The Bicycle Revolution at Ningbo Photo Festival

I just received a note from Wonder with images from the Ningbo exhibition. Unfortunately there is little online about this new festival (in it's second year) but it was an honour to be invited and have my work printed and presented there. My thanks go to the curator, Wonder Wang for giving me the opportunity to show this body of work, and to Barbara Herman from Stern magazine for identifying it as worthy work during my MA.

On show were: 200 images, 16 photographers from 7 countries.

Here a few images from the show, link to my body of work and the small book I devised. Stay in touch for further development of the work as I have some more plans...

Exhibition images

In the footsteps of Iain Sinclair

A few weeks ago I was once again in London for my yearly Photographing London workshop with participants from Morley College. This is the 7th time I have organised the workshop and it was by far the most intriguing. Every year I try and come up with a surprise location to which the participants respond. As a long term fan of Iain Sinclair, I knew I had found it when rediscovering his fantastic Thames River Walk, only a short trip away from the Metropolis. A worthy link to the map and podcast here.

The day was also used as a challenge to get out of our comfort zone. Participants were: Saron, Rob Crane, Jenny Eccles, Paul Street and Carol Jones. Find their images on our flickr page.

Here I try to sum up the experience in a sound slide show. This is one of my very first attempts to bring images and sound recordings together. The voice over was caught on Jenny Eccle's Blackberry and the water sound on Rob Crane's iPhone. Thanks to both of them for taking part in my experiment. I converted the files in Audicity in order to work with Soundslides. Soundslides can be downloaded for a free trial (ad version) and bought for very little online. It is far less complex then using Final Cut Pro but of course less advanced.

The sound is by no means perfect and you may have to turn up your volume. In any case I learned quite a lot about sound conversion and am pleased with the result. Enjoy!

BTEC End of Year Shows 2011

Having just taken down the students end of year exhibition, I thought it would be nice to celebrate a few pieces and have an archive of their achievements. After all, I have been a tutor for 8 years and sometimes, I like writing a little bit about them. This blog was meant o help me develop my own professional practice but perhaps some of it reflects in the student's work...

I am thinking about writing a more educationally focused blog, as teaching is part of my creative endeavor. Watch out for a new tab appearing on the blog.

Here a selection of City College Brighton and Hove Photography Graduates 2011.

BTEC Level 3 National Diploma Photography: The Diploma graduates have produced some stunning work this year, it went up so quickly and we were all so involved that I only managed to trace two images so far. However, they are great ones by Scarlett Casciello and Tom Selmon who are both going on to study Fashion Photography at Falmouth University. I love the juxtaposition of nature and beauty in Scarlett's work and the surreal qualities in Tom's image based on the tale of the LaLaurie slaves . The fashion world is a tough one- Good luck to them both! 1. Scarlett Casciello ©, 2.Tom Selmon ©















BTEC Level 3 National Subsidiary Diploma Photography: Let's start with a nice time laps (madeup of nearly 2000 still images!) of hanging the Sub Sid Diplma End of Year Show, created by Michael Addison:


Some Highlights from this course: Felix Cockell and Tom Wilson Keller have sold their images privately, both have produced stunning landscapes photos and there are many more gems to be seen. Students have excelled in their final project on Environmental Photography as well as in Portraiture and documentary image making. You can find more images put together in the following two Flickr Galleries: Landscapes and Portraits.

Images from the top (left to right): Abandoned car by Tom Keller, Cranes against sunset by Momo Werner, Squares by Emma Buttery, Lucyamie Towner Hibberd (two portraits), Monroe by Annabel Louise Clifton, Shaun Morrison by Alex Gill. Some of the student's work has also featured on Phil Coomes BBC blog: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-14215513

Book review 1: Landscapes

During the Easter break I had a little time for reflection and been getting out some photo books. I thought it would be great to start reviewing some of these here. The first ones I will attempt are an August Sander Exhibition catalogue as well as Fay Godwin's "Our Forbidden Land".

The reviews are by no means exhaustive but rather a short investigation related to my personal interest in environmental photography and book making. I have picked these two books for their great image quality but also because they are not as populist and well know as other photo books. Furthermore the reviews are meant to encourage my students to look at a larger variety of references.

I will start by looking at the August Sander exhibition catalogue:











This catalogue (I also call it book or booklet from here on) is beautifully presented with a solid 82 pages, a knowledgeable introduction, a sensitive collectors' perspective and an insightful essay. The first and last page is printed on very fine paper. It looks recycled and even handmade with remains of green fibres (image on the right).

The book consists of 40 landscape photographs grouped by region and theme. I picked up two new copies in a Brighton bookstore for £14 in December 2010. I felt it may have collector's value and perhaps I wasn't so wrong: it currently sells between £49 and £97 on Amazon, which is a good indication that it may be on the rise.

The intention of the catalogue was to celebrate the occasion of a unique exhibition: "August Sander: Photographs of the German Landscape", shown in Washington, D.C. in 2004 (organised by the Phillips Collection). A collection of 40 Silver gelatin prints was donated to the Phillips Collection Washington, D.C. The catalogue was designed by Ken Karlic to accompany the exhibition. Notes suggest that there was a further book produced for the occasion.

The catalogue is presented in a contemporary way, with the title caught on the bottom cut edge of the book cover. Only two colours are used throughout the catalogue (green and black, with shades of grey)- I wonder if this was also an environmentally friendly choice? Image reproduction is very good with great tonal range. Some images are a little small and the black edges framing the images are a little too bold for my taste.

On the whole, however, I really enjoy looking at the catalogue and in particular I like reading about the background of the images and the artist's intention. I did not know much about Sanders landscape work before I came across this little treasure. It was a huge delight as I was in the middle of picking up loose ends on a variety of environmentally concerned projects. What stands out to me is the mix of landscape art and scientific interest but I can also sense an emotional response and the familiarity to the land.

When showing the book to Phil Coomes, he immediately drew a comparison to Sander's "People of the Twentieth Century". Phil felt that Sander had portrayed the trees similar to the people. This is in deed confirmed in the curators introduction: "Sanders portraits of plants and trees provide natural analogues to the human studies"(Phillips, p.23).

The Collectors ((Minichiello, p.33) go further calling them "intimate landscapes". They speak about the solitude visible in the set of images they call paths in the woods. The paths suggest a human presence without any humans visible in the pictures. They also suggest that Sander took strength from making these images. They have spoken to Sanders grandson, Gerd Sanders, who confirmed that under the Nazi regime it was difficult for Sander to continue his portraits.

The catalogue alternates text with images some of which display a similarity to Ansel Adams inspired, broad views. Other images show more intimate details of paths, wild woods as well as botanical studies. Sometimes the texts in the book take you away from the images and I wonder if the text should have perhaps been separated from the flow of images.

Nevertheless, it is well worth the effort to follow up the essay taking you through the second half of the book. It gives a brief overview of the history of landscape within the arts and goes on to reveal some more details about Sanders background as a painter/ photographer.

August Sander started out with landscape photography yet advertising himself as an interior and industrial photographer. His work progressively moved from landscapes to cityscapes. The essay (Lange, Conrad-Scholl, p.61) summarises: "In general Sander's work combines the tradition of topographic documentation with a modern interest in its intellectual ramifications."

The essays mentions that Sander has left behind an archive of over 4000 landscape negatives.
It goes on to discuss the major regions Sander has focus his landscape work on such as the Rhein area, Eiffel and the Siebengebierge and reveals that Sander has applied the exact same systematic approach to his landscapes than he did when organising his portraits into book form. A good example can be seen in his portfolio "Der Rhein und das Siebengebierge".

In the view of the writers, the botanical studies associate Sander with Goethe. He had a collection of books by Goethe and was inspired by him. It seems that this encouraged Sander to work intuitively and not feel limited by one genre, bringing science and art together. Although it has to be said that not all images in the catalogue display the same technical quality (some appear blurred due to long exposure times) on second glance, the front cover choice seems to celebrate Sanders marriage of technically brilliance with intuitive flair.

My personal favourites are "Eibe im Fruehlingskleid (Yew in Spring), Birken im Wald (Birches in the woods) and Baumgruppe auf dem Hohen Venn bei Windstille (trees on the "Hohen Venn" during calm). All 1930s. The latter in reminds me a little of Alfred Stieglitz's cloud studies "Equivalents" (also known as "Songs of the Sky").

All images © August Sander

I leave you with a Sander Quote:

"In landscape we recognise the spirit of our time, which we are able to capture with the help of the camera"

_______

Fay Godwin's book: "Our forbidden land" was first published in 1990 and won the Green Book Award. It starts with a long introduction by the photographer laying out our relationship to the land. Again, I bought this book for a bargain of £7.50 through Amazon.

It is rather different to Sanders e.g. far more critical about the landscape and varies greatly in it's approach to image making (mix of formats). It includes 132 images over 192 pages with extensive text and captioning. Reproduction of images is very good. It also contains various snippets of poetry.

The themes covered in the text are: Good and bad farming, walking access and dogs, support industries e.g. chemical and machine production, nuclear, defense, water companies, polluted food vs organic food.


Photographs cover a wide span of themes including: public woodlands, allotments, small/ bio dynamic farms, blocked and dangerous paths, caravan parks, Stonehenge, power lines, private estates and beaches, dying trees, littered landscape, the Channel Tunnel works, former military land, food and farming festivals, inner city natural spaces, erosion and repair of food paths.

In my view it is a greatly educating book providing food for thought and an insight into land management. The one minus point is that pages start to yellow on the edges. Nevertheless, it strengthened my idea to set my students an environmental photography project and convinced me to take them out for a trip once again this year. Thank you Fay!










All images © Fay Godwin
_______

I have been so inspired by books lately that I started to archive my own images in book form. As I had just been invited to submit some photos to the Ningbo Photo Festival in China, this has given me an occasion to group a few of my images of bicycles in Dalian. To see a preview just click on the picture below or to the right.

One thing I can't stop thinking about is: how acceptable is it to still print books on environmental subjects (ethically speaking) and what other/ environmentally friendly ways are their to show photographs to the same standard/quality? (not based in a computer!)

Any feedback welcome. Still work in progress.

Unfrastructure, the exhibition summary

Unfrastructure is a photography arts project initiated and curated by Julia Horbaschk. It developed into a participatory event for the Brighton Photo Fringe 2010 and was supported by the ArtsFORUM.

The project aims to raise questions about the decline of Britain's infrastructure, the neglect of the environment and the value of places shared by the public.

Having developed my own body of work, which responds to the city's infrastructural and environmental issues, I invited 14 participants to contribute to a group show. The work was shown as at the Fringe Focus Space, Old Co-op, London Road, Brighton, 5th Nov.- 14th Nov 2010.

Infrastructural issues are seen in Paul Cummings' "Road side" (shortlisted for the Thread Needle Prize), Phillip Bedford's "block 2010", John Santa Cruz' obsolete military structures as well as industrial neglect seen in Paul Mc Carthy's and Rick Waterson's work.

Simon Peterson's "Unseen", Lucy Albone's "Dismissed" and Beatrice Haverich's images from the book "The whisper of a million leaves" all respond to the environmental aspect of the show.

My own work is a rather abstract approach, documenting emotionally charged spaces, shared by many Brighton city dwellers. E.g. burns of a disposable BBQ on Hove lawns, disability access in form of a narrow t-shaped ramp, cycling facilities and road surfaces feature in my photos.

We held a pop up event: "Brighton rants" (Speakers corner type event) on Saturday, 13th November 2010, 2-4pm where residents could voice their opinions. A video recoding can be found on my flickr page: freshandwild. Or read what Claire Banks had to say on the Argus Community pages. The "rants" were voice recorded and are available on request.

The participants for the exhibition were:

Julia Horbaschk

Paul Cummings

Philip Bedford

Amelia Wakeford

James Reid

Rick Waterson

Paul Mc Carthy

Lucy Albone

Grace Flynn

Simon Peterson

Roy Mehta

Beatrice Haverich

Jon Santa Cruz

Tom Gates

You can still take part by adding your images or rants onto the Flickr group: www.flickr.com/groups/unfrastructures

Talk

After reflecting on my public talk about Unfrastructure at the Media Centre last Tuesday, I have concluded a few note worthy points.

By asking questions to the audience such as which images stood out or if any of the images convey a certain feel or meaning we came back to the t-shaped disability ramp on Hove seafront and the "brick".

The disability ramp sparked debate about the suitability for users as well as the consultation process with users. I had shown the pro and con arguments as discussed by users on the "getinvolvedinthecity" website. That is the reason why the image appears twice: once in colour and once in b/w.









Photography © Julia Horbaschk

The "brick" was discussed in terms of the many bodge jobs around the city and the viability of time, replacing just one brick. There seems to be a lack of looking at infrastructural planning from a wider perspective. The constant need to patch up affected surfaces results in inconsistencies visible on the streets. This seemed to shift peoples thoughts onto the negative impact caused by outsourcing public building works to a spread of private companies.

We also discussed the title: Unfrastructure. This term is of course made up and I derived at it when playing with the word infrastructure for a while. "infra" comes from Latin and stands for "below" referring to what's underneath structures. I have also noticed that the word infrastructure is no longer purely confined to the built environment. When researching infrastructure you will come across "social infrastructure" or "information infrastructure". I have also observed a trend in the making of new terms i.e. in regards to nature and sustainability I came across "Infranature".

The support of "large infrastructure projects" seems to be one of the goals of the new UK government and I wonder of course where this will take us. A lot of what I have seen around me is neglected infrastructure and the remains of UN-done projects that once set out as Capital Projects e.g. schools and leisure redevelopments. Hence I have come up with the term UNfrastructure.

After my talk I felt reassured that it is not just me who feels strongly about the neglected infrastructure, and I have started to make contact with other artist who are commenting on similar issues. I have also instated a Flickr group and noticed that beyond the photographer's love to depict derelict sites the meaning of their images sometimes lies deeper then expected.

Danny Wilson once expressed this as ”Traversing the contemporary landscape searching for clues to inner states”. Danny also noted something else about his work that I relate to: “I have begun to be interested how human society co-exists with the natural world, how it asserts its own order onto the surrounding environment, and investigating how in some cases the natural world has become a constructed reality.“ This is visible in my images of tree stems.

The aesthetics of documentary photography in contemporary practice has become of interest to me in 2007 during my MA when I started writing about the overlap of photo journalism and contemporary photographic art.

My own practice has recently changed with a higher emphasis on the conceptual approach. Yet I still feel that the work is deeply rooted in documentary practice as the images stem from observations and walks across the city.

However, many of the images have a deeper meaning to me then being purely observational.

All images in my Unfrastructure project are unaltered except for level adjustments and one image being changed into black and white.

All Photography © Julia Horbaschk

Please visit the exhibition page to stay up to date with the development of the Unfrastructure project.

References:
www.re-title.com/artists/Danny-Wilson.asp
http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue6/aestheticsofdocumentary.htm
http://www.bpb.org.uk/exhibitions/9148/bpb-curated-strange-familiar-three-views-of-brighton/

Road 3

My practice continued to be a somewhat intuitive and personal one without the basis of any facts. The scenes jumped at me whilst I was out with my camera absorbing the general feel of my new neighbourhood. I had been reading Alain de Botton and was inspired by Baudrillard's philosophies e.g. technological progress affecting social change.























Looking at the 200+ images I had taken by now, themes started to reoccur: transport, surfaces, roads and the environment all played a vital role. I became interested in the planning process of the city and started to wonder if and how citizens shape our environment. Rather then just being observant I wanted to find out how people are getting involved.

When following up the local newspaper, the councils website and the new book releases of: "A guide to new ruins of Great Britain", I came across a few web entries that had commented on issues visible in my photographs (although on a much smaller scale).

Some of those comments are an outlet for anger, some discuss sensible solutions to local issues and others are amusing. There is "The Case for Banning BBQs on the Beaches and in the Parks" or housing issues in the South East as well as the "Concrete way of access" a critique of disabled facilities along the beach.

A few of these online discussions have in fact resulted in small changes such as special BBQ bin/containers along the Brighton and Hove beach front, however, little evaluation can be found on how useful these changes are. Overall, there seems to be a feeling of discontent.

My photographs seem to capture this feeling of discontent although in some there is a glance of hope. The work aims to raise discussions about civic engagement: it's pleasures as well as it problems.

All Photography © Julia Horbaschk

References:
www.alaindebotton.com
www.getinvolvedinthecity.org.uk