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Eoin Murray

In Paris: Mali Twist, the largest ever exhibition of Malick Sidibé's work

Malick Sidibé was lauded “the eye of Bamako” for his work in the Mali capital in the heady years after independence from France in 1960. Often shooting in dance halls and soirées as well as in his studio in the Bagadagjii district, Sidibé captured the vitality and verve of the time, photographing the country’s young people and their clothes, dance moves, and musical tastes. By the 1990s Sidibé’s work had gained attention outside Africa and in 1995, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain was the first to give him a solo show outside the continent. Now, a year after his death, the institution is staging the largest ever exhibition of his work, including over 300 images taken from the early 1960s to 80s. Mali Twist includes iconic works such as Un Yé-yé en position and Nuit de Noël (Happy-club), both shot in 1963, but also previously unseen vintage photographs and portraits – including 30 previously unshown studio portraits selected from thousands of negatives in Sidibé’s archives.

7 November 2017

BJP #7866: Revolution!

This year marked the 100th anniversary to the October Revolution; the Bolshevik coup lead by Vladamir Lenin that would result in the Russian Civil War (1917-22) and, ultimately, the foundation of the USSR and the communist regime that lasted until 1991. In the BJP’s latest issue, we try to understand something of the vast history of the Eastern Bloc.

6 November 2017

Wim Wenders' Instant Stories is a love letter to the Polaroid

Wim Wenders was given a new Polaroid camera yesterday. It was a gift. He doesn’t plan on using it. “It’s funny,” he says quietly, before pausing to carefully frame what he wants to say next. “I picked up this new One Step 2 camera and instantly everything came back to me. My hands remembered how to hold it and how to use it. But it was definitely a nostalgic act, and that felt a bit strange. When I took all these thousands of Polaroids between the late 1960s and early 80s it was anything but nostalgic. At the time, that was modernity.”

2 November 2017

Just Not Kosher combines cooking and cutting-edge images

Neither Rick Pushinsky nor his father, Steven Morris, are chefs. Pushinsky is a professional photographer with 10 years experience doing editorial shoots for the likes of The Sunday Times Style, Vogue and the FT. His father is an optician. But that didn’t stop them from putting together a series of 21 recipe cards – a three-course meal for every day of the week – inspired by the family’s Ashkenazi heritage, adapted dishes from dining in foreign restaurants, and Morris’ “60 years of making a mess in the kitchen”. Pushinsky’s bright and playful photography pairs up with his fathers’ recipes and stories, and he’s also added in relevant family photographs. A flaming crêpe falls before a bright yellow backdrop to accompany a recipe for Crêpes Suzette, for example; a sliver of sea bass draped delicately over a towering structure of fennel represents, well, Sea Bass on Fennel. The more artistic representations are the ones that stand out, and they were also the most tricky to set up.

31 October 2017

How The Face changed British culture – and photography and publishing

“The photography in The Face highlighted the important fact that none of these cultural things existed in a vacuum,” says Paul Gorman. “It was nearly always reportage.” In his new book The Story of The Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture, the long-standing author and music journalist hopes to show just how important the iconic magazine was in shifting British perspectives on culture – and how photography helped it do so. Founded in 1980 by Nick Logan, the same man behind NME and Smash Hits, The Face was one of the first UK magazines to champion youth and counter-culture, fashion, music and film under one banner, and in doing so, argues Gorman, helped launch some of the most influential music, fashion and documentary photographers of our time, including Sheila Rock, Corinne Day, Juergen Teller, Nick Knight and Ewen Spencer.

30 October 2017

New show Catharsis makes the private public

“Her project talks about the identity that the state wants women to project in public,” says Vivienne Gamble, director of Seen Fifteen and now curator of the show Catharsis for Belfast Exposed. “She comes from a family where they didn’t have those rules behind closed doors at home. She was conflicted about having this public-facing image, and this different, much more relaxed and liberal, private existence.” She’s talking about Shenasmenah, a project by Iranian-born photographer, filmmaker and curator Amak Mahmoodian included in the three-person Catharsis show.

20 October 2017

Tom Wood, Ken Grant, Alasdair McLellan, Corinne Day, and more in a star-studded show on Northern style

Preconceptions and stereotypes about Northern England are so entrenched that it can be hard to know how they got there, but curators Lou Stoppard and Adam Murray hope to change that this winter with a show examining how photography, fashion and art have developed in the region over the last century. And in doing so, they hope to demonstrate – and celebrate – North England’s immense influence on global culture and style. Running from 08 November-04 February at Somerset House, North: Fashioning Identity continues a show that Stoppard, SHOWstudio’s editor-at-large, and Murray, academic and lecturer at Manchester School of Art and Central Saint Martins, exhibited at  earlier this year. Featuring over 100 works, the exhibition includes fashion photographers such as Alasdair McLellan, Corinne Day, David Sims, and Glen Luchford, but also documentary photography dating from the 1930s to the present day.

20 October 2017

Louise Dahl-Wolfe's definitions of modern style

100 works by legendary fashion and portrait photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe are going on show at The Fashion and Textile Museum from 20 October-21 January 2018. A Style Of Her Own features over 100 photographs shot from 1931-59, celebrating work that helped define the image of the modern, independent woman, and inspired photographers such as Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. Born in San Francisco in 1895 to Norwegian parents, Dahl-Wolfe studied art history and design at the San Francisco Art Institute, taking up photography in 1921 and going professional in 1930 after meeting Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange. A leading contributor to Harper’s Bazaar between 1936 and 1958 (where she worked extensively with influential editor Carmel Snow, fashion director Diana Vreeland, and designer Alexey Brodovitch), Dahl-Wolfe is credited with having invented the idea of the ‘supermodel’, and creating distinctive styles for models such as Suzy Parker, Jean Patchett, Barbara Mullen, Mary Jane Russell and Evelyn Tripp. She is said to have kickstarted actress Lauren Bacall’s Hollywood career, after shooting her for a Bazaar cover in 1943.

17 October 2017

Illuminating India shows off contemporary and archive photography at the Science Museum

Illuminating India: Photography 1857-2017, is the first exhibition to document the history of photography in India, and includes both archive and contemporary work. It includes images by India’s first known photographer Ahmad Ali Khan, pioneering art photographer Marahaja Ram Singh II, the country’s first female photojournalist, Homai Vyarawalla; and award-winning contemporary photographers such Magnum’s Sohrab Hura. It also includes images of India taken by non-Indians, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Werner Bischof, Margaret Bourke White, Lucien Hervé, Mitch Epstein, Vasantha Yogananthan, and Olivia Arthur.

6 October 2017

Photo London: Nicola Lo Calzo on the Afro-Cuban legacy

Examining the cultural, religious, and ceremonial practices passed down through generations of African descendants in Cuba, Lo Calzo highlights the variety of identities within the country, and the ways in which they complement one another. Cohabiting “within a personal culture of exchange”, he says, they “borrow each other’s visions, customs and narratives”. He points to the “precarious balancing act” between the familiar Cuba, largely defined by the communist revolution and the society born out of it, and the diverse communities that actually make up the country.

11 May 2017