Gravity Defying Photography by NAM

Art collective NAM have created gravity defying photographs for Harbour City Chocolate Trail, a charity project for the Hong Kong Blood Cancer Foundation. The series uses a method of suspending objects and people with strings and cables to create weightless environments that appear to be caught mid-explosion. All taken within one photograph the effects is mind blowing, It is nice to see work that is done in studio for once rather then later on in photoshop, like many adverts you see today. Here is a video below showing how they created these photographs and the techniques behind them.

For more gravity defying photography! look at my previous post about photographer Thomas Jackson.

Viewer or Voyeur? The Morality of Reportage Photography

When reading this artical http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/mar/08/world-press-photo-sean-ohagan about images of a man stoned to death in december of 2010. I was very shocked that these was taken, however i do know what stuff like this still happened within some parts of the world.

After some thinking these are what i think of such images being taken: I believe images like this should be show to the world. As I feel that many of us are born, especially in first world counties, with wool over our eyes. We all live very comfortably and many of us not knowing much of the world outside our country and how lucky we really are. Taking pictures of tragic events is a way of showing the true world that we are living in. These photographers are a witness of those events and they should be shared in order for human beings to reflect more deeply onto the world, plus themselves and I think help shake the world out of their indifference. Photography brings forward issues and educate people who do not wish to listen to words. However when looking at these images it is shocking,it almost makes you not want to look or know about why this man has had this done to him because of guilt you were not there to stop it. Yet I feel it is disrespectful towards the stoned man to offer no captions or text explaining why this has happened to him.

"I have been a witness,and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated." – quote from James Nachtwey a documentary photographer of war and suffering

If people are more interested about war photography, how its done, why some feel the need to do it and what kind of person it takes. You should look at the documentary War Photographer. It can be found on YouTube and its really insightful. Focusing on James Nachtwey and the stress of dealing with viewing the worst of the world as a job.

Instagram - Good or Bad?

Instagram is an application for smartphones that has recently just been bought by Facebook for $1billion. For anyone who doesn't know the application, it allows the user to take a picture with their phone then add coloured filters and borders to it, to create a 'vintage' effect. You can then upload your photographs taken with the app on to the social network facebook, where friends can see and share with each other. The debate about Instagram is very heated. Many people turn their noses up at it, saying that it is not a true form of photography and laugh at those who class themselves as photographers that use it. While others simple see it as a fast and easy way to share and capture moments with each other, having fun with the many filters that make the pictures more appealing.

I am personally annoyed with seeing pictures taken on Instagram filling my facebook newfeed of mundane objects and scenes, blue skies, light poles, bus stations, coffee cups, office chairs and even paving stones, suddenly are classed as cool and amazing with a old rusty filter place one top of the image. Often the effect doesn't match the subject, a brand new pair fluffy slippers in bad lighting with a dusty scratched old 50s tint effect placed on top? really?

Yet I'm not saying that I think Instagram is a bad thing, as I have seen some very good photographs with good compersions and lighting. However I feel that many people look down upon Instagram simple because normally the bad photographs out weigh the good. Yet it quick and easy giving many people who don't have time or unable to understand film photography a chance to still show their artistic flare, which might have become lost without this app. But it often annoys people who send long amounts of time developing film and working really hard to get an effect, while suddenly instagram can do it in seconds.

Overall I think Instagram is good, if used by people who already understand image composition and lighting. Its very simpler to how digital photography and photoshop are looked down upon, but are slowly being accepted as a art form.

Out Of Focus: Photography Exhibition By Saatchi Gallery London

I went to the Saatchi Gallery to see the group exhibition Out Of Focus: Photography. Designed to give students, both British and international, a chance of exposure and a opportunity to display their work in an established gallery. The Saatchi Gallery is known for displaying innovative and contemporary art and this exhibition was not a let down. However the exhibition lacked structure and flow, yet it matched perfectly to my own personally way of liking to view book. Allowing you to wander the gallery rooms and become excited to what you might find in them.

One of the most captivating of artist works were the beautiful landscapes of the American west by young photographer David Benjamin Sherry that can be found in gallery space two. His photographs are dramatic mountainscapes with otherworldly light.The dreamy and surreal colours were cast at exposure or later during printing, and the kind of colour cast that he created depended completely on his mood at that time.

Mat Collishaw's work can be found toward the back of the Saatchi in gallery space 10. His large 'photographes' are made from hundreds of tiny ceramic tile, places together to make the illusion of a large scale pixelated photograph. The tiles make a high gloss finish, as well as the placement of tiny mirrors mixed within the lightest patches to add to the effect. My favourite piece of out of the three being showcased was Madonna. The face of Madonna is a cropped photographed of an Indian women taken after her village was destroyed by a flood, a timeless and tragic face. Mat Collishaw uses mosaic to immortalise his subjects the same way images of saints where in early churches, while the pixelated effect refers to the Internet culture of today.

The work Hannah Starkey's women in everyday scene can be found in gallery space 12. I found it strange to come across her work within the exhibition, especially as i was lead to believe the work was for upcoming artist. Not already established photographers, yet it was still a pleasant surprise. She explores the everyday experiences and observations of inner city life from a female perspective. She see herself as a street photographer, however her style of shooting is not the average candid approach of many street photographs. First finding an location then waiting till finding a person who she finds interesting to appear. She asks for permission from the sitter and tell them what she wants, creating structured and controlled photographs.

On the lower ground floor space of gallery 15 can be found the work of Richard Wilson, the only permanent installation at the saatchi gallery and has been on display since 1991. Viewed from above from a platform the viewer is shown a infinite pool of black, making the illusion of a highly polished floor. The installation fills the space to transformed gallery 15 into a expansive and epic visual space that mirrors the saatchi's architecture. The pool is made from used sump oil which has flooded the room, a thick and pitch black liquid. A beautiful and absording piece, but be perpared for the slight smell of engine oil up your nose!

ShowStudio - Selling Sex

I went back to ShowStudio to see their new exhibition called Selling Sex. To read about their previous exhibition scroll down and read my post ShowStudio - In Your Face. ShowStudio is an amazing place and i would advise everyone to check it out and its free to enter! They always display interesting and unusual work, that in most galleries would not. The exhibition contains a mixture of pieces such as photography, film, painting, fashion, collage and even sex toys.

Selling Sex battles against how many images of women created by the media that are done by men, often using the female body to get out to wider audience. The prospective in this exhibition is changed by featuring all female artists, therefore examining an 'self-other' relationship and examining their unique relationships to sex and the female nude. The exhibition allows women a chance to get there work displayed without the ''male gaze''. only 8% of the work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art is created by women and at the the Tate’s female holdings amount to a only 15%. The imbalance doesn't only exist in fine art. But also in fashion, nearly all famous designers are male and major shots are done by top male photographers.  Film women hold only 33% of all speaking roles and only 7% of all directors in Hollywood are women. And there remain only three industries in which women earn more money than men - pornography, prostitution and modelling.


ShowStudios aim is an exhibition made up of exclusively women artists looking at sex and nudity - examining a woman's version of a woman and asking how it differs from a man’s? Is an image of a nude woman empowered in the hand of a female artist? Does it resist traditionally constructed gender roles? Does it mock a voyeuristic male gaze?



The work I felt most draw towards was Porn sewn on Valentino Advert by Inge Jacobsen. Photography graduate Inge Jacobsen is a London based artist who takes found images and makes them her own through embroidering, cutting, and colleaguing.The images she uses are from women’s high fashion magazines and pornographic images found on the Internet. The reason I felt so draw towards this work is I have a personal passion for embroidery and collage, especially on photographic images.

"The Dailies" Exhibition by Thomas Demand

At the Sprüth Magers Gallery in London I recently saw the work of artist Thomas Demand. Thomas Demand is often known for making photographs of three-dimensional models that look like real images of rooms and other spaces. However for the exhibition the work that was displayed was different from his normal style. It is a collection of photographs that were studies everyday and mundane objects. Things you would often pass thinking nothing of it or in some case looking at it only as rubbish. Yet Thomas Demand almost forces the viewer to notice these day-to-day object that often go unnoticed and realise the beautiful in them.

In The Dailies, Demand for the first time experimented using an out of date process of printing called dye transfer, which involves fixing dyes with gelatin to ordinary paper. Very similar to technicolour, fixing each primary colour to the print paper one at a time. Demand chose to use this print process because its over saturated colour, however not garish effect. I found the style of print beautiful, it created an image depth not normally seen now a days, as well as an almost pop-art feel. While talking to one of the gallery staff, she informed me that this style of print process has actually stopped in production, meaning that no more of the gelatin fixing dyes are being made anymore. Meaning that is possible that Thomas Demand could have used up the last of the remaining supplies and these are the last photographs to ever be made in this process. Which I find weirdly upsetting as it make such rich and bold prints.

"Someone Else" Exhibition By Shilpa Gupta

Upstair in the Arnolfini Gallery is the first major solo exhibition of the artist Shilpa Gupta. Gupta creates artwork using interactive video, websites, objects, photographs, sound and public performances to probe and examine subversively such themes as desire, religion, notions of security on the street and on the imagined border. When you first enter into the show, you are presented a wall of shelves holding book covers made of metal. The piece is based around  100 books that have been written by either anonymously or under a pseudonym. The books are a mixture from around the world, different centuries and other cultures.the authors of the books hide there real names for many different reason, ranging from fear of imprisonment to simply thinking a different name would seel the book better. The work looks in to social, political dialogue of discrimination and understanding individuality.

The second room contains a piece called Singing Cloud. A large cloud shape made out of 4000 microphones. The microphones have been changed so instead of recording sounds, they emit a soundtrack made out of fragments of speech, that ripple and 'sing' across the works surface. Also in the room is a flap-board, used traditionally to announce arrivals and departures. The board displays short sentences that change every few seconds. The flap-board symbolises the numbers of the people migrating and those lost in this movement.

Within the third room is two other pieces of work, one a series of photographs and the other a wall with tape stuck directly to it creating a flag with text. The photographs show her in military style clothing doing many different poses, creating gun shapes or covering her eyes and mouth with her hands. These images reflect the violence in the world and the repression of knowledge. The tape flag created out of yellow tape symbolises nationhood, however along the tape is printed "there are no borders here". The piece brings forward the ideas of both physical and psychological division between people simply because of where they live.

The text on the flag says:
I TRIED VERY HARD TO CUT THE SKY IN HALF, ONE FOR MY LOVER AND ONE FOR ME. BUT THE SKY KEPT MOVING AND CLOUDS FROM HIS TERRITORY CAME INTO MINE. I TRIED PUSHING IT AWAY, WITH MY BOTH HANDS, HARDER AND HARDER BUT THE SKY KEPT MOVING AND CLOUDS FROM MY TERRITORY WENT INTO HIS. I BROUGHT A SOFA AND PLACED IN THE MIDDLE, BUT THE CLOUDS KEPT FLOATING OVER IT. I BUILT A WALL IN THE MIDDLE, BUT THE SKY STARTED TO FLOW THROUGH IT. I DUG A TRENCH, AND THEN IT RAINED AND THE SKY MADE CLOUDS OVER THE TRENCH