6 images from my Time For Heroes Project have been nominated for the AOP Student Award 2011.

One of the reasons that the AOP stands out from other Photography Competitions is that it sticks to four simple categories and focuses all its energy into its Exhibition. (Last years above). I am really happy with my Exhibition Prints as well.

There are a couple of other AUCB students in there as well. Including my personal favourite from all the nominations of Caroline Goetze amazing series of crying men.

Nina Hove and Sarah Brimley also have images nominated.

Exhibition runs 22nd March – 31st March at the AOP Gallery 81 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4QS

Private View is on the 23rd of March.

Fellow AUCB alumni Paul Gorman just picked up the LPA Landscape Award for his series of multiple exposures. His whole series can be seen here.

I was lucky enough to pick up a print of the image above at one of the print auction last year.

The exhibition is excellent and is running from the 24th – 4th March and is free and open to the public. The images themselves are not ground breaking, and his photographic style is fairly safe for the era. (David Bailey name is now thrown around when the sixities are mentioned and so seems very familiar to us but his style is far more outgoing Townsend’s)

What makes the images interesting is the access Townsend enjoyed in London to the the key players that we now associate the sixties with. The Stones, the Beatles and other key players dominate his images.

The lecture was open and packed, but the audience reflects really why Townsend’s images are so poplar. People interested not so much by the photography but by the Nostalgia industry in general.

I am a little put off by the 60′s nostalgia belonging to the generation who enjoyed it. People who were born immediately before or during the war who albeit grew up with the hardship of rationing and post-war repair but who found themselves enjoying the hey-day of the welfare state, a cheap step onto the property ladder and who reminisce about the 60′s being the creation of culture. Its an interesting generation and it powers a whole industry of books, television programs and films that reinforce that this was a ‘wonderful’ time.

Tellingly question from the floor came as people told anecdotes they were not present for, or asked questions about people who they had never met but instead only read about. People claiming a stake in a decade which they viewed photographically in magazines and newspapers from their bedrooms with music blaring out on cheap and easily accessible LPs. Leaps forward in technology allowed music and image to flow together into peoples homes and infuse their lives and make them feel part of something from which they were geographically and socially far removed.

Townsend is quick to point out that he sees the 60′s applying to only 300 or so key players who lived the lifestyle. With life outside a small area of London continuing on much the same as it had done in the 40′s and 50′s. Yet, his images perpetuate a cultural myth that has become important to many people. This isn’t to say that its a bad thing, but simply to say his images have contributed to a time when photography, music and video combined to alter our collective memory of a decade. They are important images because of this, as well people and places they document who contributed to creating the myth of the 60′s.

You can see information on this and future exhibition on the AUCB website and in the 2010-2011 gallery guide.

There is a video of Philip Presenting his limited editions exhibition on youtube, which is also interesting

Christmas is well and truly over! Happy New Year

I have done a whole lot of web work since leaving University and I wanted my portfolio to reflect that as well as consolidating my most successful projects.

The site is simple, clean and contemporary. It has a whole load of SEO tricks up its sleeve as well as some fancy javascript tricks including images loading on demand, sideways scroll with mousewheels and some magic menus. All done in indexhibit proving you don’t have to have a indexhibit site that looks like every other indexhibit site. A couple of big site launches in the next few days so check back.

Click the image to visit.

Interested in my web design services? Get in touch.

One of the last projects I worked on at AUCB was a collaboration with fellow photographer / studio geek Toby Roberts. Over two days we provided headshots of all the staff in the school of media for Marketing at AUCB.

They are now online across the AUCB websites.

One of my projects is featured on Photography Served today. Click the image to have a look.

Its a great photography aggregator shameless self publicising aside.

This years single image winner is Michelle Sank who is a accomplished photographer and has produced some particularly good projects in recent years. (Well worth a look at her portfolio’s).

However the image has chosen has inspired much criticism from social media and the blogosphere. A backlash made all the more visible because of the BJPs growing popularity on Facebook and Twitter since its redesign earlier in the year.

Some fairly typical tweets can be found here:

Comments on the BJPs original story here and subsequent justification here.

And the BJPs facebook threads here and again here:

There is also a very good article on the ‘online photographer’ here

The choice of the image is obviously meant to be ‘controversial’ and the buzz that is surrounding the awardI is a massive win for the flagging IPA as it has generated a fair amount of publicity (and as we all know all publicity…).

However I can’t help feel sorry for Michelle Sank, some of the comments are really vitriolic and she will be remembered first and foremost for this image and the messy debate around it rather than a well accomplished body of work. It seems a shame that the work is so outside her style and that this is always going to be attached to her name as google never forgets.

It does of course raise some very interesting questions about the art photography world vs the real world and these criticism – traditionally banded around in smokey back rooms by hardened photographers – and now out in the open thanks to social media and blogs. Fascinating to see how poor the BJP’s justification seems and how quickly it is taken appart in the face of a tide of photographers criticism.

There is allot of chatter about the up coming Unlimited Tuition Fee Plan.

I was in University for 5 years, I completed a BA in History and Politics at York (one of the top places in the country for it) and an FDA in a vocational Commercial Photography course at Bournemouth (again one of the top places in the country for it). I received a massive amount of support both emotionally and financially from my family and from my partner. The last two years have been a particular struggle with tuition increasing from £1,250 a year to £3,250 a year. That is a 3 fold increase in the time I have been a student.

Of the people I know who have graduated from both courses very few are earning the figures banded about in the debates. There were good students at good universities. The reason why most of us are finding it difficult to get top notch jobs is because ether they don’t exist (recession hit grad schemes now are laughable to those when I was looking at Universities 6 years ago) but also because a degree is so unvalued.

Everyone went to university to get a rare commodity that would put them in an head hunted elite. Problem obviously is that if everyone does it then it isn’t that rare.

However with degree-hyper inflation whilst its value for students has decreased its cost has spiraled upwards.

Uncapped top-up fees are going to started at an estimated £8,000 a year and consider that alongside a maintenance loan of £3,500 (a debt of £11,500 a year) I would have left University with £57,500 worth of debt.

I simply could not afford this level of debt looking to go into the photo (or really any other industry). So apparently University is now going to be for the rich and the financially stupid (insert Tory joke here).

Hetherington has made a name for himself as a leading War Photo-journalist, most notably winning the World Press Photo of the Year 2007.

However this year has seen the debut of Restrepo which has received a string of great press since its release in the US earlier this year. It has effectively catapulted Hetherington from a name known in photographic circles to a much wider audience.

It is well worth listening ‘again’ to Sebastian Junger on Restrepo on Front Row (there is also an interview with Martin Parr towards the end of it thats worth a listen) and the Film Program’s interview with Tim Hetherington. The film looks phenomenal and whilst I have not yet seen it, it strikes a different tone to the Infel exhibition currently on at Host.

Tim’s work for me is very important, it shows the war in  Afganistan in a contemplative way. Focusing on the relationships between soldiers, the shock of grief and the human impact of war on those that participate in it (soldiers as well as civilians).

One thing that struck me about the Host exhibition though was the focus on male relationships in the Company. There was a stark contrast between the quiet images of patrols crossing the landscape, the clothes hanging off the Restrepo and dozens of images of bare-chested soldiers. At first glance they have an almost homo-erotic edge to them? However if you take time to took over them they show the strength of male friend-ship born out of the day to day anxiety of Afganistan.

There is a week left to see the images so if you are in London head up to Old Street to have a look. I am looking forward to seeing Restrepo and how it sits against the exhibition.