Construction work to start on The Photographers’ Gallery, London

The Photographers’ Gallery is creating an iconic new building in the heart of London’s West End.

On 19 September 2010, the Gallery will close its doors to the public for a year while it embarks on its ambitious development of the building, creating a new, international home for photography in the UK. From October 2010, construction will begin at 16-18 Ramillies Street. Architects O’Donnell + Tuomey’s exciting plans will transform the former Edwardian warehouse into a state-of-the-art photography gallery.

The architectural plans include contemporary additions of textured acrylic render, Angelim Pedra hard wood and anthracite coloured terrazzo to elements of the existing structure and fabric of the building. The end result will provide three floors of dedicated public galleries that will enable the exhibition programme to be expanded; a floor dedicated to learning, offering space for a comprehensive programme of talks, events and education series and workshops; an enhanced Bookshop and Print Sales to nurture and inspire a new generation of collectors; a brand new café at street level; continued free admission and full access, including a passenger lift for public use.

Established in 1971, as the nation’s very first public gallery dedicated to photography, The Photographers’ Gallery always resided in the Soho area. Building on its heritage as one of the world’s primary venues for photography, it has welcomed around half-a-million visitors annually. Responding to the growing popularity in photography, in 2008 plans were launched to relocate with a major £8.7 million capital campaign. Now, two years later the gallery has reached a key moment in its history and are in the final stages of creating a unique ‘cultural oasis’ in the heart of central London.

During the construction period, the Gallery will operate a reduced programme offsite. Working in and around the Soho area, a series of innovative artist-led projects have been programmed, supported by Bloomberg, as have talks & events for visitors of all ages. The Print Sales will continue to be available to collectors through photography fairs and by appointment at its satellite location and the beloved Bookshop will be available to browse via its new online shop. To keep up-to-date with all the news, activities and developments join its free newsletter – sign up at www.photonet.org.uk.

Coinciding with its 40th anniversary, The Photographers’ Gallery will reopen in Autumn 2011. Further information on anniversary events and the opening programme will be posted on the website.

Lisa Elmaleh

All images © Lisa Elmaleh

Today's post features some good old honest and straightforward landscape photography courtesy of Lisa Elmaleh.

"As a native of South Florida," she says "the Everglades are an ecosystem that have shaped my own history. Inspired by the early photographers of the American west, I have documented the flora and fauna of the Everglades using my large format camera and the wet collodion process, a nineteenth century process which renders light slowly and reveals the passing of time."

"The Everglades are the only ecological system of its kind. To date, more than half of the Everglades have been repurposed for urban and agricultural use. 'Freshwater flowing into the park is engineered,' reads the brochure given to all visitors of Everglades National Park. 'With the help of pumps, floodgates, and retention ponds… the Everglades is presently on life support, alive but diminished.' I hope to preserve an essence of the Everglades, a land we are rapidly losing without knowing the magnitude of our loss."

You can also view a video of her project here on Kickstarter.

Elmaleh is a recipient of the Goldwell Artist Residency (2010), the Everglades National Park Artist Residency (2010), the Camera Club of New York Darkroom Residency (2008), and the Tierney Fellowship (2007). Elmaleh's work has been published in Harper's, Dear Dave, and Visura Magazine. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including a solo show at KMR Arts (2010 Washington, CT), Arbor (2009), Michael Mazzeo Gallery, New York, NY), Linked: New Yorkers Meet Londoners(2009, Keumsan Gallery, Korea), and the New York Photo Festival(2007&2010, Powerhouse, New York, US). She holds a BFA with honours from the School of Visual Arts.

John Szarkowski: Simply the best?

Was John Szarkowski really the most influential person in 20th-century photography? It's a no brainer, right? Of course he was.

"An insightful critic as well as a visionary curator, Szarkowski filled New York's Museum of Modern Art with the colour photography of William Eggleston, and championed the transgressive work of Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander. Everyone who cares about photography is in his debt," writes Sean O'Hagan in this article over at The Guardian.

Now nobody is trying to downplay Szarkowski's contribution to the medium, but consider this response from Peter Galassi during a symposium at The Shpilman Institute for Photography:

"In a sense, for Szarkowski it was easier because nothing was worth anything, and nothing was shown anywhere else. And the artists came to him. Because there were no galleries that was the only way."

Watch this video clip, and decide for yourself whether there's an element of truth in this statement.

1000 Words Photography - The Collection

We are pleased to present three photographs from Virgílio Ferreira for the 1000 Words Collection.






















Medium - 1 available
Edition of 15
£700.00
50 x 50 cm paper size
40 x 40 cm image size

NB: This is a Giclée print on Epson Premium Lustre paper. It comes with a certificate signed by the artist and is number 1 from the edition. Each print is produced with a white border around the photograph to allow for framing. We also have included some cotton gloves to protect the print during handling.























Medium - 1 available
Edition of 15
£700.00
50 x 50 cm paper size
40 x 40 cm image size

NB: This is a Giclée print on Epson Premium Lustre paper. It comes with a certificate signed by the artist and is number 1 from the edition. Each print is produced with a white border around the photograph to allow for framing. We also have included some cotton gloves to protect the print during handling.























Medium - 1 available
Edition of 15
£700.00
50 x 50 cm paper size
40 x 40 cm image size

NB: This is a Giclée print on Epson Premium Lustre paper. It comes with a certificate signed by the artist and is number 1 from the edition. Each print is produced with a white border around the photograph to allow for framing. We also have included some cotton gloves to protect the print during handling.

All images © Virgílio Ferreira

Taken in and around the burgeoning Asian cities of Bangkok, Macao, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo, the photographs in Virgílio Ferreira´s series Daily Pilgrims are portraits of anonymous passers-by ensnared by his lens.

The faces are routinely blurred whereas the backdrop remains in focus, creating a seductive unreality that leaves an evocative impression without actually describing the specifics of the place. It is this precise "information deficit," Ferreira says, which is what "catches the eye of the observer and makes the portrayee stand out, also adding enigma."

By creating a symbolic tension between the subject and the setting, Ferreira has managed to poetically conjure up the feelings of solitude and alienation that are by-products of modern city living. Commenting on such places, he says, "in all of them, territory and behaviour are changing fast. Cities seem to mirror our state of mind and reveal secrets that can be decoded when minute details are looked at: it is between the lines that I seek ambiguities and contradictions."

Ferreira´s gaze is swift and furtive, presenting the viewer with glimpses of people´s untold stories. One image foregrounds a smirking youngster who exposes his tattooed arm to us while soaring sky scrapers loom large in the distance; in another, a face is simultaneously assailed and attacked by the street lights, this time spindly branches of trees sprout up behind. Elsewhere, as lovers embrace on a park bench their liquid outline almost melts into the brightly-lit futuristic building, the image becomes imbued with an emotional atmosphere that is typical of the entire series.

As such, Daily Pilgrims provides a fresh perspective on the tradition of street photography and offers a vision of the East that is so strange yet so familiar.

Collections is a new initiative that has been set up by Troika Editions to provide photography organisations with the opportunity to showcase their own art collections online and pursue alternative funding avenues through the sale of limited edition prints.

As a not-for-profit organisation the net proceeds from all sales of limited edition prints in the 1000 Words Collection will go entirely back into supporting 1000 Words Photography Magazine and help finance our extended programme of exhibitions and events including workshops; portfolio reviews; talks; panel discussions as well as prizes and awards.

Noorderlicht International Photofestival 2010

Fresh back from my trip to The Netherlands, it gives me great pleasure to share some information with you about Noorderlicht International Photofestival 2010, which will take place from 5 September-31 October at Fries Museum and Blokhuispoort, Leeuwarden.

Noorderlicht is a multi-faceted and international podium for documentary photography. It is a place for photographers who explore their world and in their work picture its big events and everyday occurrences, and everything in between. There is scope for all genres of photography in the program, with documentary photography as the basis. If success begets success then the 17th edition is going to be quite special.

The Noorderlicht International Photofestival 2010 will open on Sunday, 5 September, in the Fries Museum. In Land: Country Life in the Urban Age, Noorderlicht looks at the consequences that urbanisation has for the countryside. Simultaneously, Warzone, an exhibition examining the experience of war on the part of soldiers dispatched to conflict areas, is to be seen in the Blokhuispoort. The opening, which begins at 5:00p.m., is led by the writer Arno Haijteman, chairman of the Silver Camera and photography reviewer for de Volkskrant. The festival runs from 5 September through to 31 October.

Land – Country Life in the Urban Age

Since the beginning of the 21st century, more than half of the world's population live in cities. What are the consequences of this shift for the countryside? Is it possible, against all economic logic, to accord new value to rural life?

Drawing on the work of some thirty photographers, Land – Country Life in the Urban Age exposes the symbiotic but unequal relation between the city and countryside. Agriculture is organised around large-scale production at minimal cost, the growing demand for agricultural products quickens the cutting of rainforests, and whole regions are allocated new uses as a result of increasing need for water. Add to that the continuing exploitation of ever scarcer natural resources, and the economic and demographic consequences of immigration to the city, and one thing is clear: the countryside is facing serious challenges in the 21st century.

In 2011 Groningen will be the location for the second part of this diptych: Metropolis – City Life in the Urban Age.

Warzone

Blokhuispoort Verdun, Omaha Beach, Srebrenica, Fallujah: names of places that are anchored in our collective memory.

Places where the once serene landscape changed into a battlefield, where young men and women fought for their faith, politics or ideals, lost their innocence, and sometimes their lives.

Military cemeteries and history books may remind us of them yet, but the battlefields themselves are transformed after the conflict is over. Time erases the evidence – the rubble is cleared, the shell craters become overgrown. But is the inner landscape of the soldier as resilient as the landscape in which he fought?

On the basis of work by top photographers including Ad van Denderen, Martin Specht, Paul Seawright, Peter van Agtmael and Antonin Kratochvil, Warzone pauses to examine the experience of soldiers who have been dispatched to conflict areas in recent history.

The official launch of the photo book Warzone will be on 25 September in the Blokhuispoort. The book contains work by about forty war photographers and essays by Hans Achterhuis, Ko Colijn, Auke Hulst, Sebastian Junger, Jeroen Kramer, Jaus Müller, Joris Voorhoeve and Désirée Verweij.






















© Jackie Nickerson

Henry Wessel

"I actually try and work before my mind is telling me what to do." Watch this great video of Henry Wessel talking about the importance of not thinking.

EXPOSED Photography Competition

Recently 1000 Words was invited by the World Photography Organisation to be shown around the Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera exhibition at Tate Modern by none other than the Tate's newly appointed curator of photography and international art, Simon Baker. The tour was to promote the WPO's new Student Focus Competition based on the theme of the Exposed exhibition.

If you are a student aged between 18-28 years with a passion for photography it is worthwhile entering.

Here is the official creative brief:

"Your image should draw on themes explored within Tate Modern’s Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera. The exhibition explores issues around exposure, voyeurism and surveillance. It features a range of photographs created by well-known artists, photo-journalists, amateur photographers and those using technology like CCTV and camera phones.

We’d like you to think about these different kinds of imagery and how we experience photography in different areas of art, photojournalism and everyday life. We want to see your creative response to these images and ideas. We’d like to see how you think the themes affect the world around you. Consider the increasing use of surveillance cameras, camera phones, and the circulation of images in the media and on the internet. Look around you and observe different ways we experience ‘exposure’ through imagery.

We are looking for a clear image to represent one or more of the above themes. Your photograph should record and communicate the essence of your idea."

And here´s what you can win:

-Win the chance to have your photograph shown in the World Photography Organisation's 2011 Student Focus Exhibition.

-10 students from selected universities win the chance to participate in the Young Tate Online & World Photography Organisation’s Student Focus talks, workshops, forums, activities and portfolio sessions.

-The winning students and the overall winning university receive a combined prize of €45,000 worth of photographic equipment

See more details on how to enter






















Georges Dudognon, Greta Garbo in the Club St. Germain, Paris (detail) c.1950s San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Foto Forum purchase © Georges Dudognon