A Review of The David Shrigley Show at Manchester's Cornerhouse.

Back posting in the new year. New year, New work, New approaches, fuck it I may even change my profile picture........

Christmas Killip.

Last post of the year goes to Manchester based photie artist Ed Watts and his irreverent take on the work of one of this years Deutsche Borse Prize nominees Chris Killip. MERRY CHRISTMAS KILLIP can be seen HERE .

New Cliches of Photography #30

Burka babes......

Daniel Gordon

I first came across the work of Daniel Gordon when I was looking on Google for stuff by Douglas Gordon. It was a happy search engine hiccup. Appropriation. Taking images again often from online and turning them into 3D then the camera is needed to turn them back into 2D. That's the interesting thing for me, the camera is still as much an integral part of the process. Why do I like that ? is it because I love the art and craft of fine photography?  Is it because  perhaps his work can be seen to be exploring ideas such as photography's roll in the modern image savvy world  when digital imaging can take on the job of representation? Do I like his work because it is perhaps a 'kick back' at slick perfect picture making, a bit 'make do and mend' like knitting and baking. Is it because he is the Kirstie Allsop of photography?
The reason I love the work of Daniel Gordon is all of the above but mainly because he makes nuddy women out of old magazines.

Fourteen Nineteen.

People sometimes send me in submissions. I don't get as many as I did back in the photo blogging heyday which I think was a couple of weeks in 2009 but I still get some. I got one the other day from a third year student who manged somehow to use an email address I couldn't reply to. They also sent me nothing to look at and when I searched online they had no website.
That is how not to get yourself out there or how to operate in 2012. Photographers Alex F Webb and Lewis Chaplin  are frighteningly pro-active. They are two halves of the online gallery Fourteen Nineteen which they say of "we attempt to provide a sincere, engaging platform for interacting with the next generation of torchbearers for contemporary photography."  They also find time to study (Alex is still a student) they publish indie photo books counting Ryan McGinley amongst their fans and set up exhibitions. No wonder the young pups got no time to brush his hair. 

I'm tired just writing about them.

Cats.

“My wife Yoko first brought Chiro home from Kasukabe when she was just a four month old kitten.”
– Nobuyoshi Araki, Itoshi No Chiro (Chiro, My Love), 1990

Oh no I hear you scream bloody cats on the web. Get used to it, there may be a few more around here over the next couple of weeks. I love cats me. Dogs are OK but they can be prone to eat their own shit. Cats don't even like to look at theirs.
 Araki loved his cat so I'm in good company. Thought I'd make some cat work, so I've been looking at cats in Art as well as all that 'Cats in sinks' Internet shite .
 THIS series by Araki is a good place to start. It's as good as animal photography gets. "Never work with animals or kids" they say. Animals because it's hard, kids because it's Britain and you would probably get nonced off but that's a post for another day.

Anyway more cat stuff coming up. I'm just a smitten kitten me.

Andy Adams.

I may be wrong and he may eat babies but in the few dealings I've had with Andy Adams from amongst other things FLAK PHOTO he has always come over as a nice bloke. Nice bloke and dedicated and forward thinking photography bod. So it was great to listen to him on THIS talking about how photography may live on the web in the future and how that is effecting photo aesthetics. Clever stuff and a few nice tunes while you listen.

Large False Ones.

I have spent the last couple of days making a couple of giant false fingernails. It's a dirty job but someone has to do it...

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.

Jonathan Lewis

Jonathan Lewis is a facebook friend. I've not posted up his work here because of that. Oh no other way round. Fact is I really like his work and that's why I wanted to be his facebook friend. LIKE LIKE, LIKE. HERE for more.

Gemma Marmalade

I always hated the name Mark Page. It's just a couple of dull noises. Uh Uh. I would have loved a name like Gemma Marmalade.  Mark Marmalade, now that would have been something.

 Ms Marmalade's work partly deals with sexual orientation, you got to be careful with shit like that, this is the art world and like Manchester everyones gay, or at least art about such thing's is a well trod path. Give a lesbian photographer a camera and portraits of female boxers could well be on the cards.

That's no good for our Gemma. She researched and found out that in the 1950's far from just eating sick off the pavements  pigeons could also tell if you were gay or not or so some people came to believe. Now when such things were illegal (being gay not eating sick) getting grassed up by a pigeon was a bit of a shitter. That's the background for her 'STRANGE BIRDS' . I reckon this bird is one to watch.

I could could get upto so much shit with one of these....

 

Goodbye photography hello photography. 3D printing. Some lucky artist with shit loads of money will soon be making a name for themselves playing with these new 3D printers. My money is on Dame David Hockney, at least if the company that makes them has any PR sense. From SNAP! Orlando........  

 

3D Printer Photo Booth Makes Figurines:

Instead of photos, Tokyo’s stylish Harajuku district will soon be home to an unusual pop-up photo booth—customers will walk away not with photos, but with 3D printed figurines of themselves. The customer is first 3D scanned in a process that requires them to stand still for 15 minutes. A 3D model of the customer is then refined on a computer before output to a 3D printer. The figurines are available in sizes ranging from 4 to 8 inches. The 3D printer photo booth will be open November 24 to January 14, 2013.

(Although that model fella has a girls front bum which is a bit of a worry)

From a party at URBIS the first time...

Ciaran Og Arnold

I love this picture it blew me away when I saw it in SOURCE GRADUATE PHOTOGRAPHY. It's the single most memorable image I've seen in a while. I think I will remember it for a long time and also remember who it's by. I think as visual artists that's the best we can hope for.
I've been a fan of Ciaran's work since I first saw it back in SOURCE in 2007. With this latest series 'No Day or Night' he's took it up a notch. They are photographs of the inhabitants of a town, we are not told where or when. Like my favourite stuff from Japan or Denmark, existential documentary could that be a genre? HERE for more.
You will notice that the link takes you to a site called FINDING FRAGMENTS well worth a look round in it's own right. Work made by photographers who studied under such luminaries as Paul Seawright and Donovan Wylie.

SOURCE MAGAZINES TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL LIST....

So the new SOURCE magazine is out and with it comes a pamphlet 'SOURCE MA/MFA GRADUATE PHOTOGRAPHY ONLINE 2012'. I love SOURCE it's one of my favourite mags (even if the writings a bit skew sometimes) and I love this list that comes out as well. Much more interesting than the CRITICAL MASS list I mentioned in the last post. There's some proper intersting work coming out of British and Irish uni's I'm going to flag up my highlights from the list over the next week or so. It's daunting really, so much new talent coming online year after year. And they want to take art off the main curriculum, good it might give the rest of us a fucking chance. 

CRITICAL MASS 2012 Top 50 and my Top 3.

 Paula McCartney's 'A Field Guide To Snow and Ice'

Photolucida have released their CRITICAL MASS TOP 50. There are a lot of names and work in there that you may well have already seen floating around on blogs and in magazines. Some pretty well known names, Tony Fouhse Lucia Herrero and Michelle Sank to name a few. Still a goodly dose of angst ridden teenagers and  people  still seem scared to let go of the whole NEW TOPOGRAPHIC thing. I can't argue with the choices though as looking at the list of jurors (I stopped counting at 100) it seems to consist of all the great and good of the photography world! So I'll shut up and just point out my favourites from the list. Paula McCartney Thomas Jackson and Meike Nixdorf

Another Little Daido Moriyama Film.

Good camera choice cocker! Can you call the great man cocker?

I'm Not Dead,

I've just been busy trying to start stuff before I've finished stuff and while I'm still half way through other stuff. You ever get like that ? Heads up my arse and need to focus and finish one thing at a time. So the blog gets pushed back.
If anyone wants to help out around here it would be appreciated. If you want to write something for the blog let me know. Obviously you got to know something about photography/art/Manchester. You'll get full credit and a decent sized friendly audience. If you're interested let me know at info@manchesterphotography.com

ALTERNATIVE CAMERA CLUB presents EJ MAJOR

EJ Major is this months speaker at The Alternative Camera Club down at The Whitworth Art Gallery. She fits into the remit of the ACC which  looks at what's interesting and fresh in approach within the often conservative and boring world of photography. "Now where did I put my 50% grey card ? I saw it last in my Billingham bag..."