Ron Jude: Alpine Star

The American photographer Ron Jude has tackled a number of photographic techniques in portraying his personal vision, from straight forward documentary to still life, post-Photoshop and appropriation. What results is a body of work that pushes our understanding of a visual narrative, creating space both within the images and between the images so we, as observers, are obliged to not only look but think about the story put forth. Alpine Star is a project which does exactly that, it moves us to think about our own memories of news stories, collected almost by accident, and plays with the gleaned imagery we thought we forgot.

"Based on a sequence of pictures culled from the back-issues of a small town newspaper, Alpine Star by Ron Jude engages with the fictions of our collective memory. We find at work something far stranger than the standard assault on a photographic “code” that has undermined most discussion of the subject. This is not just another deconstruction of photography as if it were a kind of conceptual problem to be solved and explicated, but rather an irrational poetics of the archive. Jude has fashioned an uncanny anti-narrative, its precise structure defined by a tension native to photography itself. The result is more than just the sum of its parts – he achieves, in this minimal way, a very satisfying and provocative ambiguity."

—Darren Campion
The Incoherent Light

For more on the theme of 'Appropriation' check out Issue#13 of SMBHmag, which also includes an essay by The Incoherent Light's Darren Campion on Joachim Schmid. 

Welmer Keesmaat: He Who Wants Fire...

He Who Wants Fire Must Be Able To Bear Smoke by Dutch photographer and graphic designer Welmer Keesmaat (who is also the founding editor of Yvi art magazine) represents his knowledge of where contemporary photography is right now, as well as that of a more art historical context.

Aesthetically speaking the work points to the history of Dutch and Northern European painting with its attention to chiaroscuro, creating a sense of foreboding and depth. This effect works just as well with the fractured body parts - limbs mostly, hips and backs - but also with the abstract images of blurred nightmarish landscapes and the more weightless aspects of surfaces such as glass and water.

What prevents the work from being just another body of work that plays on these art historical references is his use of photographing images from screens (TV or computer) so as to introduce a more conceptually dense photographic trope, that is re-photographing a subject to suggest how we interact with photographic imagery. It is a dark (sinister even) poem, visually and metaphorically, with abstractions working satisfyingly well with the apparent. There is a disquieting effect on the reader, which through the brevity of narrative requires a return.

He Who Wants Fire Must Be Able To Bear Smoke is published by Contentement and is available to purchase from the directly website here

Night Contact launches

image: ©Rrrrrrrroll, Japanese artist collective. See their Tumblr.

On Friday 27th September, as darkness begins to fall, indoor and outdoor projections will pop up

across a range of venues in Dalston, East London, beaming out inspiring artworks for one night only.

Supporting and promoting contemporary image making, Night Contact aims to bring together exciting and innovative photographic works that provoke or engage in conversations with other media, such as film, music and literature. All of the works will embrace the projection format, through experimental edits, collaborations with other artists, and the use of sound, narrative, movement, colour and rhythm.

Centred around Gillett Square, a specially installed bank of screens will show site-specific commissioned and curated work. There will be stalls, music, food and drink, with vouchers offering deals at local bars and eateries. Beyond the main square, the festival will break out into a trail of six satelllite venues, taking over the streets of Dalston across outdoor spaces, bars and music venues, each showing a programmed screening.

The majority of the work we show will come from open submissions; these will be accompanied by a curated programme to ensure a varied, engaging and inspiring final line-up.

Three £1,000 grants are available for the production of collaborative works, in addition to an open call out for submissions. Submit your work here.

New Work judges are:

Katrina Sluis: Digital Curator, The Photographers Gallery
Charlotte Cotton: Curator
The full judging panel will be announced soon

Deadline: 27th May 2013

Existing Work judges are:
Aaron Schuman: Photographer and Curator
Carmen Salas: Founder and Director, Alpha-ville
Celia Davies: Acting Director, Photoworks
Ravi Amaratunga: Media Project Manager, Channel 4

Deadline: 15th July 2013

Night Contact is produced by Contact Editions with the support of the Arts Council England.

IPG: In Search of the Crying Lady

The series In Search of the Crying Lady from IPG (Yoshi and Tamara Kametani) does something different to other photography projects which set out to document or uncover the lives of the "professional mourner" which were, or indeed still are common to communities from across Europe to Africa and Asia. First, the work is not approached in a manner sympathetic to the subject, that is to say, the artists have not created a maudlin aesthetic, saturated with the grim spectre of death. True, there are images of death, but they are brighter than one would expect, even airy, and not the suffocating darkness one feels upon entering a funeral home in full ceremony. Second, there is no professional mourner, there is no "crying lady" as the title suggests, in fact, the search goes on without discovering such a character. The death which ultimately prevails in this story, is the death of a tradition. The Crying Lady is as much a spectre as Death itself it would seem. The series is now a self-published book, as you can see below...

In Search of the Crying Lady is a poetic and dark tale about a search for a tradition that never gets found. 

"The Crying Lady refers to the term Plačky who were professional mourners in Slovakia. Plačky used to be an essential part of the Slovak death ritual and were hired by the family of the deceased. The tradition was believed to still exist in certain areas of the country. Despite the encouragement that IPG received from ethnographers and people they spoke to along the way, the Plačky were never found. The journey had therefore turned into a search for the tradition that disappeared before anyone that IPG encountered had realized. In Search of the Crying Lady is essentially a collection of moments that crossed IPG’s path along their road to failure. "

IPG is an experimental collaborative project of photographers Yoshi and Tamara Kametani. Yoshi and Tamara established IPG in 2010 and are currently based in New Jersey, USA. In Search of The Crying Lady is their first self-published book. You can purchase the book directly from the website here

Darby & Peters: The Past is Ongoing

A.Darby&R.Peters: key chain, street vendor series, 2011

SMBHmag contributors and exhibitors Darby & Peters (Angela Darby and Robert Peters) will be showing The Past is Ongoing at PS² (Paragon Studios / project space), from 28 January - 16 February 2013.

The focus of PS² is on urban intervention and social interaction by artists and cultural practitioners, architects, multidisciplinary groups and theorists. Experiment and risk, social relevance and artistic quality are key elements of a diverse programme; from installations to projects with communities, classes, talks, curatorial residencies and research. It is located in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The Past is Ongoing explores the nature of Darby & Peters' joint practice in a manner that suggests both symbiosis and division. All images have been captured in urban settings and feature elements from previous projects. 

Public Address presents an ongoing documentative process, recording non commodified rituals. For this exhibition, examples of these unsanctioned public interventions at one bridge are presented in a new configuration spanning the slippage of time.

Private Lives in Public Spaces is a series of new works that combine a meme in which padlocks emblazoned with lovers' names are attached to bridges with an investigation of bridges that are notorious suicide spots. 

The video works I Ain’t No Kinda Hustler (below) and The Intangible are observed street scenes that infer the brain's need to layer meaning onto random experiences.

PS² , 18 Donegall Street, Belfast, BT1 2GP, UK
Opening hours: Wed-Fri 1-5pm, Sat 11am-3pm.
Mid- project opening: Thursday, 07 February, 6-9pm.

See the PS² site for more details