Guest Lecture - Max Ferguson

‘Max is a photographer, writer and curator. He is the Founding Editor of Splash & Grab Magazine, the Director of Photography of Port Magazine and Port Creative and a freelance Photo Editor at the Financial Times Weekend Magazine. Working in partnership with Emma Bowkett, he produced the My London show at the 2018 edition of Peckham 24. Recent clients include The British Journal of Photography, Leagas Delaney, BBH, President's and Next Level Projects. In 2014 his photographs on the Rwandan genocide were exhibited in a solo show entitled Ndi Umunyarwanda / We Are Rwandan. He has curated photography and contemporary art exhibitions while working with contemporary art galleries in London. He graduated with a degree in Photography from the University of the West of England in 2012.’ Max Ferguson

An excerpt from Max’s website - an exceptional, talented, focused and driven person. Magazines have always been an inspiration for Max, who still plays a role in the magazine he founded - Splash and Grab - which promotes talented emerging photographers. In the seven years since he graduated from UWE he has used his early experience in, and passion for, magazine editing to establish an impressive CV.

The finance needed to launch Splash and Grab came from a £3k kickstarter fund. Max says it was an ongoing learning process - and that he learnt through his mistakes.

Important learning from Max’s lecture is that he didn’t sit around waiting for things to happen - he was self-motivated, and knew what he wanted to achieve, constantly pushing himself, looking for opportunities and making contacts.

On a more personal level, in our workshop I talked with Max about the relationship between text and image, something he is passionate about. It was really helpful to have his endorsement of my approach and plans for my project.

Guest Lecture - Robert Darch

Robert Darch has been a regular visitor to Bath Spa photography - helping with tutorials, and talking to us about his practice. His talk yesterday was about his most recent book, The Moor.

“The Moor depicts a fictionalised dystopian future situated on the bleak moorland landscapes of Dartmoor. Drawing on childhood memories of Dartmoor alongside influences from contemporary culture, the narrative references local and universal mythology to give context but suggests something altogether more unknown. The realisation of this dystopian future is specifically in response to a perceived uncertainty of life in the modern world and a growing disengagement with humanitarian ideals. The Moor portrays an eerie world that shifts between large open vistas, dark forests, makeshift dwellings, uncanny visions and isolated figures.” Robert Darch

It’s a beautiful book - small and with no written narrative, relying on its 43 colour images, and with a simple line drawing on the cover by Ben Javens.

The Moor is a fictional narrative set on Dartmoor

In the couple of years we’ve known Robert, his work has become more widely recognised. Martin Parr has described him as a ‘rising star in British photography’, and Robert has just last month given a talk at the Martin Parr Foundation.

Robert has said that this success has not just happened - it’s something he has had to work hard at in terms of raising his profile and getting his work out there. He sets aside a day a week to work on his social media presence and on raising his profile in general.

This was a key message for us as final year students - you can’t expect the world to come and find you, you have to put a lot of effort into networking and social media, exhibiting and, above all, continuing to make new work.

Guest Lecture - Guy Martin

Guy Martin introduced to us his most recent work - The Parallel State, made after he moved to Turkey, having been seriously injured whilst covering the conflict in Libya when a mortar struck and killed the two photographers working with him. An event which had a deep impact on him both personally and professionally. I think perhaps we all see images and film clips of violent conflicts across the world, but often fail to recognise the personal danger journalists and photographers place themselves in to bring their stories to the public. An essential job, but carrying a huge cost.

It took Guy a year to learn to walk again, and several months before he started to take photographs again. In that time, his relationship with photography had undergone a radical shift, with Guy taking back control. By then he was living in Turkey, and had become fascinated by the lavish Turkish soap opera industry, gaining access to spend as much time as he wanted to on set, and to photograph as he pleased, exploring the blurry line between fact and fiction. The work was made over a few years, covering the explosive political scene in Turkey, mixed with fake news and social media - it’s hard to work out what is real and what is fiction. A powerful piece of work which has far wider implications for society as a whole.

Guy is a highly articulate, self motivated and commercially aware photographer - essential qualities in a hugely competitive industry. He came armed with copies of his books, and a card machine. Sorted.

Guest Lecture - Celine Marchbank

Celine came to talk to us about her project ‘Tulip’. It’s an intensely personal and emotional body of work, documenting her journey through a painful and difficult part of her life - her mother’s diagnosis and eventual death from lung cancer and secondary tumours.

Her mother loved to have flowers in the house - of which the tulip was her favourite - and the book is punctuated with images of vases of flowers, fresh or wilting and dying. The images capture her mother’s time in hospital, and also at home. The detail, the small mundane things Celine noticed - like the bowl of washing up, cushions on the sofa, a plate of toast, pots of homemade jam - are interspersed with images of her mother lying in her bed, the effects of the chemotherapy on her hair. A stark realisation of her life as it had been, and had now become.

It’s a beautiful book, full of colour. Celine says of her work that she ‘felt a real need to record everything, like some kind of magpie, collecting thoughts and moments rather than shiny things’, although she struggled at times to understand just why she had decided to introduce a camera into what was an unbearable situation.

I am reminded of Miyako Ishiuchi’s work, Mother’s, which captures images of her mother’s most intimate items, such as underwear, lipsticks, a hairbrush still holding strands of her hair. A project which also looks to capture memories - the essence of a person - and to help with the process of grieving.

For Celine, her project did not conclude with her mother’s death. Her mother had been a head chef, and Celine found herself standing in her kitchen looking through her mother’s lifetime’s collection of recipes, and threw herself into cooking, then growing food. ‘A stranger in my mother’s kitchen’ became an outlet to help her cope with her grief, and a project which she is now planning to publish as a book.

Never work with animals .........

A tricky but fun photoshoot at County Hounds with Kay, Les and canine guests, for their new website.

Kay’s vision for her kennels is that it is a place where the dogs come to have fun, with the minimum time possible spent locked in their kennels. The dogs spend most of their day in the yard, either resting on the leather sofa in the summerhouse or on beanbags scattered around the yard, playing with toys, or making new friends in the exercise field. It is most definitely doggy heaven.

The brief was to reflect Kay’s vision - not difficult as the dogs were all having a great time!! The main problem was trying to get them to stand still for a moment, avoiding getting covered in muddy paw prints (which failed), and wiping wet nose and lick marks off my lense …….

RA Summer Exhibition 2018

Grayson Perry has breathed new life into this year’s exhibition. It had, for me, become stale and repetitive and I had pretty much stopped going. The curation was superb, with photography being included alongside paintings, and with work from renowned artists being shown alongside amateur work. Exciting and vibrant!!

This year’s exhibition will be a hard act to follow.