Elliott Wilcox

Squash 02: Elliott Wilcox

Elliott Wilcox graduated from Newport Uni last year. In the year since leaving Newport he has developed quite a reputation with this series of pictures of squash and tennis courts which was taken for his final year project. He kindly took some time out to talk to us.

Your pictures are very beautiful, the tones in them fantastic. How much post production is involved in getting that subtlety?

Thanks for your comments, In regards to the question the word you mentioned "subtle" is how I see my post production process. I shoot on large format and use transparency film, it is probably seen as "old-skool" using slide film but I believe that is where the source of my tones appear. I scan in the film and subtly remove the dust/spots that comes from scanning, I do a little bit of colour management but ultimately I feel what gives my photographs the distinct quality is because it is "straight photography" or as close as I possibly can.

You've used large format and I think played with the verticals to give us that sharp geometry. Did you try out many different spaces in the completion of this project or did you just have a hunch that this techinque would work well?

I started shooting a lot of different indoor spaces to get a feel of what I wanted from the project. I had an initial idea in my head that I wanted it to be geometric in a sense but you never really know how it is going to look until you have done a lot of tests.

To be honest I remember getting my film back from the first Squash court I shot, this was also the first court I'd photographed and just getting excited by the results. This is when I knew what I wanted to pursue because I had the passion there which I guess fuels the work.

Who are your influences?

David Bate, Edgar Martins, Boyd Webb, Andreas Gursky, Mitra Tabrizian, Sam Zealey, Peter Bobby, Robert Frank and many more. These are not specifically linked with this project but are artists and friends that have influenced me to keep making art and getting excited about it.

What are you working on at the moment?

I am working on my Masters degree, which is lots and lots of work. I have about three projects coinciding which is confusing but also fantastic. I am interested in the border between internal and external, defamiliarisation and the hot topic of abstraction/realism.

Can you expand on those last 3 points for us?

In regards to Internal and External, I am interested in that border between what makes something an Internal or External space. Specifically I am concentrating on artificial spaces - contrived by art rather than by nature. Space that has that connection with the internal and external. External spaces that are bought inside or vice versa. I believe this questions modern man or the 20th century man. Why do we need everything on our door step? Have we lost that connection with nature? It has a strong correlation with globalization.

Defamiliarisation is the technique of forcing the audience to see common things in an unfamiliar or "strange" way, in order to enhance perception of the familiar. This was first coined by Viktor Shklovsky in his essay "Art as Device", essentially it came from Russian literature influenced by Tolstoy and others.

Abstract photography has become a slight craze as of recent. I would not go as far as saying my work is abstract but I think when people say that in regards to my own work they mean the symmetry and colour contained, in some ways my style. A purely visual association.

Abstraction in photography has seen a bit of a hot topic because a lot or more work than ever before is being created with an abstract quality in a search to get that closer depiction of reality. Photography is inextricably connected to a visible reality but the images produced are never an exact mirror image of reality. This has long been debated through out photographic history. Lately artists such as Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Walead Beshty and Thomas Ruff to name a few have all been producing work that has an abstract quality, while of course talking and thinking about contemporary issues that surround us and society. My question is do we crave reality!?

You've been very successful with this work, exhibiting in Toronto, Amsterdam, Singapore as well in many venues in the UK. What was the break that got the work first noticed, or has it been a steady buildup?

It has been a steady process, it is not very often someone gets shot in to the lime light unless Saatchi gets on your tail but I am not sure he really likes photography due to the lack of in his gallery. It is different for photographic artists I think you have to build up a reputation over time which I aim to do.

I guess I had some good interest after the New York Photo Awards also FOAM Amsterdam. I love Amsterdam and that gallery. They are really good people and advise anyone interested in photography to buy FOAM magazine, it is brilliant!

Paris Photo 09

I was going to write a review of Paris Photo, but after reading a report here from our friends at BlackLab I'm not sure I could summarise it better.

Having said that, I'm not sure my report would be quite so scathing; I did see some interesting work while I was there, albeit in a rather crude context in which it is very difficult to get a feel for the work.....

The above video was a rare moment of excitement at the fair; a moment of anarchy in the entrance of the opening night at Paris Photo 2009, read more here.

David Birkin

David Birkin, from the series 'Confessions'

David Birkin is one of the recipients of the National Media Museum Photography Bursary scheme, which he has received to complete his series The Confessors, forming part of his ongoing Confessions series.

The project is an interesting mix of performance and photography, with Birkin removing himself from the traditional role of 'the photographer'. The process involves sitters being asked to confess a secret they have never previously revealed. They are left alone in a room with a camera and left to open the shutter when they feel ready, closing it when they are finished, meaning that the time that the shutter is left open is determined by the amount of time that the sitter chooses to speak. The results are not only beautiful, but interesting for what they reveal of the body language of the sitters as they are left alone to confess their deepest and darkest....

Vision 09

Ben Roberts, from the series 'The Brick Business'

Thanks to everyone that attended our informal crit last night, especially to Ben Roberts and Kalpesh Lathigra who were reviewing work, it was a great evening! We shall be holding our next crit session at the end of January, details will be announced soon.
Ben will be speaking about his new body of work, The Brick Business, at BJP's Vision 09 tomorrow and the ongoing series is showcased in this week's issue of BJP. The series progresses every time I see Ben, so if you're at Vision tomorrow get along to his talk!

Informal Crit

Kalpesh Lathigra, from the series 'Transmission'

It's been a busy old time of late! I've just got back from Paris Photo, having seen a host of interesting work as well as attending a lecture by the great Roger Ballen. I'll be featuring some of the highlights on here over the next few weeks.

We're holding an informal crit this Wednesday, 25th November at 7pm in the upstairs room of the 3 Kings Pub in Clerkenwell, London. With this we aim to encourage an environment of dialogue and debate, giving photographers and photography lovers the chance to get together to discuss work, argue and drink beer! Ben Roberts and Kalpesh Lathigra will also be in attendance to give personal crits. I'll be posting more about Kalpesh's excellent work soon, with an interview about his practice.

Please let us know if you'd like to attend on info@contacteditions.co.uk.

Tomas Van Houtryve

Just put together this piece on Tomas Van Houtryve's '21st Century Communists' project, which is really superb. The Moldova and North Korea sections are especially strong stylistically, and with the other sections, from Cuba, Laos and Nepal, some of which are more reportage-y, you get a good feel of the different ways in which communism survives today. Hopefully it's going to be published as a book sometime next year, so watch this space.

Photography and illustration: The Photographer

From 'The Photographer'
Really excited to see this book with photography by Didier Lefevre and illustration by Emmanuel Guibert. The story is arranged in a comic book style with Guibert illustrating the 'gaps' in Lefevre's contact sheets. It tells the story of Doctors without Borders work during the 1986 Afghan-Soviet war, with Lefevre's narration of his experiences. An ambitious and innovative project, nicely done! You can flick through a few pages here.

Livia Corona

Livia Corona: from '2 Million Homes for Mexico'

Slim pickings this week, sorry, have some treats for you later in the week but for now, take a peek at Livia Corona's latest work. I especially like her latest project, '2 Million Homes for Mexico'.

Chris Jordan

This series of typologies by Chris Jordan has really provoked a reaction in me, more so than with most 'documents' that I see. Jordan writes in his statement:

"These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent."

Saddening, yet at the same time graphic and compelling - I think this is what university would have told me to refer to as 'the abject'...

found via.

Beso Uznadze

After seeing Beso Uznadze's image in the NPG, I've spent quite a lot of time browsing the images on his website. His Tbilisi portraits are particularly strong, documenting the everyday lives of Georgians, questioning the identity of the ex-Soviet state.

CONTACT EDITIONS

Last week we launched our new initiative, Contact Editions, with a striking portrait from Ben Roberts' project Higher Lands, and a special guest edition by the innovative Seba Kurtis courtesy of HOST Gallery. For just £30 you can buy one of these beautiful prints and help
support new talent. We really love the work of both of these photographers and hope that you will too!
We established Contact as a dynamic online space where lovers and collectors of photography can find and support the work they love, making good photography affordable whilst providing a funding platform for both established and emerging photographers. Our aim at with Contact is to create a community around photographic talent, to support photographers in the ongoing progress of their personal work.
Please visit the site to find out more information about these photographers and their work, watch video interviews with them talking about their practice and to enter our Spring Slideshows competition! The site also features an interview with Harry Hardie, gallery manager of HOST Gallery, talking Seba Kurtis' work, his role as a Gallery Manager and how to catch his eye.
In addition to all of this, we'll be holding an informal crit on the 25th November in the upstairs room of the 3 Kings Pub in Clerkenwell, London. With this we aim to encourage an environment of dialogue and debate, giving photographers and photography lovers the chance to get together to discuss work, show projections, argue and drink beer! Ben Roberts will also be in attendance to give personal crits. Please let us know if you'd like to attend on info@contacteditions.co.uk.
Lastly, you can see a rather nervous video interview with me (I'm not too good with a camera in my face!) talking to Jon Levy, of Foto8, about Contact here.

Photographic Portrait Prize

'Female Boxer No.3' by Inzajeano Latif.

I went to see the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait prize at the NPG the other evening and saw a lot of great work. I was happy to see one of Vanessa Winship's beautiful portraits from Georgia in the show, as well as images from Beso Uznadze, Spencer Murphy and Laura Pannack. I think my favourite image in the show was 'Female Boxer No.3' by Inzajeano Latif.