Fine Art

kennardphillipps on the power of political photomontage

“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.”

12 June 2017

Festival: Belfast Photo

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

8 June 2017

From the BJP archives – current Prix Levallois nominee Cemre Yesil

Back in February 2015, BJP flagged up Cemre Yesil as a One to Watch – and now her series For Birds’ Sake, made with Maria Sturm, has won a Prix Levallois nomination. We revisit our article on this series and her hands-on approach to photography

1 June 2017

Photobook: Roxane II by Viviane Sassen

“When I unbutton the sleeve of a shirt/Shades of sky under my skin awaken,” read the opening lines of Maria Barnas’ poem You and I, used at the start of Viviane Sassen’s new photobook, Roxane II. Abstract though these lines seem, they possess a subtle symmetry with the images which follow, in which expanses of pale skin sit in stark juxtaposition to graphic, almost blindingly bright streaks of colour. In Roxane II, the human and the organic seem to bleed into one another with captivating results.

22 May 2017