Flash, bang, wallop, what a picture

I visited Lewes Bonfire about 15 years ago when I paraded with a drumming band. The experience was mixed - I was slightly traumatised at having to step over exploding bangers all night but totally enthralled by the fiery visions that etched themselves into my brain. This year, not encumbered by the commute from London, I vowed to return with a camera. With all trains cancelled an attempt to keep the numbers down, I decided to cycle the 9 miles with my friend and accomplished photographer Kevin Meredith. We got there early and positioned ourselves at the bottom of the High Street, just beating the scrum of press photographers. It was obviously the spot to be for an establishing shot. The first procession was led by 17 people carrying burning crosses. An unnerving sight, this commemorates the 17 protestants who burned at the stake in 1555.

Unlike the newspaper guys, we didn’t have to rush off to the next job and it was later in the evening that the pictures became really interesting. We headed up the hill through back streets and twitterns (the local name for alleyways) and emerged in the middle of a huge procession. At points I was able to get in the middle of the street and recapture some of the views I had all those years ago. 

Lewes is the daddy of all Sussex Bonfires, and has been dubbed the bonfire capital of the world. As well as the 7 local bonfire societies 25 to 30 societies from East and West Sussex come to parade here, dressed as Tudors, Suffragettes, Zulus, Native Americans, Priests and First World War soldiers. Six parades end up at different bonfires around the town, with much competition between them about how big they can be made. We finished the night at the Waterloo bonfire which burnt so huge and with such intensity that a mini tornado started next to it. 

Going to Lewes will ruin your local firework display at the recreation centre forever but it’s totally worth it.

You can see more of my pictures here.

From the bookshelf: Klaus Pichler - 'Dust'

I've worked with many photographers who sell themselves on being able to make the ordinary look extraordinary, or as we used to say, "a pile of shit but beautifully lit". Klaus Plchler has taken this to the next level. For 2 years he painstakingly collected samples of dust, fluff and grime from various locations around his home in Vienna and photographed them in minute detail.

There is much humour in his choice of locations, everything from Vienna's rival football clubs to police stations and swinger clubs. Together they create a cross section of society, a typology of dust, in it's various shapes and forms. 

The resulting book has the same painstaking attention to detail - rough felt boards, flocked title and great printing makes an overall wonderful and more than unique book - there’s a lot of filth and dirt in the art-world, but Klaus manages to make art out of dirt.

You can read more and order the book here 

Dust #86 : Soccer Club's Fanstore No.2
©Klaus Pichler

Dust #87: Natural History Museum No.2
©Klaus Pichler

Dust #08: Tailor No.1
©Klaus Pichler

Dust #37: Ethno Fashion Store
©Klaus Pichler

Dust #86: Fine Art Photo Gallery
©Klaus Pichler

Dust #82: Police Station
©Klaus Pichler

From the bookshelf: Alex Webb - 'The Suffering of light'

I was first introduced to Alex Webb's work a few years back by Matt Stuart, now a Magnum photographer himself. Matt, a legendary street photographer, is incredibly generous with his knowledge and while we worked together on campaigns for Bank of Scotland he opened my eyes to a whole range of street photographers. For colour work, Webb is my favourite.

The genre, "street photography" doesn't really sum up his work, it could be photo journalism or fine art, but as Webb is quoted as saying, "to me it is all photography". His compositions are complex, something you might expect from a classical painter but these pictures are all taken on the fly with no interaction with the subjects. You can lose yourself in his pictures as your eyes dart around the multiple figures. He is recognised as a pioneer of American colour photography and his search for the intense colour and light that characterises his work led him to extensively shoot in Haiti and Mexico. 

The Suffering of Light is a collection of work taken from Webb's 30 year career. You can see more pictures an order the book here.

MEXICO. Oaxaca state. Tehuantepec. 1985. Children playing in a courtyard. 
© Alex Webb/Magnum Photos

USA. San Ysidro, California. 1979. Mexicans arrested while trying to cross the border to United States.
© Alex Webb/Magnum Photos

HAITI. Cite Soleil. 1986.
© Alex Webb/Magnum Photos

HAITI. Port-au-Prince. 1987. A memorial for victims of army violence.
© Alex Webb/Magnum Photos

MEXICO. Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. 1996.
© Alex Webb/Magnum Photos

10 years of Pride Portraits

As a Brighton photographer, taking photos at Pride each year is an absolute must. What I find the most visually rewarding in this celebration of our city’s diverse community are the drag queens and costumed paraders. Pride is a real fun event and though people go to great lengths to create their costumes, none of them take themselves too seriously. Since 2009 I’ve been shooting individual portraits and through experience I’ve found that the hour before the parade starts when everyone is buzzing with anticipation is perfect for me. 

With my background in advertising art direction I’m more comfortable working to a brief so even on my personal photographic projects I like to set myself limitations to work within. Each year I use the same medium format film camera, a fixed lens 1961 Minolta Autocord loaded with the same Fuji portrait film. This has helped give my shots a consistent look across the years. As people are generally trying to get to their start points and organise themselves, I limit myself to I shoot one frame for each subject before moving on

Using an old camera is a great conversation starter, it’s visually unusual compared to the digital SLR’s most people are using. It has two lenses, a viewing lens and a taking lens, and to focus you need to look down into the glass viewfinder. It’s not as fast to use as a digital but people seem to appreciate the extra effort that goes into making the picture. An added advantage of the top mounted viewfinder is that I naturally shoot from lower down. This viewpoint gives my subjects a statuesque appearance and also gives me a greater chance of getting a cleaner frame of clear sky behind them.

Brighton Pride is the UK's biggest and attracts hundreds of thousands of people to the city every year. My individual portraits can only give you the tiniest taste of what a great celebration it is. If you get the chance, do come and join in. 

From the bookshelf: Rachael Talibart - 'Sirens'.

If you haven't heard of Rachael Talibart, you will. She was named as one of 'the best outdoor photographers working in the UK today', a 'landscape master' Outdoor Photography Magazine June 2016. And with her new book "Sirens", she has gone from strength to strength with reviews in This is Colossal and Creative Boom following her being awarded Black & White Photographer of the Year 2018.

Rachael appears to have as much energy as the storms she photographs, she is owner of f11 Workshops, providing photography day workshops in the South of England and runs residential photography workshops for international, fine art photography business, Ocean Capture. Rachael is in demand as a public speaker and writes for photography magazines. 

Brought upon the south coast of England and spending much of her childhood at sea, it's no surprise that the ocean plays such a big part in her work. Inspired by The Odyssey, her series of storm waves captured off the English coast are named after mythological gods and sea monsters. 

Rachael will be holding a solo show at Brighton Photography Gallery in September.

To read and see more, and to buy her book, follow this link.
 

Gemini ©Rachael Talibart 2018

Medusa ©Rachael Talibart 2018

Namazu ©Rachael Talibart 2018

Niobe ©Rachael Talibart 2018

Raptor ©Rachael Talibart 2018

Brighton Horizons

I’ve been closing one eye and lining up things out of windows for as long as I can remember. With this series, I’ve made repeat visits to a spot by the West Pier where the poles line up with the horizon.

One of the joys of living in Brighton is staring out to sea. The coastline in this part of East Sussex is fairly featureless, not far off from being a straight line. But if you stand on the seafront and look out, you get almost 180 degrees of uninterrupted horizon. It’s like standing on the edge of the world, with limitless possibilities just out of sight. 

My Horizons project started with a chance purchase of an oversized tripod - the smaller one I had originally ordered was out of stock and this model was a bargain. The ability to look at things from just a few feet higher appealed to me - I could take photos of familiar scenes but with a slightly different viewpoint. 

Walking onto the beach with my tripod one day I saw that I could line up the rusting West Pier poles with the horizon, which helped define the horizon even further, whilst almost splitting the frame into two separate images. It’s a composition that I found immediately rewarding, probably because it jarred a little bit.

I have a rather dogged approach to personal photography projects, once
I start one I find it hard to let go. This was no different, I wanted to explore how this view would look at different times of day and night, in the various extremes of weather. 

To mark my shooting position I placed a discarded yellow plastic golf tee on the pebbles. The tee stayed there for a couple of months, so it must have been before beach cleaning started in earnest. Now the tee has gone, I measure out set paces across the beach like a pirate looking for treasure on a map. 

So if you’re ever wandering by the West Pier and see a photographer with one eye closed, teetering on tiptoes beneath a huge tripod, you’ll know it’s me.

Travels with a Trolley

One of the great bonuses of being my own boss is having the chance to devote time to projects that excite my imagination. Recently I've been collaborating with artist, Louise McCurdy of Dirty Beach, who as a group create contemporary, provocative and witty work that reacts to social and environmental challenges of plastics and throwaway culture.

Louise recently unearthed a rusty shopping trolley buried on a pebble beach near Brighton and we've decided to take it on a shopping trip, full of plastic waste to help highlight that every plastic item any one of us has ever bought, still exists, in one form or another. Plastic lasts forever, and can never be assimilated into the environment without causing irrevocable harmful effects.

For a trolley with no wheels, it has plenty of mileage. I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes us next. 

Meet the neighbours

Two years ago I was made redundant from the large advertising agency I'd been working at for the previous 14 years. It wasn't a surprise, clients had been leaving the building in droves as they took their work in house or to smaller and therefor cheaper agencies. Redundancy was also something I'd been holding out for. I'd wanted to make a new start as a photographer for a while and I knew that the pay off would help cushion that move.

I'm lucky enough to live in a basement flat in Brunswick Square, on the seafront in Brighton (Hove actually). Its a stunning Regency development of Grade 1 listed, stucco fronted buildings, all of which are painted in a shade of yellow known as Hove Cream. With a cursory glance, you'd think the buildings were identical but the frontages were designed in groups of three or four, with subtle changes between them all. 

Having lived a commuter's life for all my time living here, I hadn't had the chance to meet many of my neighbours. Now I was working from home, I wanted to remedy that. I was brought up in villages and I had romantic notions of being able to say hello to everyone I met. 

Piggybacking on a Facebook group that had been set up for the Square, I sent a call out for a new portrait project using a picture of David Hockney's "Mr and Mrs Clark with Percy" as visual reference. Three people initially responded and as I posted pictures back on the Facebook group, more people quickly got involved.

I've now shot 35 portraits in the series, made many friends and picked up a few commissions on the way. There are roughly 350 flats in the square so although my dream of being able to say hello to everyone is a long way off, I certainly feel like I belong here. 

Jen and Steve 

Shane and Carolyn

Cathal and Doreen

Penny

George, Yves and Carissa

From the bookshelf: Victoria J Dean - 'The Illusion of Purpose'

This beautiful and mysterious new book from Victoria J Dean is published by Another Place Press, a champion of contemporary landscapes. 

She offers no explanation of what these imposing structures are, or what their purpose might have been, instead leaving it to our imagination. This project was singled out by the jury of Lens Culture's Emerging Talent Awards 2017.

"Technology is restructuring our communication methods, transforming our perceptions and interactions with our environment, and rendering the physical realm comparatively cumbersome and slow. Disconnected from the modern digital world, these material structures and the systems in which they once functioned are obsolete. With the simplicity and directness of a symbolic form, each structure withholds its message, alluding to a relic from a forgotten language.

The Illusion of Purpose explores ideas of materiality, monumentality and the sculptural, questioning the relevance of the physical in our increasingly virtual age, and in a world of communication hijacked by technology."

Untitled II (The Illusion of Purpose), 2017 © Victoria J. Dean

Untitled V (The Illusion of Purpose), 2017 © Victoria J. Dean

Untitled IV (The Illusion of Purpose), 2017 © Victoria J. Dean

Untitled VIII (The Illusion of Purpose), 2017 © Victoria J. Dean

Free content vs free publicity.

Yesterday, I was very happy to have the Observer newspaper publish a picture of mine - lightning striking the West Pier. Last week they had called out for photos under the theme of "Storm" for the reader's photos section in their News Review.

There was no money involved, which led to a couple of my photographic friends to question the morality of giving out images for nothing. It's a question that has been keeping photography online forums in hot debate for years now. Photographers are losing out as newspapers find cheaper ways to illustrate stories and fill their pages. 

Having recently switched from working in a long career in advertising, I am well aware of how clients' decreasing budgets have affected both agencies and magazines. But as a fledgling photography business I need to get my pictures out there by every means possible. Even at the risk of shooting myself in the foot.

The Anti-War Photographer - Philip Jones Griffiths

An exhibition at London's TJ Boulting marks the 10 year anniversary of Magnum photographer, Philip Jones Griffith's death with two bodies of work; his coverage of the Vietnam War and his pictures of Britain taken between 1950 – 1970.

Born in Wales under the shadow of English castles, Philip Jones Griffiths held a lifelong affinity with the underdog. This is most evident in his coverage of the war in Vietnam, a country he grew to love and return to throughout his life.  Upon setting foot on Vietnamese soil for the first time, he remarked  "I found my village in Wales. In a Welsh village you're taught to keep quiet, to keep your eyes open, to listen, and not to give too much away. I felt that this was the ethic that the Vietnamese themselves lived by. I was fascinated by the fact that the most powerful nation on earth – with a military might never before seen – was being regularly hoodwinked by rice farmers."

The Magnum photographer who always hated being called a ‘war photographer', wasn't interested in macho action shots, he was interested in normal people and how war affected lives. He often turned away from the obvious, spending days waiting on his balcony to catch a Vietnamese woman pickpocketing an American GI, other images are “infused with his wry sense of humour”, such as his image of a soldier chatting with a young girl in rural Vietnam. His photos of Vietnamese conflict, first published in the acclaimed Vietnam INC (1971), were credited with helping shift public perception of the Vietnam war – particularly in the US. Speaking of the work years later, Noam Chomsky said: “If anybody in Washington had read that book, we wouldn’t have had these wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

His shots of Britain – drawn from 2008 publication Recollections – demonstrate Griffiths’ unparalleled ability as a poignant documenter of place and time. While the two bodies of works displayed are contrasting in their subject matter, they remain united through his unique curiosity in people and a belief in the power of visual storytelling. 

At the start of Griffith's photography career, Dennis Hackett of the Observer,  gave him valuable advice. "He said look, remember, who, what, why, where, when. Those are the five W's you've got to get right every time when you take a picture. That's what I want to see when I look at a picture. And the more I thought about it, I thought, you know, all of them are standard, but the one in the middle, the why, that is the one that interests me. Why. Call it simple curiosity; call it a search for the truth, call it whatever - but it's the Why, the middle W, that counted."

Philip Jones Griffiths – Ten Year Anniversary Exhibition is on show from 19 March-21 April 2018 at TJ Boulting.
Philip Jones Griffiths: Icons will run from 5 June-27 July 2018 at the Magnum Print Room. 

U.S. Marine Sharing Cigarettes, 1967 © Philip Jones Griffiths / Magnum Photos

Refugee from U.S. Bombing, Saigon, 1968 © Philip Jones Griffiths / Magnum Photos

Soldier with Bullet-proof Shield, Northern Ireland, 1973 © Philip Jones Griffiths / Magnum Photos

Boy Destroying Piano, Wales, 1961 © Philip Jones Griffiths / Magnum Photos

Heart Murmurs

On winter evenings in Brighton, the starlings gather on the seafront and put on a free display as the sun goes down. I go as often as I can and wait for the moments when they get spooked and suddenly twist and turn in the sky, making beautiful abstract patterns. 

For a photographer, it's a great daily workout. It pushes both the camera and the photographer to extremes. The point where the starling's performance is at its greatest is just before they roost, which is also just as the light is failing. To capture a sharp image takes constant tweaking of aperture, shutter speed and ISO and in the half light, you can't rely upon autofocus. It's also generally freezing cold so you're making all of your fine adjustments with numb fingers. 

If you're planning on shooting them, the starlings normally appear in October and disappear suddenly at the beginning of March. Shows begin 15 minutes before sunset and carry on for 30 to 40 minutes. And if you want to avoid the thousands of other photographers, take the afternoon off work and come on a weekday.

You can see more of my Murmuration pictures here.

From the bookshelf: Jean Pagliuso - 'Poultry Suite'

For nearly three decades, California photographer Jean Pagliuso has directed her camera at Hollywood film stars and fashion models. But most recently she has been training her lens on a far more personal subject. Inspired by her childhood, where she helped her father breed and show prize bantams, Pagliuso has created 'portraits' of exotic chicken breeds with equally exotic name like Sebrights and Spangled Hamburgs. Shot against a plain background in her New York studio, these formal pictures emphasize the plumage, stance, form, and countenance of each bird. She's gone back to her roots in the printing process too - each photo is shot on film and printed by hand using silver gelatin painted onto Thai Mulberry paper. 

You can see more of the images and order the book here.

All images ©Jean Pagliuso

Plastic explosives.

As a graphic representation of the vast amount of trash hidden beneath the surfaces of our oceans, photographic artist Mandy Barker creates collages from plastic salvaged from beaches around the world. For her project "Soup", each piece is photographed separately in her London studio before being painstakingly Photoshopped together. Each artwork can take years to produce. Both eerie and beautiful, her images draw you in before disturbingly reminding you how we are destroying our marine environments. You can see more of her work here. 

Artist Statement

"The aim of my work is to engage with and stimulate an emotional response in the viewer by combining a contradiction between initial aesthetic attraction along with the subsequent message of awareness. The research process is a vital part of my development as the images I make are based on scientific fact which is essential to the integrity of my work. The impact of oceanic waste is an area I am committed to pursuing through visual interpretation and in collaboration with science, hoping it will ultimately lead to positive action in tackling this increasing environmental problem which of current global concern".
 

All images ©Mandy Barker

Brighton beach, Vienna.

Last year, I was approached to create a backdrop for the Vienna State Opera's production of Handel's Ariodante by the set and costume designer, Vicki Mortimer.

The brief was simple, she wanted a cloudy sky with a thin strip of sea and pebbled beach. I live two minutes away from Brighton seafront so that was relatively easy. The challenging part was the technical specifications. The image was to be printed at 19x12 metres requiring a 640 megapixel image.  

I generally shoot on a Nikon D800 which has, for most jobs, an oversized 36 megapixel sensor. The only camera that could get even close to creating an image large enough is currently sitting in an observatory and pointing into deep space. The answer had to be stitching. 

To get photographs that blend together involves locking the focus, white balance, shutter speed and aperture and sweeping the camera across the scene taking images with a large amount of overlap. It's like a seamless version of what David Hockney did with his polaroid camera in the early 80's. After much experimenting with different set-ups, I worked out that for this gigapixel image, I needed 6 rows of 11 shots. 

Finding a sky that works at this scale provides its own difficulties, you can't use the viewfinder for framing when it only covers a sixtieth of the shot. With practise I could work out two points on the horizon that would mark the extremes and visualise it from there. 

I ended up creating 10 different version, clouds being such a subjective thing but I was very pleased when they chose this one, even though it was the second one I made.

This is the sort of job I relish with lots of both aesthetic and technical problems to work out. And scale-wise at least, I don't think I'll ever be able to beat it.

Credits: Vicki Mortimer

Credit: Vicki Mortimer

Credits: Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Poehn

Credits: Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Poehn

The World's Most Expensive? Me?

Working from her kitchen table in Hove, Rachelle Fawcett creates beautiful clothes for pets. Using that same table, a length of purple velvet and one studio flash, I photographed her exclusive range of canine couture for her new website.

The Peacock gown pictured above is made from the finest silk satin and has over 40,000 hand applied Swarovski Element crystals. Retailing at £40,000, it caught the interest of Boomerang TV, makers of "The World's Most Expensive Presents".

They asked if they could film me photographing the dress and the resulting images were used by Channel 4 across national press to publicise the programme. You can see more of the images here, or if you're a subscriber, they also feature in the January issue of Billionaire magazine.

If you'd like to make a big noise with a small budget (with or without a small dog) please get in touch. 

Welsh Rabbit with Egg.

Having seen my Sleepwalking series, where I blur night and day as I follow the moonlit exploits of a pyjama clad figure, Brighton agency Propellernet commissioned me to help add a surreal twist to Hotel Chocolat's Easter egg hunt.

With fixed shoot dates that didn't fall anywhere near my default surreal lighting, the full moon, I had to find a different approach. The timings were also tight - we had to squeeze 6 locations with hundreds of miles of West Country and Welsh lanes between them into 3 days.

After a few days experimenting we decided to shoot an hour before the sun came up and an hour after the sun went down. Add to this Beau Bunny, the suavely dressed rabbit and a 2 metre egg floating on a jet of air (created by Guineapig) and getting a surreal look wasn't a problem.

The shoot was fuelled by adrenalin and quality chocolate and was my first major commission as a commercial photographer. It will be a hard one to beat.

The Agoraphobic Traveller.

Jacqui Kenny suffers from agoraphobia, an anxiety disorder which leaves her with an irrational fear of busy, public areas. It was this condition which spurred her photography project, the Agoraphobic Traveller. 

From her flat in London she has created an archive of over 27,000 images, screen grabbed from Google Street View, documenting her virtual travels through rural towns in countries like Chile, Mongolia and Senegal. She's managed to maintain a visual aesthetic by picking countries close to the equator with the strong shadows and angular shadows that she loves.

Amongst her Instagram feed, Streetview Portraits, there are beautifully curated groups of shots such as dust clouds behind the Google car, roadside cacti and cars under dust covers.

Ironically, the interest in her project led to her having an exhibition on Manhattan's Lower East Side which meant her overcoming her worst fear, flying.

Concept and curation by Jacqui Kenny. Imagery @2017 Google

From the bookshelf: Brian Griffin - 'POP'

'POP' charts Brian Griffin's early career shooting album covers, single sleeves and poster and press shots for bands and musicians from the late 70's to the early 90's, which were my formative years both visually and musically. The 160 record covers in the book are a visual chronicle of New Wave, Post-Punk and the New Romantics.

Punctuating the photos and covers is a conversation between Griffin and author Terry Rawlings, with insightful and humorous stories behind the images that help bring them to life.

Working on low budgets in a time before Photoshop his work was highly experimental and show off both his visual and technical creativity. 

I was lucky to work with Brian on a TV commercial in the early 1990's, just after he'd turned his back on photography and moved into film. Although he had success with moving images, the world of photography is much richer with his return.

You can read more and order 'POP' here.