Tuesday, May 19, 2015

London / Amsterdam / Kassel / Toulouse / Paris



I'm away to London and other places today... in particular Photo London and the Kassel Photobook Festival. If any of my distant friends are up for a coffee or a beer, get in touch, it would be good to see you. Unfortunately there will be not much happening on my blog until mid June. Cheers...

Monday, May 18, 2015

Kassel - KIJK:PAPERS 2015, a celebration of the photographic artists' book

 

In June 2011 kijk:papers showed more than 80 books and editions produced by international artists at the art space Warte für Kunst in Kassel, Germany.
In this, the second edition which runs June 4 - 7, the kijk:papers event will function as both an exhibition and temporary book shop. Presented will be a curated selection of self-published books and editions, recent publications from independent publishers with a focus on photography. Kijk:papers runs parallel to the 7th International Fotobookfestival.


I will be talking about my photobook practice at 6pm on Friday June 5.

Warte für Kunst Frankfurter Straße 54, 34121 Kassel / Germany


PHOTO LONDON - see you there



Tomorrow I head for Photo London. This inaugural London Photo Fair, presented in Somerset House, 21-24 May, promises to be something special and anyway what's not to like about London. The organizers sat this:
Photo London is a unique photography event. It will feature a major international photography fair of over 70 exhibitors, including the world’s leading photography galleries and publishers, alongside an innovative public programme supported by the LUMA Foundation. Photo London will showcase the broad range of photographic practice, from vintage to contemporary, in diverse and exciting scenarios, through a series of exhibitions, installations and live events in and around Somerset House. Exhibitions will include Beneath the Surface from the V&A collection, Sebastião Salgado’s Genesis in Platinum and Kaveh Golestan’s Prostitute, while a specially commissioned installation by Rut Blees Luxemburg will fill the Courtyard. Talks, music sessions and book signings around the fair will change the way you look at photography.

British photobook publisher Dewi Lewis will be at the fair and on Friday May 22 at 2.30pm I will be signing copies of my two most recent books published by Dewi. Some Things you Should Have Told Me and You Won't Be With Me Tomorrow.
 
Harvey Benge - Some Things... and You Won't...
You can read more about Photo London by going to their site HERE.

Japanese photobook publisher Superlabo will also be in London and will be at Offprint London, presented in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern from 6pm Friday May 22, closing 6pm Monday May 25. Here, over 150 artists, independent and self-publishers will be showing their wares. Superlabo will have my bookwork, How Humans Made God and also the collaborative edition Lost Home which consists of 10 separate bookworks in a slip-case, with my work amongst others.

Harvey Benge - How Humans Made God

Lost Home - A collaboration


Sunday, May 17, 2015

Christie's London, May 22, Photographs selected by James Danziger


 
Christie's London present a photography sale selected by notable New York gallerist James Danziger.
Since its founding in 1990, the Danziger Gallery has established itself as one of the leading photography venues in the world, known for the originality and diversity of its programming, its representation of established photographers, and the influence of its new discoveries. The gallery was the first to show Richard Misrach's Sky pictures, Abelardo Morell's Camera Obscuras, Chuck Close and Vik Muniz's fashion work, and the work of British camera-less photographers Susan Derges, Christopher Bucklow, and Garry Fabian Miller.

The sale has something for everybody, Warhol, Frank, Brandt, Steichen and more, classic works from the masters and less known material. All of high standard.

You can go to Christie's London HERE and have a look at the sale, all 103 lots.


Saturday, May 16, 2015

Clare Strand - Workshop - PROTOCOLS OF THE UNKNOWN

 

Here in opportunity to spend three days with Clare Strand at her workshop PROTOCOLS OF THE UNKNOWN. Clare is a remarkable camera artist who is not afraid to take risks in her practice which extends the photographic medium beyond mere representation and description.

The participants will be exploring the open-ended subject of chance… What happens when your decision making and shaping of form are separated from aesthetic sensibility and the canons of the very obvious? Chance your luck in the face of logic and the sensible. Join Clare Strand to celebrate the joy of not knowing.. whilst making.

Clare Strand's work is held in the collections of Arts Council England; The National Collection; The British Council; The Folkwang Museum; The Unicredit Bank; The New York Library; The Victoria and Albert Museum; The Centre Pompidou and many private collections. There are two publications Clare Strand Monograph published by Steidl (2007) and most recently Skirts published by GOST (2013). Strand is also one half of the ideas based collective MacDonaldStrand and head of the Intangiable for The Institute of Unnecessary Research. "Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time" by Clare Strand is on show until 06 June at Grimaldi Gavin gallery (London).
www.clarestrand.com

The workshop will take place in the beautiful classroom and garden of a Victorian House located at West Norwood, London. The space is managed by The Meanwhile Foundation, a national charity set up by Brent Council in London and Locality, that champions meanwhile use of empty property as a valuable way for supporting regeneration and connecting local people with the assets in their town centre's and neighborhoods. 


Where_ West Norwood, SE27 9AA London
Date_ 26, 27, 28 June
Schedule_ Friday 3pm-6pm, Saturday & Sunday 10am-6pm
Price_ 470 GBP (lunch included)
Contact_ hello@widephotobcn.com

 

You can find out more about Clare Strand's workshop HERE.

Friday, May 15, 2015

VISION ANEW - The Lens and Screen Arts



Vision Anew, published by the University of California Press and edited by Adam Bell and Charles H Traub presents a collection of essays on photography and the moving image alongside engaging interviews with artists and filmmakers, Vision Anew offers an assessment of the medium’s ongoing importance in the digital era. Contributors include Ai Weiwei, Gerry Badger, David Campany, Lev Manovich, Christian Marclay, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Murch, Trevor Paglen, Pipilotti Rist, Shelly Silver, Rebecca Solnit, and Alec Soth, among others.

The ubiquity of digital images has profoundly changed the responsibilities and capabilities of anyone and everyone who uses them. Thanks to a range of innovations, from the convergence of moving and still image in the latest DSLR cameras to the growing potential of interactive and online photographic work, the lens and screen have emerged as central tools for many artists. Vision Anew's diverse selection of texts by practitioners, critics, and scholars to explore the evolving nature of the lens-based arts.

You can get your copy HERE.

GET THE PICTURE - PHOTOGRAPHERS


 
GET THE PICTURE is a photographers collective established in Paris in 2003. GTP brings together seven camera artists from France, USA, UK and New Zealand. Working with their own personal fictions, each members practice deals with post-documentary photography.

The GTP group has an all new website designed by Myriam Barchechat and developed by Arno Soban. You can see new works by Harvey Benge, Pascal Fellonneau, Marcus Haydock, Paul Kwiatkowski, Simon Kossoff, Damien Lafargue and Simon Letourneau.

You can got to the GET THE PICTURE web site HERE.

Paul Kwiatkowski - SUMMERLAND Part 8 of EAT PREY DRUG

Thursday, May 7, 2015

American photography at artnet auctions

 
O Winston Link - Hot Shot Eastbound at the Drive-In... 1956

With biding open until May 14 artnet auctions presents a sale of American photographs which explores various aspects of the American cultural landscape. Highlights of the sale include works by William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, Ansel Adams, Joseph Szabo, Edward Weston, Irving Penn, and O. Winston Link.

The auction includes one of my favorite photographs, O. Winston Link's well known work Hot Shot Eastbound at the Drive-In, Iaeger, West Virginia, 1956. The work carries an estimate of US$8 - 12,000.

On the hot night of August 2, 1956, while the Iaeger Drive-In was showing Battle Taxi, a Korean War movie, O. Winston Link photographed the scene. Link used two exposures on separate sheets of film, one for the image on the movie screen, and the other for the rest of the photograph. This image has been reproduced worldwide, and remains one of Link's most famous works. The image brings together many archetypes and themes of the American experience: love, cars, movies, and the steam railroad.

For Link, the steam railroad was a vital ingredient to “the good life" in America, an essential part of the fabric of our lives. It is this quality - of life, not machinery - which he captured so artfully in his photographs. This image is from a series in which Link photographed railway trans at night, juxtaposed with small-town America. 


You can go to the artnet auction page HERE.



Monday, May 4, 2015

Clare Strand at Grimaldi Gavin London

 
Clare Strand - Pre-The Entropy Pendulum archive image

Clare Strand is a British artist who mostly works with lens based media and in doing so defies the obvious, abandons convention and takes risks. The result - surreal, demanding work that is open to innumerable possibilities.
Currently showing at London's Grimaldi Gavin Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time is an exhibition of balanced opposites;  better and worse, backwards and forwards, up and down and in and out.

The exhibition employs kinetic machines, film and photography to reveal Strand’s discordant relationship with the photographic medium, exploring its promise and limitations through unexpected and eccentric means.

The Happenstance Generator is a large Perspex chamber on a metal plinth. Inside the chamber a selection of the artist’s archives of research images from the past 30 years, will be blown about by hidden fans. The machine will randomly propel images towards the transparent surfaces of the chamber, before being repositioned again by the movement of the air. The images will be highlighted for one moment and disappear the next; much in the way that data and image sequences appear and disappear, grow and diminish in importance, in the constantly changing landscape of everyday visual encounters.

The Entropy Pendulum will have a selected photographic print positioned under its constantly swinging weight. As the pendulum arm swings back and forth, it will rub against the work and over the course of a day will gradually erase parts of the image. Each day throughout the exhibition, a photograph will take its place under the weight of the pendulum, gradually filling up the 35 empty frames on the gallery wall.

The third machine, Control in Motion, is a mutoscope based on an early motion picture device invented in the late 19th century. Working on the same principle as a flip-book but with a circular core, like a Rolodex, a series of 100 pages, representing the subtle grades of the tonal system from black to white, will rotate in a constant motion. With each rotation the cards experience a very slight degradation, initially undetectable to the human eye, but noticeable over time.

The British Journal of Photography spoke with Clare Strand, you can read the piece HERE.

Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time – New work by Clare Strand is on show until 6 June at Grimaldi Gavin, 27 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4DW. www.grimaldigavin.com

Friday, May 1, 2015

Printed Matter at the first edition of the Melbourne Art Book Fair



Printed Matter NYC are special guests at the inaugural Melbourne Art Book Fair this weekend, May 1-3. The Fair is the first of a series of annual art book events put on by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).

You can visit Printed Matter at Booth 5. PM's Acting Director Max Schumann and Fairs  Editions Curator Shannon Michael Cane will join a number of emerging and established publishers, artists, writers and designers from around Australia, as well as ten featured publishers from Japan.

The Printed Matter booth will present a curated selection of artists’ books showcasing recent activity in independent publishing. Schumann will deliver the Keynote Lecture The Possibilities of the Artist Book on Sunday May 3, 2pm, on the origins and development of contemporary artists’ books as an experimental media-art practice. He will also give a second presentation on Saturday, May 2, 1pm, on the history of Printed Matter since its founding in 1976. Printed Matter will also present FORMAL ARRANGEMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE AND CANCELLED, a new publication from Misha Hollenbach, published in partnership with Heavy Time on the occasion of the Fair. The collaged work of B&W images is printed in two sizes (A4 and A5) bound into the same book. The work is published in an edition of 200 and retails for $20.

The Melbourne Art Book Fair has a full weekend of programs including free talks, forums, printing demonstrations, and performances, set within a uniquely designed experience by Melbourne Architecture firm Fold Theory. You can see the full schedule HERE.