Guest Feature - Mark Massey

Essex Chronicles is my exploration of the northern coastline of the Thames estuary, focusing on our interaction with the everyday places that occupy the land alongside it. It's an area I know well and I wanted to document the very varied mix of industry, leisure and human habitation which seem to sit side-by-side all along the coast (along with lots of nature and wildlife). Together they contribute to the identity of the entire area.

The mouth of the Thames, in the south eastern corner of the UK, is one of the country’s largest inlets and a major shipping route in and out of London. It's also the home of ‘Estuary English’ accents and lazy stereotypes, but it has always been a source of inspiration to artists and writers.

Mark Massey is mostly self-taught, focusing on documentary and portraiture photography. He studied graphic design at college, worked in London as a magazine designer for 20 years, and is now a freelance graphic designer / photographer based from his home county of Essex. His community is important to him, so local issues have formed the focus of several of his personal projects. 

markmassey.co.uk

Guest Feature - Mateusz Kowalik

Once tuberculosis was referred to as a dry-air disease or simply the romantic disease that afflicted the greatest artistic souls. Today, nothing dries the skin like air conditioning in an office in a high-rise building scraping the sky, or the confined spaces of a shopping mall, populated with colourful dreams, or a brand new car on a never-ending road to work. So, are we talking about searching for a remedy and a therapy, or maybe trying to break free from the death of the soul, which decays progressively, like the lungs of a consumptive? Is the unique climate of Góry Suche (pol. Dry Mountains) a destination itself or is it only a stop on the way to somewhere else, a more distant port of call?

There’s the clean, fresh air of the local micro-climate. The sound of crickets keep the starry sky company. Herbs from the backyard garden drying over the fireplace. And those endless repairs of the local road that keep getting destroyed by sudden downpours. Lifelong friendships with kindred spirits and even stronger dramas. A lack of peers in the neighbourhood for a growing-up son, and an even more acute lack of work that reflects in real changes in the bank account. Even if you take a gulp of air, you still might end up panting for breath. 

Mateusz Kowalik is a documentary photographer from Poland. He focuses on long-term projects and his work is often rooted in his own experience, exploring issues of contemporary society. He has shown his work at four individual exhibitions in Poland and Slovakia, and graduated from the Sputnik Photos Mentoring Program. In 2018 he began studying at the University of Opava at the Institute of Creative Photography. All images are from his project Still Far Away From Paradise. Project text: Beata Bartecka.

mateuszkowalik.com

Guest Feature - Robert Herrmann

Once a French colonial town and known as the pearl of Southeast Asia, now the biggest city in Vietnam and the country's financial centre, Saigon aka Ho Chi Minh City has been transforming into a megalopolis - and with its population already beyond 10 million it is growing fast. Until now the old cityscape has already been altered by a number of skyscrapers. But what is to be expected, when a metropolis is changing fast and profoundly like this? Ten years ago I visited Saigon for the first time. Small stores and street kitchens edged the streets emitting smoke and steam and exotic food smells. Yet, even back then high rise buildings were starting to be erected along the main roads. Since then I have been visiting Saigon documenting its transformation.

The people's traditional way of life, worshiping the bonds of the family, is making way for individual aspirations after wealth and consumption. Everywhere street kitchens are being torn down in order to erect modern high rises where banks and companies are doing their business amidst a growing middle class. Saigon is densifiying. At the same time many inhabitants are forced to move to the city's fringes where real estate prices are lower. New quarters are rapidly and organically growing there, often loosely regulated by the city authorities. Increasing traffic is requiring fast solutions, often at the cost of tearing down old structures. But are the generic high rises that follow nothing but the pulse of commercial investment really the best building practice for a unique city like this?

Robert Herrmann is an architectural photographer based out of Berlin, Germany. Trained as an architect Robert evolved into working as a photographer and visual artist. Balancing architectural comprehension with aesthetic interpretation he creates architectural and documentary images for numerous clients across the building industry.

robertherrmann.com

Aaron Yeandle Joins MAP6!

We are absolutley delighted to announce that photographer Aaron Yeandle has joined the MAP6 collective!. Below is a brief interview where he discuses his photograhic practice, his influences and his latest projects.

Can you share with us your journey in photography – from your early inspirations and education to your current practice?

I first started photography when I studied an evening City and Guilds course. From that moment I wanted and needed to be a photographer. The following year, I left my full-time employment and began my journey into the world of photography. In this early stage of education my first inspirations were Richard Billingham, Martin Parr, Paul Reas, Nick Waplington and Rineke Dijkstra. These photographers revealed to me how the everyday world around us is so fascinating and how our society can be documented through photography. I was hooked on learning and began a BA (Hons) in photography. Throughout this period my work developed, and I became interested in other aspects of art and photography. In my second year I transferred to a BA in fine art. This was a period where I really learnt how to contextualise projects and ideas. Deep down, however, I wanted a photography degree rather than a fine art degree, and transferred back to photography for my final year.

During this time I was inspired by paintings, painters and different art movements such as the Romanticism, Realism and the New American colour movement. These influences helped to open my mind, understand lighting, and discern how photography plays an important part in sociology, politics, anthropology and history. Soon after, I began an MA in fine art where I learned how to write about my practice, and the different possibilities of exhibiting work such as installations and displaying and mounting artwork to suit the environment. I also lectured at the local college and university and spent another year studying for a PGCE, which allowed me to lecture in further and higher education. For the next few years I spent my time travelling, and ended up working as the senior technician in photography and media at a university.

With my practice I have become interested in how realism, romanticism and the imagination can be juxtaposed to create a narrative which tells a compelling visual story. For the past few years I have been exhibiting and working on numerous projects focusing on the unseen world of Guernsey’s communities, delving into social and historical aspects of the island. I have exhibited nationally and internationally, and my work has been seen in several international photographic festivals. I have also completed a number of international artist-in-residencies. Alongside my practice I provide educational workshops and present talks on my work. 

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What motivates and drives your photographic practice?

When I first discovered photography I had a deep need to somehow express myself creatively. Photography gave me something tangible to hold onto and provided me with some kind of inner peace. There is so much to capture, so many fascinating people and places to meet and photograph, and this is what drives and motivates me through my practice. Photography somehow allows me to put the world in order, which makes me feel calm amidst the chaos. It also allows me to provide a historical and social view of the world for the future. 

Tell us a little about your major project Voice-Vouaïe and your recent exhibition in Guernsey.

For the last three years I have been working on a large-scale social and historical project on the island of Guernsey. The title of the project is Voice-Vouaïe. The aim of the project is to bring awareness and create a visual and audio archival record of Guernésiais, an ancient language of Guernsey with a long and distinctive history which derived from the Normans. Today, the number of original native speakers in Guernsey is in fast decline, and it is estimated that in 2021 there are possibly fewer than 150 fluent speakers, mainly aged over 80. In World War 2, Guernsey was occupied by the Germans for five years. Most of the children on Guernsey were evacuated to England, which is one of the main reasons why the language began to die out. The majority of people who took part in this historical project were not evacuated in WW2, and spent their childhood under the Nazi occupation. I felt the need to capture this critical and changing situation as an important part of Guernsey’s social heritage and for the future legacy of the Island. I feel that in documenting this social issue for the international community I have captured a part of social history, which can be so fleeting.

At the end of 2020 I showed Voice-Vouaïe in the Guernsey museum, with almost 200 images in this large-scale exhibition. To complement the photographs there was an opportunity to interact and listen to sound recordings of every person who took part in this historical project. In the gallery there was also a short film which featured the key people who made the project possible. There was also a complementary book published to go alongside the exhibition, which also acted as a guide and a gift for family members. We ran visits for different private and public organisations, as well as educational tours to primary, secondary and sixth form schools and educational talks at various events. Internationally the exhibition has created interest in Guernsey and the plight of the Guernésiais language. The next phase of the Voice-Vouaïe exhibition is now to take it on tour, to other countries that have their own endangered languages. 

If you could work collaboratively with one photographer – living or dead – who would it be and why?

This is a hard question, but in the end I choose August Sander, who was a German photographer. He lived in a remarkable social and political time, where from the 1920s onwards Germany went through a great upheaval, changing from being a free and forward-thinking society to the radical constrictions of the mid-1930s. I feel that Sander was one of the first photographers who created what we now know as the ‘artist project’. He was also part of a collective called the Cologne progressives. Sander had a clear idea that he wanted to create a visual diary of everyday people and place. He would go outside the studio and take people to their everyday places or photograph them in their homes and in their own private surroundings. At this time this was unusual, as most portraits would’ve been taken in the studio. He was able to capture his subjects in an objective and non-judgmental way, and record time for the future of social history. Sanders’ work helped to confirm photography as a true art medium, and in some ways he was the first contemporary photographer of the 20th century. 

What do you anticipate as being the advantages of working as part of a photography collective?

There are so many benefits of working in a collective. There is an opportunity to share experiences, knowledge, expertise and learn new skills from one other. There are also significant advantages working on a collaborative project, such as exhibiting together, providing and receiving feedback from peers, and facilitating each other’s growth as photographers. Furthermore, one of the great advantages is creating new contacts, which can develop into a community of artists and friends who are all striving for an outstanding photographic result.

What excites you about the future of photography?

Photography has been used for so many different reasons and has gone through many changes, compared with other art mediums. In recent years I have found that there seems to be a kind of renaissance back to analogue photography by the younger generation. Recently, I gave a two-day workshop on pinhole photography where the students were mainly young teenagers. We made cameras out of shoeboxes and made paper negatives, before developing the negs into positives using traditional darkroom chemicals. The younger students were fascinated with this process, and at the end of the course they went away with pinhole prints and were talking about how they would love to have their own darkroom. I find this exciting for the future of photography, even though my own practice has moved on from film. I can see there is a thirst by the younger generation to move away from digital photography and experiment. This may not be the future of photography; however, as long as there are photographic courses in schools, there will be a strong future for all types of photography. 

arronyeandle.com

Guest Feature - Jakob Ganslmeier

This photo series depicts seven soldiers that served in the Bundeswehr (German armed forces). They have differing backgrounds in the military, among them are: an elite soldier, an intercultural advisor, a paramedic, and a military pastor. As a result of their deployments abroad they share a common ailment, they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In the U.S., as early as the period following WWI, many soldiers were diagnosed with PTSD. In England it was called “shell shock”, in Germany it was known as the “tremors of war”. After the Vietnam war, post-traumatic stress disorder enjoyed wide public reception in the media for the first time. In Germany, the prevalence of the disease among police, rescue workers, and soldiers was hotly discussed following the air show disaster in Ramstein in 1988 and the deployment to Kosovo. During the deployment to Afghanistan, the German armed forces set up trauma centres in Germany due to these experiences.

The daily life of such a soldier differs in many ways from the norm. They alter their lives in the extreme due to the disease. These soldiers have a very strong need for peace and quiet and they avoid places and events where large numbers of people may be present; for example, pedestrian zones, public transportation, shopping centers, and concerts. Their self-imposed isolation is also a source of suffering for them. The world that they inhabit is reduced to a few places: their living room, yard, therapy center, army base, and training grounds. The soldiers suffer from nightmares in which they spontaneously experience traumatic events all over again. These symptoms can return suddenly, years later, often set off by harmless unforeseeable situations known as triggers. Normal day-to-day smells, sounds, or even a certain model of Toyota pick-up truck that the soldier often saw in Afghanistan can set off such flashbacks. Further limitations are also present, such as poor short-term memory and poor concentration. The soldiers are unable to consolidate their day-to-day environment with their deployment experience, which proves an insurmountable hindrance to personal relationships and “normal” communication.

The source of trauma is often hard to pinpoint. It can be a single event, but the permanent latent danger in military camp can lead to trauma as well. One soldier told me that the first traumatic experience of soldiers deployed abroad is the moment they get off the plane. The results are devastating: The Süddeutsche Zeitung (German regional newspaper) recently reported that “more American soldiers die from suicide than in action” and that “experiences in war often play a role; however, many victims had never seen action.” There are no comparable studies in Germany. Nevertheless, the topic of suicide plays a role here, as well as its correlation with PTSD. PTSD therapy is long and complex. Often the training of learned behavior proves useless in overcoming experience with war. Soldiers are trained to follow commands decisively, to be disciplined, and to subdue fear and feelings in action. The goal is to perform perfectly all of the time. Therefore, PTSD can be seen as the failure to display this behavioral pattern in the face of the subconscious. Therapy calls for tracking down the cause and processing it little by little. The images don't show the cause of the trauma, explain the illness, or exemplify the therapeutic process. What can be seen is how this illness manifests and the visual clues that indicate it. Post-traumatic stress disorder is not a disease to be discerned with the eye. We cannot recognize a soldier with PTSD at first glance. This war is one that takes place in the mind.

Jakob Ganslmeier (b.1990, Munich) lives in The Hague, studied at Ostkreuz School of Photography in Berlin and graduated with guidance of Sybille Fendt in 2014. From 2016-2019 he studied Photography at FH Bielefeld and graduated with guidiance of Prof. Katharina Bosse.

jakobganslmeier.com

Behind the Image - Richard Chivers

Richard Chivers shares how he captured an abstract photograph of a half demolished block, amidst a Scottish housing estate.

Describe the image.

The photograph captures a half demolished two storey block of flats. It’s an elevational abstract shot that captures the exposed interior walls.

Where was this photograph taken.

Muirhouse, Edinburgh in Scotland.

Why was this photograph made?

The photograph was made as part of a project called Degeneration. The work was made to take a look at the state of housing and regeneration in the 21st century, and the implications and complex nuances this may have had on some of the poorest in society, reliant on social housing. After decades of neglect, consecutive governments have overseen the gradual demise and disappearance of social housing, due to the right to buy scheme and a lack of new housing stock built. When many of these estates were regenerated the new housing wasn’t affordable for the existing tenants, pushing them away from the community they had lived in for most of their lives.

What was happening outside the frame.

The work was made as part of a collaboration with the Human Endeavour collective, and I was with fellow photographer Alex Currie. We often visited estates in Scotland together as they didn't feel the safest places to be on your own. We were on an estate that was half demolished and half lived in still, and whilst I was setting up the shot on my 5x4 large format camera, Alex was looking out for some unruly kids that we had previously been warned about. After I took this photo Alex was trying to get a shot, and soon we were surrounded by kids trying to take equipment from us. We managed to bribe them with some sweets in the end.

Tell us a key fact about this photograph.

The photograph wasn’t used in the final edit for our Degeneration exhibition as we felt at the time it was too abstract. But it has over time become an important image for me.

Why is this photograph important to you.

I really like the rich detail in the photograph, the way you can see what wallpaper people had, as well as the colours of the walls which are often bright in comparison with the bland exterior of these houses. You can see the wallpaper damaged by the diggers that had been demolishing the building, and also where the stairs would have been and the electrical boxes under the stairs. Looking at the fabric of a building like this can show us its history and memories, revealing the human unconscious energy that exists within them. You don’t need to see any people in this photo to be able to feel their presence.

Guest Feature - Mari Boman

Schönholzer Heide is a large public park in the north of Berlin not very known to visitors. Among locals it´s a popular place for recreation because of an adventure playground and a popular café. The project Schönholzer Heide and its Hidden Histories is about a landscape with a multilayered and complicated past. Within the park histories include a mulberry plantation, a health retreat, a castle, a fairground that turned into a nazi labour camp, an open air theatre and an unusual graveyard with dead from various sides of the second world war. These and other histories are well hidden in the park, so that you only find what you are looking for if you know where and how.

Funded by the local arts council of Pankow Berlin, I wanted to show the park in a different light than which the locals are used to seeing it, and remind them of all the interesting and disturbing things that have happened there. I have walked through the park many times without a camera, just looking and opening my mind to what was going on. Literature about the past history of the park did not satisfy my curiosity, so I hired a local amateur historian who had spent his childhood in the park and knew every corner of it. He showed me where to find human remains when the spring comes, where I could potentially dig up old cutlery from the castle, and how to find the hidden entrances to underground war bunkers and where the caste once stood.

I captured items that I hoped would remind people of the past, that I mainly photographed with a large format camera. I like using a large format camera because it forces me to work slowly – and in my view, if you want to get a true sense of a place you can´t do it in a hurry. I collected found items on my walks and used montage to add a farrow wheel (the London Eye) into one of the photographs, showing an open space that used to be the fairground, as well as nazi labour camp. I am currently in the planning stages of creating a zine of the project.

Mari is a Finnish born photographer based in Berlin. She holds a BA in Photography and Human Rights from the University of Roehampton in London, and a MSC in business administration. Her main interests in photography are research based documentaries often including landscapes, architecture, history and theories of place. Apart from her photography work, she regularly engages in community photography and arts projects involving young people. Furthermore, she works in an office supporting the improvement of human rights issues within business. Mari has received funding from various governmental and private arts foundations. Her book Dry the River was shortlisted for the Spine Dummy Award in 2015. 

mariboman.com

Guest Feature - Richard High

About six years ago, I had a year from hell that left me floored and questioning much of what I’d hitherto believed to be me. The two years that followed were pretty dire too – I ended up living in lots of different places, including a few spells in my car - as I tried to keep my head above water financially and my sanity and health intact. Unfortunately, I had a breakdown. Until I got medical help a year or so later, I didn’t know I was having, or had had a breakdown, I just knew things weren’t right. As part of my efforts to make myself better, I started going for walks. I didn’t have a camera at the time, just my phone. While walking I started meeting and talking to people, something I was desperate to do and which I found healing. These conversations felt honest and open.

Eventually I started asking the people I met, if I could take their picture. At first, taking the picture wasn’t the most important thing, the chance to talk was. I started putting the pictures on Instagram because I didn’t (and still don’t) have a website. Instagram suited me though: I could edit and post quickly and it wasn’t too technical. As part of my effort to change my circumstances, I started volunteering for a Brighton-based charity – Team Domenica – and got to use a camera to help promote their activities, which was huge boost to my confidence. Since then I’ve continued going for walks, talking to people and taking pictures, even during lockdown.

Most of the pictures I’ve shared are of people I’ve met on the street. They all have a story, and I can remember each of them. My hope now is to continue going for walks, meeting people and taking their picture.

richardhigh

Rich Cutler - New Series

Rich Cutler’s photographs trace the ancient course of the River Fleet and its history through the urban landscape of present-day London. The project explores one of London’s ‘lost’ rivers: the Fleet, with its headwaters arising at Hampstead, and its mouth at Blackfriars. After the Thames it was the city’s largest river, but as the population increased it became an open sewer, and the channel silted up. The Victorians eventually diverted it underground, incorporating the river in their new sewer system. Today, with the exception on Hampstead Heath, no open water remains, and the course of the river has been obliterated.

As London grew, its landscape and climate changed – the causes in part natural and in part human. The London Basin when first settled by humans was tundra with grass, sedge and shrubby trees. The climate warmed, and by 10,000 BCE this region was covered by deciduous forest, with meadows adjacent to the River Thames. The first farmers arrived about 4,000 BCE and began felling trees; the landscape soon became a patchwork of cleared fields and small settlements. The River Fleet at this time was a stream flowing from the hills to the north, forming a steep-sided valley before it entered the Thames in a wide estuary. The settlers in this area would have used the Fleet for drinking water and catching fish. Later, after founding the city of London, the Romans harnessed its power for mills. But as London grew over the centuries, we turned the Fleet from a source of clean water into an open sewer, finally entombing it underground to be unseen and forgotten.

We have an uneasy relationship with nature, exploiting it for our – often short-term – needs. As time passes, the environment changes beyond recognition by our hand, yet echoes of the past bleed into the present, and nature is never truly subjugated. As well as exploring the geography of the natural course of the Fleet through modern London, Rich Cutler questions our relationship with and impact on the landscape – both natural and built. Following the now-hidden former course of the River Fleet, we journey through a present-day London conditioned by history: a landscape that should be familiar but appears instead out of place and out of time – neither here nor there, neither now nor then.

Rich Cutler carefully transposed the last known natural course of the river from an old map onto Google Maps, and then walked and observed along this route over 4 years, from the start of the Fleet on the hills of Hampstead Heath to its former mouth by Blackfriars Bridge on the Thames – never straying from what would have been the banks of the river. The final series is comprised of 70 photographs and will be made into in a book, along with archival material from the 19th century and earlier.

Behind the Image - Barry Falk

Barry Falk shares how he captured an intimate portrait of an elderly Holocaust survivor in the Ukraine.

Briefly describe the photograph

A very frail, elderly Jewish man sits on the edge of his bed to let me photograph him. This man is a Holocaust survivor from a nearby village.

Where was the photograph made?

This image was taken in Zvenyhorodka, Kyiv Region, Ukraine.

Why was the photograph made?

This image is part of an ongoing project, which I began in January 2017, titled In Search of Amnesia. The project looks into the Jewish narrative in south-east Poland and north-west Ukraine. It is concerned with Jewish memory, how we both remember and forget the past, but it is also a very personal project exploring my own identity and the family story that I hold. Poland and Ukraine are both very culturally and religiously significant to Jews; they are the ancestral home to many diaspora Jews around the world.

In November 2019 I returned to Ukraine for a second time, this time concentrating on the Kiev region. My interest was in meeting the small Jewish communities that had survived the numerous pogroms and the Holocaust. I worked with a guide, Chaim, who drove me to various small towns, some of which had been former shtetls, and still held small Jewish communities. Chaim was more than just a guide: he had been compiling a historical website on the Jewish communities in the Kiev region for the last five or six years, so it was a great opportunity to join him and see the region through his expert eyes.

What was happening outside of the frame?

I am squeezed up against the wall to take this image, so I can get him in the picture frame and include the backdrop of the swan. His wife is in the doorway instructing him to sit down and not to get up, so that I can take his photograph but also because she is worried about him over-exerting himself. Next door his daughter is talking to my guide Chaim about his story as a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust.

Tell us a key fact about this photograph?

The way he is framed by the backdrop of a swooning swan, wings outstretched like a vision of heaven, is particularly relevant as he represents a diminishing population of Jewish people in the rural Kiev region.

Why is this photograph important to you?

To have the opportunity to travel to Ukraine and to be allowed into this man's home, in what was quite an intrusive if consensual manner, was a huge honour. This image represents a much wider narrative about survival and loss, remembering and forgetting, which I could only fully understand by actually visiting these communities and meeting these people.

MAP6 Interview with Urbanautica

MAP6 are delighted to have been featured on Urbanuatica. For the feature Barry Falk was interviewed by Steve Bisson, where they discussed the origins of MAP6, working collectively and our two latest projects, The Isolation Project and Finland: The Happiness Report. Check it out here.

Guest Feature - Jake Romm

This is a selection from the series Hanging on the Wall, an ongoing work exploring the formal relation between museum guards and the aesthetic space that they inhabit. The photographs have been processed in such a way to flatten and erase the distinction between the guard and their work, in order to incorporate and level both into a single pure form. This flattening further comments on the anonymous, often under appreciated labor that keeps museums running. In erasing the distinction between art and guard, the viewer is forced to engage with the guards presence, to acknowledge their integrality to the museum, both aesthetically as form and as labor.

When the guard is brought into focus, the experience of a museum changes for the viewer. The act of observing, of a visitor engaging with a work of art, becomes troubled by the presence the guard engaged in the act of observing the observer. In the presence of a museum guard the museum goer becomes self-conscious, conscious of their physical presence within an enclosed space and conscious of the act of observation itself. Questions begin to arise in the mind of the viewer: Have I looked at this work for too long, or not long enough? Am I standing too close, or should I move to the next room? The guards apparent boredom, or perhaps nonchalance, in the face of the artwork forces us to ask what viewership is worth and whether novelty is the primary force at play.

As a philosophy student, Jake Romm focuses primarily on aesthetics and the ways in which our world is mediated through images. Jake Romm’s writing and photography have appeared in The New Inquiry, The Forward, Humble Arts Foundation, Loosen Art Gallery, Yogurt Magazine, Dodho Magazine, Fisheye Gallery, Phroom, Across the Margin and Reading The Pictures.

jakeromm.com

Featured Collective - Wideyed

In our second ‘Featured Collective' we got the chance to catch up with Wideyed. We love what these guys do, so we’re delighted to share an insight into their work and how they function as a collective.

Nat Wilkins, from the Wideyed project Agri[culture]

Can you tell us a little about Wideyed, how you began, and what were your intentions when creating the collective?

Founded in 2008, Wideyed currently combines the practices of Richard Glynn, Louise Taylor and Nat Wilkins. We’re based in the North East - but also work nationally and internationally. Co-founder Lucy Carolan left the group earlier this year to focus on her practice-based fine art PhD.

One of the initial reasons for forming was the recognition that collaborative working was beneficial both collectively and individually, and that sharing resources, such as our neg scanner, made higher end equipment more affordable. Some of our projects involve us all, and others just one or two. This flexible approach takes into account our individual work and other commitments.

As a self-funded non profit making group we have covered a lot of ground since we formed. We’ve been part of international photography festivals, received awards and bursaries, worked on commissions, and exhibited from the UK to South Africa - most recently collaborating with artists in the US and Sunderland. Collectively and individually, we’ve taken part in numerous international artist residencies and photography festivals such as Fotofestiwal Lodz, Supermarket Independent Arts Fair (Sweden), FORMAT and Brighton Photo Fringe (UK), and Mois de la Photo and Mois-OFF (France).

Can you tell us about each member, what are your individual photographic interests?

Richard Glynn

As a 1970’s teenager, a friend told me about her grandfather who would make his own tools specifically if there wasn’t something available or affordable. This idea that you could make something rather than just buy it off the shelf has hugely influenced my approach to both photographing and exhibiting.

I did an MA in Contemporary Photography at the University of Sunderland (2008-10), and throughout my career have always had a strong interest in the limitations of photography as a medium. This started with low-light photography - long-exposures and pushing film - and coupled with a fascination with people, has gradually developed into an ongoing series of 10 x 8 paper negative portrait experiments. In recent years, this has led to several interesting commissioned projects, some of which have involved makeshift studios with portable darkrooms, but also colour documentary and architectural imagery. The experience gained from working as part of Wideyed and undertaking residencies have really consolidated my interests and the development of my work.

Everything I have done has reinforced my belief that presentation and audience engagement is as important as the photography itself. My experiences have enabled an openness and flexibility towards what can be done with photography.

Richard Glynn, from the series Hefted To Hill

Louise Taylor

Louise’s interest in photography and the documentary/socially engaged approach was piqued when Czech photographer Jindřich Štreit visited a neighbouring farm for AmberSides’ Unclear Family international workshop in Crook, County Durham, 1993. Since then she has embraced an 'embedded' approach in which she becomes comfortable in the communities she documents. Her personal work tends to focus on rural people and place, often where there is a connection to the land. Nomadic herders, Gypsies and Travellers, farming, rural traditions and rare breed enthusiasts are the themes she is drawn to. Recent commissions include Northern Heartlands’ Hefted to Hill, a year long project documenting seven hill farmers with Richard Glynn and artist/philosopher Ewan Allinson. In addition to her personal work Louise devises participatory photography workshops with schools and environment/heritage organisations.

Louise is currently working on Wombling:Archiving Dad - a very personal project, and a bit of a departure for her in terms of style. When her dad died suddenly 7 years ago he left behind a wealth of treasure. He had a tool for every job and that ‘thing’ to fix every problem. Louise is archiving his collections prior to binning, selling or scrapping them… which is no mean feat!

www.louisetaylorphotography.co.uk

Louise Taylor, from the series SHOOT!

Nat Wilkins

Nat joined the collective in 2017. His work is documentary in nature and has two significant strands, family life and alternative rural living, having worked with Zen Buddhists, retired rock stars, coal miners and off grid families. Most of his subjects live within 15 miles of his home (which is essentially next door when you live in the middle of nowhere).

Having worked in conservation for ten years managing some of England's most remote and visually stunning nature reserves, he brings a depth of understanding and passion for rural life into his photographic practice. He graduated from Sunderland University’s Photography and Digital Imaging BA in 2017 and has been a practicing photographer since then.

He also works in the environment/heritage sector using photography and participatory arts to interpret a wide range of subjects from invertebrates to folklore. And uses video and photography to document and evaluate arts and heritage based projects.

www.natwilkins.co.uk

Nat Wilkins, from the series Ten Guineas an Ounce

How is working collaboratively different from working individually, and how do you function as a collective?

Wideyed members don’t always work together on every project - the collective sometimes serves as a platform for work developed singly or in pairs, with the group providing support through things like peer review and technical assistance. Whether we work together on a project or not we still benefit from peer support and can draw on a wider collective skill set / networks where needed.

We don’t really have any fixed roles although officially we are Richard (Chairperson), Louise (Treasurer), and Nat (Secretary)! Our roles within each project vary and depend on which particular skills are needed, who has the most relevant networks and what time we have available individually. Our creative process can probably best be described as resourceful! We’re not shy about seeking out, and in some cases instigating opportunities. For example - BLINDBOYS WIDEYED (2010), one of our early international collaborations demonstrates our collective approach to making things happen. Lucy had spotted an open call to contribute to Blindboys’ ‘BlowUp’ street exhibition in Mumbai and made contact with them leading to a plan to reciprocally exhibit their work in the UK. Louise was given the heads up about a job lot of photographic equipment coming up for auction which we bought and sold on to raise funds to print the exhibition, and Richard, who was doing an MA at Sunderland University at the time learnt of a Symposium they were hosting so we timed the exhibition opening to coincide with that. The end result, in Newcastle, was an intervention in the Mining Institute, an alleyway billboard piece and an exhibition in an empty shop.

Collectively you have worked on many projects, can you share some with us? 

Our first collective body of work - IN VINO VERITAS (2010-2011) - was made through two self funded residencies at an organic vineyard in the Loire Valley during the grape harvest. Since ancient times, it’s been considered that wine reliably reveals a person’s character. For experimental natural wine producer François Blanchard, in vino veritas means remaining true to the character of the grape, respecting the integrity of this very complex fruit and skilfully drawing out its subtle aromas. Each year the grapes are picked and pressed by hand and foot. The harvest is labour intensive, but also a festive event, with families, friends, musicians and artists from all around France and beyond coming together to make and celebrate wine. The work returned to the vineyard as a 60pg newsprint exhibition before being curated for ArtHouse, Lewisham for our first collective show in the UK. With François’ contacts and Lucy's fluency in French we then secured Espace Beaujon, Paris and exhibited for Mois de la Photo-OFF. We’re constantly striving to find new and relevant ways to present our work. Photos inside wine bottles gave visitors to the gallery the experience of interacting with the work, as well as giving us the opportunity to curate a large exhibition comprising of 87 images.

Richard Glynn, from the Wideyed project In Vino Veritas

Lucy Carolan, from the Wideyed project In Vino Veritas

Louise Taylor, from the Wideyed project In Vino Veritas

We have collaborated with each other and with other photographers across the UK and beyond, but Nomadic Village, an international arts residency was a great opportunity to network with artists from other disciplines. We developed FOREIGN BODIES (2012) and partnered with NPIA, a forensic training centre resulting in 20 students from the local school and a journalist dressing up as CSI’s and combing the residency site for evidence of travel to feed into our final installation. The project allowed us to work on the same theme -  investigating evidence of travel around the residency site - but to develop our own responses to it. Foreign Bodies was exhibited in a public outdoor exhibition at the end of the residency before being reworked into a one off artists book that toured Europe before heading to its own personal gallery space at FORMAT15.

You have a creative and unusual approach to exhibiting your work, can you tell us about some of your past exhibitions? 

Our approach has evolved over the years, not from a desire for any particular unique trait, but from a belief that the work should be presented in the best manner achievable for the audience and whilst working within the limitations presented - financial, spatial and temporal. We have discovered that there can be a synergy between the work and the place and the manner in which it is exhibited. 

The following (very) detailed description of one exhibition hopefully demonstrates that the means of display has been thought about and is as much a part of the work as the subject matter. 

MAPPING THE FLANEUR (2011) was a collaboration between Wideyed and ASA Collective (since folded) for The Collectives Encounter, FORMAT11. It was a dynamic photographic installation inspired by Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and the advent of cloud printing. It was designed to provide an overview of the global collective movement, of contemporary photographic practices, and the complexity of urban life worldwide. Over the course of the festival we received 700 images, by 97 photographers, from 20 collectives based in 15 countries. Benjamin collected notes on Parisian life in the early 20th Century on various topics through spending his time as a flaneur; a walker and observer of society. The exhibition comprised several elements. Our modern day photographer flâneurs were asked to focus on three of Benjamin’s topics: Consuming, Urbanising and Transporting and to send their images to us. To reflect the random nature of observations, we printed those images in the strict order in which they arrived. To reflect the categorisation, each image was printed at the top, middle or bottom of the page according to the topic. The effect was to print three lines of images, like notes on a musical notation, with the exact location only determined by the order received and the topic chosen. The controlling computer was hidden in an old travel chest; the printer was hidden within a packing crate so all the viewer could see was the paper laid along the floor to a timber filing cabinet containing a reel. Only about thirty images were visible at any one time. This changed every day as more images were printed and the roll was wound into the filing cabinet and archived.

The images were also printed on individual cards and placed within an old timber index card cabinet referencing Benjamin’s collation of notes. As well as the three drawers dedicated to each theme, this also included others including a drawer of cards indexing the details of every contributing collective, blank cards for visitor observations and feedback and our own contact details. The installation utilised objects we had to hand. The computer was an old mac G4 with remote log-in software on a months trial. A cheap webcam was positioned to see the images coming from the printer. The printer box and the wooden reel were made from scrap timber. And a copy of the Arcades project book was used to prop up one corner of the drawing chest. Much of the thought that went into the installation won’t have been noticed, but the process of consideration of the design enables smoother, quicker installation times, economy with materials and a means of complementing the subject matter.  

In recent years you have been working on a project called Agri[culture], what is the project about? 

AGRI[CULTURE] (2018-2019) was a collective project that focussed on the annual agricultural shows taking place in and around the North Pennines. It was devised in 2017 in response to Nat joining the collective, an uncertain Brexit, and a desire to work on something collectively. Between us we visited ten agricultural shows through the 2018 show season ranging from the oldest recorded in Britain to small sheep shows. We gave ourselves the visual freedom to document the shows as we found them. For some of us it was a first time experience attending these events, for others they were always an important part of the annual social calendar.

Louise Taylor, from the Wideyed project Agri[culture]

Lucy Carolan, from the Wideyed project Agri[culture]

As we embarked on Agri[culture] we were aware that there were question marks about where the country was heading politically. Worst case scenario involved the UK crashing out of the EU and with that the end of EU subsidy payments to farmers. Upland agriculture is heavily dependent on subsidy payments so if this were to happen then upland sheep farming - the foundation to all the shows we documented - could disappear within a few years, closely followed by the smaller dales shows. This worst case scenario was unlikely, but our research into the shows’ archives proved that shows do disappear. Horse Fairs for example would have been important dates in the annual calendar but since the mechanisation of farming this historical tradition vanished within a few decades. Evidence that a stalwart of a cultural calendar for centuries can disappear under the right conditions. Given the political situation of the time we thought we were at an ideal juncture to start a conversation with the show going public using our images as a catalyst for reflection.

Richard Glynn, from the Wideyed project Agri[culture]

Nat Wilkins, from the Wideyed project Agri[culture]

The work toured to six agricultural shows, was sent over to Wyoming, US for two exhibitions and had its last exhibition in Sunderland, down river of where all the shows took place. With each exhibition reflective conversations sprouted about these long standing british rural traditions. In rural Wyoming we began a visual conversation with art students creating work in response to our images, and in Sunderland we had the urban view. Through the tour back to the shows we had the views from the culture that seeded the project to begin with. The project journey also gathered creative writing responses to the work from a group of local writers in addition to the donation of loads of amazing archive materials from old show schedules to photos of local legends and their owners. This was a really eye opening experience for us and an interesting way to use our documentary work to share a cultural tradition in an urban setting, but also to hold up a mirror to a community and offer a reflective pause. All this has informed our new Wideyed publication.

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Most recently you have been organising SHOWSTOPPERS!, a new participatory photography competition. Can you tell us more. 

SHOWSTOPPERS (2020) was a photography competition and outdoor ‘winners’ exhibition developed in response to COVID-19 and the cancelled agricultural shows that we had been working on for the previous two years. Showstoppers kept the spirit of the shows alive and offered an opportunity to engage show people in photography and photography people in agricultural shows. We invited those who would have normally attended the shows to send us show-stopping photographs of their entries instead. 

The project attracted 370 entries from exhibitors aged three upwards. Our outdoor ‘winners’ exhibitions coincided with the cancelled shows and featured work made by children, florists, horse breeders, farmers, photographers and allotmenteers. All ‘winners’ received a rosette with our three judges choice ‘best in show’ awards winning a fancy rosette and a copy of of recently published book Agri[culture].

You also produce publications under the name Wideyed Editions, can you share some of the publications?

We started Wideyed Editions in 2012, the same year as our ambitious one off artist book for Foreign Bodies. Agri[Culture] is our most recent collective publication. Created to celebrate the project of the same name, this 148pg book features the work by all four of us involved in the project including archive material donated through the touring exhibition, creative writing by NorthPens Writers and essays by John Darwell and Jill Cole. The design reflects the size and style of the show catalogues and comprises 5 separate books in a sleeve. (£19.50 + p&p)

Other books we have published include CHAIN REACTION (LUCY CAROLAN), SHOOT! (LOUISE TAYLOR) and Park (MkII) (LUCY CAROLAN & RICHARD GLYNN) which is a mutascope developed as an analogue interpretation of Google Street View for Superdream, a creative exchange between artists in Gateshead UK, and Johannesburg SA.

You can find out more and purchase books on the Wideyed website.

wideyed.org

Raoul Ries - New Publication

Raoul Ries is delighted to announce the release of his book The New Towns published by The Velvet Cell. The work explores the first wave of New Towns near London. These towns were built in England immediately after the Second World War to relocate populations who lost their homes. They aimed to create a welcoming space, with walkable distances between homes, work, shops, cultural offerings and green spaces. Construction had to progress quickly and needed to stay affordable.

The book starts with scenes from traditional city centres. While the original architecture is mostly preserved here, contemporary chains and smaller independent shops feature widely throughout. In the traditional residential neighbourhoods contemporary elements are rarer. The houses show the marks of their history. Raoul enjoyed seeing the DIY home improvements that pop up in several pictures. The series then transitions to the more recent residential developments and finally over to newly-built city centres. Over seven decades the economic climate has fluctuated, political ideas have changed and new social aspirations have superseded the dreams of previous generations. Today, while the New Towns preserve some of their initial character, their identity is nonetheless shifting in favour of more national and international elements.

96 pages, 21 x 26 cm,
Hardcover, Sewn Binding,
Limited Edition of 500,
978-1-908889-74-4

With an essay by Social and Urban History Professor Mark Clapson.

You can purchase the book directly from Raoul here.

Guest Feature - Iain Sarjeant

Out of the Ordinary developed from wandering, exploring, discovering, and observing – slowing down and spending time in everyday places. It reflects my interest in human landscapes and the way we interact with our surroundings - through it I have developed a passion for documenting the overlooked, for finding visual interest in seemingly ordinary locations. The series contains work from across the country, city centres to remote communities - it’s been a fascinating journey through everyday Scotland, documenting the social landscapes of the country at a time of great change.

My interest has always been in landscape or ‘place’ in the widest sense, and how people interact with their surroundings. This can be anything from remote communities in the Highlands to the centre of major cities. But of course any photograph is a combination of document and personal response, and my work also explores my own relationship with the landscape.

On previous projects I had tended to work in a slower, more reflective way, but Out of the Ordinary has seen me adopt a more spontaneous, instinctive approach, often moving through places reacting quickly to elements within the landscape – in many ways more like street photography than landscape photography.

Iain Sarjeant is a photographer and publisher based in the Scottish Highlands. His photography explores both natural and human environments, and often the interaction between the two. Iain is the founder and editor of Another Place and Another Place Press. He has published numerous books of his work, including most recently his 2021 Out of the Ordinary calendar, and his Alpes-Maritimes zine, which are available to purchase at Another Place Press.

iainsarjeant.co.uk

Guest Feature - Claudia Bigongiari

The series 20 Minutes is about waiting, a personal testimony of suspension. The images are of a non-defined space and time, an ‘in between lands’. This project became the documentation of these lands, a collection of waitings in places of passage. The pills (collected every morning) are a measurement of time. They do not relate to a medical discourse, but question the repetition and the suspension of time.

I kept collecting my pills for a few years, starting without any particular purpose. Then I made 20 Minutes, which I see as being a container of time. The project collects the time waited over a couple of months, describing this period amongst the images of pills and the places I had to pass through such as passage ways, airports, train stations, waiting rooms and the hospital. They are depictions of different dimensions of time and space, a subject in which I have always been inspired with my photography.

Claudia Bigongiari is an Italian photographer who focuses on silent spaces and suspended moments. She is driven to take pictures by a personal need to make her visions and memories come to life. Static objects, non defined conditions of space and time and in-between moments fascinate her. She recently attended the Master's in Photography at the University of Brighton, and graduated from the Fine Arts Academy of Florence in Exhibition Design. She now lives in Italy.

claudiabigongiari.com

Guest Feature - Nina B

Loops and Echos merges together two projects that I have been working on for some time. They come under the working titles of Portrait of London (portraying London's less known spots) and Still Life of Moving (beautifying London city's squats). Both of these have been exhibited separately, but with time they grew into each other. To me they reveal what I would call a home. The two ideas began when I first moved to London a decade ago. The theme of home was very much at hand and I started living my way through London's squats.

I was charmed by the character and variety of the spaces and how they have been DIY beautified. I was looking for quiet and intimate moments, which means that I have a huge collection of pictures of beds. As the buildings are often boarded up I realised the repetition of artificial light and a sense of claustrophobia, so I began to look at the surrounding areas as well as the interiors. I photographed areas in which I lived, mainly in North London, capturing the things that I've seen a hundred times on the way home, everyday things that I saw over and over.

Nina B was born in Prague in 1987. She works in photography, film and video, focusing on documentary topics, mostly social and housing related. Her work has been exhibited in Prague, London and New York, and she won an award for young creatives from the Czech Ministry of Culture in 2011. In 2017 her documentary film Men in a Box got selected for the Doc Outlook at Visions du Reel. She currently resides in London.

photoninab.org

Behind the Image - Paul Walsh

Paul Walsh shares how he captured a moment of stillness amidst the hustle and bustle of the Russian capital.

Briefly describe the photograph

A man emerges from an underground subway station in the centre of Moscow.

Where was the photograph made?

I was making photographs around Red Square, the area was busy with tourists and street vendors. Most of the people were there because of St. Basil's Cathedral, and I was making street photography images of people passing through the area.

Why was the photograph made?

My series Moscow Circular looks at everyday events that occur amidst the streets of Moscow, more specifically around subway entrances. I decided to walk the Koltsevaya metro line above ground, which is the circular line that orbits central Moscow. The project idea was really about finding a route into the city that enabled me to make photographs, however the repetitive cyclical journey of the metro train also seemed to underline the monotonous everyday events that take place in cities. It took me five days to walk the route using my map, which led me through many different areas that I otherwise would not have discovered.

What was happening outside of the frame?

Directly behind me when I made the image was St. Basils Cathedral, where a myriad of tourists were taking photographs. I wasnt so interested in photographing the Cathedral and upon turning around I saw this view of the city, which looked like layers stretching out towards the horizon. I stood there composing an image when a man emerged out of the subway station holding his bag. He stood for just a few seconds and I managed to snatch two frames before he was gone.

Tell us a key fact about this photograph?

Instinctively I tried to compose the figure in the picture to be aligned with the tall white building in the background. The building is actually one of the Seven Sisters which surround central Moscow. They were erected in Moscow in the 1940s and 1950s and have come to symbolise the new Moscow in the aftermath of WWII.

Why is this photograph important to you?

I made this image In 2013, when five photographers from MAP6 traveled to Moscow for their first time working abroad together. The trip went on to define the way that we now collaborate and make work. That first trip really changed the way I approach picture making and editing, allowing others to openly influence my ideas and edit my work was something I had never done before. For me this photograph represents the start of my collaborative journey with MAP6.

Guest Feature - Sapphire Stewart

In January 2018, my sister became paralysed from the waist down by multiple sclerosis. As time passed, she began losing her sight, and the loss of feeling was spreading up her body. 

After 8 months in a wheelchair, she underwent a revolutionary, trial treatment. Following a stem cell transplant and chemotherapy, she stood up unaided after just one week.

My project When Life Gives You Lemons documents her return from hospital to our family home in Farnham. It signposts the beginning of her new life.

Sapphire Stewart is a photographer based in the South East. Her key interests lie in the role of narrative, specialising in documentary, fine art, and portrait photography. Her recent projects have explored areas that are emotive and delved into self-exploration, seeking to examine and disrupt the conventional. Sapphire has a BA Hons in Photography from Bath Spa University.

sapphirewstewart.co.uk

Guest Feature - Ruth Phng Keng Hwa

For my series Temporary Residents I photographed the spaces where my grandparents occupy in their home. Their house in Malaysia is a renovated and a present space, where they will stay temporarily until they move on again. It is this ephemeral and temporal space that I wanted to explore with photography. One day when I’m not able to return to this space; when it has been lost to time; I'll know that it once existed and that my grandparents existed within it; and I captured it.

The alternative analogue process I used for this project is called Lumen printing. It's similar to making Cyanotypes, where you print out a digital negative and lay it on top of a light-sensitive coated paper. In this case, it's just laying the digital-negative on top of a normal photo paper, and leave it out in the sunlight to expose, hence the name Lumen, meaning light. You can leave the image to expose for however long you like, from a few hours to a week, depending on how strong the sunlight is. Once the paper has been exposed you take off the digi-neg and place the paper into the fix. I then selenium and sepia tone the paper to bring out the image, and adjust the overall tone to give it a brownish finish.

I use two analogue cameras to capture that element of time and memory in the images by taking long-exposures. For each image I left the shutter open for five minutes to allow the sunlight and space to seep in and embed itself onto the film. The process is almost meditative, to fully appreciate the spaces where my grandparents live, knowing that they are still alive but that it won't last forever. 

Born in Malaysia and a recent graduate of London College of Communication, Ruth Phng Keng Hwa delves into Buddhist notions of impermanence and temporality in her work. She is interested in exploring and visualising the spirituality of Eastern Philosophy, through analogue and alternative photographic techniques.

phngkenghwa.com