Sodley-on-Sea Gets Grant For The Arts award.

 Sodley-on-Sea gets a grant from the Arts Council. It's to fund the production of  light boxes, exhibitions and run workshops based around Sodley. Further details to follow. Big thanks to Andy Brydon from CURATED PLACE for all his help and advice.

Fuck Dragon's Den.

 

Good ideas don't need a telly programme. If I had one musical bone in my body I would upload it HERE and get me a single and you can too Pop Pickers. Pop pickers, that wasn't one of uncle Jimmy's sayings was it? Can you still say Pop Pickers?

I reckon this idea could be as big for muso's as blurb is for photographers. And of course it's come from here in Manchester. If self publishing has been the big news over the last few years then go HERE to the new kid on the block and self record deal.

Gabriel Orozco: "Mirror Crit"

Following on from the last post... This seems more useful than a shitty boring portfolio review, and I bet you could still make a quid out of them.

Stephen (C) Nuttall.

 

 

Stephen (C) Nuttall is a home grown satirist. This Manchester based illustrator has been taking folk to task using a pencil for donkey's years. He also makes pictures like the one below which is called Conway Line Painter. See more of his work HERE.

Deutsche Borse 2013

Image Christina de Middel

Deutsche Borse 2013 shortlist is out. Chris Killip, Broomberg & Chanarin, Christina de Middel and fuck me Manchester's own Mishka Henner! I'm so chuffed for him, well deserved. It's a funny line up this year though. Mishka and Broomberg & Chanarin I get but I've never heard of Christina de Middel before although having spent sometime looking at her website I do like her series that she's been nominated for 'Afronauts'.  I can see some people thinking  white folk taking funky African pictures again and to be honest looking at the rest of her stuff I bet she can't believe her fucking luck, but fair play to her.

Chris killip? The old camera club chaps and clampits such as wee Sean O'Hagen are all shouting for him and as I've made clear for me he's taken one of the all time great portraits but jeez that was 30 years ago.

I knew one was coming and I'm glad it's come from Manchester's BlackLab. I thought it might be a CYBER CHE poster that came out but I'm liking this, and the whole broken dream irony of it all.

Fuck it, I'm moving to Chile...

The scores on the Doors & The writings on the walls...

So tell me about this Jedward...

Apparently the ticket sales for This Popes visit are down on the ticket sales for the visit in 1982 by the last Pope. I'm not being funny but at less than 55, 000 for some events, it's down on a mid season wet Wednesday match at OLD TRAFFORD, which of course begs the question why are we as a nation spending 15 million quid on the visit if we need to make all these cuts? Now I know he loves a bit of penance, so maybe he could save us a few quid by crawling here on his hands and knees for covering up the fact that a lot of his foot soldiers are kiddy fiddlers.....

Just in case

anyone was under the illusion that bulls actually enjoy themselves in the ring and that it is a noble way for them to die and regardless of what that otherwise pretty bright lad Picasso thought. No, this is the noble thing for them to do, take out a few of the blood thirsty inbreds who came to watch them die. Good on you fella..

OPEN CITY Photography Day.

That's my group at the end of our two hour session photographing in Manchester city centre as part of the OPEN CITY day. I think we had a good time, I know I certainly enjoyed myself. I had to laugh when we got back to base and Len Grant who was running one of the other groups said that he went up to one fella in town and thinking that they were part of the day starting giving this bloke some tips only to find that he was just a random tourist and nothing to do with our day at all!

press release! 'OPEN CITY'

Image copyright Mark Page

"Five renowned Manchester photographers are taking part in an afternoon which is aimed at working towards Manchester being an ‘open city’ for photography. Organised by Cityco, Manchester ’s City Centre management company, 100 Manchester Confidential readers will be taken on a free two hour photography tour around the city on Sunday 23 May.

Manchester aspires to be a photography-friendly and accessible place where people don’t get hassled or arrested for taking pictures. We’re talking to the authorities to work together to move towards us becoming an ‘open city’.

Photographers, who include Aidan O’Rourke, Andrew Brooks, Len Grant, Paul Herrmann and Mark Page will each take a group of budding amateur snappers on a themed photography workshop and a selection of the best images will form an exhibition to be held in the Triangle shopping centre in June. Each photographer has his own unique style, and is passionate about the city, and together they are helping to make Manchester a destination for photography." CONTINUE READING HERE. and then click again past ad!

I'm proper pleased to be involved in this after all the bollocks about people getting stopped and hassled left right and center. I'm pleased and proud that Manchester is taking the initiative and positively promoting itself as a photography friendly city.

Elsewhere.

Image copyright 'Tania'


The Elsewhereness online weekly magazine is an outgrowth of the "Elsewhere" social community network project - a grassroots movement and independent community dedicated to fine art and social visualization driven by a Middle East-based team of photojournalists and visual artists. Both projects are completely volunteer-based.

The Elsewhere social network offers an educational framework in the field of visual literacy. The network's vision is to develop, with the cooperation of galleries, museums and alternative spaces, a series of workshops with an emphasis on local Middle East projects. By using its website as a platform for featuring portfolios and its weekly online magazine, the network establishes a common international space enabling dialogue among Palestinians, Israelis and others.

The Elsewhereness is a unique project aimed at motivating positive social processes and creating a common ground for Palestinians and Israelis who live in a reality where mobility and the ability to meet face-to-face is restricted; a reality which denies communication (physically by fences and isolation, and socially by public (mis)conceptions). The magazine presents artists work and articles, and is the only one in the region dealing with social issues through visual art.

Peace through photography? Why not, they've tried everything else. See their website and plenty of 'Top' work HERE

Found this great bit of 'piss taking' via the SAVE OUR URBIS facebook page. Taken from the "Original Modern"council corporate squiggles designed at great expense by Jimm..... sorry Peter Saville.

MANCHESTER PHOTOGRAPHY puts on it's serious head for a moment and humbly asks you to give your support to this project that DUCKRABBIT have been involved with . Benjamin from DUCKRABBIT writes below:


The strongest thing about this project is that all you hear is the voices of the Congolese affected by the violence. Its edited in a very straight forward way and according to the same principles I observed as a documentary maker at the BBC. Its all about the people and their stories.


Here is my own personal write up:


It's the world's deadliest conflict since the second world war and yet the majority of people have never heard of it. According to the IRC at least at least 5 million Congolese have died in more than a decade of conflict sparked off by the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda. Most of the deaths are linked to a lack of medical facilities as the ability to access medical care in Eastern Congo has crumbled with the war. The four videos on the Condition Critical website give voice to the pain and trauma of those caught up in the conflict, bearing witness to their dignity and attempts to survive the conflict.


Told only in their own voices all the website asks you to do is send a message of support. At first that might sound a bit daft. I mean why send a message of support to people I know nothing of? Surely what they need is cash, right? Well first off if you watch the videos you can find out a little about their lives, that they're not that much different to you and me except that they've been caught up in an unforgiving conflict. Secondly messages of support do make a difference. I know this because last year I worked in camps in Kenya and the thing that people were most frightened of was being forgotten, the sense that no-one cared. That's what leads to depression and despair. Worse than that, when no-one cares people get away with murder, literally.


So the fact that MSF will take these messages and share them in the camps and clinics will make a difference. It will also give a huge morale boost to the MSF staff working in Eastern Congo.


People can do four great things:


1. Leave a message of solidarity on the map
2. Twitter about it and link to it on Facebook (for Twitter use #conditioncritical)
3. Embed one of the video's on their blogs.
4. Write something about the project


I'm not being paid to write this, my work for MSF stopped when I delivered the video, but editing these brave peoples voices has made me care and left me feeling a little of the burden of their pain. I also think by doing something you're supporting NGO's to take a more journalistic approach to their work, working with photographers to create great work, rather then just telling you how great they are as an organisation, how fucked everyone else is, and can I have a fiver a month by direct debit please?


I've included the embed code of one of the videos but if you decide to do some thing on this and prefer one of the other videos, or a smaller size, please let me know.


THANKS and from the heart


Benjamin

CONDITION CRITICAL

The Manifesto Club campaigns against the hyperregulation of everyday life. We support free movement across borders, free expression and free association. We challenge booze bans, photo bans, vetting and speech codes - all new ways in which the state regulates everyday life on the streets, in workplaces and in our private lives.

We believe that the freedom issues of the twenty-first century cut across old political boundaries, and require new schools of political thought, and new methods of campaigning and organisation.

I'd have called them the common sense club! HERE for plenty of articles about erosion's of civil liberties and the NEW LABOUR Liberal PC Gestapo permeating into all aspects of modern British Life.

HERE for the one that most affects us "POLICING THE PUBLIC GAZE: THE ASSAULT ON CITIZEN PHOTOGRAPHY.

TOM RICE-SMYTH.

Image copyright Tom Rice-Smyth.

I remember way back in the mists of time (2007) when I started this blog. I had no real idea what format it was going to take other than it was loosely going to be about Manchester & photography (can you see how I came up with the name?)

Starting a blog is, for the first few posts a bit like shouting into the dark, you have no idea who if anyone is out there. And this went on for a while until I stuck a statcounter on here, I knew then that a couple of people were at the very least stumbling across my posts.

The first big land mark for a blog is when people start to leave comments, that's the important bit, that's when you start to connect with folk, that's the first evidence that you have of an audience. You have started to meet people and discover, albeit virtually, interesting people and fantastic things you may not have other wise come across. Tom was one of those people and his blog was one of those creations. Tom was one of the first ever people to leave comments here at MANCHESTER PHOTOGRAPHY, the first human contact I received here in cyberspace, other than someone who just kept calling me a wanker that is.

So it's with great sadness that I have learnt that he has hung up the blog. I think it's a real shame and a genuine loss to not only the photo blog world but the world in general. Tom has been a true pioneer of British photographers using the Internet, running his blog since January 2006 with almost daily uploads of photographs of this nations capital city. Never using the blog to massage his ego as so many of us do, I believe that it was acting as a worthwhile and increasingly complete mammoth documentation of modern London. Tom's understated style ran through the thousands of images without detracting from the near forensic inspection of almost every detail of London town. Finished sooner than I think it should have been, I really do believe that Tom has made a most complete Document, of London between 2006-20010. Wishing Tom all the best, here's to one of the best and most worthwhile photo blogs on the web..............

I would just like to say a big thanks to everyone who came to the opening on Wednesday night.
Considering the crappy weather and the fact that it went "Head to Head" with THE CUBE opening, we were well chuffed with the turn out. It was great to catch up with some older friends new babies belonging to friends and finally making real of virtual friends. The show is on at URBIS, Manchester until the 12th.

More on The National Football Museum Move from the brilliant MULE.

Even cynical me was touched by THIS.

Lets Party Like It's 2016

Congrats to Rio on the successful Olympic bid Now they can join London in getting misty eyed over disappearing slums, Worry where the money's coming from and redirect millions from the Arts in the vain attempt of discovering an anomaly who can run really really fast.