Photography
Jasper Rees
Purists would have it that punk rock was but a brief explosion in first New York then London, and was all but spent by the end of 1977. Irish photographer Niall O'Brien, however, was born in 1979 and has no truck with purism. Instead, taking the role of anthropologist for his exhibition Good Rats, he has befriended and spent time with groups of young punks, from skaters in Kingston-upon-Thames to homeless teens in Berlin and Tel Aviv, and documented the noise, chaos and sense of belonging that comes with the subculture more than three decades on from its inception. Click on the images below Read more ...
theartsdesk
The annual Sony World Photography Awards began in 2007. They showcase the work of both professional and amateur photographers across genres which inclu de journalism, fashion, architecture, advertising, sport and music. This year there were over 60,000 images submitted from 139 countries. Each year, the winners and runners-up are collected in an exhibition which tours the world. The London stop of the tour opens today at the Art Work Space gallery in London W2. Here is a selection of images, with short commentaries by the photographers themselves.Gordon Welters (Germany): Loveparade Read more ...
fisun.guner
When we look at still images of moving figures what we see is not exclusively determined by what is in front of our eyes but what we already know about the world. If we stopped to think about this, it would seem obvious. We would know, for instance, that the putti who are so joyously leaping, dancing and bounding about in Donatello’s static frieze Cantoria would make little sense to us if we didn’t already know what such static postures implied: still images of moving figures can only come alive in the imagination when we have some understanding of how living bodies move, and of what comes Read more ...
sue.steward
Every day till 3 January theartsdesk will carry a survey of one of the arts we cover. We begin with Photography. Photography books are exploding on to the market like fireworks just as the book as a tangible object is becoming increasingly endangered. And with so many titles emerging from established and pop-up publishers, it’s a hard task to pin them down to the best of 2009 without some shocking omissions. So I’ll call them “Favourites” - and await cries of outrage about who’s in and who’s out.
First, some regretted omissions: the National Portrait Gallery’s Beatles to Bowie exists thanks Read more ...
sue.steward
“Photography is a refuge for failed painters,” declared the French poet, Charles Baudelaire around 1862. Yet photography took over a century to become a genuine family member of the art world. The British Library was slow to capitalise on the visitor value and historical significance of the vast photo-archive that it accumulated over the birth-period of this new artform. But its spectacular debut exhibition has burst open the vaults containing over 300,000 images, and now presents a magnificent production leading visitors on a journey back through time as Read more ...
sue.steward
The British Library has for the first time created an exhibition from its unique photography archive of some 300,000 items, dating back to the first days of the process. Sue Steward reviews this major exhibition elsewhere, while here we present a selection of some of these marvellous early images.Click on a picture to enter full view and the slideshow
Anna Atkins, (algae) Dictyola dichtoma, 1843-53.
Lady Alice Mary Kerr, Portrait of William Scawen Blunt, c 1870.
Samuel Bourne, From the top of the Manirung Pass, India, 1864.
Francis Frith, Hastings from the beach – low water, 1864. Read more ...
theartsdesk
Graffiti is the only form of artistic self-expression that can get you both arrested and exhibited. Its most celebrated exponent, Banksy, is the subject of tabloid news speculation. The faces and names of most graffiti artists are even more of a closed book. Until Crack & Shine, that is. Gaining exclusive access to these creative renegades as they work, the photographer Will Robson-Scott shines a light into occluded corners of nighttime London where graffiti art finds its stealthy way onto brick walls and tube carriages. His images, which radiate both a pulsing energy and a ravishing Read more ...
fisun.guner
Does a winning photograph jump out at you? Sure, we can talk earnestly of composition, an interesting subject, a telling juxtaposition, or the abstract interplay of colour, texture and light. But perhaps more than any other visual art form, what strikes us most about a photographic image remains somehow more elusive. And the hand of the artist who presses the shutter, rather than wields the brush, is not so easily perceived.Which brings us to this year’s winning entry for the National Portrait Gallery’s Photographic Portrait Prize. The standard for this annual award and exhibition remains Read more ...
theartsdesk
Keith Pattison took photographs of Richard Jones's new production of Annie Get Your Gun for the Young Vic. Read Matt Wolf's review here.Click on a photograph to enter full view. [bg|/THEATRE/young_vic_annie] All photographs for the Young Vic by Keith Pattison.
Jane Horrocks (Annie Oakley); Julian Ovenden (Frank Butler)
Jane Horrocks (Annie Oakley); Julian Ovenden (Frank Butler)
Liza Sadovy (Dolly)
Buffy Davis (Mrs Potter Porter); Paul Iveson (Ensemble); Matt Turner (Ensemble); Julian Ovenden (Frank Butler); Adam Venus (Ensemble); David Ricardo-Pearce (Ensemble); Michael Taibi (Ensemble) Read more ...
sue.steward
Jillian Edelstein, the distinguished photographer, is joining theartsdesk. She grew up in Cape Town and in 1985 moved to London, where within a year she had won the Kodak UK Young Photographer of the Year award. It was to be the first of many such accolades. She has since established a reputation as one of the leading portrait photographers of the age, her work appearing widely in this country but also for American publications including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue and Interview.Between 1996 and 2002 she documented the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Read more ...
jillian.edelstein
Acclaimed photographer Jillian Edelstein's series of Portraits include images of significant figures from the world of arts, fashion and the demi-monde, but also politics: her portrait of Nelson Mandela, taken in Cape Town in 1997. There is also a delightful photograph of three South African boys mucking about by the water.Affinities is a series of studies of professional and personal connections between like-minded. "After I had a bad break-up, I started to think about how friendships and relationships come out of creative partnerships," she says. "Gilbert and George chose their cleaner, Read more ...
charlotte.macmillan
Charlotte MacMillan photographed the Royal Ballet's Mayerling, with choreography by Kenneth MacMillan, music by Franz Liszt, and designs by Nicholas Georgiadis, which opens at the Royal Opera House on Wednesday. The cast is headed by Edward Watson as the death-obsessed Crown Prince Rudolf of the Hapsburg imperial dynasty and Mara Galeazzi as his partner in death, the court groupie Mary Vetsera.Ismene Brown writes: Kenneth MacMillan’s most narratively ambitious three-act drama ballet, premiered in 1978 at the Royal Ballet, is a feast of pomp, royal hypocrisy, sex, drugs and suicide - a far cry Read more ...