Uncategorized

Obituary: Frank Selby, co-founder of Rex Features, 1918-2018

Born Ferenc Saluzinszky in Budapest, Hungary on 12 January 1918, Frank Selby first moved to the UK in 1936 to read Economics at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He returned to make Britain his permanent home in 1939 when, under pressure from the Nazis, his father Imre Saluzinszky was forced to give up his position as editor-in-chief of the Az Est newspaper group. Saluzinszky decided to Anglicise his name and to join the Pioneer Corps of the British Army – a move that happily helped him meet his future wife and business partner Elizabeth Guttman, also from a Jewish-Hungarian family and then working for the French resistance in London. Frank and Elizabeth married in 1948 and within six years had set up Rex Features, a picture agency that become a lynchpin of Britain’s newspaper business.

8 March 2018

Sophie Green turns on the water in Kenya

“Human life at its most basic level needs water to survive. It’s tragic that too much of the world does not have access to a sustainable source of water in order to survive, never mind live,” says photographer Sophie Green of her work with Just a Drop, a charity providing access to sustainable clean water solutions in Kenya. Born in the UK and best-known for exploring facets of British culture such as drag racing and horse fairs, Green isn’t an obvious choice for the charity. But Just a Drop approached her because they were drawn to her aesthetic, she says – and, she points out, she’s spent the last two years documenting African culture in Britain.

8 March 2018

Philip Jones Griffiths on show at TJ Boulting

“Philip always hated being called a ‘war photographer,’” says Hannah Watson, director of TJ Boulting Gallery, of Philip Jones Griffiths. “He wasn’t interested in the ‘action’ that you often associated with war photography.” Instead, Watson draws attention to the careful consideration and intelligence behind each of the Magnum photographer’s shots. “In a single image he could give insight and an in-depth analysis to a complex situation,” she says.

7 March 2018

Collaboration on show in Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto

Photography is often considered a solitary pursuit, but the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) in Toronto, Canada hopes to overturn this conception with a research project led by artists, scholars, and curators such as Ariella Azoulay, Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas, Leigh Raiford, and Laura Wexler. Now an exhibition at RIC called Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography is putting their work on view. Featuring approximately 90 photographic projects the work on show demonstrates some of the many ways photographers have collaborated with their subjects and other participants. It includes Wendy Ewald’s Reciprocating in Arabic installation, which combines image and text in an attempt to show the experience of walking through the Arabic language, and WEB Du Bois’ The Potential of the Archive I, a look into the history and present challenges of black America, among many other projects.

6 March 2018

Excess exposed by Cristina de Middel and Bruno Morais

Tackling excessive consumption and its parlous effect on the environment and on mental health, Excessocenus uses brightly-coloured, staged images rather than the gritty photojournalism more familiar in this field. “On one hand we wanted to point out the culture of excess that is driving the planet to a total collapse, but on the other hand we also wanted to make a point about how this dramatic situation is normally presented to the audience,” says its creators, Cristina de Middel and Bruno Morais

2 March 2018

ICP’s 2018 Infinity Award winners

Bruce Davidson has won a Lifetime Achievement prize in this year’s ICP Infinity Awards, which will be formally presented on 09 April. Best-known for his two-year project on the poverty-stricken residents of East 100th Street, Davidson joined Magnum Photos in 1958 and showed his work at the Museum of Modern Art in 1963. His work often documents social inequality, and includes iconic series such as The Dwarf, Brooklyn Gang, and Freedom Rides.

27 February 2018