Sam Mellish - Roadside Britain

Late last year on a trip to Brighton I encountered a really interesting exhibition from the Photographer Sam Mellish, that I encountered at Brighton's Phoenix Building. 

Entitled "Roadside Britain" and shot over the course of four years, this body of work documents the the culture of roadside Britain though it's inhabitants and locations. This body of work I would say is very appealing to anyone who has a lot of experience of travelling long distances and knows what it's like to spend time in roadside cafes. 

"Some of it’s tongue in cheek, some of it’s quite funny, but my main reason for doing it is to document the social changes that have taken place on the road in the UK". - Sam Mellish (1)

    Fig One - Inside the Phoenix Building

   Inspired by the work of Paul Graham and his early 1980's series "A1 The Great North Road", it is quite easy to see the similarities in how Sam Mellish from a structured point of view, can be compared to Paul Graham's work. In particular the images from Sam Mellish that shows the subjects gazing away from the camera can be compared to some of Paul Graham's portraits. I personally find some of these style of portraits to sometimes be a bit stronger than ones that show the subject gazing into the camera, duly because sometimes they can come across as overly posed. 

Fig two - Paul Graham: Portrait from the series A1 The Great North Road

    
Unfortunately I can't seem to upload a video link to a video on Youtube of Sam Mellish talking about his work. However, you can still find a couple links below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaNhVeNfdhI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts8Xt1iypdg

Sources

http://www.sammellish.co.uk/#a=0&at=0&mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=2&p=9

Quote: http://wearelookingsideways.com/events/roadside-britain-book-launch-sam-mellish-interview/
http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/a1.html#a

Ansel Adams exhibition - London's National Maritime Museum

This past week I had the great experience of viewing the work of Ansel Adams for the first time at London's National Maritime museum. From seeing Ansel Adams work throughout books over the years, this exhibition was something special in the experience of seeing Ansel Adams work as the real thing within a life size scale directly in front of you.  The work featured within this exhibition is a documentation timeline of over 100 of Ansel Adams prints that were hand produced by the man himself over the course of his long and celebrated career.

Within all of the prints on show at this exhibition, what stood out to me most were the incredible large scale works from Ansel Adams which documented America's Gravel Bars river. The sheer scale of the print itself did a fantastic job of making me feel as if I was standing in the spot that Ansel Adams was when he fired the shutter capturing this image. In the next week I will have a full review posted on my thoughts on the exhibition.  Until then, if your a fan of Ansel Adams work the head down to London's National Maritime Museum before the 28th April.

                                    Fig 1 - Ansel Adams: Gravel Bars, American River (1960)

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait prize

After recently visiting London's National Portrait Gallery back in March of this year, within the galleries' gift-shop I discovered a hardback copy of the results of the galleries' recent "Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait prize" which was on show from the 8th of November last year up to February of this year. The work on show in this book stood out to me so much, that I had to buy myself a copy from online. Recently, as I have just started a new project for my University course that relates to portraiture. This book was a great source of research towards gaining knowledge of what a portrait is and about.

When you think of portraiture, a lot of questions regarding the topic in general come to mind if you look close enough. To what degree do we perform in front of a camera when being photographed?, What makes a good portrait?, among other questions.

Fig One: Spencer Murphy - Laurie

One portrait that caught my eye in particular from this book was a portrait from the work of the British Photographer "Spencer Murphy" entitled "Laurie" from his body of work "The abyss gazes into you". The way that the portrait has been structured has been done in a way that makes us the audience try and  pay attention to compelling appearance of the subject being photographed.  What is so strong about the subjects compelling appearance is the way that the subject staring away from the camera in what looks like a form of trance. The strong contrast within this portrait comes from the scarring around the subjects mouth and the smoothness of the sitter's head and skin. Through all of these features, there is an idea of a phycological look and feel to how they subject has been represented. According to Spencer Murphy, the marks visible on the sitters face come from some surgery that the sitter had after an accident. What I find interesting about this is that before reading any background information on this portrait, I the viewer got the impression that courtesy of the subjects portrayal through his gaze along with the marks on his face. My initial thought was that the subject might have been in some form of physical altercation in order to look the way he does. It's this kind of idea of studying portraits in detail that make's them more stronger.

Fig Two : Spencer Murphy - Ruby Walsh (2013)            

Fig Three: Rineke Dijkstra - Bull Fighters from Vila Franca de Xira and Montemor o Novo in Portugal





















Upon looking more into Spencer Murphy's work, I can't help but compare some of his work to the work of Rineke Dijkstra and her Bullfighters series. An example of this is through one of Spencer Murphy's most recent portraits which he produced produced for a commercial based assignment for advertising the 2013 Grand National on Channel 4. Within Rineke Dijkstra's portraits, the art of performance can be seen within her work. Her Bullfighters series in particular because of how her subjects have been photographed after taking part in an event.

Sources


 http://spencermurphy.tumblr.com/
http://www.spencermurphy.co.uk/#/portfolio
Book: Rineke Dijkstra - A Retrospective
http://www.npg.org.uk/photoprize1/site12/index.php