On the road

We have been away for about a month now. The first 20 days were taken up by visiting our agencies in Paris, a few days in Cannes, where Vanessa had an exhibition of new work during the Sony World photography awards and a week in Milan meeting with my agents Prospekt for the first time.

New trip, Ukraine, Poland and Georgia

Vanessa and myself bought a new secondhand car, after the last one was put into retirement and have now set off on a 3 month road trip to Ukraine, Poland and Georgia via Paris and Milan.
I have just received a copy of La Vie magazine here in France with a feature they did in December of the Transit Ukraine work.
We should reach Ukraine in the last week of April for 2 1/2 weeks. If anyone in Ukraine or for that matter in Poland and Georgia wishes to meet up please drop me or Vanessa an email.

IZ Magazine 3

The final 2 portfolio are Vanessa Winship's "Sweet nothings" series and a selection of work from Dutch photographer, Hellen Van Meene

Burroughs book cover

The photograph was taken in my fathers village in Northern Cyprus after the border was open.

Serbs and Roma

I have spent the last week going through some of my work from Kosovo and Serbia and distributing it to the agencies I work with.
One of the observations I made when I was living in Serbia was that throughout all the conflicts the Serbs had, it was surprising to see the peaceful and respectful relationship they had with their Roma population, specially in comparison with much of Eastern Europe. Obviously, this was of no interest to any news media at the time and even less now.

The principal music festival in Serbia is The Guca trumpet festival, which is the largest indigenous folk festival in Europe. It brings together Serb and Roma musicians and in many ways Roma music is embedded into the Serbian identity. Rarely does a celebration not involve a Roma band.

Below is an image from the Zastava car factory in the central town of Kragujevac. A large number of Roma worked at the factory, which finally closed down last year. The last image was also taken in Kragujevac, and is at Gypsy Ball held in the main hotel.

IZ Magazine 2

We were pleased that Pieter Hugo agreed to allow us to publish

his new work form Nigeria "Nollywood".

In the Nollywood series, Hugo explores the multilayered reality of
the Nigerian film industry. Nollywood is the third largest film
industry in the world, releasing between 500 and 1 000 movies each year.
In his travels through West Africa, Hugo became increasingly intrigued by this hyperactive industry, in constant production. He has created a series of portraits that play on the blur between reality and fiction by taking the actors off the set and asking them to recreate the stereotypical myths and symbols that characterise Nollywood productions.
































I first saw Jan Banning's images from Bureaucratics, when I was in the Panos offices a few years back and they had just received his Bureaucratics from India. I remember thinking how such a simple idea had so wonderfully captured an aspect of India. This project developed into a book.
"This project hones in on the typically anonymous civil servant who, anywhere in the world, makes up a small cog in the gigantic machinery of the state. Jan Banning and writer Will Tinnemans photographed and interviewed approximately 250 civil servants in eight countries: Bolivia, China, France, India, Liberia, Russia, Yemen, and the United States."
The Dutch version of the book can be bought here

Courrier International France

Courrier International in France published my Turkey portfolio this week.

I feel they did a good job with the layout and managed to get a sense of the project within the confines of a limited space.

Close to Home reaches Cyprus

The British Council's "Close to Home " exhibition arrived at it's final destination last week in Cyprus after a year long tour of South Eastern Europe . 

I was invited to the opening as the "Cypriot" artist and made a presentation of the "Fault Lines: Turkey" work in both the North and South of Nicosia. What was interesting for me was the positive response of the Turkish Cypriots to my work, in particular the Fault Lines project. They really engaged and understood the images and issues I was exploring in this work.

On the final afternoon I had the good fortune to find a building along the Greek side of the Green line that wasn't being guarded. It led to a series of buildings running along the green line with these fortified bunkers. After 30 years of impasse the cleanly swept rooms really symbolise this slow burning division.

IZ Magazine 1

IZ is a Bi monthly Photographic magazine published in Istanbul by Fotografevi, mostly presenting documentary portfolios, both historical to the contemporary. Over the last 3 years IZ has featured and introduced to a Turkish audience a number of photographers from VII, Magnum, Panos,
and other.
For the March/April issue, Vanessa Winship and myself were invited to guest edit IZ and produce a Portrait issue. We wanted to emphasis work that doesn't attempt to sit in one genre but moves between documentary, portraiture and fine art. Unfortunately the magazine doesn't have a website and is only available in Turkey. I will show a few of the page layouts here in the next week. On this post we have August Sander, (above), who needs no introduction.

A great discovery during our time in the Balkans was the photography of Leonidas Papazoglou (below). Born in Kastoria, Greece during the final years of the Ottoman empire, Papazoglou worked as a photographer in Kastoria and the surrounding region from the late 1890's until his untimely death in 1918 at the age of 46. His stunning portraits capture the centuries-old multiethnic and multicultural character of an area where Greeks, Turks, Jews, Turks and Albanians coexist with Slav-speaking native people, as the Ottoman Empire goes through the last phase of its existence. I would like to thank Mr George Golobias, who discovered, restored and owns the collection and the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography for publishing the book, Leonidas Papazoglou: Portraits from Kastoria at the time of the Macedonian struggle.
More images here.

The Second photographer is Pierre Gonnord, we saw his work for the first time, exhibited at Arles last year. Without a doubt this was one of the highlights of the festival. Here is a snippet from his own introduction of his work.
I choose my contemporaries in the anonymity of the big cities because their
faces, under the skin, narrate unique and remarkable stories about our era.
Sometimes hostile, almost always vulnerable and very often wounded behind
the opaqueness of their mask, they embody at once specific social realities
and a different concept of beauty.

I search for individuals that seem unclassifiable and timeless, suggesting that the play of human condition has been repeated over and over since the beginning of time. I would like to encourage the crossing of a mental border.

Deep Sleep online magazine

Deep Sleep is a quarterly online photography magazine founded

by and featuring work from a small group who share the same office

space in Shoreditch, East London. Each issue will be on a theme and

guest contributors will be invited to submit images on that theme.

For the first issue, "Invisible', Vanessa Winship, Wang Wei and myself

are the guests alongside the office boys, Ian Teh, Ben Smith, James Harris,

Martin Scott-Jupp and Sam Baguley.

Submissions are welcome for the next issue: Aliens. deadline 1st may 2009.

Fault Lines in Geo magazine Germany

Geo magazine in Germany has just published a 20 

page feature on my  Turkey : Fault lines work.

Kosovo anniversary and the beginnings of a journey

The 17th February marked the first year anniversary of Kosovan

independence. This year also see the 10th anniversary of the NATO

campaign against Serbia.

For Vanessa and myself, this was the beginning of our long

journey into the Balkans and beyond. I can still remember

the day we arrived in Albania in our car and took the tortuously

slow, potholed drive to Kukes in northern Albania, the entry

point for the Kosovan Albanians fleeing Kosova. Within 30 minutes

of leaving the ferry, the suspension had gone, 20 minutes later,

one of the many makeshift garages had improvised a repair and we

were up and running. From that moment on we were sold on the region.

Work can be seen here, here and here

Expiration Notice

A new blog site, Expiration notice,  devoted to the work of photographers over the age of 35 has just launched and features my series "Hidden: Psychiatric institutions in Kosova and Serbia". Also featured are David Wolf, John Darwell and Alan George.

Sweet Nothing exhibition at Host

Vanessa's "Sweet nothings" exhibition finally arrives to London.

One of the highlights of last years Les Rencontres D'Arles 

this is a great opportunity to see this beautiful work on the wall

at Host gallery 3rd Feb to 5th March

Lens Culture

Lens Culture features 2 parts of the Fault lines: Turkey 

East to West work in the latest issue. As always it's full of 

interesting work and reviews.

Also featured is  an interview and photos by Roger Ballen 

Close to home Romania

Exhibition installation from Romania, thanks to Dana Popa

Close to Home exhibition next leg

Close to Home exhibition opens tonight at the National Theatre in Bucharest, Romania.

Here are some of the photographers in the exhibition.

Cover feature in BJP

This weeks BJP has a feature on my work on Turkey written by Colin Pantall.

You can download a readable PDF here

How to destroy an exhibition

Well I arrived in Athens on the 20th November, for 2 days of discussion around the notion of Mediterranean photography and portfolio reviews and a chance to see my exhibition at the

Artower Galleries in Central Athens.

After finishing my last portfolio review, a group of us went down to

the gallery to see my exhibition.

What followed was a series of disappointments, to put it politely. My initial impression, as I

 entered the Gallery was I didn't like the way it was ordered and spaced.

As I moved closer to the images, I noticed that there was some damage to the corners, they had clearly fallen from the wall. As I move round the exhibition, cursing very time I saw a damaged photograph,  I begin to look more closely at how they have hung them. It was a double sided tape that couldn't take the weight of 100x70cm photographs mounted on sintra board.

To finally top it all off I notice a small pin nail in one of the images, I re-looked at all the large images and in every image there were 2 nails hammered through the photographs, and not in the corners but half way down and sometimes 5cm into the images. It looks like the were trying to find areas in the image where the nails wouldn't be so visible.

I go back to Athens in 10 days time, it will be interesting to see how they managed to get them off the wall without completely destroying them.

 

Close to home exhibition

The 12th of  November see the British Council's  "close to home " touring exhibition reach Tbilisi, Georgia.

I am showing images from Cyprus.

I can't find a link to the exhibition in Georgia but here is the link from the Armenian British council site with details of the artists showing.