Category: Photography
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Photography Cliques
For a long time I’ve been baffled by the invisible lines that are drawn by those in the business of art theory and criticism between different types of photography. And in particular the status of those types, the people who make them, and who gets to call themselves an ‘artist’.
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One sheet zines
Another format idea – what’s the minimum viable zine? A single sheet of paper. This format has ben around for a long time; I saw it used most recently to promote the Looking for Spiders show at Brighton Photo Fringe. Austin Keon has a good write-up.
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Beate Gütschow: LS/S
I’ve had this book for a long time, but recently revisited it, as I’ve been thinking more about landscape photography. In the first half of the book – the LS (Land Scape) series – Gütschow recreates imaginary 17th Century landscape paintings with digital collage. The essays and quotes following this talk about many of the same…
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The details
I was thinking about details as I walked the dog this morning, and reflecting on my zine project, especially the finishing of that project. It’s easy to get to 90% in a project. The last 10% is the hardest, and it’s all about details. The minor details of sequencing and layout; testing out different types…
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Finishing
I enjoy finishing things, which perhaps makes me better suited to art practice than many (leaving aside questions of talent, skill or ideas). But it never ceases to amaze me just how long finishing takes, or how boring it is. I’m driven by the desire to just get rid of the bloody thing, and it’s…
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Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of People/Places
There are two kinds of books about photography. Serious books about artists (monographs, retrospectives, histories or collections of a genre) and how-to guides (how to use your DSLR, how to take black and white photography, how to take stunning portraits, etc.). The first kind assume you’re a consumer of art. They introduce you to new…
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A good surface is full of clues
I read Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi this summer (buy from Amazon). I’m exploring photobooks and this is one that comes up again and again as a must-read. I was predisposed to Soth’s work because i know him first as a blogger and YouTuber, which I imagine he might find amusing. It’s a mix…
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Flattening the Picture
I’ve been taking photos of woodland damage caused by larch felling and subsequent storms. This landscape would often be captured with a romantic view. In fact, the place I’m photographing is cultivated as a picturesque landscape. I didn’t want to make images of beautiful decay, so I thought I’d try something more confrontational. I thought…
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Process Saves Us From The Poverty Of Our Intentions
This is a quote, attributed to sculptor sculptor Elizabeth King, that Seth Godin uses to introduce his book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work. I read this two ways. Firstly, that process is what distinguishes pros from amateurs – ‘doing the work’. But also that sometimes our intentions feel poor. We don’t quite know what we…
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Photography is dead. Long live photography
It might just be a symptom of accelerating culture, but it seems the lifespan of technologies shrinks ever more. Painting lasted a few thousand years before being ‘obsoleted’ by photography. Photography has only just made it into the Museum of Modern Art, and been declared dead. The main threats being: I feel like photography has…
Andrew Sleigh 