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WHEN LIGHT CASTS NO SHADOW
EDGAR MARTINS with an interview by GERRY BADGER Edgar Martins was granted special airside access to some of the most interesting airports in Europe. Those he chose have had a key role in history or the history of aviation (for example the Azores, which was a compulsory stop for transatlantic flights prior to 1970 and a military base in both World Wars). Almost all his images were produced at night, using the aprons’ floodlights, moonlight, long or double exposures of between ten minutes to two hours. Some of the airports on the Azores archipelago are unique. They are amongst the very few black-tarred runways in the world, and it is the relationship between the dark tarmac and the fluorescent painted signs and runway markings that lies at the heart of some of Martins’ most arresting images. This unusual combination allowed him to produce incredibly abstract images, with a very long depth of field and often with the use of minimal lighting. In some, sky and ground merge in darkness with only the lights and airport hieroglyphics to orient us. Yet even these are hard to decode, for whilst this is a landscape of signs that can be read by the knowledgeable – pilots and air traffic controllers, for example – it remains perplexing to the uninitiated. There are also areas in which even this complex visual language is further ruptured, as new and old markings merge, echoing the overlapping of time, space and different eras, and disturbing language and meaning itself. These juxtapositions of sign and shape and the ambiguity of meaning are central to these remarkable images. Edgar Martins has won several awards for his work including Portugal’s prestigious BES photography Award and a Jerwood Photography Prize. He was awarded a National Media Museum Bursary and second-place at the Terry O’Neil Award 2008. He was also recently nominated for the renowned Prix Pictet. He has exhibited throughout Europe and the United States, including Museums such as PS1 MoMA, and has published several books, the most recent being Topologies, which was published by Aperture. |
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AFTER THE WALL
ERIC LUSITO texts by FRANCIS CONTE The Berlin Wall was the physical embodiment of the ‘Iron Curtain’ that divided the Soviet world from the West. Once it fell the Soviet Empire itself also began to crumble. At its heart was a military system which extended throughout its territories exerting huge control and influence. There were military bases in every country. Eric Lusito, has travelled throughout the former Soviet Union from East Germany to Mongolia, from Poland to Kazakhstan in search of these former Soviet military bases and his photographs are an extraordinary record. As the Union crumbled many bases were simply abandoned. The military departed but much else was just left behind. Lusito discovered everything from gas masks to propaganda posters, books and magazines, instruction manuals and personal photographs. But it is the buildings themselves which are the most resonant symbols of the fall of a once powerful Empire. A lecture hall is laid out with chairs ready, and theatre spotlights still mounted on the walls, yet the ceiling has begun to collapse; a swimming pool is full of water but this is stagnant water unchanged for years. And throughout there remain symbols of the old regime – murals of heroic deeds and national glories, photographs of political and miltary leaders, posters exhorting young soldiers to give their all for their motherland. The book includes photographs not only of the bases but also of the murals, posters, books, instruction manuals etc. that Lusito found abandoned. It is a rich collection of work and illuminates the military world of the Soviet Union in a way that is both fascinating and unique. |
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THE LAST RESORT
MARTIN PARR introduced by GERRY BADGER When Martin Parr’s The Last Resort was first published and exhibited in 1986 it divided both critics and audiences alike. Some saw it as the ‘finest achievement to date’ of colour photography in Britain whilst others viewed it as ‘an aberration’. With the benefit of hindsight there is little doubt that it transformed documentary photography in Britain and placed Parr amongst the world’s leading photographers. The book is now recognised as a ‘classic’ and is highly sought by collectors worldwide. Whilst this new edition keeps the same imahges and sequence as the original, a new text has been commissioned from Gerry Badger. Steering a perilous course between objectivity and voyeurism, Parr viewed the decaying holiday resort of New Brighton and its holidaymakers in a way that was new, unique and deeply disturbing. And he did so in colour, something which at the time was seen as revolutionary for documentary work. For some his camera seemed cold and cruel as it followed the working classes desperately pursuing their holiday dreams surrounded by dereliction and decay and wading through the apparently endless detritus of a pollution-ridden consumer society. Others felt it showed an affectionate, humorous and humanistic response from Parr. However it was viewed, it was undoubtedly a sharp, bitter satire of the Britain of the Thatcher years. Martin Parr is a member of the prestigious MAGNUM photo agency. Internationally recognised as a brilliant satirist of contemporary life he has led the development of British documentary photography with wit, style, and intelligence in a career that boasts numerous publications and exhibitions. His work is in major galleries and museums worldwide. In a new essay Gerry Badger re-examines the work and its impact on British Photography. Recognised as a leading writer on photography, as well as a photographer and a curator, Gerry Badger was co-author, with Martin Parr, of the two volume The Photobook: A History. |
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DREAMS & GOALS
ALISTAIR BERG introduced by ROGAN TAYLOR For every football fan the World Cup Finals are the most extraordinary celebration of the game. As we look forward to South Africa hosting the 2010 tournament, this outstanding collection of photographs by Alistair Berg captures fan culture around the world at its most vibrant and characterful. The book is a unique chronicle of a 20 year period that has seen enormous changes in football and a massive surge in support for the game. It covers not only the last five World Cup Finals but also grassroots football, from pub teams and Sunday league to children playing barefoot in the streets of Brazil or in the townships of South Africa. Images are drawn from every continent and a chapter is devoted to each World Cup from 1990 to 2006. To celebrate the Finals in South Africa there is a special extended section on the game in Africa. Alistair Berg has worked as a freelance photographer for over twenty years, visiting more than fifty countries for some of the world’s most prominent publications and advertising agencies. He was a member of the French press agency, Gamma, before joining the prestigious reportage agency IPG. In 2004 he moved with his wife and young family to Cape Town, where he is now based. Despite the variety of assignments he has undertaken, Alistair has always photographed football culture. He has continued to see the World Cup Finals from the perspective of the fans as they make their pilgrimage to the mecca of the world game. 2010 will mark twenty years of Alistair’s photographic coverage of football culture. Rogan Taylor is an academic, writer, broadcaster and football activist. He is the author of several books on football including The Day of the Hillsborough Disaster and Kicking and Screaming. An Oral History of Football in England. He is also founder member and chairman of the Football Supporters’ Association, launched in Liverpool after the Heysel disaster. |
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ALLOTMENTS
ANDREW BUURMAN There’s something about the word ‘allotments’ that conjures up an image of traditional values, of balmy summer days spent working the land, escaping in honest toil. A rural idyll far removed from our everyday experience. And even though allotments can be found throughout the world, in our minds they still seem to encapsulate a certain Britishness. Andrew Buurman’s photographs capture the essence of the allotment and convey the enthusiasm and diversity of today’s plot holders. These photographs were all taken on Uplands Allotments, in Handsworth, in the heart of Birmingham. The largest allotment site in the UK – with 422 plots – it opened in 1949, with its own office and meeting hall. Even today it retains much of the communal spirit of the post war era with weekly tea dances, bingo nights and an annual flower and vegetable show. The history of allotments tracks the major social and political changes in British life: the move away from open field agriculture, the urbanisation of the Industrial Revolution, the need for home grown produce during both World Wars. By 1943 there were some 1.4 million allotments in the UK growing 10% of the nation’s food. Inevitably both increasing affluence and the redevelopment of many sites led to a dramatic decrease in numbers, though in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest. There are now some 300,000 allotments in the UK often shared between families and friends. Born in Liverpool in 1966 Andrew Buurman bought his first camera at the age of 27 whilst working as a teacher in Japan. Returning to the UK he studied photojournalism at LCP, before becoming a photographer with The Independent newspaper in London. A World Press Award winner his work has been exhibited in the UK and USA. |
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EARTH FORMS
STEPHEN STROM texts by Gregory McNamee & Albert Stewart Stephen Strom has photographed in the south western desert lands of the United States for more than 20 years and this book brings together, for the first time, a selection of his most powerful and memorable images. |
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THE ANIMALS
GIACOMO BRUNELLI Foreword by Alison Nordström “Giacomo Brunelli has been looking hard at animals. His focus is not on the framed and caged exotica of zoos but on the ordinary animals that remain with us to some extent: horses, dogs, cats, chickens, pigeons. He shows us a fox, looking sharply at the camera and poised to flee, and there are numerous birds, a snake and several toads, but this wildness is small and fragile, living in the familiar liminal space where manmade and natural meet and overlap. His animals inhabit farmyards, cobbled streets and the façades of stone buildings. There are no tigers here. Brunelli’s animals are often composed only of suggestive fragments. His spare black and white images are attuned to the nuances of a moving mane, a silhouetted whisker, a highlighted, almost illuminated wing. He favours the profile and the counterintuitive angle, setting dark unobservable features against dark undiscernable backgrounds. A dead mouse, on its back, paws in air beside an oversized flower against a stark and distant mountain is no more or less frozen in time than is the growling dog, eyes alight and teeth forever bared; both are icons of states we fear but cannot know. These pictures are timeless and uncanny, powerful in their ordinariness, and emotionally much bigger than their simple subjects.” Alison Nordström. |
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IN A VERY ENGLISH TOWN
JOHN COMINO JAMES High Street, Buttermarket, Cornmarket, Pump Lane, North Street, Park Street, have such a deceptive familiarity to the English ear that they might be found in any English town. They are names that suggest a sense of continuity and tradition – something very English. Yet the reality is often not quite what it appears. John Comino-James has photographed the streets, shops and shopkeepers in the centre of Thame, an historic market town some 45 miles from London. Portraits, texts and candid photographs are contained in a sequence representing a meandering walk through the town, during which are encountered the last cattle market operating in the area, travelling showmen at one of the two annual fairs, and the weekly street market. The accompanying interviews reveal pride in the continuation of family businesses, as well as small enterprises both challenged by and benefiting from the increasing impact of the internet. While the presence of supermarkets and services such as banks, travel agents and estate agents is acknowledged, in choosing subjects for portraits Comino-James was drawn to those shopkeepers whose aim might be summed up in the words of one of them: “To keep the character of Thame as a Market Town and not a Supermarket town”. |
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I, TOKYO
JACOB AUE SOBOL Magnum photographer Jacob Aue Sobol moved to Tokyo in spring 2006. "Initially I felt invisible. Each day I would walk the streets without anyone making eye-contact with me. Everyone seemed to be heading somewhere – it was as if they had no need of communication. Most mornings I would take the Chuo-line from Nakano to Shinjuku, and even though the train would be packed with salary-men and school girls in uniform, I rarely heard a word being spoken. And so I began taking my pocket camera out with me on the streets and in the parks. Rather than focusing on the impressively tall buildings and the eternal swarm of people, I began searching for the narrow paths and the individual human presence in a city that felt both attractive and repulsive at the same time.” Sobol’s first book Sabine (2004) was nominated for the 2005 Deutsche Börse Prize. Other Awards include a first prize at World Press Photo 2006. Exhibitions during 2008 include the United States, China and Denmark. Previous solo exhibitions include Portugal, United Kingdom, Canada, Poland and Denmark. In 2007 Jacob became a nominee at Magnum Photos. He is represented by the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York. |
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THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
VEE SPEERS This is a series of portraits of children about to attend an imaginary birthday party. Inspired by her daughter’s birthday party Speers imagined what characters might be created if role play were pushed to imaginative extremes. The children are placed in front of the same white wall and gaze into the lens of the camera, performing within a strictly laid out frame. They reveal very little of themselves and yet this is what makes the portraits so magnetic. The childlike game of dressing up, of putting on costumes, reinforces the surreal tone of the series. The Birthday Party is “anarchistic” in its take on childhood and play, “both improvisatory and highly theatrical... unsentimental but playful, macabre... in a way which is liberating both for us as viewer and perhaps for her subjects too.” Clare Grafik, The Photographers Gallery, London “There is always a certain tension in my work which draws the viewer into what is hidden beneath the surface. My intention was to show a real side of human nature, to expose a side of childhood that is not care-free or clichéd, and project a range of emotions and definitions which are part of an imperfect world.” Vee Speers For the past fifteen years Vee Speers has been based in Paris, working in fashion, photojournalism and fine art photography. Widely exhibited throughout Europe, the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Japan and Australia, her work has also been seen in publications including The Sunday Times, Harpers+Queen, GQ, Arena and Esquire. |
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ZEBRATO
MICHAEL LEVIN Foreword by Barry Dumka Michael Levin’s award-winning and extraordinarily beautiful photographs have a very painterly quality. In a recent feature profile, the American fine art magazine Focus declared “Michael Levin’s captivating images are soulful and evocative; he is truly one of the rising stars in photography.” Using long exposures Levin reduces the landscape to elemental shapes. Each image has a simplicity and purity capturing the essence of the landscape. Many of his photographs feature water and clouds, and show what has been described as ‘the smooth skin of light’, yet it is the architectural intrusions into these clean spaces that most engage him. Wooden posts, concrete barriers, weathered rocks, dilapidated jetties, even the elegant shape of French topiaries introduce elements which seem to haunt the landscape and introduce a human presence. Michael Levin has won a number of awards including the prestigious ‘Photographer of the Year’ award at the 2006/07 International Photography Awards in New York. Previous honorees include Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein and Larry Clark. Levin also won a further ‘Photographer of the Year’ Award at the 2007 Prix de la Photographie in Paris. Born in Winnipeg and presently living in Vancouver, Canada, Levin travels extensively to capture his sharply-observed black and white photographs. |
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LOVIN' IT
ADAM HINTON These photographs from Shanghai explore the new culture rapidly developing in China as it expands its domestic market at breakneck speed. As elsewhere in the world, the appeal of modern consumer goods and the benefits they bring is there for all to see. But such rapid change has its dark side. As the not-so-old cultural structures become increasingly irrelevant there are threats to social cohesion as communal identity gives way to individuality and alienation. What we are seeing now is a new Cultural Revolution, a capitalist Cultural Revolution that is more complete, more total, and no less ideological than the Cultural Revolution that was instigated by Chairman Mao in the 1960s. Lovin’ It is introduced by John Gittings, for many years foreign leader-writer and East Asia editor at The Guardian. Gittings first visited China in 1971 during the Cultural Revolution and in 2001 he opened the Guardian’s first staff bureau on the Chinese mainland, in Shanghai. The book also includes an interview with Hinton by writer and cultural critic Nigel Warburton. London based photographer, Adam Hinton has produced several documentary projects based around various communities including a favela in Rio de Janeiro, a coal mining family in the Ukraine and a Himba community in Namibia. His personal and commissioned photography have won numerous awards and been exhibited at various galleries including the National Portrait Gallery and The Photographers’ Gallery, London. |
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FRENCH KISS
ANDERS PETERSEN Swedish born, Anders Petersen is a world renowned photographer, noted for his intimate and personal documentary-style black-and-white photographs. Petersen explores the fringes of society and his images depict a raw, and sometimes disturbingly brutal, social portrait. Taken in the South of France, French Kiss is characteristic Petersen, exuding the poetic sadness, restlessness and sense of urgency that runs through all his work. When the work was first shown at Arles Photography Festival the response was astounding: ‘They made everything else on display at the huge photography festival pale in comparison. They became the ‘buzz’ in Arles. And everyone realized that Anders Petersen (that wildly energetic 62-year-old guy) is still making some of the most arresting personal documentary photographs today - Jim Casper, Lens Culture. Petersen first became known for his series Café Lehmitz, a daily chronicle of the regulars – transvestites, prostitutes, drug addicts and harbour workers – of a Hamburg bar in the Reeperbahn, the city’s once notorious red-light district. Starting in 1967, Petersen continued the project for three years. The photobook of the same name was published eight years later, in 1978, first in Germany, and then in France (1979) and Sweden (1982). Café Lehmitz has since become regarded as a seminal book in the history of European photography. Anders Petersen has published more than 20 books and his work has been exhibited widely. |
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TRUNCATED
PAUL HART Foreword by Gerry Badger The forest interior is more architecture than landscape. Amongst the trees, your concept of time is changed. As you move deeper inside, and the outside world disappears, the wind is calmed and noise filtered, temperature is altered, and light is bounced and subdued. Some trees stand like sentinels, others are stolid in ranks, an army of trees appearing out of the dark. This apparent sanctuary of stillness can strangely transform. It is it’s own world. Stepping into the forest is always like stepping into the unknown, with the semi-dark concealing much, revealing a little. A place sometimes mysterious, sometimes secretive, but always seductive and always dark. A prize winner at the 2008 Prix de la Photographie Paris, Paul Hart is fast becoming one of the UK’s leading landscape photographers. His work is used by Ilford-Photo to promote their black and white paper range worldwide. Born in the UK in 1961, Hart worked for six years in advertising photography, travelling throughout Europe and the USA, before embarking on a freelance career focusing more on the natural world. His images have been used internationally for advertising, publishing and editorial. Since 2000 Hart has concentrated solely on personal projects. Truncated is his first book. |
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THE LAST THINGS
DAVID MOORE texts by Chris Petit & Angela Weight David Moore was allowed unprecedented access to a Crisis Management facility below ground in central London, between September 2006 and April 2007. This space will be used as the first port of call in any situation where the State is under threat. The environment is sustainable for extended periods and is part of a larger network. Over an 8 month period Moore was able to observe a live working space, continuously on standby, and fully prepared for the most extreme national emergency. The facility’s hermetic, tightly regulated environment, artificially lit and air conditioned, is prescient with the threat of crisis. At once sophisticated and touchingly ordinary, part military and part civilian, Moore has documented its labyrinthine depths with chilling clarity. Small areas of certain images have been digitally altered at the request of the MoD to protect what they consider to be sensitive information. All of this begins to hint at the relationship with the MoD and imposes a conceptual requirement on what has become a censored document. Moore’s photographs are accompanied by an essay from the film-maker and novelist Chris Petit and an afterword by the curator, Angela Weight. David Moore has exhibited and published his work widely. The Last Things is his third book. |
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IN A WINDOW OF PRESTES MAIA 911 BUILDING
JULIO BITTENCOURT In March 2006 the residents of 911 Prestes Maia, a 22 storey ramshackle tower block in the centre of sprawling São Paulo, Brazil, were surprised to learn that they were to be evicted within 28 days. Whilst the building, neglected by its landlord, had apparently been empty for over a decade 1,630 people, including some 468 families with 315 children lived there. In 2003 the ‘Movement of the Homeless’ had moved in hundreds of homeless families. The new residents drove out the vermin and the drug dealers, and cleaned up the place, and the building became possibly the largest squat in the world, complete with a library, workshops and other educational activities. Bittencourt’s photographs are a powerful record of this diverse community. Photographing from the adjacent building, Bittencourt records the tower’s residents as they appear in weathered window frames. According to him, in a mega-city like São Paulo, where large buildings are packed together cheek by jowl, families and friends often communicate with each other through windows. Julio Bittencourt lives in São Paulo. He was awarded the Leica Oskar Barnack Prize in 2007 for this work. His work has been widely published internationally including Le Figaro, Stern, Leica World Magazine, British Journal of Photography and Le Monde. |
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COAL, FRANKINCENSE & MYRRH
Yemen and British Yemenis TIM SMITH The reputed home of the Queen of Sheba, Yemen has been at the crossroads of Africa, the Middle East and Asia for thousands of years thanks to its position on the ancient spice routes. Ten thousand years of trade along Yemen’s Red Sea and Indian Ocean coasts, over its mountains and across its deserts made it a meeting point of people, ideas, money and goods and the centuries of trading generated much wealth. There has been a British presence in Yemen ever since the early 1600s when the East India Company set up trading posts in Mukha, a port then famous as the world centre for trade in coffee. In 1839 the port city of Aden was captured to provide a base to protect British trade routes. This began an even stronger relationship which would last some 130 years until 1967 when the British finally pulled out. Yemen is the mother country of the longest-established of Britain’s Muslim communities. Yemenis came to Britain from the 1890s onwards, many as an indirect result of having joined the British Merchant Navy, and after World War Two there was further emigration. By the mid-1970s there were some 15,000 Yemenis in Britain, though today this figure has shrunk back considerably. One of the poorest countries in the region, Yemen still maintains much of its tribal character and old ways. People wear traditional dress and the custom of chewing the narcotic plant khat in the afternoons is still widely observed. Yemen remains a country of great mystery and, though security is an issue, it has attracted the curiosity of a growing number of tourists. |
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INFECTED LANDSCAPE
SHAI KREMER Infected Landscape by Israeli photographer Shai Kremer is a searing portrait of the military disfiguration of the landscape of Israel. The accumulation of ruins and military remnants is an important part of what defines the Israeli landscape today – wounds in the landscape that correspond to the wounds in the Israeli collective consciousness. The book includes photographs from the ‘Chicago’ miltary training centre in Israel. This centre encapsulates the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Over the years it has been rebuilt to represent different war environments and reflect varying scenarios – from Lebanon through to Gaza City. A further area was also constructed to simulate a refugee camp. The newly established Urban Warfare Training Center (unveiled to the press in 2007) also features. This is a mock city located in the southern Tze’elim military base. From a distance, it looks like any Arab urban centre. Built by the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers and funded largely through U.S. military aid, the 7.4-square-mile generic city consists of modules that can be reconfigured by mission planners to represent specific towns. Known as ‘Baladia’ by the Americans – balad, in Arabic, means village – it is used by U.S. forces as well as by the Israel Defense Force. Complete with shops, a grand mosque, a hospital and a Kasbah quarter, the UWTC even has a cemetery that doubles as a soccer field, depending on the operational scenario. In some of the houses openings have been created to replicate those that soldiers leave behind as they demolish walls in the process of moving through urban areas whilst avoiding streets and alleys. For added realism, charred automobiles and burned tyres litter the roadways. During training exercises Arabian music is played in the background. The facility is enveloped by cameras and an audio system that simulates helicopters, mortar rounds, and prayer calls. Based in New York and Tel Aviv, Shai Kremer has exhibited internationally with shows in the USA, China, and throughout Europe. A finalist in both the 2007 Sante Fe Prize and the 2007 HSBC Award and runner-up in the 2007 Aperture Portfolio Prize, his work has also been published widely including in the New York Times. |
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ONCE UPON A TIME IN WALES
ROBERT HAINES For 35 years this extraordinary collection of photographs remained hidden from the world. Taken around 1971/2, by young photographer Robert Haines, they record life in the Welsh valleys, in the village of Heolgerrig and nearby Merthyr Tydfil. Heolgerrig was a very close-knit community with Welsh the first language. It was a mining community where most of the men worked underground and life seemed to revolve around the pub and the chapel. Merthyr Tydfil, once the ‘Iron Capital’ of the world, had a justifiable reputation as ‘tough’ with characters such as hard man, Melvin Webber, who died after being blasted by a shotgun, and ‘Mad’ Malcolm for whom no chemical substance was too strong The early Seventies were a time of flux and, looking at these powerful photographs now, many of the extraordinary characters featured seem to have drifted in from a previous century. Haines photographed the local people with enthusiasm and energy. Some he knew well, others were complete strangers. Some spent their days in the pub, others worked underground, living conditions were often very poor. The photographs speak to us today of a world very different to our own. |
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Richard Billingham
Over recent years Billingham has photographed increasingly within the landscape and this new book brings together this work for the first time. The images are contemplative and thoughtful and reflect his primary concern for the ‘making’ of an image.
Billingham first exhibited in 1995 at the Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, by whom he is still represented. His work has received significant international acclaim – in 1997 he won the Citibank Photography Prize and his work was one of the talking points of ‘Sensation’, the exhibition of Contemporary British Art from the Saatchi Collection. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2001.
Billingham lives in Brighton and is currently a part-time senior lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire based in Cheltenham.
The work is introduced by Sacha Craddock, leading art critic and broadcaster.
£25.00 hardback
96 pages, 224mm x 280mm
45 colour photographs
ISBN: 978-1904587385
Published: February 2008
in association with University of Gloucestershire
ORDER NOW
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SMALL WORLD
MARTIN PARR Introduction by Geoff Dyer This is a revised and updated edition of Martin Parr’s classic book which was first published in 1996. Copies of the original edition of Small World are now avidly sought by collectors and demand a high premium. It is a biting, very funny satire in which Parr looks at tourism worldwide, exposing the increasingly homogenous ‘global culture’ where in the search for different cultures those same cultures are destroyed. The issues that Parr raised a decade ago when the book was first published are even more relevant today. Whilst Parr’s larger-than-life troupe of tourists appear willing participants in an omnipresent consumer culture they are also bemused victims – at the mercy of larger social forces and locked into their insatiable craving for spectacle. Small World‘s citizens become a symbol of western society’s prosperous freedoms, declaring their power and their rights to travel, to choose and to consume. A member of the prestiguous MAGNUM photo agency Martin Parr is one of the best known photographers in the world today. He has published innumerable books and his work has been exhibited and published worldwide. |
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DINKY TOYS
A celebration of Dinky Toys in the 1950s Kim Sayer Dinky Toys must be one of the most successful and collectable toys ever made. These delightfully stylish photographs feature models from the golden age of the Dinky toy – an era remembered fondly by every post-war baby-boomer. Now the subject of serious interest from collectors worldwide many of these models have re-emerged as highly collectable, often selling at very high prices. But the toys that feature here are neither pristine or shiny. Collected over the years by photographer Kim Sayer, their charm is in the chips, dents and worn paint work – toys that have been played with and loved. His affection for them is obvious, as each model is given its own delightful setting, reflecting a more gentle and innocent era. Visual puns abound – the Landrover, 'a fine model of a vehicle designed to go anywhere and do anything' climbs its way up a staircase, whilst the Avro York Airliner takes off from the ironing board, and an open-top sports car zooms along fighting the gale force winds of an electric fan. Many of the photographs also play off against the original marketing tagline used to sell the models: ‘Just look at the remarkable detail on this exciting model of Britain’s famous centurion tank. It is a welcome reinforcement for the playroom army.’ ‘Here is a fine new model, the Humber Police Patrol Car containing uniformed driver and patrolman.’ These are wonderful photographs that will appeal to all ages – particularly to those who will remember their days of short trousered bliss crawling about on the floor for hours on end, their imaginations fired by the splendour of their Dinky toys. |
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GREAT PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNEYS
JOHN HANNAVY One hundred and fifty years ago travelling with a camera was both a novelty and an enormous challenge. The intrepid photographers who took their cameras to remote corners of the world brought back images which amazed their peers. Photographer and historian John Hannavy has recreated some of their epic journeys – travelling to Scotland along the route followed by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1844; recreating Charles Kinnear and Thomas Melville Raven’s 1857 journeys to France; exploring the Nile from Cairo to Abu Simbel along the route Francis Frith followed between 1856 and 1859; travelling through Russia and the Ukraine as Roger Fenton did in 1852 and 1855; across India from Calcutta to Simla following Samuel Bourne’s 1863 account of his travels; and exploring China and Cyprus as John Thomson did between 1863 and 1878. This beautifully illustrated book contrasts the Victorian world with our own, and looks at how our view of the world has changed in the intevening years. It chronicles the developments which have taken place in travel, architecture, culture, and of course photography itself. Professor John Hannavy has had a long involvement with photography and photographic history, and has been writing about the subject for over thirty years. He edited the recently published Encyclopaedia of 19th Century Photography, and has previously published many books and articles on travel, history, photography, and photographic history, and has written and presented two well-received series of television films on the history of photography for the BBC. |
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THE VISITORS
CHARLOTTE CORY Charlotte Cory’s ‘Visitors’ are truly creatures of fantasy and fascination – each so delicately posed that we think “can that be real?” A noble tiger in full military regalia, a dejected donkey slumped in a chair in a sparse studio setting, a haughty kangaroo holding a cricket bat and gazing out at us dismissively. What kind of extraordinary creatures are these? Cory’s images rework cartes de visite, the photographic visiting cards that were a Victorian craze. Many millions were produced and are now so commonly discarded in junk shops that they are almost worthless. Can there be anything more poignant than a person got up in their best bib and tucker, preserved for a posterity that is no longer interested? Yet there is something assuredly sadder than discarded photographs of forgotten faces and family pets: all those stuffed animals in museums, shot long ago not on glass plates but with guns, their very bodies preserved for posterity to gawk at. Where did this moth-eaten lion sniff his last antelope? How many of us have stood with our noses pressed to the glass eyeing these captured creatures. The Visitors is a remarkable book that draws us into an imagined world of immense power and originality.In addition to her photographic work Charlotte Cory is an established novelist and writes regularly for BBC Radio. She has published three novels with Faber & Faber; her next historical novel will be published by Harper Collins. |
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