Tagged with: Photography
Posts (44)
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Kutosis: In session, 7 January 2012, 成人论坛 Radio Wales
Bethan Elfyn
The first 成人论坛 Radio Wales Saturday night session for 2012 went to Cardiff three piece band Kutosis, whose album A Fanatical Love has been a regular on my radio show since it was released by Barely Regal a few months ago. You can listen again to the show on the 成人论坛 iPlayer until 10pm on Saturd...
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Daniel Blaufuks - Works On Memory
Polly March
A new installation by Portuguese artist Daniel Blaufuks will explore the complexities of the processes of memory and the role photography plays in freezing and retrieving memories. The exhibition is due to open at the Ffotogallery in Penarth on 14 January with a talk by Blaufuks on the subject taking place from 11am- 2pm. It is the first solo UK show for the artist, who uses the media of photography, video, sound and installation to express his fascination for how memory is formed through an accumulation of notions and details throughout life. Fifteen Minutes 1 from The Business of Living, c-print, 2010 漏 Daniel Blaufuks Blaufuks believes memory cannot be separated from our notions of time, space and place. In his own contemporary photography, for which he has built up a strong reputation in Portugal, he uses each object he snaps as a springboard for something else, be it conscious or unconscious. Untitled from The Memory of Others, c-print, 2010 漏 Daniel Blaufuks The works contained in the exhibition will explore how these cues for romantic relationships, emotional resonance or recollections just outside the realms of consciousness have significance yet can often remain beyond our reach. As he says: "The hand-written note, postcard, concert ticket, passport stamp, shopping receipt; as individual images they appear to have little significance and meaning, but presented in a series they encourage us to look for patterns and relationships, to build a coherent narrative from the shards and fragments of personal or collective memory." Another point of interest for Blaufuks is how individuals archive the important information in their lives and how that affects their ability to remember and the way they access those memories. Images of film canisters, cassette tapes, celluloid film strips and negatives included in the installation cast a glance at technological developments in photography over time and muse on how, even as we find ever more newfangled ways to store and retrieve data, something true can also be lost in the process. In using photography as his medium, Blaufuks investigates how it in itself becomes part of the process of memory and is more than just a trigger for past reminiscences or snapshots. "From the act of photographing something new, or incorporating a found image in a work, new memories and associations are formed." Untitled, from Terez铆n, c-print, 2007 漏 Daniel Blaufuks Works On Memory is co-curated by Filipa Oliveira and Ffotogallery Director David Drake and runs until 25 February. A new Ffotogallery publication, Works On Memory, will accompany the exhibition. Exhibition preview: Friday 13 January 2012, 6.30-8.30pm. Artist talk: Saturday 14 January, 11am-2pm.
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Photography exhibition explores Bangladeshi community
Laura Chamberlain
A new photography exhibition at The Cardiff Story provides an intimate insight into the UK's Bangladeshi community. The exhibition consists largely of observational portraits of Bengali women living in Cardiff, London and Sylhet, the region in north east Bangladesh where the majority of the UK's Bangladeshi community originates. The portraits not only give an insight into their private lives and situations but also wider cultural issues of the Bangladeshi community. It is one of the most disadvantaged communities in the UK, suffering from high rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and it is the older women in the community that typically suffer from ill health. The images have been taken by documentary photographer Vanja Garaj, who is also a lecturer in digital media design at Brunel University. The photographs explore the ideas of migration, nutrition and ageing in a cross-section of Bengali women taken in the three very different cities. Each striking photograph is accompanied by a caption, written by journalist Nick Hunt, that explains a little about the subject's situation, though all the women involved have been given pseudonyms. Cardiff, Wales, UK - Leena, 37, was born in Cardiff, and her family speaks English at home - her children understand the Sylheti dialect, but cannot speak it well. She regularly visits Bangladesh to keep in touch with her family. Garaj told me: "The two-year project involved a number of visits to Cardiff, several sessions in London and two prolonged trips to Bangladesh between January 2010 and September 2011. "The majority of the photographs tell personal stories and provide an insight into the way of life of Bangladeshi women both in the UK and in Bangladesh and some illustrate the complex female-male relationships existing in the Bengali society. "Besides their documentary aspect, the photographs and the exhibition are intended to raise a wider awareness of the issues many Bangladeshi women face in their daily lives." Cardiff, Wales, UK - "Here I have only my children but in Bangladesh I have so many relatives around me," says Lubna, 52, who has been living in the UK for 31 years. "I used to feel like going back home. I was feeling so bad, but slowly everything was OK." Sylhet City, Bangladesh - Most street restaurants in Bangladesh cater for rickshaw drivers and other male workers, and women generally feel uncomfortable to visit these places. Other more upscale food establishments, however, are frequented by both men and women, particularly in urban centres like Dhaka and Sylhet City. The exhibition is part of Project MINA: Migration, Nutrition and Ageing across the Lifecourse in Bangladeshi Families: A Transnational Perspective - a three year research project funded by Economic and Social Research Council UK, under New Dynamics of Ageing Programme. Bangladesh鈫扷K: The Stories of Food, Ageing and Migration, A Photo Exhibition by Vanja Garaj, runs at The Cardiff Story Museum at The Old Library, The Hayes, Cardiff until Thursday 15 December. Browse a photo gallery of some of Garaj's striking images on the 成人论坛 Wales News website.
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Believing is Seeing exhibition at Ffotogallery
Polly March
The idea in some parts of the world that taking a photograph of somebody amounts to stealing their soul is nothing new. But a fascinating new exhibition of work by seven Korean artists about to open at the Ffotogallery in Penarth goes a step further in exploring just how much of our selves can be captured in a portrait. Hein-Kuhn Oh, Jung-suh Yun, age 17 July 19, from Cosmetic Girls, 2007 漏 the artist The term 'Junsinsajo' is used in traditional Korean portrait painting and signifies the replication of a person's shape and spirit. This means that taking a snapshot of a person is not restricted to a replication of their physical likeness, but should also embody the essence of their personality. It is an idea that endures in contemporary photography and makes for one of the themes explored by the seven photographers incorporated in the Believing is Seeing exhibition, a body of work which also appears to question the very notion of 'Koreanness'. The collaboration has been made possible through the work of Ffotogallery curator David Drake and Jiyoon Lee from the SUUM Academy & Project in Korea and was jointly funded by Arts Council Korea and Wales Arts International. David says: "Each of the seven featured artists has a very different approach to photographic portraiture. "The exhibition examines some common themes in contemporary Korean photographic art - its performative nature, ideas of duration and transience, nature and constructed reality, memory and illusion. "Inverting the Western idiom 'seeing is believing', the exhibition features artists with markedly different strategies in relation to photographic portraiture, but who have in common the rejection of any approach to photography that emphasises visual verification and purely mechanical reproduction." Je Baak, detail from We Laughed Together, 2009 漏 the artist The exhibition will, he says, challenge our preconceptions about Korean culture. "It's a very distinct culture but each artist is very aware of Western arts traditions, influenced by global contemporary art trends but remaining deeply rooted in Korean culture and traditions. "The work featured in the exhibition also demonstrates the 'natural ambiguity' of the photographic image in that the portraits are no longer just depictions of people, they have a reality of their own and become a screen onto which the viewer projects their own relationships and emotions." The featured artists are Byung-Hun Min, Duck Hyun Cho, Hein-Kuhn Oh, Hyun Mi Yoo, Je Baak, Kyungwoo Chun and the awardwinning photographer Seihon Cho. In all they have contributed 44 different works to the exhibition. One of Duck Hyun Cho's works sees him combining an image of the queen with an image of his mother in a portrait realised as a graphite pencil drawing on canvas, where the canvas is allowed to hang loose, like a drape. His collection sees him repeatedly blurring the boundaries between painting and photography and reflects a keen interest in personal memory and collective history, identity, family and spirituality. Duck Hyun Cho & Seihon Cho, Portrait of a Great Monk, 2001 漏 the artists In Oh's work, his subjects in many cases break a Korean taboo, as they are teenage girls embracing the world of cosmetics and the myriad ways it can alter and sexualise appearance. Chun has become well-known for his poetically blurred photographic portraits, created in a very unconventional way of dealing with time and space. The exhibition runs from 10 November to 17 December with a private view on 9 November and a curators' talk on 1 December at 6.30pm. Admission is free to all visitors. For more details visit www.ffotogallery.org.
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My Llyn Peninsula
Polly March
Stunning photographs of the Ll欧n Peninsula form the basis of a new exhibition at the Oriel Plas Glyn-y-Weddw in Llanbedrog, Pwllheli. Adults and children alike were invited to share their thoughts on what the historic and picturesque coastline means to them by capturing those expressions on f...
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Jooney Woodward's Royal Welsh photo makes Taylor Wessing shortlist
Laura Chamberlain
A photograph taken by Jooney Woodward at the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show has been shortlisted for the prestigious Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011. Her photograph Harriet and Gentleman Jack, 2010 is of 13-year-old Harriet Power, a steward at the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show, ...
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Aberystwyth gets ready for photography festival FfotoAber
Laura Chamberlain
There are many picture postcard spots in and around the seaside town of Aberystwyth, so it's hardly surprising that some of the local folk are setting up a new photography festival to celebrate the town and its photographers. FfotoAber will be the first festival of its kind for the tow...
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Winners unveiled in 2011 Photomarathon UK
Laura Chamberlain
Pontypridd-based photographer Emma Shepherd has scooped the first prize in the Photomarathon UK 2011 competition. Shepherd beat 399 other competitors to the accolade, for which competition entrants took 12 photographs on 12 different themes over the course of, yep, you guessed it, 12 hours in ...
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Snap happy? Photomarathon exhibition opens this weekend
Laura Chamberlain
Having recently got married, I now have a mound of photographs 'arranged' in haphazard piles on my kitchen table. I can't quite bring myself to painstakingly, er I mean, lovingly arrange them all in the assorted albums and frames that have formed a Tetris-style stack in the living room. Patience...
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Ffotogallery presents Wish You Were Here
Laura Chamberlain
Ffotogallery will put the spotlight on emerging photographic artists living and working in Wales this summer with a new series of exhibitions and events. Entitled Wish You Were Here, the exhibitions will run over the summer months and will take place at Ffotogallery's base in Turner House in P...
