you can't always get what you want

Please join us for the private view of the DayFour exhibition, "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

When: Thursday, December 10th, 7pm - 10pm

Where: theprintspace 74 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DL

In an ideal world, we could all work for a living three days a week and on the fourth day we'd do our own work, on whatever we love, are drawn to or excited by (of course, the three-day weekend goes without saying). This is the philosophy of DayFour, an annual magazine and website of personal work, mainly (but not exclusively) photographic. The idea for this issue was to explore something we in the affluent West have become very used to over the past few years: the ability to have most of our desires satisfied with comparative ease. In this issue and exhibition, the contributors were asked to think about wishes, desires, lusts, hopes, expectations. The 28 contributors responded in surprisingly varied and personal ways.

The exhibition will run from Friday the 11th of December until Wednesday the 30th of December (excluding bank holidays)

Fiona Hayes

Editor / Art Director

DAYFOUR

http://www.dayfour.info

a distance between

In the cities, Kelly Hill, 2009

'In the cities ' is a body of work that looks at the private world of children living in a major urban metropolis whose parents have migrated from another European country - for work, for marriage, for study. The images were shot from the outside at dusk - a threshold moment where day merges into night. This liminal period hints at an ambiguous and indeterminate state where identity dissolves.

The children are illuminated in pools of light as the world darkens around them, exploring notions of boundary and the merging/blurring of private and public universes as well as of languages and cultures.

“Dans les villes” est un ensemble d’œuvres photographiques qui observe l’univers privé d'enfants vivant dans une grande métropole urbaine et dont les parents ont immigré d’un autre pays européen pour des motifs professionnels, familiaux ou d'étude. Toutes les photographies ont été prises de l’extérieur, au crépuscule, moment liminaire où le jour et la nuit se confondent et qui évoque un état ambigu et indéterminé où les identités se dissolvent.

Les enfants sont éclairés par une source de lumière tandis qu’autour d'eux l’obscurité se fait peu à peu. Ces images explorent la notion de fusion ou de “confusion” entre les univers public et privé et entre les diverses langues et cultures.

A DISTANCE BETWEEN

MA Photography London and Paris

Pascal Ancel, Diane Bielik, Tania Dolvers, Kate Elliott, Joanne Gane, Rab Harling, Cameron Haynes, Kelly Hill, Maxim Kelly, Gemma Land, Elisa Noguera Lopez, Jeff Metal, Olivia McGilchrist, Anna Positano, Emma Jane Spain

Ivan Mathie, Sophie Scher, Loïc Molon, Annabelle Lourenço, Lucille Caballero, Gabriel Coutagne, Judith Bormand, Pierre Adrien Brazzini, Nicolas Friess, William Gaye, Lauriane Thiriat, Alban Chassagne, Julie Balagué

Pebbledash Gallery, 2 Leswin Place,

Stoke Newington,

London N16 7NJ

Private View Saturday 24.10.09, 7 - 10pm

Gallery Open Sunday 25.10.09 – Friday 6.12.09, 11am – 6pm

Late Opening on Thursday 5.12.09 until 10pm

A DISTANCE BETWEEN aims to create a platform for the photographic image as a valid vehicle to question, communicate and debate the multiple facets of European identity.

www.adistancebetween.org

For press enquiries email info@exhibitx.co.uk or telephone Kevin Martin on 0207 2545833

itchy scratchy

YOU ARE INVITED TO . . .

An exhibition initiated by Jason Evans

Preview Friday 2 October 6.30 - 9.30pm

Exhibition continues 3 October – 8 November 2009

Permanent Gallery, 20 Bedford Place, Brighton

Open: Thurs/Fri/Sun 1pm - 6pm, Sat 11am - 6pm

"I think of it as the picture/s that you print up, just to a small working size, to get a look at. The ones that interest and trouble you because there is something that you don't fully understand about them, as if you unconsciously did something. These pictures seem to signpost a new direction in a photographer's practice, they are transitional pieces, and precursors to a new phase or project. I think all the best photographers have the guts to move beyond the pictures they already know they can make, and spend time with the itchy scratchy pictures to work out what comes next."

Charlotte Cotton

Itchy Scratchy is an exhibition of photographs. The title is taken from this quote by Charlotte Cotton, where she describes the pictures which break photographers out of familiar ways of working. The exhibition affirms the role that happy accidents and epiphanies play in creative activity.

Itchy Scratchy was initiated by photographer/writer Jason Evans. All exhibitors have been invited to submit a digital file of an itchy scratchy image in a uniform size, to be reproduced on matt paper using an inkjet printer. The exhibition features a broad range of photographers from the emerging to those of international repute.

Visitors to the exhibition are able to purchase a raffle ticket. At the end of the show a draw will determine who has won which unique print. Proceeds from ticket sales will support the realisation of future exhibitions at Permanent Gallery.

Itchy Scratchy photographs will be viewable at http://www.permanentgallery.com soon. Raffle tickets will be available to purchase from the Gallery (during opening times, Thurs/Fri/Sun 1pm -6pm + Sat 11am - 6pm), and from the gallery website, as of Friday 2nd October. Raffle tickets are £50.

List of contributors :

Nik Adam, Marta Bakst, Jason Bascombe, Kevin Beck, Nicola Belson, David Blackmore, Peter Bobby, Michael Bodiam, Mark Bolland, Matt Burgess, Millie Burton, Polly Braden, Thom Bridge, Thomas Brown, Tommi Cahill, Helen Cammock, Sam Collins, Ben Crawford, Jason Evans, Niccolo Fano, Annabelle Fenning, Andrew Ferguson, Victoria Fornieles, Anna Fox, Carl Gent, Ruth George, Phillipe Gerlach, Simon Gilbert & Nik Adam, Nigel Green, Amy Gwatkin, Fiona Harvey, Peter Haynes, David Hendra, Laura Hensser, Todd Hido, Kelly Hill, Jan von Holleben, Mandy Lee Jandrell, Greg Jones, Maria Kapajeva, Shiho Kito, Paul Knight, Ioannis Koussertari, Matthieu Lavanchy, Patrick Lears, Patrick Lee, Wiebke Leister, Chris Linaker, Gordon MacDonald, John MacLean, Craig Mammano, Mike Massaro, Trent McMinn, Sherman McMinn, Shannon Michael Cane, Alexander Milnes, Tim Mitchell, David Moore, Ashima Narain, Luke Norman, Magali Nougarede, Tod Papageorge, Sam Pearce, Sarah Pickering, Oliver Pin-Fat, Oliver Poddar, Augusta Quirk, Milo Reid, Alex Rich, John Rose-Adams, David Rule, Viviane Sassen, Richard Sawdon Smith, Michael Schmelling, Aaron Schuman, Andy Sewell, Alexandria Da Silva, John Spinks, Sandra Stein, Christopher Stevens, Melanie Stidolph, Clare Strand, Kamei Takashi, Andreas Tauber, Kirsti Taylor Bye, George Thomas, Tviga, Nick Waplington, Harry Watts, Ruth Wiggins

http://www.jasonevans.info

http://www.permanentgallery.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Permanent

Gallery & Bookshop

20 Bedford Place

Brighton BN1 2PT

UK

+44 1273 710389

info@permanentgallery.com

http://www.permanentgallery.com

http://www.permanentbookshop.com

Open:

Thurs/Fri/Sun 1pm - 6pm

Sat 11am - 6pm

cape farewell : art and climate change

endangered species, siobhan davies

I went to a lecture at the Barbican last night and was extremely impressed with how Ruth Little, Literary Manager at the Royal Court Theatre, and Cheoreographer, Siobhan Davies, described the experience of visiting the arctic with Cape Farewell and being faced with 'not knowing' how to respond or what to think in a place where experience is so far removed from a more familiar environment. Ruth Little in particular described the importance of a need to shift one's quality of attention to 'seeing' rather than falling back on habit to quantify experience. Little recommended looking at Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk - in which she describes how she experienced the process of having a stroke and realized how the loss of logic enabled her to have a powerful encounter with the sensory realm. It is a very moving talk and a great insight into how the left and right side of the brain respond to experience. Enjoy!

rinko kawauchi

'I am often not sure why I am photographing things, but by the end of the third year I know. When the pictures provide the answer I know it is time to move on.'

Rinko Kawauchi in converstion

with Martin Parr, June 2009

hannes schüpbach

Hannes Schüpbach (b. 1965) creates meditative and lyrical film diaries that explore the power and limits of the single shot and an idea(l) of beauty grounded in a fascination with nature. An accomplished painter and expert on textile art, Schüpbach uses 16mm cinematography to explore cinema’s painterly dimensions, bringing to his films a keen attention to color and light and their effect on mood and tempo.

Schüpbach’s meticulously structured silent films, discover a multi-layered world, often using superimpositions and reflections to explore the hidden depths of the places and people evoked within them.

adam broomberg and oliver chanarin

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin have worked together for over ten years. Their unusual approach to photojournalism has earned them a place amongst the most progressive photographers working on the front-line today

The long term collaborators constantly question the responsibility of the photographer and whether the photographs made will change the situation of the protagonist in the frame. They gain access to situations by researching stories meticulously before they arrive and choose a particular aesthetic for each specific project.

Citing diverse influences, from the music of John Cage to 'The Story of my Death' by the Italian, Lauro de Bosis, who succeeded in humiliating Mussolini by distributing ant-fascist leaflets in a solo flight over Rome before disappearing at sea - Broomberg and Chanarin encourage an audience to work harder and listen more closely to the stories they are told.

'The act of photographing is complicit - you are not a neutral witness.'

Broomberg and Chanarin

Photovoice Lecture Series

susan derges

'The whole night became my dark room,' Susan Derges

richard long

I like the simplicity of walking,

the simplicity of stones

I like the common means given

the simple twist of art.

I choose lines and circles because they do the job.

My art is about working in the wide world,

wherever, on the surface of the earth.

My work is not urban, nor is it romantic.

It is the laying down of modern ideas

in the only practical places to take them.

Richard Long, 1980

school run

day four

Sensitive Dependence is featured in DayFour issue 7 -  'You can't always get what you want'.

Inspired by the lyrics of the Rolling Stone's song by the same name - a disillusioned reflection on love, politics and the drug scene enveloping the group and their friends and a poignant message from Jagger to his then girlfriend, Marianne Faithful, a heroin addict seven months pregnant with their child.  

Creative Director, Fiona Hayes asked contributing photographers to think about 'wishes, desires, lusts, expectations, hopes and what is actually important.'  In these turbulent times we need to think carefully about what is significant. 'What makes us happy? What (who) do we really want? And what do we really need?'

'But as the song says, 'If you try sometimes you might find, you get what you need'. Creativity, passion, and support are the things we always need.' 

Fiona Hayes, DayFour

DayFour is a beautifully produced magazine with inspiring images, stories and ideas - I am absolutely thrilled to be included in the line up of photographers whom I greatly admire - Esther Teichmann, Hin Chua, Ben Roberts, Alys Tomlinson, Julieta Sans and Gigi Cafali - amongst others! 

fault lines

An extension of his involvement in Indian politics and human rights, Amar Kanwar's multilayered films and installations prompt 'revelations, of different kinds, for different individuals.

Sean O'Toole interviews Kanwar in Frieze.

helen levitt

Helen Levitt, whose photography caught 'fleeting moments of surpassing lyricism, mystery and quite drama' on the streets of her native New York, died at home in Manhattan on Sunday.

In his preface to Levitt's book,  A Way of Seeing, James Agee wrote 'Like most good artists, Miss Levitt is no intellectual and no theorist; she works, quite simply, where she feels most at home, and that, naturally enough, is where the kind of thing that moves and interests her is likely to occur most naturally and in best abundance'.

'The artist's task is not to alter the world as the eye sees it into a world of aesthetic reality, but to perceive the aesthetic reality within the actual world, and to make an undisturbed and faithful record of the instant in which this movement of creativeness achieves its most expressive crystallization.'

For a retrospective of her work, see Helen Levitt: New York Streets 1938 to 1990s at lensculture and obituary in the Guardian by Amanda Hopkinson

the grain of voice

Photography and the Grain of the Voice is an exhibition by 19 students from the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, Germany, curated by Dr Wiebke Leister. The work was exhibited at the London College of Communication last week where it was received as an extremely accomplished and thought provoking body of work.

The photographers were asked to consider Roland Barthes' 1972 essay 'The Grain of Voice' as a lietmotif in the production of work that considered photography as performative. How in making the work the photographer becomes involved in an active engagement with the question of what a photographic voice can be and how it can relate to ideas of authorship in the making of and the thinking about photography.

The students posed many different questions in the process of producing the work - Who is speaking? And who is looking? What is the character of the author? Is there an element of fictional self portraiture involved? What kind of timbre does the visual voice have? What do we imagine off frame?

The photographers were attempting to find a gesture in their art that reached out to the viewer .... 'The 'grain',' for Barthes, 'is in the body, in the voice as it sings, the hand as it writes, the limb as it performs.' 

I was asked to review the work of Johanna Kopp who produced a series of poetic portraits titled 'About Closeness'. Johanna is a sensitive artist who by looking intimately at gesture, facial expression, gaze and posture pared down the elements to capture a private moment of internalization and contemplation. 

Taking, as a starting point, Barthes' description of the skill of a particular harpsicordist who was able to communicate a tremor from her inner body in her music  - Johanna's project was a search for a way of making portraiture that touched on an interior moment. An attempt at a 'moment of truth', a shared moment of equilibrium.

We talked about Bettina von Zwehl's work - how she sets up a controlled situation in order to elicit a very private human emotion (Fur Alina), and Rineke Dijskstra, who also waits for a particular moment in which to photograph. In all there is a paring down of gesture and pose, a search for an internal moment, and a desire to become systematic and detached in order to reach that moment of non pose.

We also discussed how photographers project themselves on to their subject, the images are in fact self portraits, where an intimate moment is shared between the photographer and the subject.

The Grain of the Voice was an impressive body of work which drew on different readings of Barthes multi-layered text. I was particularly drawn to pared down palette of  Anne Lena Michel's still lives in The Attempt of a Transformation of an Immediate Vicinity and the retro wit of Philip Ullrich's Next time it will be about the Solar System. Finally, a special mention for Philipp Gallon whose failed equation for building a grain enhancement machine was replaced with a grain of the self in Assuming a pose could reveal an expression of failure, when it is a neutral one. I was moved by this young artist's sincerity.

cia de foto

Cia de Foto's video and photography montage was banned by the council at Derby's Format Festival last weekend but shown at the Photographer's Gallery on wednesday.

Members of the San Paulo based photo bureau live together and work in such a way that the singular author is rejected in favor of the collective. 

All images are credited to Cia de Foto regardless of who actually took a picture. Pio Figueiroa described how the photographers work in a collaborative way that makes it 'impossible for us to know who to credit individually.' 

Post production (significantly in this group - a female domain) is regarded as important as taking the pictures.

a shimmer of possibility

Pittsburg (Man cutting grass), 2004 

from a shimmer of possibility, Paul Graham/steidlMACK

'Perhaps instead of standing by the river bank scooping out water, it's better to immerse yourself in the current, and watch how the river comes up, flows smoothly around your presence, and gently reforms on the other side like you were never there.'

Paul Graham

British photographer Paul Graham, currently shortlisted for the Deutsche Borse Photography prize alongside Emily Jacir, Tod Papageorge and Taryn Simon, commented on his best shot in the Guardian. 

Graham was nominated for a shimmer of possibility inspired by Chekhov's short stories. The work comprises 12 individual books in each volume a story of everyday American life is told in a small sequence of images. At times the quiet narrative breaks unexpectedly into a sublime moment - such as the moment above when Graham describes 'the sun burst through, and the rain came down, and every drop was illuminated.'

'A 'great shot' is the antithesis of what this work is about. It's about appreciating the flow of the moment, the rhythm and currents and the eddies of life, rather than neatly packaging the world into perfectly formed little jewels.'

I am interested in Graham's portrayal of the mundane moments of life that seem 'worthless' but, as he says, 'they form and shape our lives'.

A recent Q&A with Paul Graham published on PDN offers some provocative thoughts on documentary photography and how it is perceived in the art world. I have taken one quote, see below, for the full article follow the link above.

'My point is simply that the art world is traditionally attuned to perceiving what the artist "created", which in photography usually means that they pick up more on work with a synthetic quality - constructed scenes, Tableaux Vivants, staged pieces - these fit neater into this expectation and fit into the broader art world model of "what artists do" much more easily. However, the great photography which operates at the core of the medium - from Frank to Eggleston to Shore to Winogrand - doesn't fit that model, as it is taken from life directly, unscripted and unforced. That creates problems and is often misunderstood or marginalized as 'documentary or 'observational', Now nobody in their right mind can deny the power of what Frank did, or the best of Eggleston, or Robert Adams, but sadly there's a lot of folks that don't get it, and prefer the traditional model.

Having said that .... there's a lot of blame to lay in the photography community itself, for the plain dumbness and lack of discrimination that burdens the medium. We should fight that and be smarter and more discriminating in what we do, say and promote. It's an incredible medium, alive and direct, but we need to engage our hearts and minds in aspiring to make truly great work, that puts any doubts beyond reach.'

Paul Graham

the day Bourgeois moved me to tears

The female of the species ... views of a series of paintings

entitled Femme Maison by Louise Bourgeois

I just stumbled across Will Gompertz's article in the Guardian 8th October 2008 on the impact of walking round the Louise Bourgeois exhibition at Tate Modern last October.  

'All the Femme Maison (literally house woman/housewife) paintings share the same idea. In each one, a woman has a house covering her head, below which her naked body protrudes. She thinks she is safe and secure in her domestic prison, because that is all she can see around her. She has no idea that she is flashing her genitals to all and sundry, more vulnerable than ever. It's the stuff of nightmares where you are publicly exposed and shamed. These paintings succinctly sum up the struggle of every woman and their destiny to live with the responsibilities and constrictions of trying to maintain the balance of wife, mother and housekeeper while trying to retain a semblance of individuality in such sapping domestic circumstances. The simplicity of the paintings adds to the sense of entrapment; there wasn't the time for anything more studied or crafted.'

deep sleep

Sweet Nothings, Vanessa Winship

Vanessa Winship drew my attention to this new online magazine that has just launched its inaugural issue. Deep Sleep was founded by and features work by a small group of contributors based in the same office in Shoreditch. 

david spero

Emma and John's, Tir Ysbrydol (Spiritual Land), 

Britdir Mawr, Pembrokshire, 2004, David Spero

Settlements is a body of work that David Spero has been working on since 2004 and is only now reaching a conclusion. However, given the photographer's commitment to the project it is clear that there will be an on-going relationship with the communities he has clearly become involved with. 

The artist, who graduated from the RCA in 1993, has spent time visiting and staying at the low impact communities located throughout the UK. Set in beautiful lush green countryside and dense forests these transitory homes are timeless, as Spero describes, 'these places look like they belong in the past, but at the same time they could be a future.'

In many ways the places are as far away from the manicured lawns, gardens and driveways of suburbia as one can imagine. The structures, artfully cobbled together from local natural and recycled materials, are built in harmony with the local environment to the extent that they seem to become part of the surroundings. Spero focuses on the the evolution of the settlements that see people come and go, where children are born, grow and educated in a world where the buildings emerge in a natural, organic and ad hoc way. 

The communities work towards being as self sufficient and sustainable as possible, offering a refreshing antidote to consumer society. Camilla Brown, Senior Curator at the Photographers' Gallery described Spero's work as 'a powerful visual testimony to these people who chose to live their lives according to their ideological beliefs within a contemporary society.'

bettina von zwehl

Alina, 2004  Bettina von Zwehl

Bettina von Zwehl spoke about her work last week and at the end of the lecture she gave the everyone in the audience a slide from the presentation - symbolically marking a move from slideshow/analogue to powerpoint/digital. 

In the lucky dip I pulled out the image above which is from a series - created for a Photoworks commission - in which Royal College of Music students were photographed when totally absorbed listening to music for twenty minutes in the dark. 

In the morning we had been introduced to Relational Art - time/place, effect, embodiment - and in a way I felt that Bettina's work bore the elements of this way of working as she is dependent on a reaction from the participant in order to create the work. 

Bettina sets up situations in a specified place - her studio or on location - where she employs members of the public to work with her in the creation of an image. In this case she asked music students to listen to Fur Alina by Arvo Part in the dark for a prolonged period of time. The music - a calm, meditative and repetitive piece - is played through twice over a twenty minute period and at some point the artist sets off a sudden flash, perhaps once or twice - in order to capture a private moment of intense concentration. The resonant images become the embodiment of Bettina's original idea for the work.

By setting up what is almost a scientific experiment or laboratory situation, Bettina is able to capture moments of extreme beauty and quiet reflection that are both honest and distinctly human.

eventually, everything connects

Peter Fraser, Untitled, from Ice and Water, 1993

Unfortunately, I missed Peter Frazer's lecture at LCC on February 11th, but looked at his website which is fascinating and read Gary Badger's essay, Eventually, Everything Connects.  

In this eloquent piece, Badger describes how Charles and Ray Eames' remarkable eight minute cult movie, Power of Ten, became a formative inspiration behind Frazer's work, along with the time he  spent with William Eggleston, 'the master', in Memphis. 

''Inevitably, materials change their state or bound, both box and glass fragment have degenerated from being 'things of this world' to formless chaos' bound. The glass may even be considered a 'thing of value.' Frazer of course has already explored this in previous series, but here in the disparate nature of things to which he has attended, asking us to draw broader connections, make Peter Frazer not only a more difficult but a more ambitious piece of work, along 'universe in a grain of sand' lines. In these Chinese boxes of connections, Fraser might be proposing a model or metaphor for the world, its past, present and future, by tapping into a small part of the cycle that will reach closure eons into the future - formlessness to form to a new formlessness."

Gary Badger, 2005

esther teichmann

esther teichmann, Mythologies, 2008

Esther Teichmann spoke at LCC a couple of weeks ago to an incredibly rude audience who seemed to think it was ok to come and go, talk, answer the phone and generally show little regard for the fact that this artist was showing not only beautiful but powerful and personal work. 

It was difficult not to be overwhelmed by the creative energy of this young, prolific and clearly gifted photographer who splits her time between completing an MPhil at the RCA, lecturing at LCC and Brighton, producing ad campaigns and fashion shoots, and linking up with fellow creative spirit, Spartacus Chetwynd, on minibus forays to galleries in Berlin.