Created in Birmingham

The results of an interesting collaborative project, carried out in 2007, are just coming out. The project used the question ‘what does this city really look like?’ as a starting point.

Locations were shared-out between a team of ‘photographers’ (none of them are photographers) according to a grid imposed over the area.  The photographers were free to capture whatever they wanted at their location, but it was the grid that determined the locations in the first place.

You can browse the photos on the Birmingham Photographic Project website and it’s worth a look.

The results of the project are being presented in stages - the website being th first with a (limited-run) hardback book and a public exhibition both not far off official announcement.

Pete James, custodian of Birmingham Library’s legendary photographic archive, sends through info of From Canton to Guangzhou, part of Birmingham’s China Festival running through this year at BM&AG.

This exhibition presents the work of two photographers who have made very different visual records of Birmingham’s Sister City in China. It contrasts the photographs of buildings and street scenes taken in the historic city of Canton (now known as Guangzhou) by the European photographer Felice Beato in 1860 with those of the contemporary Chinese photographer Xu Peiwu (1997 - 2007), whose work witnesses the dynamic change during the urbanization and rise of Pearl River New City in Guangzhou.

The exhibition runs from 3 May to 10 August at BMAG with the official opening on Thursday 8 May. Invite only, by the looks of things, so if you wanna go contact kath.leahy [at] birmingham.gov.uk, tel: 0121 303 8775.

Probably more interesting than hobnobbing in the Round Room is a seminar in the afternoon of the 8th at 2pm at BIAD, Margaret Street with Pete, Dr Jiang Jiehong (Director, Centre for Chinese Visual Arts, BIAD), photographer Xu Peiwu and Cheng-Hsuan Kao (PhD Candidate, Kings College London). Here’s the flyer (PDF).

Feed in Millennium Point are running what they call a Contact Night with Vanley Burke aimed at Matthew Boulton students but open to the public.

He will be discussing his background, how he became a photographer and his role in documenting black culture and british people for the last 40 years.

Tickets are £3.50 and it takes place on Wednesday 16th April, 6:45 - 7:30pm.

Stuart Whipps is a local independent photographer, who, amongst other things, documented the closing of the Longbridge Rover plant and its subsequent move to China. The exhibition of this work will be at The New Art Gallery Walsall and runs from April 4th to June 1st with the private view on Thursday 3rd April which open to all.

This exhibition brings together photographs of both the Longbridge and Nanjing plants. Though relating to a very specific context, these images speak volumes about the transformation of heavy industry in the 21st century and its wider implications.Taken from flyer

This month Gary Corbett has had a photography exhibition at the Central Library Gallery of his photographs from Rush Hour Blues which he’s been shooting with great consistency for years now. You can see the whole lot in this Flickr collection and it was only a matter of time before something physical came of it.

He’s also running a blog alongside the show giving liner notes and the like. The show runs until March 31st (sorry for the late notice) and is apparently self financed so if you like his work please give him your support.

Photographer George Benson has a new website with a lovely new series of work, The Colour of Music.

This series purely looks at the colour of the record sleeves grouping all records by colour alone. In this way the genres of music were mixed with techno standing next to hiphop next to rock next to house and so on. The resulting photographs create a rythmn of colour, light and shade through an unseen collection of music.

Prints are available to purchase.

The Big Picture are seeking artists/design teams to help with the following projects:

World Record Attempt (deadline for proposals 18th March)

Audiences Central wants to appoint an artist or artist/design team to break the world record for the largest photo mosaic in the world, as the culmination of our ‘Big Picture’ project.

The current record is 94,392 photographs covering an area of 562.85 m2 (6,058.46 ft2). Both numbers need to be surpassed in order to break the record.

MMS Upload Project (deadline for proposals 25th March)

Audiences Central wants to appoint an artist or artist/design team to produce an engaging online concept that will drive MMS photo uploads to the ‘Big Picture’ project.

The same artist/team may apply for both projects.

Craig Holmes’ book A New Birmingham which sold out of it’s initial run last year available from the publisher presumably on a print-on-demand basis. There’s a 16 page PDF preview too.

Matt Murtagh’s photos from Project X Presents’ XLAB:VL are up.

Lovely as ever, but shame about the irritating Flash-based gallery. On the plus side, Matt has a blog.

Another of Kate Beatty’s portraits of local creatives has surfaced, this time of the Mama Feel Good DJs, Bobbalin’ Hot and Sister 45.

Set of 4 here.

From Heaven`s Gate (John)

Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.

From Tim Burton

Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.

From Aeioux

Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.

From Dr King Bertt

Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the image for more details.

Birmingham Live! is a live music reviews blog set up by Steve Gerrard. Which explains why the photography is so good!

It’s not there to promote him though - he’s hoping other gig photographers in the city will join and contribute turning it into a showcase which can help them if not break into the business then at least get photo passes. There’s also a Facebook group.

via himself

Photographer Emily Quinton has a new weblog which warms my heart. She also has a couple of Flickr accounts, one for business and one for pleasure. Here’s a couple of shots.

Spaghetti Gazetti brings notice of a forthcoming Pogus Caesar exhibition at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery running from April 26th to July 12th. Here’s one of his photos from the 2005 tornado:

Taken from the wide range of photographs, photomotages and films on his website.

Most of Caesar’s UK photography is based around his home city of Birmingham and important events such as the Handsworth riots and the Birmingham tornado. He has photographed well known personalities such as Stevie Wonder, Desmond Tutu and actress Julie Christie. Internationally, Caesar has visited places as diverse as South Africa, Spain, Albania, America and India to photograph people and events.

More details at SpagGaz (who I’m ashamed to say I haven’t been following. Bad me. Bad bad me.)

Kate Beatty is working on a series of portraits of “Birmingham Creatives”. Here’s one, of Andrew Dubber.

He blogs about it here.

Oh, and here she is taking the photo:

from suselstahl

from amortize

from Matt Murtagh

from BigChilli

Photos are posted here from the Birmingham Flickr community. Click on the images for more details.

Missed this while I was away but it seems Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is cracking down on photos of their collection appearing on Flickr and, presumably, other online venues. You can get permission to take photos there if you sign a waiver that says the copyright remains with them. Presumably this policy was put in place before the rise of digital photography and online sharing muddied the issue with people using Flickr, etc in the same way folk used photo albums in the past. So should BM&AG just ban photography completely?