Cooling lava, tidal currents and glacial ice cascade through Ron Jude’s latest photobook, 12 Hz. “A lot of things are said, in a lot of places, a lot of words cluster about, and thoughts buzz around them in clouds like flies, and ideas clot within them like disease,” says a short text that accompanies the images. “And beneath all the ideas and thoughts… Beneath all of this is Rock.”
A professor of art at the University of Oregon, Jude’s work often explores the relationship between people, place, nature and memory. Made between 2017 and 2020 around mainland US, Hawaii and Iceland, the images in 12 Hz depict rocks, glaciers and volcanoes – vast, living entities, captured in stark black-and-white. But there is a patience to the landscapes that Jude captures – a sense that they are not moving in any timescale set by humanity. The title of the work refers to the lowest sound threshold of human hearing, alluding to forces of ungraspable scale, operating independently of our anthropocentric experiences.
During a time of ecological and political crisis, Jude’s work is a reminder that these forces have been erupting, collapsing and growing, billions of years before us, and will do so for billions of years to come. We are merely its temporary guardians, and it will endure, even if we do not.
The coronavirus pandemic has brought about many challenges for festivals, galleries and publications, most of which have migrated online, or postponed until next year and beyond. But, for Photoworks, this time of crisis has been an opportunity to reflect and rethink. This year, the organisation rebranded its two-yearly event, the Brighton Photo Biennial, presenting a new outdoor festival installed across the city, as well as the option for it to be experienced at home, through a limited-edition ‘festival in a box’.
Containing prints that fold out in varying sizes, as well as wall labels and texts to supplement them, the “portable festival” enables viewers to take on the role of the curator, deciding where and how to install it. Designed by Swiss artists Gilliane Cachin and Joshua Schenkel, the box includes artworks by all of the artists participating in the outdoor festival: Farah Al Qasimi, Lotte Andersen, Poulomi Basu, Roger Eberhard, Ivars Gravlejs, Pixy Liao, Alix Marie, Ronan Mckenzie, Sethembile Msezane, Alberta Whittle and Guanyu Xu.
Shoair Mavlian, director of Photoworks, explains: “Each of the artworks can be installed on your own walls: at home, in your office, in a gallery, in your classroom or within your community. Use nails, tape or clips to hang it in your preferred space. Or keep it folded, as a special object on your bookcase.”
Photoworks’ approach to their programming this year has centered around access and power. The boxes have been sent to schools, universities, institutions and artists across the UK and internationally, alongside an online programme of talks and events. “There’s a lot of conversations around hierarchy that have become more apparent over the last few months. This is something we were thinking about a lot last year, about how we can share this power and give other people opportunities,” says Mavlian. “This year’s festival is about asking what the possibilities are for photography in the future, and showing exciting artists that are making photography at this moment.”
Photoworks’ festival in a box can be purchasedhere.
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Female in Focus 2020 is exhibiting at El Barrio’s Artspace, New York, between 2-21 November 2020. View the full list of winning images here.
From 1854 Media and British Journal of Photography, the Female in Focus award was conceived in response to staggering gender imbalance in photography. An open call to female-identifying photographers around the world, it is an annual initiative to promote and reward women’s work in an industry that disproportionately favours men’s.
This year’s edition was judged by an international jury including Chiara Bardelli Nonino, Photo Editor of Vogue Italia and L’Uomo Vogue; Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, co-author of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, Kate Bubacz, Photo Director at BuzzFeed News and several other leading women in photography.
“The effects of photography on society are more far-reaching than ever before. Gender inequality in the industry is just the start of a good conversation about who gets to tell stories — and how.”
Kate Bubacz, Photo Director at BuzzFeed News and Female in Focus 2020 judge
From a pool of thousands of entries, the panel has selected two outstanding bodies of work and 20 single images to be exhibited at El Barrio’s Artspace, New York, between 2-21 November 2020. Collectively, the curation examines gender, race, sexuality and beyond, weaving delicate stories of beauty and pain; joy and injustice; resilience and reflection.
Valentina Sinis’s Broken Princess, one of two winning series, tells the devastating story of women in Iraqi Kurdistan who try to escape — and protest — domestic violence by setting themselves on fire. “Our ability to manage pain is limited,” Sinis tells British Journal of Photography. “It is impossible for anyone to handle more than a certain amount of pain. These women have overcome, almost angelically, that border of possible pain. Winning Female in Focus can give them hope, confidence and energy, for they are finally seeing their story told.”
Ada Trillo’s La Caravana Del Diablo, named this year’s second series winner, maps the calamitous human cost of President Donald Trump’s political agenda in Central America. “Trump has effectively barred asylum seekers from entering the US by threatening to impose tariffs and cut foreign aid to Central American countries,” Trillo explains. “With the series, I want people to recognize that elected officials’ decisions affect people outside of their nation. Hopefully, winning Female in Focus will expand my audience to more people who can advocate for Central American asylum seekers.”
In the Single Image category, Sara Lorusso’s delicate portrait of couple Gioele and Beatrice captures a quiet moment of young, queer love in Italy. “From an early age, we are suffocated by innumerable opinions about love,” says Lorusso. “What it is, where to find it, who is authorized to celebrate it, when it is or isn’t appropriate. When this happens with a person of your own sex, absolutely nothing changes — but not everyone seems to have understood this yet. Winning Female in Focus is a great incentive to keep telling these stories.”
See the full list of Female in Focus 2020 winners below. View their images here.
Don’t miss the online exhibitionRESET, curated by Salvatore Vitale, investigating one of the most tumultuous years of modernity through the eyes of seven Futures artists: Julie Poly, Ela Polkowska, Eva O’Leary, Garry Loughlin, Sanne De Wilde, Dávid Biró and Ana Zibelnik
“Futures gave us the opportunity to pause and reflect on the current situation in Spain — how the pandemic is directly affecting our visual arts landscape,” says Ana Berruguete, Director of Exhibitions at PHotoESPAÑA. The Spanish festival — which has forged Madrid’s space at the forefront of photography since 1998 — returns to Futures this year, bringing five nominated artists to the fore.
Among them, documentary photographer Ire Lenes examines ethnic minorities in the Baltic States. Jon Gorospe focuses on new approaches to contemporary landscape photography; Mar Saez explores the complexity of identity and biopolitics, and Ruth Montel investigates the human relationship with natural territory. Between them they span a range of practices, from documentary photography to fine art and physical installations. “Contemporary Spanish photography is rich in this way,” says Berruguete. “It stretches beyond the traditional forms of representation and focuses on a much more interdisciplinary language. Our five Futures artists are good proof of this.”
“Resistances in Solidarity”, PHotoESPAÑA’s Assembly Talk, offers a triple perspective on how different image agents are facing the impacts of COVID-19. Featuring conversations with Pia Ogea, Sandra Maunac and Nicolás Combarro, the event explores the need to establish new strategies and solidarities across artistic practice, community and government support.
Photo Romania also returns to Futures this year with five nominated artists. Combining photography alongside his career in medical research, Greek-born photographer Vassilis Triantis explores themes of isolation and identity and the collective versus the individual. Hanna Jarzabek is a Polish photojournalist whose projects address discrimination and societal dysfunctions in western society, while documentary and fine art photographer Paulina Metzscher tells intimate people-led stories. David Arribas reports on anthropological and social issues, and lastly, Alin Barbir covers a range of perspectives through fine art.
In Photo Romania’s Assembly Talk, “RESET Your Mindset and Adapt in the World of Photography”, photojournalist and Photon Festival director Tania Castro discusses the skills and competencies needed by photographers amid the current pandemic, moderated by Sebastian Vaida, artistic director of Photo Romania.
New York-based artist Jenna Westra first became interested in photography in 2009, when she reluctantly enrolled in a history class. “I needed an art history class to graduate, and was late registering. The only option was a section on history of photography, so I signed up, despite having little interest,” she says. “I was immediately fascinated by early image-making processes… Imagining what it must have been like to create a direct visual record of the world for the first time – a way of seeing and looking that was new and different – felt really exciting to me.”
Westra began collecting old cameras, taking them apart and piecing them back together to understand the mechanics of image-making. At the beginning, she was producing self-portraits as a way to “learn how light and form are translated on film”. Eventually, she began working with female models, often dancers, because they have a good understanding of how their bodies look and move. Her images are tender and fluid, painted with limbs and torsos moving and intertwining through space. “I’ve been working in this particular way, with models as collaborators in the studio, for about seven years,” she says.
Now, a collection of Westra’s works are gathered in an exhibition, at New York’s Lubov Gallery, as well as an accompanying photobook, titled Afternoons. “It’s the time of day I’m most productive,” says Westra, explaining that the inspiration for the title first came from one of the chapters of the 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters. “I had also been spending a lot of my afternoons photographing people in parks around the city. The word has a certain texture that fits within the mood I try to convey in my work. It has a poetic quality.”
Below, Westra reflects on the presence and evolution of the body in her work.
I am forever interested in how the camera shapes ideas of the female psyche. I taught myself through self-portraiture, at a time when I was figuring out my own identity, but I didn’t like the lack of control you get by actually looking through the viewfinder at the genesis of an image. Eventually I replaced myself with other women who are somehow physically similar.
I started working with dancers when I made my first 16mm film. It was about an injured performer who could no longer move how she once did. I liked the idea of a dancer who couldn’t move, but could pose in a specific, learned way and how that idea relates to stillness and photography in general.
She poses and makes slow, meditative movements over the course of the sun setting in Prospect Park. Two bodies, the movie camera and the dancer, both with the capacity for movement, that when held still, vibrate together.
I have never been a photographer who works in ‘series’. I consider this collection of pictures as an ongoing investigation into how the female form can be imaged in a nuanced, feminine way that resists traditional power dynamics between genders and questions the politics of looking.
We’re all missing human touch and contact. Maybe this work is a reminder of the tenderness in that, and that is refreshing to see again. But I also hope it’s a reminder to keep making, keep pushing, and find solace in creative work, however that may look.
My studio and darkroom have been both sanctuary and lifeline in this trying year. I’m so grateful for these spaces and for the people who continue to support me.
Jenna Westra: Afternoons is on show atLubov, New York, until 22 November 2020. The accompanying book is published byHassla, pre-order a copy here.
Above: Installation shots from Afternoon, on show at Lubov, New York.
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“I was quite shaken up that morning,” recalls Naomi Wood of the day she gave birth. “It’s such a huge process to go through. And I couldn’t really grasp what had just happened.” She had packed her camera in her hospital bag and, that morning, at the end of a three-day labour, she took it out. “The first thing I did was start to take pictures in the little hospital bay we were in,” she describes. “I think that’s quite often my reaction to things: to take images to make sense of what I’m feeling.”
Her ongoing work, I Wake To Listen, is a continuation of the work that began with the birth of her son, Charlie, and her first experiences of motherhood. Living in a static caravan with her partner while they save money to buy a house, Wood found her world small and close, filled with the daily rhythm of child-rearing, and the constant refrain of its various bodily fluids. “It’s such a fundamental process; it’s so universal,” she says, “but also I found it quite shocking. So having the images does help me; it’s about controlling that [shock] a little, because I’m documenting it.”
Wood began to turn the camera on herself, a new photographic territory for her. “I knew that I wanted [the self-portraits] to be honest, and it’s hard looking at them because they’re not the way I would like to be seen by the world,” she explains. The work portrays the photographer in pyjamas, breastfeeding, her expression often weary. “The initial self-portraits were a lot harsher, and that reflected how I felt at the time: everything was so raw,” she says. “But then there’s a kind of reconciliation. We all have these different stages in our lives; we’re all very nuanced. The therapeutic part is being able to reconcile those different sides of myself.”
This reconciliation is embodied particularly by the rich presence of nature within the work. Wood’s caravan is surrounded by it on all sides, and she looks out onto an oak tree, which we watch cycle through bareness and into the full flourish of summer through her lens, the windows misted with dew. “Nature is so beautiful, and I do think mothering can be a little over-romanticised sometimes; sometimes I’m unsure about whether I should be linking the two together so much,” she reflects. “But then, also, nature can be very harsh and brutal.” Mice nest beneath the caravan, and in the summer the surrounding bramble bushes grow so large that they twist through the gaps in the windows. “It’s constantly encroaching on us; it’s all-consuming,” Wood says. “The very early stages of becoming a mother were like that… In a way, nature was reflecting that for me.”
Wood is dedicated to reflecting this kind of duality: that such a primal experience can be as gorgeous as it is challenging. The kitchen sink overfills; the laundry hangs quietly in the light; her son has porridge on his face; and the oak tree comes into bud outside. Wood continues to use photography to make sense of her world. “It’ll keep changing, because our family will change as we go through different stages. I’m always going to be taking photographs of us all,” she says. Will the project ever be concluded? “I believe in feeling things out, so I’ll know as I move through it. I think it’s really important to remain curious.”
Guanyu Xu’s ephemeral photographic installations are potent. Secretly installed in his childhood home, unbeknown to his conservative parents, they speak to Xu’s experience of being a gay man in China and now the US — “two systems that are limiting my freedom differently”. In one image, copious images clutter an empty drawer. In another, large scale prints lie strewn across his parents’ neatly-made bed. “It is a project that reclaims the space, that queers the space — it explores how images create desire and influence us, and how we can confront that influence,” he says.
The installations, collectively titled Temporarily Censored Home and currently on show at Yancey Richardson, New York, comprise images drawn from a range of sources — “a clutter of things I care about”. They include intimate portraits of Xu and other gay men, from his project One Land to Another, which interrogates the intersectionality of race, sexuality, and citizenship — specifically Xu’s experience of homosexuality in the US where queer aesthetics still privilege the quintessential white male. These nestle among his artwork, images from family albums, and torn pages from western film and fashion magazines, the white male protagonists of which Xu idolised as a teenager growing up in Beijing, China.
Space of Mutation. 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.
“It is a project that reclaims the space, that queers the space — it explores how images create desire and influence us, and how we can confront that influence”
Rooms of convergence. 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.
Collectively, the images embody many facets of Xu’s identity exploding out into a place that has historically repressed him. Not only his childhood home but, beyond that, China, with its strict censorship laws and restrictions on LGBTQ+ content. The photographer grew up in a conservative family — his father a military office and mother a civil servant. Both are still unaware that he is gay, and that he has constructed and photographed these installations in their home. It was only after moving to the US to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014 that Xu felt able to come out. The photographer’s parents support his studies, however, they are only aware of his most innocuous work. “My parents always ask me what I am working on … I just show them images of landscapes,” he explains.
The Dining Room. 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.
Sara Ahmed’s book Queer Phenomenology partly inspired the work, encouraging Xu to reflect on how space can influence an individual’s identity, and the power structures latent in it. The project enabled the photographer to disrupt an environment that had always restricted him: Xu was prevented from decorating his room, bound to the strictly organised layout envisioned by his father. Infiltrating his childhood home, and adorning it with expressions of his sexuality, allowed Xu to reclaim it — “to queer the normativity of my parents’ heterosexual space”.
The quasi-protest Xu enacts via his installations is not confined to the space in which it takes place. From the Hollywood movies he watched as a child and adolescent, the photographer envisioned the US as a land of freedom and democracy — a place markedly different from his home. Relocating to the country was liberating in some respects. However, he discovered that different forms of discrimination pervade the US, a reality increasingly exacerbated by the Trump administration. “Here, I am not represented by the mainstream media — cultural production, movie production etc, only represent white men,” Xu reflects. The work is also a comment on that, exploring how photographs and visual media construct a certain narrative, often divorced from reality.
My desktop. 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.
“My parents always ask me what I am working on … I just show them images of landscapes”
Parents’ bedroom. 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.
The photographer muses on how his rigid upbringing contributed to his identity. By temporarily throwing his childhood home into disarray, the Xu unsettles that side of himself. “My home and the images I was exposed to influenced my desire and made me the person I am today,” he says, “in releasing that history and releasing those archives, I can influence my future; I can understand how to change”.
The Living Room. 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.Inside of my drawer. 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.
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Harold Feinstein could have been a quintessential street photographer. His subject was 1940s New York; his medium, a Rolleiflex camera borrowed from a neighbour. The native New Yorker honed his skills on the beaches and boardwalks of Coney Island, wandering among the sun-drenched crowds in search of subjects. But, his work evades that categorisation. “The thing about Coney Island was not how to find a picture, but how to avoid it,” he reflects in Last Stop Coney Island: The Life and Photography of Harold Feinstein, a new documentary, which showed in tandem with the London exhibition Found: A Harold Feinstein Exhibition at 180 Strand during Photo London 2019, and which delves into the story of the photographer who fell into relative obscurity, until now. The film’s makers have now launched a Kickstarter raising money to make it available on DVD.
Feinstein, who died in 2015, framed familiar subjects in a manner that renders them remarkable – a skill that quickly gained him the recognition, and respect, of his contemporaries. He left home aged 15, escaping the wrath of his physically-abusive father for a room at the YMCA. The photographer was accepted into the Photo League aged just 17; the youngest of a group comprising some of the most noted American photographers of the mid-20th century, including Weegee, Robert Frank and Margaret Bourke-White. Two years later Edward Steichen purchased two of his prints for the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. He was praised by peers, curators, and critics alike: in 1954 Feinstein had his first exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art; around this time, the formidable W. Eugene Smith entrusted the photographer with the layout for his Pittsburgh Project.
However, Feinstein’s renown was short-lived. This was, in part, down to his decision to withdraw from Steichen’s group photography exhibition The Family of Man – a monumental exploration of human experience, which toured the world for eight years and was seen by more than 9 million visitors – after he was asked to relinquish control over the size and crop of his images. As the spotlight shifted onto Feinstein’s more successful contemporaries, the photographer left New York for Philadelphia and threw himself into teaching. “Part of my journey in life has been running away from the establishment, just as running away from home was important,” he explains in Last Stop Coney Island.
Feinstein achieved some commercial success at the end of his life with One Hundred Flowers – an avant-garde photo book comprising scanned images of flowers. However, he remained relatively obscure. In 2011, director Andy Dunn contributed to a Kickstarter campaign to fund Feinstein’s first monograph. “His work was instantly appealing so it was an easy decision to support the book; then the thoughts of a film began to form in my mind,” he explains. Dunn took the plunge, producing Last Stop Coney Island. He also introduced Feinstein’s work to Carrie Scott – an American curator and writer – who curated the concurrent exhibition Found at 180 Strand.
In a conversation with BJP-online, Dunn and Scott, discuss the challenges and responsibilities involved in presenting Feinstein’s life and work.
BJP-online: What drew you to the story of Harold Feinstein and what motivated you to tell it?
Andy Dunn: When I think that a subject could make a good documentary I ask: “Is there a story worth telling? What is the value of a film beyond showcasing an artist’s work?” I would not have pursued the project if Harold hadn’t been such an inspirational character – it was the way he chose to live his life, being true to his art, which interested me most.
Carrie Scott: Andy and I were working together in New York and he asked me to take a look at Harold’s work. I had never heard of him and was cautious at first but then, like Andy, I started looking at his images and reading about his life – I quickly realised what an authentic artist he was.
Harold’s photographs are alive. They are genuine and spontaneous and make you feel exactly how you want to when you look at an image. I was drawn in by the romance of the imagery and the romance of Harold’s story, despite never having met him. I said to Andy: “You have got to do this.” He introduced to me Judith Thompson, Harold’s widow, and from there it was the most natural process.
BJP-online: So the project really evolved as you went deeper. Did distinct themes emerge as you continued to research and speak to people?
Carrie: Yes, because his story has not really been told before there was as sense of discovery, like peeling back the layers of an onion.
The first time I saw Harold’s images I thought: “How can I build on these? Clearly, he is massively under-recognised. What is going on?” Then, I learned he was a beautiful teacher who gave so much of his life to helping people discover their own authenticity and integrity.
So it was this organic process of getting to know Harold through his work (sadly, he had passed away by this point). I quickly realised how important Harold’s biography is to the history of photography and that we had to tell it. And we had to tell it in a significant way.
BJP-online: Did you feel a duty to present Harold in a certain way – what do you want viewers to take away from the documentary and the exhibition?
Andy: Yes, for me that is a big part of the job.
My approach to the film was partly led by what attracted me to Harold as a bohemian of sorts. But, it was also led by a sense of responsibility to create something that would not just be a hagiography. The film had to have balance and I wanted to reflect some of the costs involved in Harold’s unwavering commitment to his art.
I began the project when Harold was alive, but he passed away during the process. Because of this, I had to make decisions about how to handle certain themes in the knowledge that he was no longer here to speak for himself. I was really conscious that he had problems and pain in his life, and that this is relevant to his work. I had lots of conversations with Judith early on, to ensure that she would trust me to present him in a balanced way.
In the art-world, some people worry about the negative effect on an artist’s reputation and legacy that recounting the darker, or perhaps flawed, aspects of their character may have. “Don’t say they had an alcohol problem, better not to risk inferring that they were promiscuous” etc. But, I think the lifelong struggle between the darkness and the light is where a lot of great art comes from and it was certainly a key part of Harold’s psyche.
BJP-online: How do the different narratives in the film work with those in the exhibition? Are similar themes covered by both the film and the exhibition?
Carrie: One of the things that I was inspired by when watching the film was Andy’s ability to bring Harold to life. Andy and I began to talk about the ways that I could do that in the show and not only via the prints on the wall. So the show employs a range of media. Before you even see one of Harold’s images, you hear his voice – it is a recording that he did when he was taking some curators around an exhibition. There are also manuscripts from the lectures that he gave, and Andy has cut some small excerpts of the film that will be included. So, hopefully Harold’s presence is there, right from the beginning.
BJP-online: The sequencing of images in the film is so fluid. How did you decide what photographs to include in the footage and in the exhibition?
Andy: Having access to Harold’s archive was one of the joys of making the film. I love contact sheets and rummaging through boxes of proof-prints – there is always the thrill of not being quite sure what you are going to find.
You can learn about how a photographer worked by looking in their archive. Harold had phases where he shot a role of film and every image would be different. He had other phases when he would fill an entire role with the same scene.
I knew that there were 50 or 60 classic images, which should definitely be in there. Judith also knew about some images that Harold was particularly fond of – I wanted to include those too. And then there were the pieces that I personally just liked. Sometimes we would notice that there was a shot in the moving archival footage, which echoed one of Harold’s photographs and that would influence what we selected too.
Carrie: When I started talking to Judith I was pleasantly surprised that the archive was actually very well-organised. There were three groupings that I knew I wanted to show – Harold’s work from Coney Island, his street-photography, and his still lives, nudes and landscapes. Images just worked with images – that is the nature of his archive.
There will also be additional prints that people can leaf through with white gloves. So, in total, you have about 70 images that people can look at.
Andy: The print is also key. Harold was an amazing printer and I think that the exhibition will convey that.
BJP-online: One thing that really stuck out was how close he got to his subjects, and the unconventional angles that he often employed. New York City has been the subject of so many photographer’s work. But, it was unique to see his subjects framed in this close-up way.
Andy: When you look at his photographs you know he isn’t self-conscious. He had an innate sense of composition and balance. His work doesn’t feel like someone trying to “make art”; it looks like someone reacting to what feels good instinctively.
Carrie: That element of proximity is so significant. With many other street photographers, you get this sense that they held back – there is some distance. But Harold is right there. That was particularly brave back then when the camera was not so commonplace and when you consider that his subjects are mostly not his friends. But, Harold manages to cut through all of that. And so do the people staring back through his lens. They are sparkling and they look like they love him. They are at ease with the process and they are just happy to be there. That was what hit me straight away.
