The RPS Journal, January 2020

THE RPS JOURNAL / JANUARY 2020 / VOL 160 No 1

Alan Bovik The scientist who sharpens up the digital world

Your guide to the most exciting photography events in 2020

WWW.RPS.ORG

JOURNAL JANUARY 2020 / VOLUME 160 / NUMBER 1 WWW.RPS.ORG

IPE 162 / ALAN BOVIK HonFRPS / PREVIEW OF 2020

THE GREATEST SHOW The curtain is raised on a stunning IPE 162

OPENING SHOT ‘Sharing pictures is as natural as breathing’ NEXT ISSUE

Botanical artist Azuma Makoto shoots for the stratosphere; we celebrate excellence with a Fellowship special; and Yan Wan Preston selects her best shots

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AS WE HERALD A NEW DECADE packed with amazing images, we start by previewing some of the most exciting photographic exhibitions and events in 2020. From neopictorialism at RPS House to Alice in Wonderland at the V&A, we bring you highlights from the year ahead.

Among the most inspiring events this year will be the International Photography Exhibition 162, which launches at RPS House, Bristol, in February. Turn to page 22 to enjoy a selection of the most arresting images including a series by the over-30s winner Cody Cobb.

Sharing pictures online – still or moving – is as natural to many of us now as breathing. You can make and post a picture on social media almost

Paria 2 by IPE 162 winner Cody Cobb

STAY CONNECTED

in a heartbeat, while your followers can like and share it in a matter of seconds.

If you take any of this for granted, you can thank Professor Alan Bovik HonFRPS, recipient of the 2019 RPS Progress Medal. Bovik and his team at The University of Texas at Austin have helped shape the photographic and internet-streaming video industries globally. Bovik’s picture quality-measurement tools allow hundreds of millions of viewers each day to enjoy optimised visual experiences.

He enjoyed a visual experience of his own during a shoot with Harry Borden HonFRPS at the Royal Society, London, shortly before the RPS Awards ceremony. You can see the results, and learn about Bovik’s innovative work, in a fascinating piece by Tom Seymour on page 34.

Innovation is also at the heart of an impressive body of work by Valérie Belin. Clare Harris spoke to the French artist after a major commission of Belin’s work was unveiled at the V&A in London. Turn to page 46 to discover which images Belin has selected as her best shots.

We hope this issue of the Journal will help kickstart your year with a bang. The team here look forward to taking you on a visual journey over the next 12 months you won’t forget.

KATHLEEN MORGAN Editor

KEEP IN TOUCH WITH THE RPS

Or contact the editor with your views rpsjournal@thinkpublishing.co.uk

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THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY RPS House, 337-340 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR, UK www.rps.org frontofhouse@rps.org +44 (0)117 316 4450 Incorporated by Royal Charter Patron The Duchess of Cambridge President Dr Alan Hodgson ASIS FRPS President Elect Vacant Treasurer John Miskelly ARPS Chief Operating Officer Mike Taylor Director of Education and Public Affairs Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS Published on behalf of The Royal Photographic Society by Think Red Tree Business Suites 33 Dalmarnock Road, Glasgow G40 4LA thinkpublishing.co.uk EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES Editor Kathleen Morgan rpsjournal@thinkpublishing.co.uk 0141 375 0509 Contributing editor Rachel Segal Hamilton Design John Pender Sub-editor Sam Bartlett Editorial assistant Jennifer Constable Advertising sales Jordan Ngandu jordan.ngandu @thinkpublishing.co.uk 0203 771 7229

© 2020 The Royal Photographic Society.

All rights reserved.

Every reasonable endeavour has been made to find and contact the copyright owners of the works included in this newspaper.

However, if you believe a copyright work has been included without your permission, please contact the publishers. Views of contributors and advertisers do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Royal Photographic Society or those of the publishers.

All material correct at time of going to press.

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French artist Valérie Belin selects her best shots

Circulation 11,079 (Jan-Dec 2018) ABC ISSN: 1468-8670

Cover Ian At Home

by Frederic Aranda

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22 The IPE 162 is unveiled

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40 Journey into the Arctic with bursary winner Sandra Angers-Blondin

VALÉRIE BELIN; SANDRA ANGERS-BLONDIN; SIMON SCHWYZER

Group account director John Innes

CONTENTS

JANUARY 2020

CONTRIBUTORS

EVERY MONTH

Tom Seymour (PAGE 34)

Writing about contemporary photography, film and visual arts, Tom Seymour has contributed to titles including the FT, Wired and the Guardian

4 | BIG PICTURE Taliban portrait by Thomas Dworzak HonFRPS

20 | WHAT TO SEE THIS MONTH We highlight the best displays of photography around the UK

7 | IN FOCUS A preview of the year ahead, plus a round-up of Society news, views and the 365 competition winners

54 | DISTINCTIONS Panel chair Joe Cornish HonFRPS shares the thinking behind a new Distinction in landscape photography

19 | BOOKS Includes Gideon Mendel’s Freedom or Death and Paul’s Book by Collier Schorr HonFRPS

63 | EVENTS There’s something for everyone at these RPS get-togethers

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Bealach na Gaoithe

by Joe Cornish HonFRPS

Gavin Bell (PAGE 40)

A former foreign correspondent for Reuters and the Times, Gavin Bell has returned to live in his native Glasgow. He is now an awardwinning travel writer for the Telegraph and Wanderlust magazine

JOE CORNISH HonFRPS; HARRY BORDEN HonFRPS

FEATURES Clare Harris (PAGE 46)

34 See clearly with Alan Bovik HonFRPS

Director at the Scottish Contemporary Art Network, Clare Harris is a former editor of the Journal.

She has also overseen awardwinning titles including The Big Issue in Scotland

22 | IPE 162 Sixteen outstanding images celebrate the return of the world’s longest-running photo competition

40 | CLIMATE WITNESS Bursary-winning environmentalist Sandra Angers-Blondin reveals what keeps her ‘fighting and not despairing’ in the Arctic

34 | VISIONARY THINKER Meet Alan Bovik HonFRPS, whose digital-imaging research has influenced how billions of people visualise their world

46 | BEST SHOTS One of France’s most decorated photographers, Valérie Belin shares the works that give her oeuvre its groove

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BIG PICTURE

Taliban portrait Collection T Dworzak/Magnum Photos While covering the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Magnum photojournalist Thomas Dworzak discovered a few studios in Kandahar which, despite a Taliban ban on photography, were allowed to remain open solely for taking passport images.

This photograph of Taliban soldiers is part of the exhibition Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography, at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, from 20 February.

Curator Alona Pardo says: ‘Complicating the conventional

image of the hypermasculinised soldier, the portraits Dworzak found in these studios include hand-painted photographs of fighters posing in front of scenic backdrops, their eyes heavily made up with black kohl, enveloped in a halo of colours. They contradict the public image of the soldier in this overwhelmingly male-dominated, patriarchal society.’ Dworzak received an Honorary Fellowship in 2018.

Visit barbican.org.uk

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MEET THIS MONTH’S NEW TALENT

SEE THE 365 COMPETITION WINNERS IN PRINT

TAKE YOUR PICK OF THE BEST NEW PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS

IN•FOCUS News, views, exhibitions and competitions

See An Hour Exposure: Shibuya, 1990-2017,

by Sato Tokihiro, at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 16 July

It’s showtime The best photography exhibitions and festivals to look forward to in 2020

SIGN UP

THIS YEAR LOOKS set to be thrilling for anyone interested in photography and its history.

From Glasgow to Guernsey, you will find exhibitions that look back through the development

PHOTOSHOP WITH JOHN ROE ARPS

of photography – the remarkable MacKinnon collection and the glamorous archive of Cecil Beaton HonFRPS – and embrace the contemporary practitioners expanding the boundaries of the medium.

Join this two-day workshop in Bristol on Saturday 29 February and Sunday 1 March. It costs £135 for Society members. See page 70 for all our workshops

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Cumloden, Loch Trool boating party, 1888 ABOVE

SCOTLAND’S PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM

Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh Until 16 February

Murray MacKinnon’s extraordinary collection spans 100 momentous years of Scottish history, from 1840 to 1940.

This exhibition marks the recent joint acquisition of the collection by the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland. nationalgalleries.org BELOW

ABOVE

Various venues, London

Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow

14 to 17 May

The leading photography fair again lures an international cohort of collectors, curators and others to the capital, plus offering lots of fringe events, such as the innovative festival Peckham 24 (17-19 May). photolondon.org and peckham24.com Warp, from the series FLUX, by Alia Ali, featuring at Photo London

Alice in Wonderland, The Royal Ballet, by Johan Persson ABOVE

ALICE: CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER V&A Museum, London

27 June 2020 to 10 January 2021

This major show at the V&A in London promises to be ‘a mind-bending journey into Wonderland’, exploring the lasting cultural legacy of Lewis Caroll’s classic with photography by Honorary Fellows Tim Walker and Annie Leibovitz, surrealist art and theatrical set design. vam.ac.uk

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OSCAR MARZAROLI Until 15 March

Born in Italy, Oscar Marzaroli moved to Glasgow as a baby in 1935. He become one of Scotland’s best-regarded documentary photographers, capturing renowned images between the 1950s and 80s. streetlevelphotoworks.org ALICE IN WONDERLAND. THE ROYAL BALLET. ZENAIDA YANOWSKY ROH, JOHAN PERSSON, 2011. COSTUMES BY BOB CROWLEY

PHOTO LONDON

IN FOCUS

Expectation, Celtic end, cup final, Hampden Park, 1963, by Oscar Marzaroli

BELOW

SQUARING THE CIRCLES OF CONFUSION RPS House, Bristol 10 April to 21 June

A celebration of neo-pictorialism in the 21st century, this exhibition is a positive response to the digital age. Curated

by Zelda Cheatle, it features artists including Takashi Arai, and Honorary Fellows Susan Derges, Tom Hunter and Joy Gregory. rps.org/circles

Baba Beaton as ‘Heloise’ in ‘Great Lovers Pageant’ by Cecil Beaton, 1927 Master Tide Pool by Susan Derges HonFRPS

ABOVE

CECIL BEATON’S BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS National Portrait Gallery, London 12 March to 7 June

The National Portrait Gallery’s spring show is devoted to the work of fashion photographer Cecil Beaton HonFRPS. In the 1920s and 30s, while working for Vogue, he documented his high society friends and their dazzling world. npg.org.uk From the series Utsurundesu by Mika Ninagawa RIGHT

TOKYO IN THE FRAME

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 16 July to 8 November

Tokyo: Art and Photography presents 400 years of creativity in the Japanese capital – from the 1600s when it was the Tokugawa shoguns’ headquarters to its contemporary status as a photographic powerhouse. ashmolean.org

IN FOCUS

NEWS IN BRIEF FAMILY AFFAIR A project by Jude Wacks, celebrating family business, has been chosen as one of the projects to be showcased in Brent’s London Borough of Culture 2020. Wacks, also a mental health campaigner, spoke about her work at a 2019 RPS conference on photo therapy. Visit judewacks.com and brent2020.co.uk PHOTOBOOK SUCCESS New Delhi-based Magnum Photos associate Sohrab Hura has taken the prestigious Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards PhotoBook of the Year for his self-published book The Coast. Visit sohrabhura.com

NEW TALENT

Theo Simpson

This photographer is reinventing how we see the northern landscape Growing up in the north of England, industrial landscapes were a constant presence for Theo Simpson, who was born in Doncaster in 1986.

Since his first big solo exhibition, The Land of the Day Before, at Webber Gallery in 2017, London, the Lincolnshire-based artist has exhibited his work at

BOOK AWARD RESULT The winner of the inaugural ICP/GOST First Photo Book Award is Nancy Floyd for the series Weathering Time. The award attracted nearly 300 entrants from 45 countries.

Floyd will have her first photobook designed, edited, printed and published by the ICP/GOST imprint in the spring.

IVORIAN ARTIST WINS PRIX PICTET PRIZE Joana Choumali, from Ivory Coast, has become the first African to win the Prix Pictet prize. She won the £78,000 award for her series of embroidered images, titled Ça va aller (it will be ok), made in the wake of terrorist attacks in her homeland in 2016.

Untitled, Ça va aller, 2019, by Joana Choumali

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World of Things

FOAM in Amsterdam and Photo London.

His is a thoughtful and experimental photographic practice that incorporates overlapping images, archives, magazine clippings, industrial materials such as steel or aluminium, and three-dimensional elements to rethink the conventional

language of landscape photography. Last year Simpson was named as one of two winners of the 2019 Jerwood/ Photoworks Award, along with Silvia Rosi.

Offered to outstanding artists within 10 years of starting out, the award celebrates and encourages new approaches to photography, and comes

PLAN AHEAD

Crying girl on the border by John Moore

WORLD PRESS PHOTO This free-to-enter annual contest recognising the world’s best visual journalism was won by John Moore last year. Open to professional photographers, it offers a top prize of €10,000.

Entrants must register by 9 January and submit their work before noon on 14 January. worldpressphoto.org

1 Five Rivers

with a £10,000 grant and mentoring to produce a new body of work to be shown at Jerwood Arts London this month.

Shoair Mavlin, director of Photoworks, says: ‘Theo’s work explores the relationship between

landscape and history, drawing references from the past in an attempt to understand the current social and political moment.

‘Incorporating found photographs and new images, his work also merges

photography and sculpture, expanding the idea of contemporary photographic practice.’

Photoworks Awards: Silvia Rosi, Theo Simpson, is from 15 January to 8 March.

Visit theosimpson.co.uk

RHS PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION Entries close at 10am on 31 January for this showcase of the finest gardening-related images. A selection of the best portfolios will be exhibited in April, with an RHS medal for the winner. rhs.org.uk

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION Aimed at UK and Irelandbased photographers of any level, this has four travel-related categories – cities, landscapes, nature and people. Prizes include a trip to Mexico for the grand prize winner, and Manfrotto tripods.

The deadline is 23 February. nationalgeographic.co.uk

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AOP OPEN AWARDS There are no thematic restrictions in these awards, co-curated by Tim Flach HonFRPS, president of the AOP. The two best entries will be awarded gold and silver in the categories for stills (series or a single shot), moving image, and innovative.

Depending on the category, entries close on 2 or 19 March. aopawards.com

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Vanden Plas

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TOP SHOT

Against all odds Honorary Fellow returns to capture hope amid hardship

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Two weeks before this image was made, Bourka Bourka in Niger was empty land. Within days of a single gold flake being found ‘the hills were colonised by thousands of men, women and children digging for gold,’ says Nick Danziger HonFRPS.

‘The furnace-like heat, the squalor with tired bodies stretched out on the hard ground, the constant arguments, the women trying to find customers, the pre-teen children trying to sell a variety of wares made me feel like I had entered a terrestrial hell.’

IN FOCUS

Danziger was in Niger following Abbas – a 25-yearold gold miner he has been documenting for more than a decade. The project is to be published as a book, Another Life – a collection of 40 stories of people living in poverty across the globe.

‘I return to the same individuals and stories. [I’ve met] remarkable people who against all the odds provide us with hope and belief in a better future for those less fortunate than ourselves.’

Visit nickdanziger.com

‘Climate change has reached the Amazon … and we had 400km of rapids to negotiate’

MY PLACE

By Sue Cunningham

The Xingu River, Brazil What inspired you to spend six months photographing communities along the Xingu?

I’ve been photographing Brazil for over 35 years. In 2007 my husband Patrick and I won the Royal Geographical Society Neville Shulman Challenge Award with a proposal to navigate the length of the Xingu. We had solar panels on the roof of our boat to charge equipment and brought 550 litres of fuel in barrels. We had the privilege of meeting nearly 20,000 wonderful diverse forest people who live in villages, with no roads and no electricity, built of materials from the forest.

What challenges did you face on your journey?

Climate change has

reached the Amazon. The Xingu River was not as flooded as it usually is – important when you have 400km of rapids to negotiate. So, we had our equipment in Peli cases. Our indigenous boatmen – one for each section of the river – were vital because only they knew their stretch of the river well enough to navigate those rapids.

Are you still in touch with people you met?

We have been back to the Xingu often since the expedition. We took photos back to them. One chief cried when he saw us. He said: ‘No one ever comes back.’

Spirit of the Amazon is published by Papadakis

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365 monthly competition winners

Enjoy the most popular entries themed around community HORSES IN THE RIVER EDEN

Marianne Van Loo ARPS

In the last few years I have been a regular visitor to the Appleby Horse Fair, attended each year by thousands of gypsies and

travellers. The earliest record of the fair is in a charter from Henry II, from the 12th century.

I wanted to show that washing horses in the River Eden is a tradition that has been upheld for decades – a community

preserving its lifestyle. I love how the red T-shirt is reflected in the water. I created this with a Nikon D700, using a 28-300mm lens. The focal length was 92mm, 1/160sec, f/11, ISO 200, manual, spot metered.

WOMEN’S MARCH AGAINST THE ELECTION OF PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP

Ron Evans

The day after the inauguration of President Trump on January 20 2017, a grassroots movement took place in hundreds of cities across America labelled ‘The Women’s

IN FOCUS SUNBATHING

Rob Kershaw ARPS

ALAN HODGSON ASIS FRPS

Community spaces are popular in the summer for relaxing and sunbathing, particularly those near swimming pools, rivers or lakes. This particular spot in the Marzili area of Bern is close to a pool and the Aare River. This was taken during a ‘photo walkabout’ from a bridge high above the location. I liked the random nature of the scene, people in various positions and the contrast of their belongings against the green grass. The image was shot on a Pentax K-1 with a 24-70 zoom, set at 24mm, at f/11, 1/400 and ISO 200.

President, The Royal Photographic Society

VoiceBox Climate change

ENTER NOW

We need to move on to ensure a brighter future for us all

ALAN HODGSON ASIS FRPS

Inspired by these images?

Then vote for your favourites and submit your photographs for the next monthly Society competition at rps-365.org

March’ – the largest single-day protest in US history.

I made this in Washington, DC, on January 21. Women, men and others of all ages were pressed together in affable proximity like sardines in a can. This is exactly as it appeared. No ‘fake news’ here.

However, what is missing are the voices, the sounds of humanity in close rapport.

The UN has colour coded its sustainable development goals

CLIMATE IS A WORD THAT perspective – the UN sustainable can have different meanings development goals (SDGs). Everyone has a depending on the context – role to achieve these and the AGM social, economic, cultural and, of course, resolution will facilitate a place for the environmental. Let’s consider this Society in them too. The UN has colour from a RPS perspective. We live in times coded its 17 SDGs, enabling a rich array of of change. visual imagery to support the initiatives.

The RPS is now established in a These range from the colour wheels used different city. With an education centre, to badge the programmes to photographs gallery and auditorium we can move on to used for communicating and inspiring provide the right climate for member participation. This could be but one area volunteering and public engagement. The where the RPS could make a difference. task now is to fill these with meaningful Some of the images in recent issues of events that sustain our future. the Journal could be the start of this While it was good to see so many of you journey. In parallel with this we need to at the AGM, we need to continue this consider the sustainability of the RPS. We climate of engagement. We conducted the must ensure the Society is on a sound last Society election electronically, making footing – financially, and for membership it easier for participation irrespective of participation and public benefit. We need residence in Brisbane or to balance these, and working Bristol. But we need to widen we will do this.

We live in times together participation in this process.

We should also note a of change.

Our electoral engagement climate change at trustee needs to change.

A new balance level with a majority being The AGM passed an new to the role, a change will prevail of treasurer and two interesting resolution – changes of presidency in recognising that a state of short succession. A new balance will climate emergency exists and to establish a working group to consider the prevail. I look forward to working with the Society and surrounding communities to Society’s position with regard to climate make this happen. change and pollution. You might have I plan to be out and about, visiting seen a recent RPS email on this topic. groups, regions and probably some Sustainability is a particular interest of chapters. I am interested in your views – mine from a global strategy context. come and talk to me. I will also be Shortly after the AGM I departed for a continuing the president’s blog on rps.org. work assignment in Shanghai. The IEC International Standards body was My aim is to share with you my thoughts considering sustainability from a global on this journey. Let me know yours too.

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IN FOCUS

Congratulations to these RPS members ASSOCIATE TRAVEL MARCH 2019 Justin Cliffe, Surrey David Cole, Hertfordshire Barbara Anne Davies, Swansea Susan Hutton, Leicestershire John Macfarlane, Cumbria Kathryn Phillips, Surrey Kin Hung Siu, Hong Kong Binyuan Li, China Xinmin Zhang, China ARPS NATURAL HISTORY APRIL 2019 Dhruba Banerjee, Dubai Gerry Butler, Co. Clare Robin Claydon, Hertfordshire Alison Jenkins, Hertfordshire Richard Sharman, Surrey Nigel Symington, East Sussex Karin Wilson, Gloucestershire KS Srinivas, Karnataka Kola Venkateswarlu, Telangana ARPS CONCEPTUAL & CONTEMPORARY APRIL 2019 Elizabeth Akers, Norfolk Janine Ball, Kent Robert Herringshaw, Gloucestershire Steve R Hicks, Middlesex Janet Richardson, Shropshire Simon Street, Surrey John Tickner, Warwickshire Pam Turner, Worcestershire ARPS EXEMPTIONS APRIL 2019 Ian Flanders, Liverpool Rachel Persaud, East Sussex ARPS FINE ART NOVEMBER 2019 Nick Browne, Worcestershire Jannett Klinke, Cambridge Agnieszka Laskus, Bristol Lionel Mitchell, Co. Antrim

Jeff Owen, West Sussex Sarah Townley, Hampshire ARPS FINE ART OCTOBER 2019 Thomas Allaway, Nottingham Clare Collins, New Malden Gaynor Davies, Wirral John Dunn, Bedford Emm Eason, Exeter Christopher Flood, Cranleigh Jan Harris, High Wycombe Tom Lee, Neston Andy Linden, London Martin Parratt, Hertford Mark Reeves, Wirral Jacki Rosin, Coventry Tim Sawyer, Leeds Jonathan Walland, London Rong Zhang, Nanjing ARPS APPLIED OCTOBER 2019 Nicholas Alston, Essex Ian Hammond, Worcestershire Martin Hillary, North Yorkshire David Peckham, Dorset Michael Poole, Derbyshire Glenn Porter, South Glamorgan Peter Wells, West Yorkshire

Historic England digitally preserves 10,000 images from construction company’s archive THEY ARE A RECORD of the nation’s industrial heritage. Now, 10,000 images from the collection of a UK construction company are being digitised, catalogued and conserved for future generations as part of the Historic England project Breaking New Ground.

The John Laing Photographic Collection, held by the Historic England Archive, is a collection showing the building of modern Britain. Around 2,000 newly digitised images have already been released on the Historic England website, with 8,000 more to be published online by the autumn.

Alan Thorpe was employed from 1946 to 1998 by John Laing PLC, the company behind the construction of Coventry Cathedral, Sizewell B nuclear power station and the M1.

The 89-year-old, who was born in Carlisle, worked in various roles before becoming the company archivist.

‘Words alone are insufficient in themselves to readily describe or understand a construction project,’ he says. ‘Back in 1947 we published a book called Serving a Nation at War, and one of my first jobs was to locate most of the projects that had merely been described as “somewhere in England”. I needed the help of people still alive that had worked on them. Airfields and hangars look the same anywhere and I had to avoid getting confused with those built by other contractors.’

Launched in 1848 as a building company based in Carlisle, John Laing ceased construction work in 2002.

Visit historicengland.org.uk

ARPS EXEMPTION OCTOBER 2019 Athena Carey, Hong Kong ARPS EXEMPTION NOVEMBER 2019 Wing-Lun Blasé Cheung, Hong Kong ASSOCIATE EXEMPTION DECEMBER 2019 Jacqueline Alexandre, Switzerland Stuart Bridewell, Wiltshire Anne Clements, London Richard Corbett, Co. Down Yasmin Crawford, Devon Allan Fisher, Bridgend Jasmine Murray, Bedford Megan Ringrose, Oxfordshire Gareth Williams, Windsor

We’d like to apologise for incorrectly listing the LRPS successes of October 2019 as Exemptions in December’s Journal. Those Licentiates listed had gained their Distinctions through the assessment process

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A collection built to last

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DOUBLE SUCCESS: The Journal has won two accolades at the PPA Scotland Magazine Awards 2019 in Edinburgh. The monthly title produced for the RPS by Think was named Special Interest Magazine of the Year. Tom Seymour, left, was awarded Writer of the Year (Specialist Magazines) for features including a profile of human rights activist and photographer Shahidul Alam HonFRPS, who had been jailed without charge in Bangladesh.

HISTORIC ENGLAND ARCHIVE / JOHN LAING PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION.

Distinctions successes

NEWS IN BRIEF

Arromanches, by Stéphanie Hurel

HISTORIC WIN Stéphanie Hurel has won the latest Historic Photographer of the Year award for her image of the artificial harbour at Arromanches which can only be reached on foot in September during the tides of equinox. Visit historicphotographerofthe year.com

Construction of Coventry Cathedral, 1960

ESSENTIALS

Spirit level

BY PETER DAZELEY BEM FRPS ‘I love tiny-sized spirit levels. They’re so handy.

If I drop them into the top of the viewer on my

old Hasselblad 503CW, with a 52-megapixel Aptus-11 10 on the back, I can control and stop converging verticals.

‘I’m working on the second edition of my book

Clockwise, from top right: Peter Dazeley FRPS, photographed

by Sarah Ryder Richardson; Royal Opera House auditorium, from the book London Theatres by Peter Dazeley; Dazeley holds a spirit level, photographed by Sarah Ryder Richardson

London Theatres, with a foreword by Sir Mark Rylance. I shoot images for the book using a Nikon D810, on a tripod with a Gitzo G2270M pan-and-tilt head, which has two builtin spirit levels, one for horizontal and one for upright, both useful for keeping the architecture upright and square.’

Peter Dazeley FRPS will give a triple-bill presentation on his work on 19 January. Visit rps.org

COMMISSION FOR FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHER Vasantha Yogananthan, previously featured in the Journal’s ‘One to watch’ column, has been named the awardee of Immersion – a French-American commission run by the Fondation Hermès – to create a new body of work in the USA, which will be exhibited in both countries during 2021.

Visit vasantha.fr/ FAMILY PORTRAIT My Family, an endearing image of emperor penguins

by Canada-based photographer Thomas Vijayan, has won the 2019 SINWP Bird Photographer of the Year award. The contest is run annually in aid of the RSPB. Visit sinwp.com PANORAMIC VIEW Australian landscape photographer Mieke Boynton has become the first woman to win the overall prize in the Epson International Pano Awards.

Her image Dragonfire shows Southern Iceland’s braided rivers. Visit thepanoawards.com/ and miekeboynton.com/ VOL 160 / JANUARY 2020 / THE RPS JOURNAL / 17

BOOKS AUTOFOCUS: THE CAR IN PHOTOGRAPHY Marta Weiss (Ed) INTO THE WOODS: TREES IN PHOTOGRAPHY Martin Barnes (Ed) THAMES & HUDSON (£24.95)

This delightful series from the V&A Photography Library presents a curator’s selection of pictures from the museum’s wonderful collection on a theme, often tied to a current exhibition, as in the case of Cars: Accelerating the Modern World, on show until 19 April.

FREEDOM OR DEATH Gideon Mendel

GOST (£35)

Lost Cover, Re-Edition #5, 2016, by Collier Schorr

The artist’s muse

A creative collaboration is at the heart of this work PAUL’S BOOK Collier Schorr

COLLIER SCHORR HonFRPS / MACK

MACK (£35)

A 19-year-old French model and actor, Paul Hammeline, showed up at Collier Schorr’s Brooklyn home in 2015 for what is known in the fashion industry as a ‘go see’ – a chance for a photographer to see how a model looks in front of a camera.

So began an artist-muse relationship which resulted in this book from the New York-born Schorr, who won the 2019 RPS Award for Editorial, Advertising and Fashion Photography.

Schorr is noted for portraits of young people that explore gender and androgyny, and Paul’s Book is focused primarily on one young man, recalling her 2005 project Jens F. Paul’s Book gives a behind-thescenes insight into how a creative collaboration unfolds. Schorr would meet Hammeline at his parents’

house whenever she was in Paris to take pictures. Like a dance, the images capture a shifting dynamic which can leave us half-intrigued, half-uncomfortable, questioning the assumptions behind the categories that separate Schorr and Hammeline – older, younger; female, male; photographer, subject.

In one we see a shaven-headed Paul staring into the lens, bathed in golden light; in others he is stretched out on the bed like a classical nude.

In a way this is a kind of sketchbook. Photographer and model each explore the possibilities of portraiture, conscious of its history, sometimes drawing on a documentary tradition, sometimes more experimental, using layering, collage and text.

As Schorr put it to Interview Magazine: ‘Paul’s body [is] a way to talk about different kinds of pictures, both seductive and a little bit terrifying, evidence versus intimacy.’

Discovering a box of transparencies and negatives he had left in a friend’s Johannesburg garage sparked photojournalist Gideon Mendel to revisit his work from the end of apartheid.

Poignant, water-damaged pictures speak of memory, while images overlayed with colourful drawings by Marcelo Brodsky and original press prints offer new insights into historical narratives.

ON PHOTOGRAPHING PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES Dawoud Bey APERTURE (£22)

The interest in socially engaged photography has been growing in recent years, but Dawoud Bey has been doing this since the 1960s, making large-scale, long-term projects with youth and other marginalised groups. Those new to the field will have plenty to learn from the American’s insights into his approach, which is always based on empathy and respect for those he photographs.

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IN FOCUS Richard Mosse, Ice Cave, Vatnajökull, 2014

WHAT TO SEE THIS MONTH VISUALIZING THE CLIMATE CRISIS The Horniman Museum and Gardens, London UNTIL 12 JANUARY

Dramatic and often

1 disturbing works

by Edward Burtynsky, Norfolk + Thymann, and Noémie Goudal feature in this group show from Project Pressure, a climate-change charity which commissions artists to document and highlight the devastating consequences of glacier loss. horniman.ac.uk

MARTIN PARR: THINK OF SCOTLAND Aberdeen Art Gallery UNTIL 23 FEBRUARY

Newly reopened

22-26 JANUARY

Curated by

2 gallerist Laura

Noble and part of the Photo50 strand of London Art Fair, this show presents the work of 10 talented women photographers aged over 50. In distinct ways the photographers explore how we inhabit and reclaim spaces – literally and metaphorically – throughout our lives. londonartfair.co.uk

SHOWING

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impressive £34.6m revamp, Aberdeen Art Gallery is showing a selection of work shot across Scotland by Martin Parr HonFRPS. The show promises to explore ‘leisure, landscape, food and community with Parr’s characteristic twist’. www.aagm.co.uk

NAN GOLDIN: SIRENS Marian Goodman Gallery, London UNTIL 11 JANUARY

Nan Goldin

4 HonFRPS reveals

a reflective mood for her first UK solo show since 2002. Presenting historical works alongside new video installations Sirens and Salome, and two digital slideshows, she explores the fragility of memory in the face of drug addiction. mariangoodman.com

JEW. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN OFFENBACH The Jewish Museum, London UNTIL 19 APRIL

John Offenbach travelled to 12 countries

5 around the world, including Ethiopia,

Argentina and China, to photograph Jewish people from all walks of life. His portraits show everyone from Nobel Laureates to rubbish collectors, proof that Jewish identity takes many forms. jewishmuseum.org.uk

Rebel Goddess, Seen Fifteen, London, until 11 January // Mario Testino: East Hamiltons Gallery, London, until 18 January // Women Photographers from The AmberSide Collection Stills Centre for Photography, Edinburgh, until 8 March // Too Rich a Soil The New Art Gallery Walsall, until 19 April // Steve McQueen Year 3 Tate Britain, until 3 May

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RICHARD MOSSE / PROJECT PRESSURE; JOHN OFFENBACH; NAN GOLDIN; MARTIN PARR HonFRPS; DANIELLE PECK; MARIO TESTINO

OCCUPY THE VOID Business Design Centre, London

3 following an

IPE 162

GREAT EXPECTATIONS A wealth of international talent is to be celebrated with the launch of the International Photography Exhibition 162 at RPS House in February 22

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OVER-30S AWARD WINNER

CODY COBB (USA)

Liminal State

ABOVE, ONE OF SIX AWARDED IMAGES

My portraits of the Earth’s surface [from the series Strange Land] were made during extended periods of solitude while in various states of being lost, cold, hungry or sleep deprived.

Stripped of basic human comforts and isolated in an unfamiliar terrain, a calmness settled over me and I was able only to observe while my internal experience

became entangled with the external topology. These photographs are an attempt to capture a surreal and occasionally confusing glimpse of the subtleties of enormity.

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IPE 162

KATYA ILINA

(CANADA/RUSSIA)

Gangnam Girls RIGHT

Seoul, South Korea, in 2018 felt like a place where big changes were waiting to happen, culturally and socially.

In this photo series I tried to capture this feeling of change in the context of Korean clubbing culture.

My images were taken throughout June to December 2018, in the Gangnam, Itaewon and Hongdae districts of Seoul.

This picture shows a scene inside a Gangnam nightclub known for its strict dress code and (unspoken) age limit.

Those over 29 years old are not allowed inside unless as part of a group booking a table, prices for which start at $1,000.

MAT HAY (UK) Tree LEFT

The prevailing image of rural Scotland is dominated by historical context and romanticism, concealing the reality of daily life and the extent of human influence on the landscape. Seeking an alternative representation of my home country I have spent several years documenting the remote communities and terrain of the Highlands. Through this I have witnessed modern life thriving on the cusp of isolation, and the inherent bond between the people, their animals and this rugged environment.

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PAUL ADAMS & JORDAN LAYTON (USA)

Luther, One of Two Remaining Speakers of Kawaiisu RIGHT One language dies every 14 days. By next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will probably disappear. This project consists of portraits of the last native speakers of endangered North American languages. They were made

UNDER-30S AWARD WINNER

CHIRAG JINDAL (NEW ZEALAND) No 06 Ambury Road

ABOVE, ONE OF THREE AWARDED IMAGES

using a 20x24in view camera and the 19th-century wetcollodion tintype process.

This process is one of the most permanent of all photographic printing methods, which means that the portraits created in this project will outlast the dying native languages of the subjects. Each image is one of a kind, much like the people being photographed.

These images celebrate and stand as a permanent record of these rare and disappearing language speakers.

The lava caves underneath Auckland are an unseen landscape devastated by a century of rapid urban sprawl. Unique to the volcanic region of the city, the caves were once the site of urupā

(graveyards) and war shelters, and are considered wāhi tapu (sacred places) by local Māori.

Their existence is not common knowledge and ongoing discoveries are unreported by the developers

that destroy them. My project Ngā Mahi Rarowhenua traces 11 existing sites using terrestrial Lidar – a form of lens-based imaging applied in archaeological surveying and criminal forensics.

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IPE 162

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ALETHEIA CASEY (AUSTRALIA)

My mother at Hill End LEFT The series Which Way is North began four years ago, after my son was born. It explores the loss of self which I experienced after childbirth and attempts to make sense of my new identity. The series uses my mother and wider family to explore the complexity of motherhood, changing family relationships, feelings of belonging, and the inevitability of loss.

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IPE 162

ALICE ZOO (UK) Tara by the Window LEFT

Fat activism is about liberating fat people from social norms, and the discrimination and negativity that comes with that. It’s also about trying to change society to accept fat people as human beings whose worth is not defined by their weight, appearance or health.

Although 62% of the UK’s population is classified as overweight or obese, fatness is highly stigmatised. In addition to these social consequences, fat people face discrimination in the workplace, the legal system and healthcare.

Media coverage of fatness is often negative, dehumanising and sensationalistic, despite studies demonstrating that weight stigma itself is a main cause of poor health outcomes and weight gain.

This project presents portraits of fat acceptance activists, honouring their work and their individual humanity. Their size is only one part of the story.

BYRON AIHARA (USA) Lilies Float on the Water’s Surface RIGHT

Lilies float on the water’s surface like a scattered still life, suspended between two worlds, the water below and sky above.

The flowers were a ritual offering made by the Meitei people of Manipur. They believe their ancestors can be drawn up from the watery depths to join in the yearly festival called Lai Haraoba.

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ROEI GREENBERG (UK)

Syrian Tank (1973), The Banias Nature Reserve, 2016 ABOVE Route 90 is the longest single road in Israel (470km). It follows the valley floor of the ‘Break’ in the Great Rift Valley.

This is a continuous geographic trench caused 35 million years ago by the movement of tectonic plates. It is a topographic phenomenon which crosses contemporary Israel.

In Along the Break, using a large-format camera, I import the notion of the epic American road trip, endless roads and vast open spaces, into the small and confined Israeli territory, transforming relics into monuments.

Although the ‘Break’ describes the physical features of the Great Rift Valley, it is also a metaphor for a certain sentiment towards the land of contradictions that I used to call home.

LUCA TOMBOLINI (ITALY)

LS XI #167 ABOVE

My series Vistas is composed of multiple-exposure shots on 4x5” negative film and microscopes, and highresolution scans of colours and solvent compositions.

Departing from my previous landscape works, I aimed to

create images that present an altered time dimension, through the use of multiple and/or very long exposures, while the scans reveal new landscapes that exist on a scale too minute for the naked eye to see.

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IPE 162

CAMILLO PASQUARELLI (ITALY)

Danish Rajab Jhat RIGHT Danish Rajab Jhat, 24, from Srinagar, was injured when a shell entered his left eye.

He said: ‘The police were chasing someone throwing stones in my neighbourhood.

I was just sitting by the road and they shot me. I don’t remember anything about that moment. I woke up in the hospital. The left eye was entirely damaged, so the doctors replaced it with an artificial eyeball.’

SIMON SCHWYZER (SWITZERLAND) Horse Care ABOVE

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This horse is not going to the slaughterhouse, but to the operating theatre.

Anaesthetised, blinded and suspended four legs up. We are used to admiring horses, but this

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one is powerless, reduced to an unnatural trophy, ready to be intubated or incised.

Shiny fur but hair upside down, it becomes a fanciful beast, a hybrid of metal and

muscles. If you turn the photo upside down, its slouched position and its tail facing the sky make it look like it is experiencing an endless fall. A Pegasus taken down.

CATHERINE HYLAND (UK)

Lithium Mining XIII RIGHT The Atacama Desert, west of the Andes, is famous for being the world’s driest place. Four thousand metres above sea level, it’s remote and isolated.

It’s also the world’s largest source of lithium, home to minerals that provide the power that fuels our modern daily life.

In the Salar de Atacama salt flat, lithium exists as a mineral salt suspended in underground reservoirs of brine.

My series Lithium Mining captures a world that seems empty. Embedded in these images are the attempts of man to tame the land. The dusty roads and two square miles of neatly bordered pools put the land into a grid.

There is the idea that this is a desolate place that has been made tidy by mining.

JENNY LEWIS (UK)

Blanche 8/100 Years LEFT My series 100 Years is made up of portraits taken in my community featuring every age from one to 100.

It’s a celebration and investigation into the different perspectives that we travel through, ages we have forgotten what it feels like to inhabit, and ages we have yet to reach.

‘I have a black eye because I was playing sword fighting with my friend,’ says Blanche. ‘This is my fourth time with a black eye.

Strangers are always touching my hair and I hate it … I shout at them and give them a fierce look.

They say I look like a doll …

I don’t like dolls.’

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IPE 162

SOUNAK DAS (BANGLADESH)

Wire Formation RIGHT An electrical pole is transformed into a structure of unified cables and wires.

LESLIE SHERYLL (USA) Anita (Punica granatum, Pomegranate, Meaning: Fertility) LEFT

I create photographic collages from scanned 19th-century tintypes of women in order to explore female identity in our male-centric society.

This series references the Victorian fascination with botany and The Language of Flowers, a series of 19th-century books that assigned meanings to flowers, usually related to romance and relationships.

During the 19th-century, botany was one of the few areas of study that women were allowed to pursue. Carl Linnaeus, the 18th-century botanist, created a system to identify flowers based on male and female reproductive organs, and drew parallels between plant sexuality and human love.

Women were able to bypass Victorian taboos about sex by using this information to educate and empower young girls. The flowers I have chosen all reference a physical or emotional attribute dealing with sexuality.

EXHIBITION TOUR DATES The International Photography Exhibition 162 launches at RPS House, Bristol 15 February to 22 March RPS House, Bristol 1 April to 28 April Royal Albert Hall, London

13 June to 12 September Beverley Art Gallery, East Riding, Yorkshire 28 November 2020 to 16 January 2021 Oriel Gallery, Theatr Clwyd, Mold, Flintshire, Cymru

Please check with venues for opening times. Visit rps.org/ipe162

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SEEING

BELIEVING

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ALAN BOVIK

IS

A pioneer of digital imaging, RPS Progress Medal recipient Alan C Bovik explains why his faith in maths ensures we see quality images on social media and beyond WORDS: TOM SEYMOUR PORTRAITS: HARRY BORDEN HonFRPS

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ALAN BOVIK

A RIGHT

Digital images captured by casual users and posted on social media can suffer from many distortions at the same time BELOW

A depiction of the pathway in the brain that pictorial information follows

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FEW HOURS BEFORE Professor Alan C Bovik is awarded the Progress Medal at the 2019 Royal Photographic Society Awards, he stops to talk over coffee in the cafe of London’s Royal Society. Looking out over St James Park, Bovik rests his tablet on the table before him. The tablet is adorned with stickers of some of the biggest tech brands in the world – YouTube, Facebook and Netflix among them – which, since the turn of the millennium, have transformed the role of photography in the lives of people the world over.

It is easy to forget how recent the world without digital photography was.

Or how remarkable the innovation of instant digital photography seemed to those who had grown up with only analogue cameras – rolls of film, saturation levels, exposure and shutter speeds, and a trip to the high street before an image would reveal itself. ‘I still have my Apple QuickTake,’ Bovik says. ‘It was a terrible digital camera, but it was my first one.’

It is also difficult to overstate the extent of the sea change brought by

the commercial technology companies like those on Bovik’s tablet which, in the new millennium, first commercialised digital photography.

But these companies relied on algorithms developed by unheralded visual scientists who, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, had beavered away in labs, libraries and university studies in order to study the maths behind lightbased imagery; understanding how we humans process and comprehend the visual world through our eyes and brain – or, as Bovik terms it, ‘the perceptual science of image quality’.

Alan C Bovik was at the forefront of this movement. Now 61, Bovik spent his teenage years watching sci-fi films. He moved to The University of Texas in Austin (UT Austin) in 1984, straight out of graduate school.

Now, 35 years later, Bovik’s work at the university, where he has spent his career to date, and where he now directs the Laboratory for Image and Video Engineering, has earned him the Society’s Progress Medal, and an Honorary Fellowship. The medal celebrates ‘any invention, research, publication or other contribution which has resulted in an important advance in the scientific or technological

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

development of photography or imaging in the widest sense’.

Bovik read nuclear physics as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but decided to take a class on the early field of digital imaging-processing engineering – the technical, mathematical side of photography. His teacher was Dr Thomas Huang, the Chinese-born American electrical engineer and computer scientist who Bovik regards as ‘the greatest image processor ever’.

As far back as the early 1970s Huang was working on ways to digitally compress image and video. ‘But he and his contemporaries were focused on television. They didn’t realise it would be in our pocket, and we’d document every moment of our lives,’ Bovik says.

Huang’s teaching soon meant Bovik was ‘completely taken with the idea of working on digital pictures for the rest of my life. I became fascinated with how we might begin modelling the visual brain from a mathematical perspective’.

Digital imaging, at this time, was in its infancy. It was only being used in rarefied and secretive fields such as the military or intelligence services, or at

PROFILE PROFESSOR ALAN BOVIK HonFRPS The work of Primetime Emmy-winning professor Alan Bovik addresses some of the most important and difficult problems of the information age.

The reliable global transport and sharing of pictures – still and moving – is greatly complicated by the diversity of capture, processing and display devices; the innumerable commingled visual distortions that affect pictures; and the complexity of the human visual system and how it perceives

‘We were lucky enough to develop a way of predicting how the human gaze would respond to the quality of a picture’

distorted pictures. His inventions pervade the photographic and internet-streaming video industries on a global scale.

Today, the neuroscience-based algorithms developed by Bovik and his students monitor and control the visual quality of more than half of all moving bits in the USA, and an increasingly substantial portion of network traffic elsewhere, whether by broadcast, cable, satellite or the internet/cloud. Each day, Bovik’s picture-quality measurement tools allow hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide to enjoy perceptually optimised picture-viewing experiences.

the cutting edge of medical technology.

‘It just wasn’t a commercial thing,’ Bovik explains. ‘But there was a sense that we were working on something that could be applicable to people more generally.

I became interested in how to process images for people to look at – and that’s been borne out, unbelievably.’

Did he in any way predict this at the beginning of his career? ‘I had a sense, actually,’ he says. ‘I remember giving a talk about the vision for the future.

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ALAN BOVIK

And I remember predicting that digital pictures and video would be a multi-multibillion-dollar industry. And I thought it might encapsulate our lives.’

Bovik’s work built on that of Dr Huang’s. He took the theories he had learned from his mentor and applied them to the studies of visual psychologists. In doing so, Bovik wanted to understand: ‘Why we look in the way we look? How do you predict someone’s gaze? How do we know that someone is going to look at that part of the image?

Where is someone’s attention drawn?

‘We tend to think of pictures as being infinitely variable. But – as it turns out – if you subject most pictures to a few simple mathematical equations that take place in our retina and our visual cortex they will obey statistical laws for sure.

That was a huge discovery in our field.’

In the early new millennium, and just as digital cameras and digital television were beginning to populate the high street, Bovik and two of his leading students, Zhou Wang and Hamid Sheikh, were exploring the perceptual science of picture quality.

‘We began to create algorithms so as to understand the statistics of the real world,’ Bovik says. ‘We were lucky enough to develop a way of predicting how the human gaze would respond to the quality of a picture. It had been an unsolvable problem before that.’

The market was progressing quickly, and, year on year, cameras were able to process images of a vertiginously higher and higher resolution. Such photographs remained – on a fundamental level – a radically different type of image; their essence coming in the form of pixels rather than celluloid and processing chemicals. Why is it that important?

‘Because we’ve evolved our visual system over aeons in response to certain statistical laws,’ says Bovik. ‘Our visual systems are expecting pictures to contain a certain range of statistics. So, if we see a distorted image on our smartphone – an image that’s been subject to blur, camera shake, low light, compression – those statistical laws are violated, and our visual system is upset. It suddenly doesn’t make sense to us. That’s what we were trying to understand.’

The globalisation and democratisation of photography spawned by smartphone-based cameras has been well documented.

And so have the pitfalls of this powerful new technology; the addictive nature of platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, the ease with which images can be manipulated and faked, the infringement of our right to privacy, 38

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‘The technology will almost certainly be misused. The question is by whom, and what sort of power will they have?’

the impact of constant mediation on our concentration and self-esteem, and the dangers of living a life of incessant comparison and projection on social media. As someone who has dedicated his life to enabling the easy sharing and connection of digital imagery, are these criticisms at all shared by Bovik?

‘They’re an absolute concern,’ he says. ‘These companies are very sincere about what they’re doing, but I’m not sure they’re always as careful as they should be. Like any new technology, they have made mistakes.

‘It’s worth remembering this technology could be absolutely and terribly misused. We have to be very careful, because it can feel like the technology will almost certainly be misused. The question is by whom, and what sort of power will they have?

That’s something the next generation of image makers will need to really carefully think about.’

BURSARY

Tent shelters on Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island

‘IT FEELS LIKE AN ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE’

Mountain avens (Dryas integrifolia) ready to disperse feathered seeds across the tundra

Winning the TPA/RPS Environmental Bursary has allowed Sandra Angers-Blondin to fuse photography and science on an Arctic journey WORDS: GAVIN BELL

BURSARY

A curious ringed seal emerging from the Beaufort Sea

T

HERE IS AN ISLAND of ethereal beauty at the top of the world where polar bears and grizzlies roam free with caribou in the golden light of a summer sun that never sets. It is a high Arctic refuge, remote and barely touched by humanity.

But the pristine wilderness is crumbling into the sea through coastal erosion accelerated by the climate change that is also carving massive, ugly scars on rapidly thawing landscapes.

These stark contrasts emerge in compelling images by ecologist and photographer Sandra Angers-Blondin – originally from Québec, Canada, and 42

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now based in Scotland – who spent a summer month during 2018 on Qikiqtaruk island in northern Yukon.

She had been to the island before, studying the effects of global warming on tundra ecosystems with a team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh, but this time was different.

She had been awarded the 2018 Environmental Awareness Bursary (under-30s) by the RPS in partnership with the Photographic Angle. Previously she had considered herself an ecologist with a camera; latterly she was a photographer engaged in scientific research. And she made the most of it.

A slight, elfin figure, Angers-Blondin is speaking in a tearoom in Edinburgh where she is now resident after

completing a PhD in environmental science. On Qikiqtaruk she slept alone in a tent, with a shotgun by her side in case polar bears came calling. And it was while waiting for a flight to Canada from Glasgow Airport that she received the email announcing she had been awarded the bursary. ‘I was jumping in my seat, I was so excited,’ recalls Angers-Blondin, who is 30.

Qikiqtaruk, named Herschel Island

by Sir John Franklin on a mapping expedition in 1826, is hard to reach. Light aircraft from the Yukon mainland are the only practical ways of getting to the remnants of a 19th-century whaling station that provides basic accommodation in the short summer for a handful of

A red fox hunting for tundra voles and lemmings

researchers, occasional tourists and a couple of national park rangers.

The high Arctic is a realm of aching solitude and profound silence that grips the soul. But it is teeming with wildlife, and Angers-Blondin evidently feels at home in its icy embrace.

‘It’s strange,’ she says. ‘I feel really peaceful and in my element on the island, but also it feels like an alternative universe. There’s a sense of pioneering in being in a place where few people have been before.’

The island of 40 square miles is a living laboratory for scientists researching dramatic coastal erosion and the effects of melting permafrost that have placed it on the most endangered sites list of the World Monuments Fund.

‘There’s a sense of pioneering in being in a place where few people have been before’

Angers-Blondin found that one of her field sites from three years before had been lost 30m out to sea.

It would have been easy for her to focus on coasts crumbling into the Beaufort Sea, and ugly ‘thaw slumps’ looming from a once frozen soil. But she preferred to portray the intact beauty and vibrant wildlife of the island. ‘I was trying to make people aware of an environment that they don’t really know and don’t get to see. Most of my images are quite bright, with pastel tones. I wanted to celebrate beauty that is getting lost, to record how beautiful and fragile these places are and that it’s worth taking action to preserve them. That’s what keeps me fighting and not despairing.’

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BURSARY

View of camp across Pauline Cove

Her favourite image is of a narrow spit of sand with a driftwood shelter barely rising above freezing mist on a glass-like sea, framed by the huge, dark mountains of Yukon in the far distance. It could be an illustration from the Philip Pullman fantasy His Dark Materials.

‘This was taken on a quiet afternoon, shortly before a storm, and for a few minutes everything was very still. There was mist rising from the sea and I was very excited.’

Barely visible in the shelter is the tent where Angers-Blondin slept. ‘It’s at sea level and it gets quite flooded when there are storms, but mostly there’s a lovely quiet feeling going to bed in that tent.

You hear the ice creaking, the seagulls 44

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‘People tend to think of the Arctic as completely white. But the truth is much of it is green and getting greener’

crying, and sometimes you can even hear the whales breathing. It’s just fantastic.’

On previous expeditions to Qikiqtaruk she had been a ‘hobbyist photographer’, lagging behind other researchers to take snaps whenever she could. This time she was still part of a research team but the bursary encouraged her to be more creative in using her compact mirrorless Fujifilm X Series.

‘With no real sunset you get a lovely golden light, usually between 8pm and midnight. It’s amazing. After dinner people would do their data entries and I would go for a walk and take photographs. One night it was beautifully calm, and the sea was a mirror, and sea ice was floating in the soft light. It was about three in the morning and I stayed

‘Thaw slumps’ in a once frozen soil

up until about five because it was so beautiful, I was so excited, and there were seagulls and whales. It was magical.’

There are disturbing images in her portfolio, of thin layers of soil draining into the sea, and bare bones of the earth emerging like tombstones from melting permafrost, as if the island was a wounded animal. But far from the usual Arctic illustrations of frozen wilderness, Angers-Blondin captured panoramas of tundra bursting into life during the short summer and blooming with grasses, shrubs and wildflowers.

‘People tend to think of the Arctic as completely white, and images of ice and polar bears are pretty much all you get in the media. But the truth is much of it is green and getting greener, and there

are processes at work releasing carbon from the permafrost and producing bigger plants that are significant for the carbon balance of the planet.

‘There’s lots of feedback we don’t understand yet, but when I hear climate sceptics on the news it makes me angry, because it’s no longer a matter of whether change is happening or not, it’s what can we do about it and how quickly can we do it.’

The world is changing but life on the frontiers of survival goes on, for now at least, and Angers-Blondin’s portraits celebrate Qikiqtaruk’s wildlife. A ringed seal pokes its head from still water bathed in rosy light, a snowy owl glides low over the tundra. A fox is captured leaping into the air to pounce on

unsuspecting prey, and a plover chick takes its first hesitant steps through sun-drenched grass.

Asked how the bursary has affected her work, Angers-Blondin says: ‘It was a turning point. It’s given me a lot of confidence, because I always saw myself as a scientist with a camera, but now I have the credentials and confidence to approach people and market myself as a photographer for exhibitions and magazine articles. On the island it gave me the freedom to roam in one of my favourite places, and be more thoughtful and creative in taking pictures. It was the perfect summer.’

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BEST SHOTS

WINDOWS ON THE WORLD Her work blurs the line between reality and fantasy. Following a major commission by the V&A, French artist ValĂŠrie Belin selects her favourite images WORDS: CLARE HARRIS

BEST SHOTS

V

ALERIE BELIN’S WORK is never static. It evolves, series upon series, allowing us to see the world through her eyes. To understand her imagery is to understand the evolution of photography itself, through black and white, to colour, through analogue to the boundless possibilities of digital post-production.

Belin is one of France’s most recognised photographers. Born in 1964 and now based in Paris, she received the Prix Pictet in 2015 and in 2017 was made an officer of France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her services to culture. Her latest series, Reflection, was unveiled at the V&A Photography Centre in October. As impressive in size and scope as the centre’s first commission, Thomas Ruff’s Tripe, Belin’s large-format, multi-dimensional images allow the viewer to gaze into a dreamlike landscape.

‘When I photograph objects I give an illusion of life to them’ BLACK CANARY, FROM THE ALL STAR SERIES (2016) PREVIOUS PAGES, LEFT could be a heroine ‘In this series I use of the comics but at superimposition to the same time she’s create that sense of unease. In this image a stranger to the story coming from the subject is a the cover.

Hitchcockian ‘Hitchcock is a heroine, but the big influence and unease comes from inspiration for me. the superimposition He also plays with of the comics. This superimposition in woman could be his early films.’ complicit – she

UPTOWN VISION, FROM THE REFLECTION SERIES (2019) PREVIOUS PAGES, RIGHT ‘This was ‘The shop window confirmed when is an eminently I discovered in the photographic subject because, just [V&A] photographic collection the as the window is sublime albums of made to be seen, a photograph is made the Worsinger Window Service. to be seen and we ‘We cannot tell if can say that the they were made to glass surface of the show the windows, or window is an indeed if the windows equivalent to the were made to make focusing screen of the photographs.’ the camera.

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UNTITLED, FROM THE FRUIT BASKET SERIES (2007) ‘My work goes back and forth from portraiture to still life because when I photograph people I remove life, and when I photograph objects I give an illusion of life to them.

‘I bought these fruit bowls on a website where you can have them delivered the morning after.

They’re made to be seen but it’s interesting – there’s one side dedicated to the viewer and the other is ugly and plain – like a painting.

‘I went to the factory where they put the fruit bowls together. I got to know each of the girls who made the baskets. They each had a different style, so when I went home and placed my order on the phone I knew who to ask for. For me, it’s a way to know people, of knowing the world outside.’

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‘They asked me to choose any aspect of the collection, of the whole museum’ PROFILE VALERIE BELIN Born in 1964, the renowned French photographer and multimedia artist Valérie Belin lives and works in Paris.

She trained at the École Nationale des Beaux-arts and studied the philosophy of art at the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne.

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Her work has evolved constantly, in phase with the evolution of the photographic medium itself. Initially analogue, it now involves calculation, intention, manipulation, information and imprinting, mixing genres and subjects.

In 2019 Belin unveiled Reflection, a major new commission, at the V&A Photography Centre in London.

Visit valeriebelin.com

‘For Reflection, the V&A’s photography curator Martin Barnes asked me to choose any aspect of the collection – of the whole museum – to form the basis of a new body of work,’ she explains. ‘What a proposition!’

For Belin, who regularly returns to themes that include the mannequin, decorative art and commercial design, the V&A had long been a source of inspiration.

‘I had many, many choices for this commission,’ she says. ‘At first, I was thinking of doing some pictures of

BEST SHOTS ASTRANTIA MAJOR (RUBY WEDDING), FROM THE BLACK-EYED SUSAN II SERIES (2013) FACING PAGE flowers. On one recognise what ‘I think my work is you’re seeing. These hand they’re losing accessible because life, yet on the other images draw on the at first you’re hand it’s organic.

Pre-Raphaelite captivated by something beautiful, paintings; it’s as if the The contradiction between death and women are laid on but the second time life is always the case you look you get the top of wallpaper, or in my portraits.’ feeling that you don’t under a shroud of

UNTITLED, FROM THE MICHAEL JACKSON SERIES (2003) BELOW

‘I work a lot on stereotypes, such as the lookalikes I photographed for the Michael Jackson series – all of them are striving to become like a

stereotype. Jackson wanted to transform himself into the ideal of white female beauty. My images are always produced at a large scale.

Because of the size,

you can see every detail – the tip of the nose, the shadow on the face. In a way, the details of expression in the face end up making these images like objects.’

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BEST SHOTS BOB #3, FROM THE BOB SERIES (2012) RIGHT

‘I explore the nude genre for the first time. This series is based on the fusion of two images that exist between dignified nude shots of Bob – a curvaceous stripper inspired

by American pin-ups in the 30s – and images of places filled with stage scenery.

‘This girl is nude, she has no history, and it’s the superimposition of the varied multitude of décor around her that creates a powerful narrative effect. This series is exemplary of my fascination for the world of artifice and show where people are transforming themselves into empty images.’

objects in the collection – the crystal, or the silver perhaps – but it was far too complicated because of the fragility of the pieces. Finally, I chose to look at the photography collection.

And that brought me to consider the shop window.’

Having studied sculpture during her early art-school years, Belin quickly moved to the camera as her preferred tool for exploring the world. Now, she would never use anything else – but adds that the form that is closest to what 52

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‘I like being the one who is looking at, and not being looked at’

she does is writing, rather than sculpture or painting. She says: ‘I like being the one who is looking at, and not being looked at. And when you are looking at the print on the wall, you are in the position of the photographer. You adopt their viewpoint. It’s the equivalent of a writer – being someone who makes you adopt his viewpoint on life.’

Reflection is at the V&A Photography Centre, London, until August.

Visit vam.ac.uk

© Mat Hay Horse Bath

INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION 162

FEATURES 43 INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS Opens February 2020 Free admission rps.org/IPE162 ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 337 Paintworks, Bristol, BS4 3AR

Take your inspiration from the work of the new landscape panel

START YOUR JOURNEY What are RPS Distinctions?

Distinctions offer a fantastic opportunity for photographers to improve their own skills and develop an understanding of photography by applying for one of the three levels available

Licentiate (LRPS) Applicants must show photographic competence in approach and techniques

Associate (ARPS) Requires a body of work of a high standard and a written statement of intent

Fellowship (FRPS) Requires a body of work of distinguished ability and excellence, and a written statement of intent

THE TIME TO REFLECT As new Associate and Fellowship landscape Distinctions are launched, panel chair Joe Cornish HonFRPS asks what makes images relevant and successful WORDS: RACHEL SEGAL HAMILTON

DISTINCTIONS

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PROFILE JOE CORNISH HonFRPS The chair of the Landscape Associate Distinction, Joe Cornish HonFRPS has been photographing landscapes in the UK and abroad for more than four decades. He has been involved in the Distinction panels for 11 years, and been on the judging team of Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

Visit joecornishphotographer.com

One chilly winter morning in 2017, Joe Cornish HonFRPS was poised to photograph a grouping of snow-covered trees in Gribdale Woods, Yorkshire, when a young roe deer wandered into his frame. In just one exposure the creature looked directly at the camera, then vanished. The decisive moment is not normally associated with landscapes.

But if this shot challenges our idea of what landscape photography is, perhaps our definition is too narrow.

‘Landscape can be scientific, geographic, documentary, personal or abstract,’ says

Cornish, chair of a new Landscape Distinction. ‘It’s such a broad field of endeavour and that’s one of the most exciting things about it, but what differentiates it from other fields is that the emphasis is on the landscape.’

Cornish proposed the new Distinction, believing it is long overdue. ‘Landscape is the single most popular “subject” – in the absence of a better word – in all photography.

We’ve expected landscape photographers to shoehorn their work into other genres, and that isn’t fair. This will be a natural

home for the thousands who don’t easily identify with the other Distinction themes.’

Within this category, however, he is eager to embrace creative approaches. ‘Traditionally, landscape photographs might be picturesque or pictorial, maybe they’re expected to follow compositional rules of thirds, or leading lines,’ he says. ‘But, with great respect, the rule of thirds is inherently ridiculous – the landscape doesn’t lend itself to a gridline structure, it’s often chaotic. What counts is how you organise the space and all the relationships within the frame.’

Cornish himself often bends ‘the rules’, placing subjects centrally in the frame, or photographing elements of the landscape in extreme close-up, as in Ice Detail Glen Affric, which shows a frozen puddle.

‘There’s a risk sometimes in the desire to promote technical rectitude, that we can be too dogmatic about highlights and shadows,’ he continues. ‘Light

Joe Cornish HonFRPS PREVIOUS PAGES

Kerulsfjord FACING PAGE

Gribdale Woods Winter BELOW

Castell y Gwynt

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‘Landscape photography is constantly being reinvented by its practitioners’

Tony Worobiec FRPS ABOVE

Goosenecks

Tim Rudman FRPS FACING PAGE

Silver Birches 58

and dark are the very soul of photography, and control of these is undoubtedly important.

But there are times when a highlight can be pure white if that’s what the photograph needs to express an idea.’

Take Ansel Adams’ renowned photograph of aspens, shot in New Mexico in 1948. ‘I saw an original print in a hotel in Colorado, and stood in awe of it,’ says Cornish. ‘It’s incredibly dark except for the backlit trees in the foreground, the rims of which are paper white and transmit the feeling that the aspens themselves contain a light source within.

‘There are always exceptions to the rules. I don’t think anyone

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can say with confidence there’s a “right way” of doing landscape photography; it is constantly being reinvented by its practitioners.’

‘An authentic voice’ is what he hopes above all to see in Distinction submissions. ‘What frustrates me most is derivative work by a photographer searching for approval, rather than pursuing their own path.

I’m looking for work that shows a commitment to the subject matter and to the photographic process. It might convey a sense of wonder, curiosity, of fun, or anger – but most of all something real, something with a voice that comes from the heart and the soul.’

The statement of intent is, he admits, his least favourite part of the process.

‘Photography is a visual medium, and my feeling is that the work should, by and large, speak for itself. If I had to give advice it would be simply to ask for complete honesty.

We are not looking for an academic dissertation; rather, illumination and background into the photographer’s thinking and workflow.’

Cornish’s own love of landscape photography is inseparable from his love of the landscape.

‘Being pretty socially awkward and shy as a child, the outdoors, the woods, the seaside

DISTINCTIONS

EIGHT STEPS TO A LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY ARPS

were the places I felt happiest and at home,’ he recalls.

‘For many, landscape photography is a form of meditation, a physical practice that gives them a reason to be outdoors, look around and explore their curiosity for the natural world.

‘It’s accessible. It’s not a genre that requires you necessarily to travel, to invest in expensive equipment.

‘You can take a bus into your nearest countryside or walk the streets; the urban world is also a landscape. Being outside is what’s important. We didn’t evolve to dwell indoors.’

When he started out, reportage was king. ‘The

Follow these suggestions for a successful submission 1 An ARPS submission requires 15 images on a topic of your choice that form a cohesive body of work 2 The panel will be looking for high-quality, technically proficient work that communicates a clear narrative and demonstrates your individual vision 3 The work should show a high level of understanding of craft and appropriate artistic presentation 4 As with all ARPS Distinctions you must include a short statement

of intent that clearly and succinctly explains what the project is about.

The panel will look to see that the body of work clearly fits with the written statement and vice versa 5 You can submit your work as prints presented as a hanging plan, images on screen or in book form 6 Before your submission it can be helpful to attend an RPS advisory day, which are held across the UK. Assessors show and discuss successful

submissions, and comment on submissions brought on the day 7 You could also attend an assessment day, even if your work is not being assessed, to see how the process works. These are open to all 8 You can upload your images to the RPS website at rps.org/advice if you require specific Distinctions advice prior to making a submission For detailed submission guidelines, go to rps.org/ qualifications/arps

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DISTINCTIONS

Paul Mitchell FRPS ABOVE

Southwold Dawn

60

Americans still appeared to have a monopoly of the world’s landscape photographers in the early ’80s, and their traditions and ideas were dominant. In general, there was little landscape photography to look at in the UK, where it was considered largely irrelevant because it

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‘Photographers make pictures that express our response to nature’s effortless beauty’

did not appear to deal with the big issues of the day – society, social justice, the pervasive British class system. And the Vietnam War. This was over by the time I had a camera, but the mythology of the heroic photojournalist was the one that many young photographers were inspired by.’

Now, among a new wave of landscape photographers are those motivated by a desire to tackle the ecological crisis. ‘The environment is the burning issue of our time – literally as well as metaphorically in the case of the Amazon basin,’ says Cornish.

‘Habitat destruction, climate change, rising sea levels, ocean

acidification, deteriorating soil, air and water quality – these increasingly threaten not just our way of life but the very existence of civilised human society.’

‘As artists we reflect the world around us, and that includes making pictures that express our response to nature’s effortless beauty. Photographers who love

nature, and focus their cameras and their energy on habitat and place, are recording and interpreting our world now and for future generations,’ he concludes, before adding that in the two years since he took his image of the roe deer, every tree in that snowy woodland has been felled in forestry operations.

VOL 160 / JANUARY 2020 / THE RPS JOURNAL / 61

Find details of Society activities over the next three months ALL ABOARD The Wiltshire Air Ambulance prepares for take-off

GO TO RPS.ORG/

Chopper squad

EVENTS

FOR THE LATEST UPDATES

TERRY DONNELLY FRPS

RPS Fellow scales new heights with air ambulance charity AWARD-WINNING Society Fellow Terry Donnelly will have a pop up display of new work at RPS House this month.

The Sony Europe imaging ambassador spent three days with Wiltshire Air Ambulance’s paramedics and pilots to get an insight

into the charity’s work and capture them in action.

Forty images will go on show at RPS HQ in Bristol from 9-12 January, with a talk by Donnelly on the opening day, before the photographs appear at Chippenham Town Hall in Wiltshire from 13-17 January.

The winner of more than 230 international awards, Donnelly holds Fellowships in photography with four different organisations and has had work exhibited in more than 25 countries.

Wiltshire Air Ambulance chief executive David Philpott said: ‘From the

moment Terry met us to discuss this project he has been a consummate professional. He worked closely with the aircrew and our charity staff to tell a story of what we do and we can’t wait for everyone to see his work.”

See rps.org for more details

VOL 160 / JANUARY 2020 / THE RPS JOURNAL / 63

REGIONS

Meet photographers and view work in your area CENTRAL

Creative Eye Group AGM and exhibition selection day Sun 1 Mar, 10am-4pm

See Creative Eye Group for details

Stewart Wall ARPS, 07955 124000

mikes.sharples@virgin.net

stewartwall01@gmail.com

Jonathan Vaines, 01234 360339 eastanglia@rps.org

Creating good impressions – David Townshend ARPS Fri 10 – Fri 24 Jan, 10.30am-5pm

A solo exhibition of work created along the English coast, particularly in Norfolk and Northumberland The Yarrow Gallery, 2 Glapthorn Road, Oundle, Peterborough PE8 4JF Jonathan Vaines, as above

East Anglia Region 2019 members’ exhibition Tue 14 Jan – Sun 23 Feb, 10am-4pm Free exhibition of print and projected images The Apex Gallery, Charter Square, Bury St Edmunds IP33 3FD Jonathan Vaines, as above

The Open University campus walk Sun 16 Feb, 11am-3pm, £5/free

The Open University campus, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA Jonathan Vaines as above

rps.org/events for event contact details and updates

Group discussion Whatton Jubilee Hall, Church Street, Whatton in the Vale NG13 9EL Stewart Wall ARPS, as above

SW London Group meeting Tue 14 Jan, 7-9pm Daniel Morgenstern will be presenting The Prince of Wales, 138 Upper Richmond Road, Putney, London SW15 2SP London RO2, londonro2@rps.org

Distinctions workshop Sun 23 Feb, 10am-4pm

Find out about an LRPS or ARPS in travel, applied, documentary, fine art or conceptual and contemporary photography Whatton Jubilee Hall, Church Street, Whatton in the Vale NG13 9EL Stewart Wall ARPS, as above

The Bookworm Club Wed 15 Jan, 6.30-9pm

The Harrow, 22 Whitefriars Street, London EC4Y 8JJ London Bookworms, londonbookworms@rps.org

EIRE Michael O’Sullivan

London Region AGM and keynote talk Mon 20 Jan, 7-9pm, £5 non-members/free

info@mosullivanphoto.com

LONDON Judy Hicks, 07768 923620 londonro2@rps.org

University College Hospital, Ground Floor Gallery, 235 Euston Road, London NW1 2BU Judy Hicks, as above

Details to be confirmed London W1H 7DX London Cave, londoncave@rps.org

Canonbury Tavern, 21 Canonbury Place, London N1 2NS Judy Hicks, as above

‘Let’s talk documentary photography’ Sat 25 Jan, 10am-4pm

North London Group exhibition Until Wed 15 Jan, Mon-Fri 7.30am-8.30pm, Sat-Sun 7.30am-6pm

London, Street – photowalk Sat 11 Jan, 9.45am-2pm

North London Group meeting Mon 13 Jan, 7-9pm

EAST MIDLANDS

Mike Sharples ARPS, 07884 657535

EAST ANGLIA

GO TO

Moorings Mosaic, Cley, by David Townshend ARPS, part of his exhibition at the Yarrow Gallery in Peterborough from 10 to 24 January

The London Bridge Hive, 1 Melior Place, London SE1 3SZ Judy Hicks, as above

London, Midweek Explorers – photowalk Tue 21 Jan, 11am-3.30pm Details to be confirmed London W1H 7DX Judy Hicks, as above

London, Naturally – photowalk Sun 26 Jan, 10.30am-1pm Explore some of the City of London’s gardens London Naturally, london-naturally@rps.org

SE London Group meeting Tue 28 Jan, 7-9pm The Talbot Room at the George Inn, 77 Borough High Street, London SE1 1NH London Cave, londoncave@rps.org

London Region members’ exhibition opening night Wed 5 Feb, 7.30-9.30pm Lauderdale House, Waterlow Park, Highgate, London N6 5HG Judy Hicks, as above

London Region 2019/20 members’ exhibition Wed 5 Feb – Mon 2 Mar, 11am-4pm

Lauderdale House, Waterlow Park, Highgate Hill, London N6 5HG Judy Hicks, as above

London, Street – photowalk Sat 8 Feb, 9.45am-2pm Details to be confirmed London W1H 7DX London Cave, londoncave@rps.org

North London Group meeting Mon 10 Feb, 7-9pm

Canonbury Tavern, 21 Canonbury Place, London N1 2NS Judy Hicks, as above

SW London Group meeting Tue 11 Feb, 7-9pm The Prince of Wales, 138 Upper Richmond Road, Putney, London SW15 2SP London RO2, londonro2@rps.org

Advisory day: LRPS and ARPS fine art – spectators Sat 15 Feb, 10.30am-4.30pm

Resource for London, Holloway Road, London N7 6PA London Distinctions – Brian, londondist1@rps.org

London, Midweek Explorers – photowalk Wed 19 Feb, 11am-3.30pm Explore Highgate London W1H 7DX Judy Hicks, as above

The Bookworm Club Wed 19 Feb, 6.30-9pm

The Harrow, 22 Whitefriars Street, London EC4Y 8JJ London Bookworms, londonbookworms@rps.org 64

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EVENTS London, Naturally – photowalk Sun 23 Feb, 10.30am-1pm

Horniman Museum garden and nature trail London Naturally, london-naturally@rps.org

SE London Group meeting Tue 25 Feb, 7-9pm

The Talbot Room at the George Inn, 77 Borough High Street, London SE1 1NH London Cave, londoncave@rps.org

Fellowship advisory day Sat 29 Feb, 10.30am-4.30pm Canada Water Library, Room 1&2, 21 Surrey Quays Road, London SE16 7AR Brian or Mike, londondist1@rps.org

London, Naturally – photowalk Sun 29 Mar, 10.30am-1pm Horsenden Hill London Naturally, london-naturally@rps.org NORTH WALES Rolf Kraehenbuehl, 07748 295307 northwales@rps.org

North Wales Region AGM Sun 23 Feb, 1-2pm, members only, free Craig-y-Don Community Centre, Queens Road, Llandudno, LL30 1TE Rolf Kraehenbuehl, as above

Talk and book signing by landscape photographer Glyn Davies Sun 23 Feb, 2.30-4.45pm, £14/£10 Craig-y-Don Community Centre, Queens Road, Llandudno, LL30 1TE Rolf Kraehenbuehl, as above

Advisory day – LRPS and ARPS Sat 18 Jan, 10.30am-4pm

Bridge of Allan Church Hall, Keir Street, Bridge of Allan FK9 4NW James Frost FRPS, as above

Scotland Region members’ print exhibition 2019/20 – Aberdeen Sat 8 Feb – Sun 1 Mar, 10.30am-4pm Aberdeen Arts Centre, 33 King Street, Aberdeen AB24 5AA James Frost FRPS, as above SOUTH EAST Bruce Broughton-Tompkins LRPS southeast@rps.org

Lightroom – beyond the basics Sat 18 Jan, 10.30am, £55/£40 members

For more information see the region’s web page Croxted Farm Hotel, Eastbourne Road, Halland BN8 6PT rmcrocombe@gmail.com

Join Western Region and Peter Crane ARPS for his talk on street photography on Sunday 15 March at RPS House

South East Region AGM and members’ day Sun 16 Feb, 10.30am, free but please book tickets Includes presentations by

northwest@rps.org

regional members and a print competition Croxted Farm Hotel, Eastbourne Road, Halland BN8 6PT southeast@rps.org

NORTHERN northern@rps.org

NORTHERN IRELAND Richard Corbett, 07805 381429 richard@richardcorbettphotography.com

SCOTLAND James Frost FRPS, 01578 730466/07881 856294, james.frost11@btinternet.com

Scotland Region members’ print exhibition 2019/20 – Inverness Mon 6 – Fri 31 Jan, 9am-5pm

The Dolphin Hotel, Station Road, Bovey Tracey TQ13 9AL Tim Sanders LRPS, as above

Astrophotography among the telescopes – John Fox Sat 29 Feb, £80/£65 members

SOUTHERN

Photographing the night sky.

For more information see the region’s web page The Observatory Science Centre, Herstmonceux, Hailsham BN27 1RN rmcrocombe@gmail.com

Paul Cox ARPS, 07748 115057 southern@rps.org

THAMES VALLEY thamessecretary@rps.org

DIG Thames Valley: Peter Dazeley FRPS triple bill Sun 19 Jan, 10am-3.30pm

SOUTH WALES

See DI Group for details

Rhys Jones ARPS

Eden Court Theatre, Bishops Road, Inverness IV3 5SA James Frost FRPS, as above

DIG Thames Valley: Tony Harmer – ‘The design ninja’ Sun 16 Feb, 10am-3.30pm

On being a photographer: key decisions of Magnum photographer David Hurn HonFRPS Sat 15 Feb, 12.15-5.15pm, £5-£25

See DI Group for details

DIG Thames Valley: a day with the Westgates Sun 22 Mar, 10am-3.30pm

School of Journalism, Media and Culture (Cardiff University), main lecture theatre (0.06), No 2 Central Square, Cardiff CF10 1FS Rhys Jones ARPS, as above SOUTH WEST Tim Sanders LRPS, 01237 422450 southwest@rps.org

Field trip Thu 2 Jan, 10.30am-4pm

South West Region members’ exhibition Fri 10 Jan – Mon 23 Mar, 1-3pm

Regional AGM Sun 23 Feb, 10.30am-4pm

southwalessecretary@rps.org Carol Palmer ARPS

Shilley Chalet, Hayle Towans, Hayle TR27 5RH Graham Hodgson FRPS, graham.hodgson@artslive. org.uk

Biennial exhibition Torre Abbey Museum and Art Gallery, Torre Abbey, Torquay TQ2 5JE Tim Sanders LRPS, as above

NORTH WEST Roy Appleby LRPS

FOR MORE DETAILS SEE RPS.ORG/EVENTS

See DI Group for details WESTERN Suzanne Johnson LRPS western@rps.org

GO TO

rps.org/events for event contact details and updates

Annual general meeting Sun 12 Jan, 10am-12.30pm Includes a talk on RPS Distinctions with a review of successful LRPS, ARPS and FRPS portfolios by Peter

Hayes FRPS, chair of the Distinctions board RPS House, 337-340 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR Suzanne Johnson LRPS, as above

Show and tell Sun 9 Feb, 10am-12.30pm Members can show their own work and/or portfolios, receiving constructive criticism from experts RPS House, 337-340 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR Suzanne Johnson LRPS, as above

Peter Crane ARPS: ‘Street photography my way’ Sun 15 Mar, 10am-12.30pm Includes the opportunity for members to benefit from a constructive complimentary review of one of their images RPS House, 337-340 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR Suzanne Johnson LRPS, as above YORKSHIRE Mark Slater yorkshirechair@rps.org

SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS ANALOGUE Richard Williams analoguesecretary@rps.org

ARCHAEOLOGY AND HERITAGE Gwil Owen heritagechair@rps.org

VOL 160 / JANUARY 2020 / THE RPS JOURNAL / 65

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EVENTS AUDIO VISUAL Edgar Gibbs FRPS, 02920 564850 avchair@rps.org

CONTEMPORARY Avril R Harris ARPS contemporary@rps.org

Contemporary Group AGM

Sat 14 Mar, 10.30-11.30am RPS House, 337-340 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR Avril Harris ARPS, as above

An afternoon with Teresa Eng and Sarah Lee Sat 14 Mar, noon-4.30pm RPS House, 337-340 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR Avril Harris ARPS, as above CREATIVE EYE Moira Ellice ARPS, 01473 720928 creativechair@rps.org

Creating good impressions – David Townshend ARPS Fri 10 – Fri 24 Jan, 10.30am-5pm

See East Anglia Region for details

AGM and exhibition selection day Sun 1 Mar, 10am-4pm

Whittlesford Memorial Hall, Mill Lane, Whittlesford, Cambridge CB22 4NE Moira Ellice ARPS, as above DIGITAL IMAGING Janet Haines ARPS digchair@rps.org

DIG Thames Valley: Peter Dazeley FRPS triple bill Sun 19 Jan, 10am-3.30pm

DIG Thames Valley: Tony Harmer – ‘The design ninja’ Sun 16 Feb, 10am-3.30pm Woosehill Community Hall, Emmview Close, Woosehill, Wokingham RG41 3DA

Wei Han (Richard), oolongcha@hotmail.com

CHINA SHANGTUF

Guo Jing, shangtuf@yahoo.com.cn

CHINA QUANZHOU Xiaoling Wang, hgudsh@163.com

DUBAI

Het Palet, Duikerstraat 29, Rotterdam John Riddick, johnmriddick@yahoo.ca

Chris Renk germany@rps.org

GERMANY

Alan Bousfield ARPS, digthamesvalley@rps.org

AGM and print exhibition

Sun 23 Feb, 10.30am-4pm Smethwick PS, The Old Schoolhouse, Churchbridge, Oldbury, Birmingham B69 2AS Chas Hockin, digweb@rps.org

DIG Thames Valley: a day with the Westgates Sun 22 Mar, 10am-3.30pm Woosehill Community Hall, Emmview Close, Woosehill, Wokingham RG41 3DA Alan Bousfield ARPS, digthamesvalley@rps.org

GO TO

rps.org/events for event contact details and updates

DOCUMENTARY Mark A Phillips ARPS, 07792 134007 doc@rps.org

Documentary York subgroup meeting

Keyworth Methodist Church Hall, Selby Lane, Keyworth NG12 5AH Howard Fisher, docem@rps.org

South East Documentary Group meeting Sun 26 Jan, 10am-1pm Tangmere Village Hall, Malcolm Road, Tangmere PO20 2HS Jeff Owen, docse@rps.org

Documentary Group South meeting Mon 3 Feb, 7.30-9.30pm

Open to RPS members and non-members, this is a chance to share your projects with fellow enthusiasts in a noncompetitive setting. There will be a short talk by a member of the group and a chance to discuss how this group can best fulfil your needs Jubilee Hall, New Road, Timsbury, Romsey SO51 0NL docsouthern@rps.org or christopher.wmorris@ btopenworld.com

ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY MEMBERS AROUND THE WORLD

Yan Li, yanli88@yahoo.com

Mohammed Arfan Asif ARPS, dubai@rps.org

CANADA

Hear from ‘design ninja’ Tony Harmer at a DIG Thames Valley event on Sunday 16 February in Wokingham

Clements Hall, Nunthorpe Road, York YO23 1BW Sue Gibson, digyorkshirerps@gmail.com

CHINA CHONGQING CHINA WESTERN

RPS Benelux study group meeting Tue 18 Feb, 7.30-10pm

Documentary East Midlands Group meeting Sat 25 Jan, 2-4pm

DIG Yorkshire and North East Region: Steve Race – ‘Wild Shetland’ Sat 15 Feb, 10.30am-4.30pm, £10/£8/£5

BENELUX

Het Palet, Duikerstraat 29, Rotterdam

Showcasing the shortlisted entries and finalists of DPOTY 2019 RPS House, 337-340 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR Mark A Phillips ARPS, as above

DIG North West talk: ‘Honing the creative image’ Sun 9 Feb, 10am-2.30pm, £11/£8

CHINA BEIJING

RPS Benelux study group meeting Tue 21 Jan, 7.30-10pm

Documentary photographer of the year awards Sat 11 Jan, 3-6pm

Kearney will show some postprocessing skills and have a Q&A session with demos Merryfield Village Hall, Copse Lane, Ilton, Taunton TA19 9HG Sheila Haycox, 01392 468859, sah2@live.co.uk

AUSTRALIA

Janet Haines ARPS, Richard Sylvester LRPS, Benelux@rps.org

Boston Spa Village Hall, 199 High Street, Boston Spa LS23 6AA Graham Evans, docyork@rps.org

DI Western Group – Jane Kearney CPAGB presentation: ‘A trip to the Falkland Islands’ Sun 2 Feb, 10.30am-4pm

OVERSEAS CHAPTERS Elaine Herbert ARPS, eherbert@alphalink.com.au

Thu 9 Jan, noon onwards

Woosehill Community Hall, Emmview Close, Woosehill, Wokingham RG41 3DA Alan Bousfield ARPS, digthamesvalley@rps.org

Mike McNamee FRPS will present his thoughtprovoking interactive talk/ workshop examining the creative process Frodsham Community Centre, Fluin Lane, Frodsham WA6 7QN Malcolm Blackburn ARPS, dignw@rps.org

FOR MORE DETAILS SEE RPS.ORG/EVENTS

Example is everything!

Until Sun 19 Jan, noon-6pm Hagener Everyday Culture and Bauhaus: a co-exhibition in cooperation with the RPS Junges Museum, Osthaus Museum Hagen, Museumsplatz 1, Hagen, Germany germany@rps.org

HONG KONG

Shan Sang Wan FRPS, shansangwan@ yahoo.com.hk

INDIA

Rajen Nandwana, rajennandwana@ gmail.com

INDONESIA

Agatha Bunanta ARPS, agathabunanta@ gmail.com

ITALY

Olivio Argenti FRPS, cirps@ olivioargenti.it

rps@moothall.co.nz

SINGAPORE

Steven Yee Pui Chung FRPS, peacock@ sandvengroup.com

SRI LANKA

JAPAN TOKYO

Romesh de Silva, romesh@access.lk

MALAYSIA

Rob Kershaw ARPS Rob.Kershaw@bluewin.ch

MALTA

Joanie Fan Hui Ling ARPS, djpassionfoto@ gmail.com

Yoshio Miyake, yoshio-raps@nifty.com Michael Chong ARPS, michaelcsc1985@ gmail.com Ruben Buhagiar, info@rubenbuhagiar.com

NEW ZEALAND Mark Berger,

SWITZERLAND

TAIWAN

USA ATLANTIC USA PACIFIC Jeff Barton, rps@vadis.net

VOL 160 / JANUARY 2020 / THE RPS JOURNAL / 67

EVENTS

FOR MORE DETAILS SEE RPS.ORG/EVENTS

Documentary Distinctions advisory day Sat 22 Feb (details TBC)

For those interested in the Associate or Fellowship Distinction in the new documentary category. Check the RPS website for details and booking information RPS House, 337-340 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR HISTORICAL Gilly Read FRPS historical@rps.org

The 2020 Colin Ford lecture Thu 6 Feb, 5.30-8.30pm Professor Larry Schaaf on his work on the William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonné Book via rps.org/schaaf Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BG Gilly Read FRPS, readgilly@hotmail.com

£50/£10 group members RPS House, 337-340 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR Richard Ellis, landscapef16@gmail.com MEDICAL

IMAGING SCIENCE Gary Evans gary@garysevans.com

LANDSCAPE Richard Ellis landscape@rps.org

Winter on the Brighton and Hove seafront Fri 10 Jan, 7am-4.30pm

Brighton Palace Pier, Madeira Drive, Brighton BN2 1TW Mark Reeves, 07968 616551, rps.landscape.events@gmail. com

Blackstone Edge in winter Fri 28 Feb, 9.15am-2pm

A field trip along a section of the Pennine Way Hollingworth Lake Visitor Centre, Rakewood Road, Littleborough OL15 0AZ Roger Styles, rkstyles@btinternet.com

Sunrise at Stonehenge Sun 8 Mar, 6-7.30am, £68/£45 group members

Stonehenge, Airman’s Corner roundabout – A360, A344, B3086, OS grid ref. = SU 10067 42802, Amesbury, Wiltshire SP4 7DE landscapememberevents@ rps.org

Coastal long exposures Thu 12 Mar, 9am-3pm

Dovercourt lighthouse, Lower Marine Parade, Dovercourt, Harwich CO12 3SS Mark Reeves, rps.landscape. events@gmail.com

Symposium and AGM Sat 21 Mar, 9.30am-4.30pm, 68

Ullswater by James Black ARPS, as featured in the Scotland Region’s members’ print exhibition 2019/20

Prof Afzal Ansary ASIS FRPS, 07970 403672 afzalansary@aol.com

SW Visual Art Group members’ day Sun 12 Jan, 10.30am-4pm

The Dolphin Hotel, Station Road, Bovey Tracey TQ13 9AL Di Wilkins ARPS, diwilkins@hotmail.co.uk

Rollright Visual Art Group – winter meeting members’ day Sat 22 Feb, 10am-4pm

Medical Group AGM and IMI meeting Fri 17 Jan, 6.30-9pm

‘Seeing the invisible’ by Bill Edwards The Gordon Museum of Pathology, Hodgkin Building, Guy’s Campus, London SE1 1UL Afzal Ansary FRPS, as above

Village Hall, High Street, Long Compton, Shipston-onStour CV36 5JS Andreas Klatt ARPS, as above WOMEN IN PHOTOGRAPHY Thérèse Barry

NATURE

wipchair@rps.org

Ann Miles

For updates see the WIP webpage on the RPS site or follow the group on Instagram @ rpswomeninphoto

annmiles70@gmail.com

New year’s day on the Norfolk coast Wed 1 Jan, 10am-3pm Titchwell Marsh RSPB Reserve, Main Road, Titchwell PE31 8BB Ann Miles as above

Group AGM Sat 18 Jan, 2.30pm

The Photographers’ Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW Thérèse Barry, as above

Field trip to Welney Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust Sat 14 Feb, 10am-7.30pm

EXHIBITIONS

Welney WWT, Hundred Foot Bank, Welney PE14 9TN Ann Miles as above

John Riley LRPS, travel@rps.org Kath Phillips ARPS travelweb@rps.org

VISUAL ART visualart@rps.org

Creating good impressions – David Townshend ARPS Fri 10 – Fri 24 Jan, 10.30am-5pm

See East Anglia Region for details

/ THE RPS JOURNAL / JANUARY 2020 / VOL 160

GO TO

rps.org/events for event contact details and updates

Sugar Paper Theories Until 26 Jan, Thu to Sun and bank holidays 10am-5pm Free entry RPS House, 337-340 Paintworks, Arnos Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR

Scotland members’ print exhibition 2019/20 – Inverness Mon 6 – Fri 31 Jan, 9am-5pm See Scotland Region for details

Creating good impressions – David Townshend ARPS Fri 10 – Fri 24 Jan, 10.30am-5pm

See East Anglia Region for details

South West Region members’ exhibition Fri 10 Jan – Mon 23 Mar, 10am-3pm See South West Region for details

East Anglia Region 2019 members’ exhibition Tue 14 Jan – Sun 23 Feb, 10am-4pm See East Anglia Region for details

RPS Science Photographer of the Year exhibition Until Sun 5 Jan

London Region 2019/20 members’ exhibition Wed 5 Feb – Mon 2 Mar, 11am-4pm

North London Group exhibition Until Wed 15 Jan, Mon-Fri 7.30am-8.30pm, Sat-Sun 7.30-6pm

Scotland Region members’ print exhibition 2019/20 – Aberdeen Sat 8 Feb – Sun 1 Mar, 10.30am-4pm

Science Museum, London SW7 2DD

Andreas Klatt ARPS, 07973 217707

See Overseas Chapters for details

01225 325724, sally@rps.org

Sally Smart ARPS, exhibitions manager

TRAVEL

Example is everything!

Until Sun 19 Jan, noon-6pm

See London Region for details

See London Region for details

See Scotland Region for details

SOCIETY WORKSHOPS

HONE YOUR SKILLS, WITH 25% OFF FOR MEMBERS. BOOK ONLINE: RPS.ORG/LEARNING/WORKSHOPS / ENQUIRIES: LEARNING@RPS.ORG

Fully booked: New angles on flowers – John Humphrey FRPS Thu 9 Jan, 10am-4.30pm Buckinghamshire £120/£90 RPS members Buckinghamshire

Fully booked: Introduction to creative flower photography – Polina Plotnikova ARPS EFIAP Fri 10 Jan, 10am-4.30pm £120/£90 RPS members Buckinghamshire

Portraiture photography and getting the most from your subject – Simon Ellingworth Thu 16 Jan, 9:30am-5pm

£126/£94 RPS members Buckinghamshire

Introduction to your digital camera – John Roe ARPS Sat 1 Feb, 10am-5pm £85/£63 RPS members Bristol

Introduction to Photoshop – John Roe ARPS Sun 2 Feb, 10am-5pm

70

£104/£78 RPS members Bristol

Introduction to creative flower photography – Polina Plotnikova ARPS EFIAP Tue 4 Feb, 10am-4.30pm £130/£98 RPS members Buckinghamshire

Introduction to Lightroom – Tim Daly Sat 8 Feb, 10am-4.30pm £104/£78 RPS members Bristol

Printing with Lightroom – Tim Daly Sun 9 Feb, 10am-4pm £104/£78 RPS members Bristol

Wedding photography – Terry Hewlett ARPS (two days) Sat 15 – Sun 16 Feb, 10am-5pm £187/£140 RPS members Wiltshire

Art figure painting with light intensive – Jon Gray Sat 22 Feb, 10am-5pm

£165/£123 RPS members Kent

/ THE RPS JOURNAL / JANUARY 2020 / VOL 160

Photoshop – John Roe ARPS (two days) Sat 29 Feb – Sun 1 March, 10am-5pm

£181/£135 RPS members Bristol

A sense of place – Benedict Brain ARPS Tue 10 Mar, 10am-5pm £85/£63 RPS members Bethesda

Learning to light paint – Dee Dougherty Wed 11 Mar, 10am-4.30pm £120/£90 RPS members Amersham

Learn the secrets of car studio photography with James Mann FRPS Wed 11 Mar, 10am-5pm £110/£82 RPS members London

Build your website with Squarespace Thu 12 Mar, 9.30am-4.30pm £104/£78 RPS members Bristol

Creative techniques in Photoshop Thu 12 Mar, 10am-4.30pm

£104/£78 RPS members Amersham

Join Terry Hewlett ARPS for two days of wedding photography on the weekend of 15 and 16 February

Street photography – Spitalfields Market and Brick Lane Fri 13 Mar, 10am-4.30pm

£126/£94 RPS members London

Studio portraiture Sun 22 Mar, 10am-5pm

£187/£140 RPS members Lacock

Photographic wellbeing with John Humphrey FRPS

Wed 25 Mar, 10am-4.30pm

£104/£78 RPS members Amersham

Slow-mo mojo with Benedict Brain ARPS Wed 25 Mar, 10.30am-5pm

£85/£63 RPS members Lyme Regis

Male art-figure lighting – intensive Sat 28 Mar, 10am-5pm Kent

THE COLLECTION

Ahead of the curve

THROUGHOUT the 19th century photographers jostled to improve the quality of their camera negatives.

Some believed in modifying negative development by adding bromide or enhancing the developer solution with ammonia. If these so-called ‘wrinkles’ did not work, there was no shame in using an intensifier or reducer to render a negative printable.

One pioneer, Ferdinand Hurter, proposed a simpler alternative: determine the correct exposure and develop to a standard. His friend and colleague Vero Charles Driffield agreed, predicting that the arrival of faster plates – with improved colour sensitivity – 72

would impose changes to Driffield constructing a device darkroom practices. to measure these varying Hurter knew his proposal ‘densities’ and sketching the would be clarified if the results as a diagram on page characteristics of a negative 93 of his notebook, known as were presented in DN/B in The RPS Collection. diagrammatic form. To this On examining curves of end, Driffield constructed typical results, Hurter apparatus that could identified four zones, place a sequence of including the ‘period exposures on to a of over-exposure’ The RPS Collection photographic plate. and ‘correct is at the V&A Photography A whirling disc, representation’, Centre, London. punctured by slots which became Visit vam.ac.uk of different lengths known as ‘the and operated by the straight-line portion’. pedal power of an old sewing Whenever the plate machine, allowed variations of received gross exposure, a light from a standard candle ‘reversal’ occurred with the to fall on the plate. materials in use at the time – After processing in a that is, the late 19th century. developer of ferrous oxalate, The method had much to the negative consisted of a commend it and characteristic range of silver deposits, with curves survive in today’s

/ THE RPS JOURNAL / JANUARY 2020 / VOL 160

VISIT

digital imaging. However, by concentrating on his straightline portion, Hurter in 1890 devised a method for determining the speed of a plate, and Driffield designed stationery for plotting experiments that allowed the user to assess speed, compare developer formulae, explore temperatures, judge development times and so on.

The stationery, sold in pads of 100 sheets, was a boon to photographic communities, as well as to Driffield and Hurter.

The Collection contains a treasure trove of 18 bundles of data which document hundreds of experiments by both men from 1890 until the death of Hurter in 1898, when Driffield returned to his first love – pictorial photography.

DR RON CALLENDER FRPS

Sheets of stationery helped revolutionise 19th-century photography, writes Dr Ron Callender FRPS