Take a peek inside the new issue of BJP – featuring Sasha Huber, Kalpesh Lathigra, Eva O’Leary, Samuel Fosso, and more – plus photos from the launch event at Autograph Gallery
Tag: Autograph ABP
Commissioned by Autograph ABP, Rosi’s latest project aims to visualise the many experiences of social isolation, demonstrating how we can be unified by a collective experience
“For individuals who have had their lives changed beyond recognition, the studio acts as an integral part of their new identity,” says Foggitt
Mark Sealy guides us through the work of eight artists from an exhibition he originally curated for FotoFest 2020, examining the relationships between contemporary African life, the diaspora, and global histories of photography and colonialism
This month, the director of Autograph ABP reflects on his life and career
Lina Iris Viktor presents a gilded new exhibition in London, delving deep into the complex history of one of the world’s most desired metals
Born on the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1935, Raphael Albert moved to London in 1953. Studying photography at Ealing Technical College while working part-time at a cake factory, he soon picked up freelance jobs for black British papers such as West Indian World, The Gleaner, Caribbean Times, and New World, and also started to document the West Indian communities in Hammersmith and Fulham, photographing weddings, Christenings and other social events, and taking studio portraits of local families in his home.
In 1970 he established the Miss Black and Beautiful contest, followed by Miss West Indies in Great Britain, Miss Teenager of the West Indies in Great Britain, and Miss Grenada, running them via his company, Albert Promotions, and going on to set up a magazine called Charisma in 1984. The pageants ran for 30 years and he documented them all photographically, as well as commissioning other photographers to shoot them, and in 2007 he organised a display of their work during Black History Month titled Great Britain: Celebrating 30 Years of Beauty Pageants (1963-1993). Albert died in 2009.
“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.
“I’m reclaiming my blackness, which I feel is continuously performed by the privileged other,” says South African photographer Zanele Muholi. Born in 1972 in Umlazi, a township close to Durban, Muholi defines herself as a visual activist using photography to articulate contemporary identity politics. In her latest series, Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness, she uses her body to confront the politics of race and representation, questioning the way the black body is shown and perceived.
With only one week left to enter the International Photography Award 2018, judge Mark Sealy discusses the kind of work he will be looking for