Opus 2016

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opusphoto.co.uk 30th June 2016 OPUS Photography Private View and Satellites Symposium Private View from 6pm 6pm Photographic Speed Dating 7pm Satellites, a symposium featuring: Sian Davey Jon Tonks Daniel Meadows Josh Lustig Exhibition continues 1st – 3rd July 2016 11:00 – 18:00 Admission Free Introducing OPUS University of the West of England BA(Hons) Photography graduate degree show Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, London SE1 9PH Tube: Blackfriars/Waterloo

Introducing OPUS, a collaborative photography exhibition presented by the final year photography students of the University of the West of England.

The exhibition will showcase the work of 42 different Photography BA students, through a range of media such as books, zines, archival prints and moving image.

Each of the photographers use their talents to reflect on social and economic issues, predominantly through the genre of landscape, portraiture and still life. The work varies in style and method, with many students using digital methods, whilst others continue to use analogue method to conduct their studies.

All Good Photographers are Perverts M A X FERGUSON

illegal and transgressive. A man secretly filming his wife naked might not be illegal but is transgressive.

A man selling secret photographs of his wife naked is illegal. It isn’t straightforward. What is transgressive is not necessarily illegal. Photographers by and large tend to be transgressive without breaking the law. Photographers tend to draw attention to our pleasure in looking and if we are brave enough then this means facing our sexuality and often the darker side of our imagination.

Miroslav Tichy was a Czech photographer who created images exclusively of young women, which have come to be recognised as Art by the international Art community. He shot on homemade cameras assembled from junk. He made his photographs of girls while concealed in bushes.

After he had been banned from the local swimming pool he started shooting from the outside of the fence. This fence often appears in his images, giving the impression that he shot the girls without permission. These girls are not paid models posed erotically by the cameraman for the pleasure of the viewer in the manner of historical nudes.

He photographed solely for his own pleasure, printing each negative once, often discarding the images after he had created them or giving them homemade paper frames. A local artist collected the discarded images and in due course his work found its way into the Seville Biennale. His reputation has subsequently acquired an international status and his work has been exhibited at Les Recontres D’Arles, the Pompidou Centre and the International Centre of Photography in New York, but is it even appropriate to call his photographs work? Tichy, who had spent time in a Soviet psychiatric clinic, was self-evidently not of sound mind.

He was a man with a psychosexual disorder, a ‘pervert’ who made images that have been canonised in high art circles worldwide venues. At the time of his death he was unaware of his success d’éstime.

He attended none of his exhibitions.

Nobuyoshi Araki. Diane Arbus. Sophie Calle. Sophie Ebrard. Todd Hido. Boris Mikhailov. Terry Richardson.

Miroslav Tichy. Photographers evidently enjoy watching people – generally women – in sexually vulnerable positions both covertly and overtly.

Their limited edition hand-prints carry the imprimatur of Art and cost a lot of money, whereas the clandestine up-skirting snaps on the escalator of the Tokyo metro are the products of ‘perverts’.

It’s a fine and fluctuating line between what is and what is not permissible in photography.

When Christian Metz wrote about photography, he used the word fetish to describe its appeal and related this to voyeurism and scopophilia, or pleasure in looking. Although by the nature of their métier photographers are voyeurs, they are not alone: ten

million people watched the first series climax of Big Brother; Kim Kardashian’s sex tape is the most watched porn film ever; the celebrity Frappening photo-leaks were front-page news. These, and many other everyday examples, suggest that many members of our post-modern society, perhaps a majority, are willingly complicit in voyeuristic or fetishistic activities. Individuals consent to perform sexual acts in cars in order that these acts may be captured on film by strangers and made available world-wide for other strangers to watch on porn websites. Voyeurism is no longer a secret act, but one that is carried out on an industrial scale by a vast proportion of the population. To watch, and perhaps to be secretly watched, is thrilling, illicit and dangerous. So illicit and dangerous that it is often illegal. A man secretly filming a naked woman may be

His photographs are transgressive, and in some jurisdictions would be considered illegal. Is this why we like them? Does indulging in his peepshow vicariously thrill us? Are we Tichy fans any different from those who log into dogging sites to watch the watchers and the watched without taking the risks?

Japanese photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki was walking through Tokyo’s Chuo Park when he noticed a couple embracing on the grass. They weren’t alone.

Voyeurs/perverts/fetishists were lurking in the bushes watching them. Kohei returned home to research the practicalities of photographing this night-time phenomenon.

He spent six months pretending to be one of the perverts to gain their trust. He then photographed the scenes with Kodak infrared flash bulbs that are invisible to the human eye.

The photographs are bizarre, in super high-contrast black and white they show fully clothed entwined couples surrounded by voyeurs. Some watch from a distance. Some seem too close, sometimes touching the couples. One appears to have his hands down the girl’s pants. Are the couples in on it? Are they perverts too? If all the participants are okay with the situation, can they be perverts?

Sophie Calle gate-crashes the secret lives of people she doesn’t know.

“For months I followed strangers on the street. For the pleasure of following them, not because they particularly interested me. I photographed them without their knowledge, took note of their movements, then finally lost sight of them and forgot them.”

On the streets of Paris, Calle followed a man whom she lost sight of a few minutes later in a crowd.

That very evening, quite by chance, the man was introduced to her.

During the course of their conversation, he told her he was planning an imminent trip. Disguising herself Calle followed him to Venice and photographed him from a distance, took notes on him, watched him in the company of a woman, recording them together. The man was married. The woman was not his wife. She produced this sequence in a book Suite Vénitienne. Is Calle a pervert in a country that protects the liberty of its citizens in legislation? Or is she a transgressive artist in the best Parisian tradition of the flaneur.

We are drawn to voyeuristic images, and because we are timid bourgeois, we are also fearful of them. Our complicit hypocrisy towards observing a person without his or her knowledge is represented perfectly by Edouard Manet’s ambiguous painting Les Folies-Bergere in which the mirror behind the girl behind the bar captures the face of a man inthe act of propositioning her, the viewer of the painting whom she looks at in the act of looking at him.

The viewer not only confronts the gaze of the gazed at, but partakes vicariously in an instance of exploitative sexual/fetishistic/voyeuristic exchange.

High quality, high art perversion. It may not signify in that way to a 21st century audience, but photographs can and perhaps we need to let them.

Killing Your Digital Darlings JACK L ATHAM

Photography is by its very nature a lonely and contemplative medium. There are long stretches of time spent creating work, often in solitude, then you edit the pictures in a way you see them best, then whittle the rest down to create a project.

Now however, in a dimly lit room behind a retina display and half jar of peanut butter, you’ll post your images online, all to chase the little red mark of recognition.

I’ve often thought that Photographers present their careers like they do their images. Social media conduits have only made it worse. These platforms have developed into something representing more of a speaker’s corner forum than something of any social value. A solid “I’m not suffering, and I’ve made the right choice,” to Mum and Dad. This is by no means a bad thing, but it does pose a problem that can morph and mutate into a form of Imposter Syndrome.

Tools like Facebook and Twitter present new ways to share good, progressive news about your career to your peers. It is just people believing the hype that’s the issue. It’s not easy to spot integrity in a soup of bragging and mutual backslapping.

What I’ve come to discover, in my admittedly short period of time being a photographer, is that the success you see online by your peers is mainly smoke and mirrors. For every “here is a great commission I did,” or “I won the xxx award,” you see online, there are hard-drives filled with unposted announcements about insecurity and doubt. It’s the orchestrated choir singing their own achievement into the echo chamber that creates it. There is no shame in comparing one’s accomplishments to another and feeling that you can do better.

That’s one of the main factors that keeps people driven – the idea of competition and ‘success’.

It’s just that when digital self-curation of achievements happens, it paints a false picture and vulgar picture.

A parody of the family album, these highlighted achievements leave out the meat and potatoes of what photography really is. You constantly chase a perceived sense of success, trying to present your best self to your peers out of fear of being viewed as a failure. It is these failures however that separates you from everybody else.

You’ll never achieve a God like status of constantly getting what you want like Facebook would have you believe. Why should you? Creating work is about just that, creating. If everything landed on your plate and you constantly got what you wanted, what’s the point?

With passion comes persistence, and with persistence comes luck. That’s all there is to it.

Now get off Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Go through your old work, find out what it is that interests you and work hard to achieve that. You’ve got a passion, and that is worth more than any social media recognition or any grant you might win online.

A Call to Arms: Reflections on Photo London 2016 JIM C AMPBELL

‘Some of my work is explicitly political, some of it is explicitly aesthetic, but I love it when the two things come together.’— Richard Misrach Many of the great writers on photography, like Walter Benjamin, insisted that the medium must not deny its function as a political weapon, whilst for other pioneers like Alfred Stieglitz, the battle to be fought was about the medium’s status as an art form and attendant aesthetic considerations. After watching Katy Grannan’s film The Nine at the National Portrait Gallery and listening to Richard Misrach at Somerset House talking about his work at the US/Mexico border, it feels like the debate is coming to the boil once more. Much contemporary photographic art insists on being political and through such work, the politics of the US, and everywhere else it seems, is shown in a perilous state. The motives of these two photographers are not dissimilar, that is to show the plight of a marginalized underclass or of excluded migrants. Thanks to Grannan and Misrach I ended my day at Photo London 2016 with Benjamin’s ghost firmly in my soul, wondering whether art without politics is art at all. After lusting, in a covetous way, after some of the framed work for sale in the fair, these organized events put the commercial side of festival into stark relief.

After the Misrach lecture I overheard two west coast American collectors talking about how the Bay area was really well represented in London, ‘what with Grannan and Misrach and all’, but it felt like they fancied owning and archiving the imagery rather than wanting it to operate in an active sense.

But can it really do that? It seems easier to consume photography as commodity art than it does as a political message. I talked to other punters at the fair in front of Eddie Adams’ famous Vietnam execution image. It was the fact that it was famous which interested them as potential collectors, rather than its brutal subject matter.

‘One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding (at a distance, through the medium of photography) horrors taking place throughout the world.’—Susan Sontag Sontag, like Benjamin before her, questions the effect of photographic ubiquity – pondering to what extent our concept of reality is eroded by this condition. But it depends very much on the motives and process of the maker, as well as the channel in which it is delivered, and of course the receiver.

Recently Teju Cole, writing in the New York Times, has talked about the syrupy perfection of Steve McCurry’s ‘documentary’ portraiture and how it defines the subject through an orientalizing gaze. Indeed without a sharp eye on this aesthetic quandary photography can easily become mannered, and as soon as that happens it loses its value and its edge.

Aesthetics cannot, on the other hand, be abstained from and beauty can be a friend as well as a foe, particularly when you’re trying to sneak some kind of political message through a tightly regimented network of western tastes and values.

Grannan and Misrach go for very different ways of sugaring the pill. The former in her feature documentary film The Nine describes in stark detail the troubled life of a Californian woman in her delusional battle with addiction, in Modesto, part of the hinterland between Los Angeles and San Francisco. For me it was not easy to watch as it literally regards the pain of another in vivid and often very beautiful detail. But essentially I think she got the balance right in difficult and intimate circumstances.

In fact the beauty register seems higher in her film than in the stills that she previously shot of the same subject, as if she needed it to soften the blow of a more immersive attack. A very brave piece of work, which took 5 years and 2000 hours of footage to resolve, The Nine is not going to be big box office, however stunning it is.

If Grannan’s is a little story with big implications, then Misrach’s Border Cantos tries to deal with one of the perennial grand narratives of our time, immigration. In this case the movement of Central and South American nationals over the border to the United States. He portrays the clashes, both ideological and physical, of far right vigilantes trying to shoot migrants and humanitarian aid workers trying to keep them alive by providing water in a desert landscape. And yet there are no people in his imagery, only traces and suggestions of border atrocity. Again the result of an epic engagement with the subject, Misrach has avoided mannerism not through close human contact, as Grannan does, but by collaboration with the composer/performer Guillermo Galindo. The results are a combination of Misrach’s sublime landscapes and an abstracted collection of transformative works including scores, sculpture, musical instruments and any combination of the above, made by Gallindo largely from objects collected by Misrach at the border.

In the plenary after his lecture Misrach was asked the inevitable aesthetics question. He contemplated out loud, as if he’d considered the issue a thousand times before. ‘What does it mean to aestheticize political subjects?’ In his rhetorical answer he invoked Shakespeare and the comedy writer and broadcaster John Stewart, as diverse examples of artists whose agenda was and is to politicize and critique. His own delivery system, landscape photography, is designed to sensitize us to what’s going on in the world.

Ultimately, like Grannan, he concluded that he loves what he does and that it feels meaningful. I agree.

From stilled time to time-based: Reflections on photographers’ use of moving image as an extension of their craft.

C AROLY N LEFLE Y

A starting point for this essay begins with my own experience as an artist who uses photography and, more recently, moving image. Several years ago I bought a new digital SLR camera specifically because it also captured high definition video. However, I found that I never used the video function. I just continued to think, dream and make work as still images. Moving image was unknown territory and just didn’t feature in my creative project planning.

In January 2012 there were some incredibly strong winds which caused the branches of the local trees to thrash and bend. I found that by composing the frame as I would do for stills, the branches danced and bowed for my fixed position. This essay draws on my experience making this and subsequent film work, reflecting on the new materiality of moving image.

There has been a recent shift in practice for still image makers to incorporate moving image as an extension of their craft; a change that could be in part due to the inclusion of video capture in the design of the digital camera, and indeed the smart phone. This evolution in the apparatus has allowed photographers to seamlessly shoot moving image with the same device as their stills work. David Green and Joanna Lowry in Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image suggest that ‘the photograph now exists as only one option in an expanded menu of representational and performative operations presented by the technology’.1 Still and moving image can be potentially captured, produced, distributed and viewed on the same interface of a screen, which in many cases is a phone or tablet.2 Just as the Kodak Box Brownie camera democratised photography, changes in technology and the cult of the ‘prosumer’ make moving image more accessible than ever before. Perhaps a larger shift in this trend is the dematerialisation of the photograph, which as Green describes suggests, has been increasingly ‘stripped of its tangible material support and its objectness as something that can be held in the hand’.3 Technological developments and new trends in media consumption change how we read the wealth of photography and film theory about this subject.

Much has been written about the ontological differences between still photography and moving image and there isn’t time here to offer an extensive overview of this material. However, in the spirit of this paper essay being a kind of field guide to photographers new to moving image, two seminal texts on the subject by Peter Wollen and Christian Metz are useful. Wollen’s 1984 text ‘Fire and Ice’ sets up film and photography as opposites in relation to the idea of a time-based approach. Film is ‘incessant motion, transience, flicker’ whereas photography ‘is motionless and frozen, it has the cryogenic power to preserve objects through time without decay’.4

Printed film stills from ‘Wind’ (2012)

Metz’s 1985 essay ‘Photography and Fetish’ describes the main ontological differences as spatial and temporal size, movement, sound, the frame and touch.

Of the final projected work Metz notes: ‘Most of all, a film cannot be touched, cannot be carried and handled: although the actual reels can, the projected film cannot’.5 As a lens based artist, ‘touch’ was the first stark difference I noticed between still and moving image work. The project workflow around my still photographic work involves printing test prints. When working with video files I miss this tactile and reflective stage in the project cycle and often print out stills from my video footage to work with the sequencing.

Much of film and photography theory pre-dates the ongoing de-materialisation of the photograph.

Theorists wrote about analogue prints that were held in the hand and made comparisons to cinematic projections. The miniaturisation of the screen to palm size and the increased use of platforms which display both still and moving images together is beginning to blur the boundaries between still and moving. When you scroll down the Instagram or Twitter news feed, stills and videos appear together one after the other.

Videos are stilled only to be animated by the touch of the screen and un-muted with a second touch.

As a photographer used to dealing with silent stills, shooting and editing a moving image piece has so many variables it can be bewildering. There are perhaps three key considerations in making the shift from still to moving: duration, movement and sound.

Towards time-based A moving image piece is comprised of thousands of photographs, which through sequencing become animated into a time-based work with a sonic sphere.

Metz notes that ‘film is a stream of temporality where nothing can be kept, nothing stopped’.6 This evokes an image of a river of footage which flows by, not having a moment to hold onto a still image in our hand, and points towards the idea of duration as a challenge for those new to film making. In timebased work duration not size, becomes the dimension of the final work. Time is no longer stilled as in a photograph. Wollen describes photographs as having a ‘near-zero’ duration which is rooted in the past, an ‘ever-receding “then”’. The spectator’s fascination in looking at a photograph has no fixed duration, which contrasts with the ‘predetermined duration’ of time-based film.7 The duration of the look is controlled by the filmmaker. To a certain extent, there is more control afforded to a filmmaker, than a stills photographer, in the reception of the final piece.

The viewing time is exact, so that the images, both moving and still, are only shown for precisely the duration intended.

We return to Metz for a definitive description of the difference of temporal duration between still and moving. A photograph ultimately has an unknown temporal size; it is a lexis, or artwork, of no duration.

‘Whereas the timing of the cinematic lexis is determined in advance by the filmmaker’.8

Film still from Flood (2016)

Movement is terrifying The American photographer Gregory Crewdson, who creates cinematic tableau photographs, is often asked if he would ever make a film. In an interview in 2006 Crewdson noted: ‘I just think in terms of single images. The idea of even moving the camera is terrifying’.9 Of course, his comment was facetious but for many still image makers duration, movement and sound just haven’t figured in their photographic workflow. Crewdson’s photographs, though cinematic in aesthetic and in how they are produced, are of a stilled, staged moment. These photographs aren’t distilled moments from a temporal flow.

What are the technical challenges of sound?

While we may be able to accurately ‘write’ what we see, ‘writing’ what we hear requires more sophisticated sound recording equipment and expertise in how to deal with different environments.

This can, of course, all be learned by a photographer, but collaboration at this stage has helped my practice.

I work alongside my husband who is a sound artist to create moving image works. The soundscape in ‘Wind’ incorporated ambient field recordings with a composed score. For my latest work entitled ‘Flood’ we worked together to craft each field recording to work in harmony with my layered footage.

Movement in the frame and camera tracking is a challenge for photographers who are more accustomed to shooting what’s in frame, cropping out what is not required and pressing the shutter at the decisive moment. In the 1990s there was a trend for still video portraits. ‘Sixty Minute Silence’ (1996) is a video portrait of a group of police officers posing as if for a school photograph. At a first glance in the gallery, this work appears like a large projected still photograph, then small clues to movement become apparent: someone might fidget in their seat or we might hear the rustle of uniforms. One participant lets out a cry of frustration at the end of posing still for an hour. I saw this piece installed at the 1997 Turner Prize, and it was addictive viewing; the changes in subtleties of movement held my gaze. The fixed camera position is a useful comfort zone for photographers new to moving image. The familiarity of a camera on a tripod, framing, focal length, all remain the same. It is only movement and changes in light that unfold.

This work was shot during an Artist Newsletter New Collaborations funded project in partnership with an archaeological team, set on an uninhabited island in Orkney. Swona was populated until the 1970’s, when the houses where abandoned and left to nature. This film uses double exposure techniques, very similar to my stills work, to visualise the brutality and tranquillity of the sea overtaking the man-made structures on the island. It has been interesting to see how the double exposure technique translates from still to moving image. I’ve played with merging layers of the visual and sonic sphere together in a wave like progression.

Writing sight and sound The term videography comes from the words ‘videre’ meaning ‘to see’, ‘audire’ meaning ‘hear’ and ‘graphy’ meaning to write or draw. Just as photography is ‘light writing’, videography is to write what we see and hear. Recording sound can be one of the biggest leaps for a still photographer. We usually edit out what we hear, only capturing the visual. Metz describes the photograph as immobile and silent, absent of the auditory sphere of moving image. He defines the sonic environment of cinema as an ‘auditory scene’ which expands what is depicted in the visual scene.10 For example, characters’ voices can float in from an off-frame position. The sound of the environment enriches the spectator’s immersion in the scene.

Sound influences the reading of a scene too.

There is a trend now for multimedia presentations of still photographs, with field recording and narration.

With a moving image piece, unless looped, there is a fixed duration and the viewer experiences the soundscape as the filmmaker desires. In comparison to still photographs, which unless accompanied by a multimedia soundtrack, are experienced in an endless number of auditory circumstances.

To conclude, this essay has looked at several key areas relevant for photographers moving from stilled time to time-based work: materiality, duration, movement and sound. Further areas for discussion could include the craft of editing and methods of display and distribution.

This is an abridged version of a paper presented at ‘Moving Stills: Photographers’ Film Symposium’, April 2016, at the Watershed, Bristol. Organised by UWE Photography Research Group.

David Green and Joanna Lowry (2005) Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image. Photoworks. p.7 2 Ibid. p.22 3 Ibid.

4 Peter Wollen (1984), ‘Fire and Ice’ in Liz Wells (2002), The Photography Reader, Routledge. p.78 5 Christian Metz (1985), ‘Photography and Fetish’ in Carol Squires, ed, (1991), The Critical Image: Essays on Contemporary Photography. Lawrence and Wishart. p.162 6 Ibid p.157 7 Peter Wollen (1984), ‘Fire and Ice’ in Liz Wells (2002), The Photography Reader, Routledge. p.76 8 Christian Metz (1985), ‘Photography and Fetish’ in Carol Squires, ed, (1991), The Critical Image: Essays on Contemporary Photography. Lawrence and Wishart. p.155 9 Gregory Crewdson interview in David Campany (2007), The Cinematic. Whitechapel Gallery / MIT Press. p. 171. Originally printed: Anna Holtzman, Interview with Gregory Crewdson, Eyemazing, issue 3, August 2006, www.eyemazing.info 10 Christian Metz (1985), ‘Photography and Fetish’ in Carol Squires, ed, (1991), The Critical Image: Essays on Contemporary Photography. Lawrence and Wishart. p.161 1

Jack Tyler Danny Cozens Alex Ingram Jonathan Faulkner Isabella Tulloch Holly Mitchell Amy Johnson Antony Price Joelle Sayles Ewan Foster Jones Luca Pope Hannah Joseph Grace Previte Fleur Batt Anjelica Catton Greg Lake-Hollingdale Lucy Tindall Chloe Massey Samye Asher Klara Foreman Rachel Mason

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Lucy Durling Katie Ellis Jasper Gibb Katie Murt Jack Moran Molly-Rose O’Connell Rebecca Gray Joe Rumsey Rachael Boys Betsy Seal Danielle Allen Keith Hursthouse Aoife Littlejohn India Rose Karima Thomas Sylwia Cholody Teresa Hardy Becky Hardy Grace Doyle Esther Lippett Kelly Pinker

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Jack Tyler J A C K-T Y L E R .C O.U K

Flâneurs don’t have any practical goals in mind, aren’t walking to get something, or to go somewhere. What flâneurs are doing is looking. — Alan Fletcher Flâneurs are opening their eyes and ears to the scene around them. They are not treating the street as an obstacle course to be negotiated; they are opening themselves up to it. They are wondering about the lives of those they pass, constructing narratives for them, they are eavesdropping on conversations, they are studying how people dress and what new shops and products there are (not in order to buy anything—just in order to reflect on them as important pieces of evidence of what human beings are about)… While cities bring together huge numbers of people, paradoxically they also separate them from each other. The goal of flâneur(s) is to recover a sense of community.

— Alain de Botton I am a photographic Flaneur. I walk the streets with an open mind and immerse myself in the crowd. I spend time with various individuals that I meet. I create a diverse body of work including portraits and observational imagery, while offering narratives based around our journey and experiences together. Material objects are collected along the way to portray and visually represent the vast variety of street styles within British youth culture.

This project is an exploration of the everyday, bringing the seemingly insignificant to light.

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Danny Cozens DA NN YCOZENS.CO.U K

This project focuses on young soldiers, using photography to highlight the trials that these troops put themselves through to be in the army. I am showing a theatrical and dramatic side to these individuals in their day-to-day training. The emotional and physical struggle they undergo is a key focus and a feature of their future service.

I am seeking to explore the dynamics and stricture of military life. Whether it is the traditions that are built so strongly into its foundations, the identities that sit within units or the dynamics that govern the discipline. I want to understand the respect and integrity that create the force that defends Britain.

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Alex Ingram A L E X IN GR A MPH OTO.CO M

St Davids on the Pembrokeshire coast has a population of just 1,841 and is the UK’s smallest city. This project explores the connection between people and place; the relationships people have with the landscape and the reasons for spending their lives in this distinctive, secluded place.

Through my own connection with St Davids I hope to offer a thoughtful representation of the tightly formed community where I grew up.

The project evolved from an initial conversation with my neighbour Dai Turner, about the life he has spent in St Davids and the stories he had to tell. Broadening my work to the wider community, I am in search of what connects other members of the community to the place and to explore how St Davids has impacted on their lives.

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Through the development and westernisation of Thailand’s minority groups, some people are swapping their traditional lifestyles for more modern versions; with many of the younger generation are leaving the villages to find work in the cities. With help from various charities more and more of the Karen people now have access to education, healthcare and citizenship. This means that distinctive cultural traditions are disappearing rapidly.

This portraiture and documentary project focuses on the Karen hill-tribes of Northern Thailand. The project follows a Karen family and the close community of tribes that surround them whilst exploring the modernisation of these tribes, and looking to challenge the preconceptions linked to them.

J O N AT H A N F A U L K N E R P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O . U K

Jonathan Faulkner

Isabella Tulloch I S A B E L L AT U L L O C H . C O M

One in Three is an in-depth look at how cancer affects the lives it touches.

The project is broken down into three sections; the first section looks at people who have lost loved ones to cancer, the second looks at people who have survived cancer and the final section looks at people who are currently undergoing treatment. The project is a combination of portraits, landscapes and still lives.

The subject of each image has been carefully chosen and represents one person’s experience of the disease.

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Holly Mitchell H O L LY M I T C H E L L P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O M

This project is based around a folktale of the Goddess Sabrina and how she was transformed into the River Severn. I was first introduced to this story by a group of Pagans who I had featured in a previous project. They told me of their experiences with the river and rituals that had included or been dedicated to Sabrina. They hope that by sacrificing living items, such as flowers, seeds and even blood, they will satisfy Sabrina’s destructive nature and thus avoid her danger themselves.

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Amy Johnson R O C K A B E L L .W I X .CO M / P H OTO G R A P H E R S - P O R T F O

My current practice explores cosplaying, through photographing a combination of behind the scenes craftsmanship and studio portraiture. Inspired by ideas around identity and hyper-reality I focus on a select group of cosplayers, including myself.

Through a variety of images, from selfportraits to candid studio shots, I explore the characters according to their roles and their relationship to themselves and others. I want to explore gender and how we adapt and change to better suit these roles.

The images shown are from my ‘Fantasy Worlds’ project. I created rooms and spaces from famous fairy tale novels.

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Antony Price A N T O N Y P R I C E P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O M

My project documents the people staying in backpacker’s hostels around the UK. By using portraiture and detailed interviews with the travellers I document hostel culture, and people who connect with the places they stay. It is a demographic study which seeks to reveal similarities, differences or trends in the hostel users and their personalities.

Maybe there is no pattern.

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Joelle Sayles J O E L L E - I B F K . F O R M AT. C O M

This project investigates young children’s vivid imaginations, aiming to articulate their whimsical insights on a musical pathway to jazz. Invoking visual fantasies to a musical score. I seek to orchestrate how passions can be born in innocence, and last a lifetime.

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Ewan Foster Jones E W A N J O N E S P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O . U K

HIRAETH – (n. Welsh) a word for homesickness, for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places of your past.

In 2015 my father wrote a brief memoir of his childhood, of growing up in a tiny coastal village in West Wales during World War II. His account was the inspiration for this project, which is about a sense of place, a love of the landscape, my relationship with my father and the memories we share.

Taking a phenomenological approach I aim to produce landscape photographs that convey a place that is both real and imaginary and the “hiraeth” which accompanies it. Conversations with my 88 year old father during walks through that landscape where we both grew up continue to fuel the project.

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Luca Pope L P - P H O T O G R A P H Y. N E T

This project is about Marrakesh. It is a visual attempt to understand its people and their daily lives. Morocco is not a country with which I was familiar before this visit and I wanted to depict it as directly and faithfully as possible through focusing on people at work, family life and portraits of children.

Within the city itself and in the Berber culture of the Atlas Mountains that surround it, the people of Marrakesh and their way of life are fascinating.

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Hannah Joseph H A NN A HJ OSEPH.CO.U K

This project explores the theme of ‘spirit of place.’ Thinking about the transience of space, and how it is not something static.

I considered the idea of the return.

Everyone is guilty of believing that when returning to a place linked with memory it will not have changed, but, this is not always true. We cannot simply go back and recapture the genus loci of the past in a once familiar domestic space. What might have once signified home now have a more abject resonance.

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Grace Previte G R A C E - P R E V I T E . F O R M AT. C O M

This work focuses on my interest in youth culture, the realities of social media and its affect on our modern condition. These young adults feel the need to conform and my portraits are of individuals that appear fragile once virtual and social barriers are broken down. This is a close and intimate glimpse into their personal lives.

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Fleur Batt F L E U R B AT T. C O . U K

The word ‘Anthropocene’ has been used since the 1960s by ecologists, chemists and geologists. It is the current geological age, where human activity has had the most dominant effect on the climate and environment. Our impact on the earth is a contradiction, between discovery and loss, and new problems arise as old ones subside.

My project is a personal journey looking at the environment we live in and discovering areas that have been affected and changed by humans. My work reflects that these changes may be both positive or negative in impact.

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Anjelica Catton A N J E L I C A C AT T O N P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O M

I have combined my lifelong fascination with ancient civilisations and my interest in portraiture. I have chosen six women from Greek myth and attempted to bring them to life. Their stories are exciting and dramatic so I decided to photograph my subjects using a chiaroscuro style favoured by painters, such as Caravaggio. The images will clearly express the hopes, fears and desires of these characters.

I have used location lighting to produce a theatrical atmosphere. This can be either nightmarish or dreamlike depending on the story I am portraying. I am also including minimal but significant props to act as symbolic references. Similar signifiers have been used throughout the history of story telling. Beauty, riches and power held huge significance in ancient Greek society. It was widely believed that the interference of the Gods in mortals’ lives, for better or worse, affected their fortunes. I hope to give the women in my portraits a voice in a male dominated world.

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Greg Lake-Hollingdale GR EG - L A K E.CO M

My interest in hip-hop culture and the current revival of retro brands inspired me to undertake this project. It is based on the bold colours of the nineties. Bristol’s unique culture has influenced me heavily, and through collaboration with local vintage streetware businesses in the city, I have attempted to re-capture the vibrancy of the period in my work.

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Lucy Tindall LU C Y ROSE TIN DA L L .CO M

This personal project reflects multiple identities of myself onto my subjects.

They’re not an attempt to interpret them but a reflection of my idealised response to portraiture. Instead of idealised, homogenised fashion images and traditional practices this project is about fetishising my own obsessions.

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This project allowed me to spend a year representing the strength of women.

The series portrays female monarchs from history and is inspired by modern female advocators for change. Amongst them are Empress Theodora, Emperor Wu Zetian, Queen Amina, King Nzinga, Empress Nur Jhan and Empress Mehen. I have become well acquainted with these women, past and present, through extensive research.

Their innovative ideas, the difficulties they have faced and the wonderful women they are have humbled me. I hope to reveal what they stand for and utilise their positive messages to inspire and encourage women.

C H L O E M A S S E Y P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O M

Chloe Massey

Samye Asher S A M Y E A SHER .CO M

My last project – Low Tide, was a response to the Cornish coast where I grew up, focused on the caves and rock pools that I used to explore as a child. I aimed to rekindle the energy I felt in these places and create dream-like landscapes. Locations can hold personal memories and narratives. I hope these images will spark something in the viewer’s imagination and evoke something for everyone.

My latest project builds from this work looking at the emotive qualities of different places, representing a personal response, in the form of light. In a study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh students were shown various images intended to trigger emotional responses.

The results, recorded using FMRI scans, showed consistent patterns of brain activity in relation to different emotions. My intention is to create patterns of light in the landscape based on my emotive responses to the environment. These patterns will act as metaphors for different states of being.

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Klara Foreman K L A R A FO R EM A N.CO M

My work is predominantly studio based and is influenced by my fashion background.

I plan and construct all aspects of the images I create taking pride in styling my sets and models, from designing and making garments, to styling hair and makeup.

In previous projects I have produced still life photography and have created troup l’oeil illusions with body paint.

I seek to create images with individuality and lasting impact, blurring the lines between art and fashion. My current project is based on abstracting the human form. I am creating images inspired by abstract paintings, through bold graphic composition and lighting.

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Rachel Mason R ACHEL M A SO NPH OTO.CO.U K

This project looks at people’s involvement with disability sport and focuses on depicting their love of it. I want to show people for who they are rather than identifying them by their disability. Disability awareness has always been at the heart of much of my photography and I aim to communicate stories of endurance and success: from children getting into sport to keep fit to athletes whose sport is their life. I look at intimate and collaborative aspects of sport, the moments that surround playing and the relationship between teammates and coaches. It is the dedication of each individual and a love of sport that makes the subject fascinating.

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Lucy Durling LU C Y D U R L IN G.CO.U K

My project explores new places and spaces through walking. Whilst exploring these spaces I am influenced by the conversations I have with strangers. I walk as a way of escaping from thoughts. By walking I increase my creativity because I am conscious of my surroundings and intrigued by the new and unfolding landscape before me. By listening to people talk about their passions, no matter what the subject, I am intrigued and interested and this goes forward to influence my work.

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Katie Ellis K AT H E R I N E J - P H O T O S . C O M

My work focuses on psychology and digs beneath the surface of why people think in certain ways. I am examining and seek to expose this hidden process through my photography.

My project Eva focuses on my grandmother and is a study of why she stores so many things in her home and is unable to throw them away. My project Nostalgia follows people on their journeys, revisiting old and significant early life places.

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Jasper Gibb JA SPERGIBB.CO M

My project Reminiscence explores the ideas that shaped my childhood. Looking at physical memories I break them down into what made my childhood special and memorable. By exploring colours, space and physical objects that bring my memories together I seek to create unique pieces of work that are personal to me and offer potential synergies with the imagination and recollection of the viewer.

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Katie Murt K AT I E M U R T. C O . U K

Redefine is a self-portrait project that explores the concept of identity within the home environment. After the breakup of a long-term relationship, I found myself looking for a new home and a part of myself. I had to seek to redefine the part of my identity that I had drawn from my home, the part that I had lost. By entering the homes of others and dressing myself in their clothes, a ‘trying on’ of superficial identities takes place and allows me to begin to work out what is and is not me. I redefine myself.

Jack Moran J C M O R A N P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O M

The Fosse Way was a major Roman transport road built in early 40 AD that connected Exeter to Lincoln, creating an East/West divide across England. Originally a supplyline between barracks, the road has been maintained and is now most commonly re-routed as the A38 and M5. I have been making Landscape imagery along The Fosse Way, capturing interesting and historical scenes, architecture and the road itself.

The images appropriate a topographic aesthetic as a reflection on history and place.

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Molly-Rose O’Connell Delving into the much-debated privacy issues of the 21st century, this project has allowed me to fully immerse myself in psychology, sociology and anthropology.

Through following unknowing members of the public, I create a personal attachment to them depending on my daily mood – imposing on them my own narratives and ideas without the subject’s knowledge or consent. This ethically challenging piece has allowed me to explore the amount of control the artist has over the subject, and also just how morally challenging work like this can be in order to retain the authenticity of the piece, whilst exploring social and ethical boundaries.

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Rebecca Gray R E B E C C A G R AY. F O R M AT. C O M

For this series of photographs I returned to Grimsby, the town where I grew up, to explore the places that I used to inhabit with my friends and family. I was interested in how I would view the places and people, now that I have left the area. At some point in our lives we begin to remove ourselves from the security of our childhood home.

For me it was a case of removing myself to the point where I could no longer frequent places easily. This is uncommon, especially so early in life, and has lead to an unfamiliar view of places I frequented as a child and teenager almost as an outsider.

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I wanted to explore this new feeling, and visualise how I see these places and people, through portraits and landscapes.

Revisiting the places that were once important gave me a chance to engage with the feelings they reawaken.

This project came to a natural end, or pause, and I recently moved on to working with people who volunteer – to help those in need of psychological support.

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Joe Rumsey J O E R U M S E Y. C O . U K

When working as a photographer, I strive to find beauty in everyday things, to combine truth with theatrical aesthetics.

“Ramsgate is both ordinary and extraordinary.

As you walk around you see a town centre full of independent shops, with several butchers, bakers and greengrocers as well as Waitrose, Aldi and Asda. There are oldfashioned shops that sell haberdashery locks and do repairs of all kinds.”—Ramsgate town map by Ramsgate Town Council.

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Throughout this project I have explored the importance of folklores and fairy tale as a tool for teaching children how to handle the fears, problems and questions in their lives. Using a psychoanalytical model, these early teachings could also prove to still have a subconscious impact later in life to how we react to other stories, whether real or fictional.

Inspired by mysterious creatures from various cultures’ folklores, my project brings to life my interpretation of these characters through a combination of set and costume design and fashion photography. Through the long process of constructing each costume myself, making them out of materials I find and adapt, these constructions have become personal to me, as much as a visual re-telling of mythical narratives.

R A C H A E L B O Y S P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O . U K

Rachael Boys

Betsy Seal B E T S Y S E A L P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O M

Superstitions have been culturally prevalent for centuries, and whether aware of it or not, most people use some form of superstition in their everyday life. This series of images uses the mythology of old English superstitions as a platform for playful fashion photographs.

I use a combination of hair, makeup, props and location to conjure a lyrical and surreal twist to my images.

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Danielle Allen DA NIEL L E A L L EN.CO.U K

Deep in the narrow Vestfjord valley in Norway, surrounded by steep mountains and at the foot of the mighty Gaustatoppen peak, lies the industrial town of Rjukan. It is a small and quiet community that lives in darkness for six months of each year. This unique isolation and darkness is what drew me to Rjukan.

The contrast between light and dark has always fascinated me as a photographer since these are fundamental aspects of image construction.

Solspeil means ‘sun mirrors’.

These reflectors are structured the top of one of Rjukan’s mountain walls.

They follow the sun’s path throughout the entire year using a computer program to move on two axes and are powered by solar and wind energy. They are able to capture the sun that hits the top of the mountain and direct it down into the market square, creating a small circle of light for the community to enjoy.

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Keith Hursthouse K EITHH U RS TH O USE.CO.U K

My project marks the 80th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War by revisiting the killing fields where the XV International Brigade, including its British battalion, fought Franco’s fascists on behalf of the Spanish Republic. I encounter some of the people who tread the same soil today and capture the modern world’s tenuous marks on the landscape. I wish to keep alive the memory of the British men and women who volunteered to defend democracy, people whom poet Miguel Hernández saluted with the words: ‘Around your bones, the olive groves will grow, unfolding their iron roots in the ground, embracing men universally, faithfully.’

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Aoife Littlejohn AO IFEL IT TL E J O HN.CO.U K

My project is about the high levels of anxiety I have experienced through lack of human contact. I hope these photographs can act as an antidote for this condition.

My images represent intimacy; promote self-love and self-confidence; to inspire you to be comfortable in yourself and your skin.

I am challenging the stigma around images of nude people. We shouldn’t feel awkward about being in our natural state.

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I seek to oppose the unrealistic and hackneyed image of perfection that is so often perpetuated by mainstream media and by photographing people nude I am peeling back myths that we learn from television and social media. Instead I pursue a more genuine connection and understanding of my subjects to create real images.

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India Rose IN D I A ROSEPH OTOS.CO M

‘Be’ aims to focus on encouraging casual, comfortable nakedness. Through producing appropriate images, the boundaries of peoples’ relationship to being naked can be broken down. This could potentially offer a more relaxed environment where people are at one with others and themselves.

By creating ease around this subject and through observation ‘Be’ hopes to inspire more people to be more naked.

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Karima Thomas K A R I M AT H O M A S P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O M

My new project looks at precious items, things that aren’t seen often, perhaps tucked away in an attic, stored in a cupboard or hidden in a box. The work looks at treasured objects: heirlooms, inherited objects, baby toys, clothes, teeth and other firsts. These are taken from home to home each time a person moves and never discarded. I’m interested in what it is about these things that encourage people to retain them. The images explore the owner’s relationship with their chosen item.

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This project, shot in the stores of the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, was a way for me to voice my concerns about the human insatiability for the planet’s resources.

This greed has lead to the disappearance of many species. The preserved animal bodies stand as evidence of this hubris.

“To be fully human is to be beyond human” — Blake, C. & Shakespeare, S. (2012) Beyond Human. Continuum International Publishing Group.

S Y L W I A C H O L O D Y. C O M

Sylwia Cholody The fragility of the body is something we share with animals. As well as other traits, once thought to be exclusive to humans, like empathy, culture and self-awareness.

This series is part of an on-going project that endeavours to confront the way we think about other animals and humanities place within the animal kingdom.

Teresa Hardy T E R E S A H A R D Y P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O M

This project focuses on members of the antinuclear movement in the UK. My portraits capture the dedication and determination of the individuals. When I began this project I knew little about nuclear power and weapons a subject currently under represented in the media, but this process has been an eye-opening experience for me. I have learnt about the detrimental effects that these rather covert activities have on people and the environment. I aim to shed light on a subject that I believe to presented with a bias by mainstream media.

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Becky Hardy B E C K Y H A R D Y. C O . U K

Lady Lolly Rouge is a happily married mother of two, and a burlesque dancer.

These pictures esque traditional documentary styles to focus on artistic dance. I am focusing on Lady Lolly Rouge as nothing but a burlesque dancer.

I intend the burlesque aspect to come through as much as possible in the work.

My work is a reflection of my interest in documentary practice, employing voiceovers, atmospheric sounds and the voice of Lady Lolly Rouge telling her story.

Its styling reflects a fifties aesthetic, a time when burlesque was at its most popular.

Performing a sensual burlesque routine, Lady Lolly Rouge is mixing fun and sexuality.

Grace Doyle GR ACE SUS A NN A H.CO M

My project explores notions of floriography or The Language of Flowers, a Victorian trait for attributing specific meaning to flowers.

Through still life studio imagery that employs the use of props and intervention with the flowers my work aims to convey the meanings associated with each individual bloom.

The project also explores people’s unique relationships with flowers photographing in their homes as they recount memories that give them a connection to a specific flower.

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Esther Lippett E M L - P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O M

My most recent work is an emotive reflection of the numerous countries and cultures that I have lived in whilst growing up. With each change of continent and climate, came a different set of memories.

Working from my grandfather’s archive of imagery, taken whilst visiting us, alongside my own personal memories, I have produced a series of still life images that reflect these personal impressions.

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Kelly Pinker K E L LY P I N K E R P H O T O G R A P H Y. C O . U K

My current practice focuses on asbestos.

Bringing different elements to the project it looks at a particular company who remove asbestos including details of the workers processes and techniques. It also looks at people who have been victims of asbestos and who are now dealing with life long illnesses. I researched the history of asbestos and the project documents some original asbestos factories. These different perspectives bring together an environmental, documentary and portrait project that looks in depth into asbestos as the quintessential man-made environmental disaster.

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Design Jack Wells jackwells.co Yee Poon yeepoon.co.uk Cover images by Sylwia Cholody opusphoto.co.uk Copyright 2016 University of the West of England The copyright of the individual photographs in this book remains with the photographer unless otherwise shown.

The compilation of the photographs remains copyright of UWE. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, including photographing, recording or otherwise without the prior permission in writing from the copyright holder(s).

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