child at the Fedotov Spit, a sand strip about 45 kilometres on the northern shore of the Sea of Azov, a popular beach resort that is home to small villages and summer hotels. Locals tend to be fishermen or farmers. The sea, sandy beaches and cool winds during the summer heat attract many people to come for vacations and weekends without having to spend lots of money. Because of the current political situation, I think that many Ukrainians who used to vacation in the Crimea now come to the Fedotov Spit.

I talked with people and tried to get their personal stories, but also tried to stay ‘invisible’ to capture as honest an image as possible. However, there is no one truth. But I hope that my photography will be seen in the context of Ukraine’s upheaval and that it will give viewers a different perspective on the country.

Ed. note: Oksana Yushko is a freelance photographer based in Moscow. See her website http://www.youok.ru/ for more photographs of the Toilers by the Sea and her other award-winning projects.


Alien Resident: Searching for San DiegoJulia García Hernández and Stephen Clarke

In 2015 the independent photobook publisher The Velvet Cell released two volumes of Stephen Clarke’s photographs of Southern California’s marts, drive-ins and eateries under the title California Shopfronts. Dominated by signage and the automobile, the sun’s heat is palpable in this small selection of black and white images where people-less sidewalks point to a non-pedestrian culture.(1)

When Clarke arrived on the West Coast in the mid-1980s in the weeks immediately following his degree, he had expected to feel a familiarity with its landscape. Like other British children of his generation growing up in the 1960s and 70s he had absorbed a version of California by watching popular American detective shows. The backdrop to the weekly drama on Charlie’s Angels or Columbo was the bright, blue-skied Sunny State in close up. Onto his childhood picture of California, Clarke had mapped the work of the photo-artists who now informed his practice: Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari and Lewis Baltz. In Clarke’s portfolio were the markets, arcades and chip shops of the seaside promenade that he had been photographing continuously across Britain in the four years before visiting the USA. The imagery developing was of small-scale, flat-roofed, flat-fronted buildings with homemade signage and an appearance of impermanence: a temporary architecture more akin to the mobile or shed. This was a place photographed out of season in inclement weather and changeable light.(2)

From the summer of 1986 Clarke took up residence for one year in El Cajon, a suburb east of San Diego. This was alien territory: seasonless and sprawling, it was not the place of the ‘close up’. Streets were wide; buildings and landmarks were spread out. Everything that Clarke had imagined he would photograph seemed beyond

reach, in the distance, across roads, parking lots, and scrubland. He needed to learn to navigate San Diego County in order to picture it.

Clarke took casual employment in the photographic industries and became familiar with San Diego as a stage set to tourism and cinema. His first job was as portrait photographer of visitors to the tourist attraction of San Diego’s Old Town, a site of historic importance that had gained the character of a theme park. Later as a photo retoucher he was based in a studio in Miramar, the location for the film Top Gun (1986). As a minilab assistant Clarke collected film and delivered prints to the Naval Base Coronado where the Hotel del Coronado had been the setting for the film Some Like it Hot (1959).

Clarke’s approach to photographing the city and its environs was through simple exploration: he drove, parked up, and walked. On foot he was an oddity, a lone figure. In El Cajon, La Mesa, La Jolla, and over the border in Mexico’s Tijuana, he focused initially on features that were recognisable in their function but extraordinary in their appearance, such as the American mailbox.

As the year progressed Clarke met with San Diego based photographers Philipp Scholz Rittermann and Phel Steinmetz (3). Both offered support and guidance to enable his continued work and practice in the region. Clarke’s photographic trips became interspersed with visits to Steinmetz’s studio, then Professor of Photography at University of California, San Diego. Steinmetz, introduced Clarke to his photographic work and shared his experience of San Diego, encouraging him to apply for the MFA under his tutelage.

By the summer of 1987 Clarke had amassed close to one hundred rolls of film that remained unprocessed until


his return to the UK in the autumn. Revisiting this body of work thirty years on reveals his search for imagery that would resonate with his picturing of the British seaside. Accompanying the motifs that signal the Californian heat such as the cloth-covered car and the palm tree is an abundance of signs designed to attract the attention of drivers-by. Lifelike animals – bears, apes, and cattle – pulled out of their natural habitat are dropped into an environment in a manner that in Britain was reserved for the funfair or the sea facing façades. Titled San Diego Signs some of these images have been shown as part of Carlisle Photo Festival’s touring exhibition Visualising the Animal (2015/16) (4). On the pedestrian-only city streets of Carlisle, in the shopping precinct at Workington, and in the Glasshouses at Durham’s Botanic Gardens, these are creatures displaced by time and place.

1. California Shopfronts has been produced as part of The Velvet Cell’s zine series Chronicles. See: www.thevelvetcell.com2. See article From San Diego to St Helens by Cian Quayle on The Double Negative website: http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2015/10/from-san-diego-to-st-helens-stephen-clarkes-end-of-season/3. Philipp Scholz Rittermann had directed Clarke to Steinmetz. See www.rittermann.com

Phel Steinmetz was known for his collaborations with other artists including Eleanor Antin for her project 100 Boots. Steinmetz died in 2013. Seewww.phelsteinmetzphoto.com

Steinmetz’s work is represented by the Berlin based gallery Silberkuppe and has been shown at the 2016 art fair Independent New York. See: www.silberkuppe.org4. Visualising the Animal was on show in Washington Square, Workington until 9 April 2016, see www.carlislephotofestival.co.uk

From the publication California Shopfronts



Unpublished

From the series San Diego Signs



Unpublished


A narrative of complexitiesSimon Gomery ARPS

This body of work has been made in Hembury Woods, near Buckfast, Devon. The Woods are on National Trust land, and incorporate an Iron Age settlement, encapsulating the river Dart in the valley of lichen-clad, ancient oaks. For me personally the work is an investigation into many things, including how I spend my recreation time escaping grey dour concrete surroundings. The work starts to embrace the fragility and ephemera of nature, how nature intercepts the land and how humans can reconstruct from the reclamation of nature.

I use the power of photography, what it captures in that fraction of a second, as a tool to critique the environment, choosing to make permanent with the use of film as the medium of my choice. Although the photographs are pictorial, it is not my intention to romanticise the landscape - my photography is contemporary. It is ‘as is now’. I want to represent things as I find them. Photography itself is a transformative medium. I choose to make the photographs using colour negative Kodak Porta 160 film with a 1974 Fujica GM 670 and 100mm f3.5 lens. Unlike digital equipment I anticipate that this equipment will last the rest of my photographic career. I fear a digital dark age when the cloud crashes, when decades of preciousness are lost in a fraction of a second. The polar opposite happens when I make a composition, select the aperture for depth of field, select a shutter speed either to freeze that moment in time - the one that is no more. Or, with a slower shutter speed, paint with light traces of time.

My permanent records are on negatives, and negatives have been in use for almost 200 years. The traces of my foot prints in the land will be replenished by nature, unlike the work of the forest management team that are crafting the woodland for many years of preservation, so that it can be enjoyed by future generations - as will the human Iron Age traces in the land, which will be evident long after I have left this mortal coil.

http://photographiesimongomery.carbonmade.com/


Heroes of Byron MármolSéverine Grosjean

Byron Mármol is a young, self-taught Guatemalan photographer who is developing a photography focused on universal human nature. As a documentary photographer, he explores with an international dimension, heroes or villains of ordinary life. He puts his art at the service of a vision of society, registering his artistic position on pictorial or earlier artistic traditions.

Byron has begun a census of urban tribes in his series Cosupure. The photographs follow a protocol used in the movies : light, framing, decoration, the positions of the characters : Silence, Smile!

His work is playful, anachronistic, but fragile in its social aspect. Most of these ‘heroes’, living in precarious conditions, interpret a role in a suit, a wig and makeup of Manga characters, video games or comic books. They become objects of contemplation and fascination interacting with an unexpectedly common landscape. They show in their own way the power relations taking place in Guatemalan society today, reflecting a vision in which two worlds overlap and where barriers are broken. The so-called ‘cosplayers’ are actors and witnesses of an anti-system. Mármol explores identity as a fighter in a brutal Guatemalan society.

In his series Element, Mármol switches his reflection with these seemingly ordinary portraits. Unlike the previous series, where the heroes wear suits to ‘exist’, Mármol removes the uniforms of the private security guards. In Guatemala, a common sight on every corner, in every shop, are the ‘keepers’. This is so natural that they are part of the landscape until they disappear. In this new work, he wants to give them back their humanity, photographing them identically, looking down, detached, bottomless, wearing everyday clothes. Mármol wants to be as neutral as possible. The photographs give a visual psychological critique of a dehumanising contemporary society.

To summarize the work of Byron Mármol, the words of the photographer, Willy Ronis, resonate : “I have never pursued the unusual, the extraordinary, but what is more typical of our everyday existence.”

Ed. Note. For more information about Byron Mármol see the website (Spanish and English) http://uvuvuv.com/uv/byronmarmol.html. Founded in 2009 Proyectos Ultravioleta is responsible for a micro-revolution in Guatemala’s art scene through exhibitions, events and talks. Mármol was one of its founders. There’s a YouTube interview with Mármol in Spanish : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeIdDCMLag4. Another website (English) reviews the contemporary Guatemalan art scene. http://blogs.guggenheim.org/map/dispatch-guatemala-city/

From the series Cosupure: Sundae 2011

From the series Cosupure: Iván Rodríquez

(Hisagi con Zanpakutou en forma Shikai: Kazeshini) 2010


From the series Cosupure: Kurosaki Ichigo en segunda transformación vizard hollow 2010

From the series Cosupure: Hiro (Azai Nagamasa) 2011


above left - From the series Element: Adolfo (Guardia 01) 2012above right - From the series Element: Cristian (Guardia 02) 2012left -From the series Element: René (Guardia 03) 2012


Wasteful Art?Rob Kershaw ARPS

Almost every Saturday morning I take our rubbish to the Déchetterie in our local commune for recycling. It’s always busy with the amount of waste that we all seem to accumulate these days. There are containers for all types of materials which are surplus to requirements, no longer function or have been replaced at home by the latest model, as well as all the accumulated packaging, building and garden refuse. (There is even a specific container for used Nespresso capsules!) Of course this being Switzerland the facility is neatly set up and remarkably clean. It is also a testament to the commitment of the community to re-cycle.

Usually I have a camera with me and from time to time take photos around the dump. Reflecting on these pictures it occurred to me that there was a possibility of a project documenting the waste we produce and also the random art of the dumped materials. During 2015 I made a number of photo sessions at the rubbish dump, and the images reproduced are a cross section of this work showing colours, shapes, textures and patterns rather than a more straightforward documentary approach.

I am currently discussing with the local commune staff the possibility of a small exhibition to take place at either the commune building in Avry or at the Déchetterie itself.


See Google Maps for location of the Déchetterie https://www.google.com/maps/place/46%C2%B046’54.0%22N+7%C2%B003’33.7%22E/@46.7816885,7.0590865,101m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0?hl=en-US

The Avry Commune Building: http://www.avry.ch/run?iset=1099&refpage=56474

http://robckershawphotography.com/


Reactive PortraitsJeff Hutchinson

Involving the subject of the portrait in the work itself is going to be unwieldy but interesting. How often does the photographer listen to the subject, particularly concerning ‘their’ portrait? How do we react to a portrait of ourselves? There’s a point between what we want people to know about ourselves and what we can’t help people knowing about us. The gap between intention and effect is the flaw. These portraits are fast becoming history – they are probably the last of their kind.

Photoshop can be used to manipulate body shape and skin texture. Digital cameras are now being produced with a slimming function mode. Also, more people are resorting to plastic surgery and with gene therapy cosmetic enhancements almost available, soon you will be able to look like anyone you want – except yourself!


LOOK, SAVOUR, REMEMBERGus Wylie Hon FRPS

Don McCullin wrote about his dislike of digital photography in The Photographic Journal, January 2016. He supported his view with the fact that he still retains and prefers the traditional techniques of film, negative and the darkroom. Whereas I fully understand what he means, and to a very large degree agree with him, the relentless march of digital technology is upon us and inevitably means that certain aspects of traditional photography are now becoming a minority pursuit.

Elliot Erwitt admits that he “fell for it” and had decided “to go digital” but felt, as he worked with it, that it destroyed most of that which he had come to love. For him it was not the question of digital dishonesty, but quite simply the method of working. When working with his Leica he would never take his eye from the viewfinder, gradually refining the sequences until he was happy. Now he felt that with digital cameras, photographers are seduced by the use of the window rather than the viewfinder and, after taking one image they look down at the back to check the composition. In doing so, they are missing the very next (and possibly better) shot.

It seems that craft now dominates photography much more than creativity and imagination. One only has to look at the magazines devoted to digital photography, found next to TV and cookery magazines, which re-enforce this view. Their central preoccupation is within fantasy, not reality, and so much so that it is often difficult to discern one picture from another. Even the subject matter has now become so predictable and formulaic. The placing of the tripod on a rock or foreshore is the starting point, followed by allowing the light to be low enough so that the exposure will not be instantaneous, but can be exposed over several seconds. Then, as

the aperture is set at its widest, the moving water can offer the picture ‘mystery’; if the sky is not quite right then simply wait and change it for another one. If this also allows the glow of a setting sun then so much the better; why not then take three or four versions over intervals, and then choose when you go home? Switch on the computer. Open up the imaging file and then start

– smudge brush? impressionism? auto levels? – anything is possible. They are the pictures that will adorn the walls of burger bars, pizza parlours and cheap furniture stores and, in the process, become predictable and uniquely boring.

I recently pondered these issues as I travelled north to attend the exhibition opening of my close friend Richard Denyer at Norwich Cathedral. His show was to be the first that he had made since embarking upon a long-term project, encompassing subject matter that had interested us both, and concerned aspects of both Norfolk and the Western Isles of Scotland. My first and early dialogue with Richard made me feel that he was taking on too much simultaneously - for what did the Gaelic speakers in Harris have in common with the people of Norfolk? Yet, as I wandered in, I realised at once that the fault had been mine and not his. The first common ground between the two areas was that of water and its influence on the people of the two communities, and second was the influence of faith and its practice throughout time. The illustrator Michael Foreman said in a radio interview that water did not divide communities but linked them, which he had expressed perfectly one week earlier.

Ten minutes into the exhibition it became immediately clear that this photographer, although working with digital photography, had no intention whatsoever in


lapsing into the dreaded excesses of trickery and over-manipulation. Rather, far from seeking out ‘easy’ subject matter, he had retained a single-minded approach that had little to do with image manipulation and was more in the tradition of Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, Richard Misrach and Joel Sternfeld. Yet this is hardly surprising for he had previously been involved in projects from the Norfolk Broads. His first major document Still Waters was on behalf of the Broadland Water Authority, and his second was his major exhibition at the Norwich Art Centre, 2012, Neither Land nor Water, which extended from the East Anglian Wetlands out into the Dutch Canals in Holland.

So this exhibition, Affinity and Kindred, is one that I considered Denyer’s most satisfying work, never relying on trickery and manipulation, but on a more formal and honest approach to documentation. In support of that, he had restricted himself very much as Walker Evans had done, some eighty years earlier when documenting the American South and the Dust Bowl sharecroppers. This viewpoint was fostered as a direct result of what it means to not deviate from a clear-headed and unsentimental response to subject matter. Together with the landscapes, and the individuals within that landscape, the portraits also are a testimony of the photographer not to interfere, but rather to respect his subjects. In pursuit of what I can only refer to as a ‘purity of vision’, Denyer often allows small artefacts – the boat sheds and workshops, the devotional markers of a continuing faith – to build up a mosaic of a community in both Scotland and East Anglia.

Indeed, one of the most memorable images for me in the exhibition was the group portrait of ministers of the Free Church, assembled for the Deacon’s Court in Scalpay, for it perfectly exemplifies that quality so strong in Denyer’s work. It is the quality of patience and interaction with the community that he is representing, and above all, an honourable approach to people. The ministers of the ‘Wee Frees’ can often recognise and frustrate the charlatan, but for Denyer they were in accord.

This is then extended into the documentation of the work place - the reparations to the hulls of wooden boats, of sanders, drills, saws, planes, clamps, glue, gimlets and paint set against the ravages of wind and water. It is similarly extended into aspects of faith, of two angels appearing to be praying to a plant in Eriskay, Christ and a hand basin in Howbeg, a labelled and priced Redeemer, Madonna and child, in Walsingham, Norfolk – they are all there and they speak to you. Nor is it not merely that which is in the respective photographs but what is also between the photographs. This in turn brings the viewer to respond to matters of layout and juxtaposition because in


many instances it is the careful pairing of two images in which its message is to be seen – the positioning of a dry-stone wall alongside a natural outcrop of lava that had been formed on the foreshore some hundreds of thousands of years earlier, preceded by a portrait of a working man, with tide marks on the wall behind him at Ardinashaig on Scalpay. All are there to be remembered and savoured.

Thus it is that the overall statement Denyer makes is one of the highest order and is less the product of mere photojournalism but more especially of documentation. This then follows through from not only the discernment and practice in the field, but also carries through to the quality of the imagery and printing in the exhibition itself. These were the product of close friend and mentor Bill Jackson in Halesworth, a small town in rural Suffolk that has an outward-looking gallery, The Cut, which will show Affinity and Kindred in 2017. The quality of the printing was not only outstanding, but also complimented the thought of the photographer as the shutter was released. In one case alone I looked closely at a wide-angled view over a stretch of water that had within it a delicate vapour trail in the sky, and was gratified to note on closer examination that the tiny speck of the airplane remained wholly discernable

– quite remarkable.


All of these considerations conspire to make this one of the most satisfying exhibitions I have seen for a very long time. It resonates with warmth and kindness, and holds a deep respect for the subjects. It is sensitive and without malice, and preaches to no one; the gimmicky techniques and the sniggers of some modern practitioners are completely missing, and all it is saying is “look, savour and remember”. Cartier Bresson always expressed the importance of “the eye, the hand, and the heart” and never details of technique. In considering this exhibition and commending it to you - when it tours this country, from Halesworth to Stornoway, within the next two years,


I can only follow these remarks with the saddest of realities and advise you that these memorable images are the last of Richard Denyer. Within a few days of the exhibition opening in Norwich Cathedral, he was suddenly taken ill and died. Thus it was that within less than a month I returned again to attend his wake in the very same hall. That being so, I urge you to see it and to tell others, for it really is worth it.

Ed. note: Many thanks to Bill Jackson for supplying the photographs for this article. He is organising another exhibition of Affinity and Kindred at The Cut Gallery, Halesworth, in 2017 before it travels around Britain.


EasterMike Shanahan

Within the western world there is a convention that the date upon which Easter falls is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or soonest after the 21st of March. This calculation requires a consideration of our calendar and the heavenly placement of the moon.

However, other celestial events are rarely celebrated by means of formal holidays. For example, during 2015 it was reported that water had been found on Mars, a discovery that might eventually lead to the terra-forming of that planet with the associated introduction of primitive plant life. Unexpected movements within the gas clouds surrounding Jupiter were also observed. And there were several violent solar flares that disturbed the functions of many satellites circling our lonely planet.

In general, these developments were given scant attention, overwhelmed as we were by other upheavals that occurred during 2015. But these three images may provide a quiet moment for contemplative reflection of those events.

Jupiter

37

Mars

Solar Flare


SOME THING means EVERYTHING to

SOMEBODYPeter Mitchell

Book Review by Brian Steptoe

28x23cm, 130 pages59 scarecrow photographs, 132 photographs of ‘things’.Published by RRB Publishing, 2015

This is Peter Mitchell’s autobiography told by

inanimate objects, as observed by scarecrows. These follow a chronological sequence, each set alongside his treasured objects: mostly everyday things. The scarecrows are shown full page and have been taken over the last 40 years. An extensive set of notes at the back of the book gives information about the objects and the events in the author’s life at the time, starting during the WWII years.

The top page spread here refers to the Viking spacecraft landing on Mars, which was the theme for Peter Mitchell’s exhibition at the Impressions Gallery, then in York . The red crate is one of four that afterwards travelled the exhibition for several years. The centre spread here shows correspondence by Connie Wirtz from Ottawa in 1985. The bottom spread relates to the author’s enthusiasm for the cinema, with an ABC Minors Saturday Morning cinema badge dated 1957, complemented by a poster from Walt Disney Productions of 1976.

These are just a few snippets which allow readers to explore and follow the author’s life.

Note. Peter Mitchell will be exhibiting at Rencontre d’Arles this year.

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Chair - Avril Harris ARPS [email protected]

Deputy chair - Rod Fry [email protected] - Peter Ellis [email protected] - Greg Holba [email protected] portfolio - Duncan [email protected] organiser - Avril Harris ARPS [email protected]

Journal editor - Patricia Ruddle ARPS 28 Malvern Avenue, York. YO26 5SG [email protected]

Journal Editorial committee - Patricia Ruddle, editorAnne CrabbeBrian Steptoe, design

Webmaster, Sean Goodhart [email protected] (Concept) editor, Christine Pinnington LRPS [email protected]

Committee members -Brian Steptoe FRPS [email protected] Crabbe FRPS [email protected] Tooby FRPS [email protected] Wentworth [email protected] Owens ARPS [email protected] May FRPS (co-opted)[email protected] Maxwell (co-opted) [email protected]

Group and related Society eventS

17 May-19 June Contemporary East Anglia inaugural exhibition at Beyond the Image Gallery, Thornham. Suffolk. see www.beyondtheimage.co.uk for details

21 May Contemporary North East meeting at the Royal Oak Pub, York 2-5 pm. Please bring work, whether completed or in progress to discuss. Photobooks welcome. There will be no digital projection. Contact Patricia A Ruddle ARPS, [email protected], tel. 01904 783850

31 May Contemporary North West meeting at Days Inn, Charnock Richard Services on the M6 between Junctions 27 and 28, starting at 7.30pm. Contact Ian Maxwell [email protected], tel. 01524 770278

10--12 June Bristol Photobook Festival, Southbank Club, Dean Lane, Bristol, BS3 1DB. Purchase tickets by PayPal at www.photobookbristol.com/index.php/tickets or to pay by cheque or direct transfer, email mailto:[email protected]

19 June Contemporary South West meeting Carnon Downs Village Hall, Carnon Downs, Truro, TR3 6GH. Contact Rod Fry [email protected], tel. 01803 844721

21 September Conceptual and Contemporary Distinction Assessments for ARPS and FRPS. Fenton House, Bath. Applicants and observers may attend the Associateship assessments. ARPS enquiries [email protected] FRPS enquiries [email protected]

18-23 October RPS International Photobook Exhibition and associated print exhibition. Espacio Gallery, 159 Bethnal Green Road, London E2 7DG. Opening times 1-7pm daily, 1-5pm Sunday.

23 October Contemporary Scotland meeting at Edinburgh Photographic Society 1-4pm. Contact David Fells [email protected], tel. 07563756137

29-30 October RPS International Photobook Exhibition. St Saviours Hall, Barbican, Plymouth PL1 2NN. Held in conjunction with Fotonow, Plymouth. Details to be announced.

12 November RPS International Photobook Exhibition. Impressions Gallery, Centenary Square, Bradford BD1 1SD. 10.30am-4.30pm.

Dates not fixed Contemporary East Anglia meetings. These will be in the Ipswich and Cambridge areas when arranged. The project underway is the The Ipswich Waterfront Development. Contact Peter Ellis [email protected]

This is OPEN TO MEMBERS AND NON-MEMBERS Of THE RPS. TO ENTER see www.rps.org/photobook

Closing date 31 July 2016

Journal price where sold, £5 Journal printing by printed.com

Duval, from the series ‘Syrcas’ (1993) © Maud Sulter, courtesy the Estate of Maud Sulter. From the Impressions Gallery, Bradford exhibition: Passion, a Street Level Photoworks/Autograph ABP partnership in association with TrAIN. 1 April - 4 June 2016.

Contemporary Photography, Spring 2016

Documents

Transcript of Contemporary Photography, Spring 2016