Behrouz Boochani, who has been detained offshore since 2013, had to compose his debut using WhatsApp messages. Now, that book has earned him the Victorian Prize for Literature
(Image credit: Hoda Afshar)
No flashbacks, no dream sequences. Just a raw, harsh tale about the practical concerns of minute-by-minute survival in a frozen wasteland.
(Image credit: Stefano Baroni/Bleeker Street Media)
Miss Bala invites comparisons to other, more effective films with similar butt-kicking protagonists, but as compelling, well-acted genre filmmaking, it succeeds.
(Image credit: Columbia)
Thirteen-year-old Genesis keeps a running list of things about herself that she hates — her skin is #95. Debut author Alicia D. Williams says she hopes her book will help young people "heal."
(Image credit: )
NY Times reporter David Sanger says the world's leading producer of telecom equipment will be central to the spread of a global 5G network — which could pose a major threat to U.S. national security.
A 50-year old album by pianist Oscar Peterson and a studio orchestra has been reissued by the German label MPS. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead confesses to having mixed feelings about it.
Old Meets New, the 7th Ras Al Khaimah Fine Arts Festival
Outdoor Exhibition 15 February-20 April, 2019
Al Jazirah Al Hamra Old Town, Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates
The atmospheric and recently restored historic village of Al Jazirah Al Hamra in Ras Al Khaimah is set to be transformed into an open-air gallery, as it plays host to this year’s Ras Al Khaimah Fine Arts Festival (RAKFAF). Opening on Valentine’s Day with a theme of Old Meets New the 7th edition of RAKFAF promises to be a cultural, immersive and unique experience not to be missed. An initiative of the Al Qasimi Foundation, the popular festival will present a rich variety of works by local, regional and international artists to be explored and enjoyed, as well as an expanded programme of workshops and activities. The festival is free to the public and will run until February 28, with an extended outdoor art exhibition running until April 20th, 2019.
Karen Knorr will be exhibiting thirteen works from the series ‘India Song’ as part of the outdoor exhibition in the Al Jazirah Al Hamra Old Town.
Karen Knorr & Kimiko Yoshida – Avatars: The Boundaries Between Illusion & Reality
February 23–March 20, 2019
Holden Luntz Gallery
332 Worth Avenue
Palm Beach, FL 33480
USA
This duo exhibition sees Karen Knorr exhibit for the first time in the USA her large Byobou screens made in Japan from her series Monogatari, a series she has worked on since 2012. In 2017 Knorr was invited into Obai-in temple in Kyoto by artist, calligrapher and head priest Tagen Kobayashi.
Knorr first exhibited her work as free-standing Byobu screens, in a solo exhibition at the Daitoku-ji complex in Obai-in temple in 2018. These screens were made of cedar wood, mulberry, rice paper and silk, and combined with photographs printed on rice paper. The screens were made by local artisan Heiando, in collaboration with Karen Knorr. The photographs are transformed into one-off unique handmade objects with the aid of Japanese master craft techniques. This exhibition at Holden Luntz Gallery in Palm Beach brings together two of these Byobu screens as well as a number of framed photographic prints.
Kimiko Yoshida was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1963. Feeling oppressed as a woman, she left Japan in 1995 and moved to France to pursue her artistic ambitions. Yoshida studied at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles and the Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Le Fresnoy. Her work revolves around feminine identity and the transformative power of art.
Hala Alyan reflects on three decades of life in an intimate, unsparing new poetry collection that offers a unique look at life as a Palestinian in exile, a woman, and a young person looking for love.
(Image credit: Amr Alfiky/NPR)
In Mike Chen's debut novel, a time-traveling secret agent is stranded in the past and has to live out a normal life — including a family — that becomes a problem when he returns to his own time.
(Image credit: )
“The Pink and Blue Projects were initiated by my five-year-old daughter, who loved the colour pink so much that she wanted to wear only pink clothes and play with only pink toys and objects,” writes JeongMee Yoon. “I discovered that my daughter’s case was not unusual.
“In the United States, South Korea and elsewhere, most young girls love pink clothing, accessories and toys. This phenomenon is widespread among children of various ethnic groups regardless of their cultural backgrounds. Perhaps it is the influence of pervasive commercial advertisements aimed at little girls and their parents, such as the universally popular Barbie and Hello Kitty merchandise that has developed into a modern trend. Girls train subconsciously and unconsciously to wear the colour pink in order to look feminine.”
Yoon started to photograph children with their belongings in 2005, but the project – shot mostly in New York and Seoul – continues to this day. Showing babies and toddlers in their bedrooms, and shot in forensic detail on a medium format camera, the images show both the creation of gender identity and the overwhelming impact of consumerism. As time has gone on she has also revisited the children she has photographed, to consider the impact this marketing has had on them.
The Blue Project – Kyungjin and His Blue Things, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 2017 © JeongMee Yoon
As Yoon points out, the association of pink with girls and blue with boys is arbitrary – and was originally the other way around. In 1914 American newspaper The Sunday Sentinel advised mothers to “use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention”; it was only after World War Two that the current convention became fixed in the US, and beyond. But as Yoon points out, these now well-established conventions include more than just the colours.
“The differences between girls’ objects and boys’ objects are also divided and affect their thinking and behavioral patterns,” she states. “Many toys and books for girls are pink, purple, or red, and are related to make up, dress up, cooking, and domestic affairs. However, most toys and books for boys are made from the different shades of blue and are related to robots, industry, science, dinosaurs, etc.
“This is a phenomenon as intense as the Barbie craze. Manufacturers produce anthropomorphic ponies that have the characteristics of young girls. They have barrettes, combs and accessories, and the girls adorn and make up the ponies. These kinds of divided guidelines for the two genders deeply affect children’s gender group identification and social learning.”
The Pink and Blue Project by JeongMee Yoon is published by Hatje Cantz, priced €40 www.hatjecantz.de/jeongmee-yoon-7393-1.html
The Pink Project – Charity & Hopey and Their Pink Things, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea © JeongMee Yoon
The Association of Photographers’ Open Awards aims to shift the focus away from the photographer and instead celebrate the power of the image alone. Priding itself as an awards with a broad global reach, its most recent iteration saw some 3500 images submitted from various far flung corners of the world, from Finland to San Francisco. Entries came from hobbyists, professional photographers and everyone in between; instead of being influenced by a photographer’s professional industry accolades, the judges scrutinise the image as a standalone entity.
“Being a finalist in the AOP Open Awards has given me the confidence to produce more photographic work and present it to people with a belief that it will be taken seriously,” says 2017 finalist Julian Hicks. As a digital retoucher, Hicks felt that “most of the time [his] work was not recognised at an artistic level because [he is] not a professional photographer.” A celebration of excellence in photography from across the world, the Open Awards dismantles such barriers, reflecting the wider AOP’s ethos of ‘promoting, protecting and educating photographers of all levels’. The AOP was created 50 years ago by photographers and today it is still run by photographers for photographers. A not-for-profit, organisation, its all revenues go back into promoting photographers and creators.
Leon Fagbemi. Portrait shoot. Orpington. 15 May, 2016. © Tom Watkins www.tomwatkinsphoto.com
Photographer and filmmaker Dan Prince, a finalist from the most recent Awards, highlights the value of this inclusivity: “The Awards are a great platform for visibility within the industry as Open finalists exhibit alongside the main awards [the AOP Photography Awards and the Student Awards] which attract a lot of creative people,” he says. Finalists of the 2019 Awards will have their winning images showcased as part of a group exhibition at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf and will be rewarded with prizes including a £4000 Lumix kit voucher.
With the competition closing for entries on 25 February 2019, we spoke to four photographers – Katinka Herbert, Julian Hicks, Dan Prince and Fiona Read – about how they selected their winning submission and why the Open Awards were integral to their professional development. From a staged portrait to a candid shot taken in the wild, the range of submissions is notably varied. They can be seen as a microcosm of the wider entry pool.
Joana Menédez Gonzalez © Katinka Herbert www.katinkaphotography.com
“Gazing at these bodies, we are forced to imagine the movements of which they are capable. The lives they wish to leave behind, and the ones that they dream of,” says Herbert, referring to her photo series on Cuban athletes. The Movers unveils the layers of inaccuracy surrounding Cuban representation and repositions the photographer’s subjects through her critical eye. The image that made her a 2017 Open Award finalist, Joanna, Tropicana Club Dancer depicts a dancer, fully dressed in her performance costume, perched upright on the edge of her bed, stuck static within the confines of the bedroom walls and the even more rigid borders of the staged photograph. As a singular shot, it captures the overarching themes that tie the series together: the tension between mobility and domesticity, the black body as a “ticket to global mobility,” and the oppression of black movement both on and off the world stage.
Much like Prince, Herbert lauds the career-changing power of the awards: “the Open Awards offer great exposure across the industry,” she says. Since winning, The Movers has been exhibited at Photo London, the photography biennale at Somerset House and published in a number of high profile European magazines. Such exposure has further shed light and brought greater attention to the realities of life in Cuba.
Screaming Cow © Julian Hicks www.julianhicksart.com
Hicks is a commercial retoucher. His photograph The Screaming Cow – a crepuscular cow staring ominously into the camera – was a 2017 finalist in the Stills category. Taken from the vantage point of a boat on the Thames, the photograph is shrouded in a mysticism found in the rest of Hicks’s photographic portfolio. Since reaching the Open Awards finals, The Screaming Cow has been exhibited at the 2017 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, as well as being longlisted for the 2017 Celeste Art Prize.
Hicks however stresses that most significant/impact of winning lies beyond the accolades: “Being a finalist in the AOP Open Awards has given me the confidence to produce more photographic work and to present it to people with a belief that it will be taken seriously. There must be so many people like me that have creative awareness and skill that don’t ever take the chance to be considered for prizes.”
The Latvians © Dan Prince www.danprince.co.uk
With such broad submission guidelines how does one go about selecting what to enter? For Prince, the answer is simple: “Sometimes it’s the shots that you personally might not think are the strongest that make the Awards. You never know.” His winning submission, The Latvians was taken while on set for a photography commission. “These guys [his subjects] were actors in the TV advert. I wandered around the location and found a large window which was perfect. I asked them to to stand for a portrait and luckily, they agreed.” He encourages prospective entrants to take the plunge and “Just submit. Even if you have doubts, submit.”
© Fiona Read www.fionareadphotography.com
Though the Open Awards is open to all, Read – whose portrait of her daughter featured in the 2017 Open Awards exhibition – stresses that serendipity alone does not make a winning entry. Rather, she suggests that a “compelling portrait is a truthful one, where the model is truly engaged with the moment.” Echoing the reflections of the photographers featured above, Read comments on the ripple effect the awards has had on her career: “Since then, I have graduated with a degree in Photography and have begun lecturing at the college I studied at. I have always loved portraits and working with people but this was a turning point for me and solidified that passion.”
The Open Awards is now open for submissions in the following categories: Stills, Moving Image and Innovation – a new category designed to encourage the use of new technologies. Submit your photography here. A curated exhibition of the winning work will take place at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London from 15 April – 31 May 2019.
This article has been written in partnership with Association of Photographers. Please click here for more information on sponsored content funding at British Journal of Photography.
When Kanghee Kim started making photographs, it was out of frustration. Due to immigration laws, she hasn’t been able to leave the US for 10 years, even to visit her relatives back home in Korea, because her entry back in isn’t guaranteed. Kim, now 27, moved to New York with her family when she was 14. Her parents wanted her to have an American education because they thought Korean schools were too rigid and strict. “I really miss Korea, especially over the last few years,” says Kim. “Korea is the motherland. Whenever I see photos or hear about it I feel a bit torn.”
Kim didn’t get into photography until her final year of studying painting at Maryland Institute College of Art. It was just about the time when smartphone cameras were getting good, and she was frustrated by how much space and materials were needed to paint. “I love walking around and being outside. Approaching photography as a painting was solving that problem.”
Golden Hour is Kim’s second book to be published by Same Paper, who are based in Shanghai, China. Its carefully-assembled pictures are captured during the magic of the “golden hour” – the moment immediately before sunrise or sunset – and is part of her ongoing body of work, Street Errands. Most of Kim’s images are taken in New York, California, Colorado, and Hawaii, the furthest place she could go within the states. “When I first went to California, I was pretty shocked,” says Kim, who was inspired to work with images of the sky after visiting the West Coast. “The sky felt so close to me. I saw palm trees for the first time, I’d only ever seen them on the internet.”
By using photoshop to manipulate and merge her photographs, Kim feels that she can escape, creating a “new space that feels almost like travelling to an unknown place”. “When I’m working on these images. It feels very therapeutic,” she adds, “I’m so focused I don’t think about my problems”. Making these surreal images has also been a way for Kim to appreciate what she can do within her current situation. “I used to get bored of doing the same things in the same surroundings, so finding the moments that I really like and layering them helped me to not be so pessimistic or self-pitying.”
http://kanghee.kim/ Golden Hour by Kangheee Kim is published by Same Paper, available to purchase for 45 USD http://samepaper.com
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
From Golden Hour © KangHee Kim
Jake Gyllenhaal re-teams with Nightcrawler writer-director Dan Gilroy for this funny Netflix horror film set in the art world that's better at delivering quotably arch lines than sharp satire.
(Image credit: Claudette Barius/Netflix)
PicMonkey offers powerful photo editing and design tools created for everyone, from image-making novices to pros. You can see how intuitive our tools are right now, for free—head over to the Editor and play with a sample image, or upload one of your own. You can export your image and keep creating free for 7 days when you start a […]
The post How Much is PicMonkey? appeared first on PicMonkey Blog.
Who doesn’t love shortcuts? They get you to where you’re going faster so you can spend more time enjoying the destination. That’s why we’ve assembled this list of PicMonkey keyboard shortcuts. Use them to get to your photo editing and design destinations on the quick—because sometimes it isn’t about the journey. Take these shortcuts for a spin (and you can […]
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Oscar-nominated film composer Nicholas Britell seeks out sounds that capture a movie's essence. His process involves many discussions with directors — and a lot of experimenting.
(Image credit: Tatum Mangus /Annapurna Pictures)
A new, eight-part Netflix series examines the complex aftermath of the 1994 killing spree — and offers a good reminder that history is vast, messy and ever-changing.
(Image credit: Des Willie/BBC/Netflix)
Oscar-nominated film composer Nicholas Britell seeks out sounds that capture a movie's essence. His process involves many discussions with directors — and a lot of experimenting.
(Image credit: Tatum Mangus /Annapurna Pictures)
A new, eight-part Netflix series examines the complex aftermath of the 1994 killing spree — and offers a good reminder that history is vast, messy and ever-changing.
(Image credit: Des Willie/BBC/Netflix)
Will Hunt approaches the world of underground caves and bunkers, death and life, with an unusual dedication and open-mindedness — and some striking photography — that is difficult to resist.
(Image credit: Bernard Friel/UIG/Getty Images)
Maurice Carlos Ruffin's razor-sharp new novel is set in a dystopian near future where race relations have deteriorated further and scientists have developed a procedure to "demelanize" black people.
(Image credit: )
If you wanted to become a professional photographer in the Soviet Union, says Victor Kochetov, you only had two options. Either you could work at an atelier producing pictures for books or postcards, or you could work for the press – and both meant conforming to the ideological pressure of the state. Kochetov chose the first option, and through the 1960s he worked as a commercial photographer in Kharkiv, Ukraine, photographing events such as weddings and funerals, and providing images for books on travel.
“In the USSR, there was no such term as ‘art photography’, at least not in Kharkiv,” he says. “There were some photography clubs at factories or big institutions, but it was mostly typical amateur photography. Everyone was just taking pictures of their children, wives, cats and sunsets.”
But Kharkiv has an interesting photographic history. In the 1970s it was the birthplace of The Vremya (“Time”) Group, which was set up by Evegniy Pavloc, Yuriy Rupin and Boris Mikhailov, and included members such as Oleh Malevaniy, Oleksandr Suprun, Oleksandr Sitnychenko, Gennadiy Tubalev, and Anatoliy Makiyenko. These artists rejected the aesthetic criteria imposed by the state, which would usually have meant that they were censored and persecuted. But for 15 Soviet years, The Vremya Group managed to secretly create, exhibit, and preserve their work in Kharkiv.
“They were part of a very small circle that affected everyone who got in touch with it,” says Kochetov, who met Boris Mikhailov, Jury Rupin and Olexander Suprun in the mid-1970s. He says he owes much of his career to these artists, because they encouraged him to make fine art and make pictures for himself. “Mikhailov’s style of shooting – presenting two photographs on one sheet using writing on top – it was something that turned our work over,” he says. “It was unique. My discussions with Rupin and Mikhailov and their positive response to our work was the only stimulation and purpose for us to continue along this artistic route.”
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
On 26 May 1972, when Victor was 25 years old, his son Sergey was born. “Our collaboration began right after he started to sit on the potty,” says Kochetov. “He became my best model.” When Sergey was old enough to take pictures himself, they started to work collaboratively, and later helped each other by filling in for their odd jobs. Now their collaborative book KOCHETOV has been published by MOKSOP (Museum of Kharkiv School of Photography), gathering together images they made from 1970 right up to the year 2000.
The publication is part of a project launched by MOKSOP to collect, exhibit and publish work by established and upcoming Ukrainian photographers – other upcoming releases include a book by Jury Rupin, and another by Sergey Solonsky, who worked with Mikhailov as part of the socially-oriented Fast Reaction Group in the 1990s. Later this year MOKSOP plans to publish photobooks by two younger Ukrainian artists – Vladyslav Krasnoshchok’s documentation of life in an emergency hospital in Kharkiv, and Sergey Melnitchenko’s project on young bodybuilders from southern Ukraine.
But MOKSOP chose to make KOCHETOV its first publication because its hand-tinted images are “so visually strong that it is able to amuse even a demanding contemporary viewer” – and, adds Sergiy Lebedynskyy, founder of MOKSOP, it represents a photographic history that is largely unknown to the broad public. Victor says there was no real reason why he and Sergey started to paint their photographs, or work with a panoramic camera, other that it looked more interesting. But in doing so, they were inspired by Boris Mikhailov’s hand-coloured series from the late 1970s, Luriki.
Luriki was an underground method of hand-colouring black-and-white photographs which, in an interview published in Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-related Works of Art in 2004, Mikhailov referred to as “Eastern idiocy,” and the “backwardness of Soviet Technology” – explaining that it was used only because he, and others, couldn’t get hold of colour film. But, as Mikhailov also later points out, the technique revealed an irony and humour in the ordinary, creating images that “made people smile”. “The main point of Luriki was ‘making the beautiful even more beautiful’ with the help of old-fashioned, lagging technology,” he said.
Officially the hand-coloured images were considered bad taste and kitsch, and most exhibitions during Soviet times didn’t accept them. Even so, it was popular. “It was of high demand,” says Kochetov, “which is why Kharkiv became the centre of production of luriki for the whole of the USSR in the Brezhnev times [1964-1982].
“There was no particular idea or vision behind it, we just worked on the picture until we liked the result,” he adds. “But one could analyse particular images, and the usage of certain colours. If pink is used on ‘masculine’ images – and most Soviet propaganda images do look masculine – it may provoke an opposite effect. Or blue, the colour of dead body, is very heavy and disturbing.”
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
The publication KOCHETOV contains a lot of nudity, something which was also not encouraged by the Soviets. Nude photography and references to sex in general were taboo, says Kochetov, and could not be shown in Soviet times – any images including nudity, including lightly pornographic shots, were confiscated by authorities and destroyed. “The ideological pressure was pushing all photographers to self-censorship, nobody would try to show such pictures in public,” he says. “Every single exhibition or photography show was checked by the state prior to it’s opening.”
This censorship could be what led to the popular belief that “there is no sex in the USSR,” a phrase blurted out by a Russian actress during a live TV show aired in America. But though sex wasn’t discussed it certainly happened – Kochetov recalls having unlimited access to condoms at state pharmacies, for example, sold for 4 kopeks (around 0.05 pence) a pop. So while the images in KOCHETOV were difficult to show at the time, and may appear surreal at first glance now, for Kochetov, they’re mostly a record of everyday life. “All of these photographs were included because they were part of our life,” he says. “We are glad to finally show them in a book.”
KOCHETOV is published by MOKSOP, priced €50 www.moksop.org/en/product/kochetov/
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
© Victor and Sergey Kochetov
