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Portraiture

Palm Photo Prize at London’s House of Vans

Work by 120 young photographers from around the world is on show in London’s House of Vans from 10 May – 03 June. Selected from an open call for the Palm Photo Prize, the show features one image per photographer and, say the organisers, “places an emphasis on raw, engaging work”. The winners will be announced online on 04 June, having been picked out by a judging panel comprising: Karen McQuaid, senior curator at The Photographers Gallery; Joshua Coon, director, content marketing & production at Kodak; Jack Harries, editor at The Heavy Collective; and Andrea Aurland, editor in chief at Huck Magazine.

10 May 2018

Victorian Giants Lewis Carroll, Julia Margaret Cameron, Oscar Rejlander and Clementine Hawarden at the NPG

“When people think of Victorian photography, they sometimes think of stiff, fusty portraits of women in crinoline dresses, and men in bowler hats,” says Phillip Prodger, head of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery. “Victorian Giants is anything but. Here visitors can see the birth of an idea – raw, edgy, experimental – the Victorian avant-garde, not just in photography, but in art writ large. The works of Cameron, Carroll, Hawarden and Rejlander forever changed thinking about photography and its expressive power. These are pictures that inspire and delight. And this is a show that lays bare the unrivalled creative energy, and optimism, that came with the birth of new ways of seeing.”

10 May 2018

Photo London: Photography on a Postcard lucky dip!

Photography on a Postcard is offering the chance to own a signed, one-off print by a world-renowned photographer for just £55 at Photo London. The twist is that the photographer will remain anonymous until after the sale. Buyers can choose from 350 postcard-sized prints, and the photographers involved include Bruce Gilden, Mark Power, Dougie Wallace, and Laura Pannack, as well as 35 hand-selected emerging image-makers. Buyers will be able to choose their postcard-sized print in person, but priority will be given to those who pre-register online. All money raised will go to the Hepatitis C Trust and its campaign to eliminate the virus from the UK by 2025.

9 May 2018

Deprivation in Thatcherite Britain with Tish Murtha’s Youth Unemployment

“Tish believed that photography was an important form of visual communication that could stimulate discussions about real life situations and captured accurate records of the world we live in. She was trying to force people to look at the truth and learn from it,” explains Ella Murtha, the daughter of the documentary photographer. In honour of her mother’s memory, Ella has put together a new photobook, Youth Unemployment, which gathers Tish Murtha’s work photographing poverty-ridden communities in Newcastle in the 70s and 80s. Raw, powerful and emotional, Murtha has captured youngsters trying to survive turbulent economic times, when they had limited prospects – something which has recently come full circle as a new generation has had to deal with the global financial crisis.

2 May 2018

Obituary: John Reardon, photographer and picture editor, 1951-2018

“People say that John was brilliant but tricky, but he was only difficult if you were being mediocre,” says Sacha Lehrfreund, John Reardon’s long term partner and one-time colleague. “In a professional capacity he wanted to be excellent. He pushed it beyond a point that was comfortable for lots of people, but he made you better than you might otherwise be.”
“John Reardon was an artist,” says Greg Whitmore, picture editor of The Observer and another former colleague. “You can see it the photographs of Handsworth cricket fans, the Kosovan woman and baby, the portrait of Fergus Henderson…John was one of the greats of his generation.” John Reardon, a celebrated photojournalist who went on to shoot equally celebrated celebrity portraits for The Observer, has died aged 66.

2 May 2018

Gretje Treiber’s requiem for a working class Hamburg

How do you capture a neighbourhood in the throes of transformation? How do you negotiate the complex tensions between old and new that lie at the heart of regeneration? These are some of the quandaries that prompted Gretje Treiber to begin Hamburg Barmbek Nord: Attempts at an Encounter, an intimate requiem for the disappearing features of her local community. Originally a small collection of farms, Barmbek-Nord was transformed into a working-class district shaped by industry in the early 1900s. The area became an expanding residential hub with many new blocks of flats designed with a striking red brick and equipped with green spaces and sports facilities, built during the 1920s, only to be destroyed during the Second World War and rebuilt 15 years later. Since 1980, few urban changes have taken place, leaving the neighbourhood “almost forgotten” by the rest of the city, according to Treiber.

1 May 2018
Hinged on a connection between photographer and subject, portraiture is, in many ways, the ultimate collaborative act. In this collection, we showcase the best of contemporary photographic portraiture.