In Transit

Hereford Photography Festival

2011-10-22T07:31:00.000+01:00

Time & Motion Studies: New documentary photography beyond the decisive moment

Curated by Simon Bainbridge

Saturday 22nd October – Saturday 26th November

Tuesday to Friday 10am – 5pm; Saturday 10am – 4pm

Hereford Museum & Art Gallery, Broad Street, Hereford, HR4 9AU

Time & Motion Studies presents the works of five photographers, each the result of deliberate and sustained observation. But more than that, each employs a carefully thought-out strategy for their study, a methodology by which to transcribe and communicate ideas about the world, tackling subjects that aren’t always obviously photogenic. For the photographers in the exhibition, the ideas they are trying to communicate take prescience over aesthetic concerns, although these remain important, both in terms of engaging viewers and in contributing to the development of a wider photographic language.

The festival gives me an opportunity to show these works, five excellent examples of the diversity of contemporary documentary practice, and all of which have appeared inBritish Journal of Photograph, some in the recent past, which I hope the photography crowd will enjoy seeing in the flesh, some of it exhibited for the first time anywhere. But the festival attracts a wider public than just the photography crowd, particularly at the Hereford Museum & Art Gallery, and for these visitors I hope to give a flavour of what photography can be and what it can say, beyond the traditional idea of the artist photographer as someone wandering the earth communing with nature. And by showing five very different approaches, I hope to expose the photographers behind the images, to get viewers thinking about how they position themselves – both physically, embedding themselves into situations, and in terms of negotiating themselves into spaces – to make their pictures.

In the case of Donald Weber, that’s a very uncomfortable space. Having befriended a Ukrainian policeman whose career was on the rise, he spent years negotiating access to the interrogation room the officer spent much of his time, gaining confessions from mostly petty criminals. Waiting for the moment of confession, the results are a terrifying insight into the justice system, but also, a defining point of departure for the subjects – a cathartic experience sometimes – after which life may never be the same again.

Robbie Cooper exemplifies the increasing convergence between still and moving images, using the first digital camera that truly delivers both, in high resolution. Technology is also at the heart of his subject matter, which is concerned with how our identities are becoming wrapped up in new virtual territories – in this case, capturing animated faces close up through as his subjects engage with computer games and other screen-based worlds. Manuel Vasquez also touches on technology, particularly surveillance culture, in his montages that splice together different moments in time. Captured in largely anonymous public places, they capture the anxiety as well as a sense of spectacle within the spotlight of this constant observation.

George Georgiou is also working with sequential imagery. He is interested in the continued influence Russia plays on its former Soviet neighbours, and how this is manifested in the daily lives of ordinary people, capturing them in sequences shot from the same vantage point. His installation at this year’s festival is his most ambitious realisation of this approach, and is the first time he has presented a work on such a scale. His partner and travelling companion Vanessa Winship takes an altogether different approach. Where as Georgiou remains largely hidden to his subjects, she places her camera in such a way as to invite her subjects to present themselves. She seeks a direct connection, and somehow manages to capture the complexity of this dialogue in the directness and vulnerability of their gazes. Putting them together in the same show, I aim to demonstrate that a photograph is not so much the result of what’s in front of the camera, rather than the motives, instincts and ideas of the person behind it.

Time & Motion Studies also refers to this year’s festival theme of motion, a concept I struggled with at first (after all, photography is all about distilling moments into single frames), until I thought about this idea of the photographer waiting, quiet and still, capturing what before his or her camera. It also got me thinking about one of the most enduring concepts in photography, now nearly 60 years old – “The Decisive Moment”, as termed by Henri Cartier-Bresson. In it’s most simple form, the idea was that every image of a “stolen moment” had it’s own decisive moment, a split-second capture in which “simultaneously and instantaneously the recognition of a fact and the rigorous organisation of visually perceived forms [expressed and signified] that fact”.

It’s not a very fashionable concept anymore (especially when you think about the Becher School photographers who have dominated in the past 25 years, with their monumental images, largely of scenes that denote no single important moment of time). But a sense of the right moment pervades in photography nonetheless, along with photography’s pictorial visual language. Cooper has to decide where to pull the stills from his motion, Weber looks for a moment of confession, and even Georgiou, who presents multiple takes on a time and place, edits from hundreds more moments.

The Decisive Moment was a product of a particular time, when newspapers and magazines were the primary outlet for photographers’ work, a medium through which they could speak to hundreds of thousands of readers. And up until relatively recently that remained the case for anyone with documentary concerns; photographers making their names on smaller titles before hopefully working their way up to bigger commissions on bigger and more prestigious publications.

But there are no big commissions these days, and few photographers can earn a proper living making interesting work for newspapers and magazines anymore. There simply isn’t the budget; a situation that would seem to point to more straightened times, were it for the fact that they are still prepared to pay huge sums for images of celebrity. You can blame it on dumbing down, or the deep conservatism of publishers, or the internet, which has helped drive down the price of professional photography to unsustainable levels through the digital distribution of cheap images.

For photographers the end of print is a reality, at least regards to newspapers and magazines. (On the festival’s opening weekend, Self Publish Be Happy will present a flourishing counter-trend, showcasing the work of independent book publishers who still find vital express in printed matter.) But these publications never really gave them real freedoms to express their points of view, and in their absence, photographers are searching for news ways to communicate with audiences, free from the editorial confines of newspaper dictat.

Although they operate in uncertain times, these five photographers present us with clear and articulate takes on the world. And if such different voices and approaches can sit side-by-side so easily, isn’t that a sign that photography is maturing, rather than a medium in peril?

Simon Bainbridge

Vanessa Winship: Georgia, 2009-10

Donald Weber Interrogations: Big Zone, Small Zone

Manuel Vasquez: Traces

Robbie Cooper Immersion

George Georgiou The Shadow of The Bear, 2009-10

George Georgiou The Shadow of The Bear, 2009-10: installation detail

New Blog site for the next year

2011-10-12T07:21:00.001+01:00

I will not be posting very often on this blog site over the next year as I will be going a new blog with Vanessa on our travels through the USA.

We are going to attempt to keep a daily stream of posts of our encounters, through text, photos and video.

A brief intro to the blog below and the link

The Map is Not the Territory

Vanessa Winship & George Georgiou

An Exploration of the USA by car, by plane, by train, by bus by foot ....

The title for the blog came from an email conversion I had with a friend as we were preparing for this extended project into the USA.

ME: So I try to prepare for this big trip to the States, it seems like a strange thing to be doing now...
I have a huge wall map to make it feel more physical ..but I don't have a free wall to put it on so I must grapple with it on my desk, I'm partly trying not to spoil it, but at the same time I want to spread it out on the floor and tread on it and get it over with...

C: I understand, it is a weird feeling for you to prepare your travel, a big movement when everything already moves around.
I like so much the way you talk about your huge wall map. Do you know this expression "The map is not the territory" ?

The father of general semantics, Alford Korzybski stated, "A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness". What this means is that our perception of reality is not reality itself but our own version of it, or our "map".

No two people can have exactly the same map.
So here we are, 2 photographers, 1 car, same journey, 2 visions.

Leicester in Caravan magazine, India

2011-10-10T08:31:00.000+01:00

Add caption

Installation photos from New Photography 2011 show at MoMA

2011-10-10T08:09:00.000+01:00

AFAR assignment

2011-09-17T22:32:00.000+01:00

Last March I was assigned by AFAR, a San Francisco travel magazine to go to Jerusalem to do a story on Jerusalem stone. The assignment was a mix of portraits of architects, architectural landscapes and travel.
I did a small interview for the website A Photo editor, reproduced below or here.

A Photo Editor
The Daily Edit – Monday 8.8.11

Afar
Design Director: Jane Palacek.
Art Director: Steven Powell
Director of Photography: Tara Guertin
Photographer: George Georgiou

Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.

Heidi: Are you shooting a lot of travel now?

George: I don’t often shoot travel assignments, the last time I was in Jerusalem was during the beginning of  the 2nd intifada, when the City was very tense with a lot of clashes. So it was great to see the city relaxed,  with all the tourist returning and Arabs and Jews moving in each others areas without fear.

I know this was shot during Purim, how much of a gathering collected to listen and watch? Where the streets bustling and were people responsive to you taking photos?

I had arrived in Jerusalem around 5 in the morning and was staying in East Jerusalem, the Arabic side.  I got up around noon and decide to walk around the City to get a feel of the place, I had no idea it was Purim until  I started to notice a few people dressed up. I headed towards the city center in West Jerusalem, which was full of people  dressed up and generally partying and having fun. Shooting was easy, as is usually the case when people are celebrating.

Where were you to take this opening image?

I knew fairly early on that an image of the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock would be perfect as both  are unmistakably symbols of Jerusalem and illustrated the main theme of the feature, Jerusalem stone through the ages.  I walk around trying to get onto as many rooftops as possible to find the right angle and light, in the end I took this image  from a spot that is accessible and popular with tourists. The photograph was taken at the beginning of the Sabbath on the Friday evening, just as the sun is starting to set and the floodlights are switched on. During the Sabbath, photography is not permitted by the western wall, so it was a perfect time to step back and make a landscape. I managed to get to this vantage point just before the tourists, by the time I left there were rows of people waiting to get to a glimpse of this view.

by HEIDI VOLPE

David Goldblatt

2011-09-10T08:14:00.000+01:00

A truly inspirational photographer who has consistently made great work throughout his life, that in his own words is "lovingly critical"

Conversations with Goldblatt from Leonie Marinovich on Vimeo.

MoMA's Annual Photography Series Highlights Six Emerging Contemporary Artists

2011-08-18T12:04:00.000+01:00

George Georgiou (British, born 1961). Mersin, 2007. Pigmented inkjet print, 27 3/4 x 40 15/16" (70.5 x 104 cm) Courtesy of the artist © 2011 George Georgiou.

I am delighted to have been chosen to exhibit at this years New Photography 2011 show at MoMA.

NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art announces the 26th annual New Photography exhibition, running September 27, 2011, through January 16, 2012, in The Robert and Joyce Menschel Gallery. This year, the exhibition expands to feature six artists—Zhang Dali, Moyra Davey, George Georgiou, Deana Lawson, Doug Rickard, and Viviane Sassen. These artists, hailing from Canada, China, England, Holland, and the United States, exemplify the diversity and international scope of contemporary photographic work. New Photography 2011 is organized by Dan Leers, The Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art.

"Whether using an appropriative practice like Zhang Dali, analog forms of communication like Moyra Davey, the documentary approach of George Georgiou, conventions of portraiture like Deana Lawson, web-based images like Doug Rickard, or Viviane Sassen's self-reflective analysis, each of the artists in New Photography 2011 has his or her own individual means of addressing issues relevant to the world today," says Mr. Leers.

©Zhang Dali

Zhang Dali (Chinese, b. 1963) began his project, A Second History, in 2003 and continues it into the present. For this work, Dali analyzes photographs that were manipulated for use as propaganda under Mao Tse Tung’s Communist regime. Acting as an archivist, he juxtaposes original source materials from Chinese archives and periodicals with the altered images used to spur the Communist revolution. Seen side by side, the images reveal the meticulousness of Maoist censors who retouched, colored, and drastically changed the photographs, often adding or removing entire figures from the frame.

© Doug Rickard

In his most recent series A New American Picture, Doug Rickard (American, b. 1968) explores the ground-level geography of urban areas across the country using Google Street View, taking photographs of the Street View images on his home computer that he finds the most captivating. He focuses on geographic areas where unemployment, crime, drug use, and lack of educational opportunities are prevalent. The resulting photographs document the blurred faces of people and crumbling cities as captured by the Google lens, and explore issues of poverty, raceequity, and personal privacy.

©Viviane Sassen

Viviane Sassen (Dutch, b. 1972) was born in Amsterdam, but spent formative childhood years living in Kenya, which has influenced her work as a photographer. Upon her family’s return to the Netherlands, Sassen felt like a foreigner in her homeland, but knew that she had been an outsider in Africa as well. Her latest series, Parasomnia, animates these feelings, and was made in intentionally unidentified African countries with anonymous, faceless subjects. Sassen’s surreal pictures provide a glimpse into her psyche, and invite viewers to follow her journey through the mysterious remnants of her dreams and memories.

©Moyra Davey

Moyra Davey (Canadian, b. 1958) often uses the postal service as part of her artistic practice. She creates photographs with analog materials that are increasingly rare in today’s digital era, and then folds those photographs into an envelope shape to be mailed to friends. Davey later recoups the photographs and exhibits them in pinned-up grids, complete with the stamps and addresses obtained en route. For New Photography 2011, Davey has created a new mailer piece: The Coffee Shop, The Library. Photographing at The Museum of Modern Art and incorporating images of New York Public Library branches and iconic coffee shop images by Bruce Davidson and Saul Leiter, Davey meditates on creativity and the places in which it occurs.

©Deana Lawson

Deana Lawson (American, b. 1979) explores issues of intimacy, sexuality, and community in her portraits of people made in their homes and personal environments. Lawson refers to her subjects, nearly all of whom are strangers, as “her family.” Although she is not related to them by blood, her connection to them is palpable. Her large-scale portraits featured in New Photography 2011 are both intimate and confrontational; museum visitors are invited into Lawson’s world, but strictly as spectators.

George Georgiou (British, b. 1961) has photographed extensively in Eastern Europe and Turkey over the course of a decade, having lived and worked in Istanbul for the past five years. Georgiou’s series Fault Lines looks at modern-day Turkey as it negotiates its traditions and landscape amid the oncoming wave of development and Westernization and the notion of East/West. Following recent elections and the country’s ongoing talks of joining the European Union, Turkey now finds itself at a political and social crossroads. Georgiou follows the path this former imperial empire is forging in its search for a 21st-century identity.

Installation photos of Invisible exhibition on bus shelters

2011-08-04T23:37:00.000+01:00

The bus shelters run from Mornington Cresent, through Camden Town to Chalk Farm station in London.
There was also a 6 screen installation in the Collective gallery, showing alongside work by Mimi Molica.
The screens were pretty much a try out, to see how they worked together. The photos changed to quickly, and I now have a much better idea of how I will present this work in the future.

Invisible London exhibition in London

2011-06-30T14:06:00.000+01:00

I will be showing Invisible London in a joint show with Mimi Mollica called Seen/Unseen, as part of the London Street Photography festival.
I will also be showing 8 photographs from the project on bus shelters running from Mornington Crescent station to Chalk Farm station. If you are in London on the 7th July you are invited to the opening.

Here is the blurb from the press release:

This joint show by award-winning photographers Mimi Mollica and George Georgiou, takes a look at Londoner's journeys and public and private lives from two very different perspectives. Both artists use the London bus as a vehicle to penetrate the private spheres people create for themselves while navigating public spaces. In each case the subjects are unaware of the image makers so their thoughts and interactions are undisturbed at the moment of making the picture. It is only in later viewing that the audience has a glimpse of their private world.
Mimi Mollica's brand new work Bus Stories focuses on a hidden view of London’s bus passengers and questions the ethics of public surveillance. His photographs have a dark, almost eerie quality although they are strikingly familiar.
George Georgiou's ongoing project Invisible:London surveys the diverse topography and migration in London through the windows of buses. The work explore the increasing diversity of a major Western metropolis as the movement and migration of people continues to change both the urban landscape and the community within it.

There are still a couple of places left for the 5 day shooting workshop I am teaching in London to coincide with the London Street photography festival: Details here.

Review of the Format festival

2011-06-07T14:49:00.000+01:00

A good article on this years Format festival, Right Here, Right Now in Frieze magazine by Mark Durden.

Kosova images in L'Europeo magazine , Italy

2011-05-24T17:39:00.000+01:00

Workshop in London

2011-05-17T10:20:00.002+01:00

I will be taking a 5 day shooting workshop in London in July as part of the London Street photography Festival.

Side Gallery

2011-05-15T22:55:00.001+01:00

I am shocked to hear that the Side Gallery in Newcastle has lost all it's Arts

Council funding. As the only gallery in the UK that has supported and shown documentary photography for over 35 years, the gallery needs as many people to write in, offering support of their unique and valuable role in British documentary photography.

All the info about the Art councils reasons and Sides counter arguments can be found on the Side website
There is a petition that I encourage everyone to sign. The local MP's in the North East of England have join the campaign to try to save the galleries funding by questioning it in the House of Commons.
I have a strong affection for the gallery and the cooperative, Amber, that run it. They are the only gallery in the UK to have given me a solo show, and not only once but twice.
I showed Between the Lines in 2002 and Fault Lines in 2010.
Today I was at the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the Figures and Fiction, Contemporary South African Photography, and also went to the permanent gallery space, where they were showing a collection of photographs by the truely amazing, David Goldbaltt from their collection. The work was originally organised and shown in the UK by the Side Gallery, who then toured the exhibition around the UK. When the exhibition ended David donated the prints to the V&A.
This is one of many cases of both photographers and their work that they have supported over the years, I made a previous post about the great posters they have from previous exhibition that can be viewed here.

©Graham Smith

In the spring of 2010, they exhibited Tim Hetherington's striking photographs of the civil war in Liberia, taken from his first book Long Story Bit by Bit – Liberia Retold.

As a tribute to Tim, I would like to post this link to the talk he did at Side at the time of the opening.

Leicester feature for Russian Reporter

2011-05-09T11:40:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I shot a feature for Russian Reporter on Leicester, the 10th largest city in the UK.
The story was based on the prediction that Leicester will become the first city in the UK with a non-white majority. I was free to explore and interpret this story as I saw it.

I've never been to Leicester before and apart from my London project, "Invisible", I haven't shot a story in the UK for years.

One of the first things that you realise is that Leicester is not London. Statistics are interesting but can also be misleading.
London is a truly multicultural city, and I soon realised that the population of Leicester is roughly similar to individual boroughs in London and there are a number of London boroughs that are less than 50% white.
So, if I move around my area of London, I see pretty much every corner of the world represented, not only that, but people are living almost on top of each other. My "Invisible" project addresses some of the issues of how we occupy and share a space. More on this in a couple of months, I am in the process of finishing this work and have a preview exhibition/installation lined up for July in London.

What I found in Leicester, is a city that is very proud of it's status as a successful multicultural city. It has become an official and unofficial line, with almost everyone singing to the same tune. The psychology of this is interesting, in the same way that negative stories repeated start to reinforce believes and behaviour, in Leicester the spin is one of pride of it's multicultural status.

What I observed in Leicester was that although the workplace, business and the city centre were multicultural, the residential areas were fairly segregated, the East and North mainly non white and the South and West mostly white. Also on a social level people seemed to keep to their own kind or tribe, giving you two different levels of interaction, the private and the public.
In many ways, maybe this is one of the ways multiculturalism works. We recognize and respect difference, people live in peace with each other and overlap as and when. In the end we all live in our own tribes, be it by income, age, ethnicity, subcultures.
So I decide to photograph the different ethnic groups in there tribes, time didn't permit me to explore the mixed space of work and the city centre.

Later this year the 2011 census data will come out, so it will be interesting to see if Leicester is the first Non White City in the UK.

All Photographs ©George Georgiou 2011

Antonio Olmos and Simon Norfolk

2011-05-08T10:43:00.002+01:00

A beautifully shot video by an old friend, Antonio Olmos, on Simon Norfolk photographing and speaking from Afghanistan.
I love the sense you get of Afghanistan through this video.
It contrasts really well with the very precise and intelligent way that Simon selects and photographs his project.
The work from this video, Burke + Norfolk: Photographs From The War In Afghanistan is on show at the Tate Modern until 10/07/11.

"Visual narratives: European Borderlines" applications

2011-04-24T11:07:00.000+01:00

Young photographers (18-35) from Latvia, Turkey, Iceland and Portugal are invited to apply
for a long-term project workshop called "Visual narratives: European Borderlines"

The workshop will involve 12 photographers, 3 from each country, working in their own country and one other. The workshop will be taken my Vanessa Winship and myself, with help from the project partners in the 4 countries.
The project will begin with a one week workshop in Latvia this August during the ISSP workshops and conclude with an editing workshop next spring in Turkey. In between participants will undertake a short residency in one of the partner countries as well as produce work in their own. During this time they will be guided online.

The workshops and flights are funded and there is some money towards shooting costs, approx €1200.
Workshop partners will make a shortlist of 12 people from each country and Vanessa and I will select the final 12.
Please consider the portfolio you put together, we are more interested in seeing a well thought out long project than a selection of single images or small sets.

Application deadline: 20 May 2011. Applications here
Good luck

International Summer School of Photography 2011

2011-04-19T20:43:00.009+01:00

Applications are now open for the ISSP workshops in Latvia this August. Last year more than 200 people applied from 42 countries for the 60 places. In the end 22 different countries were represented and looking on facebook, a lot of these people have continue to keep in touch.
I was teaching last year and I must admit that I had a great time, both with the students and relaxing at the end of the night with the other teachers. The intense but fun atmosphere and everyone living together in the middle of nowhere, really does create an amazing bond. Application will close 8th MAY.

The teachers this year are:

Workshop 1: Personal documentary: Interior
Teacher: Michael Ackerman
Workshop 2: Kuldīga in Pop Latino

Teacher: Marcos Lopez
Workshop 3: Creative documentary: Using reality to create personal fiction
Teacher: Claudine Doury

Workshop 4: Who else am I

Teacher: Arno Rafael Minkkinen

Workshop 5: Still Life as Critical Aesthetics
Teacher: David Bate

This year I will be teaching a workshop with Vanessa Winship during ISSP, but it will be outside the normal applications. More news to follow in the next couple of days.

Installation images from Athens house of Photography

2011-04-17T18:35:00.000+01:00

Installation images from Athens house of Photography exhibition. The exhibition will come down on the 22nd April.
I was really happy with the presentation in this gallery. The tall wall was perfect for the Taksim grid and worked very nicely with the Title text.

Russian Reporter assignment

2011-03-25T21:51:00.000Z

Three weeks ago I did an assignment for Russian Reporter on Leicester, in the UK.
Leicester is due to become the first City in the UK with a non white majority in the UK.
Below is the feature in RR. In the next week I will post some more images and explain my
interpretation of the story.

Format International Photography festival

2011-03-17T08:57:00.001Z

I forgot to post about the Format photography festival that's on right now until the 3rd April in Derby.
There are a number of shows on under the title,

'Right Here, Right Now'

Exposures from the public realm

I am showing 5 large prints from Fault Lines in the main curated show at the Quad, alongside some very good photographers including, Amy Stein, Joel Meyerowitz, Martin Kollar, Michael Wolf, Rich Rowland and some wonderful work by Chinese photographer, Zhang Xiao

Best to check out the website for full details

©Zhang Xiao

©Katrin Koenning

©Kurt Tong

Athens house of Photography

2011-03-16T15:32:00.000Z

Tomorrow my exhibition opens at the Athens House of Photography.

Exhibition and Workshop in Athens

2011-02-14T15:33:00.000Z

I will be exhibiting Fault Lines/Turkey/East/West at the Athens House of Photography from March 17th until
I will also be taking a 3 day workshop. Details below:

Documentary Practice and Narrative: The Long Term Project
The Athens House of Photography is proud to announce its first workshop by world renowned (British/Cypriot) photographer George Georgiou.

The workshop will be 3 days, from March 18th until March 20th. (Hours: 10:00-18:00)

The cost is 250 euro, which will include lunch and coffee breaks for the 3 days and a signed copy of Georgiou's book (Turkey, Fault Lines: East/West)

Number of Participants: 10

Basic knowledge of english required.

Anyone who is interested can contact Nina Stavropoulou at nina@phototheatron.com or at tel: +30 210 5228696

Documentary Practice and Narrative: The Long Term Project
Workshop with George Georgiou (London, UK)

The workshop “Documentary Practice and Narrative: The Long Term Project” will address the issues of contemporary documentary photographic practice and approaches, taking a deeper look at the long-term project in photography. The aim is to build up an understanding of different forms of narratives and different ways of structuring work according to the final mode of presentation, be it a book, an exhibition, multimedia or magazine feature. We will discuss how ideas and concepts are crucial to the development of the documentary project, how to identify themes, motifs and issues that address and question the societies we live in, on both the local and the global level. Participants will bring completed and in progress projects so we can look and deconstruct the images and the working methodology, including taking a detailed look at the editing process. The teacher’s own and other photographers’ projects, working methods and project evolution will be used as illustrations. Each participant should bring selected project/s from their own work and be prepared to discuss their aims in the context of a group.

Fault Lines in 24 magazine, Italy.

2011-02-14T14:08:00.000Z

Alec Soth in NYT Magazine

2011-01-24T10:27:00.000Z

Interesting discussion about Alec Soth's portraits for the NYT mag on Bagnewsnotes. Must admit I feel these are a little too sterile for me, unlike Alec's main portraits from his own projects. Maybe to do with a time restrain and the fact that a lot of the portraits have people looking to the side.

In the Shadow of the Bear - BJP

2011-01-22T11:07:00.000Z

Last year I was awarded the British Journal of Photography prize to finish my "In the shadow of the Bear" project. I still haven't put the new work from Ukraine on my website.
Below is the first presentation of some of this work in the BJP.

4th International Photobook Festival

2011-01-22T09:48:00.000Z

Enter your unpublished photobook for the Kessel fotobook festival Dummy Award 2011 and win a complete book production.
I have just started editing "In the shadow of the Bear" for a book dummy, so this is a timely competition.

Newsweek

2011-01-12T15:57:00.001Z

Newsweek used my triptychs from Istanbul in the way they are intended to be seen, good to see a magazine respected the photographers vision.

Street Photography Now

2010-12-11T09:38:00.000Z

My work from Turkey and Ukraine is featured in the Street Photography Now book published by Thames and Hudson.
Street Photography Now celebrates the work of nearly fifty image-makers from across the globe. Some of my personal favourites include Martin Kollar, Carolyn Drake, Thierry Girard, Jens Olof Lasthein, Polly Braden, Otto Snoek, Michael Wolf, Trent Parke and Narelle Autio

This month, exhibitions open in two German galleries featuring work from the book.
Opening from the 11th December at Contributed gallery in Berlin and from the 18th December at Galerie Lichtblick in Koln.

©Martin Kollar

Spread sheet from Internazionale, Italy

2010-12-03T23:28:00.001Z

Fault Lines exhibition hanging in Bologna.

2010-11-22T23:03:00.000Z

A time lapse of the hanging of Fault Lines exhibition in Bologna

Presentation at Visions 10

2010-11-14T23:00:00.002Z

I will be making a presentation of my new work "The shadow of the Bear" at this years Visions 10 on the 19th November at 10.30 and 3.30.

Address: Business Design Centre, Islington, London N1

This is the first time I am showing this work, a project shot over the last 3 years in Georgia and Ukraine.

The presentation will be a photographic slide show and is at the early stages of editing and sequencing. Photographically, I am exploring different narrative structures within this work, creating series of documentary fictions and exploring public space.

The slide show, made very quickly, is a first impression/edit and will change as I edit the project to work in different modes of presentation, as an installation, exhibition and book.

An introduction:

This project is a document looking at the aftermath of the peaceful “colour” revolutions that took place in Georgia and Ukraine against the backdrop of Russia’s resurgence as a major international power and it’s continuous interfering in their sovereign and domestic affairs.

Through the work I am striving to make a visual connection between the overlapping territories of Nation and Empire by looking at signs in the domestic and public spheres, when taken together, build up a representation of how the people of Georgia and Ukraine negotiate the space that they find themselves in.

On Thursday 18th I will be in Paris at the OffprintParis doing a book signing at 6pm.
Offprint is an artist book fair dedicated to photography publications. A huge number of publishers will be there alongside photographers signing their books. Promises to be one of the best event during Paris photo week.

Interview in Hot Shoe

2010-10-27T22:59:00.000+01:00

This is an interview I did with Hot Shoe magazine.

Georgia spread in Italian Marie Claire.

2010-10-04T14:01:00.001+01:00

Marie Claire in Italy have run a number of my photos from the Georgia: In the Shadow of the Bear project in this months issue.

Exhibition and workshop at Spazio Labo in Bologna

2010-10-03T09:28:00.000+01:00

I have a workshop and an exhibition of Fault lines at Spazio Labo in Bologna at the end of October.

Exhibition opens on the 28th October, all are welcome and the workshop is 29th to 31st October, Vanessa will help out, details below.

Documentary Practice and Narrative: The Long Term Project
Workshop with George Georgiou (London, UK)
With the participation of Vanessa Winship

The workshop “Documentary Practice and Narrative: The Long Term Project” will address the issues of contemporary documentary photographic practice and approaches, taking a deeper look at the long-term project in photography. The aim is to build up an understanding of different forms of narratives and different ways of structuring work according to the final mode of presentation, be it a book, an exhibition, multimedia or magazine feature. We will discuss how ideas and concepts are crucial to the development of the documentary project, how to identify themes, motifs and issues that address and question the societies we live in, on both the local and the global level. Participants will bring completed and in progress projects so we can look and deconstruct the images and the working methodology, including taking a detailed look at the editing process. The teacher’s own and other photographers’ projects, working methods and project evolution will be used as illustrations.
Each participant should bring selected project/s from their own work and be prepared to discuss their aims in the context of a group.

Dates of the workshop:
Friday 29th October 2010: 6.30pm to 9.30pm
Saturday 30th October 2010: 10 am to 6 pm
Sunday 31st October 2010: 10am to 6pm

For more information: info@spaziolabo.it - +39 3283383634

Workshop fee:
300 €
280 € - student price

Place of the workshop:
Spazio Labo’ - Centro di Fotografia
via Frassinago 43/2c, Bologna

New Yorker Photo booth book review

2010-10-02T00:44:00.004+01:00

OFF THE SHELF: GEORGE GEORGIOU’S TURKEY

Posted by Whitney Johnson

From the founding of the Ottoman Empire, in 1299, to the
current negotiations to accede to the European Union, the
country we know as Turkey has had a complicated history.
“There are different interests in play in Turkey, from
secularism and Islamism to the traditional and the modern,
as well as between democracy and repression—often in
unlikely and contradictory combinations,” the photographer
George Georgiou explains.

“It is these contradictions my work addresses and the
complexities of a large country that was a former imperial
empire searching for a modern identity.” Georgiou’s work
on Turkey, where he moved in 2003, first came to my
attention at the Open Society Institute, when it was selected
for Moving Walls.

Now, nearly three years later, it has evolved into his début
book: “Fault Lines: Turkey East/West.”

It began with an idea of divided communities, something
Georgiou had explored in previous work on Serbia and Kosovo.
“I wanted to move the project away from the idea of conflict to
that of a nation caught between ideologies,” Georgiou writes.
“Turkey is caught between East and West in terms of Europe
and the Middle East, and I was interested in Turkey’s role in this
dynamic. Often the approach photographers take to Turkey is
exotic and ‘orientalist,’ fairly narrow and reinforcing a sense of
the ‘other.’ I really wanted to make a contemporary story
about Turkey.”
Though the book opens with a map of Turkey and a timeline
of the country’s history, the next hundred and thirty pages are
devoted to photographs alone (captions are relegated to the final
pages of the book, and there is no text by Georgiou or others).
It seems that Georgiou wants us to just spend time looking, to
see the contemporary Turkey that he discovered.

Here’s a selection to get you started.

Slide 1 of 9

In the cover image for the book, a woman cycles past a Turkish
fighter jet mounted by the seafront in Mersin, commemorating
the invasion of Cyprus.
“Turkey is undergoing huge change and a lot of the work is
aboutthat change. The changes are many: economic, social,
political—and the landscape,” Georgiou writes in an e-mail
from Ukraine,where he’s finishing another book,
In the shadow of the Bear,about that country and Georgia.

Exhibiton and workshop in Rome

2010-09-06T07:59:00.000+01:00

On October the 8th I will be exhibiting Fault Lines at the Fotoleggendo festival in Rome at
ISA - ISTITUTO SUPERIORE ANTINCENDI Via del Commercio, 13 - 00154 Roma
The site is only in Italian
The festival also features Alexander Gronsky, Chris Morris, Phillip Toledano, Stefanio de Luigi, Luca ferrari and many more. At the same time another photo festival is taking place in Rome, Fotografia festival internazionale di Roma, so there will be plenty to see during this time.

From the 8th to 10th October I will be teaching a workshop with Vanessa Winship on the long term project.

And finally I will do a book presentation and signing on the afternoon of the 10th.

Alexander Gronsky

2010-08-31T10:46:00.000+01:00

I meet Alexander Gronsky earlier this year in Latvia and had the pleasure of being at his wedding with fellow photographer Iveta Vaivode. The wedding took place at the end of the ISSP workshop and was the most perfect ending to a great week.

Alexander was the winner of Foam's Paul Huf Award.
The prize is an exhibition at the Foam museum in Amsterdam which is on until 10th October.
He will be showing work from, "The edge" and "Less than one"

A couple of the participants from my workshop in Latvia

2010-08-31T10:13:00.000+01:00

A couple of the participants from my workshop in Latvia, working on long term projects.
Masha Osipova, is a Russian woman who grew up in Holland from an early age. She is exploring her relationship to her home town in Russia, "My Russia"

All photos above © Masha Osipova

Taking a slightly different approach is Janka Husta from Slovakia, who is living in Singapore and photographing her lifestyle and friends.

All photos above © Janka Husta
I will post some more of the participants in the next couple of weeks.

ISSP workshop in Latvia

2010-08-30T17:48:00.004+01:00

This years ISSP workshop in Ludza, Latvia, was a great success. An intense week of creativity, energy, debate and fun, carried out in the remoteness of Ezersala boarding school in the East of Latvia. I cannot praise the organizers highly enough for their altruism in bringing 65 participants together from 23 countries from as far afield as Australia, South Africa, India and Canada and a fantastic and diverse group of teachers, who were a real pleasure to talk photography and socialize with.

Shan Rixon from my workshop has made a nice blog about the ISSP experience

©Annegien van Doorn

©Kathrin Holighaus
Teachers at the workshop,
L to R Roger Ballen, Andrei Polikanov, me, Ville Lenkkeri, Veronique Bourgoin, Julija Berkovica of ISSP and Peter Bialobrzesk.

Fault Lines featured on NYT Lens Blog

2010-08-21T01:15:00.001+01:00

George Georgiou in Modern Turkey
By ADAM STOLTMAN NYT Lens Blog
Through a series of haunting architectural and landscape scenes of Turkey’s rush toward modernization — and the resulting tension between the secular and the modern — George Georgiou
has visually put his finger on a kind of listless alienation which at times can seem to pervade globalized society. Turkey, traditionally a bridge between East and West, seemed a logical choice for such a cautionary vision.
His latest book, “Fault Lines: Turkey From East to West” (Schilt Publishing), forces us to consider not so much the emotions that connect us, but rather the spaces that separate us.
A soft-spoken photojournalist best known for searing black-and-white pictures from Kosovo and Serbia, Mr. Georgiou was always curious about Turkey, given its traditional rivalry with and closeness to the countries of his heritage, Greece and Cyprus. His visit in 2003 coincided with the terrorist bombings of a synagogue and of the British Consulate. They sparked a desire to go deeper in his understanding of the country. He spent the next five years living and working there.
The results of his explorations were far different than he expected. “My black-and-white work in Kosovo was more emotional and personal,” he said. “This required a contrast of styles to something landscape driven, and relatively devoid of people.”

The project crept up on him slowly. During frequent drives across the country, especially into Istanbul, he would notice huge and often multicolored apartment complexes springing up as part of the nation’s overall modernization. Many were the work of TOKI, the housing administration of Turkey.
Trying to capture this “alienating landscape,” Mr. Georgiou was drawn to small groups of people interacting — and not interacting — within and against these artificial constructs. It was a visual metaphor for what can be the homogenizing and disrupting effects of globalization.
“I was fascinated by how this sort of swamps all of us, and everyone is lost in their own heads,” he said.
Little by little, the book began to take shape and find its own visual language. “I am drawn to the space we find ourselves in generally as human beings” amid so much change, he said. “The imposition of an urban landscape that has been put upon this mostly rural landscape in Turkey with its hard mountains, 1,000 to 2,000 meters above sea level, allowed me to explore this.”

Mr. Georgiou is also at work on “In the Shadow of the Bear,” about Georgians trying to carve a new world for themselves in the face of rising tensions with Russia. He sees long-term projects as a way to push back against the shrinkage in print journalism. “The longer I do something, the more I understand about it at a much deeper level,” he said, which also allows his work to change and adapt.
In spite of the horrors he has covered and the foreboding quality of many of his images, Mr. Georgiou describes himself as a “strangely optimistic” person.
“I don’t believe that we are all going to end up the same because of globalization,” he said. “When I am in the States, it still feels like the States as opposed to Europe, which still feels like Europe. In general we are always making our lives better with each generation.”
As if to underscore this optimism, the book ends on a refreshingly hopeful note. After pages of bleak urban landscapes, the last few pages are devoted to a series of portraits of young people shot against blue sky. To the photographer, these images of youth — pictured as they walk through Taksim Square, the modern heart of Istanbul — seem to reject much of what has come before, and speak to the power of individuals to create their own destinies. “It is as if they are each saying, ‘We will not allow ourselves to be defined by others.’”

Balazs Gardi

2010-08-13T18:44:00.002+01:00

Last night I met up with photographer Balazs Gardi for a catch up.
He has been working on a long term project about water, "Facing Water Crisis" and has just started uploading some of his multimedia works. He is using video and photography in a beautiful, seamless way I haven't seen before.

Due to its extremely hot climate and high GDP, the United Arab Emirates has one of the largest per capita water consumptions in the world. Shopping centers and luxury hotels are built with lavish water decoration. Developers construct apartments with as many bathrooms as bedrooms. Sprinklers pump desalinated water onto golf courses, while underground aquifers are also being pumped dry.

The abundant use of water in desert cities symbolizes life, wealth and progress in the eyes of locals, whose parents still remember a very different, very arid world. In today’s Gulf metropolises there are uncountable water cascades, fountains and decorative pools, which form a dreamlike atmosphere between the shiny new buildings and the sea. Gigantic land reclamation projects are carried out to host some of the most expensive residential resorts on earth. These constructions literally grow out of the sea and build new land into a unique aquatic habitat.

New photos from Shadow of the Bear

2010-07-29T20:15:00.000+01:00

Here are a few images from the Shadow of the Bear project from my last trip to Georgia. The project is progressing really well. I think 1 more trip to Ukraine in September might well see the shooting part of the project completed.

Invisible: London

2010-07-29T20:03:00.000+01:00

A few random photos from the many I shot this summer for my London project.
Getting ready to go to Latvia to teach at the ISSP workshop during the whole of next week. Really looking forward to meeting both the other photographers teaching and the students. Usually I get a lot from these workshops, especially from the enthusiasm and energy of young photographers.

Exhibition images at CIAC Foligno, Italy

2010-07-16T02:23:00.001+01:00

CII went to the opening last week of our joint exhibition at the CIAC Museum, in Foligno, Umbria.
I was really impressed with the museum, a contemporary rust covered cube from the outside and light, bright and spacious inside.
This is the first time someone has put Vanessa's and my Turkey work together. The dynamic between the two was interesting, adding an extra layer of meaning to the individual works.
For this I must thank Daniele Mattioli for inviting us both, Emanuele De Donno for doing a great job with the installation and Piter Foglietta, the organisor of Canti e Discanti.

Change of location

2010-07-06T23:36:00.000+01:00

The Fault Lines exhibition on Foligno has change location. It will now be showing at the CIAC Museum alongside Vanessa's "Sweet Nothings". Opening is Thursday at 9pm and runs until the 9th September.
I will also be doing a presentation and book signing in an old Cinema in the town centre on Saturday at 12 noon.

A couple of curators have mentioned putting our work together but this is the first time it has happened.
Really looking forward to seeing how it holds together.

Ukraine: In the shadow of the bear

2010-07-05T14:17:00.002+01:00

My agency in Italy, Prospekt, has uploaded some of my new work from Ukraine on their website.
I haven't got round to putting it on my site. It is very much a work in progress and is part of the larger "In the shadow of the Bear" project I am hoping to complete this year. See previous post
You can see the work HERE.

It's worth having a look around the Prospekt features.

Exhibition in Foligno, Umbria

2010-07-02T13:11:00.002+01:00

Next week my Fault Lines /Turkey exhibition will be showing as part of the World music festival "Canti e discanti", in the beautiful Umbria town of Foligno. The festival includes music, film, photography and being Italy, FOOD. The exhibition will be held at the beautiful Corte di Palazzo Trinci, inside the arcaded inner courtyard. Opening 10th July at 11am.
Vanessa Winship will also be showing "Sweet Nothings" in CIac, Centro Italiano Arte Contemporanea,
A very interesting contemporary building, completely rusty on the outside and light and spacious on the inside. Opening 8th July 9.30pm

BJP Project prize

2010-06-23T13:24:00.005+01:00

A couple of months ago I was shortlisted for the BJP project award. Well, to my great delight, I have won the prize! Below is the article posted on the BJP website

“Up until today, I had to fund all my work entirely on my own, and any sales to magazines would only happen after. Now, I’m going to be able to go back to the Ukraine and Georgia and to have the money to do it.”

George Georgiou has spent the last decade travelling the Balkans, eastern Europe and Turkey after he and his partner, fellow photographer Vanessa Winship, sold their flat in London “to fund a great adventure”. Having based themselves in Belgrade, and later settling in Istanbul, shooting in-depth stories there and in neighbouring countries, they came back to London two years ago, but have continued shooting projects in the region on extended return visits.

Now Georgiou will go back to Georgia and the Ukraine with £5000 in his pocket – courtesy of the last-ever, Nikon-sponsored, Project Assistance Award – to complete his latest series there, In the Shadow of the Bear.

He was selected from a shortlist of eight photographers who were, along with more than 40 others, published in BJP over the last 15 months of our weekly editions. The eight – including Dana Popa, CJ Clarke, Clare Smart, Kalpesh Lathigra, Liz Hingley, Sayaka Maruyama and Jude Edgington – were given £300 to put together a detailed proposal as to what they would do with the bursary.

Katy Barron, an independent photography curator who acted as the contest’s judge, then read through the proposals and selected Georgiou. “In light of what he has done before, I can see that he will make a fascinating series,” she comments. “I like the way he linked the two countries. There is a lyrical pattern, which makes the whole more than the some of its parts. It has a personal, but also a universal appeal. I hope this award will push him to the next level in his career.”

In the Shadow of the Bear evolved from a very different idea, Georgiou tells BJP. “The original goal was to look at the eastern revolutions. Having already covered Serbia, I wanted to look at Georgia and Ukraine. I wanted to use these three countries to show the aftermath of the peaceful ‘colour’ revolutions.” But, after spending time in Ukraine, the photographer perceived the strong influence Russia still plays in these former Soviet regions. “Russia continues to interfere in their affairs, the same way the US did in Central America.”

In his project proposal, Georgiou writes that a “major geopolitical battle is still being fought out in Ukraine and Georgia, in their nascent stages of independence and nation-building and as they try to free themselves from Russian influence. Russia sees both countries as part of its sphere of influence, and as such acts like an imperial power towards its smaller neighbours.”

In the Shadow of the Bear will explore life after the Rose Revolution of 2003 in Georgia, and the 2004 Ukrainian Orange Revolution. “The work looks, in subtle and quiet moments, at the signs in the domestic and public spheres, which when taken together, build up a representation of how ordinary people in Georgia and Ukraine negotiate the everyday space that they find themselves in,” he says. “I am looking at each country individually, with their own very different dynamics and characteristics, but also the aspects that are familiar between the two through their shared history in the Soviet Union.”

Georgiou has already shot many pictures in the series, but says: “Now I have to fine-tune it. I need to look at the signs and symbols and at Russia’s presence. I am now at the more complex and reflective stage of producing the photographs and visual links that will bridge the two nations together in the shadow of Russia.”

Over the summer he plans to go back to both countries to explore the Black Sea coast and study the large residential districts around Kiev and Tbilisi. He expects to finish the work in September before taking on the longer task of editing and designing a monograph.

Georgiou will present his work at this year’s Vision, BJP’s annual event for early-career photographers, which takes place at the Business Design Centre on 19 November.

Fault lines exhibition review

2010-06-12T11:16:00.000+01:00

A review from Hotshoe blog

Review of George Georgiou’s exhibition Fault Lines at Side Gallery, Newcastle
June 10, 2010

You have until 17 July to catch George Georgiou’s impressive body of work Fault Lines: Turkey/ East / West now on show in the north of England. For those who are interested, the next issue of HotShoe International, June/July, features an interview I did with Georgiou while he was on the road overseeing the production of his debut book of the same title. In the interview, Georgiou talks about the development of the project and his working process.

In the post below, Newcastle University student Katie Lin reviews the show in words and pictures:
Far from the European country which has inspired his latest collection of photographs, George Georgiou’s Fault Lines: Turkey / East / West has found its way to England’s North-East and set up show at Newcastle’s Side Gallery for eight weeks.
The upper gallery houses a selection of the 42 photos comprising the Fault Lines exhibition. Through this collection of work, Georgiou “seeks to address and question the concept of East and West and the process of modernization, urbanization, and national identity that is happening against a rising tide of nationalism and religion.”

After spending almost five years living in the former imperial empire that was Turkey and observing its search for a modern identity, he chose to document changes occuring within the country by “focusing on the quiet everyday life that most people in Turkey experience.”

With unfaltering style and powerful effect, Georgiou juxtaposes pockets of high colour saturation and that “quiet everyday life” of Turkish people he intended to capture through these photographs: the first connotes life, the latter generates a feeling of emptiness. His candid subjects show little emotion in stills that seem to be extra still, yet the photographs are strangely emotive, leaving you with a feeling for the country’s struggle.

For me, this feeling was encompassed and reflected in one particular photo; at its centre walks a man whose identity is hidden under the shadow of his umbrella as he walks his way through a wet day. Yet behind him, bright yellow words slapped on a dome in the background inject the otherwise gloomy scene with a spot of life, as if to remind us that these faceless people represent real lives in motion.

The main floor of the gallery displays three sets of stunning polyptych-type works (sans hinges) from previous exhibitions, two of which Georgiou has interestingly titled Taksim. Initially, I understood this to be a location in Turkey – which it is, but a conversation with a Turkish friend also revealed that “taksim” is the antiquated word for “division”. Keeping in mind the meaningful place that “division” takes as a theme and defining thread in the exhibition, this perfectly formed double entendre was suitably subtle and a nice touch on the part of the artist.

The set which perhaps had the most aesthetic impact on me was Taksim – the dark version, also known as Turks 2. This photographic polyptych reads like a filmstrip and mimics one in its dimensions. The majority of the subjects appear to gaze in unison, all to the bottom-righthand corner of the frame as they walk, presumably concentrating on the pavement ahead of them. The subjects are spot-lit against a dark background and are brought together from their separate journeys into the same frame in such a way that their movement is sensed, but the stillness of the photographic medium forces the viewer to follow their gaze from one panel to the next. Georgiou’s combination of street perspective, combined with the use of depth-of-field andphotographic quality, makes for an impressive display.

Another favourite was labelled Şanlıurfa(after the location where it was shot) which included six of the original twelve photographs that make up Georgiou’s Turks 3 exhibition. This was slightly disappointing but the photographs were not. Unlike Turks 2, I felt that the people were not the subjects here. While their brightly-coloured clothing quickly attracts the viewer’s attention, it was the life of the space and place that was being documented, rather than the life and actions of the people passing through it. Whether or not this was Georgiou’s intention, it is an interesting concept; an otherwise unassuming space can have a life of its own that people will move through, and one which itself moves through time.

Coming away from George Georgiou’s Fault Lines exhibition, I found that his collection of photographs had evoked a sadness in me, not one of sympathy, but instead, one provoked by the desolation and emptiness that features in so many of his shots. In some cases, this desolation was exaggerated simply by the disproportional space awarded to the sky; in others, it was visible in the faces of passersby who just happened to get caught in the frame.

Thought-provoking and beautiful in content, composition and colour, George Georgiou’s latest exhibition is a fantastic display of the everyday life experience of Turkish people (and, as mentioned, three great works from previous exhibitions are also featured). In a country divided at a pivotal time, this is an aspect that could easily be overlooked, but Georgiou’s fine focus on Turkey brings it into perspective.

Fault Lines: Turkey / East / West will be showcased at Newcastle’s Side Gallery until July 17.

©Review and exhibition photos by Katie Lin.

I witness account from Mavi Marmara ship to Gaza

2010-06-09T17:45:00.000+01:00

A Turkish photographer friend, Kursat Bayhan, who works for the Turkish newspaper Zaman, was on the Mavi Marmara that was attacked by Israeli commandos last week. Apart from a few photos that he sent just before the attack, all his photographs were taken by the Israeli's.
I spoke with Kursat today, he was still very shaken by the whole experience, and as a photographer and witness on the boat he is extremely upset that his and the work of the other photographers was lost as evidence.
Below is his account of what happened.

Zaman Today

Journalist recalls 30 hours in cell number 5202

Today’s Zaman photographer Kürşat Bayhan was among the journalists on the Mavi Marmara ship sailing to Gaza, and was there when Israeli commandos stormed the ship in international waters in a raid that would kill nine peace activists.

Recalling the 30 hours he spent in Beer-Sheva Prison cell No. 5202, Bayhan says that the thing that upsets him most about the incident -- which has since sparked an international outcry over the Israeli military’s flouting of international law and human rights -- is that the Israelis confiscated his photograph-filled memory card. The following is Bayhan’s account of the conflict on the ship and the ensuing detention process.
“This was a journey that seemed normal to everyone at the beginning, that started off smoothly but then caught the eyes of the entire world toward the end. My journey on the humanitarian aid convoy began after I joined the Mavi Marmara in Antalya.

“Despite Israel’s warnings and threats, everything was normal -- until the night everything got complicated. The first announcement of contact came around midnight Sunday. Everyone put on their life jackets. There were people reading the Quran and praying. We performed the morning prayer on the deck of the ship. Fifteen minutes later, we saw zodiac boats approaching. Six zodiacs approached the boat’s rear. Then the commandos threw a hooked ladder onto the ship. At the same time, there were three commanders who were trying to rappel down from a helicopter, but one of them fell. He had a gun and an Uzi.

“A second helicopter approached. Soldiers opened fire from the helicopter using live bullets. We were taking photos the entire time up until that point. While hurrying to the press room, I saw someone on the floor; he had been wounded in the shoulder. Then, while passing by Room Two, there was a woman giving her husband a heart massage while yelling, ‘Please don’t die, please don’t die.’ Then the captain made an announcement, saying: ‘Our ship has been taken over. There are many dead and wounded people. Everyone stay calm and do not show resistance.’

“The commanders started lowering themselves onto the ship. There were around 30 journalists. We started trying to hide our photographs. I placed a small card containing some photographs under my tongue. They took us at 9 a.m. and I waited until 2 a.m. No one, including my friends, knew about this. As a result, I did not speak much during the 17 hours the card was in my mouth. Unfortunately, the doctor at the prison we were taken to confiscated the card during my health check.

“In the press room, we waited for an hour with our hands up in the air. They called us outside one by one. They did a body search. We left our camcorders, cameras and laptops there. They took us to the back part of the ship. We saw many people sitting on their knees with their hands cuffed. There were women waiting in the same way on the top floor. We heard some yelling, but we couldn’t turn around and look to see what was happening. The dead and wounded had been carried to the very top part of the ship.

“We reached the Ashdod port at 6:30 p.m. Everyone, including journalists, was handcuffed and photographed once they got off the boat. Detectors scanned us all the way down to our underwear. When we were taken for a health check, we were forced to sign a document indicating that we had not been assaulted in anyway. Then they put me in a prison vehicle all by myself; then they brought Hakan Albayrak and some other journalists.

“We were taken to Beer-Sheva Prison. They made us line up on the sidewalk. I was shivering. Then they placed us in four-person cells. They woke all the Turks up around 2 a.m. At first they took 10 people. Then they came back for everyone else, and I was left by myself. Then they put us on buses, and we arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport an hour and 45 minutes later. We got on the airplane, confirming that we would not return to Israel for 10 years. Meanwhile, those who requested their luggage and passports were beaten.”

06 June 2010, Sunday

KÜRŞAT BAYHAN İSTANBUL

Review of Fault Lines

2010-06-08T00:05:00.001+01:00

Jon Levy of Foto 8 has done an audio review of Fault Lines, you can here it here.
A few snaps from my exhibition and talk at Side and a typical Geordie.

Fault Lines book

2010-06-02T01:45:00.004+01:00

Fault Lines has finally been released worldwide apart from the
US, where it should be available at the end of the month.
144 pages hardcover.

The English edition is published by Schilt Publishing and is available in the UK through Amazon and other outlets internationally. The cover and details are wrong on the site but it is the same book.

Italian Edition and the lead publisher is Postcart edizioni. Outlet in Italy can be found on the Postcart site or here.

French edition published by Filigranes editions and available here

And finally the Greek edition by Apeiron photos

Installing Fault Lines at Side Gallery

2010-05-21T18:49:00.001+01:00

Side gallery exhibition and presentation

2010-05-17T23:35:00.000+01:00

This Saturday (22 May) my Fault Lines exhibition opens at the Side Gallery in Newcastle. On show will be the whole exhibition over 2 floors. I will be making a presentation at 2pm, all are welcome.

Various news

2010-05-08T10:38:00.003+01:00

Last night I saw a copy of my book Fault Lines/Turkey/East/West for the first time. I'm really very happy with the whole production and would like to thank everyone involved. The English version of the book will be released on the 29th May and should be easy to find. In the future I will post up some links to the book but for now it can be pre ordered at Amazon UK and Photo-eye in the US. They are displaying the wrong cover and page details but it will be the correct book.

Applications for the workshops at ISSP in Latvia this summer are closing on Monday. Already they have over twice as many applications than places.

I will be exhibiting Fault Lines at the Side Gallery in Newcastle from May 22nd and I will also be making a presentation on the same day, more details to follow.

Yesterday Fault Lines was presented at Lodz fotofestiwal in an evening of curated slideshows.
The work was presented by Tina Schelhorn

Even those who deal with photography on a daily basis find it hard to choose valuable works from the flood of ‘photo production’ of recent years. It is really difficult to follow all the novelties, changes, interesting names and ideas. Curators’ presentations during evening slide shows are an attempt to update our knowledge on what is happening in European photography.

We started the series of presentations during the last year’s Fotofestiwal. Different curators brought their different points of view and interests, which resulted in a fascinating photo mix, surprising and fresh, sometimes controversial. The series is meant to present interesting personalities of contemporary photography – curator and, most importantly, artists.

Slideshows partner – University of Lodz.

SLIDESHOWS – PART 1
7th of May (Friday), 21:00 – 1 Moniuszki St.

CURATOR:
Tina Schelhorn (Germany)

ARTISTS:
Nigel Dickinson - Smokey Mountain
George Georgiou - Fault Lines: Turkey East West
Frederic Lezmi - Beyond Borders: from Vienna to Beirut
Frank Robert - Endstation Sehnsucht / A Streetcar Named Desire

Summer workshop in Latvia

2010-04-27T22:32:00.030+01:00

In the first week of August I will be teaching a week long workshop in Latvia for the International Summer School of Photography that includes 5 other workshop in a countryside location. The workshops are all at an incredible fee of €400 with a lot of places at the concessionary fee of €250. In this price is included workshop, accommodation and food!
This is only possible because the organisers devote their time for free and not for profit.
Applications here, fees here

Workshops & teachers

Capturing Your Shadow in Black and White
Teacher: Roger Ballen (South Africa)

The purpose of the course is to use the camera to better define one’s inner psyche. In order to achieve this central goal various assignments will be given to the participating students that will enable them to interact between their inner world and the exterior one. The participants will be required to work in black and white (preferably film) to produce images that will extend their imagination. Daily assignments will be given and the students will be required to find locations and props that suit their particular visions.
The workshop will be geared towards individuals that have had reasonable experience in black and white film photography and have some darkroom experience. Film will be developed after the assignments have been completed and silver prints produced. The works will then be evaluated and discussed by the teacher and other participants prior to the next assignment. In addition, the teacher will spend a significant amount of time discussing his work and his experiences as a master black and white photographer.

Requirements/technique: Analogue or digital camera, good knowledge of the technical camera aspects. Darkroom experience is necessary if you work on film. Please bring your portfolios.

Roger Ballen Born in New York in 1950, Roger Ballen has lived and worked in Johannesburg, South Africa for almost 30 years. A geologist by training, Ballen began to photograph the houses and townsfolk he met while looking for potential mining sites in the 1970s. Ballen’s thought-provoking photography is known for particular attention to detail. He is photographing human and animal subjects in complex, fictional scenes filled with symbolism. His images have been called by critics a powerful social statements that at the same time are disturbing psychological studies. Roger Ballen has received numerous prominent awards including Best Photographic Book 2001 at the PhotoEspana festival in Madrid and Photographer of the year at the inaugural Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles in France in 2002. His photographs have been exhibited at top venues around the world, including the Gagosian Gallery and MOMA in New York, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Roger Ballen has given lectures and workshops at the most remarkable photography events worldwide; he also runs a Roger Ballen Foundation dedicated to the advancement of education of photography in South Africa.

http://www.rogerballen.com

A Sense of Place
Teacher: Peter Bialobrzeski (Germany)

This workshop will look at the possibilities of creating „A sense of Place”. Contrary to public opinion the „tools” of photography are not exposure time and aperture, but the abilities of the photographer to capture the mood of a space or the sense of a person. Without those skills a photographer can’t create complex bodies of work. Participants will create images that will feature a personal perspective of looking at a chosen place in the vicinity of the area where the workshop is held.
The question of “truth” will be an integral part of the debate in the workshop. Images might be manipulated on the computer as an extended darkroom tool. Unmanipulated images as well can look so strange, that we hardly believe in their authentic state. This will not be a workshop that teaches a technical side of manipulation; we will rather discuss the extended possibilities of the digital image making and the way it changes our perception of a photograph.

Requirements/technique: DSLR cameras are preferable. A good knowledge of computer photo-editing programmes is necessary. Previous research about the subject is at least recommended. How is a place being represented in contemporary photographic practice? How was it represented by painters? Two examples see here.

Peter Bialobrzeski was born in Wolfsburg, Germany, in 1961. He studied Politics and Sociology before he became a photographer for a local paper in his native Wolfsburg. Peter Bialobrzeski travelled extensively in Asia before he went back to College in Essen and London to do courses in Photography and Editorial design. After having worked as a photojournalist for almost 15 years and being published world wide, Peter started to focus more on Personal Projects. He interprets his work neither as documentary nor as art but defines it as Cultural Practice. In the last seven years he has published four books, XXXholy, NEONTIGERS, HEIMAT and very recently Lost in Transition. His work has been exhibited in Europe, USA, Asia, Africa Australia and New Zealand. He won numerous awards including the prestigious World Press Photo Award 2003 for his work about Asian Megacities. In 2002 Peter has been appointed as a Professor for photography at the University of the Arts in Bremen. He has been running workshops around the world. As a critic he regularly writes for Photo News and Freelens Magazin. Since 194, the reproduction rights of his work are handled by laif agency in Cologne. He is represented by Laurence Miller Gallery in New York and LA Galerie in Frankfurt/Germany.

http://www.bialobrzeski.de

True or False (Vrai ou Faux?)
Teacher: Veronique Bourgoin (Paris, France)

True or false? The border between the two is neither static nor vertical. Our senses are taken by the products of a modern artillery, they mutate towards the world where nature moves away, replacing direct experience with experiences aided by technological progress. Reality becomes a large hypnotic magnifying glass which modifies our behavior and eats away our motivation… There where the real world is transformed into fiction, fiction takes the shape of reality… What is the borderline between true and false? The participants of the workshop will try to answer this question with means of photography. The workshop will provide a continuous space for creation, reflection and debate, as well as means to go deeper into questioning and research, take a stance, and commit to a personal direction for addressing the subject.
The workshop is a part of the project Vrai ou Faux? that unites several established European artists on the international scene and supports younger artists through a programme of workshops and residences. Some of the images from the workshop will be selected for the publication of the project and presented at a travelling photo-exhibition through Europe.
Requirements/technique: There are no technical or other limitations for the participants who are free to use any analogical or digital medium. Please bring your portfolios.
Veronique Bourgoin was born in 1964 in Marseille, France. Since her graduation from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris in 1992, she makes photographic research through painting, sculpture and experimental films, focusing on the interaction between the personal and the collective. In 1988, she moved to Montreuil, where in 1994 together her partner she founded Atelier Reflexe - a pedagogical initiative for creation and promotion of young photography through a programme of international workshops, exhibitions and publications. Since 2004 she has directed several international artistic projects financed by the EU: EX-IN (2004-2005), EU Women (2006-2008) and the new project True or False? that will take place in 2010 - 2011. The projects support the creation, education, edition and exhibiting of her personal and collective artistic works that are shown at international festivals. In the last decade, Veronique Bourgoin had numerous personal and collective exhibitions in various prominent locations around Europe and in the US, and took part in numerous festivals, such as NY Photo Festival 2008 and 2009, Paris-Photo 2009, etc.
http://www.bourgoin.name

New Harmony - Man-Altered Landscape
Teacher: Ville Lenkkeri (Finland / Stockholm, Sweden)

The focus of the workshop is on seeing a new beauty in the nature that has been in some ways changed by the human presence. The human is of course a natural being, but our deeds often tend to fight against the natural order of the nature. Changed by the humans into landscapes or scenes, the original state and harmony of nature do not work anymore.
Within the course we will study this phenomenon and try to find and see the new sort of beauty and harmony in the man-made (altered) landscapes. The course will be about accepting our world as it is and ourselves as parts of it, and, in particular, studying the new possibilities for beauty to surface from what generally might be understood as disruption or even destruction.
During the course we will take a closer look at the meanings and reasons behind the taken images as well as the image compositions. The course will also deal with the significance of having a large body of work to discuss the attempted artistic intentions and arrive to a coherent project.
Requirements/technique: DSLR camera, or analogue with possibility of producing ready images during the course. Take along your portfolio or other earlier images for conversations and to build a coherent connection between the new and the existing images.
Ville Lenkkeri was born in Oulu, Finland, in 1972. Permanently lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. He began studying film in Prague and also briefly in London before taking photography degrees at FAMU in Prague and later at the University of Art and Design (Taik) in Helsinki. Lenkkeri represents the Helsinki School of photography, which has succeeded in turning contemporary Finnish photography into an outstanding cultural export. The photographer’s refined way of playing with reality and fiction continually leads the viewer onto thin ice. His works have been exhibited internationally in venues such as Gallery Taik, Berlin; Kulturhuset, Stockholm; Point of View Gallery, New York, etc. In the last 5 years he has published two books - Reality in the Making, in 2006, and The Place of No Roads, in 2009.
http://www.villelenkkeri.com

Photojournalism and Print Media
Teacher: Andrei Polikanov (Moscow, Russia)
The main idea of the workshop is to show the students that despite the substantial cuts in circulations and production budgets, print media is still one of the biggest bodies that sponsors and encourages serious photojournalism. There are alternative ways of sustaining and broadening the audience during the crisis in the editorial policy.
The programme includes lectures on how to define the essential principles, variety of means and different approaches in photo reportage production, as well as photo reportage screenings and practical assignments to the students. In addition to the individual assignments completed during the workshop, the students will develop practical skills in photo editing for print, online and other visual presentations on the basis of the Russian Reporter Magazine photo material. An introduction to the international print media classification, photo department structure and its duties will be given, as well as practical guidance on how to build ‘the dream team’ photographer + photo editor = fantasy or reality?
Requirements/technique: Please take along your portfolios (preferably digital, width - 1000 pixels, captions and credit line). DSLR cameras are preferable; examples of other photographers’ works (your “heroes” in photography) are welcome.
Andrei Polikanov was born in 1961 in Moscow. He has graduated the Military Institute of Foreign Languages. For 6 years he worked as a commissioned officer at Missions in Angola. In the early 1990s worked with Anthony Suau, Christopher Morris and other best international photojournalists producing stories on the events on the former USSR territory (including wars and conflicts in Nagornyi Karabach, Chechnya, Transdnestr Republic, Abkhazia, Tadjikistan). From 1997 till 2007 worked as a photo editor for TIME Magazine, Moscow Bureau, since 2007 is the Director of Photography at the Russian Reporter Magazine, Expert Media Group. Andrey Polikanov is a member of various National and International Photo Contests (including Visa pour L’Image de Or, Press Photo Finland) and member of the Joop Swart Masterclass independent selection committee. Since 2005, he has taught numerous workshops on photojournalism in Russia and worldwide.
http://www.rusrep.ru

Documentary Practice and Narrative: The Long Term Project
Teacher: George Georgiou (London, UK)

The workshop will address the issues of contemporary documentary photographic practice and approaches, taking a deeper look at the long-term project in photography. The aim is to build up an understanding of different forms of narratives and different ways of structuring work according to the final mode of presentation, be it a book, an exhibition, multimedia or magazine feature. We will discuss how ideas and concepts are crucial to the development of the documentary project, how to identify themes, motifs and issues that address and question the societies we live in, on both the local and the global level. Participants will bring completed and in progress projects so we can look and deconstruct the images and the working methodology, including taking a detailed look at the editing process. The teacher’s own and other photographers’ projects, working methods and project evolution will be used as illustrations.
Besides discussing the participants’ existing projects, everyone will identify and produce a short narrative through sequence, combination, or juxtaposition during the workshop. The work performed at ISSP will act as a starting place for identification and development of a critical perspective on the original long-term projects to be continued beyond the workshop.
Requirements/technique: Each participant should bring selected project/s from their own work and be prepared to discuss their aims in the context of a group. DSLR cameras are preferable, although film is also possible, provided work in progress can be supplied for daily critiques.
George Georgiou Born in London to Greek Cypriot parents, George Georgiou has been a practicing photographer for the last 20 years. For the last decade, he has photographed extensively in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Turkey, living and working in Serbia, Greece, and for five years in Istanbul. His work is focused on long term projects around identity, urbanization and the space people find themselves in when caught between communities, cultures, or ideologies. His awards include two World Press Photo prizes in 2003 and 2005, a Pictures of the Year International first prize for Istanbul Bombs in 2004 and a Nikon Press Award UK for best photo essay 2000. He has been published in most of the world’s major magazines and exhibited in a number of countries. He has carried out numerous workshops and portfolio reviews in Ukraine, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Serbia, Kosovo, Slovenia, London, Nigeria and Latvia (with ISSP) and mentored many photographers in the regions he worked. His first book, Fault Lines/Turkey/East/West, looking at the complex concept of East and West, will be released in May 2010. George Georgiou is represented by agencies Prospekt (Italy), Panos (UK) and Signatures (France).
http://www.georgegeorgiou.net

Justnya Mielnikiewicz

2010-04-24T17:14:00.006+01:00

I am staying with photographer Justnya Mielnikiewicz and her partner,
writer and Blues singer Paul Rimple in Tbilisi.

Justnya is the current Canon female photojournalist of the year. Polish
photographer Justnya has been living in Georgia for 7 years and has
photographed the Caucasus throughout this time and has a very impressive and extensive portfolio from the region.

Weekend workshop at TPW

2010-04-22T20:54:00.000+01:00

I will be part of a weekend workshop called Passion and Profession at the Toscana Photographic Workshop in Italy, along with a number of others on the 19 and 20th June. Details here

Printing Fault Lines

2010-04-13T15:59:00.000+01:00

This is the second day of printing Fault Lines at ProStampa in Rome. Great technicians are making the whole process really easy, pages are looking great.

Epsilon Magazine

2010-03-27T06:00:00.002Z

Last Week Epsilon magazine made a nice layout of the Turkey work.

In the shadow of the Bear

2010-03-20T01:14:00.005Z

Although I haven't put up on my website the latest work from "In the Shadow of the Bear" from Georgia and Ukraine, I have started combining some of the work in the first of a long editing process. Below is a couple of early ideas.

Fault Lines Book cover

2010-03-12T23:07:00.004Z

This is the design for the Fault Lines book cover, minus publishers logo, for the English version of the book. There is a possibility of a different cover for one or more of the other publishers.
The lead publisher is Postcart from Italy with the Italian edition, Filigranes for France and Apeiron for Greece.
Schilts publishing will take the English/ international edition, distributed in the rest of Europe by Thames and Hudson. If everything goes to plan we should be printing the book at the beginning of April.

Shortlisted for BJP project assistance award

2010-03-08T10:39:00.002Z

I have been shortlisted for the BJP project assistance award alongside 7 others.
Proposals of each photographer can be seen by clicking on their names.

Eight photographers in competition for £5000 Project Assistance Award

The names of the eight photographers who will compete for BJP's £5000 assistance award have been announced

For the past year, BJP has showcased every week a personal project from a photographer looking for completion funding or assistance shooting another series. Out of the 56 projects published in BJP, eight have now been selected for the final stage of the competition.

This year's shorlist includes CJ Clarke, Jude Edginton, George Georgiou, Liz Hingley, Kalpesh Lathigra, Sayaka Maruyama, Dana Popa and Clare Smart.

The eight shortlisted photographers will now be invited for interview at BJP’s London HQ . An independent judging panel will assess the photographers’ proposals and offer advice on how they might be tightened up or improved. Each will then receive a cheque for £300 with which to carry out additional research (which might include shooting tests, drawing up a budget, etc) over a four-week period.

They will then have to present their plans to the panel, which will award the £5000 cash prize to the best project.

CJ Clarke is nominated for Belfast Now - Forgotten Union, which documents the lives, habits and environment of the fragmented unionist community in Belfast.
Jude Edginton was chosen for his I'm the Daddy Now work, which aims at portraying up to 50 men of all ages who became fathers as teenagers.
George Georgiou's In the Shadow of the Bear documents the aftermath of the peaceful "colour" revolutions that took place in Georgia and Ukraine against the backdrop of Russia's resurgence as a major international power.
Liz Hingley is nominated for her project titled Under Gods, Europe, which she started on Soho Road in Birmingham. Her next stop will be in a street of Paris 'to show the growth of multi-faith communities and the issues they cause and face in different countries'.
Kalpesh Lathigra is nominated for his Infrastructure of the War project, which looks at the lives of British soldiers in Afghanistan.
Sayaka Maruyama's work Japan Avant-Garde is an homage to Japanese culture. The photographer's work is inspired from Geisha style and Japanese art.
Dana Popa is nominated for Not Natasha, a project that 'trace the tragically fractured and damaged lives of young girls and women caught up in human trafficking for prostitution within Europe.
Clare Smart is nominated for her Club Liberty 09 project - a series of portraits focusing on the concept of identity through music culture.

For more information, visit bjp-online.com/paa.

FNAC Photographic workshop

2010-03-07T21:52:00.004Z

On Saturday the 20th March Samuele Pellecchia, photographer and director of Prospekt agency and myself while take a one day workshop in Naples. This is one of a large number of FNAC workshops taking place in 3 cities in Italy over a number of months.

Details are in Italian here

The program is impressive.

Milano
Sabato 20 marzo | Giulia Tornari e Davide Monteleone CONTRASTO
Sabato 10 aprile | Francesco Zizola NOOR
Sabato 29 maggio | Paolo Pellegrin MAGNUM PHOTOS
Sabato 12 giugno | Marco Di Lauro e Patrick Nola GETTY IMAGES
Sabato 25 settembre | Micha Henrotte e Elena Ceratti H&K
Sabato 23 ottobre | Christian Caujolle e Massimo Berruti AGENCE VU
Sabato 20 novembre | Samuele Pellecchia PROSPEKT

Napoli
Sabato 20 marzo | Samuele Pellecchia e George Georgiou PROSPEKT
Sabato 10 aprile | Christian Caujolle e Lorenzo Castore AGENCE VU
Sabato 29 maggio | Marco Di Lauro GETTY IMAGES
Sabato 12 giugno | Francesco Zizola NOOR
Sabato 25 settembre | Franco Pagetti e Giulio di Sturco VII PHOTO AGENCY
Sabato 23 ottobre | Micha Henrotte e Andre Rau H&K
Sabato 20 novembre | Paolo Pellegrin MAGNUM PHOTOS

Verona
Sabato 20 marzo | Francesco Zizola NOOR
Sabato 20 aprile | Samuele Pellecchia e Massimo Sciacca PROSPEKT
Sabato 29 maggio | Christian Caujolle e Paolo Verzone AGENCE VU
Sabato 19 giugno | Franco Pagetti e Giulio di Sturco VII PHOTO AGENCY
Sabato 25 settembre | Marco Di Lauro e Patrick Nola GETTY IMAGES
Sabato 23 ottobre Paolo | Paolo Pellegrin MAGNUM PHOTOS
Sabato 20 novembre | Giulia Tornari e Simona Ghizzoni CONTRASTO

British Council photographic workshop in Lagos

2010-03-07T19:06:00.012Z

©Ekong Udobang

Just got back from an 8 day workshop organised by the British Council in Nigeria for 8 aspiring photographers. I mentored the workshop with fellow British photographer Joy Gregory.

© Enimien Etorni

The project was around the issue of climate change in Nigeria and the photographers had a tight 4 days including travel to shoot. Then it was back to Lagos to edit and prepare the images for a catalogue and exhibition taking place on the 19th March at the British council offices in Lagos.

With presentations and discussions around photojournalism, documentary and conceptual photography the schedule was pretty hectic. All the photographers had a incredible appetite to take on a lot of new information and were very open minded in how to approach the project.

© Stephen Olayinka

I am very proud and honoured to have been involved in this project, specially on a continent that is so under represented by home grown photographers with any kind of international profile or opportunity.

© Olantunji Obasa

© Emmanuel Osodi

© Tom Saater

©Emeke Obanor

© Kunle Ajayi

Workshop in Riga, Latvia

2010-03-05T11:08:00.005Z

Vanessa Winship and I are teaching a 2 day Documentary masterclass in Riga, Latvia on the 27 and 28 March.

The combined master-class will address the issues of contemporary documentary photographic

practice and approaches. The aim is to build up an understanding of different forms of narratives and

ways of structuring the work on comprehensive documentary projects.

More info and to apply from here

Istanbul workshop for Toscana photographic workshops

2010-02-21T11:31:00.004Z

On the 1st May for a week I am teaching on workshop in Istanbul for Toscana photographic workshop. Details can be found here

Contact Sheet

2010-02-16T13:27:00.005Z

I am featured in a book released in the US by Ammo books called Contact sheet. A review can be found at Photo-eye and The Online Photographer. I haven't seen a copy yet but I know it features 40 photographers, each showing 1 photograph and the contact sheet it came from, with some text about the situation. Photographers include, Nan Goldin, Martin Parr, Elliot Erwitt, Chuck Close and Paul Fusco.

Fault Lines updated on website

2010-02-13T01:24:00.002Z

As my book "Fault Lines: Turkey East West" finally comes close to being realised I have updated the project on my website. I have taken images that won't appear in the book out and added a few more from the book. If all goes to plan, the book should be available across Europe towards the end of April. I will post updates as the book comes close to completion.
I have also changed Turks 2 to appear as it will be printed and exhibited.

Invisible London published in Gioia

2010-01-06T00:43:00.003Z

Gioia have just published the London project and have again used a brave layout.
But sometimes I do wonder why I spent so many years carefully learning the craft of framing an image to only include the information I wanted to put across. Maybe I should resort to using 6x7 in the future but I'm sure the photos will then be cropped to 35mm.
This seems to be so typical of so many magazines.

Photographers Lectures from the ICP

2009-12-29T23:42:00.002Z

The International Center of Photography has a great audio and video archive of their photographers Lectures program. It has been running from 1974 and has a large number of lectures and Q&A with some great photographers, from masters to young contemporary photographers. It looks like they are slowly updating the archive.

Included are Nan Goldin, Phillip Lorca di Corcia, Bill Owen and so many others.

FT Magazine

2009-11-29T18:34:00.008Z

The Financial Times magazine published a selection of my images from Georgia
"In the shadow of the bear". Not sure about their selection but I like the fact they used my title for the piece.
text by John Lloyd© Financial Times 2009

In the Shadow of the Bear - Blurb book

2009-11-10T01:42:00.005Z

I was trying to enter the Blurb competition in the summer but failed to upload the book in time.

The work consists of the first part of my ongoing project "In the Shadow of the Bear" looking at Georgia and Ukraine. The work in this book is based on 2 trips to Georgia, images from the first trip are on my website but not yet from the 2nd trip.
I ended up having to rush the editing but it's a useful first dummy to have in my hands.
You can see a full preview of the book on the Blurb site here.

I will take this book off the Blurb site once I have re edited the work.

I have set a high price as I'm not really trying to sell this book as it stands

Graham Smith

2009-11-09T17:49:00.005Z

A final post on Side. The Side gallery has a great collection of photographs and it was a real pleasure to look through the prints, Weegee, Gilles Peress, John Davis, August Sanders and a lot more. The photographs that really caught my eye was the work of Graham Smith (born 1947) a photographer from Middlesbrough, England, who was particularly active in photographing Middlesbrough and the northeast of England in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the 1970s he was among the photographers central to the Side Gallery; and created a series of photographs that showed working-class people in the north of England. Unfortunately he gave up photography in 1990 to become a framemaker. Graham is included in ParrWorld, on show at the moment at the Baltic Art centre in Gateshead.
It is very difficult to find his work on the internet.

Side Gallery exhibition posters

2009-11-09T01:32:00.003Z

Side gallery have a great range of exhibition posters for sale at £5 each, a real bargain.

Vanessa Winship exhibition opening at Side Gallery

2009-11-05T08:55:00.008Z

Vanessa's "Sweet nothings" and "Black Sea" will go on show at the Side gallery in Newcastle from Saturday 7 November until 9 January 2010. She will be presenting a slideshow and talk this saturday at 2pm, it's free and all are welcome.

The Side and Amber films is a film & photography collective incorporating Amber Films, Side Gallery and Side Cinema...with work rooted in social documentary.

It is now 40 years old and has produced and supported a great number of exhibitions and photographers over the years. It has a really rich collection of original prints including work by Weegee, Graciela Iturbide, Martin Chambi and British photographers documenting the North, including, John Davis, Chris Steel Perkins, Julian Germain, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Dean Chapman and many more. Well worth checking out.

I exhibited Between the Lines at the Side in 2002 and will present Fault lines: Turkey East West over the 2 galleries in 2010.

NPG Taylor Wessing Prize

2009-11-05T00:55:00.004Z

Last night the Taylor Wessing prize at the National Portrait gallery was announced and I was, as is natural, a little bit disappointed that Vanessa received the 2nd prize.
I was puzzled by the overall winner and I suspect a little politics at play, but that is often par for the course.
The first prize went to Paul Floyd Blake for "Rosie Bancroft" from an ongoing project entitled "On Track for 2012: The work of the short listed can be seen here and all the photos in the exhibition, including one of my images from Georgia, can be viewed here.
Also there is a feature on the award in this weeks British Journal of photography, titled Once more, with feeling.
The print edition includes a number of the exhibited photos including my own.

Kai Wiedenhöfer wins 50,000 euro Carmignac Gestion award

2009-11-02T21:53:00.007Z

Having mention Kai yesterday, today I hear with great delight that Kai has won himself a very useful and well deserved €50 grand for his dedication to documenting the never-ending Israel/ Palestinian conflict.

Below is the Blurb.

Kai Wiedenhöfer was declared the winner of the first ever Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Prize. Fourteen candidates from eight different countries were short-listed from 76 entries. They were selected as much for their extremely well-researched projects as for the outstanding quality of their photographs... The panel of judges, chaired by the photographer, filmmaker and artist William Klein, was composed of:

- Christian Caujolle, journalist, author, exhibition curator, and founder of the

VU gallery and agency

- Guillaume Herbaut, photographer, founder member of the Oeil Public agency

- Fabrice Hergott, director of the Museum of Modern Art in the City of Paris

- Jean‐Luc Marty, editorial director and editor-in-chief of Géo magazine

- Alain Mingam, photojournalist , exhibition curator and agent

- Vivienne Walt, correspondent for Time Magazine

The subject given to photographers for the 2009 Prize was “The Gaza Strip”.

The panel’s discussions focused first on the quality of the photographic work together with the photographer’s chosen approach and unique perspective. Next, they examined the originality of the written proposals and the capacity of each candidate to present a fresh and meaningful view.

At the end of a first round of very lively analysis, the work of three finalists offering differing approaches was singled out: Kai Wiedenhöfer from Germany, Eman Mohammed from Palestine and Lizzie Sadin from France.

In its discussions, the judges made special mention of the quality and sensitivity of the work of 22-year old Eman Mohammed on the condition of Palestinian women, for which he was awarded the judges’ Special Prize.

The panel finally decided to award the project to Kai Wiedenhöfer.

Kai Wiedenhofer

2009-11-01T13:43:00.003Z

We made a short stop in Berlin on our way home from Ukraine and stayed at Kai Wiedenhofer place while he was away in Israel and Palestine.
I saw his continuing project on Walls dividing countries, a very long project that has already led to a book on the Isreal/Palestinian wall released by Steidl. More photos can be seen here and here.
He has covered the USA/Mexico border, Belfast and a number of other places that will be released as a book late next year.

Guardian photography articles

2009-11-01T11:57:00.002Z

This week the Guardian have posted a couple of good articles on photography.
A review of Jim Goldbergs exhibition and book "Open See" at the photographers Gallery.
And an article by Diane Smyth about judging the National Portrait Gallery's Taylor Wessing prize.

Ukraine photos 4

2009-10-23T16:39:00.002+01:00

The last post from Ukraine, leaving on Sunday back to London via Berlin. And then the serious work of editing. How many of the images or pairs will remain in the final edit I'm not sure, I find it a useful way of formulating ideas as I'm working.

Ukraine Photos 3

2009-10-13T21:47:00.003+01:00

Ukraine photos 2

2009-10-03T22:41:00.000+01:00

Klavdij Sluban interview

2009-10-03T22:15:00.004+01:00

I met Klavdij Sluban a few years ago at a festival we were both exhibiting at.

He has always pursued long term project, so it was great to hear that

he won this years European book publishers award.

Another long term project, in fact 15 years so far, is his work on

prisons and the prison workshops he conducts.

Jim Casper at Lens Culture has posted a video interview with

Klavdij. There are also a number of other interesting audio interviews

over at Lens Culture.

Lens Culture Conversations with Photographers: Klavdij Sluban from Jim Casper on Vimeo.

Ukraine photos 1

2009-09-27T23:06:00.003+01:00

Some photos from Ukraine. I will try to post a few while I'm shooting.

Ukraine and Mila

2009-09-27T21:56:00.004+01:00

We left Milan for Kiev, a 3 day drive. The 750km from the Ukraine/Hungary border to Kiev took 11 hours and 3 police stops, 1 for speeding, 1 for overtaking on a solid line and the 3rd one on the outskirts of Kiev I didn't stop to find out.

We are staying with Ukrainian photographer, Mila Teshaieva while in Kiev.

Rear View Mirror

2009-09-27T09:32:00.007+01:00

Last Friday in Milan a beautiful new Italian photography magazine was launched called Rear View Mirror, published by Postcart.
It features 4 reportages, Pieter Ten Hoopen, George Georgiou, Marta Sarlo and Agnes Dherbeys
1 Portfolio, Alisa Resnik

1 retrospective, Massimo Sciacca

and a couple of interviews including Guy Tillim

Conversations with Vanessa Winship and Dana Popa

2009-09-16T14:08:00.003+01:00

Over on the excellent Conscientious blog are interviews with Vanessa Winship and Dana Popa.
Conscientious is well worth checking out, there's a lot of interesting interviews, reviews and links to photographers.

Photo © Dana Popa

National Portrait Gallary

2009-09-16T13:34:00.004+01:00

I sent 2 portraits to the Talyor Wessing prize and the first was selected for the exhibition.

Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize

2009-09-16T13:16:00.007+01:00

The short list for the National Portrait gallery Tayor Wessing prize was announced, details on the BJP blog 1854. Vanessa Winship is one of the finalist with an image from her new work from Georgia, as you would expect, I hope she wins.
In order, Vanessa Wnship, Michal Chelbin, Paul Floyd Blake and Mirjana Vrbaski.