For over four decades, the documentary photography course has forged a reputation as one of the UK’s leading photography teaching destinations. In fact, the very first photography class can be dated back even further to 1912, when it was introduced by the head of the school of art at Newport Technical Institute. The course, however, was set up in 1973 by Magnum photographer David Hurn as a 12-month Training Opportunities Scheme to ‘re-skill’ miners and steelworkers.
Global business developer for Magnum Photos and founder of Firecracker, Fiona Rogers picks out her top five from the Arles festival and its fringe events – the group show Iran, Year 38; Looking for Lenin by Niels Ackermann; The Incurable Egoist by Masahisa Fukase; Life in Cities by Michael Wolf; and The Island of the Colorblind by Sanne De Wilde
The director of Seen Fifteen Gallery on her five favourite at Arles this year – from the official programme, the Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award, and the LUMA Foundation Parc des Ateliers
No matter how hard you try, sometimes Arles can be just like Glastonbury (sans mud)…
We are excited to announce the winner and runners up to the first ever Bob Books Photobook Award.
Through the passion reflected in the quality of work submitted, the competition has undoubtedly proven that the interest for photobooks is very much alive and flourishing within the photographic community.
Below is this year’s winner and runners up.
“I casted Fern for a campaign I was shooting, and we clicked right away,” says Rosaline Shahnavaz. “She showed up wearing thigh-high white PVC boots with about 600 button holes (God speed to the stylist) and she’d texted me the night before to see if she’d need to shave her armpits, because she’d been growing her hair for four months and really didn’t want to. We had a special dynamic straight away and I couldn’t stop casting her after that.” So began a working relationship that turned into a personal project and a friendship, with both women regularly meeting up to hang out and take pictures.
“I always wanted to be a painter; I suppose most photographers secretly do,” says Erik Madigan Heck. “My mother was a painter. We painted together when I was a child, and she took me to the museum almost every week to look at paintings.” He’s gone on to develop a rich, painterly style of photography, which has brought him commissions from clients such as The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, TIME, The New Yorker, and Harper’s Bazaar UK – and, most recently, with Sotheby’s Diamonds
The first ever Bob Books Photobook Award judging process is soon coming to an end, and so we’re pleased to announce the shortlisted photographers who are being considered for the chance to bring their projects to life as a photobook!
Publishing a photobook can seem like a daunting task – which pieces to include, how…
Jens Olof Lasthein, a Swedish-born photographer brought up in Denmark, has spent much of his career travelling around the European hinterlands, where international boundaries have been shifting for centuries. His new book, Meanwhile Across the Mountain, published by Max Ström, is a stunning survey of the Caucasus – the part of southeastern Europe that used to belong to the Soviet Union, but is now a collection of sovereign states and breakaway regions such as South Ossetia, Dagestan and Chechnya.
