Created in Birmingham » Photography

Birmingham’s People

Chris Unitt — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:24:36 +0000

Birmingham’s People comes from the folks at Birmingham Photospace and is a continuation of the portrait project they carried out over the Artsfest weekend in September.

The website has been featuring the portraits taken, including the latest of ‘Radway’ (below) who, unless I’m mistaken, is none other than Violet Attack from the Birmingham Blitz Derby Dames.

The project will be exhibited at The Drum from 7 December 2009 to 29 January 2010. You can also sign up to attend the (free) private view and artists talk on 9 December.

Derek Fairbrother – Birmingham timelapse

Chris Unitt — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:07:07 +0000

Ian from 7 Inch Cinema correctly guessed that this video might be up my street – a collection of images they’ve compiled for Birmingham Seen which opens at BMAG today and runs until 3 January 2010.

Ian also sent over a biog of Derek Fairbrother (1931-99), whose images they are. The following is an extended copy and paste job:

In the 1960s and 70s research chemist and amateur photographer, Derek Fairbrother, made over 20 photographic time-lapse sequences showing the demolition of old buildings and their replacement by new buildings and new road systems in Birmingham city centre.

The completed sequences, often running to some fifty images taken over a period of five or more years, were then connected together in a narrative sequence in the form of a strip of postcard sized prints. Fairbrother intended to use a cine camera to photograph each sequence, thereby compressing years of work into a series of short films. However this ambition was not realised in his lifetime.

After his death in 1999, his widow Gaynor gifted his prints and negatives to the photography collections at Birmingham Library.

These short films, which will be shown for the first time in the exhibition Birmingham Seen (Gas Hall, 31st October 2009 – 3rd January 2010) have finally enabled Fairbrother’s work to be seen in the way he intended.

Lubberland + Creative Playground + Sample + Keenan = packed blog post!

Adrienne — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:23:49 +0000

Thanks for the thoughts and input into the future of CiB. I hope it didn’t seem I was suggesting it be disbanded – I wanted more to open up debate on how technology itself has moved on from when CiB began and that the direction/organisation/intention of CiB needs looking at. Your suggestions have been very interesting and insightful – many of you proposing things I have been musing over anyway (eg. a collaborative approach, funding avenues, etc.) and in the next few weeks I’m going to be following some of these things up.

In the meantime, Birmingham’s creative communities continue to toil away and many things have been going on. Here’s a snapshot of where we’re at right now!

‘Hey for Lubberland!’ can be spotted gracing the canals around Brindley Place. This work, by Simon and Tom Bloor (and part of Ikon’s off-site projects) will be in situ on the towpath behind Bank Restaurant in Brindleyplace until 13th September 2009. Visitors can be transported by this working barge, and whilst onboard peruse the floating library of utopian design. The title ‘Hey for Lubberland!’ was derived from a 17th century English ballad about the New World, mistaken for utopia, but in fact a kind of fool’s paradise. You can be transported between 13:00 and 17:00 on Tuesdays – Sundays, and best of all admission is free!

If you’re interested in creative networking opportunities, then there’s a new group which will have it’s first meeting on August 13th. Creative Playground is being organised by Steve Gray and Kate Manion, and offers:

..a chance for people who work in a professional capacity in the creative and digital sectors to get together for drinks and a chat, make new friends and hopefully make some new collaborations as well. Ultimately it is about strengthening the city’s creative community and we’ll be looking to the RDAs and various bodies for support to help us do this.

It looks like a slightly different group of people to those you might meet at BSMC etc. and will hopefully prove rather interesting! You need to signup with meetup.com and then apply to become a member as there is a selection process as explained here:

The ground rules of joining are: 1) You must be in a professional role within the creative industries, 2) You or your business must be located in Birmingham, 3) You must fill out all the introductory fields in your profile with sufficient detail, 4) You must upload a photo of yourself to your profile. No company brands etc.

Also on Thursday 13th August is the private view of a brand new collection of work, entitled SAMPLE:

New work has been created by a range of Midlands artists including Daniel Westwood, Martin Donnelly, Matt Clugston, Steve Ellis, and Joe Mitchelmore. The work will be available to view online after the launch at the SAMPLE website, so even if you can’t make it you don’t have to miss out!

And lastly, so that this post isn’t completely ridiculously long, on a transatlantic note, Birmingham-based photographer Chris Keenan (who recently featured in the Visual / Art of Ideas 2 exhibition) has had a piece of work selected for a world-class international exhibition, Art of Photography.

This year they received 16,000 entries from 57 countries. 111 images were chosen for the final exhibition and Chris Keenan’s Franz Joseph Glacier (above) was one of them. The selection was made by Charlotte Cotton, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

If you’re likely to be in and around the San Diego area any time between 29th August 2009 and 1st November 2009 then stop by the Lyceum Theatre Gallery and marvel at some Birmingham talent!

When museums and technology meet..

Adrienne — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:48:27 +0000

I’ve often wondered why museums and galleries aren’t using their web presence in more innovative and useful ways. I worked within a gallery for a number of years, and this gave me the unsurprising insight that many factors contributed to this: underpaid overworked staff, simply no capacity (in terms of time) to explore new avenues, gallery staff restricted to working within strictly defined roles with little room for experimentation, and those who do maintain the web side of things being under supported and in need of upskilling. Plus above all, there are many challenges facing gallery collections (from conservation to valuation to interpretation and beyond) that the additional pressure of creating new ways of accessing that information sits at the bottom of anyone’s agenda, particularly when it could just end up as a copyright/intellectual property/Digital Rights Management nightmare.

Finally, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery have been brave enough to tackle these issues head on with the decision to publicly release their world-class Pre-Raphaelite collection, the largest in Europe, becoming the focal point for this work. With assistance from JISC, BMAG appointed Birmingham-based digital agency TAK! after a five way pitch to design and develop a website application to achieve their goal. And the resulting site is a beautiful, delicate and sensitive piece of design. Visitors will be able to access high quality content which will enable schools, universities, and the general public to have a greater understanding of the collection in their own time, and in their own space – which in turn could encourage new visitors and raise the profile of the museum.

“TAK! have helped us create the largest online Pre-Raphaelite collection in the world” concludes Linda Suprdle, Project Manager at BMAG. “It’s a fantastic resource and provides an unparalleled level of access and quality to the works on display. Anyone with an interest in art should visit the site and discover the importance of the Pre-Raphaelites.”

I hope that this project will encourage other museums and galleries to consider making their collections accessible online. They have the opportunity to create such valuable learning resources which could cross so many diversity and access barriers, and it seems a shame that the majority of artworks only ever see the light of day if and when a curator deems them relevant enough. Using online technology, all collections could eventually be available to view regardless of current exhibition theme!

If and when that does happen, I will be interested to see how the role of ‘the curator’ responds to that change. The Pre-Raphaelite collection site already encourages users to create their own personal collections, so how far a leap would it be for people to share those collections and reasons for their choices with other users? Imagine an itunes playlist or an amazon reading list – but for art, complete with personal interpretations, anecdotal thoughts, factual evidence and academic input. THAT would be something I could become obsessive about!

It’s that time again – 4am!

Adrienne — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:28:44 +0000

So how many of you were awake at 4am on the 04/04/09? And how many of you visually documented that moment?

As was previously mentioned here on CiB, the 4am Project is the genius concept of Karen Strunks, a Birmingham photographer who singlehandedly convinced thousands of strangers across the world that it would be a great idea to stay awake/get up at 4am to document that moment for no other reason than to be part of a larger group of people doing just that.

And people, in their droves, agreed that it was a great idea and stayed up (or set their alarms, like me!) and took photographs and sent them to the 4am website, or tagged them on Flickr so that everyone could see a snapshot of the world, of their world, at such an uncomfortably late/early hour. Who knew you could create such extensive social capital before breakfast?!

Building upon the success of the previous event, 4am photos have continued to flood in, without being prompted to do so – and Karen has now decided it’s time to coordinate another 4am en masse. The date of the next event is: 21/06/09. (And in case you somehow missed it, the time will be 4am, and the place will be wherever you are!)

In addition, the 4am Project has been nominated for the Digital Press Awards, and if you think (like I do) that this project is a fab idea and a lot of fun, then vote for it to win!

Liz Hingley’s religious Birmingham

Kate Spragg — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:10:49 +0000

I have just discovered the wonderful photography of Liz Hingley. She studied photography at Brighton University and is currently based in Italy on a photographic scholarship at Fabrica. She has photographed and exhibited around the world and more recently visited Birmingham to photograph some of the city’s religious life. Her work will make up part of of Rhubarb Rhubarb’s Hungry Bursary exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

High Rise to Power

Kate Spragg — Sat, 23 May 2009 11:15:53 +0000

In response to the ‘Music is Not Pollution’ video, documentary photographer Jane Baker and was excited to hear about how creatives are using their talents to campaign about local issues and stir up some action.

Jane is a documentary photographer who has recently moved to Birmingham and has just produced an audio visual story about two single mums from Quinton Lynsey, 23, and Carina, 21, who were given the unique opportunity to experience working in Parliament with the Shadow Secretary of State for Wales, MP Cheryl Gillan, they took the chance to speak out about their experiences living on a council estate in Birmingham.

4am Project

Kate Spragg — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:55:21 +0000

At 4am on 4th April photographers left their warm beds to take photographs of their bit of the world for the 4am Project.

Here are some of the photographs uploaded to Flickr so far:

You can read first hand accounts of the 4am experience by Pete Ashton, RachelCreative, Nicky Getgood, Citizensheep and Jon Bounds.

Did you get up at the ungodly hour for the project? Please be nice pop your story or link into the comments.

Dance photography & competition

Kate Spragg — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:39:03 +0000

Richard Battye is one of Birmingham’s veteran photographers. A few years ago he had a very successful exhibition ‘This is England’ which showed at 14 UK galleries from North Shields to Mayfair. He even took it out to Los Angeles and became a visiting lecturer with Kodak. Past clients include: The Arts Council, Land Rover, Harley Davidson, Gibson Guitars, BBC, Channel 4, and channel 5’s The Gadget show, where Richard is ‘their favourite photographer’.

He is now working on another project based around dance, but can’t come up with a title. He would like CiB readers to come up with a snappy title and the winning chosen title gets a signed print and invite to the private view when the exhibition launches.

The work is around dance and was shot in Birmingham, you can view working progress here.

Please put your ideas in the comments and remember to leave your email address (which won’t be shown). Good Luck!

The world at 4am

Kate Spragg — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 22:14:52 +0000

About a year ago Karen Strunks came up with the crazy idea of getting out of bed and stepping out at 4am to photograph desolate streets and a sleeping city. A year on, the idea has grown into a fully fledged international event called 4am Project. The idea is spreading like wildfire, and it seems people all over the world are getting in on the bleary-eyed party. On Thursday the Guardian profiled the project in their Travel section, featuring 4am photographs taken around the globe.

Abandoned summerhouse, Bjärnum, Sweden by Steve Anderson

New York subway, USA by hy136

On Saturday 4th April 2009 photographers of all kinds will be dragging themselves out of bed and taking a picture of their world at 4am.

It can be of anything at all. A self portrait, the room you’re in, the view from your window. Perhaps you want to venture out a bit further, maybe you’ll be travelling, or at work – maybe you’re a night owl…

Whatever you’re doing, it’d be great if you could get involved and play a part in building up a big picture of the world at 4am.

Get out there, take your photo and either email it to them or upload to Flickr and tag with the word 4amproject.

St. Patrick’s day Parade

Kate Spragg — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:24:13 +0000

One day a year, Digbeth is painted green and becomes a huge celebration of St. Patrick, with a parade only matched by Dublin and New York. Some swifty Flickr users have uploaded their photographs of the festivities showing the eclectic mix of revellers. This work from two Flickr users especially capture the atmosphere:

Birmingham St. Patrick’s Day 2009 by Tim Ellis

By Very Quiet

Lee Allen Photography

Kate Spragg — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:37:34 +0000

Photographer Lee Allen has recently launched his a website, and is now doing business under his own name rather than the former Front Row Photos. He has successfully integrated a blog element into his new website which gives a more personal element to the marketing of the plethora of different services offered.

Lee Allen is a self-taught photographer who originates from the wilds of Norfolk and now lives in the West Midlands. His friendly approach, coupled with his knack of capturing that “moment”, has seen him work for national magazines through to the BBC.

From the regal surroundings of a wedding in a stately home to the sweaty confines of a small club gig, Lee always approaches each job with the same level of commitment and professionalism ensuring breathtaking results every time.

Flash Swap

Kate Spragg — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:00:35 +0000

Clusta are looking for photographers

Kate Spragg — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:08:01 +0000

Clusta are looking for talented Birmingham-based photographers who may be interested in showcasing their work on the back of The Vaults Bar and Restaurant’s food and wine menus.

The Vaults showcases many artists and photographers work on its walls and Clusta have designed the bar and restaurant menus to complement this. Several Birmingham photographers including Matt Cannon, Paul Ward and Emma Clarke have all taken up on this opportunity and we are now looking for two more photographers to feature their work.

Interested? Contact edwina@clusta.com no later than Friday 13th February.

No business like snow business…

Kate Spragg — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:10:14 +0000

Today’s snow has ensured the UK has come to a standstill once again, but it does makes any landscape look incredibly beautiful. Here are some of the eighty odd photographs added to Flickr since the snow started floating down onto Birmingham last night.

Black horse on a white platform by abrinsky

B29 snow by pindec

by zosia swidlicka

#365 – Morning snow at Sherborne Wharf by Star-one

View them all on this slideshow.

January Flickrmeet

Chris Unitt — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:52:20 +0000

Birmingham Flickrers met for a photo-taking wander around the Jewellery Quarter yesterday and the photos are starting to go up online. Here’s the slideshow:

New people are always welcome so if you’re interested in going along then join the Birmingham Flickrmeet group. The next Flickrmeet will be on Sunday 8 Feb (location tbc).

Mr Underwood and dotPlay();

Chris Unitt — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:33:56 +0000

Sam from Stereographic has emailed with info about a couple of his projects:

Mr Underwood (and various other names, depending on musical genres)

a variety of projects from creating soundtracks and effects for animations to wowing crowds with his all hardware improvised liveset. When time permits he also dabbles in the design and build of obscure musical instruments

dotPlay();

A dumping ground for other bits and pieces including the effect of smearing vaseline on a camera lens, fun with kaleidoscopes (pic above) and a project called Your World. For the latter, Sam says:

I give you a disposable camera and a stamped addressed return envelope; you fill the camera with photos of Your World and send it back to me for processing

David Rowan and Tak!

Chris Unitt — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:38:35 +0000

David Rowan’s new website has cropped up on a fair few blogs recently and with good reason. It’s real purty, with a stack of great photography on it and is dead clever to boot.

David is a photographer at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and also lectures, consults and does bits of art design and graphic design.

The website was put together by Tak! and has a soundtrack provided by Chris Herbert which is remarkable because it’s interactive (try moving the three lines about) and didn’t have me reaching for the mute button like most autostart music on websites.

(Via Surely?, Tak! and CMYKern)

Tom Horton on MySpace

Chris Unitt — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:29:11 +0000

Plenty good news for Tom Horton this week. Not only has one of his pictures been featured by MySpace (see screengrab below) but he’s been picked to be MySpace’s featured photographer for Birmingham.

This will involve me picking out 3 of the most exciting hip and happening gigs / club events a week to go and cover for myspace.

Tom says if any promoters (gigs, clubs, etc) have events coming up and would like him to cover them and have them featured on MySpace then they should get in touch with him.

Tom’s also updated his website recently and has a blog featuring this post on the MySpace news.

While looking on that MySpace page I noticed another Birmingham photographer has been featured – Ursula Roxy. So congrats to her too.

B4AM

Chris Unitt — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 02:21:07 +0000

Karen Strunks has a new project called B4AM – photos taken around the city at 4am.Â The other day she had the idea of asking visitors to her blog to vote for her next destination and they sent her to Digbeth.

More photos on Karen Strunks’ blog.

Mezzetty

Chris Unitt — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:25:18 +0000

Mezzetty was established in 1999 by Martin Donnelly from Birmingham.

Mezza V4 showcases simple Photography combined with Graphik Design and Typography

Martin Donnelly is from Clusta.

Karen Strunks

Chris Unitt — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:01:21 +0000

Karen Strunks is a photographer in Birmingham.

She is currently crafting her photojournalism skills with the Birmingham Post & Mail newspapers where she has had some of her work published. She also specialises in portrait and documentary photography.

Karen’s work has recently been exhibited at Birmingham Museum Collection Centre, and at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham

She also has a blog and is on Twitter and Flickr.

Steve Gerrard’s new website

Chris Unitt — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:17:50 +0000

Wedding/rock photographer (as well as ex-international DJ, Birmingham Live! creator, etc…) Steve Gerrard has relaunched his website and, put together by Chris Garrett (who also did The Big Picture’s website), very nice it is too.

Steve’s blogging is sometimes used as an example of how a creative type can use use regular updates to showcase their work effectively. But then why would anyone not want to read a blog that turns out images like this:

Birmingham Photographic Grid at the Mailbox

Chris Unitt — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:58:46 +0000

Back in May I flagged up the website for the Birmingham Photographic Grid, a collaborative project documenting Birmingham with photos taken at points of the city determined by (yep, you guessed it) a grid.

You may recall I said that a public exhibition wasn’t too far away.Â Well, it’s just been announced and will be held at the Mailbox from 1 November.

There’s more info on the website.

Relaunch of Birmingham Live

Chris Unitt — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:40:49 +0000

Birmingham Live, for most, is a website that posts up reviews and some excellent photographs of bands playing in Birmingham.Â There are people out there covering gigs almost every night of the week.

However, for the up and coming music photographers and reviewers involved, it’s a platform where they can learn their craft and get some much-needed exposure, while gaining access to photo pits that would otherwise have been off-limits.Â Here I should probably disclose that I’m one of those reviewers.

Anyway, Birmingham Live, as an entity has been progressing quite a bit recently and the website has just been overhauled to make it prettier and nicer to use.

Frankie went and interviewed Steve Gerrard, the site’s head honcho, who talked about the idea and ethos behind the site, how it’s helped contributors and how he sees the site developing:

Self Portrait Birmingham

Chris Unitt — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:33:44 +0000

Self Portrait Birmingham:

This site has been set up as part of the new Self Portrait Birmingham Project. The Project is inspired by the original Handsworth Self Portrait of 1979 but updated with the latest digital technology

Nod to Podnosh for passing this my way.

Parkour in Sutton Coldfield

Chris Unitt — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:58:31 +0000

BiNS and Keri Davies have both gawped at the fantastic parkour (free-running – remember Jump Britain?Â The start of Casino Royale?Â Ah, nevermind) pictures by Sutton Coldfield’s Mark Lilly.

The photos were for Deleted Scenes but are also up on Flickr too.Â This here shot was taken in Sutton Coldfield:

The others are worth a look, especially the one taken at Leeds Uni which can’t have ended well.

By the way, zoom on to 38mins 20secs on the Jump Britain vid to see the ICC being jumped on/over/around.

Birmingham Photospace

Chris Unitt — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:03:25 +0000

There’s been a discussion bubbling away in the past few weeks about establishing a dedicated space for photography in Birmingham.Â Much of this has been taking place among members of the Birmingham Flickr group.

Now there’s to be a get-together to try and take things further:

A small group of us are getting together on Wednesday 17th September 2008 at 6.30pm in Rooty’s (the Custard Factory) to discuss some of the ideas that have arisen from our Flickr discussion on setting up a group to push for the establishment of a Photospace for Birmingham.

For background info you can see the PhotoBirmingham blog and the original (and still ongoing) discussion on Flickr.

John Garghan

Chris Unitt — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:50:31 +0000

John Garghan is a photographer who, to be mundane about it, takes beautiful photos of the details of burnt out cars.Â He puts it much better:

My aim is to capture the disturbance to surfaces created by acts of joy riding and arson by zooming into disfigured vehicle parts that are occupied in the lifecycle of metals, fabrics, and glass. Their corrosion is a natural process that tries to reclaim human made objects to an elemental state more in line with the energy of the molecules these objects are made of, torching accelerates this journey of returning to the earth and I look to capture, investigate and at times distort results of the advancement of its lifecycle

John also has a blog called ‘You will never think of them in the same way again‘ which gives an interesting insight into what he’s been up to and what he thinks about.

John has a Flickr account too.Â Happily, Flickr has just made it easier to embed photos and slideshows on other sites (like blogs) so here’s a slideshow of John’s work (not all are of burnt cars):

Thanks to Jon Bounds for spotting John Garghan’s blog and Joanna Geary for the Flickr embed info.

The Big Picture breaks a world record

Chris Unitt — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 23:09:51 +0000

The team from The Big Picture have set a world record for their huge photo mosaic, unveiled outside Millennium Point.

There’s loads of information about this on the Big Picture website.Â You can see a whizzy online representation of the mosaic and there’s a Big Picture collective memory where reactions to the mosaic are being gathered – the video of Lucy Moore’s reaction to the unveiling is definitely worth seeing.

In fact here it is – the image created by the mosaic is of her grandfather and, although she knew it had been shortlisted for use, the final image was a closely kept secret until the covers came off:

Big congrats to all involved.