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Awards

Female photographers wanted for the Firecracker grant

Fiona Rogers founded her online Firecracker platform to help showcase the best talent in female photography. What followed was a community of photographers all celebrating and sharing amazing work and it wasn’t long before the Firecracker grant was born. “It felt like the natural evolution was to be even more supportive. Something that went beyond showcasing work online. It started out pretty small: everybody contributed £10 to put into the pot and then we managed to flip that into a grant that was £1,000 and now it’s grown to £2,000.”

21 July 2017

Interview: Aurore Valade "The magic of photography is trying to capture a shifting reality"

For two months last April and May, Aurore Valade isolated herself in a remote village in the Haute-Bigorre region of France. The result? Her photography project Se Manifester, which has been awarded this year’s Photo Folio Review at the Rencontres d’Arles festival. “Etymologically, ‘to manifest’ is the action of making visible. I feel that could be a beautiful definition of photography too,” says Valade.

17 July 2017

Arles 2017: Voies Off

Dating back to 1996, Voies Off is the large and well-respected alternative to the official Rencontres d’Arles programme. Now backed by Leica, Voies Off is staging nearly 150 exhibitions from 03 July – 24 September, all of which are free to enter, plus a week of screenings, masterclasses, awards and portfolio reviews in the opening week, from 03 – 08 September, from its base in the Cour de l’Archevêché courtyard. The courtyard also hosts parties, held every night from midnight in the opening week.

6 July 2017

BJP #7862: Look & Learn

In our third annual edition focusing on photography education, BJP visits schools around the world to discover what it takes to “see photographically”. From one of the oldest photography schools in the UK, to pioneering institutions in Germany and Denmark, tutors stress the need to appreciate the mechanics of a photograph – light, shape, space and perspective. “Our bodies learn to adapt to the camera that is shaping our experience,” explains Thomas Sandberg, photographer and co-founder of the Ostkreuz School for Photography in Berlin.

4 July 2017

Awards: Five finalists for the ING Unseen Talent Award 2017

The ING Unseen Talent Award is one of the most generous prizes out there for young photographers, with a €10,000 fund to make new work up for grabs, plus mentoring from Nadav Kander and a group show at Unseen Amsterdam for all the finalists. This year, the five shortlisted artists are: Alexandra Lethbridge (b. 1987, UK); Tom Callemin (b. 1991, Belgium); Andrea Grützner (b. 1984, Germany); Robin Lopvet (b. 1990, France); and Stefanie Moshammer (b. 1988, Austria).

26 June 2017

How to shoot a perfect portrait: tips from Ali Mobasser, a Portrait of Britain 2016 winner

photography has the power to unite and create empathy, something that we, as photographers, should see as our obligation to the world,” says Ali Mobasser, who was one of the winners of BJP’s Portrait of Britain project last year. “Exhibiting using major advertising space was a brilliant idea,” he said of the initiative, “replacing its capitalist function with a humanist cause is genius. It’s a bit like secretly replacing someone’s cigarettes with carrot sticks, or opening up the Daily Mail to find the poetry of Rumi.”

8 June 2017

The look of love: when photographers take pictures of their families

This fascination with the familiar isn’t a new phenomenon, says Phillip Prodger, head of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery and a former judge of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. “We live in a world of the free exchange of imagery and social media and perhaps the photographs that once were considered more private aren’t considered so private anymore. I think people have been making those photographs all along but perhaps not sharing them in that way.”

7 June 2017