Natasha Caruana

"Sorry now sold"


















"You will feel like a princess"


















"If it doesn't sell I will take it as a sign I'm not meant to part with it"

All images © Natasha Caruana

Natasha Caruana was my stand-out artist during the portfolio reviews at this year's FORMAT International Photography Festival in Derby and her latest series of work, Fairytale for Sale seems very pertinent given the Royal Wedding that looms large. The project exposes the world of online wedding dress re-sale in a manner that is both humorous and offers a complex cultural commentary on the idea of marriage. The omission of personal identities through markings and blue tack, in juxtaposition with comments intended to sale the item, loads the work with both narrative and critical possibility.

Posing as a woman hunting for the perfect dress, Caruana befriends the brides who in her words: "reveal that the artefacts of the big day are being discarded; sold for money to de-clutter the wardrobe, make space for births or in some cases because the dresses are now tainted with divorce. Their words punctuate the images."

Caruana further explains her work and interest in the phenomena: "The smiling faces of the bride, groom and their entourages’ are blocked out in white, cloned over, smothered in blue tac or scratched off in a bid to disguise and make anonymous their private day now in the public arena. What remains are bizarre theatres of marriage; white-faced performers have taken to the stage and act out emblematic scenes. The original wedding album represents the trophy, the validation of a ceremony, a ritual performed, a tradition upheld as a record of the perfect day. But now the party is over, the cake has been eaten, the presents have been opened, and the photographs have been framed; the online adverts represent the detritus, the props of the fairytale wedding production."

Caruana's matured foray into themes of love and the everyday comes after The Other Woman and Married Man. Her works have been exhibited in various group shows, such as Invisible Adversaries, alongside Francesco Goya and John Constable and The Fool at the Northern Gallery of Contemporary of Art, Sunderland. Previous group and solo exhibitions have been in The United States, Poland, Germany and Saudi Arabia. Her work is held in the collections of the British Library, Woman’s Library in the UK and the Laguna Art Museum and The Kinsey Institute in the United States.

Born in 1983 Caruana is a practising artist, lecturer of photography and founding director of the London based studioSTRIKE artists studios. She graduated from an MA in photography at the Royal College of Art in 2008 and is currently a lecturer of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey. Her work was shortlisted for the National Magazine Awards in 2007 and the Deutsche Bank Pyramid prize in 2008. In 2010 Caruana was named as the one to watch in the Royal Photographic Society Journal and the British Journal of Photography and selected by the Humble Arts Foundation as one of 18 leading female art photographers working in the UK.

Alina Kisina

All images © Alina Kisina

Here's an interesting project by Ukranian-born, London-based photographer Alina Kisina. City of Home is a series of half abstract, half representational photographs that conflate Kiev cityscapes and interiors. Kisina's images become a dialectical and lyrical space questioning the changing state of both personal and cultural values in Ukraine. Malcolm Dickson, Director of Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow (where she recently exhibited), said of the work: "...Whilst there is a longing in the images, Kisina is too young to be nostalgic (!). She is an image-maker embarking on her artistic journey, wide awake to her task and too driven to dwell on distances to lose sight of the road ahead. These photographs, which glow and pulsate, help plot the way."

I had the pleasure of meeting Alina in person at this year's FORMAT International Photography Festival in Derby which she was also part of, and she immediately struck me as a very sincere but fiesty and fearless person with an intersting story to boot. Here is her artist statement on becoming a photographer:

"Having been brought up in a rather conservative family and trained as a linguist I never questioned my beliefs, tastes or occupation until a single event drew a line between 'Before' and 'After' and the power of visual language revealed itself to me.

I suddenly became intrigued by mysteries and the spiritual qualities of things, realising the potential of visual discoveries made within this extraordinary means of communication. Photography became an obsession and a way of finding my place in the world.

I do not convey facts but merely suggestions, questions and emotions, relying primarily on my sincerity, the force with which I myself feel the emotion I transmit, to help me infect the viewer and share my interrelated but universal concerns.

I prefer not to intellectualise my work but admit the role philosophy played in my education – I cannot escape the categories of time and space that give me the illusion of replacing the material world with the world of ideas."

Have a listen to Kisina talking about her work on the BBC here.

FORMAT Festival 2009

FORMAT 2009: PHOTOCINEMA - 6 March - 5 April, 2009(Exhibitions, Conference, Portfolio Reviews, Screenings, Workshops, Mass Participation, Talks, Tours and Events)Featuring David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Hannah Starkey, Jonas Mekas, William Eggleston, Cindy Sherman, Aaron Schuman, Eric Baudelaire,Siman Roberts, Edgar Martins and many more. Curated by Louise Clements. Patrons: Martin Parr, Brian Griffin.

Dean Hollowood

All images ©Dean Hollowood

These are a few images that Dean Hollowood submitted from his lovely little project Still Closer. The work, he says, is "informed by a long period of hearing loss and is a reflection of life viewed through the minutia of my domestic surroundings."

He kindly fills in the details and explained further:

"Ten years ago I was diagnosed with a degenerative middle ear disease. My hearing gradually deteriorated to the point where I could no longer recognise sounds outside my immediate environment. This had a profound effect on my physical and psychological outlook. Silence changes the way you look at the world, it enables us to observe and reflect without being disturbed. More importantly the work is an expression of the emotional response to silence encompassing notions of melancholy, isolation and humour.

Shot in landscape I reference cinematic psychodramas, each study is initiated through chance, part snapshot part staged. Focusing on the sculptural and abstract, and paying particular attention to colour I exploit the available light to fetishise the subject through the act of photography."

Dean studied at St Martins and went on to work in editorial and design, clients included the charity Shelter along with the Guardian and Sunday Times Magazines. More recently he has focused on self initiated projects and have exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, John Kobal Exhibition prize winner, The Lowry Centre, Salford and Four Corners Gallery in Bethnal Green. The project Still Closer was awarded the jurors choice prize at the 2008 Santa Fe Review project competition, and is about to be exhibited as part of the Format Festival, Photocinema in Derby.