Privacy Note: Source uses cookies or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movement around the website and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. The technology used to collect information automatically from Source Users may include cookies, web beacons, and embedded scripts. In addition, we and our analytics providers (such as Google), and service providers (such as PayPal and Mailchimp) may use a variety of other technologies that collect similar information for security and fraud detection purposes and we may use third parties to perform these services on our behalf. If you continue to use this site, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device. 

Source Photographic Review: Archive RSS Feed

ARCHIVE: RSS FEED

An Online Repository of Articles and Photographic Works drawn from Source's online and print publishing. Spanning more than twenty-five years of photography publishing. Includes: feature articles, editorials, reviews, essays, interviews, portfolios and blog posts. Subscribe to this RSS Feed to stay notified of when this material is made available.

Feed URL: https://www.source.ie/feeds/archive.xml

‘Issue 117 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 03 Feb 2025 11:15:05 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 117 - Winter 2024

In the past, two views of Ireland dominated: an idealised topographical view, designed to appeal to tourists (as in John Hinde postcards), and a photojournalistic view that recorded and dramatised the Troubles. More often than not these were images made by outsiders to be seen elsewhere. But what about today? How should Ireland be represented by photographers now? We asked a selection of writers this question and they gave us some pleasingly unanticipated answers. We should see people being happy says Erika Hanna. We should avoid undue optimism says Colin Graham. Read together, these answers are like extracts from a catalogue of possibilities rather than a manifesto. They complement the portfolios of photographs that also appear in this issue. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online Themes: Open Water Community’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Fri, 31 Jan 2024 06:11:28 EST
Content: Index / Genre: Graduate

A concordant selection of photographic work curated from the Graduate Photography Online archive. The theme of ‘Open Water Community’ encompasses graduate work documenting the activities of various informal groupings of people who share a love of taking to open water as a means to some end of recreational, medicinal or spiritual purpose. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Photography’s Roots and Flowers’
by: Melissa McCarthy
Posted: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 12:15:31 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Archive

I didn’t expect to end up in a darkened drawer in LA on a botanic detective mission, but looking at art takes you to some strange places. I’d written a book about photography, and to illustrate a section on impermanence and memory, I wanted to use an image of something from the Getty collection. The item is a piece of paper. Specifically, a photogenic drawing negative, made by W.H.F. Talbot in around 1835, catalogue number 85.XM.150.14. This item is an irregular rectangle, some 11x5 cm, and the subject it depicts is a scrap of dark linen damask woven with a lighter figure of tumbling flowers, each with undulating leaves, a cog-like centre. The original linen was the same size; it’s a photogenic drawing made by treating the paper, placing the fabric on it, exposing to light. But it’s a photogenic negative, so the object, the dark linen with light flowers, produced for Talbot an artefact that looks the other way round: a dark, trapezoid background with a ghostly pale field (the fabric) floating on it, fraying away at the edges. Dark flowers blooming. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Your Little Scattered Archive’
by: Tess Little
Posted: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 18:22:18 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Archive

It was my mother who found the photograph. She was searching for my writing when she encountered the Amazon listing: 'Vintage photo of Tess Little and Alice Hobbis busy in the sand' For $29.00 (plus $9.99 shipping) you could purchase a photograph of Tess and Alice, aged four or five, digging with plastic spades. The picture was listed as an ‘original collectible’, ‘over forty years old’, though anyone who studied it could recognise the cartoon gloss of the nineties. The era is there in Alice’s 'Little Mermaid' sweater, in the primary colour palette, the crisp contrast of sunlight dimpling sand. The seller, a company called PickYourImage, would post the purchase from Latvia. Elsewhere, they called themselves Icelandic. I had grown up in Norwich and had never visited either country. But not only did this company have my likeness, they had my name too. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Shoebox’
by: Martin Raymond
Posted: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 03:55:07 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Family

This is about the heft of a shoebox filled with photographs printed on paper. The physicality of images. It is also about the stillness of the house of the recently dead. The empty chair with the cushions crushed. The crossword half done, the slippers neatly parked, the TV remote still to hand. We were the executors, with the sad business of emptying the house. The house belonged to my Uncle John, a remarkable man who left school at fourteen for an engineering apprenticeship, did his national service in Germany in 1948, witnessed the Berlin Airlift, married my mother’s sister, moved into sales at GEC, travelled the world, was an active trade unionist and historian of the labour movement, completed his PhD at the age of 79, wrote scholarly articles in his eighties and lived in this same house in Manchester for nearly sixty years. He had no family but left behind his scholarship, a wide network of friends and relatives. And his photographs. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Shooting on cameras, shooting with a gun’
by: Emma Aars
Posted: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 05:02:12 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Photojournalism

Jackie is running across a big field in Central Park, heading for a forest. She is no longer a Kennedy, and probably happy her life is no longer regulated by presidential guards and the strictures of the White House. They wouldn't allow her to run as freely as she is doing here, now, in the uncut grass, free from tight Chanel suits and long Givenchy dresses. Jeans and flats makes it easier to run away from the paparazzi photographer Ron Galella’s stalking lens. Ron Galella’s world is full of celebrities. His proximity to the stars makes him a kind of star himself, being the paparazzo behind many of the most iconic celebrity images of the last century. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online Themes: Body Language’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Mon, 02 Dec 2024 10:27:43 EST
Content: Index / Genre: Graduate

A concordant selection of photographic work curated from the Graduate Photography Online archive. The theme of ‘Body Language’ encompasses graduate work which posits the body of as a point of expression and figurative departure, blending elements of sculpture, decontextualisation, performance and dance, to explore and question ideas that cluster around what we commonly refer to as the human form. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2024 MA/MFA Selections’
by: Katy Barron
Posted: Thu, 21 Nov 2024 12:04:08 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

It has been fascinating to view the huge range of submissions from this year’s MA photography graduates and a real pleasure for me as I am always looking for new work. Each submission was clearly the result of a great deal of careful consideration and deep thinking around image-making and process. The range of approaches was particularly interesting as I encounter more work that is created by AI within the realm of photography. Equally, I appreciated the way that text and three-dimensionality were included within some projects, and I enjoyed the blurring and pushing of boundaries as to what photography is. I hope that my choices include a range of stories, from the personal to the urgent and I chose them for these reasons but also because I felt that the execution was of a high standard and appropriate for the subject-matter. I have no doubt that we will see many of these recent graduates go on to greater things and I wish them all the best of luck in their future careers. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2024 MA/MFA Selections’
by: Chris Clarke
Posted: Thu, 21 Nov 2024 11:58:32 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

It was a real pleasure to discover the work of so many new and emerging photographers from the MA graduates. I was impressed by how thorough many of the projects are, revealing a willingness to dig deep into the histories, politics and personal backgrounds of their subjects without forgoing considerations of composition, display, even pure aesthetic pleasure. It’s a fine balance between communicating an overall concept to the viewer and ensuring that the images are striking enough to catch their attention. I also appreciated the breadth of subject matter. While it didn’t necessarily dictate my selection, I was pleased to see so many photographers engaging with identity, history and heritage in a way that didn’t feel solipsistic. Rather, they made me want to see and understand more, to get an even broader sense of where their respective projects might develop. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2024 MA/MFA Selections’
by: Hana Kaluznick
Posted: Thu, 21 Nov 2024 11:55:56 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

How is it possible to choose only six artists from such an extensive list of excellent projects? Whether tackling complex issues like climate change, global conflict or violence, to deeply personal reflections on grief, belonging and identity, the works in this broad selection reinforced photography’s unique ability to articulate a sweeping range of stories. It struck me that much of the work is very personal, and I am grateful to all the students for presenting their vulnerability and passion for their subjects in such creative and technically competent ways. The photographic medium has been continually evolving since its introduction in the 1830s and I think the classes of 2024 have brilliantly heeded the call to continue driving the medium forward, tying together the past, present and future of photography in fascinating ways. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2025 Selectors: Raquel Villar-Pérez’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Wed, 23 Oct 2024 17:30:15 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Raquel Villar-Pérez, Academic, Curator & Writer and Selector for the BA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2025. / Tell us about your day-to-day routine as an independent researcher and art curator? What projects are you working on at present? / I am quite new to this realm of ‘independent researcher and art curator’. I have done independent curatorial projects and writing in the past, but I was also in a full-time job. It feels good being able to focus on the projects and artists that really interest me. In my experience, working independently allows you to develop your ideas and pitching them to initiatives and spaces you want to work with. Then, fundraising. It adds up to a lot of unpaid labour. I feel lucky that, at this point in my life, I have a generous and caring support network that enables me to take this time off full-time employment. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 116 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 28 Oct 2024 16:50:04 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 116 - Autumn 2024

The elements – Earth, Air, Water, and Fire – as described by Empedocles 2,500 years ago, are still relevant categories for thinking about our ecosystem and more particularly the way we are damaging it. As Conohar Scott writes, talking specifically about Fire, our assumption that we could harness combustion for our own ends without any consequences now looks hubristic, in a way that Empedocles would have recognised. Scott surveys the approaches photographers have taken to record uncontrollable fire’s devestating consequences. Holly Birtles is concerned with Fire, Air and Earth as embodied by volcanoes. Her photographic practice incorporates performance and making props. Volcano Mother presents moments from backstage rehearsals and a pseudo theatrical production in which the cast contemplate and practise their role as selected volcanoes. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2025 Selectors: Raquel Villar-Pérez’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Wed, 23 Oct 2024 17:30:15 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Raquel Villar-Pérez, Academic, Curator & Writer and Selector for the BA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2025. / Tell us about your day-to-day routine as an independent researcher and art curator? What projects are you working on at present? / I am quite new to this realm of ‘independent researcher and art curator’. I have done independent curatorial projects and writing in the past, but I was also in a full-time job. It feels good being able to focus on the projects and artists that really interest me. In my experience, working independently allows you to develop your ideas and pitching them to initiatives and spaces you want to work with. Then, fundraising. It adds up to a lot of unpaid labour. I feel lucky that, at this point in my life, I have a generous and caring support network that enables me to take this time off full-time employment. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2024 Selectors: Hana Kaluznick’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Thu, 18 Jul 2024 08:32:04 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Hana Kaluznick, Assistant Curator, Photography at the V and A and Selector for the MA/MFA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2024. / Tell us about your job? What does your core role at The Glucksman involve? / Across displays, research, conservation, publication, collection building and more, my job is to support the curatorial efforts of the wider Photography section. No day is the same, but my core tasks typically involve managing objects lists, overseeing the administration of new acquisitions, drafting various bits of texts (blog posts, object labels, cataloguing descriptions etc.), and supporting members of the public who wish to access the collection for research or creative purposes. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2024 BA Selections’
by: Darren Campion
Posted: Thu, 25 Jul 2024 10:48:33 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

While on one level a graduate project is the end of something, closing off a particular period of study, it also marks the start of what will hopefully be a long-term engagement with the possibilities of photography as a creative medium. My selection has been guided by a sense of how the stylistic or visual language that these photographers have evolved for their individual projects is linked in a fundamental way to what they want to talk about. That match is a key element of a successful work for me, that it ‘speaks’ in a way appropriate to the subject, and in doing so expands our understanding of what that subject is. While there are many accomplished projects in this year’s graduate selection, the six that I have chosen strike an interesting, open-ended balance between their thematic concerns and how these are realised visually. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2024 BA Selections’
by: Anne Adesolabomi Nwakalor
Posted: Thu, 25 Jul 2024 10:45:40 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

The Source Graduate Photography competition has been graced with an impressive array of submissions, showcasing the exceptional talent and creativity of this year's graduates. Each project stands out for its high standard and quality, reflecting a deep personal touch and unique artistic vision. The diversity of topics explored by the photographers adds a rich layer of intrigue and engagement to the collection. From poignant personal narratives to thought-provoking social commentaries, the projects demonstrate a remarkable breadth of subject matter. The sophisticated use of various photography techniques highlights the skills and knowledge acquired through their university education, underscoring the educational excellence and dedication of the participants. I am delighted to be a part of this years selecting panel as it has given me an opportunity to view these captivating and skillfully crafted works that truly embody the spirit of innovation and expression in contemporary photography. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2024 BA Selections’
by: Jilke Golbach
Posted: Thu, 25 Jul 2024 10:41:45 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

Reviewing the work of this year’s BA photography graduates has been a wonderfully stimulating and eye-opening experience. I was impressed by the wide range of visual approaches, technical skills and forms of storytelling on display whilst also feeling the palpable impact of covid-19 on this generation of photographers who completed their studies in the aftermath of the pandemic. Themes of mental health, illness, domestic space, belonging, loss, grief and melancholy were prevalent among the submissions and testify to photography’s ability to act as a therapeutic medium. In making my selection, I looked for compelling narratives, original visual approaches, a balance between conception and execution, and an overall sense of coherence within the project. My six choices reflect this year’s bold explorations of personal narratives, familial relations, cultural heritage, and connections across borders. I look forward to seeing many of these projects develop further in the future. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2024 Selectors: Chris Clarke’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Thu, 18 Jul 2024 08:32:04 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Chris Clarke, Senior Curator, Exhibitions & Collections at The Glucksman and Selector for the MA/MFA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2024. / Tell us about your job? What does your core role at The Glucksman involve? / I am the Senior Curator for Exhibitions and Projects at the Glucksman, University College Cork. My main role is to research and prepare our gallery exhibition programme, working with Irish and international artists as well as galleries, museums and lenders to curate thematic group shows. The Project strand of our programme involves curating newly commissioned solo presentations by artists in off-site locations. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2024 Selectors: Katy Barron’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Thu, 18 Jul 2024 07:20:36 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Katy Barron, Festival Director, Photo Oxford and Selector for the MA/MFA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2024. / Tell us about your work and particularly your recent appointment as Festival Director at Photo Oxford? What does your day-to-day routine as a curator involve? / I’ve been Director of Photo Oxford for nearly 6 months and my day-to-day routine is extremely varied. It might include meetings with festival partners who are in charge of the spaces that we hope to use for the festival – such as the public galleries attached to one of the Oxford university colleges or maybe a local museum. Equally, I might be meeting potential sponsors as we need to fundraise for the festival. I spend a lot of time talking to photographers and thinking about the form of the festival and how best to really consider and interrogate the theme. I’m also working with our Comms Team on how to announce the next festival this coming autumn, and how to keep our profile up during this interim period. I’ve initiated some exhibitions and outreach projects in and around Oxford and so these also have to be curated and delivered. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 115 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Wed, 17 Jul 2024 11:16:24 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 115 - Summer 2024

Is photography a wounding technology? Not necessarily. Jason Bate has collected stories from the relatives of injured First World War servicemen and discovered that domestic photography played an important role in easing their way back in to family and social life. Carefully including them in the small rituals of photographing significant family events could have a healing effect for someone with severe facial injuries. Deborah Padfield has been using photography to try and visualise chronic pain. Unlike a typical injury, with a known origin, chronic pain causes "a crisis in meaning making" because it has no obvious cause. Working with patients, she has been trying to find a way to represent it and thereby help them articulate their experience of this debilitating and destabilising condition. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Clinical Photography’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Wed, 10 Jul 2024 07:15:18 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Medical

Separated from its original purpose, in a British twenty-first century charity shop, the 1972 American guide for the practising or aspiring medical photographer is unsettling. With detailed depictions on every double-page spread of wounds and skin conditions in adults and children, the viewer looks deep into the ears and mouths of patients, although rarely into their eyes. Clinical photography, as the book explains, is a rewarding potential career direction for a skilled photographic practitioner; professionally-produced photographs are needed for a range of purposes, from photographs of nursing care and medical apparatus for institutional promotion, through to record photographs for patient case histories and pathological symptoms for teaching diagnosis. It is the latter with which the book is principally concerned, with guidance given on the technical production of requisite images, including matters of hygiene and safety – blood and other fluids spattered onto photographic lamps may cause explosions, it is noted – but also on etiquette for the clinical photographer’s interactions with patients, where “kindly impersonality” is encouraged. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 114 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 15 Apr 2024 09:29:14 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 114 - Spring 2024

The idea of ‘home’ as a place of refuge is a modern one. As Danielle Patten from the Museum of Home explains, it is only in the 20th Century, with greater home ownership, more regulation of working hours and the pervasiveness of modern communication that we come to see our homes as bastions of privacy. With the advent of social media and the experience of a global pandemic that had us working in our front rooms again, perhaps that process is being reversed and our domestic space is becoming semi-public once more. Annie Ernaux and Wolfgang Tillmans in different ways (but with similar photographs) have recorded a particular intimacy associated with our living spaces. They have both photographed discarded clothes, suggesting the recent vulnerability of their wearers. Klara Fritz writes about the way a small domestic untidiness can point to larger philosophical themes of absence. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2024 Selectors: Darren Campion’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Fri, 09 Feb 2024 15:52:12 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Darren Campion, Assistant Curator, Photo Museum Ireland and Selector for the BA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2024. / Tell us about your job, what does your core role at Photo Museum Ireland involve? What projects are you working on at present? / I'm Assistant Curator at Photo Museum Ireland. I work as part of the curatorial team with my colleagues Trish Lambe and Tanya Kiang to develop and realise exhibitions at the Museum. Planning involves discussions around how particular works and practices might fit into our artistic programme for a given year, meetings with artists to share new work and talk about prospective shows, as well as managing calendars and budgets. Designing exhibition layouts is also a vital part of working towards an exhibition. The way a visitor encounters the work is a key aspect of its meaning and something we give a lot of attention to. This extends to the framing of the show textually, through the writing of exhibitions texts, press releases, and wall labels, which give visitors an insight into the thinking behind the work we’re showing. Then there is the practical side of curation, which can be anything from scheduling international transport to finding a specific kind of screw. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 113 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 19 Jan 2024 06:52:18 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 113 - Winter 2023

If you cannot imagine a different world you cannot begin to make it. This is one of the basic principles behind Alejandro León Cannock’s essay about the role photography has in making a better world. It reads as a manifesto for a new model of photography made by photographers who work collaboratively Photography has often been considered unimaginative, a tool that merely captures the world as it is. Claire Anscomb shows the many choices that photographers make, and says that although the medium may have constraints, it is working within these that gives play to the imagination. These arguments about photography and the imagination are being given new relevance as they are applied in similar ways to AI-generated images. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2024 Selectors: Jilke Golbach’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Sun, 14 Jan 2024 16:34:55 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Jilke Golbach, Curator, Writer & Researcher and Selector for the BA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2024. / Tell us all about the PhD you've been undertaking and what brought you to this specific area of interest? How much is your current research trajectory informed by photography? / By the time this interview gets published, my PhD should be completed! That is something I have looked forward to for a long time as I started this piece of research nearly ten years ago. All throughout this period, I worked in various curatorial roles (amongst others at the Museum of London and Barbican Art Gallery) and, as much as I loved undertaking my own research project, there were a few times the PhD had to take a backseat so that I could prioritise other projects. Thankfully I had supervisors who let me do this and supported quite a few stops and starts along the way. Probably not the most expedient (or sane!) way of undertaking a PhD but doing it this way did enable me to develop my interests along both an academic and curatorial track, which has been an enormous gift. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: The Carte de Visite Widow’
by: Annette Richardson
Posted: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 11:05:31 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Portraiture

On July 5th 1861, a young woman visited the fashionable London studio of French photographer Camille Silvy to have her portrait taken (Fig.1). Silvy was meticulous in keeping records of clients but on this occasion he initially made a mistake as to his sitter’s identity: recording her instead as the sister who accompanied her, then having to score through his flowing script and write the correct name. What is significant about this incident is not Silvy’s mistake – he had many sittings in a day – but how he identified the woman from her image. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Beyond Romanticism’
by: Sarah-Jane Field
Posted: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 11:05:31 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Experimental

My relationship with the machine began the moment I did. I slid out of my mother's body with relative ease but was hurriedly popped into an incubator because I was too cold. I survived. And that was the start of our connection. Soon afterwards, my mother and I were carried by the machine through the sky to meet my father waiting in Southern Africa. But not before the machine suspended little moments of us in London, surrounded by geriatric ladies in floral dresses. And there I am again, suspended in time in Cape Town, wearing a feather boa behind some drums. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Losing Your Head’
by: Sarah Crozier
Posted: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 11:05:31 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Historical

My relationship with the machine began the moment I did. I slid out of my mother's body with relative ease but was hurriedly popped into an incubator because I was too cold. I survived. And that was the start of our connection. Soon afterwards, my mother and I were carried by the machine through the sky to meet my father waiting in Southern Africa. But not before the machine suspended little moments of us in London, surrounded by geriatric ladies in floral dresses. And there I am again, suspended in time in Cape Town, wearing a feather boa behind some drums. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Hold On’
by: Neva Elliott
Posted: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 12:03:20 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Gender

Our relationship was meant to be casual, an intermittent distraction. The first photograph I took of him was less than a month after we met. That night I dreamt of drowning. In the morning, I photographed his hand lying on his chest, Christ-like, corpse-like, too beautiful to be real or alive. We continued to see each other, more often than planned. I kept photographing him – in his flat, my house, hotel rooms, holiday apartments, forests, the back of my car. Naked, laying bare his human fragility. This is what we do we’d joke, sex and photography. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: What Remains’
by: Liam Etheridge
Posted: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 12:03:20 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Family

The last photo of my mum was taken shortly after she was. The photo is of our hands holding, and it is shut away in a folder where I can’t see it. This is because when I once glimpsed the picture by accident, it put me in a bad mood for days. Nevertheless, I couldn’t simply delete it – it seemed disrespectful somehow, like flushing her ashes down the toilet. So I am stuck with it, tucked away somewhere in the digital recesses of my old laptop. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 112 / Autumn 2023 - Zoom Launch’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 27 Oct 2023 05:09:27 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Event

Join us for the Online Launch of Source Issue 112 - 'Work'. Featuring a live interview with Issue 112 contributors Moira Lovell and Ellie Howard, the launch will explore the impact of new areas of work such as online selling. Hosted by Source Editor Richard West, in partnership with Photo Museum Ireland. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 112 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Wed, 18 Oct 2023 10:22:06 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 112 - Autumn 2023

How do you photograph the world of work? In the past, where this involved physical tasks (like unloading ships, see below) perhaps this was obvious, but what about in an office? Then there are the relationships between companies and their employees, once mediated by a foreman or middle manager, now perhaps delineated by a non-disclosure agreement. How do you photograph that? The photographers Anna Fox and Mark Curran and the sociologist of work Rachel Cohen talk about negotiating this evolving environment. Cohen describes the changing nature of work, often part-time, insecure and invisible. Fox and Curran talk about their experience of getting access to workplaces to allow them to photograph. They each reaffirm the importance of work as a subject for photographers. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2023 MA/MFA Phase’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Mon, 21 Aug 2023 10:40:09 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Graduate

Welcome to the MA/MFA Phase of Graduate Photography Online 2023. Source Magazine's showcase for emerging photographic talent from photography courses across the UK and Ireland. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Stockists’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Tue, 15 Aug 2023 06:01:14 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing

A full, up-to-date listing of retail outlets and locations across the globe where you can purchase a copy of the current issue of the print edition of Source, including specialist bookstores, gallery shops and newsagents. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2023 Selectors: Sabina Jaskot Gill’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Wed, 26 Jul 2023 10:13:52 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Sabina Jaskot Gill, Senior Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery and Selector for the MA/MFA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2023. / Tell us about your job? What does your day-to-day routine as a curator involve? / One of the best things about being a curator at the National Portrait Gallery is how varied the job is, no two days are the same. At its core, the purpose of my role is to care for a national collection of photographs, and to grow that collection through new acquisitions and commissions, which means that I’m constantly working with living artists, photographers’ archives and commercial galleries. This is a really exciting part of the job, but I also keenly feel a responsibility to make sure we are developing the collection to be more inclusive and representative of British society today. There are also more practical aspects of collection care embedded in the role such as conservation, cataloguing and digitisation. Photography has a real presence in the Gallery’s programme, so the other main focus of my job is curating exhibitions and displays of photography. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: What’s in a Title?’
by: Francesca Butterfield
Posted: Tue, 25 Jul 2023 12:03:20 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Historical

The 1962 Italian film 'Mondo Cane' is not suitable for all audiences. It is filled to the brim with taboos—some harmless, some not—such as nudity, polyandry, animal cruelty, cross dressing, and violence. Written and directed by Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi, and Gualtiero Jacopetti, the film has a runtime of 108 minutes and is comprised of thirty-six Technicolor vignettes shot around the world. Despite being denounced as low-brow exploitation and 'shockumentary', 'Mondo Cane’s' box office success is a testament to the power of the masses.(1) It was used internationally as the model for a throng of successive films that featured graphic content under the guise of factuality. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Mandy O'Neill's Photograph of Diane’
by: Oana Sânziana Marian
Posted: Mon, 24 Jul 2023 10:35:03 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Portraiture

I don’t know Diane, but when I catch her gaze at eye level (as the photographer Mandy O’Neill captured her), there’s a complicated pain I haven’t felt since I was a teenager. But first, the photograph: Diane, a young woman of 17-18, standing, wearing a school uniform – white button-down shirt, navy-blue tie with thin diagonal stripes of maroon, yellow and green – against a featureless light blue background. There’s something retro, and institutional, about it: the pastel backdrop of school portraits in the 80’s and 90’s, when I was coming up. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Smile Though Your Heart is Aching’
by: Xaver Könneker
Posted: Fri, 21 Jul 2023 04:28:09 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Forensic

Before Carole’s smile became an object of study to be forensically examined in a mortuary, she lay dead in her English council estate apartment for over two years. Her body was slowly withering away in front of the flickering lights of a television that was left running the whole time. It was an automated payment system that, on behalf of benefit agencies, transferred half of her rent every month to the Metropolitan Housing Trust, leading officials to believe that she was still alive. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: The Body of Ulrike Meinhof’
by: Chris Milton
Posted: Fri, 21 Jul 2023 02:18:22 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Police

Victors displayed the heads of the vanquished upon pikes, held aloft for yokel delectation and warning. This photo of Ulrike Meinhof, taken shortly after her suicide in the Stannheim prison mortuary in 1976 for police archives, leaked to the press by a police photographer to 'Stern' magazine, was intended to signal a victory and serve as deterrent to the public. But on its own terms, it fails. How could it not make the viewer question just what could have pushed this famously fervent, iron-willed woman to the point of self-murder? What they did to her? Whether it was indeed suicide and not murder? It is an image that sabotages itself through its very squalor. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Bad Photography’
by: Jimi Cullen
Posted: Thu, 20 Jul 2023 04:32:08 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Nature

The Scottish poet William McGonagall died in 1902, but is celebrated to this day, with dinners and events held in his memory well into the 21st century. Yet by every formal standard, McGonagall was a terrible poet. His work doesn’t scan, with lines of wildly varying rhythm and length, and he sacrificed imagery, metaphor, and meaning in service of painfully simple rhymes. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2023 Selectors: Cynthia MaiWa Sitei’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Mon, 17 Jul 2023 14:22:00 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Cynthia MaiWa Sitei, Artist & Creative Producer and Selector for the MA/MFA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2023. / Tell us about your job? What does your day-to-day routine as a curator involve? / I am the curator at Ffotogallery Wales which is the leading photography and lens-based media organisation in Wales. Our work primarily involves supporting visual artists in and from Wales as well as Internationally – including giving artists a platform to use us as a channel to share their ideas and engage in discussions and conversations with the audience through their practice. Recently my day-to-day has been quite exciting and has involved a lot of work travels, internationally engaging in conversations about curation and learning along the way. But usually, my day-to-day involves a lot of research, working on funding applications, portfolio reviews and meetings including admin work such as responding to emails and connecting with artists and educators. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2023 BA Selections’
by: Taous Dahmani
Posted: Fri, 14 Jul 2023 12:12:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

I have selected these six young artists/photographers — You Liang, Matilda Baxendale-Kirby, Amber Gent, Heather S. Roberts, Rica Tumanguil, Maya Brasington — because they all have a unique visual language and a strong sense of conceptualisation. Most of the projects selected evolve in the space of identity politics; and most of them use the photographic medium as a way to explore ideas around nationality/heritage/diaspora and do so always at the intersection at gender/race and even ability. These young photographers all seem to be in the process of crafting and shaping their own subjective feminist lens to tackle their subject of interest. Whatever the genre or style, they are all irreverent in the best way possible. Inspired by the history of their medium, yet non-conformists, I feel like they will all be able to further develop their practice into sustained and solid photography-based paths. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2023 BA Selections’
by: Sebah Chaudhry
Posted: Fri, 14 Jul 2023 12:01:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

I was grateful to be asked to be on the selection panel for Graduate Photography Online 2023. Having been a jury member on different prizes, I am glad I am able to see the work of so many students and be able to make a selection for Source Magazine. I really enjoyed viewing the submissions from the BA Graduates. As well as seeing the difference in everyone’s work, it was interesting to see similar themes emerge throughout the UK. These students spent the first and some of second year in lockdown, and it will have had an impact on their learning. To see such high quality work, even though they have been through Covid, was a testament to their hard work. It was also good to see less projects explored Covid, and though this is something in the not so distant past, it will not control the future. I wish all the students the best of luck in their careers! . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2023 BA Selections’
by: Chris Boot
Posted: Fri, 14 Jul 2023 12:01:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

What came across strongest to me through all the entries was the sense of students exploring their environments through their photographs – feeling their way around the world visually, experimenting, discovering (as Gary Winogrand once said) what things look like when photographed. There is a lot of darkness and human fragility here, and quite a lot of the work speaks to experiences of isolation, which seems appropriate, perhaps inevitable, given COVID and the effects of lockdown. But the prevalence of introspective observations made me hanker for joy - pictures and projects less concerned with our interiority and more with uplifting viewers, looking outward. Choosing only six series to single out feels tough, perhaps random, when the overall standard is so high. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 111 / Summer 2023 - Zoom Launch’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 14 Jul 2023 05:00:23 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Event

Join us for the Online Launch of Source Issue 111 - 'Emotion'. Featuring a live interview with Issue 111 contributor David Bate, who in his feature - 'Where is the Emotion in Photography?' - explores the overall theme of the magazine. He considers the emotional aspects of the production of photographs, their reception and their content. In doing so, he looks at the history and theory of portraiture, going back to the Renaissance and up to contemporary advertising. Hosted by Source Editor Richard West, in partnership with Photo Museum Ireland. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 111 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Wed, 21 Jun 2023 10:33:54 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 111 - Summer 2023

A significant part of our contemporary communications infrastructure is dedicated to the circulation of photographs of cats, apparently because of the way they make us feel. But cats themselves have an exceptionally limited range of expression, so where are these feelings coming from? Julia Tanner explores this paradox. In fact, the question of how emotions are bound up with images can be confusing. Looking at photographs can prompt an emotional reaction and photographs can be made to convey a feeling. Photographs might depict an emotion. But are these the same thing? Is showing an emotion the same as sharing it? David Bate disentangles these different relationships between pictures and the way we feel about them. Wiebke Leister’s research explores the intersections between photography and theatre and what this might bring to bear on questions about authenticity and artificiality. In recent research Leister has become interested in Japanese Noh Theatre and how she might transpose non-representational elements from it to develop an understanding of photography that is not characterised by being a representation or imitation of the real world. Leister’s portfolio comes out of the performance of 'Echoes and Callings', which was performed at the Noh Reimagined festival. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 110 / Spring 2023 - Zoom Launch’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 31 Mar 2023 06:17:22 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Event

Join us for the Online Launch of Source Issue 110 - 'Knowledge'. Featuring a live interview with Issue 110 contributor Morwenna Kearsley and a discussion about our Writers’ Prize and forthcoming Publication Opportunity Day. Hosted by Editor Richard West in partnership with the Gallery of Photography Ireland. We often believe that photography imparts us with knowledge. Morwenna Kearsley’s series, 'Notch Code', presents a catalogue of precisely photographed objects. The objects resemble the contents of a museum display cabinet but they are each titled as if from a folk tale. Morwenna will introduce the series and discuss the questions it raises about the relationship between photographs and their titles. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2023 Selectors: Jodi Kwok’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Thu, 23 Mar 2023 06:04:40 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Jodi Kwok, Creative Producer, Curator and Selector for the MA/MFA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2023. / Tell us about your job? What does your day-to-day routine as a curator involve? / As Assistant Curator at Derby QUAD, I am responsible for curating and producing exhibitions in the main gallery and the extra gallery space (stairwells and office foyer areas in the building). My role is to work between artists and the technical team, to present the artists’ works in the best and most understandable way for our visitors. As part of the programme team, I am also working on delivering and suggesting different public programmes for our community and audiences, like events, talks, workshops and gallery tours alongside the exhibitions, doing research and connecting with other galleries and museums for potential cooperations, supporting artists with physical and virtual residency programmes, doing social media for our gallery exhibitions and events and visiting different exhibitions for inspiration about the curation and installation. Our team has been working on the return of FORMAT International Photography Festival, emerging from the days of the global pandemic with renewed purpose. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 110 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 20 Feb 2023 07:49:10 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 110 - Spring 2023

We know about many places we have never visited via photographs. Many of those photographs could be described as tourist or travel photography, a category that extends from traveller’s pictures to those commissioned by tourist boards and travel companies. Sara Dominici outlines the development of this genre, from surprisingly early on in the history of photography to the present day, and shows that these images are as much a product of market forces as anyone’s desire to learn about the world. We might have more confidence in science as a foundation for our knowledge. If you are not a scientist then you could come to understand scientific insights via images, in particular those generated by recent technologies like MRI scanners, Electron Microscopes and the latest telescopes, all of which show us things that would otherwise be invisible to us. The Science Photo Library was set up to distribute these images to a market beyond the narrow scientific literature that they were originally created for. Rose Taylor, the Creative Director, explains how these images circulate and what transformation they undego to reach a general public. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2023 Selectors: Sebah Chaudhry’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Tue, 07 Feb 2023 12:57:05 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Sebah Chaudhry, Creative Producer, Curator and Selector for the BA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2023. / Tell us about your job? What does your day-to-day routine as a curator and producer involve? / My day is very varied, as are my roles. As a freelance producer and curator, I often work on different projects at the same time/same day. As exciting as all my jobs are, there is a lot of admin. So, often my days are spent checking my email accounts, replying to emails, creating doodle polls for meetings, or joining a meeting. Some days, I have no meetings at all, but on others, I have as many as eight! If I am very busy (which I often am), I often work late into the evenings. / How did you make your way into the career you're now in? Did you always want to work in a field that involved photography? / I grew up in Birmingham and studied photography as a GCSE. I was never very academic, but enjoyed photography. And so I did a BTEC National Diploma in Photography, and at the same time, looked for work experience or volunteering in the arts. I emailed all the offices at the Custard Factory (a creative hub), in hopes of an opportunity to volunteer. Rhubarb-Rhubarb International Festival was the only organisation to reply, inviting me to volunteer at their festival in 2004. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2023 Selectors: Taous Dahmani’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Thu, 26 Jan 2023 12:31:00 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Taous Dahmani, Art Historian, Writer, Curator and Selector for the BA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2023. / Tell us about your work? What does your day-to-day routine as an art historian and curator involve? / As an art historian stepping out of academia, I carry out research for various projects including publications, essays, or exhibitions. As a freelancer, my day-to-day is very much project-led but involves research (in libraries, conversations with photographers or other knowledgeable people, etc.); writing (and reading), and project management (admin etc.). / How did you make your way into the career you're now in? Did you always want to work in a field that involved photography? / I wanted to work ‘in art’ from a very young age, I always felt like galleries and museums were a ‘safe space’ — something I now look back on with irony. So as soon as I was legally allowed to work, I did, and did so in commercial galleries at first. However, it was my professor at the Sorbonne, Michel Poivert, who put me on the path to photography and opened my eyes to the versatility of the medium, realising that it was a great way-into other subjects — to address aspects of society, politics, human relationships, etc. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: The Stock Photography Source Book’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Mon, 16 Jan 2023 08:10:00 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Advertising

As “the ultimate visual tool for the creative person”, 'The Stock Photography Source Book' represented “the most saleable stock images available anywhere” in 1987. 3,904 photographs compiled from four years of “outstandingly successful” catalogues were distilled from the 3 million-strong holdings of The Image Bank, “the largest and most successful” stock agency in the world. ESTablished in 1974 as a means of selling photographers’ work to the advertising industry under a single corporation, The Image Bank cashed in on the expanding need for a ready repository of visual material for license. Bypassing bespoke photography by assignment, they instead sold “existing photographs” by “photography greats”. By the time the weighty volume launched, they boasted 37 offices worldwide. 'The Stock Photography Source Book' was a visual hypermarket from which advertising designers could browse numbered photographs in 4 x 6 cm previews. Each colour-coded category – People, Sports, Scenics, Travel, Industry and Abstracts / Special Effects – finished with a lined shopping list. 'The Source Book' was also a glossy manual in its own right. For “the photographer, whether he is professional or a serious amateur” it was “an invaluable guide for generating the stock image that will sell”. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2023 Selectors: Chris Boot’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Thu, 12 Jan 2023 05:49:00 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Chris Boot, Curator, Book Publisher and Selector for the BA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2023. / Tell us about your job? What does your day-to-day routine involve? Both currently, as an independent photography editor/publisher and formerly in your role at Aperture? / My last job was as Executive Director of Aperture, the not-for-profit publishing house in New York. Working closely with a board and staff team, I was responsible for the organization’s direction, management, and finances, and for the institutional narrative. About half my time involved working with the organization’s main supporters and on matters of finance. I led a team of four commissioning editors, editing and making new titles and the magazine. I approved the proposals and signed the budgets, and tried to ensure the organization’s projects threaded coherently. I got the chance to work directly on a few books and photography projects of my own, but that was on the side of the main part of the job. After a decade in New York, I came back to London last year, and am pursuing independent projects. I don’t have much of a daily routine. A book I edited and produced was just published by Aperture, 'Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder'; I’m working as a consultant for Autograph ABP; and I’m editing and producing new work about Muslims in America by photographer Mahtab Hussain. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Best of Source: Archive Selections’
by: Richard West
Posted: Wed, 30 Nov 2022 04:22:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Archive

I have been an editor at Source since 1998. These articles and portfolios are among those that have stayed with me since the time they were published. I am always glad to recommend them, like a favourite recipe or a good place to buy socks. Now you too may have this privileged information. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Privacy for the French’
by: Annabelle Lever
Posted: Thu, 24 Nov 2022 06:52:01 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Photojournalism
First Published: Issue 96 - Winter 2018

France is traditionally thought to have the strictest privacy regime in Europe for photographs. Camille Simon is a Picture Editor of L’Obs, the most prominent weekly news magazine. Annabelle Lever is a political philosopher and author of On Privacy. We brought them together to talk about how the French attitude to privacy influences the photographs that are published. / AL: Do you think the protection of privacy constrains your work at L’Obs? / CS: No, not so much actually. It depends on who you are talking about, a public figure or random people? / AL: For example, do you have to think twice about publishing photos of Dominique Strauss-Kahn or even of Sarközy. You have this amazing photo of Sarközy running in the July issue and he really looks horrendous, he looks haggard and anxious and actually quite aggressive. / CS: We won’t think of the image of the person so much as the story we’re telling. For this picture, the article was about Sarközy’s running, so it works well. As he is a public figure, he knows he is photographed when he runs so it is not a problem. He will usually run with a few photographers following him. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 109 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Wed, 23 Nov 2022 06:25:15 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 109 - Autumn 2022

Your position in society may be determined by many intangible things but one concrete mark of status is being the subject of a portrait. An even greater distinction is to have your picture in a national portrait collection. Josh Allen has been talking to the curators of the different national portrait collections to find out on what basis pictures are selected, how new portraits are commissioned and the changing profile of those deemed worthy of this accolade. Do pictures of high status people look different from those of ordinary people, and if so, why? Mike Trow was the picture editor of British Vogue. He explains to Richard West what goes on behind the scenes in the photographing of people who have most likely been photographed many times before and can choose how they want to be pictured. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Genius of Television’
by: Daniel Jewesbury
Posted: Tue, 22 Nov 2022 12:06:48 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 52 - Autumn 2007

This new series has been trailed by its production company as ‘the first comprehensive history of the most influential art form of the present day’. This claim might seem a little grand, but, amazingly, no major TV series, until now, has looked at the medium in quite this depth or detail. This is, then, an important moment for photographers, for historians of photography and other scholars in the field of visual culture. Not since John Berger’s still-influential 'Ways of Seeing' and 'Another Way of Telling' has photography received this much serious small-screen attention. 'The Genius of Photography' comprises six one-hour considerations of different aspects of the medium. This is, self-consciously, not ‘the history of photography’ nor even ‘the histories of photography’: the idea of a single history is replaced, after the introductory first episode, 'Fixing the Shadows', with a set of more or less parallel, non-chronological themes.  . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Watching the Meme Wars’
by: Angela Nagle
Posted: Tue, 22 Nov 2022 11:09:51 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Political
First Published: Issue 89 - Spring 2017

The online culture wars of recent years have been fought through imagery as much as they have through text. Issues such as immigration, gay marriage, feminism and racism have been contested between and within right and left factions, in the political arena and newspaper commentary. Meanwhile, a parallel youthful online cultural battle has played out through rival political movements and subcultures trading in witty, funny, weird, sometimes cruel, crossfire communicated through memes adapted from collages, crude cartoons and ironically captioned photographs. The anarchic image messaging board 4chan, which has been called a 'meme factory' of the internet, gained widespread public attention around the time of the emergence of the Occupy movement in 2011 when Guy Fawkes masks were being worn by protesters and leaderless hackers known as Anonymous – whose symbol was the mask and whose name came from the anonymous online culture of 4chan – started making headlines. It was a subterranean and politically ambiguous world of impenetrable argot and abundant in-jokes, which loved to prank the mainstream. But long before, and ever since, it has defined more of the aesthetic sensibilities of the English speaking internet than any other space, from lolcats: an early variety of image macro (a captioned picture) involving cute cats; to Rickrolling: the prank of linking someone to something seemingly serious only to lead them to a video of the song 'Never gonna give you up' by Rick Astley. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Media Against Modernity’
by: Robert Hariman
Posted: Mon, 21 Nov 2022 09:29:05 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Political
First Published: Issue 85 - Spring 2016

It is well documented that religious fundamentalists have had no problem adopting communication technologies. In the US, examples include influential use of radio, magazine publishing, television, direct mail and telephone marketing, cable television, and now the Internet and social media. There are other examples worldwide, and now any social, political, or cultural movement has to become media savvy, whatever its ideology. So it is that a movement such as the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/Daesh) can promote its comprehensive rejection of all modern ideas, values, and institutions by using modern communication media. One example is their glossy magazine, 'Dabiq'. Published in several languages including English, the first issue came out in July 2014 and the 13th appeared in January of this year. If you have an appetite for pictures of victorious warriors and justifications of sexual slavery, this is the magazine for you. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Queer in Practice’
by: Laura Guy
Posted: Mon, 21 Nov 2022 08:51:27 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Gender
First Published: Issue 79 - Summer 2014

'Queer' was reclaimed by members of the AIDS activist community during the late 1980s as a sign under which to organise politically. Within these recent histories of gay and lesbian struggle, queer also became a means for some to trouble the hard and fast categories implied by naming either of those orientations. Functioning as a kind of umbrella under which it is possible to assemble a plethora of identifications, queer simultaneously disturbs the logic that binds a subject to a fixed identity. Given this, how does one reconcile something so unstable as queer with something as amorphous as photography? Like many communities, groups that ally through queerness often affirm relationships through photographs that circulate both off and online. Yet, if there is nothing essential about queer, there also cannot be anything essentially queer about photography. In order to think of the two together, it seems only possible to look at how they coincide at particular moments. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Best of Source: Archive Selections’
by: Vanya Lambrecht Ward
Posted: Thu, 17 Nov 2022 03:18:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Archive

When making the selections from the archive I did not come with a list of predetermined ideas but let the themes emerge from the archive itself, keeping only in mind what I thought might be of interest from a practical, thematic or a contemporary point of view for a 16-18 year old audience. Political and social subjects including themes such as the environment and climate change struck me as particularly relevant, as are portraiture (of society, the self or others) and identity. Following these threads through taken, found and constructed images, thoughts are framed and stories are created. With a shortlist made I aimed to select a cross-section of ideas and topics, which hopefully leads to further exploration. Inevitably, I have picked things using my own aesthetic preferences, for the composition, the humour or the historical relevance. All of the works chosen bring contemporary and (still) relevant topics as well as useful and inspirational ideas. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Best of Source: Archive Selections’
by: Mahtab Hussain
Posted: Tue, 08 Nov 2022 05:43:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Archive

Initially, I spent a lot of time looking through the complete library of Source but the process of actually choosing the majority of pieces to discuss began by evaluating my initial emotional response to them. I resisted any form of intellectual reasoning. I then return to these pieces again after a couple of days. The pause enabled the work to settle and allowed for a process of ‘looking again’, which encouraged further curiosity and eventually led to an articulation of the piece. This is how I approach my own work – my gut reaction is the overriding force that guides my practice, though it is closely supported by a period of reflection. But I was also fascinated with the purely intellectual, almost philosophical, pieces by David Campany, John Taylor, the joint interview with Emma Dexter and Frances Morris, and finally, Lucy Soutter. The extraordinary wealth of knowledge, their deeply engaging discussions drew me into the theorising aspect of photography, and in particular its relationship with fine art. Like so many articles in Source, each piece will surely become an invaluable historic document which future photographers and inquirers of the medium will look back on for decades to come. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Best of Source: Archive Selections’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Tue, 08 Nov 2022 08:20:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Archive

I have been one of the editors of Source from 1994 and although I have periodically gone through our back catalogue, preparing for talks about the magazine, this has been an opportunity to look back with a more specific remit: choosing work by photographers based in or from the island of Ireland. Source has returned to some of the photographers’ work a number of times over the years and I have met many of the photographers through our open submission days. Both these forms of encounter inform my choices and thoughts on the work. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Asylum Archive’
by: Vukašin Nedeljković
Posted: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 10:21:50 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 74 - Spring 2013

I took part in the protests and artistic ferment that culminated in the fall of Miloševic in Serbia in 2000. Following the assassination of Zoran Djindjic in 2003, I made a broadcast on Radio B92 in Belgrade, which resulted in me having to leave Serbia. I arrived in Ireland in 2005, and subsequently spent almost three years seeking asylum, living in the Direct Provision system in the Old Convent hostel in Ballyhaunis, Co.Mayo. As a coping mechanism during this time I made a number of images of my surroundings and as well as photographs of fellow asylum seekers. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Best of Source: Archive Selections’
by: Jessie McLaughlin
Posted: Wed, 12 Oct 2022 06:12:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Archive

When Source got in touch and asked if I’d like to be a part of this project exploring the magazine’s archive, it sounded great. What I didn’t expect is how moving the process turned out to be. I moved to Sweden just over a year ago, and have been (like everyone else) stuck in the pandemic for most of that time. In other words, stuck in an in-between space, not able to visit friends and family back in the U.K. and yet also not really able to roam and explore my new home. To be given this opportunity to reflect and look back through Source’s back issues has in many ways given me an unexpected but much needed window to old friends and peers in and around photography, to places I miss, artists whose work takes me back to falling in love with photography, being confronted by photography, being drawn into what it can be and do. My selection is therefore a personal one, in many ways even a sentimental one and yet still, I hope, offers you a true sense of the sheer volume and scope of photographic practice Source has covered over the years. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Failed Realist’
by: Siún Hanrahan
Posted: Mon, 10 Oct 2022 12:25:41 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 71 - Summer 2012

The nexus explored through Morrissey’s work combines the conventions of portraiture, revealing that which is normally hidden, and ‘everyday anxieties’. In the 1990s, Morrissey’s Women with Moustaches series (Source 22) explored the anxieties surrounding facial hair, and the challenges they pose to the conventions and ideals of femininity. In 2005, Seven Years took the family photo album and family relations as subject matter, elaborately restaging real and imagined snaps to probe the construction of childhood and family. In the series of photographs presented here, 'The Failed Realist', the proposed object of enquiry is (once again) situated within family life but what is met through these photographs of face-paintings is not entirely straightforward. The photographs were made in collaboration with the artist’s daughter, when she was between the ages of four and five years. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Failed Realist’
by: Trish Morrissey
Posted: Mon, 10 Oct 2022 12:08:18 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 71 - Summer 2012

A Portfolio of photographic work by Trish Morrissey. Published in Issue 71 of Source, Summer 2012. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Unspeakable’
by: Stephen Baker
Posted: Mon, 10 Oct 2022 08:37:20 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 64 - Autumn 2010

At times it has felt like the fall-out and debris of Northern Ireland’s violent past has been swept up with indecent haste to make way for the new political dispensation; that culture has been pressed into the service of ‘rebranding’ Northern Ireland as a place in which to do business; and that ‘the troubles’ have been dismissed as a period of collective madness from which Northern Ireland is now recovering. There has, for instance, been no process of ‘truth and reconciliation’ and no agreed or ‘official’ version of the past to underpin a museum exhibition or the teaching of history in schools. Ennui, indifference and economic expediency have seen to it that there is precious little public reflection upon a period that for many people was formative in both a personal and political sense. It is in this context that we might consider Malcolm Gilbert’s 'Post Traumatic Exorcism', a collection that renders violent acts in vivid detail, with a mise-enscene that is often recognizably Northern Irish and an iconography that at times recalls the ‘Troubles’. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Post Traumatic Exorcism’
by: Malcolm Craig Gilbert
Posted: Mon, 10 Oct 2022 08:24:09 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 64 - Autumn 2010

A Portfolio of photographic work by Malcolm Craig Gilbert. Published in Issue 64 of Source, Autumn 2010. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Known Unknowns’
by: Chris Clarke
Posted: Mon, 10 Oct 2022 07:47:58 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Multi-Genre
First Published: Issue 72 - Autumn 2012

There are some things I know about Patrick Hogan; that he is from and later lived for a period in Tipperary; that his images vary across genre and scale; that he often allows the negatives of his images to sit for some time before printing in order to accumulate dust and marks; that these prints are displayed in a non-linear, ‘loose’ arrangement that doesn’t prioritise any set, standard reading; that he keeps re-arranging, even repeating these images. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Still’
by: Patrick Hogan
Posted: Mon, 10 Oct 2022 07:19:59 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Multi-Genre
First Published: Issue 72 - Autumn 2012

A Portfolio of photographic work by Patrick Hogan. Published in Issue 72 of Source, Autumn 2012. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘If You Can Piss...’
by: Darren Thiel
Posted: Fri, 07 Oct 2022 10:06:31 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 90 - Summer 2017

Darren Thiel is a sociologist. His book Builders involved field research in the building trade. He spoke to David O'Mara about photographing on building sites. Darren Thiel: How did you come to be photographing on construction sites? / David O’Mara: I moved from Ireland to London in 2001 and I happened to get a job on construction sites. I thought it would be a temporary thing but, as time went on, it became a much more long-term job. I was working as an artist and using the job to fund the practice and also living in London. A relative of my partner was friends with someone who had a painting company so they introduced me. Their words were, ‘Oh you’ve been to art college, then you’ll know how to hold a brush, that’s ok’. I think it was a bit of overestimation of my abilities! It was some time before I started taking photographs. The whole building site environment was very alien to me so I didn’t really have the confidence to introduce a camera. I was just trying to get along with people and find my place. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘If You Can Piss...’
by: David O'Mara
Posted: Fri, 07 Oct 2022 09:40:21 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 90 - Summer 2017

A Portfolio of photographic work by David O'Mara. Published in Issue 90 of Source, Summer 2017. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘God Knows What Is In Your Head’
by: Zuzana Hruskova
Posted: Thu, 06 Oct 2022 08:28:29 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Found
First Published: Issue 43 - Summer 2005

Sometimes I take photographs to defend myself. I also photograph to feel the place or understand the specificity of moment or situation. I am sick of photography, and this is another reason I photograph. There is lot of silence in my work and I don’t necessarily like to be seen taking the photograph. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Portraiture’
by: Richard West
Posted: Thu, 06 Oct 2022 07:15:17 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 32 - Autumn 2002

Richard: Were you interested in portraiture before you were interested in photography? / Thomas: No. I must confess that I was only interested in photography. I didn’t have any art classes the five years before my high school exam and I wasn’t interested in art at all. I think it was just by chance that a friend of mine bought a 35mm camera and I saw him photographing and I thought, ‘this looks good’, no special interest in portraits. / Richard: Do you have a memory of family albums? / Thomas: Yes of course I have, this kind of photography is covered by the family itself, this doesn’t have to be done by professional photographers. / Richard: What meaning do these photographs have for you, do they serve a different function from the work that you’re doing now? / Thomas: Of course they have a meaning for everybody who has their own family album. I think these albums prove a very important thing in photography, that is using photography as a prosthesis. These family albums are used as a prosthesis for the history of the family. You probably don’t remember precisely the street where you grew up but if you look at the photographs, looking at you running through the street you remember every single detail. Even if it is not high or intended photography it is still very essential for everybody.  . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Here Comes The Tate’
by: Helen James
Posted: Fri, 30 Sep 2022 07:11:15 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Gallery-Based
First Published: Issue 35 - Summer 2003

Helen James: Could you start off by telling me a little bit about your role here at Tate Modern? / Emma Dexter: I’m a Senior Curator here at Tate Modern, I’m a contemporary art specialist and I used to run the gallery as Director of Exhibitions at the ICA for 8 years and I was previously Deputy Director there so I was at the ICA for the whole of the 90s. Before that I was at Chisenhale Gallery. I’ve been part of a team of curators that have been based here at Tate Modern since it opened. I’ve taken part in programming discussion with our Directors, in particular the previous Director Lars Nittve and more recently with Nicholas Serota. Often in these programming discussions the question of photography would come up because we were being offered monographic exhibitions by significant photographers of 20th Century. After much debate and heart searching we turned these exhibitions down. That was because we felt that it important to see Tate Modern as a new start. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Dark Set Place’
by: Becky Beasley
Posted: Fri, 30 Sep 2022 06:31:50 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 37 - Winter 2003

A Portfolio of photographic work by Becky Beasley. Published in Issue 37 of Source, Winter 2003. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Off-Beat Photography’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 07:20:31 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Photomontage

Many of the photographs in this publication, its author begins perversely, 'were taken for no reason at all'. They offer 'diverting evidence of what can be done on the lunatic fringe of orthodox photography'. As per the jazz reference of the title in its higgledy-piggledy font, the book takes an eclectic view of what might be described as an alternative photographic vision. Much is whimsy - demonstrated by the cover image of the author’s assistant, smirking as an axe protrudes from his forehead - but there are serious messages too, visualising risk, threat and tragedy. Maurice Rickards [1919-1998] was described as an artist, photographer, author and journalist in 1959. His work as a publicity designer had already secured him 'an international reputation for the unexpected'. Off-Beat Photography was Rickards’ first non-fiction book and he had yet to focus on the passion that would ESTablish his later reputation as a major collector and a pioneer scholar of paper ephemera. In his many later writings on the subject, including 2000’s authoritative Encyclopaedia of Ephemera, published posthumously by the British Library as his life’s work, he makes no reference to his earlier photographic career. Nonetheless, it is highly distinctive.  . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Other Side of Hedonism’
by: Francis Halsall
Posted: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 06:29:35 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 76 - Autumn 2013

When we were bored, as kids, there was a stupid game we played. You’d start at night in a garden and head off creeping through neighbours’ back gardens. Climbing over fences, squeezing through hedges and dodging through yards the game was to see how far one could go. Inevitably, at some point, you’d have to stop as you’d run into a prickly thicket, unclimbable wall or vicious looking dog. Occasionally a security light would be triggered and you’d be held captive for a moment in its blue-ish flare, rendered visible to anyone looking out. More often than not you’d catch odd glimpses of lives going on inside, framed by a window. These were boring, normal lives that seemed exotic in their banality: family meals; couples watching television; petty bickering; and people just sitting, waiting for something to happen. I’d almost forgotten about this but it came back to me when I started looking at Gareth McConnell’s pictures. He offers pictures of boredom too. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Ibiza Index, Nothing is Ever the Same as They Said it Was’
by: Gareth McConnell
Posted: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 06:00:20 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 76 - Autumn 2013

A Portfolio of photographic work by Gareth McConnell. Published in Issue 76 of Source, Autumn 2013. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Caravan Gallery’
by: Jan Williams
Posted: Thu, 22 Sep 2022 13:19:52 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 38 - Spring 2004

A Portfolio of photographic work by Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale. Published in Issue 38 of Source, Spring 2004. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The People's Taxis’
by: Nicholas Allen
Posted: Mon, 19 Sep 2022 12:12:28 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 16 - Autumn 1998

The images that form Patrick McCoy's 'The People's Taxis' were originally produced as part of the photographer's degree show. The fourteen photographs that I saw from this collection all took for their immediate subject matter the passengers of the Falls Road Taxi Association in West Belfast. Known locally as 'Black Taxis', McCoy's own notes tell us that the Association, to which the drivers are affiliated, was founded in 1973. Later it was joined by ex- internees who found it difficult to gain employment on release. The Black Taxis still service West Belfast today, just as their Protestant counterparts journey to their separate areas. This culturally charged background provided part of the initial interest for McCoy in his subject. The point for McCoy of photographing these taxis (and the people in them) is corrective. As the photographer's notes tell us, the taxis provide for an understanding of Belfast that need not resort "to the stock cliched images of graffiti daubed walls, political murals and British army foot patrols". Furthermore, McCoy hoped his project would prove to be an "antidote to the spectacular images produced by visiting foreign photojournalists". . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The People's Taxis’
by: Patrick McCoy
Posted: Mon, 19 Sep 2022 11:56:40 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 16 - Autumn 1998

A Portfolio of photographic work by Patrick McCoy. Published in Issue 16 of Source, Autumn 1998. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘A Commitment To Merseyside’
by: Siobhan Davis
Posted: Wed, 14 Sep 2022 14:55:31 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Social
First Published: Issue 61 - Winter 2009

Siobhan davis examines the collection of open eye gallery and its history of working with local photographers. The dark interior of a traditional pub, unevenly lit by large windows and a scattering of old fashioned light fittings, is crowded with men enjoying a lunchtime pint. Suit clad customers rub shoulders with casually dressed locals as their combined attention is directed toward a figure on the right of the frame. A woman, her back to the camera, is picked out by the chiaroscuro lighting. Dressed in a loose fitting white basque. frilled around the top of the thigh, she leans forward unhooking a suspender fastening. Barely visible in front of the woman, a man's face concentrates on the spectacle before him. The content of the photograph is not immediately apparent. It demands that the viewer takes time to examine its depths, to question what it's about. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘More than Nature’
by: Colin Graham
Posted: Wed, 14 Sep 2022 08:39:58 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 94 - Summer 2018

Thirteen years ago I accidentally became a farmer. My wife and I inherited a farm that had been in her family for centuries. But neither of us had any knowledge of farming. My wife’s uncle had passed away – he had owned the land but was too much an old-style gentleman to actually get involved in the day to day of farming. He had employed, for decades, a farm manager and a farm hand, who were as elderly and set in their ways as him. And when Joe, the farm worker, sadly took his own life in his late 70s, we were suddenly left with a flock of pregnant ewes to look after. Learning to farm has been, for me, the accumulation of new knowledge and a new argot. But more than that, it has been an accumulation of things in their actuality and materiality, and of a new sense of how time passes. Farms and farmland, are the slow, slow build-up of nature worked on by humans. Fields are grass which has been sown, land which has been ploughed for grass to be sown, drains which have been laid, so that grass will grow. Nature is cultivated and encouraged in one place, cut down and put away in others. Every part of a farm is work, layer upon layer of human labour and endeavour. Some farmers love their land, others simply inhabit it. But being on a farm is to know, implicitly, that it is lived and layered and worked land, the accumulation of things laboured on and moved around. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Tomorrow is Sunday’
by: Miriam O'Connor
Posted: Wed, 14 Sep 2022 07:55:27 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 94 - Summer 2018

A Portfolio of photographic work by Miriam O'Connor. Published in Issue 94 of Source, Summer 2018. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Unusual Gestures’
by: Gavin Murphy
Posted: Wed, 14 Sep 2022 07:01:23 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Family
First Published: Issue 102 - Autumn 2020

You never quite know when to trust your instincts. I look at these photographs and another set of images, unseen for many years, keeps coming back into my head. It is a scene from 'The Night of the Hunter' (1955) when the two children escape in a boat from the monstrous figure of the preacher. As the boat floats down the river, the scene becomes quite fantastical, beginning with a starry night and an eerie lullaby. The boat passes a spider’s web, then an owl, a turtle, rabbits, and finally a fox – all framed large in the foreground with the boat set against a silhouetted landscape. The film is transformed into a Southern Gothic fairytale through this dreamlike theatre. The children are in a realm of their own, their moment of repose framed by the looming figure of the preacher stalking the landscape: 'Does he ever sleep?', asks the young boy. The instinct to retreat to what you know in the face of what you do not know is not necessarily one to be trusted. A challenging story has at its core a request that you, the listener, retain an openness so that judgement is suspended and so allows the possibility that you, as a person, can understand and even change for the better. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Unusual Gestures’
by: Lorraine Tuck
Posted: Wed, 14 Sep 2022 06:33:37 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Family
First Published: Issue 102 - Autumn 2020

A Portfolio of photographic work by Lorraine Tuck. Published in Issue 102 of Source, Autumn 2020. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: The Shabbiness of Beauty’
by: Odette England
Posted: Wed, 07 Sep 2022 06:24:51 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Multi-Genre

I dismember the book page by page. Isn't taking a photograph a sort of dismembering of the world? Consider subbing dismemberment for another word. Word is in world. There is no L in Moyra or Davey or Peter or Hujar or The Shabbiness of Beauty or Vanishing. Rather, lots of love, lonesomeness, lust, looking, and light. I tape the pages to my walls. Regret ensues. My daughter wants to know about the chickens. She grills me with questions. Whatever, she sniffs at the elephants, waves, babies, and the penis. What's for dinner? We rhumba for a week or so these pages and me. I stroke their edges, smile. I whisper to the high heels I love you. None of us says that often enough, much less mean it. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 108 / Summer 2022 - Zoom Launch’
by: The Editors
Posted: Sat, 20 Aug 2022 11:50:20 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Event

Join us for the Online Launch of Source Issue 108 - 'Generations'. Featuring live interviews with Trish Morrissey and Julian Germain, two of this issue's contributors. Hosted by Editor Richard West in partnership with the Gallery of Photography Ireland. 'Generations' by Julian Germain is a collection of family group portraits, made across the UK since 2004, documenting four and five generation families in their homes. Recently, Germain has been focusing his efforts on Birmingham and the Black Country as part of a public space commission by GRAIN Projects and Multistory for Birmingham 2022. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 108 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 01 Aug 2022 04:51:04 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 108 - Summer 2022

The last thirty years have seen a transformation in photography. We have spoken to three photographers, Trish Morrissey, Jon Tonks and Heather Agyepong, who each started their career in a different decade during this period, and asked them how these changes have affected them. This period has seen the switch from analogue to digital, the advent of social media as well as a host of social and cultural changes. As the conversation reveals, this has created some common experiences – like a weariness with Instagram – and some unexpected differences, like varied attitudes to the long-term preservation of work. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: A Sinister Memoriam’
by: Harvey Dimond
Posted: Sat, 16 Jul 2022 06:05:44 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Photojournalism

A photograph from Christina Sharpe’s book 'In the Wake: On Blackness and Being' has been branded on my memory ever since I first saw it two years ago. Reproduced as a black and white image in Sharpe’s book, the photograph shows a young Black girl, maybe around 10 years old, in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. She had been pulled, miraculously, from the rubble of a building more than two weeks after the disaster, by which time most hopes of finding people alive would have abated. She is shown lying down, staring directly into the lens; stuck on her forehead is a piece of adhesive material with Ship written on it, in black marker pen. The material has been stuck on her head, branded almost, by US Army soldiers, as they wait to evacuate her from Port-au-Prince to an unknown destination. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Black Cats’
by: Morwenna Kearsley
Posted: Fri, 15 Jul 2022 07:07:44 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Portraiture

Pluto is often described as God of the Dead or Lord of the Underworld and I would add Photographer to that list. For what is a photograph if not a death? Down in the deep, dark shadows of his subterranean city, I imagine him printing photographs. Negative to positive, light to dark. Perhaps he uses the summer time, when Proserpina departs the Underworld, to really get to grips with the darkroom backlog. In his 1843 story 'The Black Cat', Edgar Allan Poe’s mercurial narrator names his pet cat Pluto. This brutal malefactor confesses to a pattern of abuse and violence meted out not only to Pluto but his wife also; a response to their consistent love and care and fear. Writing at a time when photography was still in its infancy, Poe plays on the prophetic image-apparition as central to superstitious beliefs and dreadful outcomes. In one scene, an image of the murdered Pluto appears on a scorched wall after fire consumes the narrator’s house. The white, negative image of the black cat communicates to observers the brutal manner of its death. In another scene, a replacement black cat’s tuft of white chest hair slowly begins to form a prophetic image of gallows. Poe tells us, through the use of black and white images that the positive photograph is bound to its negative in perpetuity, like a crime to its punishment. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Best of Source: Archive Selections’
by: Susanna Galbraith
Posted: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 05:35:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Archive

I have been part of the 'Source' editorial team in the capacity of Audience Development Officer for just over a year. Outside of 'Source' I am a writer of poems and an editor of literary and interdisciplinary publications and projects, and have been part of 'Abridged' magazine for ten years. No doubt some of what I have recommended here will chime with certain preoccupations of the Abridged project, such as a strong interest in the operations of ambiguity, myth and the uncanny in the contemporary world, as well as a curatorial interest in how visual and linguistic mediums intersect and affect each other. With a background in literature, it will come as no surprise that I have been particularly drawn to features that look beyond photography into its relationship with other mediums and wider cultural questions, introductions with a particular poetic angle or quality, portfolios wherein a sense of storytelling or the mythopoetic might be strongly felt. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Photographic Make-Up’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Wed, 20 Apr 2022 17:07:22 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Portraiture

Portrait photographers at mid-century faced a new problem, according to Jack Emerald, one of their number. "In the good old days", soft focus lenses enabled sitters to look their “impossible best”. Other time-honoured techniques included retouching the negative with knife and pencil, "removing a wrinkle here, or a piece of the jaw-line there". Emerald complained that this work is tedious and costly, and that a discerning public increasingly recognises a retouched photograph when it sees it, much to the embarrassment of its sitter. His solution is photographic make-up, which he says is steadily becoming part of the working equipment of portraitists worldwide. In this approach, retouching takes place before the photograph is taken, and thus "the lily is gilded first". Emerald supplies fifteen exhausting pages of guidance on women’s make-up. Beginning with a base coat to cover all imperfections, multiple products are then used to draw improved features back in. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: The Only Photograph of Mr Pencil’
by: Sinéad Corcoran
Posted: Thu, 14 Apr 2022 10:42:48 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Portraiture

Mr Pencil survived the War by turning sideways. Every movement of his comrades looked like the worst case of having a fleshy body that Mr Pencil had ever seen. They heaved and dragged themselves up and down the mountainsides. Blinded by their own sweat and slowed by their own feet that rejected their duty to move, move, move, hide, hide, hide. They staggered under the weight of their own selves and when they fell, he – like a sliver, a ripple, a faint glint against the sky – watched the shrapnel and the bullets press into the thickness of them. Since childhood, Mr Pencil was always looking at the sky: the chance of rain, the chance of wind, the chance of a sudden summer storm. His mother said he was of a delicate constitution, a nervous disposition, running inside at any sign of danger. In fair weather, however, he was the finest scout in all of Western Macedonia. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 107 / Spring 2022 - Zoom Launch’
by: The Editors
Posted: Sun, 10 Apr 2022 12:55:02 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Event

Join us for the Online Launch of Issue 107 'Signs'. Live interviews with Judith Williamson and Jonathan Long, two of this issue’s contributors. Hosted by Editor Richard West in partnership with the Gallery of Photography Ireland. Judith Williamson examines the photographic evidence for partygate. Jonathan Long introduces this issue’s archive feature, which is made up of images from a photographic album held in the collection of the Wiener Holocaust Library in London. The album was made in 1935 by German-Jewish businessman Fritz Fürstenberg and his fiancée, Käthe Smoszewski, who, at considerable personal risk, documented antisemitic signs dotted throughout the German countryside, its towns, and villages. The album was created to be disseminated as evidence of antisemitism in Germany. In his introduction to the pictures, Long notes the perturbing way that ‘propaganda has become so much part of the everyday’. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 107 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Tue, 05 Apr 2022 12:00:29 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 107 - Spring 2022

Like ESTranged cousins, the road sign and the photograph appear to be related in only a formal sense, perhaps part of some larger family of objects that convey meanings, one clear and direct, the other prone to vagueness. But recently what is obvious or not obvious has seemed less straightforward; we ask ‘Is this the speed limit?’ and ‘Is this a party?’ as if they were the same type of question. Partygate is only the most recent instance of Prime Minister Boris Johnson making simple rules uncertain, Judith Williamson helps us interpret the photographic evidence to find out what has occured. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Best of Source: Archive Selections’
by: Stephen Bull
Posted: Wed, 30 Mar 2022 07:32:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Archive

Chances are so important in photography - and in real life. Sometime in late 1995 or early 1996 I chanced upon my former fellow student Patrick McCoy at Brighton station. He showed me an issue of a magazine I had never seen before called 'Source: The Photographic Review'. Turning to the inside front page, Patrick proudly pointed out that he was one of the editors. He then noted with obvious pleasure that one of his photographs was reproduced on the inside back page. I congratulated him and, before parting, Patrick gave me the magazine. The same copy is beside me as I write this a quarter of a century later. Over the past 25 years many visual and verbal practitioners have shared the pride and pleasure of their work or their words appearing in 'Source' (I am one of them). Every issue from that 1995/96 edition up to now sits on my shelves. Looking through their pages to select twelve pieces has been both a trip back in time and a refreshing reminder of the ongoing relevance of the vast array of photographs and writings that Source has published. They should be seen and be read. These are my choices. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Best of Source: Archive Selections’
by: Sarah Allen
Posted: Tue, 29 Mar 2022 07:22:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Archive

For the very lucky among us the pandemic has forcibly shoved us off life’s merry-go-round and offered a moment to pause and reflect. For some this has involved looking back, which feels like a strange luxury in a future-focused culture that privileges productivity. With that in mind it was a pleasure to take a deep dive into the archive of 'Source' magazine and concertina decades worth of photographic production in Ireland and beyond. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: How to Judge Character from the Face’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Tue, 22 Mar 2022 11:40:05 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Portraiture

Illustrated with 133 photographs, mostly of facial features in isolation, Jacques Penry's system for personality analysis is, in the author's ESTimation, both a "comprehensive pictorial survey" and a "quick and easy guide". It serves dual purposes, as "fireside or party entertainment" and a study rooted in "medical-scientific foundations". Anyone wanting to know more of the latter is warned from the first page that "no attempt has been made to explain [them] in any detail". The reader, instead, "is asked to accept the assurance that these foundations exist". Physiognomy as a diagnostic science was already discredited by the mid-1950s but that didn't stop Penry from evoking a scholarly mood. With a confident writing style, he briskly delivers, first, a Question-and-Answer section to address uncertainties and then provides a complex structural formula that connotes rigour even as it obscures. Seven pictorial chapters, designated A to H, compartmentalise the face into Nose, Forehead, Eyes, Eyebrows, Mouth, Chin and Ears; a final section, on Lines-Wrinkles-Dimples, completes the set.  . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Things To Do With Photographs’
by: Blaine O'Donnell
Posted: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 12:12:13 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Family

Individually, featherlight. Together, they are a weight in our house, the box casting shadows as the sun passes over the apples. I know they are there, always, waiting in the crate, as we move in and out of rooms, seasons. I come home for a week when the trees are in blossom and the rain batters the petals down into the earth. Some of the albums have shifted. Has my mother been in here looking? Her life is another life entirely. I draw a diagram of our overlapping lives. When everyone is elsewhere, I go back to the box of past happenings, the kaleidoscopic, overlapping mound of the camera's glances. A surfeit of existence has been gathered here, skimmed from the swim of things. I can not stop looking. I look at eyes looking into the future. I look at the family features appearing in faces. A gamut of facets. I look for their frst appearance, their most recent iteration. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Do We Still Need Photography Galleries?’
by: Rebecca Hopkinson
Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2022 07:02:48 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Gallery-Based
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Many galleries now exhibit photography. This prompts the question, do we need specialist photography galleries? To answer this question we have conducted a survey to find out just how much photography is shown in contemporary art spaces and asked curators what they think of the role of medium-specific galleries. If you are a photography enthusiast the answer is simple: photography shows make up just less than 10% of the programmes of contemporary art galleries (151 exhibitions) and the small number of photo-galleries stage nearly as many photo shows (128 exhibitions). But there are more subtle questions about what photography is being shown. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Cats and My Camera’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Wed, 23 Feb 2022 08:25:54 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Portraiture

'Cats and My Camera' is a slight volume of 127 pages and 40 black-and-white cat portraits, mostly singular and in static poses, and mostly titled by the feline's name, from Bunty and Kittiwinks to Tarzan and Tony. Evelyn Glover [1873-1941] describes herself as a "very ordinary person" and a spinster; she also notes her grey hair. She lives in a flat with a female friend, who does not want to reveal her identity. Her friend, Glover warns, is "more devoted to cats than I am". That the author is an enthusiast is in no doubt but, from the start, she points out that she is no "cat connoiseusse". Equally, she emphasises, she is no expert in photography. If anyone declares, "Your cat photographs are wonderful!” she retorts, "You don't see my dustbin." Without training and expensive equipment, she is merely someone who "owes some of the pleasant moments in my life to cats and my camera", and who wishes to share this with anyone who has not, by this point, put the book down.  . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Shaking Out of Polaroid Nostalgia’
by: Robert Lewis
Posted: Tue, 15 Feb 2022 10:56:22 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Family

During the last week of the 2020-21 school year, one of my middle school students asked to take a picture with his friends. The student, a seventh grader in my English Language Learners class, was a bit of a handful; he didn’t really ask, he told. 'We’re going to take a picture,' he said. But just as I was ready to verbally pounce, I saw him slip his hand into his knapsack and pull out a modern, instant camera. I melted. He unbuttoned the black case of his black Fujifilm Instamax Mini 11 and looked at me. I nodded. 'Great choice,' I said. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Embodied Meanings’
by: Elizabeth Edwards
Posted: Thu, 03 Feb 2022 12:05:50 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Experimental
First Published: Issue 42 - Spring 2005

Photographs, quite common-sensically, are always explained in terms of the visual. However, arguably their effect, and thus meaning, is not contained solely in the visual but in the embodied experience inherent in the social use of photographs. Photographs are not merely looked at- they are handled, caressed, stroked, kissed torn, wept over, lamented over, talked to, talked about, sung to, written on, exchanged, displayed and performed in a multitude of material ways; all of which are stimulated by the visual but cannot be explained wholly by it. There has been increasing concern over the way in which the primacy of the visual in Western thinking about photographs have suppressed their sensory and emotional impact. The increasing awareness of the materiality of photographs, and the exploration of oral, tactile and embodied ways of thinking about them is part of a broader response to concern about the way in which the senses have been marginalised in a mind-body dichotomy. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Arrivals Kew’
by: Doug Ross
Posted: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 11:58:53 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 38 - Spring 2004

A Portfolio of photographic work by Doug Ross. Published in Issue 38 of Source, Spring 2004.  . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Summer of Love’
by: Ian Walker
Posted: Fri, 28 Jan 2022 10:57:17 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 40 - Autumn 2004

I think I have always been half in love with her. As she leans back against her lover, eyes closed, absorbed in sensuality and oblivious to the people around her, this girl should really be in some European art film of the period – by Antonioni or Truffaut perhaps – rather than here on a pleasure boat off the English coast. I’ve known this picture now for thirty years. It was a sunny day in London in 1974 or 1975 when I walked into a secondhand bookshop on Great Russell Street along from the British Museum to find a copy of Tony Ray-Jones’ book 'A Day Off'. It was marked down to £1.50 (the original price was £4.75). I bought it and, right now, it’s propped up on the table in front of me. I’m not sure if this was my first sight of the picture – there was an Arts Council exhibition of Ray-Jones’ work called The English Seen going round the country at the same time. But the version in the book, the second image in, is the one I return to and have shown in lectures ever since to say something about the decisive moment, traditions in documentary, the English seaside and so on . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘This Is This’
by: John Taylor
Posted: Sun, 23 Jan 2022 17:24:31 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Photojournalism
First Published: Issue 29 - Winter 2001

My friend Dr Death – named for his diligence in gathering representations of war – confessed that he had been unable to collect the newspapers from 12 September onwards. He had bought his daily 'Guardian', but had not been able to study it closely. I confessed to buying all the papers for that week, as my collecting habits extend to all types of catastrophe in photographs. Though we are both squeamish and only look at pictures, I am a greater ghoul than he. Nonetheless I attend the lowest (armchair) class in the tourism of death. I have already collected numerous examples of photographs that were taken moments before death, or at the moment of death, or after death. Some of them are gruesome, most are not; almost none are medical or forensic in their detail. Some are less affecting, emotionally, than photographs of grief. I realise that picture agencies and picture editors protect me from the worst sights. I expect photojournalism to disturb me, incidentally to satisfy a morbid curiosity and perhaps (rarely) to politicise me. I do not expect it to induce Post Traumatic Stress syndrome.  . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Playing with Enigmas’
by: David Campany
Posted: Sun, 16 Jan 2022 10:04:29 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 74 - Spring 2013

Finally we have a book that surveys one of the most interesting artistic collaborations of the post-war era. In 1973 Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel began a long career that traced an erratic but always intriguing arc from the playful, image-savvy conceptualism of America’s west coast to that strain of postmodern appropriation that concerned itself with the increasingly sinister machinations of the mass media. With billboards, books, films and exhibitions the duo coaxed photography and audiences into a realm in which equal weight could be given to humour and rigour, curiosity and the intellect, history and autobiography, sober documents and spontaneous invention. The collaboration lasted until Sultan’s death in 2009. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Man Who Wasn't There’
by: John Taylor
Posted: Sun, 16 Jan 2022 07:49:16 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Photojournalism
First Published: Issue 29 - Winter 2001

At the time of writing – the second week in November – the war against terrorism has no limit. According to the military and politicians, it may endure for years, or even never end. As in the Cold War, the present and future is filled with propaganda. As in the Cold War, pictures of actual events are stereotypical and contain little information. The stereotypical images of leaders, mobs, hardware and refugees are a mix of familiar types. The pictures, like the leaders, create expectations and purport to show the gradual achievement of war aims, such as bombed airfields and ammunition dumps. The ‘degradation’ of the enemy is supposedly matched by the simplification of complex politics. That move in propaganda means that everything about the war, even as it deals out death to more innocents, appears in the West as a mélange of back-list, Cold War movies, in which ‘civilisation’ narrowly survives some horrible alien threat or other.  . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Oana Stanciu’
by: Nora Labo
Posted: Thu, 06 Jan 2022 10:56:37 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 102 - Autumn 2020

In Oana Stanciu’s photographs, the inconceivable and the mundane collide, and the locus for this unsettling cohabitation is the artist’s own body. Her self-portraits, usually on plain studio backdrops, use minimalist props – often comical in their banality – and clever perspective to transform and distort her body. The resulting scenes are presented to the viewer with no suggestion of a symbolic key or a heavy conceptual framework. They do little more than assert an unlikely presence, stating ‘this too is real’. It is precisely this simplicity which opens up new spaces for reflection and often arouses the discomfort needed to renew our thinking and sensibility. By engaging with unthinkable situations as if they were on a level footing with everyday realities, she subtly encourages the viewer to question accepted notions of normality, and to welcome the legitimacy of experiences different from their own. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

Portfolio
by: Oana Stanciu
Posted: Thu, 06 Jan 2022 09:35:39 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 102 - Autumn 2020

A Portfolio of photographic work by Oana Stanciu. Published in Issue 102 of Source, Autumn 2020. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Peripatetic’
by: Ray McKenzie
Posted: Thu, 25 Nov 2021 16:26:33 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Still Life
First Published: Issue 62 - Spring 2010

The immediate impression made by the eight works that comprise 'Peripatetic' is of their striking elegance as images together with a poignant sense of the care with which their contents have been arranged for display. And this is just as it should be. Flowers, after all, are among those privileged objects that have been designated by our culture as not merely beautiful but inherently so,generating entire traditions of visual and literary representation that seek to explain why such fragile and physically vulnerable objects have so powerful a hold on our minds. These traditions go back a long way and take many different forms. In the West, the decorative potential of plant forms was exploited right from the start, achieving its most resolved manifestation in the stylised runs of acanthus and honeysuckle used by the Greeks on their ceramic ware, textiles and buildings. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Peripatetic’
by: Rita Soromenho
Posted: Wed, 24 Nov 2021 16:29:10 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Still Life
First Published: Issue 62 - Spring 2010

A Portfolio of photographic work by Rita Soromenho. Published in Issue 62 of Source, Spring 2010. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘What do we See?’
by: Alexandra Moschovi
Posted: Mon, 22 Nov 2021 18:06:59 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 79 - Summer 2014

‘I could hear the voices of a couple arguing in the distance. It sounds as though they have entered the arcade, but only their voices have entered, and linger for a while even after they have passed the opening and continue on their way… It seems as though even if they had walked through they would not have noticed the presence of anyone, let alone anyone having sex…’, 'The Car', text panel (1995) This caption details the memory of a sexual encounter taking place in public in the privacy of a parked car. However, the presences implied in the text are absent from the black-and-white photographic image it anchors: a mundane people-less scene featuring a lone car parked under a vaulted arcade. Part of the series 'Public Sex', Lorna Simpson’s work 'The Car' is a screen print on twelve felt panels pinned against the wall in grid format. On close inspection the picture disintegrates onto the felt surface whilst it recomposes itself from a distance. It seems as if the tactility of the flesh suggested in the spoken but unseen intimation, also a focal feature in Simpson’s earlier work, has been transposed onto the sensory experience of the woolly surface of the felt. 'The Car' is the opening picture that greets the visitor to Simpson’s retrospective exhibition; an apt selection, for it establishes the central role of the beholder/voyeur in Simpson’s work while also preparing us for the shifts and turns in the artist’s multidimensional oeuvre. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

Portfolio
by: Gillian Wearing
Posted: Mon, 22 Nov 2021 06:58:31 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 96 - Winter 2018

A Portfolio of photographic work by Gillian Wearing. Published in Issue 96 of Source, Winter 2018. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Gillian Wearing’
by: Catherine Grant
Posted: Sun, 21 Nov 2021 18:31:35 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 96 - Winter 2018

We look back at the work of Gillian Wearing with an interview by Catherine Grant. The artist talks about the development of her work since 1991 and the feature concludes with two new photographs from her current series, published for the first time. / In 'Me: Me' from 1991, Gillian Wearing is shown with her eyes downcast, apparently reading a magazine. On the magazine the same photograph is reproduced, so that multiple images of Wearing lead the viewer in whilst also repelling any investment in the photograph as an authentic representation of self. The work visualises the adage ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, and gently plays with the idea that a photographic portrait can reveal inner depths. With its deadpan humour, this self-portrait is emblematic of Wearing’s work. Across her career she has explored the ways in which people present themselves to others, including herself. She examines the conventions of photography, video and portraiture, with a keen eye for the absurd along with a sincere desire to let people speak. She is a very famous British artist, but unlike some of her contemporaries who are known for their larger-thanlife characters as well as their artworks, she remains an enigmatic figure. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Photography Needs Drawing’
by: Jennifer Good
Posted: Thu, 18 Nov 2021 12:49:50 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 95 - Autumn 2018

Lampedusa is a Mediterranean island with a divided identity. Italian, but geographically closer to Tunisia, its pedigree as a tourist destination has been overtaken in recent years as its tiny community has found itself at the centre of the international migrant crisis. The huge numbers of migrants arriving on its beaches have begun to alter the island’s infrastructure and daily life; never more so than in October 2013 when a boat carrying over 500 people sank off its shores with the loss of approximately 360 lives, and the island became a household name. The challenge of visually representing the migrant crisis has been approached in a range of ways in recent years, including creative documentary projects such as Carlos Spottorno and Guillermo Abril’s photo-based non-fiction graphic novel 'La Grieta' (2016) and Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s film installation 'The Bureaucracy of Angels' (2017). These works and others are prompted by what might once have been called ‘compassion fatigue’ but is, more accurately, ‘form fatigue’ – a search for new forms of storytelling that sometimes needs to resort to the jarring, bizarre or simply novel in order to help viewers comprehend such an overwhelming humanitarian disaster. 'Lampedusa' is a valuable contribution to this effort, which can best be compared to a kind of portfolio or dossier; an experimental exploration of as many aspects of the ‘migrant image crisis’ as possible. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘If You Know The Beginning, The End Is No Trouble’
by: Melissa Bennett
Posted: Wed, 17 Nov 2021 05:36:47 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 99 - Autumn 2019

'The only way for me to understand why I took all these pictures... is that, it’s like when you start eating you realise how hungry you are... and when it came down to pictures... I now realise how hungry I was'. Liz Johnson Artur’s first UK solo show is a visual banquet. It features around 100 images from her personal archive of photographs that she has built up with a focus on the richness and complexity of the black British community in South London where she has lived since 1991. I arrived to an empty gallery, perfect for digesting a show like Artur’s that requires you to engage with the photographs from a number of different angles. The layout has the photographs displayed on four bamboo cane structures of varying sizes and shapes. The images themselves are printed on a variety of different surfaces. Some are printed on photographic paper, some on cloth, some on acetate sheets and a number have been arranged into a book. The diverse ways in which the images are treated echoes the diversity of their content. As well as an eclectic mix of people in portraits and group portraits there are photographs of shops, streets and still lifes of artefacts, some of which refer to traditional African culture. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Language Of Photography’
by: Rosamund Moon
Posted: Tue, 16 Nov 2021 06:02:57 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 22 - Spring 2000

The history of photography could as well be demonstrated by the history of its terminology as by the pictures themselves or the devices used to produce them. Core terms - 'photography' itself, 'camera' and 'film' - were ESTablished as words in English within a matter of weeks of the first public announcements of the invention in 1839: the annus mirabilis in both the history of photography and in the history of its words. Pioneering techniques and processes produced the early coinages. As technology stabilized, interest in aesthetic aspects led to specialist descriptive and qualitative vocabulary: meanwhile, popularization led to less formal words. In this way, linguistic developments paralleled the developing visual vocabulary and grammar of photography, as well as its mechanics. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Dad’s Clothes’
by: Andre Penteado
Posted: Mon, 15 Nov 2021 10:48:46 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 63 - Summer 2010

A Portfolio of photographic work by Andre Penteado. Published in Issue 63 of Source, Summer 2010. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 106 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 15 Nov 2021 03:48:54 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 106 - Autumn 2021

Time is made manifest in photographs in different ways. We are familiar with the frozen movement of a high speed exposure. Less familiar are images that record slow processes or that simply take a long time to register as in geology or astronomy. Jem Southam talks about his work, which has often been slow to make, using cumbersome equipment, and photographing apparently static subject matter like ponds and cliff faces. Yet his patient and precise method, as well as reflecting his temperament, draws our attention to the small details of incremental change. An extreme example of slow image making would be the 5,200 day exposure to record an image of the sun made by the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector in Japan. Jost Migenda explains how this detector operates, what neutrinos are and how the most violent and extreme events in the galaxy give rise to the faintest, almost imperceptible signals. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Talking 'bout My Generation’
by: Shirley Read
Posted: Sun, 14 Nov 2021 19:51:33 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Social
First Published: Issue 33 - Winter 2002

Writing about community photography is something of a daunting task. Not simply because of the complexity and diversity of its history the relative paucity of source material, because it is disputed territory or because the 1970s seem more than a life time ago but because trying to define community photography is so difficult. Community photography was not a single movement but a loose term used to describe a huge diversity of practices and politics - it was above all a movement of very many small projects often working in isolation and completely independent of each other. Furthermore many photographers and organisations working in the area resisted being called community photographers or community projects. This was because they saw the term as derogatory and implying amateurism at a time when photography was struggling for recognition and funding. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘A Cover With Spin’
by: Slavka Sverakova
Posted: Sun, 14 Nov 2021 17:27:16 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 15 - Summer 1998

I have assumed that: (i) there was a clear brief for the design, (ii) the McCann-Erickson agency offered alternatives, (iii) the client selected this design as a sign of approval. If I turn to the observer some contradictions become obvious: "it is a sunset at the West of Ireland", "it is like a firemen's handbook", "it is threatening", "it makes you reject the Agreement", "it dictates to you to agree", "the figures are about to fall", "it is discomforting", "it puts me off", "it is not inviting". My small and random sample illustrates that expectancies give rise to perceptions (Hochberg 1978), but above all it suggests the design's low control over the recipient. That a cover may act like a referent is not surprising, since we expect it to convey the subject and its treatment. A cover is expected to interpret in visual terms the essential quality and spirit of authors' work. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Hidden People’
by: Gail Baylis
Posted: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 13:37:49 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 87 - Autumn 2016

Making photographs is a performative act for Trish Morrissey, one that allows her to explore the boundaries of the language of photography. This is a strategy that she continues in 'Ten People in a Suitcase'. As with previous work, Morrissey inserts herself as the subject in these photographs. This introduces a fiction into the key authority claim of analogue photography, its indexical link. Comparisons between Morrissey’s practice and the work of Cindy Sherman are often drawn, most notably in that both photographers choose to make themselves the subject of the work. However the aims differ: where Sherman in the 'Untitled Film Stills' sought to expose how collective popular fantasies are based on interchangeable visual signs that render femininity a masquerade, Morrissey, in this series, works to both embody the image and also to acknowledge the presence of the original subject. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Ten People in a Suitcase’
by: Trish Morrissey
Posted: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 12:27:40 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 87 - Autumn 2016

A Portfolio of photographic work by Trish Morrissey. Published in Issue 87 of Source, Autumn 2016. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘It's Your Decision?’
by: Richard West
Posted: Thu, 14 Oct 2021 10:15:04 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 15 - Summer 1998

The photograph used on the cover of the political agreement has been sent to every household in Northern Ireland and has been used on posters advertising the May 22nd referendum. As a ubiquitous image, and one carrying such political significance, questions were immediately asked as to its origins and efficacy. Attempts to discover who had taken the picture and where they had taken it have proved laborious.On first seeing the image an average member of the public, as conceived by advertising agency psychologists, might have responded to the beautiful sunset, the youthful, nuclear family with children of both sexes and concluded that standing together watching the sun set must be bliss indeed. Then reading the slogan -'it's your decision'- the citizens of Northern Ireland would put two and two together and realize that the decision they must make and being on the beach are connected in some way; if only they can make the correct decision all this can be theirs, family, beach, and setting sun. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 105 / Summer 2021 - Zoom Launch’
by: The Editors
Posted: Thu, 02 Sep 2021 03:30:42 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Event

Join us for the Online Launch of Issue 105 'Local'. Live interviews with contributors: Curator Ella Ravilious and Professor Colin Samson. Hosted by SOURCE Editor Richard West. In association with Gallery of Photography Ireland. Ella Ravilious is a Curator at the V and A, a trustee of Beaford Arts and the daughter of the photographer James Ravilious. In Issue 105 she talks about her father's work and to Mark Lawrence from Oxfordshire History Centre about photographic collections in local archives. Colin Samson is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. In Issue 105 he reviews 'Through a Native Lens: American Indian Photography' by Nicole Dawn Strathman and 'The Grass Shall Grow: Helen Post Photographs the Native American West' by Mick Gidley. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 105 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 26 Jul 2021 04:55:29 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 105 - Summer 2021

Photographic projects are often described as relating to ‘place’, ‘land’ or ‘community’, each with their own specific dimension. The ‘local’ however has more negative associations, neatly encapsulated by the catchphrase of the deranged shopkeeper from the 'League of Gentlemen': "This is a local shop for local people; there’s nothing for you here." The local represents the civic function of society – local government, education, reporting, services – and, probably not coincidentally, has been the most severely affected by the rise of social media and the financial crash of 2008. These local functions have always used photography and in this issue we look at local photojournalism, archives and council services. How are they managing with reduced resources and do they continue to have a role or, as the shopkeeper says, is there ‘nothing for you here’? . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Sexism on Show’
by: Emma Campbell
Posted: Tue, 06 Jul 2021 08:48:23 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Gender
First Published: Issue 79 - Summer 2014

In April of this year the 'British Journal of Photography' (BJP) published a ‘Women Only’ issue featuring women photographers, projects run by women and conversations about the paucity of women in photography. It touched lightly on the reasons behind this disparity and briefly, in an almost embarrassed tone, highlighted the magazine’s own past sexism, showing some of the easier to digest sexualised advertising that had filled its pages in the past. But why now? The role of women in photography has become a vital issue once again, tallying with wider public discussions about women’s involvement in other arenas. A conference at the Tate Gallery 'Fast Forward: Women and Photography then and now' has also taken place this year (part of a larger research project at the University College of the Arts, Farnham). Other initiatives include Firecracker, the European women photographers project, started by Fiona Rogers, a Magnum employee, to showcase women’s work. As was highlighted in 'Source 76' women now make up a majority of the photography curators in Ireland and the UK (62%). . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Photographs Explain Empire to Me’
by: Drew Thompson
Posted: Fri, 02 Jul 2021 11:21:50 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 98 - Summer 2019

During World War I and II, the Ministry of Information produced wartime propaganda for the British government. In 1946, the Central Office of Information (COI) replaced the Ministry of Information, marking a shift and new front in the British government’s attempts to influence public opinion. From its opening, the COI operated a photographic section that amassed and circulated news agency style photographs of Africa and Asia, sites of British imperial rule. Then, in 1966 just as the UK recognised the independence of its colonies in Africa and Asia, the COI photographic section ceased its Africa and Asia coverage. The COI used its expansive archive for public relations and disinformation campaigns that targeted audiences in Great Britain at a time when the British government transformed itself into a social welfare state and grappled with decolonisation. The reality portrayed by the COI photographs greatly differed from the one that colonial states and populations native to Africa experienced while living under British colonial rule. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Can Photographs tell the Story of Black History and the Black Present?’
by: Caroline Molloy
Posted: Thu, 01 Jul 2021 12:18:47 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 101 - Summer 2020

Caroline Molloy: First of all, I would like to ask you how you would like to introduce yourself for this piece? Your professional self? / Tina Campt: My professional self is a little schizophrenic because I come to my position and my research through various routes. I have a PhD in German history and I began my career as an Intellectual Historian who then became a Social and Oral Historian in order to do the work that I did on black Germans. Then, based on those oral histories, I was invited to curate an exhibition that was showcasing those life histories. That led me to photography because I found that photography told their stories even more vividly through a different medium. So I find it important to emphasise that I’m not a scholar trained in either the history of photography or art history or media studies. I am theorist who has come to photography and visual culture because it speaks to people and speaks for people in ways that animate what they think of themselves in a different way than language and text. In my work I engage photography and visual culture as a textual formation but I think it’s a formation that also demands other kinds of engagement as well. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Big Brother’
by: Yvonne Kennan
Posted: Thu, 01 Jul 2021 06:34:39 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 90 - Summer 2017

Yvonne Kennan: What inspired you to create such an intimate project? / Louis Quail: I think Justin is a survivor. I want to celebrate that along with his individuality. I started this book shortly after my mother died. Part of me would liked to have photographed my mother but I didn’t feel comfortable. I thought I might be exploiting my relationship on some level. My mother had schizophrenia as well. By the time my mother died I was older and more confident in the idea that it is really important to give people like Justin a voice. I am a believer that worse than being intruded upon is to be ignored. Another theme to the book is that mental health is part of us, it’s not all of us. It is important to show Justin’s hobbies and the rest of his life. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Big Brother’
by: Louis Quail
Posted: Thu, 01 Jul 2021 05:42:37 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 90 - Summer 2017

A Portfolio of photographic work by Louis Quail. Published in Issue 90 of Source, Summer 2017. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Maurice Hobson’
by: Declan Long
Posted: Wed, 30 Jun 2021 07:47:49 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 96 - Winter 2018

At the end of the summer this year, I travelled to the village of Caledon in Co. Tyrone to meet David Hobson, the brother of the late photographer Maurice Hobson: an extraordinarily talented, daringly experimental artist who passed away, far too early, in 1987. The family home, where both Maurice and David had grown up (along with other brothers and sisters) was on a pretty remote patch of farmland, a significant drive from Caledon itself. During the Troubles years, the relative isolation of such places – particularly in these contested, close-to-theborder areas – could potentially make one vulnerable. But the dispersed communities of these expanded rural townlands have always remained close-knit too. People know who’s who. Every face has a name. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

Portfolio
by: Maurice Hobson
Posted: Wed, 30 Jun 2021 07:03:11 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 96 - Winter 2018

A Portfolio of photographic work by Maurice Hobson. Published in Issue 96 of Source, Winter 2018. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 104 / Spring 2021 - Zoom Launch’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 14 Jun 2021 02:45:15 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Event

Join us for the Online Launch of Issue 104 'Legacy'. Live interviews with featured photographer Ori Gersht and contributor Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald. Hosted by SOURCE Editor Richard West. In association with Gallery of Photography Ireland. Ori Gersht was born in Isreal but has lived in London for over 30 years. Throughout his career his work has been concerned with the relationships between history, memory and landscape. He repeatedly uses the tension between creation and destruction in order to discover something new. In his new work he has been working with postcard imagery from historic museum collections and considering how these collections are defined and the way their historical story is being narrated. Issue 104 features a retrospective portfolio with selections from Gersht's photographic work to date, and an interview by Declan Long. Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald's acedemic specialisations include the visual culture of famine, poverty, migration, and diaspora (painting, engraving, photography, cinema and material culture); memory, commemoration and public art; museum studies and heritage; and Irish cultural policy and institutions. She is the author of 'Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and the Monument' (Liverpool University Press, 2013). In her Issue 104 article 'Tinted History' she discusses recent trends in the colourisation of old photographs. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 104 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Tue, 27 Apr 2021 10:57:31 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 104 - Spring 2021

From the moment a photograph is made and a small part of the past lingers into the ongoing present, a question is posed as to what is going to be done with it. Photographs form both a material legacy and one of meaning. A librarian like Richard Ovenden has to look after his old photographs, for example to prevent Fox Talbot's first experiments fading from view, but also to see how they relate to other knowledge. As he says to April Yee about the work he has recently added to the Bodleian library collection, this is part of a 'great enterprise' that extends beyond the life of any individual. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Photographs of the Unknown’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Tue, 20 Apr 2021 18:13:41 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Paranormal

‘It is not easy to take photographs of things which are not supposed to exist’, the authors of 'Photographs of the Unknown' put it, with considerable understatement. ‘You don’t just go out and photograph “the impossible”.’ Paranormal photographs have particular perils in the making. Even when a camera is present at ‘erratic, anomalous, short-lived and unexpected events’, photographers can find their operations supernaturally jinxed or otherwise ‘bungled’ in the excitement of the moment. This, the authors observe, is ‘the main reason for the badly framed, out of focus and under or over exposed views of UFOs, sea serpents and ghosts familiar to us all’. 'Photographs of the Unknown', in its large-scale hardback format, claimed to present ‘the greatest single collection of photographs’ from this diverse area. Its 300 illustrations offer ‘an astonishing album of evidence’, with the camera as ‘witness to the frontiers of human experience’. With examples ranging from the historic to the recent, the result is certainly compelling, especially in lesser-known examples from the years leading up to the book’s release. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Matters of Duration’
by: Christopher Haworth
Posted: Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:06:27 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Experimental
First Published: Issue 85 - Spring 2016

In 2015 there were over a trillion photographs taken worldwide. More pictures are produced in a single day than in the history of the world prior to the advent of digital imaging. Coupled with the rise of free publishing and social media sites such as Facebook, Flickr and Instagram, this increase in the quantity of images and image-taking devices has contributed to a shift in the temporal nature of photography. Photographs, for Susan Murray, (in her essay 'Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics') become less about the act of collecting ‘special or rarefied moments of domestic living’, and more about the immediate, rather fleeting display of the small and the mundane. In photo-messaging and ‘meme’ culture as the photograph becomes a medium for instant conversation and dialogue it is increasingly transitory, while in Snapchat image becomes utterance, as photographs ‘die’ just moments after being seen. What persists across these cases is a sense of time compressed: of the lag between production, consumption, and disposal being reduced to zero. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Photographic Scores’
by: Jez riley French
Posted: Mon, 19 Apr 2021 07:02:29 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Experimental
First Published: Issue 85 - Spring 2016

A Portfolio of photographic work by Jez riley French. Published in Issue 85 of Source, Spring 2016. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Air of the Anthropocene’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:49:03 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Experimental
First Published: Issue 93 - Spring 2018

The artist Robin Price has been working with the environmental atmospheric scientist Francis Pope on creating images that show air pollution that would otherwise be invisible. Source editor John Duncan talks to them both about how the project was developed. / John Duncan: Francis, can you tell me about your own research and how it relates to Robin’s work? / Francis: I am interested in aerosol particles which are the small particles found in the air, typically less than ten microns in size. To give you some scale, human hair is about seventy microns in diameter. So these are small particles floating around in the air. They are everywhere, even in the most pristine environments but are also produced by pollution emissions, things like cars and industry and dust resuspension and they are harmful for health. Most of my work in one way or the other revolves around aerosol particles. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Air of the Anthropocene’
by: Robin Price
Posted: Sun, 18 Apr 2021 14:21:30 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Experimental
First Published: Issue 93 - Spring 2018

A Portfolio of photographic work by Robin Price. Published in Issue 93 of Source, Spring 2018. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Erbgericht’
by: Gavin Murphy
Posted: Wed, 14 Apr 2021 18:40:56 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Architectural
First Published: Issue 80 - Autumn 2014

Once, when travelling in Norway, I kicked the gate of a guesthouse we were to be staying at. It opened the wrong way. It was the final act of a long frustrating day. I was not aware our host was standing in the doorway ready to greet us. He looked in horror at my behaviour. This was the beginning of an excruciating weekend under his roof. On departing I felt obliged to leave behind my copy of Mary Wollstonecraft’s letters from her Scandinavian travels. This was as much a declaration of civility as an act of appeasement. I had broken the ancient law of xenia: the bond of hospitality between host and stranger. In Homeric times xenia was a strong social bond in the absence of civil institutions. All strangers and travellers are sacred in the eyes of Zeus. The host was obliged to offer hospitality and the guest was to reciprocate. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Erbgericht’
by: Andrea Grützner
Posted: Wed, 14 Apr 2021 17:57:38 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Architectural
First Published: Issue 80 - Autumn 2014

A Portfolio of photographic work by Andrea Grützner. Published in Issue 80 of Source, Autumn 2014. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Climate Change’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Wed, 14 Apr 2021 17:29:15 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 62 - Spring 2010

These ads show perfectly the two main responses to climate change within capitalist marketing. One could be seen as representing the unconscious, where an image of climate change is at once present, and denied; the other speaks directly to the superego, offering a conscious expiation of an acknowledged guilt. The ads ran in the same issue of a recent colour supplement, and though they tell us very little about climate change, together they tell us a great deal about the cultural climate. Our society is deeply ambivalent about climate change. The issue hovers constantly within public discourse: in the consistent warnings from scientists and those who take their findings seriously, and in an equally persistent counter force, insisting on business as usual and unable to contemplate any lasting change in our way of life. These are not merely two opposing groups – ‘believers’ and ‘doubters’ – but represent the conflicting impulses in all of us who live, inevitably, within a consumer capitalism which appears headed towards destruction of the biosphere. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘In Development: Fiona Filipidis’
by: Susanna Galbraith
Posted: Tue, 13 Apr 2021 10:27:57 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Documentary

I took this image in my brother’s house in Comporta - a small Portuguese fishing village - on the 6th May 2020, which just so happens to be my brother’s birthday. I left London at the very start of lockdown to be with my family and ended up staying in Portugal for 6 months. I began taking pictures randomly then as a means of passing time and staying creative. I took this one about a month in; I was still experimenting then. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Bliss Of Conformity / Experimental Relationship Vol 1’
by: Rachel Marsden
Posted: Sun, 11 Apr 2021 14:38:03 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Gender
First Published: Issue 96 - Winter 2018

The growth of discipline-focused galleries, fairs and festivals, art and photobook platforms have developed new international momentum for contemporary photography in and of the broader Chinese context. These include Jiazazhi Press (China), 3030 Press (Hong Kong), Closing Ceremony (China), 'Genda Magazine' (Italy/ China), Brownie Publishing (Hong Kong), La Maison de Z (China/France) and Photography of China (France/ China), the annual events ‘abC (Art Book in China)’ (Shanghai) and ‘Shanghai Art Book Fair’. Here are two examples of this trend, from two new publishers, with photobooks focusing on the development of long-term and marital relationships. The 'Bliss of Conformity' by Yingguang Guo focuses on the renowned marriage markets held in People’s Park, Shanghai. Seen as a national phenomenon and societal norm, it is where parents go to matchmake their children, both men and women, for forced or arranged marriages (although the author also describes it as for ‘women on the shelf’). Through a complex set of largely monochromatic images she shows the markets in progress. She includes covertly taken portraits, flora from the park, and blank, delicate pieces of white paper with text like those exchanged at the market. Yingguang attempts to present the vulnerability of both parents and prospective brides and grooms when building new relationships. The monochrome documentary approach she adopts is well suited to presenting what can be a hostile environment, fraught with parental and familial expectation, where children can go unacknowledged or be rejected. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Sunil Gupta’
by: Anthony Luvera
Posted: Sun, 11 Apr 2021 09:36:10 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Gender
First Published: Issue 79 - Summer 2014

Anthony Luvera talks to the photographer Sunil Gupta about how he got started in photography, his influences and his ongoing series of portraits Mr Malhotra’s Party. / Anthony Luvera: Did you see or read any representations of homosexuality in film or literature in your childhood in India? / Sunil Gupta: There was no mention of homosexuality. And there were no images of it. But you know what? There were no negative images either. There was no name calling. But you did see – because India is marvellous for visuals – a lot of guys holding hands. And you see a lot of guys who are extremely effeminate in public. You see Hidras turning up for rituals and nearly naked men covered in ash walking down the road. You’ve seen pictures of India. People hold onto each other for dear life even if they are just friends. It’s very touchy-feely. The extra step to something sexual is very little and a whole lot goes on under your nose but you don’t see it. So I had this funny experience growing up. There was a lot of marvellous sexuality and possibilities around, but at the same time nobody talked about it. We didn’t have any language for it. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Mr Malhotra’s Party’
by: Sunil Gupta
Posted: Sun, 11 Apr 2021 07:44:32 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 79 - Summer 2014

A Portfolio of photographic work by Sunil Gupta. Published in Issue 79 of Source, Summer 2014. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Year 3’
by: Catherine Grant
Posted: Sun, 11 Apr 2021 07:17:17 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 100 - Winter 2019

"THE GALLERY IS FULL OF CHILDREN!" proclaims a large noticeboard at the entrance to Tate Britain. The rest of the notice proceeds to inform more mature visitors that the Tate is ‘excited’ to welcome many school groups to the usually quiet Duveen Gallery as they visit their class portraits that cover the walls. ‘Excited’ seems to be a way of communicating to adults that children will be heard as well as seen in this large-scale photographic installation. This notice was the first indication that this project is participatory, as well as documentary: the capital letters reading almost as a comedic warning to the viewer. When I had read about Steve McQueen’s collaboration with numerous photographers and educators to photograph Year 3 children (who are 7-8 years old) in primary schools across London, I expected to find an interesting social document of the vibrant diversity of the city. As a series of over three thousand portraits depicting 76,146 pupils seated in various school halls and classrooms, it is a documentary project on an epic scale. However, it has also been a huge outreach project, working with creative education specialists A New Direction. A team of photographers visited two thirds of London’s primary schools, engaging children in a series of workshops as well as taking their portraits, with a range of educational resources for teachers that use photography to explore issues of identity and belonging. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘In the Company of Mothers’
by: Lucy Soutter
Posted: Sat, 10 Apr 2021 15:44:27 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Gender
First Published: Issue 75 - Summer 2013

Jeff Wall once made a photograph called 'Picture for Women' (1979). An elaborate mirror composition, it features a female model gazing out at the viewer (and thus at her own reflection) while being gazed at by Wall. The camera stands between the two figures and the photographer holds a cable-release in his hand. Numerous publications, including a 2011 book by David Campany, have supported Wall’s contention that this self-conscious reconfiguration of Edouard Manet’s 'Bar at the Folies-Bergère' (1881-2) transforms the power relationship between male artist and female subject in a way that is empowering for women. Personally, I’ve always found Wall’s picture rather pedantic and patronizing. For why should a picture for women necessarily need a man at all? Why can’t women look at themselves and at other women without men telling them how to do so? Hannah Starkey has photographed women in the city since the mid-1990s. Working with models, acquaintances and with strangers she encounters on the street, she constructs large, elegant colour tableaux that depict their subjects in moments of reverie or absorption. Highly pleasurable to look at—with striking architectural echoes of modernism and intriguing female figures—they convey an interiority that is rare in contemporary images of women. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘In the Company of Mothers’
by: Hannah Starkey
Posted: Sat, 10 Apr 2021 15:07:40 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Gender
First Published: Issue 75 - Summer 2013

A Portfolio of photographic work by Hannah Starkey. Published in Issue 75 of Source, Summer 2013. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Adler’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Mon, 05 Apr 2021 17:24:31 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 69 - Winter 2011

This ad provides a fascinating illustration of the fact that images cannot be made to mean at will. The montaged photo of an African woman carrying a giant bracelet has been created with the intention of giving a positive meaning to the product, yet it functions in ways that are the very opposite of what the advertisers must have intended. Adler is a Swiss jewellery company based in Geneva, with outposts in Gstaad, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo. This information is given in small print at the bottom of the ad: it suggests a global reach, an international brand. However, there is no Adler outpost in any African country – the market for luxury jewellery on that continent must be extremely limited. This is relevant, since it is hard to imagine the image here being used to advertise to an African audience: placed in 'Vogue', the ad uses Africa to evoke universality and timelessness to an audience for whom it is definitively ‘other’. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Self-Defense for Women’
by: Joanna Bourke
Posted: Thu, 01 Apr 2021 13:03:51 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Archive
First Published: Issue 97 - Spring 2019

In the 1870s, middle-class women carried ‘dagger-fans’ when alone in public places; in the early 1900s, they hosted ‘jujitsu parties’ for friends; by the 1970s, no consciousness-raising group would be complete without the equivalent of the feminist self defence programme called the ‘Nutcracker’s [sic] Suite’; and in the twenty-first century, enterprising young women are designing and marketing ‘anti-rape’ underwear. ‘How to’ guidelines for women showing them ways to physically fend off attacks have a long and provocative history. One of the earliest books in this genre was published in 1906 by Emily Diana Watts (usually known as Mrs. Roger Watts), one of the first female instructors of the Japanese art of self-defence in the western world. Entitled 'The Fine Art of Jujutsu', Watts’ book was introduced by Mary Russell, Duchess of Bedford. It spread the word that even women from elite backgrounds could become martial athletes and fight off as well as with men. This message was spread further in a series of photographs by a woman known only as ‘Miss Sanderson’. Sanderson was a prominent fencer and instructor in self defence in Edwardian London. The photographs illustrates her unique system of self defence, which invariably used an umbrella or parasol. Commentators were clearly in awe of Miss Sanderson. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Self-Defense for Women’
by: Getty Images
Posted: Thu, 01 Apr 2021 12:08:49 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Archive
First Published: Issue 97 - Spring 2019

The writer Joanna Bourke presents a selection of images demonstrating self defence for women. These pictures were chosen following a period of research into ‘how to’ photographs in the Getty Images Archive and from other collections Getty Images represents. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Nissan Qashqai’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 17:12:00 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 56 - Autumn 2008

Urban industrial landscapes have been used to invoke a range of different meanings in ads over the last few decades. During the 1980s and 90s they provided the backdrop for a super-cool image of yuppified loft-living, mainly involving young men lounging in leather chairs in minimally furnished converted warehouses. There was a historical logic to this fantasy: it showed a city-financed lifestyle literally filling the shells of an earlier, manufacturing-based, capitalism – inhabiting the spaces made empty by its own advance. This picture gradually gave way to a more threatening view of the inner-city landscape as urban jungle, no longer merely an accessory to the lifestyle of an ascendant class but a potential danger to it. The sense of cities as wild terrain, from which rugged protection is required for each individual, goes well beyond advertising in a culture where children are driven to school in Land Rovers and pedestrians are rigged out in mountain boots and rucksacks. Car ads during this period have been dominated by images of wilderness, and alongside the glaciers, deserts and savannas has run a version one might call ‘urban safari’. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Wedding Photography’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 12:59:07 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Education

As per its straight-talking title, wedding photography is the principal concern of this pocket guide. Closer scrutiny, however, betrays that wartime nuptials are its particular focus. Uniforms are more common that tailcoats among the grooms depicted. Throughout the book, the social conditions of the period inflect the narrative. The photography for which tuition is given is aimed at the formal white wedding; no deviations are provided for register office settings or those outside of the Christian church. The opening words ESTablish that wedding photography is not "a creative job in an artistic sense". Strategies for image-making are highly conventionalised, arranged around a given set of photographable ‘incidents’, from the arrival of the bridesmaids to the cutting of the cake. These are choreographed minute-by-minute through detailed spreadsheets and pictorial diagrams in the style of a military operation. The author, Gordon Catling, who at the time of writing was serving as a captain in the army, claims to have attended over 700 weddings as a professional photographer; he knows the drill. His comprehensive systems for success are shared, from how to secure a first paid job to templates of threatening letters for when clients do not cough up. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘An Unkindness of Ravens’
by: Jennifer Good
Posted: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 08:38:28 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Narrative
First Published: Issue 102 - Autumn 2020

"Certain violations of the social contract are too terrible to utter aloud", writes psychologist Judith Lewis Herman, "This is the meaning of the word unspeakable." Violence shatters and creates fragments where there was once a whole – a whole sense of self, of safety, of place in the world. In the shattering, language often fails too, because it is a system that depends on a consensus of referents, understanding, the naming of more-or-less stable things and concepts. Hence survivors of traumatic events often struggle to name or express their experience in words. Herman says that it can be difficult ‘to see more than a few fragments of the picture at one time, to retain all the pieces, and to fit them together. It is even more difficult to find a language that conveys fully and persuasively what one has seen.’ In fact, Herman, who has written about traumas from the collective (such as war) to the individual (such as rape), likens traumatic memory to ‘a series of still snapshots or a silent movie’. Beginning with the fragmented raw material of sensation and images, which may be concrete objects or reside solely in the mind, the goal of recovery is to re-integrate these pieces into some kind of cohesive story. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘An Unkindness of Ravens’
by: Claire Maxfield
Posted: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 08:03:37 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Narrative
First Published: Issue 102 - Autumn 2020

A Portfolio of photographic work by Claire Maxfield. Published in Issue 102 of Source, Autumn 2020. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Those’
by: Gavin Murphy
Posted: Sun, 28 Mar 2021 18:32:51 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Forensic
First Published: Issue 76 - Autumn 2013

While we may aspire to understanding, we still figure the unknown through ghosts, gods, aliens and demons. Our doubts over biogenetic developments and the new controls promised over nature also find cultural form in the monstrous and in re-articulations of Prometheus’ downfall. Indeed, our origins are imagined in violent primal myths. Our future can be seen as a grim ecological uncertainty. We draw upon and wrestle with these states in the search for purpose. And sill we aspire to understand. 'Those' have stemmed from 'Them'. This is an ongoing project where Treacy gathers abandoned clothing found in offbeat grounds and neglected spaces. These are dark underpasses, desolate riverbanks and lay-by overgrowth. They are on the other side of the hoarding. His finds are assembled as if to appear as figures of retribution. They are perverse and macabre. Deviant. 'Those' are forms recomposed from these assemblages. They are described by Treacy as the furtive fruit of these fertile grounds. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Those’
by: Danny Treacy
Posted: Sun, 28 Mar 2021 14:03:15 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Forensic
First Published: Issue 76 - Autumn 2013

A Portfolio of photographic work by Danny Treacy. Published in Issue 76 of Source, Autumn 2013. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Annabel Elgar’
by: John Mathews
Posted: Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:17:38 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 69 - Winter 2011

Could you tell me about your process and how you go about creating the scenes in your photographs? / The starting point of my work is the imagined fantasies of someone outside of society. Someone who appears to live a, so called, normal life but who, within the confines of their home, finds it hard to keep a lid on their desires. I might begin with a news story for the preparation of a work, or something else that I have read or seen, and build it up from there. An example would be the story of the American creationist teacher John Freshwater who insisted on having the bible on his desk at school and who branded crosses on the arms of several students. The starting point of 'Trophy' was the story of the American Pentecostal sect ‘The Church of God with Signs Following’. As part of this religion they drank strychnine poison and handled serpents. If the serpents bit you then it was seen as a sign of lack of faith. I am fascinated by the details of these stories: the Russian cult who retreated into a cave because they thought Armageddon was going to happen and who also believed that supermarket barcodes were Satanic, which seems like a really strange fear to have. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

Portfolio
by: Annabel Elgar
Posted: Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:56:33 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 69 - Winter 2011

A Portfolio of photographic work by Annabel Elgar. Published in Issue 69 of Source, Winter 2011. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Circular Time’
by: Will Rea
Posted: Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:40:13 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 101 - Summer 2020

Amongst the Igbo people of South Eastern Nigeria there is a tradition of building a two-story shrine house, known as Mbari, to appease the goddess Ala. She, the goddess of the earth, is the central figure of representation, sculpted in clay and dressed in her finery. There is no convention to her representation and through time she has been portrayed in various contemporary guises. Mbari is also the name given to the club of writers and artists that formed in the Yoruba town of Ibadan in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The name was suggested by Chinua Achebe. In 1958 Achebe published 'Things Fall Apart' and revolutionised writing in, about and from Africa. 'Things Fall Apart' is not simply an ‘African’ novel. It is a novel firmly located within a specific time and a specific place in Africa. The story is one of universal human tragedy, but the characters, the events, the place are all a part of Achebe’s own culture and what he knows. Set within the fictional village Umuofia, in the eastern region of Nigeria, the novel is Igbo in its genesis and its philosophy. Although a fictional text its engagement is in the articulation between that philosophy and the imposition of colonial structures of knowledge. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Igbo Women’
by: Adaeze Ihebom
Posted: Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:08:54 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 101 - Summer 2020

A Portfolio of photographic work by Adaeze Ihebom. Published in Issue 101 of Source, Summer 2020. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Nature Gone Wild?’
by: Dorothea Born
Posted: Wed, 24 Mar 2021 12:26:39 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Environmental
First Published: Issue 99 - Autumn 2019

"How is global warming affecting the UK?" Under this heading, Friends of the Earth UK put different images on their website, displaying climate change impacts. Scrolling down, we see Saddleworth Moor burning, flooded streets in York, burnt fields and a toppled seawall. While the pictures are specific to the UK, the images’ overall theme is widely used in visual representations of climate change, especially when the intention is to show the effects of global warming. Type ‘climate change’ into a Google picture search and images of fires, droughts, flooding and storms will pop up. Some may show stretches of forest going up in flames or parched soil and seared crops, others display flooded cities or the aftermath of devastating storms. And most media articles, NGO websites, information videos or campaign leaflets will include similar pictures of some kind of catastrophic event when talking about climate change. Among other common visual themes, such as the iconic polar bear adrift on an ice shelf or the famous hockey stick graph (of mean global temperature), images showing natural catastrophes have become canonical for its visualisation. They are part of an iconography that has been built up to represent this issue ever since it became a ‘hot topic’. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Nature of Facts’
by: David Bate
Posted: Tue, 23 Mar 2021 08:11:58 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Photojournalism
First Published: Issue 95 - Autumn 2018

The 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award is the latest in a string of incidents to challenge the authority of the photographic image. When the Natural History Museum in London took down Marcio Cabral’s nocturnal photograph of an anteater because it had been deemed ‘fake’, the photographer protested that they were wrong. It had been noticed that the anteater in his night time photograph bore an uncanny resemblance to the stuffed animal on display at the entrance to Brazil’s National Park, Emas, where the picture was taken. Five ‘scientists’, experts in animals and taxidermy concluded the photograph was ‘faked’ (a montage of a live natural scene with this stuffed animal). Such examples of fakery are not new, but they are part of a new narrative about photography and its users being untrustworthy. People are using photographs to create their ‘own fictions’. Thus we need to do more ‘fact-checking’ it is claimed. Journalists protest that the truth must be preserved. Others claim this is all part of some social transformation of our times, where truth is no longer so relevant: an age of ‘post-truth’. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Q and A With Ciara Moloney’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Mon, 22 Mar 2021 10:13:22 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

Tell us about your job? / As a curator I work with contemporary artists to create exhibitions, often of new work, usually at institutions but sometimes in public spaces. My role is to mediate between artists and audiences, ensuring that the artist's vision is realised in the best possible way - on time and in budget! At the moment, I am working as the PS² Freelands Artist Programme Curator, for which I support a small group of artists with their creative and professional development. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Through a Kitchen Window’
by: Julie Dawn Dennis
Posted: Mon, 22 Mar 2021 08:25:56 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Landscape

At home I am, in normal circumstances, liberated by limitation, free to be myself inside my own room. Through my window I can be both seen and hidden. With soft curtains closed, I redact the outside world; with them open, I may gaze across the outside, and (if I choose to) photograph what I see. Looking through the viewfinder it is as though I am present in both places at once. Both the window and the camera complicate my interior and exterior worlds. If the human eye is window to one’s soul, is a camera an extension to this ‘soul-window’? You look into my eye to read me, to know me. I want to share with you an image of what my eye sees so that you may read me further and know me deeper. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Photoanalysis’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Mon, 15 Mar 2021 19:05:30 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Education

The nuclear family depicted on the cover of 'Photoanalysis' comprise a suited father, a fashionably-dressed mother and two blonde primary-school age children. Smiling and embracing, they are, at first glance, an idealised cereal packet image of domestic accord in the 1970s. At the hands of a book that claims "to read the hidden psychological clues in any photo", however, the sitters become specimens for critique. White circles highlight photographic details linked to probing questions. Of the mother’s hand on her son’s shoulder: "Is this real affection?" Of the father, whose face is turned away from the camera: "Is this man really happy?" 'Photoanalysis', first published in 1973, was the first book by New York shrink, Dr Robert U. Akeret. Swiss-born and trained under Erich Fromm, Akeret’s system was informed by more than 20 years of therapeutic practice. The opening pages provide accounts of his analysands and their complex psychological blocks; these were only resolved when Akeret’s suggested that each brought family photographs to the couch. In a method close to what visual sociologists now call photo-elicitation, photographs provided prompts for psychological revelation. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Q and A With Karin Andreasson’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Wed, 10 Mar 2021 06:13:24 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

Tell us about your job? / I am part of a small team of picture editors who work on The Guardian's daily print edition. The role is a combination of sourcing images for specific stories, commissioning for a fast news schedule and presenting photography that surprises and captures readers’ imagination. I scour tens of thousands of images daily that are filed from agencies and freelance photographers. This relentless search reveals images that fill standalone spaces, including our Eyewitness centre spread, and can inspire a written news piece. Finding the front page image is an important part of the day and varies from finding the perfect expression on a politician’s face that speaks to the headline, to being asked to come up with a striking image of the day that doesn’t relate to any story. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘In Development: Robert Darch’
by: Susanna Galbraith
Posted: Mon, 08 Mar 2021 17:14:42 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Landscape

I took these photographs during the first lockdown, just outside of Exeter, Devon, where I live. I used my daily exercise to cycle up to the tree on a hill, just to the south of the city. I hadn’t planned to start a project during lockdown. Instead I wanted to use the time to catch up with editing finished work and to take a break. I was just drawn to the tree, so started taking pictures of it. It became a new positive routine, cycling up to the tree each day. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Water Babies’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Mon, 01 Mar 2021 10:24:16 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Underwater

The record sleeve for Nirvana’s 1991 album, 'Nevermind', of a baby swimming underwater after a dollar bank note, has achieved iconic status. Posed in a Californian pool, Kirk Weddle’s photograph was apparently inspired by a documentary that the band’s frontman, Kurt Cobain, had watched about water births. Images of infants swimming underwater unassisted have long captivated: the cover and end papers of the 1983 book, 'Water Babies', feature very similar photographs. 'Water Babies' is ostensibly a study of the philosophies of Igor Tjarkovsky, a Russian experimental midwife who, since the 1960s, has sought to develop "a new kind of people, the children of the Ocean". Tjarkovsky, a one-time boat-builder and athletics coach, holds mystical ideas about the importance of water for healing but, as the book’s blurb notes, he has "created a sensation around the world with his photographs of swimming and diving babies". These photographs, as the first line of the first chapter attests, inspired Swedish journalist Erik Sidenbladh to visit Tjarkovsky at his Moscow research lab in the All-Union Scientific Institute for Physical Culture and produce the book. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Q and A With Mariama Attah’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Thu, 25 Feb 2021 04:47:11 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

Tell us about your job? What does your core role at Open Eye involve? / We have a wide range of exhibitions and events that happen off site, in communities or informal spaces. My day-to-day role varies a lot depending on where we are in our exhibition schedule but my core role is curating the exhibitions for the physical gallery space. I spend time finding artists through research, word of mouth, or being introduced to practitioners. I’m also spending time getting to know our audiences and communities, understanding how I can continue these relationships and understanding what role the gallery plays in their lives. That’s a hugely exciting part of my role but it isn’t the majority of how I spend my time. Curating the gallery program includes everything from managing budgets, creating installation schedules, painting walls and condition reporting artworks to coming up with suggestions for the public program. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Looking at My Parents’
by: Julia Tanner
Posted: Mon, 22 Feb 2021 07:38:59 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Portraiture

“This is the last time you’ll see me in my twenties,” I said to my father in the car. He turned around and stretched his face into a smile with dancing eyes. My father is a quiet man, and rarely makes eye contact. His affection is as genuine as it is awkwardly expressed: he makes a caricature of himself in order to show it. His father was a photographer whose photographs rarely contained people. Those that did normally held faces turned away. When I think of portraits in photography - posed, the smiling gaze looking out - I think of the brief moments of eye contact between myself and my father before we hug goodbye. These are the rare times I look directly at him looking directly at me. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Before Inkjet’
by: Simon Denison
Posted: Thu, 18 Feb 2021 17:34:21 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Narrative
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

The inevitable has happened: the photographic darkroom has now joined that long list of institutions, locations and site types recorded by the camera just as they are swept aside by history. The darkroom has long been mythologised as a place of alchemy and mysterious practices, and Canadian photographer Michel Campeau’s series emphasises the strangeness of it all by focusing on the peculiar tools and materials of darkroom craft: the hand-made dodgers, the negative carriers and masks in assorted shapes and sizes, the clothes pegs, the discarded spools of backing paper, the packed files of negatives, the clipped film ends, the clock-timers, the safety lights, the darkroom coats stained with fixer. His untitled photographs show everything but explain nothing. They will leave anyone without experience of a darkroom – which will be virtually everyone in a few years’ time – little the wiser. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Photography and Love’
by: Matt Packer
Posted: Thu, 18 Feb 2021 17:10:22 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Family
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

With it’s focus on ‘love, family, and relationships’, 'All My Lovin’' was an ambitious exhibition in both scale and proposition, seemingly unintimidated by themes so blindingly universal and perennial. Organised across two floors of the Crawford Art Gallery, the exhibition spaces were punctuated with video rooms, temporary wall constructions, and a reading table. The work itself was installed in a variety of irregular clusters and wall configurations – all perhaps a subtle nod to Edward Steichen’s 1955 exhibition 'Family of Man' that dealt, along similar thematic lines, with extravagant scenography. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The International Street’
by: Mick Gidley
Posted: Wed, 17 Feb 2021 17:26:03 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Street
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

On entering Quad’s exhibition space, opposite the door, the first group of images to demand our attention are six colour prints by Joel Meyerowitz, one of Format 11’s two patrons, and it soon becomes evident that he – in his practice as an artist as well as through his critical admonitions in 'Bystander' (with Colin Westerbrook, 2001) – has been a guiding light for this generous show of street photography curated by Louise Clements. So much goes on within his images: in 'Blind Man, Malaga' (1966) the obviously sightless male figure at a café table concentrates on his drink, oblivious of the diverse activity around him that we take in, including behind at middle distance a large woolly animal, itself displaced from some other world. As well as a talk, Meyerowitz’ other specific contribution to 'Right Here, Right Now' is his selection of mostly unpublished Gary Winogrand colour photographs made between 1958 and 1964. It is a privilege to be able to see so many of these works, which parallel and punctuate Winogrand’s prolific black and white output. Almost every one of them, despite countless imitations (including some in this show), are still eye-catching. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Amberstar’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Mon, 15 Feb 2021 08:52:28 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Photomontage

Neville Scott, a 28-year-old ‘space jockey and freelance rocket man’ lives a Bohemian life, drifting from planet to planet in an unspecified future. Having spent his money on "wine, women and wine", he finds himself unable to pay his fines and has his spaceship, 'Amberstar', impounded by monks on the highly moral planet, Cylis 4. The book that carries the spaceship’s name follows Scott as he survives a series of intergalactic scrapes. Its space opera plot barely stands up to scrutiny but 'Amberstar’s' visual narrative is sublime. The book’s blurb claims that ‘through the miracle of the PHOTO-MULTIPLE® process comes science fiction’s greatest pictorial triumph’. Such a superlative ‘miracle’, in fact, required a lot of labour, involving three photographers, two special effects staff and a four further colourists. The ‘multiple’ seems to come as much from the ensemble effort - including six actors, several different planetary landscapes and a fleet of plastic spaceships and toy dinosaurs – as it does from the complex collage and overlay technique. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Who’s Slick Now?’
by: Stephen Bull
Posted: Thu, 11 Feb 2021 10:45:34 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Multi-Genre
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

‘The Anti-Photographers’ is an influential essay by Nancy Foote, first published in a 1976 issue of 'Artforum'. Foote surveyed the use of photography by artists from the late 1960s until the mid-1970s. Most of these artists, primarily making work in a conceptual or performative mode, took or commissioned photographs to record their actions and ephemeral constructions in order to disseminate their work to a wider audience – with many of them also exploring the nature of photography itself. Foote argues that all of these artists using photography, or ‘anti-photographers’, went against the preceding Modernist art photographers’ emphasis on technical skill and precious prints. Instead, the new generation used photographs as mass-reproducible documents providing information. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Museum Piece’
by: Roger Hargreaves
Posted: Thu, 11 Feb 2021 10:10:37 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Street
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

Photography is endlessly conflated and co-joined. The book and the photograph have been fused into the ‘photobook’, standing not for all books of photographs but for a certain type of book which operates as the primary site of mediation for certain sets of photographs usually produced as a series by a single photographer. ‘Street photography’ in turn is not meant to refer to all photographs taken in the street but a specific type of photograph with an aesthetic, a set of defined subjects, principally people, and an attitude; humanist, empathetic and alert to chance. The location fashion photographs made by Richard Avedon in Paris soon after the war which re-cast the distressed backdrop of the city with a new allure are not acknowledged by street photography’s self appointed brand managers to be part of the product. Sophie Calles’ conceptual work, 'The Detective' in which a private eye followed and photographed her as she trailed around the city aren’t considered to be a chapter in the story. And yet arguably the street photographs of fashion, advertising, conceptual practice and topography are as much threads in the photographic fabric of the city as purist documentary photography. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘In Development: Yvette Monahan’
by: Susanna Galbraith
Posted: Mon, 08 Feb 2021 18:01:52 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Macro

This image was taken at our back door as the sunlight streamed in on some cobwebs. It is one of those scenes that I walk by every day, but on that particular day, the way the light caught the cobweb stopped me in my tracks. It is part of a new body of work called 'A Revolution of Stardust', which examines the cosmic every day. One morning, I looked in the sink at a pattern created by coffee grinds. On closer viewing, it resembled a moonscape. I started to see images close at hand that mirrored the universe. The water drops on the shower door took on meteoric qualities. Cobwebs assumed the form of entire galaxies. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 103 / Winter 2020 - Zoom Launch’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 05 Feb 2021 04:38:18 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Event

Join us for the Online Launch of Issue 103 'Life Stories'. Live interviews with featured photographer Nik Roche and contributor Dr Annebella Pollen (who also pens our Flea Market Photobooks column). Hosted by SOURCE Editor Richard West. In association with Gallery of Photography Ireland. Nik Roche adopts a highly immersive method for image making, shaped by his interest in social change and the impact of institutions on individual behaviour. Source Issue 103 'Life Stories' features images from his project 'It's hard to report a stolen bike stolen', which follows on from the work in his first monograph, 'The Budgie Died Instantly' (Setanta Books, 2020). Dr Annebella Pollen's academic research areas include mass photography, popular image culture and histories of art, craft, design and dress, especially in relation to marginal, alternative and non-canonical visual and material forms. She is a Reader at University of Brighton and writes the Source online column Flea Market Photobooks. Issue 103 'Life Stories' features her review of 'Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography' by Kim Beil. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: The Uses of Air Photography’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:52:29 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Aerial

The popularity of photobooks based on aerial views is evident in titles such as 'Earth from Above' by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, whose full-colour coffee table production, first produced in 1999, boasts more than three million sales across its various editions. 'The Uses of Air Photography' is a different beast. Although large-scale in format to showcase its mostly full-page black-and-white examples, the book is produced under the auspices of Cambridge University’s Committee for Aerial Photography and the emphasis is less on the photographs’ visual spectacle than on their research capacity. The volume is edited by the institution’s Director of Aerial Photography, who also produced all the photographs; the essays are mostly by committee members. Sadly, the grouping and academic position no longer exist, but its legacy, the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography, now numbers some 500,000 items. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Is He Acting?’
by: Colin Graham
Posted: Mon, 01 Feb 2021 10:06:07 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

‘The world could use a good essay about Witkiewicz’. So said Susan Sontag in an 1981 interview. Sontag was explaining that she never actually would write that essay because she could write three stories in the same time it would take her to complete the piece on Witkiewicz. Whether or not Sontag’s pragmatic equation was worth the short stories, Witkiewicz is still worth writing about, as the exhibition of his photographs at the Douglas Hyde affirms. The work on show here was chosen by Miroslaw Balka, given the title 'Between Honey and Ashes [Part 1]', and was used to provide something of a context to Balka’s video piece 'Honey and Ashes [Part 2]'. The connections which Balka sees between Witkiewicz and his own work are clear enough. Though in some ways Balka’s unsettling ‘apple T.’, shot at night and with a video camera that, Adam and Eve-like, is desperately on the point of plucking an apple, reduce Witkiewicz to an artist on the point of madness. He is that, but these photographs reveal him as much more, and as confrontational and face-on in a way that Balka is not. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘A European Collagist’
by: David Evans
Posted: Sun, 31 Jan 2021 10:10:02 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Photomontage
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

In his authoritative historical survey Collage: 'The Making of Modern Art' (2004), Brandon Taylor describes John Stezaker as the ‘most prolific European collagist’ of recent times. It is a remark that is both memorable and cryptic, and a good opportunity to reflect on Taylor’s choice of words was provided by a recent exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery. 'Prolific': the exhibition included more than ninety collages, made from the late 1970s to date. A mere sample, it must be stressed, and related photo silkscreen prints were excluded. Yet it was the nearest thing to a retrospective that Stezaker has ever had, despite his productivity and international profile over several decades. He has continuously experimented with new ways of cutting and pasting, all analyzed with assurance by writer Michael Bracewell in the accompanying catalogue. There are many breaks, then, but also striking continuities. In general, the collages are small-scale, the cutting and pasting are restrained, and found photographic source materials whiff of obsolescence. The end results are usually sober, occupying an indeterminate time zone between past and present. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘A Rebellion without Clues’
by: Pavel Büchler
Posted: Fri, 29 Jan 2021 09:19:19 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Political
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

The Hungarian Club in Bradford is no more. For a half of a century it was a place out of place, a token of a home left behind by a generation. Founded by refugees from the failed 1956 anti-communist uprising in Hungary, it had outlasted the end of its era, the Cold War and ‘Eastern Europe’, serving a shrinking expatriate community to maintain a sense of belonging to something which could have been had its time not passed even before it came. It had kept alive a collective memory of an ideal, a past inscribed into the present not as a history but as an ever-elusive promise. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Makeshift Monuments’
by: Diane Bielik
Posted: Fri, 29 Jan 2021 09:06:17 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

A Portfolio of photographic work by Diane Bielik. Published in Issue 66 of Source, Spring 2011. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Readers’ Lives’
by: Daniel Jewesbury
Posted: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 06:14:49 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

Daniel Stier says of the forlorn items that he photographs, “these are the things that don’t get glorious campaigns; the things that are just there”. And it’s true, these things are so immediately recognisable that they can sometimes seem invisible. They need no promotion, no marketing to their potential consumers. They are the basic elements of capitalism, the stuff that we have to buy, and then buy again. Stier’s re-presentation of them, as lurid plastic still lives, frozen in hard direct light like suspected criminals, is patently ludicrous – the heroic grouping of slices of white bread, gazing into the middle distance; the factory-farmed chicken on its princess-and-the-pea tower of polystyrene takeaway boxes – but it is also self-consciously tragic, precisely because of the fundamental importance of these products: not for what they actually are, but for what they signify economically. It is these goods, these crappy disposable consumables, which keep markets functioning from one day to the next, not high-value luxury items. Ours really is an empire built on budget baked beans. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Any Two For Five’
by: Daniel Stier
Posted: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 05:55:04 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

A Portfolio of photographic work by Daniel Stier. Published in Issue 66 of Source, Spring 2011. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Domestic Drift’
by: Leontia Flynn
Posted: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 18:00:03 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

A grassy dome littered with tiny flowers sits in the middle of an earthy path. The scale, at first, is confusing: is this a small mountain, or raked leaves in a garden? A plastic shark and an orange ball balance, equally improbably, on irregular, glassy waves in what must be a paddling pool, or part of a child’s toy. Yet real and imitation wave patterns contradict each other and this – along with what seems to be heavy weather engulfing the foreground – confuses the eye and gives us pause for thought. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Starbucks’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 16:46:59 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 66 - Spring 2011

At the end of the 1980s, sociologist Ray Oldenberg developed the concept of the ‘Third Place’ in a book called 'The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlours, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day'. If the first and second places are home and work, the third place is somewhere in between, at once public and intimate, where communities meet and social bonds are formed. In British culture, the pub has traditionally been a staple third place; one could argue that libraries – currently under threat from budget cuts – are another. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Movement and Stillness’
by: Daniel Jewesbury
Posted: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 07:22:57 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

I expected to enjoy David Campany’s guide to the varied theoretical staging posts of the 100 year relationship between still photography and the moving image. It’s a clearly written, plentifully illustrated book by one of the most intelligent and engaging writers on these media. It offers some excellent descriptions of important works, with a little theoretical analysis. It’s also reasonably succinct. All these benefits notwithstanding, something is lacking. Campany’s choice to focus on the description of a range of rather familiar key works and on the brief summarisation of existing theoretical understandings means that the book ends up being something between an academic textbook, and a ‘World of Art’ style compendium of theory and practice (and at times, it has to be said, a very dry one), rather than an exciting or substantially new insight into the subject. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Once the Image is Finished’
by: Malcolm Dickson
Posted: Tue, 26 Jan 2021 07:52:54 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Gallery-Based
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

'Exhibiting Photography' comes at a time when there is a groundswell of college courses in photography, evidence of many regional support networks for the medium, a number of prizes and exhibition opportunities, several dedicated magazines, websites, galleries and projects that are all championing photography’s status as a creative medium. Photography is, as Tom Normand proposes, the visual form of our age. In the book’s bibliography, Rhonda Wilson’s publication 'Seeing the Light, A Photographer’s Guide to Enterprise' is cited, a book which demonstrated (in 1993) that critical practice and career development are not mutually exclusive. Wilson is now the Director of Birmingham based 'Rhubarb Rhubarb', the annual international portfolio review event, an occasion which typifies the range and quality of photographic image-making today, whose participants, both reviewers and makers, should be alerted to this book. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Writers Prize: Making Space to Speak From’
by: Mads Holm
Posted: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 05:38:51 EST
Content: New Writing / Genre: Documentary

Riot police surround the entire group of protestors. Anonymous black shapes appear like shadows on the walls of the red brick houses on both sides of the street. Their gloved hands clutch the truncheons. I look to both sides. Like plucking flowers from a bouquet of black roses the riot police begin pulling out protestors from the crowd. One after another grabbed, forced to the ground, handcuffed and dragged down the side streets. Fleeting moments of crisscross eye contact spread an anxious energy. Heartbeats felt in finger tips. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘With a Prison at its Heart’
by: Pavel Büchler
Posted: Wed, 20 Jan 2021 10:56:29 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

Mikhael Subotzky’s 'Beaufort West' details the unknowing eccentricities and degradations of a town that sits astride the main highway from Johannesburg to the northern provinces of South Africa. Subotzky’s work previous to 'Beaufort West' has concentrated on documenting, close up and with a sense of disruptive ESTrangement, the prison system in South Africa. His photographs (particularly in the two 'Die Vier Hoeke' series) combine muted colours, into which the lurid erupts, with a tableaux-like facility for framing people in the everyday. And yet his images, partly because of the frequent proximity of the lens to his subjects, still feel intimate and shocking, able to catch the claustrophobia of the inhumanely overcrowded prison system in South Africa. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Correct Behaviour’
by: Mary Warner Marien
Posted: Tue, 19 Jan 2021 07:32:14 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Multi-Genre
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

One of the minor paradoxes in American/Iranian relations is that Iranian films have found a niche market here. The cultural and religious values that constrain the scope of Iranian expression often make that country’s films refined and visually captivating family fare. We have treacly stories about puppies lost and found, food fights, and fart jokes. The Iranians offer movies like 'The Color Paradise' (Magid Magidi, 1999) and 'The White Balloon' (Jafar Panahi, 1995). With some important exceptions, such as Magnum photographer Abbas and Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat, Iran’s photographers are less well known than its cinematographers. Filmmakers who also create photographs, such as Abbas Kiarostami, who also wrote the script for 'The White Balloon', and Mitra Tabrizian, are recognized more for their moving than still pictures. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Anxiety-Ridden Scrutiny’
by: Clive Scott
Posted: Mon, 18 Jan 2021 11:41:39 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

For many writers – Walter Benjamin, Philip Roth, W.G. Sebald – photographs of Kafka have been the source of troubled and fertile preoccupation. Kafka’s own attitude to the photograph is at the very least ambivalent: while he delights in photography’s ability to bring those close to him closer – as confirmations of intimacy – he has a suspicion of the camera’s easy access to the uncanny, the ‘optical unconscious’, the alienating. Photographs are ellipses, riddles, that the writer tries to tease into sense without really succeeding. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Heroic Image’
by: Jane Fletcher
Posted: Mon, 18 Jan 2021 06:19:58 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: War
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

As I write, it is the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice: 11.11.2008. Lest we forget, a recent edition of 'Metro' featured one of Robert Wilson’s photographs from Helmand Province as its ‘Big Picture’, taken from his ‘record of the 52nd Infantry Brigade as it neared the end of its tour of duty’ in Afghanistan. The image is entitled 'FOB Edinburgh' [Forward Operating Base], a perversely anonymous title for such an apparently deep and penetrating portrait of a man whose desert-dusted face looks powdered with pigment, whose cracked lips are stained with colour, whose eyelids and irises are so delineated as to appear lined with kohl. Indeed, if the eyes are the windows of the soul, Wilson’s photographed soldiers are fascinating individuals. They are strangely, shockingly beautiful, too. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Archival Fragments’
by: Doireann Wallace
Posted: Sun, 17 Jan 2021 07:52:41 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Archive
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

Faced with the mass circulation of photography in 1920s print culture, Siegfried Kracauer warned that this flood of images did not in any way aid memory, but threatened to wash it away. Such laments are endemic to modernity, where the speed of change is seen to sever the continuity of historical memory, and it is against the ensuing ‘cultural amnesia’ that Sean Lynch claims to pitch his work, concerned with forgotten historical subjects. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘An Opportunity to Develop’
by: Mick Gidley
Posted: Sat, 16 Jan 2021 18:17:27 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Multi-Genre
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

This is a show resulting from commissions by Pavilion, the Leeds-based art commissioning agency, itself both publicly and privately funded. The awards were to enable younger artists to develop new projects (often out of previous successful ones) to at least preliminary exhibition standard. If this means they should be assessed on the basis of their conception, execution and exhibition, then the five photographers have achieved variable levels of success at each of these stages. Jo Longhurst’s 'A-Z of Gymnastics' is fascinating in all three. As in her earlier dog project 'The Refusal', she is preoccupied by typology and taxonomy. Here, across a curved wall, we see a pattern of some 200 images – not all by Longhurst herself, some black and white but most in colour, some historic but the majority recent – arranged in sequences corresponding to particular types of gymnastic action: leaps, somersaults, box vaults, ring-work, etc. The photographs, mounted on blocks sufficiently thick to throw them into relief, are small, 5"x3" or less, so we have to look closely, and we cannot help but mark sharp similarities between the images devoted to each type of exercise. And always the photographer has gone for the body at its point of maximum extension – legs almost impossibly far apart and straight in the splits, for example – and caught, stilled it, at the extreme of dynamic exertion. Longhurst is deploying the intrinsic capacity of photography truly to observe, categorise and, even, understand something. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Acculturated Nature’
by: Siobhan Davis
Posted: Sat, 16 Jan 2021 14:18:31 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

Stratified dark cliffs rise majestically from a pebble beach. To an untrained eye, the exposed layers of strata appear to span an almost unimaginable length of time, stretching back into the primordial past. But, in truth, the cliff face of Jem Southam’s photograph has existed for only a minute portion of this imagined history. Created from the discarded waste of the iron smelting process, these manmade structures stand as monuments to the Cumbrian coast’s industrial heyday. In 2006, the Lowry commissioned Southam to photograph a section of the north western coastline – an area much loved and visited by L. S. Lowry. 'Clouds Descending' marks the culmination of this project. Divided into five sections, the exhibition traces the photographer’s journey south from Maryport, a coastal town on the Solway ESTuary, to Morecambe Bay. During the course of the project Southam invited a number of collaborators (poet, writer, historian, art historian, ornithologist, and curator) with a shared interest in the landscape to join him and produce their own responses to the sites he visited. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Camera Goes to War’
by: David Evans
Posted: Thu, 14 Jan 2021 06:09:50 EST
Content: Review / Genre: War
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

Upstairs, work dealing with wars in the 1930s and 1940s; downstairs, recent work about current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Through juxtaposition, the viewer is encouraged to reflect on the various ways in which the camera has gone to war. The two historic shows deal with Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, respectively. Capa (real name Endre Friedmann) was born in Budapest in 1913 and pursued university studies in Berlin. When Hitler took power he moved to Paris, a city that became the capital city of anti-Fascism by the mid-thirties. Capa’s American-sounding pseudonym (Capa / Capra) was adopted in Paris to help him advance in the cutthroat business of photojournalism. His assignments were diverse, ranging from Trotsky in exile to the Tour de France, but his reputation is based on war work, dealing with conflicts like the Spanish Civil War, the Japanese invasion of China and World War Two. He was killed by a landmine in 1954 whilst covering the war in Indochina. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Unstable City’
by: Edward Welch
Posted: Wed, 13 Jan 2021 07:39:08 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Urban
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

If a top ten all time list of exhibition themes is one day drawn up, then the urban world will surely be in there vying for the top slot. Yet despite the attention it has been paid over the years, it remains as fascinating and enigmatic as ever. Stills Gallery’s show captures something of its elusiveness by focusing on the theme of reflection, both figurative and literal. Work by Sabine Hornig and Dan Graham, for example, explores the nature of urban space precisely by foregrounding the role of reflection within it, and the way in which the reflective surfaces of the city (such as plate glass shop windows, or the mirrored glass which became the symbol of corporate power in the late twentieth century) can distort and disrupt our perception. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Dark and Threatening Visions’
by: Simon Denison
Posted: Wed, 13 Jan 2021 05:32:04 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Multi-Genre
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

'Unreliable Truths: Transformation and Illusion in Contemporary Photographic Practice' presents the work of twelve photographic artists based in Wales. It is in effect an art school staff show, as all but two teach at Swansea Metropolitan University – an impressive flowering of creative energy from one institution. The curators have unified the work under the rubric of ‘unreliable truths’ because none of the participants works in the documentary, descriptive mode. It is a slightly awkward framing device as truth is a slippery concept in all photography, not just this type. At the same time most of the artists here are offering oblique but unequivocal statements about human experience, and presumably none would regard themselves as illusionists. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Spirit of the Experiment’
by: Nancy Roth
Posted: Tue, 12 Jan 2021 18:03:16 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Multi-Genre
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

The exhibition steers visitors along a kind of border between conscious and unconscious communication. It focuses on Hiller’s very recent work in video and photography. But a careful selection of earlier work related to the theme extends the context, not only framing such borderlands of consciousness as one of Hiller’s longest, strongest interests, but also to let us see how a particular artist has used various media, over time, in connection with a specific concept. The earliest work here relies primarily on drawing and writing, the most recent on video. But photography, because it appears in both, offers as a point of reference, a way of thinking through what has and has not changed in Hiller’s thinking and consequently in her way of engaging us. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Drawing on Street Photography’
by: Lucy Soutter
Posted: Tue, 12 Jan 2021 10:47:26 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Street
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

Dryden Goodwin’s exhibition 'Cast' brings photography together with drawing in a series of uneasy hybrids. Made at night on London buses, trains and West End shopping streets, the images concentrate on the faces of passers-by. While some of the 5 bodies of work pit drawing and photography against each other as competing forms of visual documentation, the more striking images use drawing as a tool to underline the creepy, gnawing voyeurism at the heart of street photography. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Looking Closely’
by: Jonathan Long
Posted: Tue, 12 Jan 2021 05:17:08 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Macro
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

The key term of this exhibition is defamiliarisation, a notion that plays a major role in the aesthetic theory of the inter-war period. The term that owes its origins to the Russian Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky, for whom 'ostranenie' – ESTrangement or defamiliarisation – was the marker of literary discourse per se. For Shklovsky, defamiliarisation was not merely a matter of technique, but of the greatest ethical significance in that it allowed art and literature to rejuvenate and renew human experience, thereby counteracting the routine perception of an excessively familiar world that Shklovsky saw as an undesirable side-effect of everyday life. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Looking Obliquely at the Landscape’
by: Eugenie Shinkle
Posted: Mon, 11 Jan 2021 16:25:07 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

The discourse of landscape has undergone a Renaissance of sorts in recent years, with fields like cultural geography and landscape architecture turning their back on ESTablished definitions of landscape as a place or a representation of external nature, and embracing it as a cultural agent that is complexly linked to particular ways of seeing, being and doing. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 103 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 11 Jan 2021 09:38:12 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 103 - Winter 2020

Photographs are associated with the momentary and the fleeting but they are often most meaningful to us when they are placed in the context of a life. Achieving a ‘narrative’, a word often used loosely in relation to photographs, is seen as a mark of sophistication, but it is the most basic role of a family album, a book that is typically experienced with a skilled narrator. Family photographs now frequently appear in exhibitions and books removed from their original function. Josh Allen has spoken to the organisers of three projects about the reason they have been collecting family photographs and how they have tried to honour the original life stories that they tell. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Law: Albums and Books’
by: Ronan Deazley
Posted: Mon, 14 Dec 2020 12:16:53 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Law
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

The fourth ESTate is under siege: the number of public figures initiating claims before the British courts for libel and defamation has doubled in the last three years; Sienna Miller recently launched a landmark legal action against the paparazzi for harassment under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997; and Max Mosley, in the wake of his success before the High Court, has vowed to take his cause further, to the European Court of Human Rights, in an attempt to further advance an individual’s right of privacy within the British legal system. Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of the 'Daily Mail', in a recent tirade against the erosion of the freedom of the press, has responded by pointing an accusatory finger at Conditional Fee Arrangements (no-win, nofee), the role that one judge (Mr Justice Eady) has played in shaping the current jurisprudence on privacy in Britain (see 'Source' 51), and ‘the wretched Human Rights Act’. Time, I thought, to tackle an issue of real substance: should wedding books be standard or zero-rated for VAT purposes? . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Louis Vuitton’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Mon, 14 Dec 2020 11:51:50 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

There is something at once familiar and jarring about the celebrity photos of the Louis Vuitton luggage campaign. Made by Annie Leibovitz, these images are different from one another in tone and composition, and yet remarkably similar in their use of the well-worn tropes of celebrity portraiture. Each photo makes use of an already existing photographic genre to suggest something supposedly particular about the character it presents. It is culturally understood that celebrity photos of the classier kind are meant to do more than just show a famous figure – they are expected to express something special or quirky about them, as if the entire photo offered an insight not merely into what they look like, but what they are like. The repertoire of image types available for this process is itself drawn from popular genres, in particular film and advertising; which means that ads using celebrity photos represent a full turn of the circle – since celebrity photos are themselves so dependent on the image-bank provided by ads. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Melancholy Objects; Signs of Life’
by: Annabelle Dalby
Posted: Mon, 14 Dec 2020 08:04:52 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Nature
First Published: Issue 57 - Winter 2008

Fallen trees, hanging branches, broken twigs and gnawed leaves are documented in the predominantly black set of Tim Edgar’s images. Alike, in the white images are what seem to be spiders’ legs; flies’ torsos, wings and other disembodied insect parts, not all decipherable. What lies amongst both sets of photographs are not just signs of life, of some sort of activity, but remnants, leftovers. Tim Edgar’s 'Rookery' (2003) and 'Cobweb' (2008) series are made up of 14 and 20 photographs respectively, each documenting, as their titles describe, nesting sites in unsettling environments. The images are like those of a crime scene, they show us the more dangerous and uneasy side of nature’s activity. Focusing on conflict and ritual, neither the rooks nor the prey, the spider or the fly, are totally present in the photographs. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History by Geoffrey Batchen’
by: Justin Carville
Posted: Fri, 11 Dec 2020 05:44:49 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

In the introduction to his 'Trauerspiel' study, Walter Benjamin defined the term 'origin' as 'not intended to describe the process by which the existent came into being, but rather to describe that which emerges from the process of becoming and disappearance'. Origin is thus used to describe that which is in and out of time, something that has become, yet is incomplete. This definition of origin is useful as conceptual framework to discuss Geoffrey Batchen's dual concerns in Each Wild Idea; the birth and death of photography and their respective fractured histories. Following his previous publication 'Burning with Desire', Batchen examines the birth of photography to understand its death, and its ultimate successor digital imaging. In this scenario the death of one watches over the birth pangs of the other. Batchen's approach to this subject however, does not incorporate the dialectical materialism of Benjamin but the philosophical deconstruction of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Prospecting’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Fri, 11 Dec 2020 05:14:34 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

The Portfolio days have been taking place regularly since January 1998. Over this period they have taken place consistently in Dublin and Belfast and intermittently in Cork, Limerick and Galway. The format of these days affords photographers a half hour opportunity to show and discuss their work with one of the editors of the magazine. A record of the material brought along is kept with the photographer's details to allow for further consideration and reflection. This material along with that sent directly to 'Source' forms the pool of work from which a selection is made for publication. After three years certain patterns have emerged. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Towards A Philosophy Of Photography by Vilém Flusser’
by: Paul Tebbs
Posted: Thu, 10 Dec 2020 06:32:55 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

Vilém Flusser's 'Towards a Philosophy of Photography' is an important, ethically orientated, fully encompassing theory of photography. And, more besides. Photography serves awkwardly as an allegory for technology as a whole, and more subtly for translation and emigration. Published in German in 1983, it appears here in this English translation for the first time. Abandoning academic formalities such as a bibliography, footnotes, references to other writers (and without visual reproductions), the violence perceived to be done to the ESTablished critical topography is so great, that a glossary of terms is provided that has no 'general validity' to other writing. This is to overstate the case. Many familiar ideas float through this text (with an emégré's freedom from restrictive and sentimentalised allegiances) without detracting from its value. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Bismarck in America by Dirk Reinartz’
by: Gavin Murphy
Posted: Wed, 09 Dec 2020 05:57:25 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Urban
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

It has been said that America was created in the hope of escaping history. Dirk Reinartz's book, 'Bismarck in America', explores this by setting photographs of Bismarck, a smalt town in North Dakota, against the legacy of Otto von Bismarck, the nineteenth century architect of the German Empire. In so doing, Reinartz produces a body of photographs that is the stuff of modern horror. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Fotografien 1991-1995 by Laurenz Berges’
by: Paul Tebbs
Posted: Wed, 09 Dec 2020 04:52:52 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

Just beyond the pristinely white sentry box that is Checkpoint Charlie, two black and white images face each other. Elevated some thirty feet above the ground, one is a soldier representing the West and the other a soldier representing the East. As a memorial to Germany's tragic division it is a strangely anaesthetic commemoration. The soldiers' faces are simultaneously too individual and too generic. They are too clean. Too modern. The dirty weight of history fails to adhere to their impassive military expressions. The past is politely registered, but neutralised, by the tensionless staging of their aloft encounter. Commerce and tourism scurry about unhindered. At night, the soldiers disappear in the upper gloom. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Other Pictures by Thomas Walther - Floh by Tacita Dean’
by: Paul Tebbs
Posted: Tue, 08 Dec 2020 11:02:29 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Found
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

In the 'Restitutions' section of 'The Truth in Painting', Derrida considers to whom the two boots in Van Gogh's famous picture 'Old Shoes with Laces belong'. Heidegger interpreted them as peasant's shoes; the philosopher Meyer Schapiro disagreed and proclaimed them the footwear of Van Gogh; while the multiple voices that contribute to Derrida's text ('for n + L-female-voices') proffer other nuanced possibilities. In a familiar deconstructivist move, Derrida's polylogue stages a problematisation of the distinction between what is internal to the work of art and what is external to it. For Derrida, both Heidegger and Schapiro are guilty of appropriating Van Gogh's painting in accordance with their own presumptions. In their haste to restore to the painted boots their true subject, Heidegger and Schapiro succeed only in instating themselves. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Positioning/Repositioning’
by: Nora Donnelly
Posted: Mon, 07 Dec 2020 18:08:10 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Macro
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

"Here we enjoy an immediate apprehension of form, all shapes speak directly to us, nothing seems indifferent or redundant" (Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900). It is the unique fusion of the form and content in the work of Liam O'Callaghan that brought the above quotation (Long since consigned to the Academic out box) to mind. Initially taken by the points of tension created between what was depicted/represented and the manner of its depiction of representation, I was reminded of Nietzsche's exhortation to "look and go beyond the look". . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Upside-down and Playing Backwards’
by: Siún Hanrahan
Posted: Mon, 07 Dec 2020 17:21:08 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

I found Steve Dutton and Percy Peacock's exhibition KAYAKÖY at Catayst Arts in Belfast compelling and disconcerting. It was compelling in that its combination of photographs, video works and text (a collaborative production by Steve Dutton and artist/writer Steve Swindells) was intriguing and coherent. Disconcerting because of the stark contrast between two sets of photographs within the exhibition (in terms of subject matter, colour and format), and because the two video works were wilfully bewildering. (In one the picture is upside-down, pLays backwards and the video-recorder swings gently from side-to-side, whiLe in the other junk accumuLates and is disposed of for no apparent reason). . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Ireland of the Welcomes...’
by: Suzanne O'Shea
Posted: Mon, 07 Dec 2020 05:25:44 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Social
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

"O'Callaghan is keen to ensure that she is not seen as someone who has exploited her subject; not some fashion photographer dirtying her fingers with a little urban reality" ('Irish Times', March 1st). Perhaps it's me. Perhaps I'm cynical and lacking in empathy, but I'm sceptical of fashion photographers trying to raise awareness of social issues. I am particularly sceptical of fashion photographers who have not pre-planned an exhibition, yet end up showcasing at Temple Bar with impending catalogue (forthcoming 'Westzone' Autumn '01) and appropriate media coverage. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Utopia and the Train-set’
by: Colin Graham
Posted: Sun, 06 Dec 2020 16:50:20 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Architectural
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

In Tom Merilion's photographs Birmingham is utopian, chromatic and vertiginous. Halfway into the exhibition is an image which, at first glance, seems out of place. Why the insides of a computer in the middle of an exhibition of urban spaces? A closer look at those regularly patterned, glossy Little nodes of colour and they transform into cars in a car park, shot from an aeroplane, and then the vertigo sets in. Because you're falling into this photograph. It's an extraordinary feeling, produced again and again in different ways by these images, which vary their angle from bird's-eye to roofleveI to ground-level, yet still within each the space between the camera's point of view and the places photographed shimmers and moves. The effect is achieved with apparent simplicity; the edges of these images (particularly top and bottom quarter) are out of focus, manipulated so that in some sense they imitate the blurred edges of every day vision. And then if you can tear yourself out of the falling feeling these images induce, it's re-invented by the hint of Vaseline-on-the-lens nostalgia which threatens to tip you back into the past. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Community Photographic Project’
by: Eoin McCarthy
Posted: Sun, 06 Dec 2020 15:57:35 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Social
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

I am interested in developing my practice by combining my understanding of fine art with the fundamental principles behind Community Development. Between 1998 and 2000 I attended a part-time course in Community Development at the University of Limerick. I found that Photography proved more accessible and less intimidating to people because nearly every household was used to having their own photographs on their walls. Contributors to this published project were sought with posters in Local shops and youth clubs. Each image was jointly directed by myself and the person whose 'portrait' it was. After discussion some people chose to be in the photograph themselves, others preferred to select Locations or objects that were significant to them. The traditional studio backdrop became a key prop for setting the scene. Brian was a community development worker with a particular concern for road safety. Terence had Left school early and had placed great emphasis on his friends and his concern for horses being kept in the city. Joe wanted to show the attic of the Print Studios in Limerick that he hopes to transform into a gallery space. Sister Mary Carmel works in the St. Martin's youth centre in The New Road. The street and the kids from the area are her life. Maria's garden is her space to chill out and to proudly set out her growing collection of shoes. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Still Grim in Kharkiv’
by: Alexandra Harrington
Posted: Fri, 04 Dec 2020 06:07:57 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

Ukrainian Boris Mikhailov began to work as a photographer in the 1960s when he was sacked from his engineering job for taking nude pictures of his wife. During his long career, he has created a significant and compelling body of work, most of which has only been accessible since the break-up of the Soviet Union. His international reputation was secured with the publication (by Phaidon in 1990) of 'Yesterday’s Sandwich', a series dating from the late 1960s and early 1970s in which unconnected images are superimposed upon one another to create a fascinating, surreal landscape. His Red Series of 1968- 75, which has recently been acquired by the Tate, plays with the conventions of Socialist Realism, making it a photographic counterpart to the Sots Art of Mikhailov’s Russian contemporaries Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Wonders and Horrors’
by: Martha Langford
Posted: Thu, 03 Dec 2020 07:12:28 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

Two rather significant institutional names in photographic knowledge and production have cooperated to bring out this volume: the Aperture Foundation and the Library of Congress. The twenty-seven albums sumptuously illustrated and discussed in the book have been selected from the more than seven hundred albums in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, as well as from other archival divisions with albums in their holdings, including the Manuscript; Music; Rare Book and Special Collections; Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound; Geography and Map; Area Studies; and Science and Technology Divisions. Curator of Photography Verna Posever Curtis has not only assembled a remarkable collection, she has blazed a trail through her institution, reminding her readers of the insinuation of photography into almost every type of documentation and research, and allowing them to see the reciprocal influences of different disciplines in words and images. A huge brief, and thankfully Curtis had help from within and without. Her acknowledgements will turn many lonely archivists green with envy. Still, this is at root her project, one whose decisions and rationales are neither personal nor institutional, but a combination of both. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Invitation to the ‘Golden Age’’
by: Dewi Lewis
Posted: Thu, 03 Dec 2020 04:44:21 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

It is frequently said that we live in the ‘golden age of the photobook’. More photography books are published than ever before and what once seemed the impossible dream of every photographer – to ‘have their own book’ – now appears to be an increasingly realisable ambition. And so the publication of Publish Your Photography Book would seem entirely appropriate and timely. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘War and Amnesia’
by: Matt Packer
Posted: Wed, 02 Dec 2020 12:07:25 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

Simon Norfolk’s return to Afghanistan since his previous 'Afghanistan: chronotopia' (2002) is a parallel enquiry of lost hope and a resuscitive dialogue. The book takes the form of an ‘artistic partnership’ with the discovered albums of John Burke (c.1843 – 1900), described as the first ever photographer to make pictures in Afghanistan. Interposing Norfolk’s scenes of contemporary military scarrings and fragile new commercialisms amid the landscape and civic life of the country, together with Burke’s equanimous and beautiful images taken during the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878- 1880), the effective congruities between the two photographers’ work ultimately sets up a critique of the amnesia of recent Western speculations in Afghanistan. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Right Between the Eyes’
by: Edward Welch
Posted: Wed, 02 Dec 2020 11:43:28 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

'Shoot!' originates in an installation curated by Clément Chéroux at the Rencontres d’Arles in 2010, and explores the photographic shooting galleries which were once commonplace in fairgrounds in the first part of the twentieth century. Nicely concatenating literal shooting with its figurative, photographic counterpart, they were based on a grippingly simple premise: shooters who hit the target triggered a camera, and were rewarded not with a cuddly toy, but with a shot of themselves taking aim. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Electronic Waste’
by: Mick Gidley
Posted: Wed, 02 Dec 2020 11:26:12 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

The opening page of writing by Federica Angelucci – more reverie than analysis – evokes both the pictures to come and the place depicted: Agbogloshie, an area of Ghana that receives electronic detritus from the western world. The photographs themselves document the processes of such modern subsistence hunter gathering: fire, breaking, sifting, bagging. The place – for which its denizens say ‘there is no name’ – is toxic, polluting the air and water for miles around. Despite this poisoning, animals graze and, of course, human beings labour here. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Wretched of the Earth’
by: Edward Welch
Posted: Wed, 02 Dec 2020 11:10:45 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

Winner of the European Publishers Award for Photography in 2010, Cristophe Agou’s elegantly produced book explores peasant life in the wild, remote and often harsh uplands of South Eastern France. France is a country which still talks happily of peasants, and peasant life continues to loom large in the French cultural imaginary, as reflected in the commercial and critical success of Raymond Depardon’s film trilogy, 'Profils Paysans' ('Peasant Profiles'), over the course of the last decade. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘An Art Photograph’
by: Andrea Noble
Posted: Wed, 02 Dec 2020 05:37:49 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

Part of the ‘One Work’ book series published by Afterall, as the series title suggests, David Campany’s text focuses on a single image by the Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, the 1979 'Picture for Women'. The reader might be forgiven for thinking that the narrow focus of the book would make it of interest only to specialists seeking to expand their knowledge of Wall’s work. However, Campany’s deft handling of his subject matter means that this book will certainly be of appeal to specialists, but equally has much to say to those with a more general interest in photographic practice and image theory of the late 1970s and early 1980s. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Pencil Revisited’
by: Geoffrey Batchen
Posted: Wed, 02 Dec 2020 04:38:06 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

Often referred to as the first photographically illustrated book, William Henry Fox Talbot’s 'The Pencil of Nature' has nevertheless long been absent from the bookshelves of most scholars. The initial publication was issued in six parts between June 1844 and April 1846, comprising fascicles containing between three and five tipped-in photographs, each with an accompanying commentary by the author. The first fascicle also came with a ‘Brief Historical Sketch of the Invention of the Art,’ in which Talbot provides his own version of the origins of photography, centered on his invention of a photogenic drawing process. 'The Pencil' attracted initial praise from critics but soon also garnered complaints from customers unhappy with the fading of its photographs. Originally intending to offer those customers ten or twelve installments amounting to fifty photographs in total, Talbot eventually issued only twenty-four images and the project was a discouraging financial failure. As a result there are only about 39 substantially complete copies of 'The Pencil of Nature' now known, making it a rare collector’s item. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The End of Optimism’
by: Mary Warner Marien
Posted: Tue, 01 Dec 2020 10:34:15 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

'From Here to There' is a compendium covering 15 years of Alex Soth’s work in the form he likes the most: the book. His photographic projects are chronologically sequenced, from the 1990s black-and-white series, 'Perfect Strangers', which he has called his practice work, to 'Broken Manual', a group of images showing people who are trying to live outside (sometimes literally) of civilization. The book ends with another, smaller book, 'The Loneliest Man in Missouri', affixed to its inside back cover. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Back in the Community’
by: Jesse Alexander
Posted: Tue, 01 Dec 2020 09:54:52 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

In 1974, a project began to document poverty in Britain’s inner cities. Under the collective title, Exit Photography Group, Nicholas Battye, Chris Steele-Perkins and Paul Trevor photographed life in some of the most deprived residential areas of London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Belfast and Liverpool. The outcome of the project was a book called 'Survival Programmes', published in 1982, the bleak title of which was taken from an interview with a resident who was referring to television wildlife programmes. The book is a substantial resource containing un-credited individual black and white photographs, interview transcripts from anonymous contributors describing aspects of their lives, and a compilation of statistics relating to aspects of Britain’s economic situation at the time. Contrasting this relative objectivity are a few, yet poignant, images of wealth and the British ESTablishment: a rather generic, commercial-style shot of investment bankers at work in the City, a shot of a Trades Union Congress meeting, Margaret Thatcher at a rally. The television set, a relatively new household necessity, is a recurring motif throughout the book, and without these, the viewer might easily mistake the photographs as being made decades earlier. In one of the most interesting images taken in a community hostel on Christmas day, Her Majesty addresses a rather unimpressed man and a pitifully modest Christmas tree. It is an uncompromising book, and hopefully the tatty condition of the library copy I looked at is testimony to the project being held up as an impressive example of social documentary practice of the period. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Tourism and Time’
by: Stephen Bull
Posted: Tue, 01 Dec 2020 08:42:03 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Architectural
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

Pyramids and proof triangulate with photography throughout the past 150 years. From 1858-1860, Francis Frith published 'Egypt and Palestine Photographed and Described by Francis Frith', where the extraordinary architecture of Egypt was revealed to a Western audience, most of which were unable to take the luxurious Grand Tour that was soon to lead to the widespread culture of tourism. Those same viewers may have heard of the pyramids or seen drawings of them, but Frith’s photographs of the structures – foregrounds liberally sprinkled with posed Egyptians – apparently provided indisputable evidence of the pyramids’ existence. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Exotic and the Universal’
by: Colin Darke
Posted: Tue, 01 Dec 2020 08:16:03 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

Jackie Nickerson quit her career as a magazine photographer to travel the world, applying the aesthetic of the fashion industry in her exploration of the uncomfortable dialogue between individual and national identity and global homogeneity. Based in her native USA, she has worked in the Gulf and sub-Saharan Africa, the Far East and even the exotic world of Ireland. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Noir in Miniature’
by: Isabel Stevens
Posted: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 14:20:22 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

‘Nobody should touch a Polaroid until he’s over sixty’ was Walker Evans’s maxim. It was only at that age, when Evans’s fingers started to fail him that he turned to the small and instantaneous image to revisit the street signs and scenes he had shot early in his career. And it was only at that age in his view, when a photographer had mastered working with larger prints and more finely-tuned instruments, that they could relinquish control and work with the Polaroid. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Conceptual Photojournalism’
by: Alison Green
Posted: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 08:58:57 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

I went to a lecture a few months ago in London by the historian Ian Boal. A member of the Bay-Area activist-writer group, Retort, Boal spoke of the unprecedented intensification of capital in the 2000s, such that (he was quoting someone else) ‘we can more easily imagine the end of the world than we can the end of capitalism’. Using images from 9/11 to the Fukushima power plant explosions to demonstrate the way images participate in promoting an overwhelming ‘catastophism’, by the end of his talk Boal spoke of reinvigorating the ‘commons’ – in other words, commonly held spaces and the kind of face-to-face interactions that take place there. He emphasised this as not the same as a democratic process – where discussion leads to new laws – rather, as ongoing dialogue for its own sake, as an empowering activity against capitalism’s spectacle. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘About Looking’
by: Mark Durden
Posted: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 05:45:16 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

Paul Graham as a photographer is very interested in the picture and the problems of picture making. While his photography is taken from the world, it is nevertheless concerned with aesthetic and formal issues integral to the way a view of the world is transformed through the photograph – one could go through the ten projects on show, spanning a quarter-century of his photography, identifying the different formal techniques that have been experimented with. It would start with 'A1 – The Great North Road', 1981-1982 and 'Beyond Caring', 1984-1985, his early politically inflected responses to American New Colour photography, in which the aesthetic effects of colour were combined with a subject matter more readily associated with a black and white documentary tradition. And it would end with the reflections on time and the moment through sequenced pictures, fascinated with the lyricism and beauty of observed everyday micro-events from streets in the US, 'A Shimmer of Possibility', 2004-2006, an evanescent unravelling of street photography’s preoccupation with the decisive moment. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘After Social Documentary’
by: David Evans
Posted: Sun, 29 Nov 2020 15:58:37 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Multi-Genre
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

'Figures & Fictions' presents seventeen contemporary photographers from South Africa. The oldest is David Goldblatt, born in 1930, and the twin brothers Hasan and Husain Essop, born in 1985, are the youngest. Overall, the emphasis is on photographers who have reached adulthood in a post-apartheid country (that is, after 1993) and on work produced in the last decade or so. All contributors to the exhibition are based in South Africa, though it is worth noting that the catalogue also discusses work by famous ex-pats like Candice Breitz (Berlin) and Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (London). And the guest curator is another famous ex-pat: Tamar Garb, Professor of Art History at University College, London. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Et Nunc Sacerdos’
by: David Brett
Posted: Fri, 27 Nov 2020 13:55:52 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Religious
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

This is a very strange task for me; to write about priest’s vestments. It seems to me important to say that I don't believe a word of religion. I have no beliefs except a belief that one should not believe. Radical doubt is the thing, pushed to the edge of possibility. This is not the doubt espoused by Joyce which always takes as its counterweight an intense piety which is the product of being deeply indoctrinated in youth by attitudes that in adulthood you have rejected. Radical doubt seems to me the precondition for any kind of thought, and perhaps any kind of feeling too. This is, of course, a form of religious feeling; it’s negative, so to speak, from which many and varied positions can be developed. I am of the view that one cannot escape religious emotion, transcendental yearnings, because they go with trying to think beyond one’s self. I am not sure what I mean by this, because these yearnings are not matters of which it is useful or even possible, to speak. They can only be made manifest in some form. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Et Nunc Sacerdos’
by: Alberto Maserin
Posted: Fri, 27 Nov 2020 10:17:50 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Religious
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

A Portfolio of photographic work by Alberto Maserin. Published in Issue 67 of Source, Summer 2011. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘What Defines a Portrait?’
by: Jonathan Long
Posted: Fri, 27 Nov 2020 07:32:58 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

August Sander is a ubiquitous presence in histories of photography, studies of the photographic portrait, and cultural histories of the Weimar Republic, and his work is widely reproduced in popular publications. This omnipresence can lead to a sense that we basically know what Sander is about. This exhibition, presenting almost 200 images that have been acquired on long-term loan, largely confirms and extends our knowledge of Sander the social typologist, but also manages to spring a few surprises. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Form Follows Function’
by: Eugenie Shinkle
Posted: Fri, 27 Nov 2020 07:06:18 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

Photographic formalism has had a rough ride for the last few decades. Championed by MOMA curator of photography John Szarkowski, formalism dominated photographic criticism throughout the 1960s and 70s. Though the formalist edifice began to crumble towards the end of the 1970s, Szarkowski remained devoted to the cause until the end of his career. In his 1989 'Photography Until Now' – his final book as curator at MOMA – Szarkowski maintained, against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that ‘most photographers of ambition and high talent would prefer today to serve no instrumental functions.’ In contemporary academic circles, formalism has come to stand for a self-contained and deeply conservative approach to picture-making; as an analytical approach, it is widely regarded as a dead end. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Law: Destroying Works of Art’
by: Ronan Deazley
Posted: Thu, 26 Nov 2020 17:21:28 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Law
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

Readers of Source may well have followed the recent litigation between French photographer Patrick Cariou and the artist Richard Prince with interest. Cariou’s book 'Yes, Rasta', published in 2000, contains portraits of Rastafarians as well as landscape photographs taken in Jamaica. In 2008 Prince produced a collection of 29 paintings (entitled 'Canal Zone') for the Gagosian Gallery, 28 of which made use of 41 photographs from 'Yes, Rasta'. Some of Prince’s works consisted almost entirely of images taken from Yes, Rasta, albeit collaged, cropped, tinted, and/or over-painted, while others used portions of 'Yes, Rasta' photographs as collage elements in works that included (often pornographic) images taken from other sources. The Gallery sold 8 of the 'Canal Zone' paintings for approximately $10.5m, exchanged 7 others for art with an ESTimated value of $6-8m, and sold nearly £7,000 worth of exhibition catalogues. Cariou alleged copyright infringement. Prince and the Gagosian argued that his use of Cariou’s work constituted ‘fair use’ under the US Copyright Act 1976. In March 2011 a New York District Court ruled that both Prince and the Gallery were guilty of copyright infringement. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Troubled Thoughts’
by: Caroline Molloy
Posted: Thu, 26 Nov 2020 07:17:34 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Gender
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

'Troubled Thoughts' is a multi-media piece made whilst on residency at Flaxart studios, Belfast. The work deals with the issue of female identity within Northern Ireland, by exploring different women's individual experiences of the troubles. Whilst the work is not anthropological it does offer a very human insight into the complexity of living within a pluralist Northern Ireland; challenging stereotypical images of existing within a society at conflict. The sound and photographic installation will open at the Old Museum Art Centre, Belfast on March 4th, to coincide with International Women's Day. It will continue March 28th. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Grand Canal Swimmers’
by: Paddy McCabe
Posted: Thu, 26 Nov 2020 06:22:08 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

Having taken over twenty five years to complete, the Grand Canal was officially opened in 1805. It extends from Ringsend at the port of Dublin to Shannon Harbour and covers a total of 82 miles with 43 locks. The canal has a long tradition of use by swimmers in the summer months. Very little documentation exists of this and the project was started in 1988 to correct that deficit. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Beyond Division’
by: David Robinson
Posted: Thu, 26 Nov 2020 05:42:26 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

These images are extracts from an ongoing piece of work entitled 'Beyond Division' which is largely based within Northern Ireland, Germany and some other bordering European locations. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Cheapside EC2’
by: Martin Yelverton
Posted: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 11:49:41 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Street
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

Cheapside EC2 is situated in one of the oldest parts of the City of London, it runs from the Bank of England to St. Paul's Cathedral. The photographs were taken on Cheapside and Moorgate between April and August 1996. The photographs are in one sense a documentation of this area - Through the images, representations of a culture at a point in history. There is an attempt in this work to explore the cultural implications of representation, particularly in relation to colonialism - how control is created through representation or how representation can control or fix a culture. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Hen Brydain’
by: Phil Martin
Posted: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 11:21:36 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

The Standing Stones and Ceremonial Sites of the Modern Era. Several years ago, as I drove around South Wales, I became aware of large stones standing on the edges of several new motorway junctions and noticed their similarity to the prehistoric stone circles and menhirs that are part of the stock in trade of the romantic landscape artist. These ancient stones have also attracted the attention of a large number of photographers, including Bill Brandt, Paul Caponigro and Fay Godwin and it occurred to me that these modern monuments could be photographed in a manner that would offer a critical response to their pastoralist vision. I also noted other monuments within Wales, that bear an even closer resemblance to ancient stone circles, the Gorsedd Stones erected for the ceremonies of the Welsh National Eisteddfod. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Unterwegs’
by: Florian Merkel
Posted: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 06:26:35 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

These are from 40 photographs, I shot from driving cars in the area of German Democratic Republic between August 1988 and March 1989. The title is 'Unterwegs' (On the road). . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Myths and Fables’
by: Roger Hargreaves
Posted: Mon, 23 Nov 2020 16:44:48 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

One thing I was curious about was do you have any pets? / No. But I do have a son. He’s twenty now. But I grew up with pets, I grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in Punta las Marias, a residential area not far from the airport. We always had lots of dogs and there were land crabs in the garden and birds. I was born in Germany to American parents. My father moved our family there in 1958 when I was four. He was in business to import and export beef throughout Latin America and had set up a big freezing depot. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Myths and Fables’
by: Karen Knorr
Posted: Mon, 23 Nov 2020 11:30:59 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

A Portfolio of photographic work by Karen Knorr. Published in Issue 67 of Source, Summer 2011. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Great Masturbator on Holiday’
by: Daniel Jewsbury
Posted: Mon, 23 Nov 2020 08:14:01 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

‘Arguably’ is a weasel word. I can use it in a sentence and it will appear that I’m putting forward some sort of point of view or making some statement when in fact I’m only deferring the point at which I have to do either of those things, or anything else. For instance: ‘Neil Drabble is, arguably, a sculptor whose work only exists in photographic documentation.’ I might believe that, I might not. I’m not willing to say yet whether I actually do or don’t. Even if the statement can indeed be argued, and even if it were found to be true, so what? . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Great Masturbator on Holiday’
by: Neil Drabble
Posted: Mon, 23 Nov 2020 07:30:27 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 67 - Summer 2011

A Portfolio of photographic work by Neil Drabble. Published in Issue 67 of Source, Summer 2011. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘...As Seen by Magnum’
by: Jim Maginn
Posted: Thu, 19 Nov 2020 04:37:39 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

I waited eagerly to see Magnum's 'Israel 50 Years' book and exhibition. My interest came as an admirer of the Magnum school of Photography and in terms of what it would contribute to my understanding of the conflict in the Middle East. With one or two exceptions I was not disappointed. I won't get into the dubious territory of making direct comparisons between the conflict here and there. There are a lot of similarities in our post-colonial history but thankfully we have escaped the extreme bloodshed of modern Israel and it's neighbours. Which ever tribe you happened to be born into here none of us really know the sheer scale of the conflict in Israel. The book is a timely reminder of the ever present potential for strife of that scale on our doorsteps. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Still Life’
by: James Armstrong
Posted: Wed, 18 Nov 2020 07:45:55 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Death
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

In this particular moment of contemporary visual history there exists a calculated preoccupation with authentic biology. The presentation of specimens or the invention of genetic metaphors invites us to contemplate nature and its denominator; mortality, in a somehow new or heightened manner. Shock, sensation, horror or any number of cinematic headings classify these rarefied ventures into the super-real theatre of the millennium mind. Karl Grimes' 'Still Life' at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin is a documentation of malformations (natal abnormalities) from the turn of the century. Collections of this sort have existed primarily for scientific resource in the medical community. The only place where they could be bottled, displayed, and contemplated without the hysteria or side show exploitation that precipitates glimpses of nature's most unnatural matrix. The child:bastion of innocence, heterosexuality's immaculate claim to god-like normality, the hope of all that is perfect and coming. Here, a graphic variation on a genetic theme. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Community Photography Project’
by: Jim Maginn
Posted: Wed, 18 Nov 2020 06:51:50 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Social
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

I anticipate that the Ormeau Baths Gallery is about to have some of it's highest attendance figures to date with its current Magnum show. The Eve Arnold/Magnum exhibition at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin has broken all attendance records for that space. I would however recommend that first you take a look upstairs at the set of pictures from the Gallery's 'Community Photography Project' If you've taken in the sumptuous prints of Magnum first it will be harder to enjoy the raw energy and innocence that characterises this work. No Leica pin sharp images here. This work brings us back to basics with the help of Boots disposable black and white cameras. The project was sponsored by the High Street Giant in the form of free cameras and processing. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

Portfolio
by: Patricia Lofgren
Posted: Wed, 18 Nov 2020 05:22:24 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Photo Essay
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

These photographs are of some of the landmarks that gave me an idea of how far I was from home before I understood the concepts of minutes or miles. When I was very young I remember staring out the back window of our family car. I knew that when we passed the grey house on our leftwe would soon see the Christmas tree farm and make a right onto West Kerley Corners Road. We would pass Mr. Rockefeller's house and I knew when I saw the William's pond on the right my house would be staring back at me from the top of the hill. These images are extremely personal but, at the same time universal. Everyone that has had a home can probably draw a map of familiar places on their way home. These places, that I grew up with, were so burned into my mind that when I was photographing them I had trouble remembering how old I was. I did not have to make too much of a choice of what to photograph. It was more a case of just lining up the image already in my mind with the back of the camera. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Broadening Horizons’
by: Wendy Wilson
Posted: Mon, 16 Nov 2020 08:58:29 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

Kate Mellor quotes Paul Theroux as an introduction to her collection of coastal landscapes. "Most people on the promenade walked with their faces averted from the land... Most people looked seaward with anxious hopeful faces..." She takes us around the coast of Britain with scientific precision, using measured points in what she describes as "an essentially British posture". The landscapes are not simply seascapes, they all include a point of reference, a piece of land or some people which we recognise as British. Mellor is trying to capture the sense of enclosure provided by an island, but also the protection. She places stark windswept beaches alongside familiar seaside scenes. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The New Photography Galleries’
by: Simon Denison
Posted: Mon, 16 Nov 2020 06:30:18 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Gallery-Based
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

News earlier this year of the loss of Arts Council funding at a few photography organisations, such as Side Gallery and Hereford Photography Festival, may have given the impression that the photo-gallery world is entering lean times, in keeping with a less buoyant economy. Some galleries are certainly feeling the pinch. But overall, the reality may not be quite so disheartening. With several publicly-funded photography and art galleries engaged in major new building or refurbishment projects, and general art galleries showing photographs as never before, it seems rather that photography is at last receiving the infrastructural recognition that its status in the art world has long deserved. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Listening to the Landscape’
by: Errol Forbes
Posted: Mon, 16 Nov 2020 05:02:22 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

These photographs comprise a journey through the mountain landscape of lreland. A discipline which demands close observation and a sympathy with the subject. All of the lrish mountains are easy to reach and explore yet remain largely unfrequented. Time spent exploring, absorbing and listening to the landscape will influence the photographer and result in a truer picture. We can record the beauty of the landscape, most importantly with our eyes and then with the camera. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 102 / Autumn 2020 - Zoom Launch’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 09 Oct 2020 06:22:23 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Event

Join us for the Online Launch of Issue 102 'The Unsayable'. Live interviews with featured photographer Lorraine Tuck and contributor Professor Edward Welch. Lorraine Tuck's 'Unusual Gestures' depicts family life for a mother of two boys who have autism and two daughters, living on a farm in the west of Ireland. The 'gestures' in the title refers to her younger son Manus's inscrutable signalling with his hands but might also describe the efforts of everyone in the family to cope with the differing needs of the children and the working life of a farm, something that would be hard to put into language but is clearly visible in the pictures. Professor Edward Welch is a regular contributor to Source and co-editor of 'Photography and Its Publics' (2020). This issue features his comparative review of Jean-Christophe Bailly's The Instant and its Shadow and Hagi Kenaan's Photography and its Shadow, each of which, as he puts it, 'find different ways to apprehend the fundamental strangeness of photography'. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 MA/MFA Selections’
by: Elizabeth Renstrom
Posted: Thu, 24 Sep 2020 18:12:17 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

I am always on the lookout for new perspectives in a field that can feel more and more ubiquitous each year. As greater numbers of people have access to cameras on their phones and ways of creating lens-based work—I think subject matter and nuance is so important to stand out. I always encourage artists to identify stories only they can uniquely tell before documenting something they think they should. Zeitgeists in photo styles happen often, but wholly original series are a rarity. The submissions for this year’s MA photography graduates reflect the importance of individuality across so many genres of the medium. I was impressed and surprised by the narratives I came across in my six choices as they deal with issues of the artist’s gaze in portraiture, how we construct memory, and how we choose to tell the history of a place. All approached in a way that really made me look deeper into the projects and how the photos were constructed. I know this year is a wild one to matriculate in—but we need new ways of seeing now more than ever. These students offer just that. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 MA/MFA Selections’
by: Kirstin Kidd
Posted: Thu, 24 Sep 2020 18:09:24 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

I was honored to be asked to be on the selectors panel for this year’s MA/MFA graduates. As the year progressed and Covid-19 became pervasive in all areas of life it has been a welcome pause from the relentless news coverage for me. The process of reviewing the projects was stimulating and revitalising and gave me a chance to reconnect with photography beyond the newsfeed. Many of the projects were direct responses to the pandemic, but I was left pondering the indirect influence lockdown would have had on all these artists working at this time. The pressure to complete your final year without the usual face to face discussions and the energy and support from your peers and tutors must have been incredibly tough. Each project is revealing of our shared yet unique experiences through this time. I eventually came to my final selects but it was not without its difficulties as there are many very successful projects here which were on my extremely long short list. I urge you to look beyond those I selected, and to all the graduates I would like to wish you all the very best in the future. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 MA/MFA Selections’
by: Sarah Allen
Posted: Thu, 24 Sep 2020 17:59:14 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

This year's graduates are tackling a wide variety of subject-matter in diverse ways. However there were certain themes which ran throughout several of the projects – grief and loss, environmental concerns and sexuality, to name a few. Unsurprisingly the pandemic was a subject matter explored by many of the graduates. It’s always fascinating to see early creative responses to this critical moment– in one sense I can understand how the pandemic must feel the most obvious and urgent subject but, in another sense, one has to do extra legwork to ensure a compelling angle or mode of expression. Among my choices are projects I felt were well conceptualised, executed and edited. I wish all the graduates the very best. I look forward to seeing what comes next for them all. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 102 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 14 Sep 2020 07:55:27 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 102 - Autumn 2020

Anyone who has studied photography at a university in the last 30 years will be familiar with the idea of considering images as texts. But sometimes words are insufficient. This could be for pragmatic reasons - you don’t have a language in common - or it could be that some things are not easily put into words but can be put into pictures. It is easy to assume that words can be reduced to their meanings while pictures, whose meaning is elusive, cannot. Translators are a conduit for other people’s communication. But while a speaker’s whole meaning may be conveyed to their listener, the translator they pass through is also affected by the words, even though they are not their own. Theatre director Sophie Besse and photographer Jose Farinha worked with a group of translators employed in the public system (with the police, in prisons and hospitals) to create images to show this effect. In a collaborative process they ‘sculpted’ tableaux that dramatised their often difficult experiences. The resulting photographs show feelings that cannot be put into words. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Religion Private and Public’
by: Mick Gidley
Posted: Thu, 23 Jul 2020 07:51:15 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

These 40 colour photographs open with a view down the Soho Road as it leaves Birmingham city centre. The vantage exaggerates the road’s surface and its featurelessness. This is the locality as seen by someone driving through, who may not know the Soho Road as the multi-ethnic area captured in succeeding photographs. The next image, of guests at the annual Birmingham Faiths Forum dinner, also readies itself to be undercut: the leaders of religious groups – recognisable by such insignia as crosses and yamulkas – constitute, with the mayor in his civic regalia, a comfortable-looking ‘establishment’, whereas the people to be met later inhabit less privileged spaces. The theme is not just ethnicity (itself too often reduced to ‘colour’ and ‘diversity’) but, as Liz Hingley states, what faith, in its many guises, "can bring to everyday inner-city life". . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Relaxation and Globalisation’
by: Edward Welch
Posted: Thu, 23 Jul 2020 07:29:01 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

'Riffs' is the handsome catalogue accompanying a solo show by Yto Barrada at the Berlin Guggenheim earlier this year, organised to mark her nomination as the Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year for 2011. In many ways, it offers a rewarding encounter with her work over the past decade or so, and includes stimulating essays and interviews exploring her engagement with the city of Tangiers, and her study of the frontiers and frustrations at the margins of Europe which makes her one of the most perceptive observers of the contemporary world in all its globalised and segregated complexity. Yet at the same time, it is a publication shot through with a few too many ironies, not the least of which is that, as sponsor’s representative Pierre de Weck tells us rather proudly in his preface, the prize comes with no financial reward. Rather, alongside the solo show, Artists of the Year have a whole floor of the bank’s head office devoted to showing their work, while the bank acquires some ‘works on paper’ for its collection. One is gladdened that so many foot soldiers of big finance can be soothed, and maybe even challenged, as they meditate on Barrada’s sustained interrogation of the landscapes which global capital has done so much to shape and define over the past two or three decades. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Ephemeral Exchanges’
by: Nancy Roth
Posted: Thu, 23 Jul 2020 06:55:27 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Although Walead Beshty is a young man (b. London, 1976) and this catalogue covers only ten years of his career, 'Natural Histories' is a retrospective. The formal diversity of the work is striking: stereoscopic views of housing projects, casual portraits, large abstract colour photograms, prints made from film exposed in an airport security scanner. But the conceptual coherence is striking as well: it’s like a threedimensional philosophy that uses objects and spaces, rather than words. Through concrete materials, observable processes, specific instances, it refutes the kind of abstraction that words so easily make familiar (or ‘natural’) and that photography usually reinforces. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘What is Conceptual Photography?’
by: Lucy Soutter
Posted: Thu, 23 Jul 2020 05:55:28 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

This book showcases the eclectic international collection of Zellweger Luwa AG, a Swiss corporation specialising in air engineering and gas detection. For those interested in the relationship between conceptual art and photography, the lavish illustrations and detailed catalogue information offer a chance to study an assortment of important works that are rarely exhibited, and often reproduced in partial form. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Reflecting Truth’
by: Mary Warner Marien
Posted: Thu, 23 Jul 2020 05:28:22 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

In her new book, Karen M. Fraser maintains that Japanese photography is best seen in the milieu of Japan’s dynamic social history, particularly its rapid transformation from feudalism to capitalism. From the start, Japanese photographic practice responded to the needs of modernisation. Early photographic portraits made of the Mejii emperor were staged to show him as a modern leader in an ancient land. At the same time, photography responded to Japanese cultural notions. Fraser contrasts the Western roots of the word, photography (light writing), with the Japanese term, 'shashin', which means ‘truth copy’ or ‘reflecting truth.’ The Japanese configuration emphasised faithful recording of the visual and discouraged manipulation of the image. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘People Now Absent’
by: Jackie Higgins
Posted: Thu, 23 Jul 2020 05:08:32 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Death
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Paul Hill is perhaps best known for landscape photography, in particular his monochrome images of the remote corner of the Peak District where he lives. This work was presented in his memorable book 'White Peak, Dark Peak' (1990). The imagery in his latest publication 'Corridor of Uncertainty' marks a radical departure. Made after he lost his wife to cancer, Hill turned to colour and chose to express himself through still life, close-up and abstract photography. He says, "I did not – could not – document her decline directly. I have considered these images individually and collectively and how they interrelate and correlate to reflect the experience." . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Honoured Dead’
by: Simon Denison
Posted: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 11:49:08 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Death
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Taking photographs of our dead relatives may seem macabre today but for the Victorians (mainly, in the West) it was a sign that the dead were loved and honoured, and served as therapy for the bereaved. Photographs typically showed the dead as if at peace, and the bereaved dignified and resigned. In exceptional cases we see past the illusion: German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck caught slumped on his dishevelled deathbed by two turn-of-the-century paparazzi; or a woman captured by accident, edge-of-frame, weeping helplessly over a dead infant in a London studio. Some pictures were staged to show off the family’s wealth. Others, following the ESTablished practice of posthumous portraiture, depicted the dead dressed and sitting up as if living. The eyes were opened and eyeballs turned round – a task easily achieved, according to one account, with the handle of a teaspoon. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Depleted Associations’
by: Mary Warner Marien
Posted: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 11:29:15 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Photomontage
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Israel-born American filmmaker and photographer, Elad Lassry, makes photographs based in the visual palaver of mass media and vernacular portraiture. His demonising tweaks of cloying pet pictures will make you think twice about letting Fluffy sleep on your bed at night. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Photography and Poetry’
by: Jesse Alexander
Posted: Tue, 21 Jul 2020 09:01:57 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Street
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

'Core Curriculum' is a volume of collected writing on photography. Papageorge, whose photographic practice matured on the streets of New York alongside Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander in the 1960s and 70s, has been teaching at Yale University School of Art since 1979, where he still leads the graduate programme, whose alumni include Philip-Lorca diCorsia, Abe Morrell and Gregory Crewdson. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Old Couple’
by: Martha Langford
Posted: Thu, 16 Jul 2020 05:26:03 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Photography and anthropology are like an old couple; outsiders are scarcely conscious of the sparks and divisions between them. Christopher Pinney sees into this relationship; he pries its functions and effects apart, revealing the substrata of imbrication without destroying the pattern or his reader’s trust through hyperactive hindsight. He achieves this, in part, through selective attention: "There are many anthropologies," he writes. The version that has stared critically at its own reflection in the mirror and thought hard about the power structures both imbedded in and constructed by visual representation is the anthropology that interests Pinney. He turns it on itself – in the spirit of Foucault’s ‘counterscience’ – to ask "what an anthropological destabilization of the relationship between anthropology and photography might look like." History, historiography, and theory intermingle in this text. In schoolyard parlance, one might say that Pinney picks on people his own size. Such rules of engagement don’t always make for transparent style, but the structure is compensatory. Pinney conducts his investigation of photography and anthropology from three complementary points of view. He ESTablishes a history of shared mentalities, then teases out the pluses and minuses of photographic representation from the anthropological perspective, finally reversing that attack, in part through recourse to postcolonial critical practice. A prologue and an epilogue bracket these studies, and the book is generously illustrated at a level that we have grown to expect from Pinney who has what used to be called ‘a very good eye’. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Burden of Affect’
by: Mark Durden
Posted: Wed, 15 Jul 2020 07:44:33 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Multi-Genre
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

This is a strange book on photography. It is written ‘against’ Roland Barthes’s thirty-year-old 'Camera Lucida', (the English translation was published in 1981) in order to find what Elkins refers to as ‘another sense of Photography’. It mimics the book’s format in consisting of brief numbered sections, beginning with a close ventriloquism of the opening of 'Camera Lucida': rephrasing Barthes’s ‘“ontological” desire’ of wanting to ‘learn at all costs what Photography was “in itself”’ in response not to a photo portrait of Napoleon’s younger brother, but ‘a photograph of a selenite window,’ from a New Mexican pueblo house. This picture, together with a photograph showing the cracked layered surface of black lake ice and a photograph of a piece of rock salt, in which had been preserved two hundred and fifty million-year-old bacteria, all provide emblems for his book as ‘failed photographic windows’ and ‘failed looks into or through something’. They offer less optimistic metaphors for photography than the more dominant brilliant metaphors to do with ‘perfect windows, lucency, transparency’. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘As at the Filipovs’
by: Steve Edwards
Posted: Tue, 14 Jul 2020 11:37:30 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

In 2010 the seminar ‘The Worker Photography Movement: Towards a Political History of the Origins of Photographic Modernity’ was held at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. The extraordinary follow-up exhibition 'A Hard and Merciless Light: The Worker Photography Movement, 1926-1939' ran at the same location between April and August 2011. Bringing together hundreds of images, publications and films from across Europe as well as the USA, the curator Jorge Ribalta and his team cast a new light on politics and modernity between the mid 1920s and the fall of the Spanish Republic. As the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s continues to engulf Europe it is an apposite moment to revisit reactions to that earlier watershed in the history of capitalism. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘What Am I Looking At?’
by: Andrea Noble
Posted: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 11:15:34 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Scientific
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Beyond working in the same medium, albeit at different times and places, what is the connective thread that binds the Japanese photographic artist Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948) and the British pioneer of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877)? The answer lies in the two collections of images, 'Lightning Fields' and 'Photogenic Drawings', on display for the first time in Europe at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art. Any dialogue with the inventor of the positive-negative system, that early nineteenth-century precursor of photographic processes and images as we knew them until the advent of digital photography, is inevitably an engagement with the status of photographic representation itself. In this way, the images presented in Edinburgh form part of Sugimoto’s longer trajectory which, in part, has been characterised by a meditation on the medium. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

Portfolio
by: Jane and Louise Wilson
Posted: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 06:46:33 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

A Portfolio of photographic work by Jane and Louise Wilson. Published in Issue 68 of Source, Autumn 2011. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Jane and Louise Wilson’
by: Isabel Stevens
Posted: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 06:14:42 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Isabel Stevens: When did you first begin working seriously with photography? / Louise: We were about nineteen when we got a Mamiya C330 twin lens reflex during our undergrad. But we studied in the days when people got upset when you described your photographs as fine art. Jane: Louise was at art school in Dundee and I was in Newcastle and we used to meet up and photograph ourselves in these 'mis-en-scene', tableaux sort of situations. / Louise: Our degree show installation was called 'Garage'. One of the photographic panels shows Jane and I enacting a joint suicide ritual and the other panel shows the detritus after we left. It shows during and after the event. / Jane: ...or it could be before, you don’t know really – we often work with a looped narrative. We used to process our black and white photographs in garden troughs and on resin-coated paper. It was also a time when we developed our working relationship. The photographs we made were about 5x6 feet. Scale has always been a big issue in our work. And we’ve always been in interested in a kind of portraiture too. The site as well was very important even back then – the fact that it was a garage and that we’d transformed it. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘How To Design A Photography Gallery’
by: Daniel Jewsbury
Posted: Fri, 03 Jul 2020 07:57:26 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Gallery-Based
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Once upon a time the design of photography galleries was (one imagines) a fairly straightforward affair. The photographs exhibited would be smallish, framed with a mount, and black and white. The requirements to show them properly were some white wall space and some lighting. Depending on the size and nature of the institution, there might also be provision for some darkroom or studio space in the same building. Then, perhaps at around the same time photography began seriously to be considered as ‘fine art’, the use of colour became more widespread, and the prints became larger, and the frames or mounts changed. Galleries needed bigger rooms, and walls needed to be washed with even light rather than selectively illuminated with individual spots. At a certain point, presumably because photography became so accepted as a part of the mainstream of fine art, some galleries of photography felt the need to show photography in the context of other artforms; video and other lens-based media needed darkened spaces, and perhaps seating; eventually photography was just one medium in a whole range of image-based or even sculptural forms that required new provision in terms of storage and loading, and installation. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 BA Selections’
by: Nicola Shipley
Posted: Wed, 01 Jul 2020 05:24:35 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

Looking at projects by emerging photographers, particularly this year during the Covid 19 crisis and lockdown, has been invigorating and rewarding. Discovering bodies of work that challenge thinking, explore complex subjects, provide new narratives and a fresh approach to a subject matter is the most enjoyable part of selecting work. Many of the submissions this year were bold, providing fresh perspectives on our world and personal stories of identity, belonging and heritage. The six projects I selected were consistent and outstanding bodies of work that were conceptually strong, focused, well executed and that conveyed themes that were universal concerns and personal stories that could be connected with on an emotional level. I was very impressed by the ambition and standard of the work. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 BA Selections’
by: Rebecca McClelland
Posted: Wed, 01 Jul 2020 05:20:11 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

I came to this judging process with a refreshed and open mind not having juried a student competition as comprehensive as this one for some time. I was intrigued to discover what new printing practices students were pursuing. I was looking for work that was brave, experimental or that shared strong well-defined narratives. This jury has been a privilege. To be able to spend my time working through the many diverse portfolios and narratives entered this year. The work is consistently well executed with high production values. I was compelled to investigate further photographers’ websites, previous bodies of work and backstories. The series that I have chosen demonstrate this kind of important contextual photography that has the prowess to exist beyond campus. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 BA Selections’
by: Brenda Fitzsimons
Posted: Wed, 01 Jul 2020 05:16:05 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Graduate

Looking at these submissions mid Covid 19 lockdown there was a welcome sense of different worlds appearing before me – an energising feeling. The work that I found myself most drawn to had a strong, usually instant, emotional appeal, which on closer inspection revealed a solid skill base and technical know how. The six I chose were images I would be happy to spend time with – creative pictures that I know would continue to engage and stimulate. Submissions of this nature require the photographer to be their own curator – a challenge for all photographers no matter how experienced – and I was pleased to see that most submissions reflected a coherent vision from this year’s BA photography graduates, a narrative fully engaged in its creative response to the category brief. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Object Questions’
by: David Brett
Posted: Mon, 29 Jun 2020 13:23:05 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

This is not a photographic dossier, though all the objects include photographic images in some form, as well as being photographs. It is not an exhibition of photographs of sculpture, though these objects all demonstrate a sculptural approach to space and materials. Nor is it an exhibition of craft, though it craftily displays a keen interest in materials and a very skilful lack of skill in their handling. What the collection most looks like is a group of sketches made by a set designer for theatre or film. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Fragments’
by: Vanya Lambrecht Ward
Posted: Mon, 29 Jun 2020 10:22:37 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

A Portfolio of photographic work by Vanya Lambrecht Ward. Published in Issue 68 of Source, Autumn 2011. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Thomas Joshua Cooper’
by: David Bellingham
Posted: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 06:25:11 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

In a recent review (of your Exhibition 'Where The Rivers Flow' at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh) in the Independent Tom Lubbock suggests that the actual sense of place, in your images of oceans and rivers, is weak. 'You rarely feel that here is offered an impressive sight you might see yourself'. He goes on to say - 'His sea is treated abstractly, visionarily, but in a way very objectively, It's the same thing, with the sea, abstract and concrete, subjective and objective are one.' In earlier work, the various pieces that constituted the 'Dreaming The Godstadt' project for example there is a different relationship to site, many of the pictures are of places which are dramatic in themselves, could you say something about this change of approach? . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The World's Edge’
by: Thomas Joshua Cooper
Posted: Wed, 24 Jun 2020 06:07:08 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

A Portfolio of photographic work by Thomas Joshua Cooper. Published in Issue 14 of Source, Spring 1998. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 101 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 22 Jun 2020 11:05:56 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 101 - Summer 2020

Culture is a mixture of inheritances. These can be starkly contrasting, defined by historical events or geographical separation but can nevertheless all be contained in one person’s experience. The work in this issue is characterised by the spans of time and space that it encompasses. The historian Tina Campt, in an interview about her work, talks about how she came to photography as part of her research into the lives of black Germans under the Nazi regime. She discovered that photographs gave her a way of understanding a history that hadn't been written about, and that they spoke eloquently about lives that didn’t fit in the grand narrative of the period. She has continued to write about photography and says we need to 'listen' to images. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Brooks’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 18:17:35 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

The image in this ad appears to be a photograph. It shows a crisp and dynamic scene on an autumn day: hounds are running through a wood, towards the camera, while a young couple hide behind a tree, to the left of frame, sheltering a fox. The couple’s bicycles are foregrounded, seeming to lean against the tree trunk, with the fox’s tail curling over the crossbars: the fox itself looks outwards to the front of the picture. Copper beech leaves carpet the ground and are captured in minute detail, with all the sharpness that photography can produce; while each hound appears caught in action, either running forwards, or sniffing the air or the ground. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Law: Orphans Back in the Frame’
by: Ronan Deazley
Posted: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 09:25:42 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Law
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

The government’s recent response to the 'Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property' has attracted praise and criticism in equal measure. One contentious if familiar issue is that of orphan works (for previous commentary, see Source 50). A copyright-protected work is a so-called orphan work if the copyright owner cannot be identified or located by someone seeking permission to perform one of the exclusive rights set out under the copyright regime (copying, distributing, communicating the work to the public, and so on). From the government’s perspective "it benefits no one to have a wealth of copyright works entirely unusable under any circumstances because the owner of one or more rights in the work cannot be contacted". The government continue: "This is not simply a cultural issue; it is a very real economic issue that potentially valuable intangible assets are simply going to waste". It is the fact that the government proposes to enable the commercial re-use of orphan works that has drawn criticism from the photographic community, and in particular from the Association of Photographers, and the Stop43 campaign group (stop43.org.uk). . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Police Force’
by: Paul Seawright
Posted: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 10:12:23 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

A Portfolio of photographic work by Paul Seawright. Published in Issue 13 of Source, Autumn Winter 1997. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Laces and Eyelets’
by: Ciaran Carson
Posted: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 07:04:15 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

Thirty-nine bullet-holes have not quite obliterated the face of the cut-out, target-practice terrorist. It's the only face you'll see. To the right, an iron door with a wire-grilled window rivetted into it. To the left, a pair of circular brass-framed analogue pressure-guages, bathometers or altimeters, turn out to be thermometers. The scale reads from -20' or -30' to 120' or 50', depending on F or C. Wires lead in and out of them. At the moment of the photograph, the needles show 66' F. These instruments of measurement are Made in England. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Mary McIntyre’
by: Richard West
Posted: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 06:17:32 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

Supposition: 'Once the smallest detail has been understood then everything is understood'. The title of a pair of photographs in an exhibition of the work of Mary McIntyre. So we look carefully at the pictures in search of a small detail in the hope that everything will fall into place only to discover that the details make the images more intriguing. Looking at a picture of back gardens we notice how neatly everything is divided up by box hedges and the peculiarities of each rectangle of garden. Why is there, for example, a lone football in one garden and a goal in the other as if they have been forcibly separated and isolated from one another? Then we notice in the corner of the picture a football stadium where perhaps they are awaiting the return of their equipment. Meanwhile directly beneath us a man tends his plants with his back to us, keeping his vegetation in mysteriously strict order and the right hand side of the picture contains a greenhouse that we will see later in the exhibition from the inside. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 Selectors: Elizabeth Renstrom’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Fri, 08 May 2020 07:34:00 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Elizabeth Renstrom, Senior Photo Editor at The New Yorker and Selector for the MA/MFA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2020. / Tell us about your job? What did your core role at Vice - and now at The New Yorker involve? / Previously as sole Senior Photo Editor at Vice I oversaw all photo commissions and research behind the quarterly magazine as well as vice.com sections. This includes coming up with ideas for photo essays in relation to the themes of the magazine, but also commissioning portraits for profiles, conceptual still life, feature photography and cover art. In terms of vice.com I was responsible for web photo essays, interviews, and assigning photography for larger features on the site across all beats. I also contributed my own editorial photography while at Vice when I felt like my style was appropriate and in line with the story. At The New Yorker I’m in a similar role as before, but I’m now working within a department of photo editors vs. being the sole editor. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 Selectors: Kirstin Kidd’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Fri, 08 May 2020 07:31:00 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Kirstin Kidd, Picture Editor at The Economist and Selector for the MA/MFA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2020. / Tell us about your job? What does your core role at The Economist involve? / I’m a picture editor, I’m responsible for selecting photographs for stories in print, and various online platforms. I source pictures from a variety of places, including but not limited to, photo libraries and archives. The aim is to have a selection of photographs, that are factually relevant, can work in various spaces and cover various aspects of a story. I work in the art team, alongside the designers. We work with the section editors to get a good mix of words, photos, illustrations, and charts on page. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 Selectors: Sarah Allen’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Fri, 08 May 2020 07:26:00 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Sarah Allen, Assistant Curator for International Art at Tate and Selector for the MA/MFA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2020. / Tell us about your job? Tell us about your job? What does your core role at Tate involve? / At Tate Modern I work on exhibitions, displays and acquisitions. At the moment I am co-curating the upcoming Zanele Muholi exhibition which installs in April. Last week we installed a mixed display of work by artists including Susan Meiselas and Paz Errázuriz. I curated a room of David Goldblatt's work in the summer and in a few week​s ​I will install Irving Penn's Underfoot series. One of the real joys is looking after the Martin Parr Photobook collection​. F​or this I collaborate and co-curate exhibitions with the Luma foundation which are staged in Arles. As part of the photobook focus of my job I also oversee the Offprint photobook fair. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 Selectors: Nicola Shipley’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Fri, 08 May 2020 07:01:00 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Nicola Shipley, Director at GRAIN Projects, Birmingham and Selector for the BA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2020. / Tell us about your job? What does your core role at GRAIN Projects involve? / My role encompasses a whole range of disciplines which include commissioning new work, curating exhibitions, devising and leading professional development opportunities from masterclasses to mentoring, producing symposia and other events and in support of the above the increasingly important fundraising, stakeholder management, budget management and report writing and evaluation. Obviously, the ability to commission and work with photographers and to support and spot new talent is by far the most enjoyable aspect of the role but it has to be seen as part of the bigger picture. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 Selectors: Rebecca McClelland’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Fri, 08 May 2020 06:52:00 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Rebecca McClelland, Creative Director & Curator at The Ian Parry Scholarship and Selector for the BA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2020. / Tell us about your job? What does your core role at the Ian Parry Scholarship involve? / For the last twenty years I have been part of the small team that originated at The Sunday Times Magazine behind the creation and development of the Ian Parry Scholarship, an international award for Visual Journalism. This year we are immensely proud to celebrate our 30th year anniversary. The award was set up in memory of Ian Parry, an extremely talented young photographer who died on an assignment for the paper at the age of 24 years old. The scholarship is a free competition for any full time photography student from the UK and around the world to enter a series of 12 images and a proposal of a feature they would shoot for the The Sunday Times Magazine should they win. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Graduate Photography Online 2020 Selectors: Brenda Fitzsimons’
by: Stephen Hull
Posted: Fri, 08 May 2020 06:41:00 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Graduate

We chat to Brenda Fitzsimons, Picture Editor at The Irish Times and Selector for the BA phase of Graduate Photography Online 2020. / Tell us about your job? What does your core role at The Irish Times involve? / As Picture Editor at The Irish Times, my job – and no two days are the same – involves determining the picture needs of the newspaper, across print and all digital platforms, and making sure it happens. I allocate assignments to staff and freelance photographers, in Ireland and abroad, giving clear briefs and usually very tight deadlines. I select and edit the photos that appear online and in print – that's a big part of my day – as well as liaising throughout the day with editors and the video team. I negotiate fees, rights agreements and any other legal permissions needed. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Law: Privately Alone on a Bicycle’
by: Ronan Deazley
Posted: Thu, 07 May 2020 10:44:31 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Law
First Published: Issue 51 - Summer 2007

Landmark moments in legal jurisprudence often come from the most unlikely sources. Recently, in Ash v. McKennitt (Dec. 2006) the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court decision of Mr Justice Eady to prevent the publication of a book on the Canadian folk singer, Loreena McKennitt, by her former friend and confidant, Neima Ash. The Court of Appeal’s decision to do so has been described as ‘a turning point in the development of English privacy law’ (The Guardian, 16 December 2006), the death-knell for the kiss-and-tell stories that fuel the sale of the tabloid press. That in itself may prove to be of little interest to the casual Source reader, however the substance of the decision, and in particular the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR) which it explicitly endorses, has considerable implications for all forms of photography in the public sphere. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Oral History Archive: Trish Morrissey’
by: Richard West
Posted: Thu, 07 May 2020 09:51:33 EST
Content: Audio Interview / Genre: Conceptual
Recorded: Jun 2012

Prior to developing her own artistic practice Trish Morrissey worked in the fields of journalism and commercial photography. Her work often takes the form of conceptually charged portraiture. Recurrent themes include questions of gender and identity and in particular the nexus of value and taboo mediated via familial relationships. Her work has been shown across the UK and Ireland and as far afield as New York and Melbourne. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Interview’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Sun, 03 May 2020 12:26:39 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Forensic
First Posted: Thu, 14 Oct 2010

Above is an interview with the lead forensic archaeologist carried on a recent edition of the BBC Radio 4 science programme 'Material World'. It gives some insight particularly into the technologies and difficulties involved in this long process. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Hope and Closure’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Fri, 01 May 2020 09:51:17 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Death
First Posted: Mon, 11 Oct 2010

It has been a while. All I can offer up is that I have been away on two trips and that I am back from one. There have been a number of developments in relation to the ongoing searches, which I will expand on soon. One small note of hope and closure, Charlie Armstrong was formally identified in the middle of September and was finally laid to rest on the 18th September. His daughter Anna told the congregation gathered at the Church of St Patrick in Crossmaglen of the great sense of liberation for his widow and the family that her father could now have a Christian burial. She also thanked the anonymous person who supplied the map that finally helped uncover her father’s body at Aughrim More at the end of July. With emotion she read the lines: “Death is a heartache no one can heal, but love is a memory no one can steal.” . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Two Contrasting Events’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Fri, 01 May 2020 09:39:01 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Landscape
First Posted: Tue, 07 Sep 2010

A few weeks ago I returned to the landscape of the recent discovery at Aughrim More. At the entrance to the site it seemed that a large rock had been placed as a dormant but potential memorial stone that quite publicly faced the slim road that separated Aughrim More from Colgagh (location of the discovery of Brian McKinney and John McClory in 1999). A short time had elapsed since its secret had been revealed and as I walked down the rough stony track the bog already appeared to have been leveled and so now this location as opposed to site had been returned to the forthcoming passage of time and nature. The earth removers were gone and as I rounded the small hill at the bottom of the track it was quite moving to see that an active memorial stone already occupied the far end of the returned bog. As confirmation is awaited – real science unfortunately does not have the pace of CSI – it appeared that relatives had allowed themselves at least a private acknowledgement of their grief. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Edit Update II’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Fri, 01 May 2020 06:12:01 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Publishing
First Posted: Mon, 06 Sep 2010

‘Nature is never finished’ (Robert Smithson). The first draft arrived promptly early last week and I have been musing without much amusement since. Its always interesting that even though one might work with paper proofs at the correct final size a strange translation occurs when paper gets bound and ideas become a physical reality in book form. Inevitably one questions what language was being spoken before the binding but lets start with a positive. The colour and reproduction is reasonably good and I would advise anyone hoping to use the Blurb method to read the colour management section on their site before embarking. One small gripe is that above 60 leaves one cannot use the premium paper so the stock is light and easily creased but I was aware of this. Presumably this is due to binding issues. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: An Attempt at Reading a Landscape’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Thu, 30 Apr 2020 16:14:38 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Landscape
First Posted: Fri, 11 Dec 2009

Back in mid October ('A Slight Change of Plan' – 17/10/09 posting) I discovered through a press statement that fresh digs for Charlie Armstrong and Gerard Evans were being carried out at two new locations and began to look at these landscapes while also tracking the search at Wilkinstown. These men, who had been considered disappeared were not on the original list released in 1999. It is thought that the South Armagh IRA was responsible but they have refused to come forward with either information or formal admission of involvement. There had been a search for Charlie Armstrong in 2003 about a mile from Colgagh, (an official site during the searches in 1999/2000), which lasted about two weeks but proved fruitless. The only information I had to go on was that these two new locations were at Colgagh and Carrickrobin and while both are within miles of each other they are in separate counties. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Pantene’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Wed, 29 Apr 2020 08:19:06 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 73 - Winter 2012

The London Olympics had a quality that was widely felt as a breath of fresh air, even by those who had been initially sceptical: uniquely in contemporary culture, this was a hugely mediacovered event that centred on people who were not celebrities, but athletes, both known and unknown, followed for their prowess in actual physical actions. Some were better known than others, but all gave off the refreshing sense of being ‘real’, unglossed by PR. Not only did these real people dominate our screens for many weeks, and become the focus of widely felt admiration, we also experienced their journey to significance in real time. The athletes we followed during the Olympics occupied a unique position in a culture where being a celebrity means entering the image currency: they were seen in the very process of becoming known, we witnessed the very acts that gave them their meaning, before that meaning had yet congealed. Watching Mo Farah desperately surging forward to win the 10,000 metres made the spontaneous passion of his gestures afterwards not empty posturing, but a full human response. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 46 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 24 Apr 2020 04:34:14 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 46 - Spring 2006

Photography is not always thought of as an amusing business. For those wishing to have fun with photography Richard West and David Evans discuss photography board games and toy cameras: both ways in which you can play at being a photographer without actually having to take any pictures. Once you are enjoying yourself you may wish to question if photography is the best way to represent pleasure. Wiebke Leister looks at photographs of people laughing and notes that it is not always easy to tell if their expression represents pleasure or pain. This has a lesson for portraiture and photography in general that does not wish to be understood indexically. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 45 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 24 Apr 2020 04:26:45 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 45 - Winter 2005

Public funding has played an important role in photography over the last 30 years. Alexandra Moschovi here examines the history of funding for photography in Britain through the Arts Council. The aspirations of government funding do not always match the aspirations of photography organisations, one illuminating hard case of this mismatch was that of the funding of Ten.8 magazine, Moschovi looks back at the demise of the magazine to find out about the ambitions and expectations of the funders and publishers. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 44 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Thu, 23 Apr 2020 17:39:04 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 44 - Autumn 2005

When the bombs in the London underground were first reported they were soon accompanied by photographs taken on the scene by cameraphones. This seemed to suggest a new form of photojournalism, created for the first time, by people caught up in events. John Taylor looks at the role of technology in making pictures and asks what it is that makes us understand a news picture as showing reality. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 43 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Thu, 23 Apr 2020 17:06:55 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 43 - Summer 2005

Historically the least well known form of photography has been that produced by amateurs. While this must form the greatest quantity of pictures, of the most diverse subject matter, it is all but invisible. Timothy Prus at the Archive of Modern Conflict has set about collecting this material and here explains how decisions are made about what is saved from the photographic slag heap.  . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 75 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Wed, 22 Apr 2020 06:09:12 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 75 - Summer 2013

Photographs show the world as it is, and literature is ‘made up’. This common sense analysis suggests that the art forms are quite different in kind and function. This issue demonstrates that, on the contrary, there is a long history of interaction between literature and photography. Colin Graham finds that their simplistic opposition conceals the truth that the ‘literary’ and the ‘photographic’ are in fact aspects of both media.  . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 73 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 05:01:24 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 73 - Winter 2012

For some time we have been reporting the effects of the recession and funding cuts on photography organisations. Added to the merging of photography remits with those of art galleries and the movement of various photography functions to the web, it wouldn’t be surprising if photography-specific organisations ceased to exist altogether. And yet... precisely the opposite has taken place. In the last five years new publications, galleries and festivals, all dedicated to photography, have sprung up. And that’s not all, there are new bookshops for photobooks, new photo collectives, new community photography initiatives. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Debatable Spaces’
by: Declan Long
Posted: Thu, 16 Apr 2020 11:17:52 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

‘Have you seen milk morning sun brushing the tops of willow herb, nettle, thistle, in the unkempt field behind the car-crushers?’ So, somewhat curiously, ask Paul Farley and Michael Symons Roberts in their book Edgelands, a loving, inquisitive guide and extended ode to the marginal, minor landscapes of modern England. Together, these writers wander across what we might perceive to be neglected and dejected terrains, seeking out moments of odd grace and glanced beauty in settings that might customarily be considered ugly, uninspiring or of little value. Usually, these are the indeterminate territories where rural and urban converge in peculiar and sometimes fraught forms. Spaces such as those at the barely visible borders of towns or cities, where fraying suburb begins to become entangled with the complicated patterning of the contemporary countryside. But, just as likely, the unloved places traversed by Farley and Symons Roberts – places where, as Derek Mahon once said, ‘even now… a thought might grow’ – can bring to mind for us the undefined and undistinguished inner zones of the urban landscape: incidental, unremarkable and entirely familiar ‘interface’ areas between nature and culture in the city, spaces of edgy stillness within the frantic centres of modern life. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Silent, Empty, Waiting for the Day’
by: Mary McIntyre
Posted: Thu, 16 Apr 2020 10:40:46 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

A Portfolio of photographic work by Mary McIntyre. Published in Issue 68 of Source, Autumn 2011. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Oral History Archive: Mary McIntyre’
by: Richard West
Posted: Thu, 16 Apr 2020 09:41:05 EST
Content: Audio Interview / Genre: Landscape
Recorded: Feb 2014

Mary McIntyre was born in Northern Ireland where she currently lives. She is a Reader in Fine Art at the University of Ulster in Belfast. McIntyre initially came to photography via the necessity of having to document her own installation work. Inevitably though she came to realise photography not as an adjunct process but as the primary basis of her practice. Her photographic work comprises interiors and landscapes depicting corners of existence that are commonly overlooked or simply out of sight. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Oral History Archive: Bill Kirk’
by: Richard West
Posted: Thu, 16 Apr 2020 09:37:15 EST
Content: Audio Interview / Genre: Documentary
Recorded: Mar 2006

Bill Kirk began work as an illustrator and draughtsman in the aircraft industry in Belfast, but his fascination with photography led him to study it full-time at the College of Art in Belfast. His work, primarily in the field of documentary photography, is characterised by frank social comment and has featured in numerous exhibitions and one-man shows. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Oral History Archive: David Goldblatt’
by: Mark Durden
Posted: Thu, 16 Apr 2020 09:21:04 EST
Content: Audio Interview / Genre: Documentary
Recorded: Jan 2003

David Goldblatt documented the changing political landscape of South Africa for more than five decades. His work is renowned for documenting both the public and the more intimate lived experience of apartheid. His retrospective exhibition, David Goldblatt 51 Years, was seen in New York, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Lisbon, Oxford, Brussels, Munich and Johannesburg. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Bluff your Way in Photography’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Wed, 15 Apr 2020 05:55:39 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Education

Aside from the generic tableaux of camera, case, guide and print on the cover, Bluff your Way in Photography does not contain any photographs. This fits perfectly with its subject matter. The true bluffer, in John Courtis’s ESTimation, ideally never takes a picture. He notes: ‘You don’t have to be a photographer at all to achieve moral ascendancy’. The object is to ‘sneer knowledgeably from the side lines’. The ideal situation for the complete bluffer would be to not even have a camera, although s/he must be seen to have one as a baseline. Those with complete brass nerve are advised to buy an old camera case and stuff it with newspaper. As bluffers will not be able, or indeed want, the finest of photographic technology, the next best recommendation is to have a camera so bad that you stand out from the crowd. A non-operational one, out of use due to the dedicated pursuit of an obscure specialist part, carries particular kudos. If caught without a camera, the faux-photographer must claim to be ‘between systems’. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Colgagh - 29/07/2011’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 10:50:47 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Landscape
First Posted: Fri, 30 Jul 2010

Charlie Armstrong disappeared on his way to mass on the 16th August 1981 - he was 55 years old. Along with Gerard Evans he was not on the official list of the acknowledged ‘disappeared’ released by the IRA in 1999 as part of the ongoing Peace Process. As mentioned in the Attempt at Reading a Landscape posting last December a short search was carried out for him in 2002 at a location approximately one mile from the current site, which was, up until today, being physically searched for the last six weeks. Up until today. As it appears that finally and hopefully he is being returned to his family. A long and painful wait, over. Full and formal confirmation will take a number of weeks and it would be a cruelty beyond belief if the recovered remains were not his.In relative terms it has been a short physical search over difficult ground and I had decided to keep this one quiet. I’m not sure why, a feeling that maybe this one should be a mirror of these silent searches. Photographed but not written about until later which I sensed would not be too long. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Activation Energy’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Sun, 12 Apr 2020 09:06:37 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Publishing
First Posted: Sat, 24 Jul 2010

Only recently it dawned on me that in mirroring the activity of the search team at Wilkinstown I have been photographing this location almost every weekend since last September and I realized, as I stacked the work print boxes on top of each other in preparation for an edit, that quite possibly I was pontentially suffering from 'Pittsburgh Syndrome'. While on one level it would be an honour in a certain way to make photographs that shared the psychology that Cartier Bresson beautifully ascribed to Eugene Smith’s photographs as being ‘captured between the shirt and the skin’, it was the volume and the inherent difficulty of distillation that perturbed me. How can one make sense of a mound of, perhaps too many, can there be too many photographs? And so over the last few weeks of decompression from teaching and spending much time walking "Past the...." and floating around in the goodwill and overall success of Ireland’s first ever Photo Festival, and visiting some of the other locations being searched while also finally revisiting some others that have resolved their story and unfortunately attending another set of too close funerals, the back of the head thinking was in progress as I felt it was time to examine the work and see what was there. The basic initial problem was, as with most things, that of structure and structure in relation to ‘the book’, which is always my starting point. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Versions & Diversions’
by: Matt Packer
Posted: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 08:13:43 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Found
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Found photography is now a familiar term that regularly occupies the pages of this magazine and others, while also making frequent appearances in artist statements, gallery texts, and serving as the central subject to many academic essays and publications. In recent years, the turn to found photography has typically emphasised the vernacular and sociographic use-values of photography. Through found photography, the junk store album or the disregarded print, a portal opens into a world of social and cultural transactions once ESTablished, but that are now sometimes-bizarrely astray. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Wilkinstown - a Confused Season’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 07:18:26 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Landscape
First Posted: Fri, 16 Jul 2010

At Wilkinstown they have spent the last few weeks flattening the mounds of inverted time, dispersing the memory and all that remains is two small islands of untouched trees sitting slightly off-centre in what now is almost a returned, flattened and scoured square. These are now being used as a source for a renewed Wood in this empty space and presumably the earth beneath these will be sifted for completion. The untouched woodland lying further north that the cadaver dogs recently visited awaits it's fate of "I can’t go on, I’ll go on". In the meantime, a slightly strange event occurs in the lower field for the trees replanted in May. Somewhat like the resumed searches, nature has gone backwards to move forwards. It is autumn in the middle of summer. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Carrickrobin – Polyedged Narratives’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Thu, 09 Apr 2020 19:03:22 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Landscape
First Posted: Tue, 06 Jul 2010

“There are three sides to every story” began the local man on one of my recent visits to Carrickrobin. Perhaps you could add another two to act as a channel to allow the truth to come out as well, which is where this search is at now. An initial small area, approximately 40m x 25m, has been painstakenly searched since last October and so far a resolution is still hiding and eluding the time team. Nature has already begun to reclaim some of the re-settled bog and green shoots breakthrough here and there. The search has now started to extend further down the lane already consuming a section of the hopeful moat excavated to drain this wetland bog the previous February, what was margin has become mud. And on it will go. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Some Notes On Street Photography Continued: A Good Walk Spoiled’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Wed, 08 Apr 2020 15:05:01 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Street
First Posted: Fri, 02 Jul 2010

I have a firm dislike of labels or more accurately boxes into which people can pour all sorts of prejudices and assumptions. However I do believe that the world, like ancient Gaul, is divided into three parts. You are either a Beckett (wo)man, a Joyce (wo)man and, if you are really lucky, your own (wo)man. My literary loyalties rest firmly with Sam and on good days I also manage to be my own (wo)man. And so deliberately eschewing the ever more popular and ever more ‘scrotumtightening’ 16-06-10, I decided to make a walk on the 21-06-10 (whose numbers, for your information, individually add up to ten) and a day of what appears to be infinite daylight. Now, in the current climate, an exclamation mark rather than a question mark might be a more appropriate journey but I decided to walk in a semi-circle or hemisphere (to allow for variations) as it seemed a good idea at the time. There are of course a host of highly conceptual reasons for this decision but I won't trouble you with them now. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Ballynultagh Revisited 2010 - Six Inches, Six Feet, Sixty Feet’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Wed, 08 Apr 2020 08:46:32 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Landscape
First Posted: Wed, 23 Jun 2010

"Grand view" the young boy breathlessly speaks as he cycles by me trying to make his way up the steep road on the edge of which I have perched my tripod and camera. It’s a fitness cycle as he is dressed in a t-shirt and football shorts – a local boy I assume – he was probably four or five years old when I first stood at this roadside overlooking Ballynultagh in 1999 which had been revealed as the location of the remains of Danny McIlhone who having left Belfast, was abducted from Dublin where he had gone to live, on the 14th May 1981.While agreeing with him with a "t’is indeed" I encourage him onwards and upwards with a "keep it going". Returning to my view I wonder does he know about this view and the story it contains. As is often here, the clouds here are performing a strange ballet, occasionally and tantalizingly allowing the sun to move torch-like across the valley but never quite where I want it – I have observed this many times here and had at times naively hoped that one day it might provide a divine-like answer. Speaking in 2008 to the forensic archaeologists who were then carrying out the resumed search here it was touching that they too shared a similar experience and desire. This location is perhaps the most ‘scenic’ of all the locations. It is set in a valley through which the river Liffey flows in the early stages of it’s journey towards Dublin and it is a place of constant light changing elusive moments. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Porsche Panamera’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Wed, 08 Apr 2020 06:09:17 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 87 - Autumn 2016

In a weekend colour supplement, a double-page spread opens onto yet another familiar-looking car ad. The gleaming Porsche, light reflecting off its curves, is seen against an urban backdrop that says both ‘smart’ and ‘bohemian’. The car is sleek, photographed from an angle that makes it look long and low, and has the exotic touch of a foreign number plate. It is shown parked on a single space in a narrow street which looks like somewhere in Bloomsbury – the row includes an old commercial building with modern plate glass doors, small-scale industrial premises and a period shop/café frontage. The effect is at once specific, and generic: this is a cool, fast car in a city setting that suggests fashionable intellectual life. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘A Disguised Background’
by: David Evans
Posted: Fri, 03 Apr 2020 11:04:25 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Eyewitness ties in with Hungary’s Presidency of the European Union. It is an exhibition of work by fifty Hungarian photographers, mainly produced between 1914 and 1989, though the emphasis is on five who emigrated in the 1920s and ESTablished international reputations elsewhere. Some might see this foregrounding of a famous five as a cynical marketing ploy by the Royal Academy. Others might want to stress the political cynicism of a newly elected Hungarian government, accused of xenophobic excess, but here seeming to embrace celebrated émigrés of Jewish origin. Both perspectives are worth bearing in mind. Yet they should not obscure the fact that Eyewitness is also a rich exhibition, cocurated with sensitivity by Péter Baki, director of the Hungarian Museum of Photography, and Colin Ford, whose keen interest in Hungarian photography led to important exhibitions at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford, in the 1980s. Both contribute to the catalogue that also includes an essay by George Szirtes, the Hungarian-born poet and translator who has lived in England since arriving as a young refugee in 1956. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Fabulous Identities’
by: Catherine Grant
Posted: Fri, 03 Apr 2020 06:07:29 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Gender
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Approaching the exhibition space from the outside, three larger-than-life prints are overlaid with a quotation: ‘On three counts I am an outsider: in matters of sexuality; in terms of geographical and cultural dislocation and in the sense of not having become the sort of respectably married professional my parents might have hoped for.’ The voice of the Nigerian-born, London-based photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode is explicitly foregrounded in this retrospective of his brief six-year career, with this particular statement having taken on a talismanic status, being almost always mentioned in writings on his photography. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: A Day of Reverberations, a Day of Aftershock’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Thu, 02 Apr 2020 11:52:28 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Political
First Posted: Tue, 15 Jun 2010

It's difficult to do a minute's silence on a blog, but on a day when the ESTablishment rolls back on itself after a protracted period maybe a few words will do. There are eerie echoes in the two inventories of names below. The first list of fourteen people is of those killed on the 30th January 1972 now known as Bloody Sunday: John Duddy, Patrick Doherty, Bernard McGuigan, Hugh Gilmour, Kevin McElhinney, Michael Kelly, John Young, William Nash, Michael McDaid, James Wray, Gerald Donaghy, Gerald McKinney, William McKinney, John Johnston. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Reverence and Anxiety’
by: Eugenie Shinkle
Posted: Thu, 02 Apr 2020 06:55:20 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Multi-Genre
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

The category of the sublime is organised around a central paradox. Sublime emotion arises only when the imagination is unable to fully grasp the size or extent of an object or concept. Classical formations of the sublime, such as Immanuel Kant’s, sought to resolve this paradox by playing the trump card of human reason: the very ability to conceptualise the ‘absolutely large’ in nature was, it was claimed, proof of the superiority of reason. Postmodern formations of the sublime are organized around a new set of limits. Now, as technology takes nature’s place as the foundation of sublime experience, humanity’s own handiwork has the capacity to exceed the power of the imagination. Born of human ingenuity but no longer fully under our control, technology is both an affirmation of reason and a dehumanizing force. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Ffotogallery Book Arts Fayre’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Thu, 02 Apr 2020 06:08:36 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Event
First Posted: Sun, 04 March 2012

Last weekend I was at Turner House as part of Ffotogallery's Book Arts Fayre. On this occasion Source was one of the more mainstream publishers, with the majority of the other stall holders being made up of individual photographers or collectives selling their own publications. Next to the Source stand were a group of final year students from the Documentary Photography course in Newport. On sale at this stand were a boxed set of prints and a variety of Artists' books produced by the students themselves. Amongst these works was a book by Jack Latham, one of a growing number of students making work in response to archives. In this case Jack has used imagery from online resources such as Craigs List as a starting point for restaging new images. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: The Art of Home Cooking’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Wed, 01 Apr 2020 11:38:48 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Food

Produced ‘as a mark of celebration of the happy return of Stork Margarine to the kitchen’, this slim volume was offered free, by mail order, for anyone who wished for a copy, as fourteen years of food rationing in Britain came to a close. With a cover faded and foxed by more than fifty years in a kitchen, the peas in their tureen have taken on a fugitive bluish tinge; the traffic light colours of the three jam tarts, floating disembodied alongside, have in one case tarnished to teal rather than lime. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Charlotte Cotton Resigns Media Museum’
by: Richard West
Posted: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 10:51:39 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Gallery-Based
First Posted: Thu, 01 Mar 2012

Charlotte Cotton is resigning from her position as Creative Director for London Galleries at the National Media Museum, a position she took up in October 2009. The Galleries called ‘Media Space’ have been beset with delays and difficulties with raising funds but are currently due to open at London’s Science Museum in March 2013. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Photographs of Animals’
by: Richard West
Posted: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 10:07:50 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Archive
First Posted: Thu, 01 Mar 2012

We went to visit London Zoo Library. The library itself is a galleried room decorated with small animal sculptures and lined with books and journals relating to zoology. Ann Sylph, the helpful librarian, explained that the photographic collection relates mostly to animals that have been part of the collection of the Zoological Society of London (who also run Whipsnade Zoo) rather than animals ‘in the wild’. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Looking Back at Poland’
by: Colin Darke
Posted: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 08:56:07 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 68 - Autumn 2011

Allan Sekula’s show at Belfast Exposed is in two parts – Polonia and Other Fables is a selection of 18 photographs from a larger series and Walking on Water is a projection of seventy-eight 35mm slides. Both construct personal perceptions of the realities and myths of Poland, from his perspective as a third generation Polish American. The photographs are literarised through a booklet for each of the two parts, containing notes and quotes, along with quotations from various and often conflicting sources, scattered between images. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Panasonic HD TV’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Sun, 29 Mar 2020 18:55:53 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 86 - Summer 2016

At first sight I thought this was an advertisement for a video camera: its image and caption seem to be entirely about cinematography. The photo positions us looking at a landscape from behind the shoulder of a man making a ‘viewfinder’ with his hands, while the part of the scene he frames is presented inset, slightly larger than in the main image and overlaid on it, towards the bottom right of the page. The main caption, ‘True to the Director’s Vision’, pins down the meaning of the situation unambiguously: this is the director and that is his vision. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Archive Photograph Competition’
by: Emma Campbell
Posted: Wed, 25 Mar 2020 13:37:32 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Archive
First Posted: Wed, 22 Feb 2012

Today Source announces the start of a three-month season dedicated to photo archives. It will include seven new films, extended audio interviews, a dedicated issue of Source, blog posts and the online publication of material from our own archives. The season has been a year in preparation, has taken us to visit all manner of collections across the country. Artists, archivists, curators, conservators and academics have told us about the different projects they are working on, often out of public view. To capture some of this thrill of discovery we have designed a competition that can connect readers of this blog post and our Facebook page with the archives we will be featuring in the coming months. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Masterpieces of Bird Photography’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Thu, 19 Mar 2020 08:36:39 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Nature

What constitutes a masterpiece of bird photography? Is it the rarity of the specimen, the style of its depiction, or the difficulty of achieving the image? The editors pose these questions but do not answer them explicitly in their text. The contents of their volume, however, suggest that what matters most is how hard it was to make the picture. Masterpieces of Bird Photography is about triumph. In the first instance, British superiority in their field is asserted from the first line, perhaps due to the era in which the book was produced. The opening pages detail the 1890s origins of the genre, attributing the status of pioneers to the Kearton brothers. An extraordinary image - the only one in the book that is not of a bird - shows one brother stood on the shoulders of the other behind a large plate camera on the spindly legs of an extended tripod. They were as much acrobats as ornithologists (a story told recently at greater length in The Keartons: Inventing Nature Photography by John Bevis). . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flock - Rachel Ballagh’
by: Nicholas Allen
Posted: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 06:01:53 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Photomontage
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

Flock is the name of Rachel Ballagh's first solo exhibition at Dublin's Temple Bar Gallery and Studio. It consists of an untitled series of seven triptychs with each individual set of three images containing a total of seven magpies within it. These birds in turn frame a series of background scenes, each of which is linked thematically within the triptych. There are for example three images of flowers, of the sky and of a city. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Well That Passed the Time’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Sun, 15 Mar 2020 19:38:54 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Street
First Posted: Fri, 18 Jun 2010

A walk into town, the first one in a long time. I am without camera so as a small comfort I start to list in my head a small litany of past the... noting verbally though internally, so as not to appear like the village madman, all the things I observe that I might put a frame around if I was armed. It’s an interesting game and I am doing fine without my shield, most of the things are possibly to be returned to or probably not worth embalming in time - no real masterpieces then. It’s a grey softish day, the first mild day of our summer, almost warm I’d say but a moist air is the payback for this small relief from the recent sharp air. I start to reflect on this list that is now getting longer and longer and the sound in my head appeals to me - it’s worth pursuing, maybe I can begin something new and sure what else am I doing. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Wilkinstown - Summer Echo’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Sun, 15 Mar 2020 18:43:33 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Landscape
First Posted: Wed, 05 May 2010

My concern for the trembling trees must have wafted along the winds towards County Meath as at the official beginning of another season Wilkinstown provided another shift in its ongoing narrative. It was one of those things that will make me return (this time three days in a row) seeking some decent light to work with before the landscape changes again. While it’s the sort of detail that possibly only matters to me, there is something very significant, not just in the replanting of the reclaimed young saplings from the encroaching trench in the adjacent field, but rather this alternative shallower trench and the exposed and uprooted trees laid out now for replanting. The evidence of the ongoing search has now begun to be truly erased and a yin and yang cycle commences. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: A Birthday Portrait’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Sun, 15 Mar 2020 17:04:01 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Medical
First Posted: Sat, 01 May 2010

It was my Birthday recently, the date, let alone the year, are naturally state secrets. As it happened, just around this anniversary of me being dragged a little reluctantly into the world (I was a forceps delivery), I had this portrait made of me. It’s a little flattering, what with the Kirk Douglas chin and that faint but invisible smile, but methinks me has the bones of an eighteen year old, for look at those lovely clavicles. Although that said, if I am being truly honest the outer shell unfortunately resembles the painting in the attic. Who said the camera never lies...? . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: A Daaarlin Woman’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Sun, 15 Mar 2020 15:11:39 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Death
First Posted: Fri, 30 Apr 2010

An’, as it blowed an’ blowed, I ofen looked up at the sky an' assed meself the question - what is the stars, what is the stars? ... An’ then I’d have another look, an’ I’d ass meself - what is the moon? Captain Boyle, Act I, Juno and the Paycock - Sean O'Casey. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Carrickrobin III’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Fri, 13 Mar 2020 12:39:18 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Landscape
First Posted: Sat, 27 Mar 2010

Apologies for the hiatus but my mother’s fencing with Mr C became a little more complex recently so long hours in hospital visits Dysoned up my few words so a brief update for now.When visited at the end of February there had been no renewal of the search at Carrickrobin since before Christmas and I was uncertain as to what lay ahead. It is now heading towards the end of March so last Sunday, having spent some time at Wilkinstown, I ventured further north hoping to benefit from significantly longer days. Driving down the small lane I noticed the return of the drainage pump, so they had returned. Unlike Wilkinstown with its deep trenches and increasing number of time-mounds, Carrickrobin is difficult to photograph in terms of a shifting landscape. It is very flat and the area being searched is tight and precise. However the earth like an exotic dancer can reveal itself slowly and show us hidden things. The initial area searched has been leveled and returned and they have simply continued on from where they left off trying to follow those instructions: Walk up that lane, past the green field on the right and the stone mounds, and you’ll see the bogland. After 150 yards of bogland, stop. Walk 30 yards into the bog - that’s where the body is buried. But they are getting close to the initial drainage moat in this part of the bog so if it yields nothing they will possibly move deeper into this wetland ignoring the specifics and exhuming areas that the archaeologists have assessed as possibilities. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Camphill Community’
by: Gypsy Ray
Posted: Thu, 12 Mar 2020 15:14:20 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

A Portfolio of photographic work by Gypsy Ray. Published in Issue 13 of Source, Autumn Winter 1997. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Short Strand’
by: Frankie Quinn
Posted: Thu, 12 Mar 2020 14:21:07 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

A Portfolio of photographic work by Frankie Quinn. Published in Issue 13 of Source, Autumn Winter 1997. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Last Accordian Band’
by: David Barker
Posted: Thu, 12 Mar 2020 13:08:10 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

A Portfolio of photographic work by David Barker. Published in Issue 13 of Source, Autumn Winter 1997. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Chairs of Marly Le Roi’
by: Michael Durand
Posted: Thu, 12 Mar 2020 12:36:08 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Still Life
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

A Portfolio of photographic work by Michael Durand. Published in Issue 13 of Source, Autumn Winter 1997. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Microsoft Cloud’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Thu, 12 Mar 2020 04:57:16 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 85 - Spring 2016

This is the middle ad in a sequence of three that ran on consecutive recto pages in a recent Wired. Each follows a similar structure: a colour photo is superimposed on a montage of what seem to be tinted black and white photos of generically similar scenes, the tints matching the positions of the red, green, yellow and blue squares of the Microsoft logo shown in the bottom right hand corner. The first and last ads in the sequence are captioned This cloud redefines winning and This cloud opens one stadium to 450 million fans - referring to uses of Microsoft's cloud by the Special Olympics and Real Madrid. Further stories about specific uses of their cloud platforms can be found on Microsoft's website, which presents short videos, under the same captions, about all the companies shown in these and similar ads. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Archive Season - Warm Up’
by: Richard West
Posted: Tue, 10 Mar 2020 06:32:13 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Archive
First Posted: Sat, 18 Feb 2012

Next week, Source will be launching an archive season that will continue until May. Putting this season together I have come across a number of online archives, some well known, some obscure, that contain a wealth of material I had never seen before. Although the emphasis of the season is on the physical collections that we have visited, in some ways the most significant recent development in photography archives is their increased availability via the web. In an ideal world we would be able both to visit archives and see them digitally (and we will be running a competition that connects finding archives online with visiting them in person, watch this space for details) but, to start us off, here are a few of the pictures I have seen and some reflections on how they are changed by appearing on the web. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Small Acts of Memory and Large Omissions of Time’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Mon, 09 Mar 2020 22:10:32 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Documentary
First Posted: Sat, 13 Feb 2010

estragon: I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget. (Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts ). One thing I have to admit I do miss in my recent dabbling with the devil is that old inner glow I felt, in the good old days, when I opened the fridge and saw my exposed but unprocessed beauties lying inert like a cryogenic experiment awaiting a better time (usually financial). Recently, I had a conversation with a teaching colleague who spoke about liking film because even by looking at recently processed negatives, irrespective of the date of their exposure, he could begin to remember being here or there, or having seen this or that and somehow that re-remembering was missing when one worked with the ‘darkside’ (digital photography). Perhaps it’s simply a different process of both laying down memory and engaging with memory within the process of digital photography rather than the specifics of film itself. Its possible that the relatively proximate viewing of the ‘positive’ image in relation to it’s capture, combined with the interruption of memory through the process of deletion that can occur with darkside photography (which usually doesn't happen with the film strip ) radically alters this re-remembering and so connections are lost and the memory is not so labile or latent. There is perhaps an interruption in the flow of memory as those failures which one either forgets (or tries to forget) are not still present and so there is a fracture in our retrieval system. Perhaps this might explain why at times I find it quite painful to look back on contact sheets and it is somehow easier for me emotionally to retrieve images from a hard-disk rather than a hard-box. Being a little older than my colleague perhaps I have more doors to rooms full of film-strips that I prefer not to re-project on the inside of my head. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘I Could Read the Sky’
by: Carlo Gébler
Posted: Mon, 09 Mar 2020 12:20:47 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Narrative
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

I Could Read the Sky is an unusual novel with text by Timothy O'Grady and photographs by Steve Pyke. At some point during the last twenty years, an unnamed narrator lies in a room in Quex Road, Kilburn, and remembers fragments of his idyllic Irish childhood, his savage, back breaking years of toil in England, first as a farm labourer in Lincolnshire and later as a builder in various towns in the southeast, his short-lived happiness, sexual and emotional, with his wife, Maggie, her death from a heart attack in the street, and his decline into feeble old age. At the end of the book he waits for death in his squalid Kilburn room, the money to pay for the cost of shipping his corpse back to Ireland in a box under his bed; after a life of gruelling labour that's all he has to show - the money to pay for his funeral - and this is a bitter comment, I presume, on how little the emigrant gets back in return for the stupendous amount that the emigrant gives to the host country. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Lost Children of Rwanda’
by: Martin McCabe
Posted: Mon, 09 Mar 2020 10:02:36 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

Seamus Conlon's Lost Children of Rwanda pursues the paradigm of documentary reportage which historically has been linked to social reform agendas and meliorism. In this instance, the photographer seeks 'to open the eyes' of the viewer to distant tragedies and their aftermath in Central Africa. The first image to greet the viewer at the entrance to the gallery can only be identified as 11262/I023, a large colour photograph of an African child. For all intents and purposes 5000 + 'mugshots' of African children line the inside of the Gallery. Impressive purely at the level of their visual impact. Each face uniformly photographed and laid out regularly all around the inside of the gallery. Framing, exposure, colours and scale all maintained throughout. There are no names, no other details, just faces and identification numbers. This may be a strategy to impress upon the viewer the numbers involved and the scale of the problem. However the overall effect negates the individual images and goes some way to deindividuate the subjects. They are just a sea of faces. Conlon may have intended to put faces on the numbers but ends up putting numbers on faces. At the same time there is a long tradition of images of 'black babies' on collection boxes outside churches, in schools throughout Ireland. This seems to go unacknowledged. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Eve Arnold: In Retrospect’
by: Lynsey Muir
Posted: Mon, 09 Mar 2020 07:28:34 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

Eve Arnold was born in Philadelphia and took up photography in 1950. One of the most famous practitioners of her generation, her latest exhibition is called Eve Arnold: In Retrospect and is based on work published in the book of the same name. The exhibition consists of nearly two hundred photographs, a small fraction of the thousands taken over the last forty seven years. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Tripping Among the Stars’
by: John Hoey
Posted: Mon, 09 Mar 2020 06:58:25 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Astrophotography
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

David Malin is an astronomer; he is also an artist. Working from the same template as the amateur photographer with the tripod, camera, and time exposure, who explores the circadian revolution of the heavens, Malin convenes a body of work which invokes wonder and conveys beauty. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Causality and Contingency - Irish Landscape Images’
by: Nicholas Allen
Posted: Fri, 06 Mar 2020 11:22:58 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

Daniel de Chenu's ' Causality and Contingency - Irish Landscape Images is currently on show at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin. It consists of a large number of colour images by Le Chenu on both floors of the gallery, placed around a landscape painting from the eighteenth-century and a selection of four images from the turn of the century by Robert French. De Chenu himself tells using the Gallery's notes for the show that he wanted to follow a practice which would utilise the medium of photography as an objective recorder of reality as opposed to a tool of creative expression. Thus Thomas Roberts' 'Ideal Landscape' is from the start marginalised. The painting is there to show what photography is not. It is indeed easy to see how Roberts's landscape conforms to certain traditions of pictorial representation. There are elements of romanticism in the deserted church in the background with its literary analogue of Goldsmith's Deserted Village. There are the figures in the foreground, a country gent talking to his inferior from the height of a horse and a woman carrying a water jug on her head. Finally there are the cows, ruminating idyllically on their station in life. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Christian Boltanski’
by: Paul McNally
Posted: Fri, 06 Mar 2020 05:41:01 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

In one of the five essays contained in Christian Boltanski the artist tells Tamar Garb of a time when the Tate Gallery bought one work Dead Swiss on shelves with white cotton. The curator noted that the cotton would fade in a few years and asked could they replace it when this happened. Boltanski readily agreed. The curator also mentioned that if the shelves in the piece could be made shorter they would fit in the room at the Tate; again Boltanski agreed. Finally the curator asked if the photographs could be replaced if they faded, which was no problem for Boltanski. The curator then asked what exactly had the Tate bought? Boltanski replied an idea not an object . . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Wilkinstown - Fourth Act’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Thu, 05 Mar 2020 14:38:40 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Landscape
First Posted: Wed, 10 Feb 2010

Expecting stasis I reluctantly headed off to Wilkinstown last weekend under the grey light that enveloped us on Sunday. The protagonists have returned, the fourth act is under way, and with a renewed energy they have worked their way through a corner of this new section. The soil here at times is different with large sections having a thin covering of bog and possibly because this doesn’t match with information they may have, they seem to have moved quickly through it. In another part the small clumps of trees that dotted this field have been levelled in preparation like two pages from a diary.The potential pyre is still present and in the soft light it now truly haunts the center of the recently returned field an justifies my rejection of the blue sky last week. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Some Observations While Driving Through a Post Tiger Landscape’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Thu, 05 Mar 2020 14:25:20 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Landscape
First Posted: Sun, 07 Feb 2010

Utopias exist only in carpets (John Berger). Trampolines in gardens, and trophy homes with garages bigger than most suburban houses, and other houses reduced to sell or available at two for the previous price of one, and some that are now advertised on trucks in fields, and ghost ESTates where empty houses haunt their inhabitants, and the work of an artist/joker/philosopher/republican posting tri-colours on bridges and road signs, and orange filtered blinds still protecting mannequins in the windows of fabric shops of small and medium sized towns, and the once brightly coloured and image-laden but now minimalist black and grey hoardings around stalled development sites, and the seldom crane, now an endangered species, and the return of pot-holes down which a small elephant could disappear, and a skeletal old man with a thin stick walking straight out of a Beckett novel with his open-fire dirt-stained face, who shuffles along the side of the road like the ghost of Christmas past, and the small irony of a dead petrol station being reborn as a petrol station perhaps selling Lazarus fuel, and this building below which, in the nineties, was a two-storey house on the corner of a Dublin street. These are a few of the things. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: English Inns Illustrated’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Thu, 05 Mar 2020 13:37:10 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Documentary

Effectively a national survey of pubs for those who like their boozing to be historically legitimated, English Inns Illustrated was one of the Britain Illustrated series of books produced by Odhams Press in the early 1950s. The illustrated aspect of the publication was centrally important, and is demonstrated from the dust jacket onwards, which features two large-scale camera studies, front and back, on its almost festive wrappers of red ground and white script. The flyleaf boasts that the book’s 128 pages contain 160 such camera studies - calling them photographs, it seems, would not do them justice - provided by leading modern photographers . . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 100 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 02 Mar 2020 07:19:25 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 100 - Winter 2019

One of photography's most prized attributes is the access it gives us to reality. It captures the unguarded moment or the telling detail and we believe in its ability to record events; 'Pics, or it didn't happen' people still say on social media when they want proof that something took place. Nevertheless, the suspicion remains that the story we are being told has been set up, that photographs of political events, for example, are staged. In this issue we have spoken to a photographer, Stefan Rousseau, who photographs the British Prime Minister. The orchestration of the events he photographs is part of his everyday working life. We have also spoken to a former government Press Officer about how they manage these events and plan, down to the smallest detail, what will appear in photographs. Neither sounds confident that they are in control of what we see. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘August Sander's Mission: Impossible’
by: Stephen Bull
Posted: Fri, 28 Feb 2020 06:10:00 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 12 - Summer Autumn 1997

The desire to classify is strange and strong. During the 1920's August Sander began his personal mission to create a 'portrait atlas' surveying the whole of German society. In 1929, sixty of these photographs were published as The Face of Our Time ; a microcosm of his much larger forthcoming work People of the 20th Century, but the war put paid to Sander's grand plans. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Photography Course Prospectus’
by: Paul Seawright et al
Posted: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 18:10:16 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Education
First Published: Issue 12 - Summer Autumn 1997

Documentary Photography has flourished at Newport School of Art and Design since the mid 1970s, producing many individuals who have helped shape the profile of documentary practice in Britain today. Traditionally, the course had emphasised the role of the photographer in relation to the editorial world that encompasses photojournalism. Within the last few years however, there has been a considerable move towards a broader definition of documentary practice, recognising the need to respond to photography's changing cultural contexts. This course has been designed to reflect this development. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Pony Kids’
by: Peter Smyth
Posted: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 11:10:46 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 12 - Summer Autumn 1997

My first reaction to this exhibition relates to its location, Smithfield is an old market area of Dublin and is used on the first Sunday of each month as a horse fair. The images in the exhibition are portraits of children who attend the fair. The works are displayed along each side of the street and around a small brick structure, in the centre of the market. The images are large photocopies of original prints and measure about 30"x40". They are mounted directly onto the walls and covered with a protective sheet of plastic. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Straight Lines and a Crooked Border’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 08:55:46 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Political
First Posted: Sun, 25 Oct 2009

The South Armagh/Louth region is a fascinating area in terms of roads and 'latent' border crossings. On my first journey to Colgagh in 1999 I was very struck by the way a more or less straight road crossed in and out of the North and the South at various points perhaps aiding and abetting its historical currency as Bandit Country, a notion that goes back centuries. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Is There a Crisis in Art Book Publishing?’
by: Richard West
Posted: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 08:21:35 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Publishing
First Posted: Thu, 9 Feb 2012

Art Data is a specialist art book distributor. It takes up a small warehouse in West London (with another warehouse in Norfolk). When you go inside, the ground floor is full of bookshelves with a mezzanine floor of office space. There were five people there when I visited, sitting at desks or packing boxes. Tim Borton, whom I had come to talk to, started the company in 1978 and is still running it, so I was interested to know what he thought of the current state of the art book market. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: The Revisits - An Introduction’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 06:32:45 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Religious
First Posted: Fri, 23 Oct 2009

Truth is made of infinite small pieces (Gogo della Luna). When the searches finished in 2000 it was stated that they were at at end. For reasons outlined below in an extract from an almost singular set of diary entries from 2003 I outline why I started to revisit these places and some sense of the ongoing narrative within this work. Looking back now ten years on in some ways these Revisits do in some way appear to be the act of a madman. (In a later posting I hope to talk about the relationship between analogue, and 'what has occurred', and digital, and 'events to come' and explore the issue of photographic time which should probably also be measured in 'light' years). I mean I had had the photographers lotto win in a certain way with a book published in five European editions (though the photographs were still in English). I could move on to another work and I did (on to many), but there was a force that kept drawing me back year after year. Consequently every year I would revisit and while on one level I was simply documenting the process of renewal I was also searching for metaphors within these recovering landscapes that would resonate beyond the yearly matter of fact documentation. Indeed there is one image that I made again at Wilkinstown that I will talk about in a future blog that encapsulates in Beckettian sparseness everything that I have been producing since the first revisits in 2001 therein giving the painful dilemma of possibly letting/having one image speak for eight years work. So while every time I walked those landscapes in subsequent years scanning the settling earth in the vague hope of a chance discovery it wasn't that I felt Innocent Landscapes as a work needed a full resolution of the issue - the only resolution that mattered was for the families - but perhaps I was carrying within me the comment by the Czech poet Miroslav Holub that art doesn't solve problems, it only wears them out. I remember my father once saying to me, when he was possibly slightly exasperated at my new chosen vague, mapless and uncertain path can there never be enough pictures taken - it's a bloody good question particularly now that I have amassed a level of material on this work alone that at times can be overwhelming. In the first year or two these revisits were made quickly but as events unfolded and the landscape changed it became an imperative. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Facebook’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Wed, 26 Feb 2020 06:04:57 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 84 - Winter 2015

Earlier this year Facebook launched its first UK advertising campaign, titled 'Friends' and spanning a range of media from TV to posters, magazines and newspapers. The ad shown here is a typical example of the current print version. Most of the page is left blank, apart from the 'f' logo at the bottom, and the substance of the ad is a letterbox shape modelled on the box with a tick and the word 'Friends' which appears on the Facebook interface when you click on a 'friend'. It is essentially the click-box blown up large, with a group of 'friends' illustrated inside it. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Vienna Today’
by: Jim Maginn
Posted: Tue, 25 Feb 2020 11:56:18 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

Vienna today is an extended picture story on a year in the life of the Jewish community in Austria's capital. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Views from Flat 15-5, Block 9’
by: Michèle Lazenby
Posted: Tue, 25 Feb 2020 10:05:53 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Pinhole
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

I really enjoy being physically present within the body of the camera. Slowly your eyes get accustomed to the darkness and then you begin to be able to make out the shapes that are projected onto the walls and ceiling. You are able to see the way light travels, the way it reflects off objects outside and projects to form an (upside down) image, distorting at the peripheries. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘On the sixth day, Mr Burden?’
by: Peter Richards
Posted: Tue, 25 Feb 2020 09:49:58 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Performance
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

My performance works at present are centred around the principle of the Camera Obscura, which creates a method of documentation of performance and performance as a single entity . . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘One Foot Has Not Yet Reached the Next Street’
by: Martin McCabe
Posted: Tue, 25 Feb 2020 06:57:59 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

In terms of introduction, the work of the British artist, Keith Arnatt is known to most art students at any rate for his Self-Burial TV Interference Project of 1969. This was an 'intervention' which used a series photographic images of the artist burying himself in a hole which were broadcast on television over a period of a week or so; one at a time they were literally dropped, unannounced and unexplained, into the televisual flow. It endures as a work because amongst other things it traversed video art as anti-television, conceptualist practices, performance, and photography at a specific historical moment when new agendas and paradigms were emerging. But that was then. TV has done a couple of revolutions since. While just about coralled into the so-called 'breaks', TV advertisements today use similar tactics to Arnatt's in infiltrating the fabric of everyday life at any and every possible juncture and space. Arnatt's exhibition at the Gallery of Photography entitled One Foot Has Not Yet Reached the Next Street is a series of large scale photographs of found objects taken from a dump. This includes toys, household items, clothes, paint tins, garden ornaments, etc. They are photographed in situ using available light and are consequently imaged with a minute depth of field which acts to focus the attention of the viewer onto certain parts and qualities of the objects isolating them from their context and environment. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Vanishing Points’
by: Andrew Grannell
Posted: Tue, 25 Feb 2020 05:35:40 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Institutional
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

I took this series of photographs in 1993 while visiting a psychiatric institution at Horton, Surrey which was undergoing closure to make way for the government's new Care in the Community policy. This visit re-evoked the experience of my own hospitalisation when, at the age of eighteen, I suffered a breakdown. I was committed to Our Lady's Hospital, Cork, which like Horton, is a Victorian psychiatric institution with a labyrinth of corridors which disappear into various vanishing points. In the heyday of this hospital, countless psychiatric patients would walk these cloisters, each dreary step seeming to further confer an immutable seal of institutionalisation upon their utter rejection from respectable Irish society. Up and down they would shuffle all day, year in year out, dressed in potato-stained, ill fitting hospital rags, occasionally stopping to pick up cigarette butts from the floor in order to make roll-ups. Some derived comfort from masturbating openly in this public space. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Photography at London Art Fair’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Sun, 23 Feb 2020 13:09:31 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Event
First Posted: Mon, 30 Jan 2012

I was at London Art Fair recently at the Source stand to sell and promote the magazine. It was also an opportunity for me to catch up with a number of photographers, curators and Source readers. In my coffee breaks I was able to take a look round at what the galleries had on show in their spaces. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Irish Student Award’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Sun, 23 Feb 2020 06:51:41 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Event
First Posted: Tue, 17 Jan 2012

On Wednesday night I attended the opening of Propeller, the Irish graduate photography award. This was at The Copper House Gallery which is a new space located at the premises of the printers Fire in Dublin. The award is a collaboration between Fire and Source which includes an in-kind award of print-production costs, studio space at the lab and mentoring by staff at Fire and Source. The initial idea for the award came from Les Wolnik one of the directors at Fire who saw how difficult his own daughter, a recent photography graduate, was finding it post University. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: List Mania: 2011 Photobook Roundup’
by: Richard West
Posted: Sat, 22 Feb 2020 13:17:07 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Publishing
First Posted: Sat, 24 Dec 2011

I was planning to do a roundup of the photobooks published in 2011. We have started to review self published books this year and the job of finding out what has been published, and deciding what to review, has become even more challenging. Larissa Leclair's list of her favourite self published books of the year (most of which I hadn't seen before) is a particularly fine selection - drawing together a wide variety of high-quality books. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Innocent Landscapes - Background’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Sat, 22 Feb 2020 11:08:57 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Political
First Posted: Tue, 20 Oct 2009

In thirty years of conflict and atrocity in Northern Ireland a small group of people stood apart: they were the missing, the Disappeared - absent and yet somehow still present. Even their exact number was uncertain though it was thought that there were at least 15 people whose whereabouts had remained shrouded in misinformation and doubt since the 1970’s and early 1980’s. Despite considerable obfuscation it was considered that their fate and whereabouts was directly linked to what was colloquially known as the Troubles. Apart from Capt. Robert Nairac, an undercover British Soldier they were all Catholic and widely assumed to have been 'disappeared' by the IRA through a process of internal policing of the movement and the wider catholic community. What separated this group from other 'policings' was the silence, the denial and the absence of a returned body for uncertain relatives. This renunciation continued for over twenty-five years.On 27th May 1999 as a result of the ongoing peace process, the IRA issued a statement in which they apologised and accepted the injustice of prolonging the suffering of victim’s families and admitted what they termed the killing and secret burial of ten people. Despite internal enquiries they had only managed to locate the burial places of nine people;Brian McKinney, John McClory, Danny McIlhone, Brendan Megraw,Jean Mc Conville, Kevin McKee, Seamus Wright, Columba McVeigh andEamonn Molloy.The locations - Colgagh, Ballynultagh, Oristown, Templetown, Wilkinstown, Bragan, and Faughart contained a simple but final bitter twist - they were all located in the South of Ireland. This small group of people had been exiled in death creating a poignant and, as time progressed, what could be termed a haunting internal diaspora. This became evident when on May 20th 2000 the digs, now in their second phase, were suspended: three remains had been located, three closures permitted leaving the remaining families with a site rather than a spot, a closing rather than a closure.I had followed the searches that were carried out in 1999 and 2000 and the resulting photographs were published in a volume entitled Innocent Landscapes in 2001 as a result of winning the European Publishers Award for Photography. However I couldn’t walk away from this work - for one thing there was the unresolved nature of the searches, as only three remains had been recovered. So, every year, usually towards the end of the Summer I would revisit these locations making photographs of a ‘healing’ landscape and witness the evidence that they had been searched slowly subsume under nature. In the back of my mind I had said to myself that I would try to do this for ten years. However, as it happened, this turning back of time within these landscapes was not as straightforward as I thought it would be and fresh wounds and the re-opening of scars would occur over succeeding years. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: A Short Geography Lesson’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Fri, 21 Feb 2020 06:48:19 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Political
First Posted: Sun, 18 Oct 2009

Many times during the making of Innocent Landscapes in 1999 and in 2000 people would often say to me: how is your work in the North going?. In spite of the fact that this story was on radio and television and in newspapers and that the locations were named, quite clearly there was an automatic assumption that these places were North of the border perhaps emanating from an imbedded psychological distancing of those in the South from the Troubles of the North. So for those of you who are still in denial, or perhaps for those two international readers, these maps will hopefully give some sense of the locations and locate me as based in Dublin. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: A Slight Change of Plan’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Thu, 20 Feb 2020 17:48:13 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Police
First Posted: Sat, 17 Oct 2009

When the nice people at Source approached me in early September to do this my initial thoughts were to do some general blogs before getting to the subject I was going to cover i.e: my continued and intended final involvement with Innocent Landscapes. While sorting out technical issues and getting my head around writing, a patch of particularly nice weather enveloped Ireland and so I had to move in terms of revisiting and picture making. In any event I didn’t want this thing to be exactly contemporaneous, in order to buy time to construct some sort of narrative around how I would lay out this project to those unfamiliar with it. I also didn’t want to return to my days at the Sunday Business Post where I had to rush home to process my 8x10 prints for the next day in one of those much-favoured shower-darkrooms that freelancers used to inhabit. The nature of my way of working these days is to make photographs and to create a space for reflection. Anyway as Lennon from Liverpool said: life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. For the last three weekends I have been photographing the landscape of a resumed search in Co. Meath. It is part of new searches that were initiated three years ago and are being co-ordinated by the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR). These are discreet searches by forensic archaeologists as opposed to the initial Gardai* lead investigations. I had intended holding off for as long as possible from discussing this particular search but on Thursday, at an inquest into the successful recovery by this search team of Danny MCIlhone’s remains at Ballynultagh, Co Wicklow in November 2008, it was announced that that regular contact between the IRA and forensic investigators is guiding searches for people abducted, murdered and secretly buried during the North's Troubles, and that top scientific detective Geoff Knupfer, who is leading a painstaking quest to locate the remains of the so-called Disappeared, said that: recent and ongoing talks with the Provisionals has led to fresh digs. In this becoming public I am making a judgment here to make public in this forum what I have witnessed recently, I hope this is a right decision. However it is important to give a context and background to this complex and layered story and in the next blog or two I will hopefully introduce this work succinctly particularly to those not familiar with it, for there are details in this narrative that are frequently overlooked or somehow not grasped. I was somewhat taken aback by some of the information in the press announcement but I will address this later. *Gardai - Police Force in the South Of Ireland . . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Another Year’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Thu, 20 Feb 2020 17:09:14 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Nature
First Posted: Fri, 16 Oct 2009

It’s somewhat perverse but I actually feel rejuvenated in the autumn. There is something almost perfect about the light, the colour and the length of day. Today I returned to a small park near where I live that became my decompression chamber from teaching this time last year as we slid slowly to naked trees. It has a river and a pond and is slightly wild in parts. I tried where possible to make a number of visits during the months of October through to December to this place - it has a particularly sad beauty that embraced yet another bout of ennui and I became particularly taken with a small corner of the pond where it dropped in height from an upper to a lower level giving rise to a cascade of leaves which accumulated over time - there was an ebb and flow in relation to the trapped material and the continual flow of new leaves from above that (at the time at least) seemed an appropriate metaphor. Although I made a reasonable amount of work there last year I still struggle with its validity - it’s the beautiful landscape issue that maybe we will venture into in the future. Elusive though they may be, there are decisive moments even within landscapes - moments when all is aligned. Today is one, it is so still that one can almost hear the leaves fall. I make a photograph of the ebb. There is an interesting transition from the inner turbulent heart-shaped pool through the hinterland of decaying leaves into outer stillness. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: How it Works: The Camera’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Thu, 20 Feb 2020 05:51:11 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Education

There’s something delightfully ironic about a fully-illustrated book on photography where every single image is meticulously hand-painted. In 1970, some 130-plus years after Paul Delaroche is said to have pronounced that photography had killed off painting, this technical guide features fine brush work representations of each of its photographic images, including film negatives depicted in careful chiaroscuro. This might seem like a perverse enterprise if one didn’t see The Camera in wider context. As one of a set of Ladybird Books (series 654, to be precise), the illustrated guide’s painted illustrations are just one of a number of characteristic qualities of the Wills & Hepworth’s imprint. The palm-sized hardback cover, the ten-spot red Ladybird logo, and the formatting of simple text on the left hand page with full-page colour images on the right are tell-tale signs for any reader familiar with the heyday of the press in the 1960s and early 1970s, when it produced hundreds of enormously popular titles from fairy tale retellings to learning-to-read schemes, all priced at 2 shillings and 6. Another key characteristic of Ladybird books, however, is that they are most strongly associated with titles for children. Peter and Jane pick up a Camera this is not. Its images belong to the pastel-coloured Ladybird universe, but its content is elsewhere. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: To Blog Or Not To Blog’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Tue, 18 Feb 2020 06:46:33 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Portraiture
First Posted: Tue, 13 Oct 2009

To blog or to blabber that is the question. Am I blogging now or have I already started to blabber, hmmm... When the nice people at Source asked me would I be interested in doing this, I turned to a wise woman who archly informed me ‘that blogs are usually written by sad old men who live alone and have a cat’ (SOMWHLAAHAC Syndrome) and while I may tick a box or two there (though I would substitute one descriptor with ‘occasionally melancholy or sporadically imbued with ennui’), I was intrigued, I reckoned I would only ever do such a thing if asked so here goes for a while at least.I admitted to the nice people at Source that I had never read a blog - (apologies to Darren Campion a former student of ours at www.theincoherentlight.com) - I am of a generation that will never be digital native no matter how hard we try and possibly think we are. Facebook, twitter etc are for the birds as far as I am concerned although I have heard some positive things about LinkedIn ... So I see it as a challenge and when opportunity knocks my philosophy is have a lash. As it happens I recently came across a diary that I kept for a brief period as a fresh teenager and so I will try to avoid things like ‘JD really fancies TS but she fancies LO’S who is going out with LMcM etc’ and while a gossip blog might be more interesting I do, as mentioned, suffer somewhat from SOMWHLAAHAC Syndrome, so not a runner.The proposed nature of this escapade is to be a blog within the making of a project - now, my way of working arises from many peripatetic journeys both internally and externally and while not necessarily always a good idea, sometimes projects arise through following an intuitive curiosity rather than a linear continuity - for example, this summer largely driven by a deep ennui I began making work which slowly evolved into acquiring the working title Almost Blue - Between Two Full Moons - a title is useful as it can help to start the bracketing process of the edit. This work was born by the impromptu action of standing in front of the camera during a long exposure. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Innocent Landscapes Revisited: Background to Innocent Landscapes’
by: David Farrell
Posted: Tue, 18 Feb 2020 05:00:54 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Political
First Posted: Tue, 06 Oct 2009

In 1999, as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, the IRA finally admitted the ‘killing and secret burial’ of ten people from a possible list of fifteen missing people. They released a roll call of locations that were said to be the burial places of nine people from this list. The twist in this inventory of place-names and one of the main factors that drove me on in the project was that all the locations were in the South of Ireland. These people had been exiled in death, somehow uniting North and South in relation to the conflict – a dark stain lurking under the ‘peaceful’ landscapes of the South.That Summer I set out on a short journey from the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan to visit and photograph my first ‘site’ where, three weeks earlier, the remains of Brian McKinney (22) and John McClory (18) had been found. They had disappeared on 25th May 1978 from West Belfast and were thought to have been abducted, murdered, and secretly buried by the IRA. Throughout the history of the recent conflict in Northern Ireland where grief and trauma were visited upon so many people across all communities, these young men were part of a disparate group of people who became known as ‘the disappeared’. Nothing was certain in relation to these people, even their exact number was difficult to ascertain. Virtually all were Northern Irish Catholics and were thought to have been victims of internal IRA ‘policing’ of the movement and the wider catholic community.I followed the searches that were carried out in 1999 and 2000 and the resulting photographs were published in a volume entitled Innocent Landscapes in 2001 as a result of winning the European Publishers Award for Photography. However I couldn’t walk away from this work - for one thing there was the unresolved nature of the searches, as only three remains had been recovered. So, every year, usually towards the end of the Summer I would revisit these locations making photographs of a ‘healing’ landscape. In the back of my mind I had said to myself that I would try to do this for ten years. This blog will outline my intended final visits to these haunted places. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Cork Analogue Photographers’
by: Emma Campbell
Posted: Mon, 17 Feb 2020 10:46:06 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Social
First Posted: Tue, 13 Dec 2011

Forming an artist's collective has been a traditional way to nurture support and critique from fellow artists. For some it can mean the sharing of resources such as equipment and studio space, for others it can be an umbrella name to give more clout for showing and publishing work. As a curator or editor, it can be more rewarding to keep tabs on a collective, as their output is likely to exceed that of an individual artist, given that at least one is bound to be producing work at any given time. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: The Invisible Gallery’
by: Richard West
Posted: Sun, 16 Feb 2020 18:24:25 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Gallery-Based
First Posted: Sun, 30 Oct 2011

Two weeks ago I spoke to photography students in Falmouth and one of the questions I asked them was if they felt part of a photography community. Some did, some saw the university as their community, but most explored the photography world online. There's lots of stuff online but there is also a lot missing. If the experience doesn't translate online, if there is no easy way to link to it and if there are no advocates, then bits of the world remain invisible to the web. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Search for New Photography Continues’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Sun, 16 Feb 2020 17:42:46 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Event
First Posted: Thu, 27 Oct 2011

I was at Impressions Gallery in Bradford on Saturday, as part of the Ways of Looking Festival, to meet photographers and try to find new work for Source to publish in our portfolio pages. We had received over 120 initial submissions by email, which I had whittled down to a shortlist of seven photographers to meet on the day. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Photography Degree Top Ten Tips’
by: Emma Campbell
Posted: Sun, 16 Feb 2020 13:11:15 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Education
First Posted: Tue, 18 Oct 2011

Starting a photography degree is exciting and daunting, there will be new people to get to know, equipment to get your head around, ideas to mull over, lengthy reading lists, and all this whilst working out how to pay rent and buy two weeks food for under a tenner! Source has some collective experience of what a photography course entails and some lessons learned the hard way, so we thought we'd pass on some handy tidbits for those fledgling photographers just beginning their academic journey. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Self Published Books’
by: Richard West
Posted: Sun, 16 Feb 2020 07:12:04 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Event
First Posted: Sun, 02 Oct 2011

The latest issue of Source contains a new section dedicated to reviewing self published books. Part of the challenge for this section will be finding out what has been published. Blurb, to name only the best known print on demand company, say they now have 11,907 books in the category ‘Fine Art Photography’ and many books will only appear on photographers websites or at photography festivals. We will welcome notice of new books (through an email: photobooks [at] source.ie) and any recommendations. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: The New Photo Galleries’
by: Richard West
Posted: Sat, 15 Feb 2020 13:17:30 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Gallery-Based
First Posted: Tue, 27 September 2011

A number of photography galleries are reopening in the UK over the coming months. In the latest issue of Source Simon Denison has been to visit the redeveloped galleries: Open Eye in Liverpool, The Photographers' Gallery in London, The Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh and Focal Point Gallery in Southend. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Noblesse Obligé’
by: Chris Harrison
Posted: Thu, 13 Feb 2020 07:52:32 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Institutional
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

Text taken from an essay entitled His Grace - and Lord Derby written by Peter Jerrome, the chairman of the Petworth Society. An unabridged version appears in the book Noblesse Obligé and was originally published in the Petworth Society Magazine . . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Third Battle of Newbury’
by: Jonathan Olley
Posted: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 07:43:14 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

Newbury is a small English market town on the sleepy rolling hills of the Berkshire - Hampshire borders, made famous after two decisive civil war battles; the first and second battles of Newbury (1643 and 1644). The local council in conjunction with the Governments road building programme have decided to build a relief road around the town but there is popular objection to the new road; The Newbury Bypass . . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Photography Shows Up in Ireland’
by: Emma Campbell
Posted: Tue, 11 Feb 2020 18:05:36 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Event
First Posted: Fri, 23 Sep 2011

Ireland appears to be awash with photography in 2011. From PhotoIreland to Belfast Photo Festival, (both of which Source particpated in as hosts as well as attendees), and still to come in Dublin Contemporary and in the Douglas Hyde (Mike Disfarmer coming soon) it seems to be celebrated more than ever before. Even IMMA in Dublin has a show until the 9th October, exclusively on photography, Out of The Darkroom showing the collection of David Kronn. Though they admit in their press release that they don't yet have a permanent collection of photography, it seems clear they are finally willing to admit photographic works into their fold: Although lacking a representative photographic collection, IMMA has to date sought to compensate for this by presenting a number of significant photographic exhibitions drawn from external sources. Commenting on the Kronn donation, IMMA’s Director, Enrique Juncosa, said: David Kronn’s commitment to making IMMA the future home of his photography collection positions us as a major force in the field and comes at an opportune moment, when the museum would not have the resources to buy such prime works. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Do we need Photography Galleries?’
by: Richard West
Posted: Tue, 11 Feb 2020 13:53:52 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Gallery-Based
First Posted: Mon, 19 Sep 2011

The new issue of Source is all about photo galleries. Rebecca Hopkinson has been looking at the programmes of contemporary art spaces to ask if we still need specialist photography galleries. If contemporary art spaces (like the Whitechapel and Irish Museum of Modern Art) are showing photography why do we need galleries like the the Photographers' Gallery (due to reopen in early 2012) and the Gallery of Photography? . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Source Photo: Photobook London’
by: Richard West
Posted: Tue, 11 Feb 2020 09:48:29 EST
Content: Blog Post / Genre: Event
First Posted: Mon, 12 Sep 2011

Along to the opening night of Photobook London. A number of people there and a convivial atmosphere. Spoke to Julie Cook and Jonathan Lewis on the stand for the ABC collective. The group was started by Joachim Schmid, who according to Jonathan, spent two weeks looking through the books tagged 'art photography' on Blurb ('the worst two weeks of his life') to find other self publishers whose work he liked. Joachim has written for Source a number of times and produced some art market photography playing cards, as our subscription inserts, some years ago. As with his own work, a lot of group's books recycle found photographs, often from the web, like Mishka Henner's book No Man's Land (which we are reviewing in the next issue of Source ). . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Flea Market Photobooks: Marvellous World of Shells’
by: Annebella Pollen
Posted: Tue, 04 Feb 2020 04:58:01 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Nature

The emergence of shell-bearing molluscs, the opening line of the book declares, was one of the first stages in the evolution of the animal world. Shells, then, go back to the very origins of life. Marvellous World of Shells, however, is a 1977 product through and through. The text introduces conchology as a serious site for scholarship as a sub-branch of zoology, but the book’s scientific credentials are scanty. Technical information is given in abundance, but in print so small that it seems designed to be unread. Perhaps as a result of the text’s translation into English, there are clunky turns of phrase from the title onwards, with its absent definite article (the book also exists as Le Monde Merveilleux des Coquillages and Die Wunderbare Welt der Schnecken und Muscheln ). There are also some rather clumsy observations. Shells are often colored, one short sentence bluntly notes. The real purpose of the book, as is evident from the illustrated pages, is visual pleasure. The introduction, for all its vocabulary of operculum and dextrogyrus, betrays its aesthetic interests. In choosing examples, the author confesses, we have been guided primarily by the beauty or originality of shapes, patterns and colors . . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Magnum Landscape’
by: Bill Kirk
Posted: Fri, 31 Jan 2020 06:55:21 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

Magnum Photos, the co-operative agency founded in 1947 by a group of left-thinking photo-journalists, among whom were Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa and George Rodger, soon grew to epitomise the term 'concerned photography' and drew into its ranks the cream of the world's reportage photographers. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Developing Expression’
by: Helen Gulliver
Posted: Fri, 31 Jan 2020 05:24:09 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Medical
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

It is now beginning to be recognised that exposure to the arts has a beneficial effect on people in hospitals. The success of organisations devoted to the use of the arts is documented by testimonials from physicians and patients, and by statistics of accelerated recovery and lower use of pain relieving drugs among those who have access to the arts. (Moss, Linda, Art for Health's Sake, London: Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 1987). . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘What's Your Story?’
by: Ray McKenzie
Posted: Fri, 08 Nov 2019 07:57:39 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

What's Your Story? was a pair of linked exhibitions that ran concurrently in Street Level and Central Station Glasgow, in February this year, the outcome of a series of workshops involving residents from a group of hostels for the homeless. At Street Level, there were portraits of the workshops participants made by Kathleen Little, the project leader, and Andrew Whitaker ; Central Station was devoted to a display of images made by the residents themselves - mostly of themselves - using the skills they had acquired on the project. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Young Unionists’
by: Raymond B. Newman
Posted: Thu, 07 Nov 2019 07:31:11 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

A Portfolio of photographic work by Raymond B. Newman. Published in Issue 11 of Source, Spring Summer 1997. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Memory Memorial’
by: Paul McNally
Posted: Thu, 07 Nov 2019 07:09:04 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

The parallels between a gallery and a mausoleum and their private and personal uses here turn into an unusual metaphor. The need for private contemplation and recollection in a public space, the time to imagine histories that are only yours in the abstract, the impossibility of truly comprehending another's personal experience: the reverence that the gallery imposes on all work regardless of quality. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Track’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Thu, 07 Nov 2019 06:53:15 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Manipulated
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

Clare Langan constructs her own reality through these images. It is a world she has formed through directing, light control, and filming. What becomes important is the whole and the flow of the project rather than an emphasis on any single image. Within this 'whole', sequencing and editing are used effectively to create a pace and structure. It is a relentless rhythm in which we are always moving towards the shifting fuzzy horizons. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Third World on Our Doorstep?’
by: Derek Speirs
Posted: Wed, 06 Nov 2019 06:10:39 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 10 - Winter 1997

The Northern Ireland Council for Travelling People was founded in 1981. Today NICPT is an umbrella group comprising of Travellers, Traveller support Groups and statutory and voluntary organisations, supporting and co-ordinating work with Travellers in their identification of needs, goals, strategies and resources for action. In l996 the government released the Draft Race Relations Legislation for N. Ireland. Anticipating the order's implementation in 1997. NICPT welcomes the recognition of Travellers as an indigenous ethnic minority group, recognised and named in the legislation. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Street Life: Street Children’
by: Paul Smith
Posted: Tue, 05 Nov 2019 18:19:17 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Street
First Published: Issue 10 - Winter 1997

Over five thousand children live on the streets of Guatemala City. Orphaned, abandoned, or runaways everyday they must hustle to survive; relying on begging or petty theft to 'earn' their existence. In a pathetic attempt to fend off the cold and hunger, and escape their own desperate reality, the children sniff glue and solvents. The little plastic bag containing yellow blobs of Reistol (shoemaker's glue) is a street kids emblem - it is an exception rather than a rule to come across a street kid who doesn't clutch a wrinkled bag in a tight fist - a constant companion and arguably the best friend they have on the street. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Questioning the Signals’
by: Aphra Kerr
Posted: Tue, 05 Nov 2019 11:05:58 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Gender
First Published: Issue 10 - Winter 1997

On October 26th a day of seminars was held in the Gallery of Photography, Dublin as part of the festival. We heard some very informative presentations; Victoria Lukens of the Independent Review offered practical tips on how to approach picture editors and Rhonda Wilson, also from the UK, offered advice on how to harness digital technologies. The latter discussion was free of hype, focusing instead on how photographers might usefully access technology, i.e. using the downtime of computer firms. The informal atmosphere of the gathering was conducive to meeting other participants and breaking down barriers, as the publicity material intended. The physical exhibition in the Gallery of Photography in comparison to the seminars was rather uninspiring and disjointed, hampered by the restrictive and unsympathetic design of the gallery itself. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Effort After Meaning’
by: Anselm Gallagher
Posted: Tue, 05 Nov 2019 10:31:36 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 10 - Winter 1997

There is a certain contradiction in offering contemporary colour photographs as personal memories, as Anselm Gallagher does in his eight square prints at Watershed in Bristol, as photographs are obviously contemporary, taken in the 'now'. One cannot photograph a memory. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Bathing Caps’
by: Anne Bjerge Hansen
Posted: Tue, 05 Nov 2019 10:05:02 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

A Portfolio of photographic work by Anne Bjerge Hansen. Published in Issue 9 of Source, Autumn 1996. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 88 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Tue, 05 Nov 2019 09:47:21 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 88 - Winter 2016

It is possible that for years, publishers around the world were producing photobooks and never realised. After all, they didn't even have the word 'photobook' to describe what they were doing. Jose Luis Neves here explains why the word didn't exist in the past and why it may not be adequate to describe the wild variety of books-with-photographsin that we have today. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 99 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 04 Nov 2019 06:48:33 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 99 - Autumn 2019

There are many different ideas wrapped up in our concept of Nature. It is different from us and our culture: irrational, unpredictable and dangerous. Or maybe not as different as all that? As Dorothea Born writes, these concepts are embedded in the images we have used to depict climate change but their power to elicit an emotional response from us is not sufficient to help us understand a global problem. She says that to tackle climate change we will need new conceptions of Nature. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 98 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Tue, 30 Jul 2019 06:27:48 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 98 - Summer 2019

Photographs come into existence for different reasons, many of them nothing to do with the intentions of photographers. Public Relations is a profession that seeks to control the way organisations are understood, although the way this is achieved can be murky. This issue of Source aims to illuminate the influence PR has on the photographs that shape public life. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘No Smoke Without Fire’
by: Sarah Edge
Posted: Thu, 04 Jul 2019 11:55:11 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Political
First Published: Issue 10 - Winter 1997

This publication immediately causes the reader some confusion, as it does not fit readily into any recognisable type of art publication. Whilst it is clearly a book of 'art' photography, it is not a catalogue. It does not document or accompany a specific exhibition of work. Nor is it a publication about the artist or his work, it offers us no information about Willie Doherty, his history or his ideas. The simplest way to describe this publication is an artwork in its own right. In some respects it operates as a kind of visual retrospective of Doherty's more recent works and includes two of his most well known installations; The Only Good One Is A Dead One (1993), nominated for the Turner Prize, and At The End Of The Day (1994) which was purchased by the Arts Council of Great Britain. It also includes a number of reproductions of Doherty's recent colour photographs from 1995. However, it would be incorrect to see this publication as merely illustrating or documenting these earlier works. Instead, because Doherty's work is conceptually led, there has been a translation or transformation of the original work to take into account the different demands of a book format. Moreover, my personal view is that this has added a new and more powerful dimension to some of the original work. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Edge of Europe’
by: E. Michael Desilets
Posted: Thu, 04 Jul 2019 05:35:48 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 10 - Winter 1997

Photographs seldom speak for themselves. This seems particularly true of the work of Anthony Haughey in The Edge of Europe, published to coincide with an exhibition at The Gallery of Photography, Dublin. Though fairly evenly divided between the U.S. and Ireland, from the Bronx to Newtownmountkennedy, this collection of 30 photographs is informed primarily by the depopulation of the Blasket Islands and the emigration of most of the inhabitants to Massachusetts. In the preface by Pat Cooke, a brief memoir by ex-islander Paddy Kearney, the main text by Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole and an afterword by Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht Michael D. Higgins, we are provided with much guidance (in both Irish and English) as to how to 'read' Haughey's photographs. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’
by: David Gepp
Posted: Thu, 04 Jul 2019 04:28:24 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 10 - Winter 1997

A Portfolio of photographic work by David Gepp. Published in Issue 10 of Source, Winter 1997. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 97 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Tue, 16 Apr 2019 07:15:56 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 97 - Spring 2019

The relationship between us, the viewers of photographs, and them, the people in photographs, is a source of constant anguish, in particular about the one-way relationship between the person looking and the person being looked at. But there are genres in which that role is reversed, in which the pictures are dictating the terms, like the 'how to' photograph. The subjects of the pictures may not be looking towards the camera but their actions are discretely presented to the viewer to instruct them. They show the decisive moment or moments at which the technique they illustrate is being enacted. Typically, 'how to' photographs are in step by step sequences so all of the stages of the action can be understood as it progresses. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Ray's a Laugh’
by: Anthony Haughey
Posted: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 20:25:11 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Family
First Published: Issue 10 - Winter 1997

I first encountered Richard Billingham's work, Triptych of Ray, in the exhibition, Who's Looking at the Family? at the Barbican Gallery, London, 1994. Triptych of Ray was a series of grainy black and white melancholic portraits of his alcoholic father Ray, clutching a bottle in the half light of gloom and despair. Reminiscent of an earlier epoch, the photographs were taken as 'preliminary sketches' for painting studies, (Billingham was an art student at Sunderland University). . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Mapplethorpe’
by: Kieran Owens
Posted: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 19:41:10 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 10 - Winter 1997

After many visits to both parts of this retrospective exhibition of photographic works by Robert Mapplethorpe, taken between 1970 and 1989, the words context and intention stand out as requiring some careful consideration. From the present vantage point of 1997, it is impossible for any viewing public to fully grasp the context within which these works were made. This is a problem that exists not only for this show but in fact for every show of any kind. It is hard for us now to believe that an exhibition of impressionist, surrealist, dadist, cubist or any other kind of art could have generated such storms of controversy in their day, but so they did. However, over the passage of time and through repeated exposure to these works they have become utterly familiar to us and we have become utterly comfortable with them, and any outrage expressed then seems now like the reaction of less cultured or less intelligent or less enlightened peoples. As with works from these great movements, the context within which Mapplethorpe's photographs were made is obscure and indefinable, for never will anyone be able to reconstruct the complex web of relationships and events, or of the social, political, religious and cultural mores, that interacted during his creative life and that lead to the production of these works. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Bruce Gilden in conversation with Christine Redmond’
by: Christine Redmond
Posted: Thu, 14 Mar 2019 18:32:13 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Street
First Published: Issue 10 - Winter 1997

CR: Bruce why did you start taking photographs? / BG: I was in college and I decided that I wanted to do something other than go to University, so I took up acting and photography. You have to understand that at that time the film Blowup was out so photography was in vogue. However I had no technical expertise so during the acting course my teacher was absent and his assistant got up and performed a text from Shakespeare. Having a heavy Brooklyn accent I realised acting was not for me. At the same time I was taking a night course in basic photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and when I saw my first print come up in the developer I was hooked. / CR: So what next? / BG: I drove a taxi cab for four years to support my photography and then I found that I was working so hard I had no time for my photographic work, so I quit and I drove a truck for my father working only a few days a week which gave me time. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 96 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 30 Nov 2018 06:30:25 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 96 - Winter 2018

A magazine about photography can encompass many of the most interesting aspects of contemporary life and that is what we have sought to connect with in renewing its design. You will find new columns about fashion, the afterlife of photographic objects and conversations with photographers, of all varieties, about their experience of the world. We maintain our commitment to reviewing exhibitions, books and anything else that defines the evolving photographic culture. We will continue to explore themes - like privacy in this issue - that seem particularly relevant to our current moment. Our attitude to photographs seems to encompass our contradictory feelings about privacy today. We are increasingly intolerant of being photographed in public but ever more willing to expose ourselves in photographs online. This has political, societal and legal consequences that are explored by our interview with Camille Simon and Laura Cunningham's article on the evolving law of privacy. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 95 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Thu, 20 Sep 2018 07:45:33 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 95 - Autumn 2018

Of all the outrages of contemporary political life perhaps the greatest is the apparent disregard for truth, for which we have the new coinage, 'posttruth'. What can we use to oppose this tendency? Facts? That's something photographs should be able to help us with. But are facts the same as the truth? And are photographs a way to provide them? David Bate disentangles this confusing subject with the help of an anteater and a shelf of china. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Road Bowls in Armagh’
by: Brian Lynn
Posted: Mon, 03 Sep 2018 19:08:38 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

The documentary series, once the standard format of photojournalism in the 1950's and 1960's before its virtual demise due to television, is given new life in the show by Andrew Breakey at St. Patrick's Trian in Armagh. In a tightly edited selection of fifteen monochrome images he tells a story of the traditional country game of Bullets (or Road Bowls) which still survives in counties Cork and Armagh. By his discreet approach he has captured a selection of intimate studies which are never intrusive as his subjects always seem totally oblivious of his presence. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Sex Shops’
by: Paul McNally
Posted: Mon, 03 Sep 2018 18:48:49 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Institutional
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

Paul Seawright's present work is shown as part of an untitled group exhibition at the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. He is the only artist represented working with photography as a medium for the exploration of environments and the politics of inhabiting them. This is what Paul Seawright does, his fascination is the human space and the history of people who have occupied it. An especial fascination are those involved in areas or actions of society that will divide and partition people (the viewer?) by the nature of their own morality. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Irelantis’
by: Catherine Duncan
Posted: Mon, 03 Sep 2018 14:12:48 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Photomontage
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

Ever seen the Great Pyramids of Carlingford? Their corn-coloured geometric forms compliment the seemingly half reared nature in which they are planted: their staid elegance points to a new horizon. A jolly red jumpered Irishman contemplates the scene with satisfaction. His vantage point is ours, the planetary horizon stretches out before him, and he is master of all he surveys. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Weddings, Parties, Anything’
by: David Lee
Posted: Mon, 03 Sep 2018 11:40:31 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Family
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

Remember slatternly Janet in 'Living Rooms', Waplington's first book? Well she's back. She still parades her 'Kev' and 'Ian' tattoos on her popeye-like arms and smokes nonstop, and if I'm not mistaken she's done us a favour and shed some weight, which means that she's now within spitting distance of seventeen stone. She's also married a black man called Clive, who looks generally seedy and peers out suspiciously from what might be the squashed face of a former boxer. Overflowing ash trays and several night's empties are still strewn around the living room floor and that piece of orange peel, which seems oddly familiar from the previous book, has now taken root under the gas fire. The wallpaper has changed from plain naff to a jazzy chevron (Clive's personal touch I'll warrant). Apart from the wedding, for which Janet ill-advisedly squeezed her tyres into a white satin dress, and following which there was a Bacchanalian session down the club, everything is much as it always was on this Nottingham council ESTate. Meaning that short of a lottery win its inmates will die here. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘In the Hunter's Space’
by: Nicholas Allen
Posted: Mon, 03 Sep 2018 10:26:01 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Historical
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

Hannah Collins impressive collection of work is ideally situated in the Irish Museum of Modern Art. It hangs along a corridor and is spaced through a series of anterooms. All are white. The main images are approximately three by eight metres, black and white and striking. The first is coincidentally the one that entices the most. Entitled 'The Hunters Space - In the Course of Time - The Road to Auschwitz' it details (and for once this word is entirely correct, so large is the image that even the smallest of branches seem to be dangling in your face) a deserted scene of bending road and naked tree, half covered in snow. At first you feel like you're standing there, in the picture. Then the planes of reference make you disorientated. The right quarter of the image is cordoned off by the twist of a road which forms a semicircle whose other half can only be guessed at. Does it indeed go anywhere? Buildings rest on the left hand side. They are hyper-real as the image has been treated to allow little contrast, thus making the sky the same colour as the snow covered ground. There is a curious 3-D effect about the whole scene. The more you stare at it, the more the darker parts seem to bulge out at you. And all this without the aid of hallucinogens. This form of contact with the image before you is not sustained through the entire exhibition and with good reason. There is a subtext to the show which chronicles the traces of the lost and dispossessed. When this touches upon the still sore ground of the Holocaust such a drawing into the scene may be at best only a pastiche and at worst voyeuristic. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Clive Landen’
by: Martin McCabe
Posted: Sun, 02 Sep 2018 17:40:58 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Death
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

The relationship between death and representation have always been profoundly and intimately intertwined. Never more so than with the emergence of the photomechanical apparatus in the middle of the last century. So much so that some early photographic processes were called Thanatography derived from the Greek word Thanatos meaning 'death'. And some of the most startling images from that same period were images of the dead. They exemplified what Barthes would later go on to say about photography it must be described in relation to death. This particular preoccupation has undergone a re-emergence in the last decade or so led by photographers like Witkin and more recently in Luc Sante's collection of forensic photography from the turn of the century amongst others. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Maguire's Barbers, Belfast’
by: Paul Quinn
Posted: Mon, 27 Aug 2018 12:54:46 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

A Portfolio of photographic work by Paul Quinn. Published in Issue 9 of Source, Autumn 1996. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘World Press Photo’
by: Mary Fitzpatrick
Posted: Thu, 09 Aug 2018 08:33:06 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Photojournalism
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

Lucian Perkins, the winner of the 1996 World Press Photo of the year award sums up his attitude towards photography as an artform, he goes on to say that he does not distinguish between documentary and fine art photography, in his view they have been merging in recent years. His 'Photo of the Year' is unusual but very beautiful. It is not the dramatic 'big picture' which we may have expected but is, rather, a quiet and reflective image. It shows a small Chechen boy, his palms pressed hard against the back window of a bus through which he is gazes, his face contorted with intense and almost tangible anxiety. A fleeting moment of contact between the boy and the photographer. It was a face that symbolised the all that he had seen. Symbolised all that Perkins had seen? Perhaps the boys face encapsulated all that the child himself had seen in the Chechen war. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Grapevine’
by: Leon McAuley
Posted: Thu, 09 Aug 2018 06:49:40 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

What prompted Susan Lipper to document the lives of the denizens of grapevine Hollow, West Virginia, between 1988 and 1993? Well, according to her introduction, she didn't. The book is, she says, not so much an effort to document, as the collusion of my experiences... - a revealing construction in itself - ...the tangible world and the nature of photography. Really? . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Unwords’
by: Stephen Bull
Posted: Wed, 08 Aug 2018 18:38:26 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Photomontage
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

In some ways the work of photomonteur Peter Kennard has turned full circle. When he began making politically charged paintings in the sixties he seemed to be aiming for the small elite of a gallery audience. The escalation of the Vietnam war and the revival of a radical European Left in 1968 led him to reconsider his medium. Paint retained a seductive quality, perhaps inappropriate for the revolutionary revelations of unsavoury events that he now felt should be shown. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Portraits’
by: Christopher Taylor
Posted: Mon, 06 Aug 2018 18:39:26 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

The spectator is charged with acknowledging the representational value of the portrait. This does not mean simply deciding whether the portrait looks like the subject or not. This possibility (of a resemblance) is more appropriate in other artistic disciplines. In photographs, all the subjects look like themselves, even if only the spectators are able to recognise them, or to admit to their existence due to the characteristics of the medium itself. But it is more than that. The real problem is not the resemblance, but the recognition of authenticity. When the spectator accepts, by a particular gesture, a look,, or whatever, that the person in the photograph is 'really him or her', then the portrait can truly be considered a success. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Confrontation - Portraiture’
by: Pere Formiguera
Posted: Mon, 06 Aug 2018 17:36:14 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

The portrait is, above all, the artistic manifestation of an instant of ritual confrontation, the discovery of another person and a three sided dialogue. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Rencontres d'Arles’
by: Christophe Chabot
Posted: Mon, 06 Aug 2018 17:15:51 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Multi-Genre
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

Since 1970 the town of Arles in the South of France has during the first week of July been a place where people involved with photography meet. It is the home of Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie . . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Dove’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Fri, 03 Aug 2018 11:59:13 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 83 - Summer 2015

It is over ten years since Unilever launched the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. In response to global research showing that only 2 percent of women considered themselves beautiful, the campaign kicked off in 2004 with a series of billboard photographs by Rankin that showed 'real women' (i.e. not models), whose age, ethnicity or body shape transgressed western stereotypes of beauty, all looking gorgeous in their unique ways. The captions aimed to challenge assumptions by offering a choice of descriptions for an online vote: 'Wrinkled or Wonderful?', 'Fat or Fit?', and so on. The campaign received a great deal of media attention, and has continued to reinvent itself over the last decade in ways that provoke debate and comment. It has incorporated a range of videos (including the prize-winning Evolution, which shows how media images of beauty are created), publicity stunts (a recent one involved inviting women to enter workplaces and shops through doors marked either 'average' or 'beautiful' - unsurprisingly most chose 'average') and institutional alliances: as The Dove Movement for Self-esteem it has worked, for example, with organisations such as the Girl Scouts and Girl Guides. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Emirates’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Fri, 03 Aug 2018 10:38:45 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 82 - Spring 2015

This extraordinary advertisement for Emirates airline has been running in recent colour supplements. It is unsettling in a great many ways, some of which are built into the ad itself, while others are about the knowledge we bring to it. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Tiffany’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Wed, 01 Aug 2018 16:02:11 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 81 - Winter 2014

This ad for Tiffany engagement rings - running in glossy magazines around Valentine's Day - is a perfect example of a continuing line of advertisements, almost all for jewellery or perfume, that use black and white photography to signify romance in particular ways. These significations draw on a photographic history which, whether or not it is actually known to contemporary audiences, has been made familiar as a kind of all-purpose visual reference by advertisements themselves. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Advertising: Panasonic’
by: Judith Williamson
Posted: Wed, 01 Aug 2018 09:47:02 EST
Content: Column / Genre: Advertising
First Published: Issue 80 - Autumn 2014

A few years ago in this magazine I wrote about a Panasonic camcorder ad that showed the image of a girl flying a kite, with the slogan 'Treasure the memory as much as the moment'. The child was smiling over her shoulder towards the camera - in other words, at the person behind it. The main issue I raised at the time concerned the implication of responding to a child's activity with a camera, rather than with actual attention: it was troubling that the potential 'memory' represented by the recording was presented as more important than the lived 'moment'. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 94 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Sun, 08 Jul 2018 12:18:24 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 94 - Summer 2018

A hot spot of recent politics has been how digital platforms have become the conduit and corrupter of debate. In the recent referendum on abortion law in Ireland however, the old fashioned poster became a key battleground for each opposing side to put across their messages. Orla Fitzpatrick, Ann Curran and Fiona Loughnane followed the campaign and here examine the strategies of both sides and in particular the way they employed photographs to persuade the public. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Landscape of Remembrance’
by: Brian Lynn
Posted: Mon, 23 Apr 2018 16:21:32 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 7 - Spring 1996

In 1986 Jan Voster visited the North-West of Ireland, started taking photographs and so began a journey- a journey back to a past of which he knew nothing but was determined to sift out, discover and somehow capture. In that capturing he has shown us what we haven't seen for ourselves. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Pavel Büchler’
by: Nicholas Allen
Posted: Sun, 22 Apr 2018 16:59:38 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 7 - Spring 1996

Answers to questions of identity don't come easily with Pavel Büchler. He remarks that what led me getting involved in Art was precisely the possibility of working around... uncertain boundaries. The images which are News Flash suggest an outline of a head with the face blurred out by yellow and purple circular flashes. You are left wondering who this is (or was), where is she from (or is) and what she was doing. Immediately then the viewer is thrown into a complex of questions which are as much about the process of observation itself as they are to do with the decoding of this specific work. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Entre-Temps’
by: Padraig Murphy
Posted: Sun, 22 Apr 2018 15:48:56 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Photojournalism
First Published: Issue 7 - Spring 1996

Having suffered a personal breakdown, Roland Schneider, a professional photographer, entered a psychiatric hospital in the summer of 1987. He subsequently used the camera in an attempt to come to terms with his illness. What emerged was a set of intriguing images, first exhibited in the hospital in 1988 and later printed in the book Entre-Temps . . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Our Special Day’
by: Michael Crone
Posted: Sun, 22 Apr 2018 09:14:34 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Family
First Published: Issue 7 - Spring 1996

The exhibition, entitled Our Special day, by Lawrence Cassidy showed at the Belfast Exposed gallery in Belfast. Cassidy cites the Ken Loache film Raining Stones, together with an interest in his own family history, as being the main motivational sources for originating the project. The inclusion of an extract from the play A Hero's Life by Terence Cassidy reflects this: . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Triúr Ban’
by: Lynne Connolly
Posted: Thu, 19 Apr 2018 10:43:23 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Performance
First Published: Issue 7 - Spring 1996

Triúr Ban brings together the work of three artists; Cindy Cummings, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and Amelia Stein - respectively a performer, a poet and a photographer. It would however be more accurate to say that these three artists have collaboratively produced what is Triúr Ban. In this instance Triúr Ban is a book of poetry and black and white images of performance. But that's only the beginning. As Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith states in the foreword, their work is to some degree about the process of collaboration itself, about the perils and rewards of labouring together . . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Cultural Sniping’
by: Amanda McKittrick
Posted: Wed, 18 Apr 2018 18:46:07 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Political
First Published: Issue 6 - Winter 1995

The concerns of Jo Spence's work were wide - covering aspects of class and gender, identity and family, health and bodies. She came from a working-class background and began work as a commercial photographer. In the early seventies she became involved in education and political work using photography as a tool for change. She worked with a number of groups such as the Hackney Flashers and Half Moon Photography Workshop in London. Her life and work changed when she began studying for a degree in the theory and practice of photography, and with the discovery of her breast cancer. Together with Rosy Martin she developed a way of using photography as a personal therapy tool, producing photographs that allowed the subject to control the image and represent their own painful and often previously unexpressed feelings and ideas. From the early Eighties she used her work to deal with issues that touched her personally - identity, subjectivity, mental and physical health. She published and exhibited widely. Her work was both radical and innovative. It had an important effect on a generation of photographic students and photographers. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Taken Down in Evidence’
by: Eamonn Hughes
Posted: Wed, 18 Apr 2018 18:02:29 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Police
First Published: Issue 6 - Winter 1995

Leo Regan, a newspaper photographer, spent some eighteen months with the Garda to produce this text, divided between interviews with individual gardai and photographs from three locations: the Store Street station in Dublin (whose area includes the notorious and ironically-named Sheriff Street housing ESTate); a border station; and a station in rural Galway. It has to be said that, initially, one is unsure of what one is looking at. Is this photojournalism or documentary? If the former then many of the pictures lack the drama and urgency one would expect. If the latter, then there are the usual worries about participant/observer status. Nor are these merely generalised problems for they are raised directly by Regan's introductory comments. Having missed a photograph because of garda interference he is saved from a possible beating by the shout He's with us. Nevertheless, the hostility and suspicion with which gardai regard the media is still an issue and although Regan was granted access he has had to change the name of the interviewees and even then some of them seem to have placed their jobs on the line by talking to him without express permission. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Shankill Meets Falls’
by: Nicholas Allen
Posted: Wed, 18 Apr 2018 17:23:26 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Political
First Published: Issue 6 - Winter 1995

The exhibition Shankill Meets Falls is described as a community initiative with the primary aim of trying, in the words of the organisers, to dispel the notion that the two cultures within Northern Ireland are widely different. The medium by which to make this connection is photographic and so it is interesting to interpret common signs between the various practices displayed. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Belfast’
by: Jennifer Dempsey
Posted: Wed, 18 Apr 2018 12:59:27 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Commercial
First Published: Issue 4 - Spring 1995

A photographer captures the sights he or she wants to show the rest of the world. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Parallel Realities’
by: Paul Robinson
Posted: Wed, 18 Apr 2018 12:29:46 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Commercial
First Published: Issue 4 - Spring 1995

Parallel Realities, published last November by Blackstaff Press with sponsorship from the IDB, ABSA, and Black Bush, has all the ingredients of a nice coffee-table book. It also has all the ingredients of a nice advertising campaign. But if we take the photographs within and mount them on a gallery wall the ingredients lack something; the resulting taste is bland and insipid, the viewer craves something more. It's a matter of context. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 93 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Sun, 15 Apr 2018 19:20:05 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 93 - Spring 2018

We conduct experiments to ESTablish knowledge about the world. The method is compelling because it is repeatable and can be tested. It puts our knowledge on a firm footing. But it can also produce unexpected and counter-intuitive results and contradict our experience or beliefs. In this issue we publish the work of photographers and artists that, in different ways, use experimental methods to make us see the world differently. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 92 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Wed, 06 Dec 2017 07:01:02 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 92 - Winter 2017

What is art photography? There's certainly a lot more of it about but it's hard to nail down the difference between this special variety and the common or garden kind of photography. Even photographs that you might suppose were definitely not art, like family snapshots or old photojournalism are liable to appear in art galleries. We have asked three writers to answer this question and they have given us different answers. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 41 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 27 Nov 2017 06:05:46 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 41 - Winter 2004

In the last issue of Source, David Bate asked what had happened to Postmodernism and discovered that it had been replaced with a new form of Realism. In this issue he describes this neorealism and shows how its strategies are present on television, in newspapers and in art galleries. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 42 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 27 Nov 2017 06:00:45 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 42 - Spring 2005

The body has been a key area of debate in photography over the last twenty years. Jane Fletcher looks again at the photographic nude, still a favourite of photographic publishers but no longer a respected genre in the art gallery. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Island Camera’
by: John Shade
Posted: Thu, 23 Nov 2017 07:29:57 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Travel
First Published: Issue 2 - Autumn Winter 1992

Jim Bennett has been a major figure in Photography circles in Ireland for many years. Those who have taken the traditional route through Art Education in the Northern Ireland i.e. Foundation Art & Design at the University of Ulster, or the Ulster Polytechnic, will doubtless have been guided by Jim in their embryonic stages of photographic development. Jim has photographed and subsequently exhibited many dramatic images of his native land. In more recent years he has spent prolonged periods turning his camera on the Islands of Greece and Spain. Avid travellers will have seen much of this work in various tourist brochures and travel publications. Until now Jim has waited patiently for the right time to publish a retrospective of his work. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Paul Seawright’
by: Catherine Duncan
Posted: Wed, 22 Nov 2017 10:06:55 EST
Content: Book Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 5 - Summer 1995

Paul Seawright takes photographs of Northern Ireland. He says It is only my interpretation It is the only that gives it away. Here is an accomplished artist, from Belfast, taking photographs of his own country. But who, in common with many others who have tried to make sense of the quagmire of their culture, is reduced to the pathetic qualification only to absolve themselves in case of questions, agreement or offence. Is he not entitled to have an opinion, to make an interpretation? I would urge him to have confidence. Newspaper headlines, editorials, politicians, spokespersons, graffiti, emotive photography and TV footage all shout opinions, thunder interpretations with far less consideration. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 85 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 20 Nov 2017 08:14:48 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 85 - Spring 2016

Anyone who has tried to match the image of a haddock to the noise it makes will tell you that sound and appearance can seem completely unrelated. yet photographs and sound recordings can both testify to an event, or a place, or a personal experience in a similarly compelling way. Photographs are often accompanied by sounds, from the 'click' of a shutter to the spoken recollection of a picture's story. Photography and sound recording are often used in the same situations, be it recording wildlife or surveillance. In both the essays and portfolios, this issue of Source shows some of the way sound and photography relate to one another and suggest the great potenrial for further exploration of this relationship. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 79 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 20 Nov 2017 07:58:05 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 79 - Summer 2014

The question 'Who is the photographer?' suggests two related kinds of answers. The first answer is that the photographer is probably a straight white man. Emma Campbell here writes about women in photography and, setting out the results of her research in plain numbers, shows that women are under represented as photographers in magazines and exhibitions. This disparity was terrible in the 1970s but it's still not good today. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 78 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Mon, 20 Nov 2017 07:54:09 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 78 - Spring 2014

For the past decade there has been much debate about the apparently changed nature of photography as a result of digitisation. This initially concentrated on the malleability of digital pictures but now the most significant effect appears to be the way photographs are being made and exchanged. It is the way digital images can be used rather than the type of images they are, that seems to have changed. Cathal Gurrin is a Lecturer at the School of Computing in Dublin City University. Since 2006 he has worn a digital camera that continuously photographs. He has amassed a huge store of images - a detailed 'digital memory'- that is intended to function as data for further study on how computers can retrieve information from pictures. Colin Graham went to meet Gurrin to find out how the human subject fits into this automated image capturing system. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 39 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 17 Nov 2017 07:30:25 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 39 - Summer 2004

Photographs are often said to be 'transparent' and equated to the experience of seeing. This is an inviting comparison because of the similarity between cameras and eyes but it also conceals the process of framing a picture and the various inversions and reflections that occur through optical devices. Jane Fletcher, writing about Roger Fenton and Stephen Shore, draws our attention to the transformative component of photographic picture making with a large format camera by looking at pictures upside down as they would have been seen on a camera's ground glass. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 38 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 17 Nov 2017 07:26:36 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 38 - Spring 2004

A theme in the recent history of photography has been its definition as a distinctive discipline with university departments and specialist publishers. Over the same period an interest in the medium has also spread to writers working in other areas. In this issue Elizabeth Edwards, Clive Scott and John Taylor writing from the persectives of respectively, Anthropology, Literary Studies and Art History, demonstrate what distinct approaches these disciplines can bring to thinking photography. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 37 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 17 Nov 2017 07:24:24 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 37 - Winter 2003

One role necessary for the production of this magazine is getting copies of pictures to illustrate reviews. While some galleries and publishers are very helpful it is also common for organisations to refuse to supply pictures claiming they do not have permission or a fee will have to be charged. This is indicative of a broader trend that emphasises the publicity value of images rather than the value of public criticism. Ronan Deazley looks at the law regarding the availability of images for review and in particular how this can be constrained by contracts produced to restrict the 'fair usage' of pictures. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 35 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:15:27 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 35 - Summer 2003

On the 6th June Tate Modern will open its bumper exhibition, Cruel and Tender, that sets out to clear away the problematic aspects of the Tate's relationship to the medium and start afresh with fewer inhibitions as to what is suitable for the gallery to exhibit. In 1994 Frances Morris, then responsible for acquisitions at the Tate, was interviewed by Creative Camera about their policy. She said that the Tate would hope to fulfil photographer's expectations when the new Bankside gallery opened. Emma Dexter has co-curated Cruel and Tender. Helen James interviews both Dexter and Morris to discover how they understand the institution's relationship to the medium, why they are showing documentary photography and what their plans are for the future. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 16 Editorial’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:11:24 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 16 - Autumn 1998

To coincide with their forthcoming exhibition at The Gallery of Photography in Dublin we feature work by Patrick McCoy and Garreth McConnell. McCoy's images were made whilst enduring the cramped conditions of working with camera and tripod in the back of West Belfast's Black Taxis. The project conceived as 'an antidote to the spectacular images produced by visiting foreign photojournalists' examines a different aspect of life on the Falls Road. In McConnell's work the faces that emerge from the dark form a group of portraits that explores the artist's ongoing fascination with those on the edge of society. This follows on from his project exploring anti-social behaviour that looked at 'punishment beatings' and drug abuse, which will be on show at the gallery. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 15 Editorial’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:09:12 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 15 - Summer 1998

Meeting with photographers during the portfolio days provides us with useful feed back about the contents of the magazine. These conversations seem to suggest perceptions are polarised into two camps: that we are an 'art photography magazine' or 'a documentary magazine'. These categories are frustratingly vague and at odds with the increasing cross-fertilisation of approaches that informs gallery based work and that appearing in newspapers and magazines. The phrase 'Art photography' is also frequently used to describe any set of images that can not be understood and consumed instantly. We hope to continue to publish work that is challenging and innovative regardless of categories. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 14 Editorial’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:05:07 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 14 - Spring 1998

For the first time we explore the attitudes of six photographers towards the land; examining issues of mapping, geography, personal experience, and sense of place. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 13 Editorial’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:02:26 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 13 - Autumn Winter 1997

In this issue we celebrate Paul Seawright's achievement in winning this year's Glen Dimplex Artists Award for his exhibition Inside Information at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin. Based on unprecedented access to the RUC's operations over a prolonged period these works take a 'behind the scenes' look at the organisations inner workings. We are proud to accompany the photographs with a specially commissioned work from the poet Ciaran Carson, a feature unique to Source. We hope you enjoy this first opportunity to appreciate both these particular pieces together. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 12 Editorial’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 18:59:50 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 12 - Summer Autumn 1997

I always convince myself that each issue is better than the last, building on experience, better planning and increasing contacts with photographers. This progress has finally been complemented through financial backing by Proteus under the EU special support programme for peace and reconciliation. This provides us with two part-time salaries and allows me to finally relinquish my status as sometimes willing volunteer. The funding has also allowed us to invest in our own computer for the design of the magazine and to pay our designer. Staffing the magazine on a volunteer basis for the last three years has been a very unsatisfactory and challenging arrangement. This funding in combination with that continued by the Northern Ireland Arts Council and awarded for the first time by the Southern Ireland Arts council will provide us with increased opportunity and hope. The student work that forms the basis of this issue has been selected from seven different third level courses, located in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The contact ESTablished with the various colleges and their students is another key to our growth. The strength of the work speaks for itself. My hope is to follow the progress of these students as image makers well into the future. To what extent the various courses have equipped them to succeed in this will be the ultimate test of these varying educational environments. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 11 Editorial’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 18:58:12 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 11 - Spring Summer 1997

Taking the photograph out of the gallery and into the community hall might suggest dodgy dog eared prints on manila card but it doesn't have to be. Chris Harrison's quiet and dignified portraits made at the Older Persons Residence in Petworth are a lesson in excellence of presentation and vision. The images are now on permanent display at the community Hall in Lincolnfield were they form a backdrop to local meetings and events. The photographs were the first commission in the Country Life series by Photoworks (Kent) and we publish extracts from the accompanying book publication. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 10 Editorial’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 18:46:12 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 10 - Winter 1997

'Curiosity is probably what drives me more than anything. Pictures, after curiosity, were something I thought I could try to change things with. I do have an axe to grind that's why I bother to take pictures and to write.' The sentiments of Paul Smith are clearly from the 'socially concerned' school of photography. His images from Guatemala depict a harsh living environment and raise questions with the viewer about what possible appropriate response we can have to them. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 9 Editorial’
by: John Duncan
Posted: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 18:42:10 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 9 - Autumn 1996

Andre Felibien in the 17th Century first suggested the use of the term 'portrait' exclusively for likenesses of (certain) human beings. Up until then 'portrait' and 'likeness' could be used to mean pictorial imitation of any kind; animal, vegetable or mineral included. In the pioneering days of photography in the 19th Century the lead in technical development was given by the need to reduce exposure times for making portraits. The 15 or more minutes required in bright sunlight was reduced to less than 60 seconds. In 1842 Francis S. Beatty opened Ireland's first daguerreotype portrait gallery in Belfast. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 91 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 05:17:51 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 91 - Autumn 2017

In 2007 Source started a website called Graduate Photography Online. The site brought together work from different degree courses and, as it was added to each year, created an archive of students' work. As the number of students increased we asked curators, editors and other industry figures to make selections from the work with these recommendations acting as an introduction to each year's graduates. For example, looking through the MA work this year are Thomas Dukes the curator at Open Eye Gallery, Anna Sparham, curator at the Museum of London and Magnum photographer Olivia Arthur. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 90 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Fri, 14 Jul 2017 10:23:46 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 90 - Summer 2017

In this issue we are publishing projects by three photographers who examine their own position in relation to the people and situations that they are photographing. To draw this out we have commissioned interviews with them by people who have a professional or personal connection with their work. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 89 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Wed, 12 Apr 2017 06:27:55 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 89 - Spring 2017

The political upheaval of the last year has been played out and articulated in images, whether it's photographs of the Brexit bus (and its dubious slogans) or the size of the crowd at the Trump inauguration (and its questionable surface area). But this has not just been a matter of a small number of iconic pictures, increasingly, political debate has been mediated through the Internet and one of its chief currencies is images. In the partisan political climate we inhabit a picture and phrase combined (to make a meme) is the ideal way to pithily sum up an argument or skewer an opposing point of view. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 87 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Thu, 22 Sep 2016 07:25:47 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 87 - Autumn 2016

Museums and archives holding photography collections that aim to encompass the history of photography, like the National Media Museum, have been in particular difficulties recently. Meanwhile, those that focus on photography as an art form, like the Tate, have been doing comparatively well. In particular, they have had more success in attracting private backers: patrons willing to give them either money or photographs to enhance their collections. So what are they doing right? Can any museum attract wealthy donors or only those that show art? Will these backers only deal with institutions in London or elsewhere in the UK and Ireland? What do the super-rich expect in return for their gifts? To find out we spoke to an art advisor, a curator and a collector and they explain how contemporary museum patronage works. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 86 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Tue, 07 Jun 2016 11:01:43 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 86 - Summer 2016

The Museum of Modern Art in New York has long been a leader in the world of photography having been an early collector of the medium and having organised many formative exhibitions. There was therefore a flurry of interest when MoMA launched a massive open online course for a general audience entitled Seeing Through Photographs. This is free, can be accessed from anywhere in the world and is led by museum photography curator Sarah Meister. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 84 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Tue, 01 Dec 2015 15:04:58 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 84 - Winter 2015

This special issue includes the work of the winners of the Solas Photography Prize: Michel Le Belhomme, Dara McGrath and Mervyn Arthur. We are publishing their work along with three specially commissioned essays. We are also announcing the winners of the Solas Ireland award: Ciarán Óg Arnold, Enda Bowe, Eamonn Doyle, Emer Gillespie, Shane Lynam, Dara McGrath and Yvette Monahan. The Prize is a partnership between Source and the Gallery of Photography and work from all the winners will be exhibited there from 2 December to 10 January. The Solas Prize is also partnering with Fotohof and the Irish winners' work will be exhibited in Salzburg in April 2016. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘The Metropolitan Tabernacle Belfast’
by: Raymond B Newman
Posted: Mon, 30 Nov 2015 10:45:56 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 5 - Summer 1995

A Portfolio of photographic work by Raymond B Newman. Published in Issue 5 of Source, Summer 1995. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Port Meadow’
by: Adrian Arbib
Posted: Thu, 01 Oct 2015 06:20:15 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 33 - Winter 2002

All the pictures are taken on Port Meadow Oxford, a 400-acre area of common land in the centre of Oxford. It's arguably one of the largest common spaces inside the ring road of any city in the UK. It has been continually grazed for over 2000 years. Originally given to the Freemen of oxford by King Alfred in 900 AD as a gift for fighting the Danes, it remains steeped with history. During the civil war King Charles camped on the meadow as he fled the Parliamentarian forces and the foundations of the battlements can still be seen. In the first world war a flying school practised bombing runs by throwing jars of paint out the planes' cockpits onto a concrete block, which is still there. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Psi Gardener’
by: Peter Finnemore
Posted: Tue, 01 Sep 2015 11:25:35 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 32 - Autumn 2002

This body of work contains some of my most recent images in an ongoing project that explores my family home and garden in Wales. They become sites and backdrops to visually investigate a range of ideas from culture, history, myth, cosmology, memory, autobiography, psychology and spirit. These ideas are amplified and magnified through the transformational and alchemal qualities of photography, light and the mytho-poetic imagination, where the camera can become a bridge to connecting internal and external worlds. The work was shown in Capsule Gallery in Cardiff from 3rd October - 3rd November 2002. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Squidz and the Beautiful Octopus’
by: Mauro Cocilio
Posted: Tue, 25 Aug 2015 16:28:50 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 36 - Autumn 2003

Based at The Albany Theatre Deptford, London The Beautiful Octopus Club is run by and for people with learning disabilities. The club was initiated by the arts organisation Heart 'n Soul who also run the Squidz Club which is aimed at 14-25 year olds. This is a space where disabled people meet every few months to take part in educational activities, dance the 'big hits' and perform live during an open microphone session. Going into the club nights I was interested in producing a series of portraits of people being out and having a good time in an environment where difference isn't different. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘I Wonder Whether Cows Wonder’
by: Keith Arnatt
Posted: Tue, 25 Aug 2015 13:46:39 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Nature
First Published: Issue 36 - Autumn 2003

The first indication they had returned was the sight of a black and white cow's back appearing just above a roadside hedge. The strong markings of the back punctuating the bright green landscape were visually quite shocking. I took a photograph to record this dramatic effect and to remind me of the pleasure it gave to realise the cows had returned to where they 'belonged'. Their prolonged absence from the landscape had been due to the recent foot and mouth epidemic. Later reflections led me to consider the idea of taking further photographs of cows. Though I had no clear idea why, I began to look for cows and photograph them. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 83 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Sun, 23 Aug 2015 10:49:37 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 83 - Summer 2015

It is a common occurrence to encounter a familiar photograph in an unexpected setting. If we had time to think about it we might ask how different it was from the way we had seen the picture before. How much do we know about the circumstances in which a picture was made and first published anyway? What difference does this context make to the way we understand a photograph? Does a photojournalistic image retain much of the encounter that created it once 50 years have passed and it has become an album cover or a fridge magnet? Ian Walker had just such an encounter with a Don McCullin photograph and has retraced the the steps of the photograph and its photographer to answer these questions. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Interfering with the Negative’
by: Richard West
Posted: Thu, 20 Aug 2015 16:30:33 EST
Content: Interview / Genre: Manipulated
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

VS: We've got to the early 80s. I think the start of the change was a series I took of Belfast zoo. I went along with the family - with the camera - as I always do, to take some family snaps. I was really appalled to see the conditions the monkeys were living in; behind glass, dirty and bored out of their skulls; really depressing stuff. So I took a lot of photographs of the monkeys. Some weeks later I developed the film and I just couldn't believe what was on it. For the first time ever what I had seen was there, I just couldn't believe it. I printed them up, I was quite happy with them in black and white and decided that they were good enough to be shown in an art gallery. I toned some of them and made a blue mark on one of them, because I happened to have a piece of blue crayon in my hand. Then I put a mark on another one. At that time the Octagon gallery asked me to put in some work and I submitted these. A show called the Best of Belfast. I think there might have been six hung in that show. Everybody liked them, they looked really bad! I say really bad, Best of Belfast was a sort of contradiction; I don't think anyone really called them that - that looked at them. People liked them as images. So that was the start. / RW: So we're in about 1980, had you taken any photographs before you took the series in the zoo? / VS: My mother was a great photographer, she was an amateur photographer but she loved cameras, she always bought the automatic, instant cameras; good amateur cameras with a built in flash and so on. Anyone who walked through the door she'd photogaph them. Having quite a lot of brothers and sisters and brothers and sisters on my father's side, an awful lot of cousins and aunts and uncles; people were always calling at the house and she photographed all of them. They are all in my attic now, I must wade through them some time. She really had a lot of photographs. So my mother would have been an influence and I would have taken family snaps as well. I took some photographs at the art college but they weren,t considered anything, the lecturers never looked at them or cared about them. I was there to paint and that was that. 1 / RW: So when did you start caring about photographs? . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Day of Action, Bangor’
by: Victor Sloan
Posted: Thu, 20 Aug 2015 12:24:41 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Manipulated
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

A Portfolio of photographic work by Victor Sloan. Published in Issue 26 of Source, Spring 2001. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 32 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Thu, 20 Aug 2015 08:53:25 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 32 - Autumn 2002

What are you looking at when you look at a portrait? Stefanie Grebe traces the modern definition of portraiture back to the Renaissance. In this definition a photograph is decisively a portrait if an idea of the sitter's character is conveyed by the picture. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘From ESToril to Firmount’
by: Martina Clawson
Posted: Thu, 20 Aug 2015 07:25:48 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Family
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

From ESToril to Firmount is an autobiographical assemblage of images centred around the family home. Both my Mother and Father are remarried with young children from these new relationships. I am interested in exploring their family lives. The raw material has come from foraging through their family albums and from my photographs and video footage. The edited work cuts between images of domestic interiors and the family. The camera tentatively negotiates and reveals the family. The work was on show at The Conway Mill, Conway Street, Belfast from 13th June - 22nd June 2001. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘I Am My Mother's Daughter’
by: Ursula Burke
Posted: Wed, 19 Aug 2015 16:59:24 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Family
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

This work attempts to explore the worlds of my mother and my daughter, and my relationship to the both of them. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

Portfolio
by: Deirdre Power
Posted: Wed, 19 Aug 2015 08:24:42 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

These images were made after a number of years working in O'Hanlon's Bar in Astoria, New York. I gained the trust and friendship of these men through my job as a bartender. The men were either happily divorced or desperate to get married. They granted me access to the private worlds of their apartments and allowed me to produce the following set of portraits. The work was on show at Tiskel Arts Centre in Cork in June 2001. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Like Father, Like Son’
by: Joseph Duggan
Posted: Mon, 17 Aug 2015 10:27:49 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Staged
First Published: Issue 27 - Summer 2001

Our current consumer society confronts images of constructed worlds on a daily basis. I am fascinated by photographs in advertising, saturated with fantastical, idealised, apparently 'normal' views of life. The series of work Like Father Like Son, explores masculine ideals. These photographs depict various 'real-life' scenarios presumed to occur between a man and his young child in 'normal', daily life. The youth and man are played by a child-mannequin and myself respectively. Their tone is deliberately romantic, and the situations portrayed are easy to recognise. My hope is that these works challenge what people believe they see in photographs. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Relentless Landscapes’
by: Niamh Ann Kelly
Posted: Thu, 13 Aug 2015 08:17:45 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

In her exhibition Too Dark for Night, at the Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, Clare Langan has mounted an exhibition that seeks to explore the nature of the desert, in a way that seems to mirror Coehlo's description' The exhibition features a short film and a series of photographic prints, stills from the film. It is the display of these prints, though they are individually of merit, which provides the only weak link in this presentation as they are viewed en route to the film and serve in that context to reduce the potential impact of the main work. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Equivocation and Renewal’
by: Siún Hanrahan
Posted: Thu, 13 Aug 2015 06:43:26 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Conceptual
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

Martina Corry's Photogenic Drawings exhibition offers the viewer surfaces in which areas of deep shadow dissolve into a pale undulating expanse, and soft shifting tones are punctuated by a busy crinkling. But, and this may be disconcerting in a photographic exhibition, there is no 'thing' for the viewer to see. No thing has had its likeness taken, there is no scene to be discerned through the photographs. There is only the photographic surface to attend to. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Re-enter Ophelia’
by: Stefanie Grebe
Posted: Thu, 13 Aug 2015 05:44:47 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Religious
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

Extreme Unction - From the Ophelia Room by Abigail O'Brien is the fifth installation in her series Sacraments. The series relates to the Catholic convention of the Seven Sacraments, with the Fifth Sacrament being the Extreme Unction. The exhibition combines a small photograph and ten large-format photo works with five glass cases containing small flower embroideries stitched by the artist, a sound-piece and a thawing urn moulded from ice. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Performance and Photography’
by: Dougal McKenzie
Posted: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 08:40:19 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Performance
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

Perhaps the first 'set up' occurred when Yves Klein performed The Painter of Space Hurls Himsetf into the Void in Paris in 1960. Throwing himself from a high wall, he then had the tarpaulin bearers removed from the recorded image and presented the altered photograph as a truthful statement. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Seeing Through the Comfort Blanket’
by: Colin Darke
Posted: Tue, 11 Aug 2015 10:49:17 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Gender
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

Phil Collins' Face Value is made up of five parts - four series of photographs and a four-monitor video installation. Collins says that the theme running through the show is its critique of masculinity. This is true, but I feel it reaches beyond this to encompass a broader observation of human consciousness. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Aesthetics in the Cyborg Gallery’
by: Tracey Heatherington
Posted: Tue, 11 Aug 2015 05:41:27 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Scientific
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

What does 'science' look like? Pictures of the laboratory, its human protagonists, its instrumentation and its objects of knowledge come to us from fictional genres, textbooks, newscasts and popular magazines. When we look for classic models of scientific practice we may think of the gentlemen of the Royal Society in Victorian England, describing their experiments in the refined society of the drawing room, or the mad scientists of old horror movies, whose intellectual pursuits are profoundly antisocial. What we take for granted about the relationship between science and society, with all its possible utopic and dystopic transformations, is ultimately fixed in these images at large in the cultural imagination. Inasmuch as we expect science to shape the ways we live and work in the future, our visions of that future have changed along with our changing visions of science. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Metropoli’
by: Colin Graham
Posted: Mon, 10 Aug 2015 05:25:04 EST
Content: Feature / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

When cities change they create and multiply nostalgias. What was once the shock of the materially new accretes layers of its own over the years. Buildings, corners, junctions and doorways become smeared with the ends and beginnings of moods and extraordinary stories, or just the comforting repetition of everyday life. By erasing these smuts of time, the new building or the fresh, open-planned space can look like the embarrassed expression on a sheepish unknown face, with a strangeness which is an abomination to the city's ease with its own complexity. By our stage in city life the sight of the new has a superficial confidence, but it is always in danger of being overwhelmed by the spectres of those nostalgic pasts, which call it to account, challenging it to belong to the city, to either create its own history quickly, or refute the city's pasts for the sake of the future. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Metropoli’
by: John Davies
Posted: Mon, 10 Aug 2015 04:18:06 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Landscape
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

John Davies's photographs of Belfast, part of his Metropoli project, include what appears to be the ultimate in Belfast nostalgia; one of Harland & Wolff's cranes seen from the top of other, and the city in the background. Davies's images have the initial appearance of superficiality, yet their uncanniness and perception grows with a lingering gaze, and the photographs take on a hazy, shimmering appearance that questions our own ways of looking at the industrial landscape. Davies takes us to the edge, his elevated position as seeing eye brings on a kind of urban vertigo. ln the Harland & Wolff shot Belfast fades away into a silvery palette and becomes a cloud city. The yard's own once vastly peopled spaces are now the site of an impending grand dereliction, and the crane is a lonely skeletal structure, splay-legged and graceful. Above it the city is apparently supported on its beam, but the clouds move against the viewing eye and the city is actually being squeezed into the sky. Whatever kind of new day this suggests, it leaves behind the sense of a yesterday which has been hollowed out; this is, foremost, a photograph of the unused space beneath the crane, pointed to by the striking lines of the shed which in turn supports the beam. The yard's past is irretrievable, this shot implies, and its hold over the city is now only, and at best, an architectural anomaly. Even this dominance is undermined in another of Davies's images, looking across the river towards the new odyssey complex, in which the two H & w cranes stand at the edge of the image with the appearance of dutifully invited but unfashionable guests at an opening night. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Bird Men’
by: Audrey Flynn
Posted: Fri, 07 Aug 2015 08:01:38 EST
Content: Portfolio / Genre: Portraiture
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

A Portfolio of photographic work by Audrey Flynn. Published in Issue 26 of Source, Spring 2001. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘An Awkward Proximity with Nature’
by: Fiona Kearney
Posted: Thu, 06 Aug 2015 06:31:33 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

Paul Seawright's recent exhibition at the Douglas Hyde Gallery continues the artist's enquiry into the borderlands of contemporary society. The overtly political photographic series that defined Seawright's early career have been replaced by a more generic representation of space, the study of an intermediate ground caught between city, suburb and countryside. The photographs in The Map could have been taken anywhere in the Western World. The same concrete, earth and skeletal trees are to be found in every encounter between the rural and the built environment. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Issue 26 Editorial’
by: The Editors
Posted: Thu, 06 Aug 2015 06:03:07 EST
Content: Editorial / Genre: Publishing
First Published: Issue 26 - Spring 2001

Photography has often been seen as having a dual nature; part art, part science. In this issue we have two essays that look at photography in the scientific domain. Tracey Heatherington discusses the way science is pictured in a popular science magazine and the implications this has for the way science is understood in the broader culture. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘A Moving Display Cabinet’
by: Richard West
Posted: Wed, 05 Aug 2015 06:42:30 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Street
First Published: Issue 19 - Summer 1999

Tom Wood has been photographing around Liverpool for over fifteen years from buses and bus stops. His subject might be the changing face of urban Britain (from black and white to colour), people on pavements or the fortunes of Liverpool but his manner appears somewhat oblique. His working method involved exposing a large amount of film over a long period from which the final work was then edited. If the ratio of film exposed to printed pictures is anything to go by these must be carefully considered images. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Between Image and Text’
by: Siún Hanrahan
Posted: Wed, 05 Aug 2015 05:46:09 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Architectural
First Published: Issue 19 - Summer 1999

Gerard Byrne's show at Catalyst Arts in Belfast consists of four large, untitled colour prints on aluminium accompanied by a four-scene audio drama, 'Treatment', made in collaboration with Sarah Pierce. The photographs are of unoccupied office spaces at night, taken from outside. The audio drama presents what seem to be snippets of a pulp fiction plot. The spaces Byrne presents and his visual decisions in presenting them are unremarkable. Other than discerning that each of the photographs was taken through a window, our perception is not challenged. As Sontag observed, 'What it once took a very intelligent eye to see, anyone can see now'. So what are we being asked to look at? One possibility suggested by this particular juxtaposition of images and audio drama is that the relationship of image to reference be superseded. As a kind of caption, this fragmented, slapstick drama indicates that the photographs are no longer expected to 'speak for truth'. The relationship between image and 'text' invites imaginative projection into the image rather than beyond it to the world. . . [ Full Article ▸]

Source - Issue  -  -  - Click for Contents

 View Article ▸

‘Remnants of The Conflict’
by: Andrea Lange
Posted: Tue, 04 Aug 2015 05:33:10 EST
Content: Review / Genre: Documentary
First Published: Issue 19 - Summer 1999

In the small space of the gallery I am surrounded by Anthony Haughey's large, square-format colour photographs. They were taken during the recent armistice, and show the no man's land between the borders of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. . . [ Full Article ▸]