Venetia Dearden was brought to my attention when Marco Santucci, her agent came to talk to us in our university lecture theatre. Before he signed her up Mr Santucci claimed he was initially not too impressed with the commercial work she was producing but absolutely loved her personal projects that documented her intimate portrayal of Somerset life. He suggested to her that she remove the commercial stuff from her website and that she should really highlight her personal stuff. The agency encouraged commercial work for her that played to her strengths and allowed her to stay true to her natural photographic style.

I am however in love with her personal Somerset work

Her Somerset photos have been published as a book, Somerset Stories: Fivepenny Dreams by Kerher Verlag.

Venetia Dearden's book Another Stage (2010) celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the Glastonbury festival, and her fifth consecutive year of shooting in a studio on site. On display will be photographs ranging from Shirley Bassey to Lily Allen, Pete Townshend and Leonard Cohen, to festival goers of all ages. Dearden grew up next to the festival site and has been involved with Glastonbury since a young age.

Leonard Cohen, Shirley Bassey, Carrie and Justin

To celebrate her new book, she has a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery

19 April - 26 September 2010

In The Bookshop Gallery

Free

Laura Pannack has posted a new image on her blog. A new edition to her YBN series ( Young British Naturist?) It's really interesting to watch someone elses project grow and develop before your eyes....



Laura writes;

I thought I'd put up a recent YBN image to add to the edit. The project is proving highly stressful and I need to swing into organization station mode and plan my summer shoots..

This is Kay. Some shoots flow and pan out pretty much as you'd expect but Kay was different. The longer I spent shooting her, the more I learnt. I always speak to my models about their passions and interests prior to the shoot as I want these images to be about these people not their nudity.

Kay's unusual interest in Dolls houses already provided an interesting starting point but as the shoot continued more of her interests were revealed. However sometimes it can be overwhelming when there are many elements you want to include and I found myself actually veering away from squeezing too many of her interests and just concentrating on her, hinting subtly to her passion for dolls houses.

Kay was warm, polite and very interesting to photograph. my thanks to her for her patience and time and to her mum for being so welcoming!

Impending deadlines and the Easter Break have meant I hadn't managed to get these images posted earlier. A few posts ago I was only starting to research for my Tea Dance project and had just been introduced to Elaine Constantine's work on the same subject. Here, some 3 weeks on I can show you a few of the portraits I took . I had 3 photo shoot opportunities to attend the dances before the hand-in was due, and I used this time to try and build up a bit of a relationship with the dancers, as they really didn't seem too keen to be photographed at first. I know this was a luxury that a lot of photographers don't have......






















I am quite happy with the results I achieved in so much that I believe a lot of progress has occured since the first project I did called 'The Early Swim' to bring along to the interview I had for this course. However, although not perfect by far, the lighting is not too bad, I made some schoolgirl errors regarding the exposure and had to pull them back a bit in photoshop, (with limited talent,) and I just feel that they lack punch. I was really happy with all of my subjects and with the way the project developed over the x4 fridays I spent there but I have to work on controling my nerves on a shoot.... Thank god for beautiful assistants!......

I have now discovered another photographer to go on my 'favourites' list. Her name is Jane Hilton. Her personal projects with titles such as; The Brothel, The Nudist Camp, The Isle of Sheppey, The Silent Order and El Rancho Casino are right up my street. She was brought to my attention when my friend applied for a placement with her. Since I've discovered her I can't help but notice she is everywhere at the moment... the last edition of Hotshoe, Foto8 and last weeks Sunday Telegraph magazine supplement all feature her new book, Dead Eagle Trail. The book documents the 21st century cowboys she encountered on one of her road trips in the western states of America...
She has an exhibition featuring these photographs starting at Host Gallery, London starting 21st April.

I am keeping my eye on Simon Roberts...
Although I don't take photographs that look like anything like his in genre or style (...in my dreams!.) I really love his work.
I sent him an email to see if he could do with an extra pair of hands over the next couple of months because I know he is busy.....




He has been commissioned as the official Election Artist by The House of Commons to produce a body of work around the upcoming General Election. Alongside his own photographs he’s calling for members of the public to contribute their own photographs of political activity in their area. The submitted photographs will be displayed on The Election Project online gallery and some will be exhibited as part of the final artwork in the House of Commons this summer. He wants to create the nation's snapshot of this election.

I still haven't heard from him yet.........

Finally found the courage to post one my own images on my blog .
This is an image I have shot for my Digital Darkroom unit. I had to produce a front cover for an editorial magazine relating to The Theory of Gaia. My biggest coup here was sourcing a pregnant model and getting her to pose nude for me. I met her while swimming at the local pool and I still can't believe that she said yes! She was so lovely during the whole process - and I am so grateful to her.

While shooting images at a local Tea-Dance as part of my CAP project, I was told about Elaine Constantine's photographs on the same subject. Previously Elaine had photographed dancers in clubs as a project that recalled her own experiences of dancing in clubs in the 80's - so the Tea-Dancers project was linked to her previous work but resulted in quite different images. I had to look at this project so not to just repeat it


Tea Dance


....and her previous project ...........

These images are taken from projects by a young photographer called Laura Pannack. She has won many prestigious photography awards both while she was studying at Brighton University and since she graduated only two years ago. The top image 'Graham, The Anorexic Teenager,' was only just last week announced the World Press Photo Award first prize winner. This photo was chosen from 101,960 entries from 128 different countries. She was our guest speaker yesterday and was totally inspirational. Extremely passionate about what she does, her beautiful colour images and the subjects she has chosen obviously reach out and touch people that view them as her success testifies. I am now following her blog with interest.

Laura Pannack who was our PPRD guest speaker last week mentioned Simon Roberts, a British photographer whom she had at some point assisted and had cited as an inspiration and as her mentor. As I had liked her work so much, I thought I would take a look at his.....

For his project called 'We English', he spent 6 months driving around the British Isles with his wife and young daughter in a motor home. Being guided by people who wrote location suggestions for him to photograph on his blog, Simon used an old 5x4 field camera which he says "was quite laborious and often very public. I had anticipated that there might be problems in situations where there were lots of people close to the camera - like photographing on beaches - but by the time I'd finished setting up, any curious onlookers had lost interest and turned away, thereby allowing me to achieve very spontaneous images".







I think they are really beautiful and remind me of Gursky's landscapes although with a much more English flavour of course.

New York was great. I've come back with neck ache from looking up! Lots of photographic highlights. Favourite photographer we visited for me by far was Philip Toledano. his documentary projects all really related to things that I am interested in, especially the 'Phone Sex Workers' and the current 'Beauty' project he is working on now, photographing women and men who have undergone extensive plastic surgery. He talked about his subjects and how he approached them, he talked emotionally about his work 'Days with my Father' a really tender series of images which documented the time he spent with his dad in the last few months of his life. He came across as a genuine, funny, down to earth sort of person who was interested in people and was able to relate well with his sitters and consequently was able to portray them with compassion but honestly. I came away really liking him and his work.

Went on East Photographic's website and looked at the work of Tara Darby.
I was made aware of her by my favourite 3rd year student who had assisted her when he was a mere first year. What impressed me about her portfolio was the variety of her fashiony based work It seemed to me that she is able to turn her hand to most things, like I suppose a good commercial photographer should.

Finished PVC essay today.... At Last!! I am now free to think about other things. This week we have been given both of the photographic briefs that we have to complete by the end of March. Not only have we had to come up with the shoot ideas but research and plan them and present them to the relevant lecturers for critique and approval. My second tutorial is tomorrow just before lunch. All this and preparing for New York trip next week! Getting very excited now. Aaron Schman gave us his 'guide to New York' talk at the end of his PPRD lecture yesterday. He broke the hip neighbourhoods down for us by description to get our imaginations going and made a note of all the photographic exhibitions that are on while we are there. We will visit three photographers while we are there....


1) Ex Brit, Platon, Mainly portraiture and documentary magazine features. I looked him up on the net.......






2)Philip Toledano, another ex Brit.... Having seen his photos, I am really looking forward to meeting him!






....and 3) Chris Vereene, American documentary photographer, who has over the last 15-20 years documented his large family from American small town Gainsborough

Chris Floyd came and spoke to us yesterday in the Lecture Theatre about his 17 year career in the industry. He was a very approachable guy and gave an entertaining and inspirational talk about his experiences, his work practices and ethos. Really enjoyed listening to him, and he had some really relevant advice
AUCB has given us X3 really good speakers so far!