“When I started researching the pornographic visuals, it hit me that there’s a clear formula in the way women are portrayed in them,” says Ina Jang. “I printed out some of the images, cut out the body figures and photographed them. From there, I kept making images with similar positions.”
“There is something amazing going on here,” says Peggy Sue Amison, the artistic director of East Wing gallery in Dubai, speaking of the work of her Ones To Watch nominee Teresa Visceglia. Her words somehow echo the bellow of a circus ringmaster animating an eager audience. “Teresa is a creator who strikes a resonating chord that grabs viewers by the heart. Her works are surreal and immediately bring to mind not only Federico Fellini but also David Lynch and Diane Arbus.”
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).
Catherine Hyland’s fascination with landscape is the inspiration behind her otherworldly large format images depicting humanity’s attempts – some more effective than others – to tame the environment. It’s an observation that has led to both artistic and commercial commissions, with residencies at venues such as the Focal Point Gallery in Southend for the Radical Essex programme, the Cultural Association Su Palatu Fotografia in Sardinia and the Design Museum in London. She has also made a short documentary for the Sri Lanka Design Festival on the country’s eco-factories.
Hadi Uddin grew up surrounded by photography – his father owned a commercial studio and both technical skill and the ways of the darkroom were second nature by the time he took his place by Uddin senior’s side. He’s now found work as a fashion photographer – and a unique vision in his personal work
Aged just 24, Khadija Saye died tragically young in the horrific fire in West London’s Grenfell Tower on 14 June – a tragedy which has cut short a life already touched by greatness. Having won a scholarship to the prestigious Rugby School at 16, Saye went on to study photography at UCA Farnham and was selected to show work alongside well-established artists such as Isaac Julien and Yinka Shonibare at the Diaspora Pavilion in Venice this summer. Here her colleagues and ex-tutors remember her
“My photography is me, my doubts and my hopes,” says Spanish photographer Albert Bonsfills, who has shot major projects in China and Japan. “My camera is a mirror, a tool to help me understand myself as well as a way of showing other people’s lives, even people I have nothing in common with at first – people born 10,000 miles away from me.”
“Through putting together an image – either digitally and/or with scissors and paste, with or without text – people get to feel a sense of empowerment, an empowerment that communicates to the viewer, be it via a placard, a street poster, or an image on social media. The act of re-using existing images and re-presenting them through juxtaposition is inherently subversive, and showed up in the countless images of Theresa May that came thick and fast in direct response to the official election campaigning day-to-day.”
Put together on little budget, and without subsidies from the Northern Irish government, Belfast Photo Festival gives heft to the claim that Belfast is a hotbed of contemporary photography. Many of the exhibitions on show are themed around sexuality and gender, but there are also more open-ended group shows – many of which were curated through an international open submission process, moderated by a panel of experts from MoMA, MACK, FOAM, Magnum Photos, The New York Times, and BJP
David Campany’s celebrated exhibition, A Handful of Dust, traces the 20th century history of photography through this seemingly humble substance; as the show finally comes to London, we revisit the article on it he wrote for BJP back in 2015
