Anne Clements

Anne Clements

Dragana Lazici

Dragana Lazici

Femke Boermans

Femke Boermans

Frankie Sinclair

Frankie Sinclair

Holly Revell

Holly Revell

Lucia Hrda

Lucia Hrda

Luke Mclelland Smith

Luke Mclelland Smith

Chris Moxey

Nigel Jarvis

Ray Malcolm

Ray Malcolm

Simone Fisher

Jenny Burrows

Fiona Saunders

Fiona Saunders

Images submitted to the CLOSER ISSUE, Spring 2013

by Agata Cardoso

I am a passionate maker of the photographic image. Using traditional practice, a black and white roll of film and my Bronica SQA have been my permanent companions for the last eight years. Together they allow me to express myself through the medium of lens-based art. My subject matter is primarily the body, the damaged body, the unusual, the unacceptable, the strange and alluring; in conjunction with my dreams and nightmares, my work is of a distressed darkness. It is at times difficult for the viewer to accept – my imagery has been embraced, rejected, censored, met with repulsion, but also with love and compassion.

There are three specific stages to my practice where there is opportunity to express myself, where the unconscious internal self can develop my ideas freely: the concept, which is usually constructed weeks before, then the processing of the latent image and the final print production. It is the post production of the initial concept that I prefer working on the most, the development and printing, the wet processes. It is during these stages that I create illusions with the film, and with playing with the emulsion I am constantly researching ways in which the image behaves during the phase of development.

I distress my imagery, burn the film, melt the emulsion, freeze it, scratch it and use many other means. They become part of me and are final pieces in themselves, but I continue to work on this ‘distress’- to research and develop these techniques. This creates one-off artefacts. Often being unable to recreate what you have made is what makes this formula so interesting. I move away from perfection of the perfect technical print, the beautiful, perfect, spotless photograph. Away from what is acceptable.
My practice has been a source of sanity replacing insanity. Photography allows me a certain type of self-expression in times of need. I have used photography as a therapeutic tool, and it remains a form of expression for me that keeps alive an internal truth; my ideals expressed outwardly.

www.agatacardoso.co.uk

On the theme of CLOSER, Spring 2013

Having embarked on several photographic road trips across the back roads of America, spanning several years and taking in many rural towns, I received some simple advice some time later – why don’t I try something nearer to home? I also remember hearing photographers say this; that you cannot call yourself a photographer until you have photographed your own back yard. Worthy of debate perhaps, but I did exactly that. I photographed closer to home.

As I commuted from my country town to work in the city 35-40 miles away, the answer to my next project was literally staring me in the face, as the changing landscape revealed itself through the train windows.

Finding it difficult to read anything during my commute due to being constantly distracted by things I could photograph (do other photographers find themselves doing this?), I started to consider the implications of walking through the landscape the train travels through, from my hometown, through countryscapes, villages, other towns, the edge of the city and finally the city itself. Some of this is familiar subject matter of course, particularly the edge of cities and the familiar ‘empty’ landscape, but other mini-themes started to emerge within the whole, allowing me to group these together as I embarked on my physical challenge of crossing this landscape.

I found myself questioning our perceptions of public and private space, while negotiating the physical obstacles that lie in my path whether dense woods and undergrowth, waterlogged areas, keep out signs, high walls, construction sites, etc. Some obstacles will thwart you of course, and I found myself forced to take considerable detours away from the edge of the railway, but all of this is intertwined with the question of who has the right to own an area of land that is defined as ‘private’, and the rights of anyone to walk across that land.

I have backed this approach with some images shot through the train windows, to gain views not available to me walking at ground level. I hope this strengthens the idea of travelling, of the commute to work, and the images flashing by commuters in varying states of alertness as the train rumbles along.

This is an ongoing project begun a few years back. I’m looking to find a natural end point, but where this is I don’t yet know, especially as this landscape keeps changing, most noticeably in the city but also almost imperceptibly in country areas too. In the end, what I am aiming for is a photographic document of the changing country-to-city landscape, as defined loosely by the route the railway takes.

On the theme of CLOSER, Spring 2013

For me, beds have always been transitory, impermanent commodities. By the time I was thirteen, I had been made to move house around a dozen times. Considering all the preceding sleepovers and family visits, the subsequent summer camps, house parties, festivals, changes of residence, travelling – and my shamelessly promiscuous twenties- I tentatively estimate the bed tally in the region of three hundred or so. A vast majority of them and their stories have faded but by recording them now, I am finally able attach life’s little sticky notes along the way, turn to look back and not forget. By photographing the beds I make them mine, however fleeting the time slept in them may have been.

www.susannasuovalkama.com

Excerpt from a printed ‘My Way’ feature on the theme of CLOSER, Spring 2013

A camera around my neck renders me immediately alert and meticulously attentive to my physical surroundings. The myriad inter-relationships between forms, materials, space and light become an endless source of intrigue and fascination. Certain arrangements of objects or materials seem to attract my eye and I feel compelled to move in closer.

Other portfolios contain close-up work of glass surfaces and fencing, the selection presented here hones in on materials that struck me with their varying textures, tactility and a language of form that eludes straight forward analytical categorisation or interpretation.

The act of photographing what presents itself before me is a form of recognition and acknowledgement of the wondrously familiar and yet strange world I live in. As the photograph comes into being, following a considered and some times drawn out dialogue, photography also becomes a way of ‘amplifying’ (to use Meyerowitz’s notion) what had originally been ‘there’. Partaking and observing how a fragment of three dimensional reality stripped from its context metamorphoses into a two-dimensional object that is a photograph strikes me as an extraordinary privilege.

Photographs are so misleading. They have about them this aura of being an objective document of something ‘captured’ at a particular moment and in a particular place, and yet they remain essentially ambiguous and slippery in meaning. Show any photograph to a group of people and they will elicit different associations, interpretations and emotional responses in each one of them.

To me a successful photograph is one that works with and not against this inherent ambiguity; one which invites us to return to it again and again, to ask questions, to reflect on its peculiar attraction and possible meanings. I try my best to do this great medium justice by creating photographs that make us look closer not only at the world around us but also into ourselves; to ponder over the associations, the particular memories and emotions that with little means they have so manifestly been able to evoke.

www.stima-images.com

On the theme of CLOSER, Spring 2013

Routes Extra

view from above

dreaming of distant lands whenever i look up to the skies

at the car wash

Grosser Hundstod (Big Dog's Death)

Funtensee

Chloride Town

Roy's Amboy, Route 66, #1

Amargosa Opera House, Death Valley Junction

Las Vegas

Red route of King's Cross

Route to the top

ceremonia del olvido

Clear ahead

Green and Blue

Guidance

On route to Totnes

Get your kicks

Easy Rider

Burning Up

Images submitted to the ROUTES ISSUE, Winter 2012/13

Games Extra

Woolwich Common - Olympic Shooting Venue

Woolwich Common - Olympic Shooting Venue

The moment when inner games stop

Lauren, East London Disability Swimming Group

Taking Part

Curling at Tottenham Hotspur Foundation (an Image 17 project, commissioned by LBWF)

Multi-Sport Summer Games at Waltham Forest Pool & Track (an Image 17 project, commissioned by LBWF)

Ladies of the desert

If I had a hammer

Mind games

Mind games

Mind games

Transient productions

Transient productions

Transient productions

London 2012 Olympics Sports Area, Ponders End Park

Lea Valley Athletics Centre

Football Focus

Ganges Cricket

LimbPower- Amputee Games

from the series The Flirt

Screens

Out - No Tickets

No Tickets - Meet Friends

No Tickets - ...

Images submitted to the GAMES ISSUE, Summer 2012

These images were inspired by film noir detective stories like The Big Combo and Panic in the Streets. I was trying to reproduce the noir world feeling of virtuoso contrasts between light and shadow. The aim was to show the assymetry, angularity, verticality and the high angles which are important compositional elements for noir thrillers. I chose the locations because stairs and staircases in noir create images of entrapment and anticipate moments of doom. I experimented with text to bring out the detective story element.

The idea to use hand written text across the photos was inspired by a Dutch conceptual artist called Bas Jan Ader living in California. He did a black and white photographic series called ‘In Search of the Miraculous’ in 1973. Bas Jan Ader had himself photographed during a lonely night time walk from the hills of Los Angeles down to the sea. He wrote lines from a song ‘I’ve been Searching’ across a series of nine photos. He drowned at sea in 1975 continuing the final part of his conceptual voyage ‘In search of the Miraculous’ by yacht and has become a cult figure.

www.anneclements.com

On the theme of INCOGNITO, Spring 2012

In the Midst of Life by Ingrid Newton

In the Midst of Life by Ingrid Newton

In the Midst of Life by Ingrid Newton

In the Midst of Life by Ingrid Newton

In the Midst of Life by Ingrid Newton

In the Midst of Life by Ingrid Newton

In the Midst of Life by Ingrid Newton

The faded images, fragments of broken headstones and illegible inscriptions in these photographs – anonymous, unidentified, incognito – bear witness to the transience of memory and of all human life. Defaced, smashed photographs stare out blindly at the world; the face of an unknown beauty reminds us of our mortality; newly erected memorials await their unnamed occupants; once carefully tended graves now lie forgotten or covered with weeds. We may read the names, dates and loving tributes but we can never know anything of the lives they represent – the dead are the true incognito.

These images are part of an ongoing, long-term project I have been working on over the past year. Entitled In the Midst of Life, the series explores memorial customs and rituals, revealing our attitudes towards death and the notion of oblivion.

www.ingridnewton.co.uk

On the theme of INCOGNITO, Spring 2012

Send in the Clowns by Nigel Tradewell

Send in the Clowns by Nigel Tradewell

Send in the Clowns by Nigel Tradewell

Send in the Clowns by Nigel Tradewell

Send in the Clowns by Nigel Tradewell

Send in the Clowns by Nigel Tradewell

Send in the Clowns by Nigel Tradewell

As part of my ongoing project to capture images of ‘Weird England’ I have researched many of the often little known and esoteric rituals that take place across the country; from the PadstoweObby Oss to the Knaresborough bed race. These traditions are often unseen & overlooked. The Clown Service is a perfect example of these unsung traditions that happen under our noses.

Taking place at Holy Trinity church in Dalston, East London, on the first Sunday in February each year, the service brings together entertainers from across the world to attend the Joseph Grimaldi memorial service.

A church full of clowns is a photographic opportunity just too good to miss. The real magic, though, takes place outside on the street, where impromptu performances from mime to unicyling take place. For a street photographer like myself, who is used to snatching images of people on the move, it was a unique pleasure to be in an environment where people want to exhibit themselves for the camera.

For me there is something resonant about seeing a clown out of his or her traditional context and these were the images I enjoyed the most. I hope you do too.

www.nigeltradewell.com

On the theme of INCOGNITO, Spring 2012