Going retro!

I am off to White Coppice today to photograph a cricket match, and I have decided to try out my latest purchase to take some shots on while I'm there.

I bought this little beauty from Ebay, on the recommendation of Lee, and for just over ten pounds including shipping I think I may have got a bargain.

I'll check in with some shots from the cricket tomorrow (from the D300), and hopefully be able to post some shots from the trip very soon.

I now have three rolls of Ilford B&W film to process, and that will be up to four by the end of today.

Lee has told me he is going to show me how to develop the film myself, so that should be fun!

Walker Evans

Its always interesting to look back and review the work of early photographers who did so much to move photography into galleries and be accepted as an art form in its own right.

One of the seminal characters is Walker Evans and there is a chance to look at some of his work on-line because Beetles & Huxley in London are selling some of the prints from a 1976 exhibition of his work.

In 1935, Evans was hired as an information specialist by the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which developed aid programs for impoverished farmers during the Depression years. FSA photographers were assigned to document small-town life and their images were subsequently used as evidence of the extreme poverty in rural United States. It was during this time that Evans created his most important and significant work, partly for the FSA and partly with the writer, James Agee, for 'Fortune'. The latter project resulted in the groundbreaking book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men' (1941). Evans' powerfully uncomplicated images of rural tenant farmers, and the sites and relics of their meagre existence, soon became iconic.
Evans continued to work for FSA until 1938. His captivating images earned him the first exhibition of a solo photographers work ever to be held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
In 1976, just months after Walker Evans' death, the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford staged a major exhibition of his photographs. In addition to prints from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and from the Estate of Walker Evans, the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford acquired photographs from the Library of Congress, Washington. Although he didn't live to see the final show, Evans' himself was closely involved in the planning of this exhibition.

You can see the work on the Beetles & Huxley Website

Spring 2015 Issue is here!

Out of Office

Well, that's not strictly true!

We're at our desks but we are busy putting the new issue together.  So bear with us.  Once the magazine is done normal service will be resumed!

Before there was Photoshop

A nice little video here showing where some of the Photoshop tools got their origins.  This is Konrad Eek making a black & white print.

Influence & Inspiration - Robert Frank again!

Rober Fran is an American Photographer that we have posted about before.  However, I found this nice little documentary about him.

For more information about Robert Frank have a look at this wikipedia page.

But here is a nice little documentary about the man behind the photographs.

A Light Shines...

A new touring exhibition of films created to be shown in churches and cathedrals is set to open in Blackburn tonight.

‘A Light Shines in Darkness’ aims to bring new audiences into churches, some of whom may have never set foot in one, and challenge them to look at the building in a new way.

It seeks to provoke discussion around buildings now often overlooked and undervalued that nevertheless have a powerful architectural presence.

“Whether you’re religious or not you can’t help but be affected when you go into a place like this and the atmosphere the architecture creates. They deserve to have life in them and for people to have access to such special places,” Mike Jones FVU, curator.

Three films from the collection will be shown at the Grade I listed Gothic church Holy Trinity, built at the height of Blackburn’s industrial might.

They include LEAP after The Great Ecstacy an examination of worship of a different nature that of a major sporting event and Stable a film exploring what happens when you release a group of horses into a religious space.

A Light Shines in the Darkness can be seen at Holy Trinity Church, Brownhll Road, Blackburn.  BB1 9QY from tonight until the 28th March 4.30pm - 8.30pm.