From ‘Flogging a Dead Horse’ (1993) by Paul Reas.
Reas together with Martin Parr and other British photographers formed an unofficial group that through their approach completely changed the documentary photography in the second half of 20th century.
Paul gave us a very interesting guest talk at the university - it definitely changed my opinion about his and also Parr’s work.
‘Coney Island, N.Y., USA’ (1993) by Rineke Dijkstra. Studies of the contemporary photographic portraiture.
‘A prominent and distinct strand has become established in contemporary art photography in which people are depicted in uniform series, usually one per picture, and placed centrally in that picture, facing the camera head on and gazing into the lens.’
Intro from ‘What’s in a Face? The Trace of Ethnography in Contemporary Art Photography’ (2007) by Julian Stallabrass. You can find this and other essays of his here.
’The Jewish Type’ (1924) by Francis Galton. Studies of subjugated portraiture in photography.
Galton tried to generalize distinct groups of types (e.g. murderers from criminals) and create what he called ‘composite images’ by combining several portraits into one, which had the power of showing the typical physical features of a group.
He is known for his ideas of eugenics*. Galton believed that improvement of society was possible by ‘sup-planting the human stock by better strains’.
*Science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race
an·o·nym·i·ty
* - The quality or state of being unknown or unacknowledged. In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual’s personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.
My course mate Daria from Russia has done a very beautiful project on identity.
Seaside seems to follow me.
A friendly suggestion: watch here to see more.
Melanie Manchot, photographer and video artist, visited University of Brighton to give a talk for us - I was quite inspired by her way of shifting between projects and choosing the medium for them.
Unfortunately I couldn’t find the video piece ‘Celebration (Cyprus Street)‘ online so you can only look at it in background but the added bonus is you can listen to her interview.
Testing out Mamiya and 6x7 format and warming up for my identity project at university.
Līva - my Latvian friend who lives in Brighton and whom I met in Shanghai.
(Source: flic.kr)
Had a pretty nice birthday celebration.
‘Tatiana in Red with Green Chair’ (2010) by Richard Learoyd. Studies of honorific portraiture in photography.
‘The Ascent of Mont Blanc’ (1862) by Auguste Rosalie Bisson. Sorry for the low quality.
It’s the second week of my studies in Brighton. This semester is devoted to origins and histories of photography.
‘Officer and Laughing Girl’ by Jan Vermeer. Painted using camera obscura around 1657.
Mitch Epstein - American Power, currently at Tate Modern in exhibition called ‘Photography: New Documentary Forms’
This is definitely the most amazing body of work I have recently seen.
