I’ve spent today binding the two copies of my book for my final project submission, Saltlands. Eight images from this project have been submitted to Source Magazine’s Graduate Photography Online - 2019 - Source’s online showcase for photographers graduating from university and art college based photography courses. Bath Spa’s submission this year features the work of 15 photography students graduating this year. Looking at the entries online, our year has a very strong entry - we’ve come a long way during our three year journey.
FORM Graduate Exhibition June 2019
Alongside our project work, we’ve been preparing for our Graduate exhibition which is being held the last week in June at the Candid Arts Trust in Islington. There are around 25 of us who will be exhibiting work selected from our final two projects.
It’s been a massive commitment - not least in terms of finance with London venues costing £5k to £10k for a week - but we’ve managed to raise the money we need through fundraising events and also a fundraising page on Facebook to which family and friends of the students exhibiting have generously donated. I’m so impressed by the way everyone has worked so hard to pull this together, and achieved what seemed to be an impossible task at the beginning.
It’s always a real treat to visit exhibitions and enjoy seeing people’s work, but I think we often overlook the sheer hard work, meticulous planning and expense that goes into exhibiting.
The next major task is preparing our work. The stipulation of the gallery is that work is professionally presented, either framed, or mounted. The curation team have been steadily gaining experience through our earlier exhibitions, and it will be really exciting to see our exhibition come to fruition.
Guest Lecture - Chris Hoare
Chris Hoare is a young photographer currently working on a project based around Bedminster in Bristol, and studying for an MA at UWE. The inspiration for this project is a character from Bedminster who died going over Niagra Falls. He described his project as a slow documentary project about an area - an area with an interesting history, based around tobacco and paper - but which is now undergoing a process of gentrification.
Chris studied photography at Falmouth, and his book ‘Dreamers’ is the product of a second year project. Chris ‘semi’ self-published this book - a fly on the wall documentary of the current music scene in Bristol - printing 250 copies with an exhibition launch. He is currently working part-time at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol.
His advice to us was clear - keep making images, practice, stay sharp with your camera, and keep making work from love/passion. He says he wishes he had assisted a little bit more on graduating. His jobs have been varied - such as working in Aldi, and for Deliveroo - and that we need to do whatever work we can to sustain ourselves and allow us to keep working on our projects. He stressed the importance of networking and keeping in touch with fellow graduates. Chris sets aside one day a week when he can go and make work!! Some sound advice, and reinforcing the messages we have been receiving from other photographers.
Chris has just been shortlisted for the Palm Photo Prize, and looking at his website I see that he has listed this lecture in his CV - reinforcing James’ guidance on writing our CVs to keep adding and building them. Chris is another example of how organised and structured perseverance in promoting yourself as a photographer is essential to success - work hard, keep making work, exhibit, enter competitions and awards.
Guest Lecture - Vanessa Winship
To be able to have an opportunity to show and talk about my work with such a brilliant and successful photographer as Vanessa was amazing - and not just Vanessa, but also her partner, the photographer George Georgiou. The advice and direction they offered to us was really helpful.
For me, this workshop came at the right time - a time when I was struggling with the relationship between portrait and landscape within my project. Her advice was to follow my gut instincts in my project development - advice which I took and which proved invaluable - allowing me to move my project forward.
After our workshop we listened to Vanessa talking about her work, and in particular ‘She Dances on Jackson’, made between 2011 and 2012 travelling across America, and launched at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris in 2013, who’s award made this work possible. Incidentally, Vanessa was the first woman to have received the award.
The book is a series of portraits and landscapes - black and white large format - the output of a contemporary American road trip, described as the ruins of the American dream - a really impressive body of work that showcases her outstanding talent as a photographer. George travelled with Vanessa on this working trip - and it was surprising (and comforting for those of us who are also reticent about talking to strangers) to hear her say that she was not very confident in approaching people to ask if she could photograph them. Instead, when she spotted someone she wanted to photograph, she would get George to go up and talk to them and make the arrangements. A great team! We all need a George…….
Photographer's Gallery - Jessica Fairbrother
The Photographer’s Gallery is one of my regular haunts where there is always something interesting to see (and a great bookshop). This weekend I visited Jessica Fairbrother’s exhibition, ‘Constellations and Co-ordinates’.
Seeing images reproduced on the internet or in printed form just doesn’t cut it for her work - it’s only when you see it on the wall that you can appreciate the intricacy, delicacy and textural quality of her images.
The key elements of photography, performance and embroidery are central to her work, resulting in beautiful images that are moved beyond the one dimensional into a different space and dimension. Her images are often self portraits with a strong performance element, drawing on her earlier career in acting.
‘Photography, performance and a needle are central to Jessa’s practice. She uses the body-as-site to explore communal meanings and is concerned with making explicit the moment when performed gesture and gaze of the viewer collide. She frequently appears in her own images, piercing and embroidering them to employ process as action. Needle perforations and thread puncture the skin of the photograph, extending image-objects beyond a single time and space.Things embody feelings and the body is a material, where experience can manifest itself through stitches.’ Jessica Fairbrother
Guest Lecture - Andy Greenacre
Andy Greenacre, Director of Photography at The Telegraph Magazine, came to talk to us yesterday. His job is to commission photographers to provide images for editorial features. He may be commissioning a simple shoot for, say, £150, or a higher profile shoot with a budget of several thousand pounds.
In his words, “Portraiture is key, unless you want to be a still life photographer. Portraits are in virtually everything. You simply won’t cut it if all you can do is landscapes.”
When he’s commissioning a photographer he’s looking for someone who can think on their feet, both creatively and in practical terms being able to adapt to and work with difficult locations or lighting conditions for example, and someone who can deliver to the brief they are given and within the timescales.
On the plus side, Andy is willing to take a risk with new, less established, photographers if he likes their work. If you make the grade, the rewards can be huge, and the work glamorous. But, a more realistic scenario is being asked to go along to a farm or business to take a portrait of someone making cheese or milking their goats.
If you can get to meet and share your portfolio, then it’s important to make sure that your portfolio reflects the style and approach a magazine is currently adopting, showing versatility and properly staged and constructed portraits. So, research is key - looking at recent editions, and the styles of photography currently being featured.
