Niall O'Leary’s inspiration
Millennium Images/Book Publishing Show
One of the reasons I enjoy design:related is it enables me to interact with some of our overseas clients that I never have a chance to meet face to face. With our UK clients we visit them with our portfolio as often as time allows-this helps to show images that might not come in keyword searches-images that are about mood or emotion rather than subject. So what I've done is to upload one of our image shows-so that anybody who might be interested can down load it;
http://www.mediafire.com/?8v14xqyb41y
It's a recent Book publisher show-and features the best of our new images, that imho fit that area. You'd need Powerpoint to run it and the file is around 20MBs in size. Shortly I'll upload another show that features the best of our recent tearsheets.
I hope it's of interest!
One of the reasons I enjoy design:related is it enables me to interact with some of our overseas clients that I never have a chance to meet face to face. With our UK clients we visit them with our portfolio as often as time allows-this helps to show images that might not come in keyword searches-images that are about mood or emotion rather than subject. So what I've done is to upload one of our image shows-so that anybody who might be interested can down load it;
http://www.mediafire.com/?8v14xqyb41y
It's a recent Book publisher show-and features the best of our new images, that imho fit that area. You'd need Powerpoint to run it and the file is around 20MBs in size. Shortly I'll upload another show that features the best of our recent tearsheets.
I hope it's of interest!
Link: www.milim.com
A Collection Of Photography by Tina Hillier
Since graduating from the Arts Institute at Bournemouth with a degree in photography, Tina has been shooting for editorial publications such as The Guardian, Intersection, Day Four, Observer Escape and The Sunday Times Magazine and continues to work on personal projects both home and abroad.
While on assignment for Greenwood Guides in Southern Africa in 2006, Tina began working on the series entitled Grappling with the contents of Southern Africa. Referencing the elements of earth, water, wind and fire, this series evokes a powerful and compelling picture of the continent and tells the tale of a personal and startling journey of discovery. From the shanty towns of Kyalitsha to the dusty tracks of Kwazulu Natal there is a delicate lyricism to the documentary narrative and a constant and tangible connection with the red earth of Southern Africa.
Diary Extracts
First days in Africa, Kalk Bay, Cape Town, South Africa, August 2006
Dark storm clouds were assembling with razor sharp edges. We walked along the beach, the ocean’s graveyard, where the sea deposits the skins and the bones of the dead and the broken. At night the black sea crashes around in the darkness below my window, gathering up its forces, rolling rhythmically, violently over the rocks. I don’t sleep, unfamiliar with its nocturnal powers. Great white sharks patrol the bay where the icy arctic waters mingle with the balmy streams of the Indian Ocean, enticing a feast of mysterious creatures that gather to eat, and to be eaten. I stand under the hot shower and wonder for the first time what I’m doing here, and I notice the water spiralling the wrong way down the plughole.
It’s not until summer in October that we start to surf in the golden haze of the ocean, the sun sinking into the mountain behind us and in our delight we remain ever watchful for the sign of a fin breaking the water even when the shark flag is down.
KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, October 2006
Heading slowly, jerkily into the bush in the open landover, we are wrapped suddenly in the smells and the grasses, the silence and the great hum of animals, hiding and parading. Old trees grow out of dried-up riverbeds like wizards’ hands pointing their bony fingers to the skies. Their burnt-out branches form squiggling signatures tailing off into the white air and the older ones crumple into heaps, dried out and dusty as bones. The vegetation is probably similar to how it would have looked to a dinosaur.
When we finally arrive, God is hosting a disco with strobe lights on the adjacent mountain. The sky is filled with white flashes illuminating the raucous river that is greedily swallowing the water-filled sky. Tent zips dance in the rain.
For a time I am marooned in my canvas shelter. The rugs are drenched and the toilet looks hysterical, filling up with water under the trees. My belongings are piled onto my camp bed under which water rushes past, down the mountain, undeterred by human obstacles. Thunder cracks the sky open and I wander if my bed might take off down the river. Before long a young ranger rescues me with orders from Mark that we should all be in the main tent together. Relieved, we run-slip down the banks to join the others.
Mark calls me to the fireplace and tells me to follow him quietly to the kitchen, an extended awning from the main tent. Stacks of shelves are lined with Tupperware containers, cake tins and crockery. I lower my head to see onto the chest-height shelf and there, casually lying across the sugar tub, is a fat section of the largest python I have ever seen. The rest of it including its head is behind the cupboard housing the microwave. I feel an extraordinary urge to stroke it but Mark says I’ll frighten it away. I’m not sure the rest of us want it to stay and when he mentions the visiting black mamba who likes to sunbathe on the terrace, I quietly add him to my list of people gone mad in Africa.
Limpopo, South Africa, November 2006
The lioness marches cross-country. Striding with beautiful purpose, her black bobbing tale skims the grasses. A bewitching killing machine. The night fills with flying things, low swooping silent bats and moths the size of your hand that gather over the lanterns, entrenching themselves forever in melting candle wax like flies in amber. And I dream, almost every night, of leopards and lions. Their shadows flickering over the walls, their liquid eyes seeing straight through me. Rigid as a board, gripped by instinctive primeval fear, I listen to the hyenas whooping, the buffalo scratching his horns against my door and my raging heartbeat echoing around the roofless bamboo hut. Leopards climb trees, could climb into my room, could eat me alive. You hear many stories of people being eaten alive in the bush. Especially refugees crossing borders through National Parks, sleeping in trees, hunted by lionesses; on the run from bloody wars or poverty and starvation only to come face to face with the impassionate cycle of life and death in the wild, the rules of which are unchanged since the dawn of man.
Mozambique, January 2007
The air was hot like dragon’s breath and the red flame trees spat their petals into the cracks of the bulging pavements. The once grand colonial streets, resembling those in Portugal, are ruins now. Defiant trees wriggle their roots and branches beneath abandoned buildings reclaiming the land once more. Bewildering East German apartment blocks loom overhead and incongruous street names like Vladimir Lenin Avenue and Mao Tse Tong take their names from the communist era after the Portuguese left.
We asked where to go walking and the hotelier cocked his head and pointed his massive stubby fingers over our map saying ‘banditos here, banditos here, hmm… banditos here… all in here is ok.’ Exhausted after our bandit-fear walk we use the pool at The Holiday Inn and guiltily spend a dreamy afternoon chomping peanuts and sipping beers by a lagoon-shaped pool. I buy a wooden painted piranha from a man on the beach.
Everyone glows with sticky heat and in the blasting fans of the dorm, our pink and blue mosquito nets sway like jellyfish in the breeze. We lie every night in these stretched taught nets like shrouds and in the hottest hour one must decide between malaria and heat exhaustion. We share our dorm with Jimmy, a Mormon from Alabama who came to visit his girlfriend working for the African Peace Corps. They met in Utah while he was motorcycling across the States. They hadn’t seen each other for two years but 2 days after he arrived they broke up. He said he was just glad that she’d brought him to Africa.
We leave the next morning with two Danish filmmakers following the coast north. The earth is red, flanked by thick green foliage and people walking. Stoic women in vivid colours march majestically, balancing bowls of bananas on their heads and most are with bobbing bright bundles strapped to their backs with babies’ arms and legs sticking out of the sides, their curious eyes blinking around them.
Night falls suddenly as it always does in Africa and a whisper of a cloud drapes itself over the moon like a shawl. The tarmac unfolds before us, riddled with gaping potholes like bottomless empty puddles swerving us violently from side to side. People are still walking home in the moonlight and before us stretch hours of blackness, accompanied by swarms of white moths fluttering across the windscreen.
Harare, Zimbabwe, February 2007
We are staying in a highly recommended hostel, although when we arrive it has clearly become a refuge centre for locals and lunatics. The place is filthy and a mad man with wild darting eyes and missing teeth, whom they call Tarzan, lives in a tree house in the garden. John, a big gruff white man in his sixties, paces around in checked shorts with his photo album under his arm ready to dictate his life story to anybody who sits down. He is a mechanical engineer with $20,000 Zimbabwe dollars to his name, now worth about £2. He hasn’t had work for months and lives on squashes a local farmer gives him. With 80% of the population unemployed, jobs are scarce even for highly skilled workers. Tracey appears to run the roost. She has big plastic glasses, an enormous video collection amassed from the video shop she used to work in and three bright children under 12, vying for our attention. The red-haired boy looks after the cats and when they’re fat enough, John says they’ll eat them, although I’m not sure if he’s joking or not. Tracey is home-schooling the kids, although she works as a receptionist up the road, so mostly they are self-taught. The phone lines are down, electricity is patchy and petrol has become a rare luxury. Supermarkets’ shelves are often empty and food prices can change on a daily basis. When we asked if they had any cheese, customers and cashiers stared at us. In fact they did have some but it was so expensive we didn’t buy it. They say they just get used to doing without, seemingly succumbed to the reality of their collapsing country.
We leave Harare, driving past Mugabe’s estate, where several people have been shot for driving past at the wrong time of day. And head south to Great Zimbabwe, the greatest ruins found in Sub-Saharan Africa. We stay in the grounds, in concrete rooms designed for school parties for a whopping US$15 each for our mosquito-ridden cell with plastic mattresses and no sheets. The enormous, sprawling 5-star hotel lies gapingly dormant across the fields. The rotting rooms lie waiting for another era. We are the first tourists they’ve had in months, and still they don’t let us stay there, not for our $15. The bush surrounding our hut gives us the creeps. The atmosphere is menacingly deserted. We lock our cell at night, despite the sweaty airless heat. If we buy a beer at the bar we are allowed to use the hotel pool, which is miraculously still in use. I am lying in the sun on the lawn with giant yellow leaves falling around me and listening to the fluffy grey vervet monkeys bashing about in the palm trees. They appear to have taken over the hotel gardens and leap around us, sounding like miniature horses galloping over the springy grasses, their long black hands and feet tucked beneath them. I rescue a mouse, a lizard and a toad from the pool. I stare into the toad’s bulging eyes, he looks like a crocodile.
Later that evening we have to change money on the black market, a frightening affair that often leaves people in jail. The petite black waitress comes over with a silver teapot and asks us under her breath how much we want to change. I ask her if it’s safe, unsure of whether she is even safe. No, she replies and tells us we must go to her office but not together and with that she disappears into the darkness. M and I deliberate whether we should go or whether it is a set-up. We decide nothing can be proved until money changes hands so M decides to go and investigate and I stay at the table and look casual to brush off any suspicions. As M approaches the office she overhears the waitress talking to a man in some bushes. It is becoming horribly like a movie but M finally returns with Zimbabwe dollars. We leave the next morning for South Africa, a place that has become in our minds a land of milk and honey, just as it has for the 3000 Zimbabweans fleeing the country every day, totalling an estimated 3 million who have fled to South Africa, in search of work and hope for some kind of future.
Last Days in Africa
Muizenberg, South Africa, February 2007
The mountain behind our house is on fire. We lie awake in our beds listening to the cracking wrath of nature. In the dark it’s too dangerous to be extinguished, the flames feeding off the branches of the one-hundred-year-old milk wood trees. In my mind I see miles of red dusty villages, pierced by electric purple jacaranda trees and clusters of thatched Zulu rondavels. All along the roads there are school children walking, sometimes 3 or 5 hours to get to their classes and sometimes we give them lifts. Heading towards the coast, beehive huts lie in the dip of the dunes. Stubby green plants protect sugar-white sand up to the water’s edge, where it sinks like a carpet beneath glass-clear water. Memories of diving; our group like dancers of the sea, moving slowly, weightlessly through a city of fish. Giant morays like ancient dragons opening their massive mouths. Drifting with the current into a shoal of silver, a moment of shimmering delicate scales, fins and eyes. Soaring over the edge of a reef like flying off a mountain. The whale shark with white spots on its back hovers beneath me, huge and harmless. And the dolphins emitting their high-pitched sonar codes I can’t understand before their fragile white bodies glide away from me, disappearing into the depths of the turquoise fog.
Since graduating from the Arts Institute at Bournemouth with a degree in photography, Tina has been shooting for editorial publications such as The Guardian, Intersection, Day Four, Observer Escape and The Sunday Times Magazine and continues to work on personal projects both home and abroad.
While on assignment for Greenwood Guides in Southern Africa in 2006, Tina began working on the series entitled Grappling with the contents of Southern Africa. Referencing the elements of earth, water, wind and fire, this series evokes a powerful and compelling picture of the continent and tells the tale of a personal and startling journey of discovery. From the shanty towns of Kyalitsha to the dusty tracks of Kwazulu Natal there is a delicate lyricism to the documentary narrative and a constant and tangible connection with the red earth of Southern Africa.
Diary Extracts
First days in Africa, Kalk Bay, Cape Town, South Africa, August 2006
Dark storm clouds were assembling with razor sharp edges. We walked along the beach, the ocean’s graveyard, where the sea deposits the skins and the bones of the dead and the broken. At night the black sea crashes around in the darkness below my window, gathering up its forces, rolling rhythmically, violently over the rocks. I don’t sleep, unfamiliar with its nocturnal powers. Great white sharks patrol the bay where the icy arctic waters mingle with the balmy streams of the Indian Ocean, enticing a feast of mysterious creatures that gather to eat, and to be eaten. I stand under the hot shower and wonder for the first time what I’m doing here, and I notice the water spiralling the wrong way down the plughole.
It’s not until summer in October that we start to surf in the golden haze of the ocean, the sun sinking into the mountain behind us and in our delight we remain ever watchful for the sign of a fin breaking the water even when the shark flag is down.
KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, October 2006
Heading slowly, jerkily into the bush in the open landover, we are wrapped suddenly in the smells and the grasses, the silence and the great hum of animals, hiding and parading. Old trees grow out of dried-up riverbeds like wizards’ hands pointing their bony fingers to the skies. Their burnt-out branches form squiggling signatures tailing off into the white air and the older ones crumple into heaps, dried out and dusty as bones. The vegetation is probably similar to how it would have looked to a dinosaur.
When we finally arrive, God is hosting a disco with strobe lights on the adjacent mountain. The sky is filled with white flashes illuminating the raucous river that is greedily swallowing the water-filled sky. Tent zips dance in the rain.
For a time I am marooned in my canvas shelter. The rugs are drenched and the toilet looks hysterical, filling up with water under the trees. My belongings are piled onto my camp bed under which water rushes past, down the mountain, undeterred by human obstacles. Thunder cracks the sky open and I wander if my bed might take off down the river. Before long a young ranger rescues me with orders from Mark that we should all be in the main tent together. Relieved, we run-slip down the banks to join the others.
Mark calls me to the fireplace and tells me to follow him quietly to the kitchen, an extended awning from the main tent. Stacks of shelves are lined with Tupperware containers, cake tins and crockery. I lower my head to see onto the chest-height shelf and there, casually lying across the sugar tub, is a fat section of the largest python I have ever seen. The rest of it including its head is behind the cupboard housing the microwave. I feel an extraordinary urge to stroke it but Mark says I’ll frighten it away. I’m not sure the rest of us want it to stay and when he mentions the visiting black mamba who likes to sunbathe on the terrace, I quietly add him to my list of people gone mad in Africa.
Limpopo, South Africa, November 2006
The lioness marches cross-country. Striding with beautiful purpose, her black bobbing tale skims the grasses. A bewitching killing machine. The night fills with flying things, low swooping silent bats and moths the size of your hand that gather over the lanterns, entrenching themselves forever in melting candle wax like flies in amber. And I dream, almost every night, of leopards and lions. Their shadows flickering over the walls, their liquid eyes seeing straight through me. Rigid as a board, gripped by instinctive primeval fear, I listen to the hyenas whooping, the buffalo scratching his horns against my door and my raging heartbeat echoing around the roofless bamboo hut. Leopards climb trees, could climb into my room, could eat me alive. You hear many stories of people being eaten alive in the bush. Especially refugees crossing borders through National Parks, sleeping in trees, hunted by lionesses; on the run from bloody wars or poverty and starvation only to come face to face with the impassionate cycle of life and death in the wild, the rules of which are unchanged since the dawn of man.
Mozambique, January 2007
The air was hot like dragon’s breath and the red flame trees spat their petals into the cracks of the bulging pavements. The once grand colonial streets, resembling those in Portugal, are ruins now. Defiant trees wriggle their roots and branches beneath abandoned buildings reclaiming the land once more. Bewildering East German apartment blocks loom overhead and incongruous street names like Vladimir Lenin Avenue and Mao Tse Tong take their names from the communist era after the Portuguese left.
We asked where to go walking and the hotelier cocked his head and pointed his massive stubby fingers over our map saying ‘banditos here, banditos here, hmm… banditos here… all in here is ok.’ Exhausted after our bandit-fear walk we use the pool at The Holiday Inn and guiltily spend a dreamy afternoon chomping peanuts and sipping beers by a lagoon-shaped pool. I buy a wooden painted piranha from a man on the beach.
Everyone glows with sticky heat and in the blasting fans of the dorm, our pink and blue mosquito nets sway like jellyfish in the breeze. We lie every night in these stretched taught nets like shrouds and in the hottest hour one must decide between malaria and heat exhaustion. We share our dorm with Jimmy, a Mormon from Alabama who came to visit his girlfriend working for the African Peace Corps. They met in Utah while he was motorcycling across the States. They hadn’t seen each other for two years but 2 days after he arrived they broke up. He said he was just glad that she’d brought him to Africa.
We leave the next morning with two Danish filmmakers following the coast north. The earth is red, flanked by thick green foliage and people walking. Stoic women in vivid colours march majestically, balancing bowls of bananas on their heads and most are with bobbing bright bundles strapped to their backs with babies’ arms and legs sticking out of the sides, their curious eyes blinking around them.
Night falls suddenly as it always does in Africa and a whisper of a cloud drapes itself over the moon like a shawl. The tarmac unfolds before us, riddled with gaping potholes like bottomless empty puddles swerving us violently from side to side. People are still walking home in the moonlight and before us stretch hours of blackness, accompanied by swarms of white moths fluttering across the windscreen.
Harare, Zimbabwe, February 2007
We are staying in a highly recommended hostel, although when we arrive it has clearly become a refuge centre for locals and lunatics. The place is filthy and a mad man with wild darting eyes and missing teeth, whom they call Tarzan, lives in a tree house in the garden. John, a big gruff white man in his sixties, paces around in checked shorts with his photo album under his arm ready to dictate his life story to anybody who sits down. He is a mechanical engineer with $20,000 Zimbabwe dollars to his name, now worth about £2. He hasn’t had work for months and lives on squashes a local farmer gives him. With 80% of the population unemployed, jobs are scarce even for highly skilled workers. Tracey appears to run the roost. She has big plastic glasses, an enormous video collection amassed from the video shop she used to work in and three bright children under 12, vying for our attention. The red-haired boy looks after the cats and when they’re fat enough, John says they’ll eat them, although I’m not sure if he’s joking or not. Tracey is home-schooling the kids, although she works as a receptionist up the road, so mostly they are self-taught. The phone lines are down, electricity is patchy and petrol has become a rare luxury. Supermarkets’ shelves are often empty and food prices can change on a daily basis. When we asked if they had any cheese, customers and cashiers stared at us. In fact they did have some but it was so expensive we didn’t buy it. They say they just get used to doing without, seemingly succumbed to the reality of their collapsing country.
We leave Harare, driving past Mugabe’s estate, where several people have been shot for driving past at the wrong time of day. And head south to Great Zimbabwe, the greatest ruins found in Sub-Saharan Africa. We stay in the grounds, in concrete rooms designed for school parties for a whopping US$15 each for our mosquito-ridden cell with plastic mattresses and no sheets. The enormous, sprawling 5-star hotel lies gapingly dormant across the fields. The rotting rooms lie waiting for another era. We are the first tourists they’ve had in months, and still they don’t let us stay there, not for our $15. The bush surrounding our hut gives us the creeps. The atmosphere is menacingly deserted. We lock our cell at night, despite the sweaty airless heat. If we buy a beer at the bar we are allowed to use the hotel pool, which is miraculously still in use. I am lying in the sun on the lawn with giant yellow leaves falling around me and listening to the fluffy grey vervet monkeys bashing about in the palm trees. They appear to have taken over the hotel gardens and leap around us, sounding like miniature horses galloping over the springy grasses, their long black hands and feet tucked beneath them. I rescue a mouse, a lizard and a toad from the pool. I stare into the toad’s bulging eyes, he looks like a crocodile.
Later that evening we have to change money on the black market, a frightening affair that often leaves people in jail. The petite black waitress comes over with a silver teapot and asks us under her breath how much we want to change. I ask her if it’s safe, unsure of whether she is even safe. No, she replies and tells us we must go to her office but not together and with that she disappears into the darkness. M and I deliberate whether we should go or whether it is a set-up. We decide nothing can be proved until money changes hands so M decides to go and investigate and I stay at the table and look casual to brush off any suspicions. As M approaches the office she overhears the waitress talking to a man in some bushes. It is becoming horribly like a movie but M finally returns with Zimbabwe dollars. We leave the next morning for South Africa, a place that has become in our minds a land of milk and honey, just as it has for the 3000 Zimbabweans fleeing the country every day, totalling an estimated 3 million who have fled to South Africa, in search of work and hope for some kind of future.
Last Days in Africa
Muizenberg, South Africa, February 2007
The mountain behind our house is on fire. We lie awake in our beds listening to the cracking wrath of nature. In the dark it’s too dangerous to be extinguished, the flames feeding off the branches of the one-hundred-year-old milk wood trees. In my mind I see miles of red dusty villages, pierced by electric purple jacaranda trees and clusters of thatched Zulu rondavels. All along the roads there are school children walking, sometimes 3 or 5 hours to get to their classes and sometimes we give them lifts. Heading towards the coast, beehive huts lie in the dip of the dunes. Stubby green plants protect sugar-white sand up to the water’s edge, where it sinks like a carpet beneath glass-clear water. Memories of diving; our group like dancers of the sea, moving slowly, weightlessly through a city of fish. Giant morays like ancient dragons opening their massive mouths. Drifting with the current into a shoal of silver, a moment of shimmering delicate scales, fins and eyes. Soaring over the edge of a reef like flying off a mountain. The whale shark with white spots on its back hovers beneath me, huge and harmless. And the dolphins emitting their high-pitched sonar codes I can’t understand before their fragile white bodies glide away from me, disappearing into the depths of the turquoise fog.
Sixty Degrees North By Phil Brooks
To say "we leave for the North tonight" brings immediate thoughts of a harder place, a place of dearth: uplands, adverse weather, remoteness from cities... To say "we leave for the South" brings associations of traveling for pleasure... (Davidson 2005: 9) by Peter Davidson taken from The Idea of North
You can see a portfolio of Phil's work at http://www.milim.com/new-work.php
Phil Brooks has always been fascinated by the idea of the North and the appeal of cold, often inhospitable environments. After considering how “the North” might be defined, Phil decided to explore those countries, landscapes and communities that could be found 60 degrees north of the equator. He then embarked upon a physical and spiritual journey that began on the Siberian border with Norway, through Scandinavia, to the Scottish Islands including Orkney, and Shetland’s remote island of Foula, which is missed off many maps. He then continued on to the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Northern Canada and Southern Alaska. It is important to say that the journey is not yet complete. Phil still intends to visit Siberia to more fully complete this project.
Through Phil’s extraordinary photographs, we are able to share some of his experiences and to develop a greater understanding of the lands and the people who occupy this northernmost part of the world. Whilst on the one hand, we can revel in the awe-inspiring, sublime landscapes he encountered on his journey; we are also introduced to individuals and communities he met along the way. Through these compelling images, Phil raises questions about stereotyping and westernization. Overall, his work reveals the complexity of this environment and his own passion and affinity for “the North”.
The work is currently on show at The New Art Gallery Walsall;
Gallery Square
Walsall
WS2 8LG
United Kingdom
6/6/2008---27/7/2008
Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm Sunday 11am to 4pm
A publication accompanies this exhibition and is available from the Gallery at a price of £6.50. The publication has been supported by the University of Wolverhampton.
Phil Brook's Biography-Awards/ Publications/ Exhibitions:2007-Three-page personal article/images, British Journal of Photography (28/2), 60 degrees north. 2003 - Emerging Young Artists Exhibition, Birmingham, 60 degrees north.- Solo exhibition, 60 degrees north, The Now Gallery, Birmingham. 2000 - Lapland publication, 6 pages, ‘Foto magazine’, Germany. 1999 - Full-page article, The Scotsman (3/4), `Lords of the Arctic`. 1998 - Exhibition, Alchemy Gallery, London; Exhibition, Street Level Gallery, Glasgow, (LPA). - Publication and review, Practical Photography.- Exhibition, Bates Gallery, Frankfurt, (LPA). 1997 - Overall winner of the International, `London Photographic Awards.'- Double-page feature London Photographic Awards Book.- Full-page feature, British Journal of Photography-1996 - Double-page feature, Point 33 Book, published in Edinburgh. - Exhibition`Europe's Forgotten People', The Electric Frog, The Edinburgh Festival-1995 -Exhibition, The Electric Frog, Edinburgh-91/92 -Midland Region Award, Portraiture, 2nd place, B.I.P.P / Youngest Licentiate of the B.I.P.P.-1988 -Student Year Prize (Kentmere Ltd).
To say "we leave for the North tonight" brings immediate thoughts of a harder place, a place of dearth: uplands, adverse weather, remoteness from cities... To say "we leave for the South" brings associations of traveling for pleasure... (Davidson 2005: 9) by Peter Davidson taken from The Idea of North
You can see a portfolio of Phil's work at http://www.milim.com/new-work.php
Phil Brooks has always been fascinated by the idea of the North and the appeal of cold, often inhospitable environments. After considering how “the North” might be defined, Phil decided to explore those countries, landscapes and communities that could be found 60 degrees north of the equator. He then embarked upon a physical and spiritual journey that began on the Siberian border with Norway, through Scandinavia, to the Scottish Islands including Orkney, and Shetland’s remote island of Foula, which is missed off many maps. He then continued on to the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Northern Canada and Southern Alaska. It is important to say that the journey is not yet complete. Phil still intends to visit Siberia to more fully complete this project.
Through Phil’s extraordinary photographs, we are able to share some of his experiences and to develop a greater understanding of the lands and the people who occupy this northernmost part of the world. Whilst on the one hand, we can revel in the awe-inspiring, sublime landscapes he encountered on his journey; we are also introduced to individuals and communities he met along the way. Through these compelling images, Phil raises questions about stereotyping and westernization. Overall, his work reveals the complexity of this environment and his own passion and affinity for “the North”.
The work is currently on show at The New Art Gallery Walsall;
Gallery Square
Walsall
WS2 8LG
United Kingdom
6/6/2008---27/7/2008
Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm Sunday 11am to 4pm
A publication accompanies this exhibition and is available from the Gallery at a price of £6.50. The publication has been supported by the University of Wolverhampton.
Phil Brook's Biography-Awards/ Publications/ Exhibitions:2007-Three-page personal article/images, British Journal of Photography (28/2), 60 degrees north. 2003 - Emerging Young Artists Exhibition, Birmingham, 60 degrees north.- Solo exhibition, 60 degrees north, The Now Gallery, Birmingham. 2000 - Lapland publication, 6 pages, ‘Foto magazine’, Germany. 1999 - Full-page article, The Scotsman (3/4), `Lords of the Arctic`. 1998 - Exhibition, Alchemy Gallery, London; Exhibition, Street Level Gallery, Glasgow, (LPA). - Publication and review, Practical Photography.- Exhibition, Bates Gallery, Frankfurt, (LPA). 1997 - Overall winner of the International, `London Photographic Awards.'- Double-page feature London Photographic Awards Book.- Full-page feature, British Journal of Photography-1996 - Double-page feature, Point 33 Book, published in Edinburgh. - Exhibition`Europe's Forgotten People', The Electric Frog, The Edinburgh Festival-1995 -Exhibition, The Electric Frog, Edinburgh-91/92 -Midland Region Award, Portraiture, 2nd place, B.I.P.P / Youngest Licentiate of the B.I.P.P.-1988 -Student Year Prize (Kentmere Ltd).
CHANGING SPACES
CHANGING SPACES:
Laura Braun
Simon Rowe
Mandy Lee Jandrell
Isidro Ramirez
Gregor Stephan
16 May – 21 June 2008
Private View
Thursday 15 May, 18:30 – 21:00
FREE BAR UNTIL 19:30
This exhibition brings together five recent Goldsmiths’ MA graduates whose work addresses the changing nature of urban space. The exhibition reflects on a range of visual styles, narratives and research methodologies drawing on documentary, fine art and landscape practices. Admission free, open Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 6pm, and on Thursday evening by appointment only.
Changing Spaces is part of the Urban Encounters programme, developed in collaboration with Goldsmiths College, and includes a 2 day conference, a series of workshops, gallery talks and curated walks that explore photography and urbanism.
Curated Walks
Sunday 18 May 2008, 12.00 – 2.00pm. £15 (please contact gallery for meeting place)
Choice of three curated walks which explore the cultural and historic nature of London’s urban spaces from a visual, sociological and literary perspective:
i. Smithfield: Led by Giles Lane; ii. Deptford to Greenwich: Led by Simon Rowe & Ben Gidley;
iii. Crystal Palace: Led by Ingrid Pollard
Shot in the Dark
Thurs 29 May 2008,7.15pm. £10 (£8.50 Students, Photofusion & LIP members)
Illustrated talk and practical demonstrations exploring different approaches to photographing the city at night. Speakers Stephen McLaren, Richard Primrose, Maciej Dakowicz, Robin Maddock.
Gallery Talk
Tuesday 17th June 2008, 7.15. £5 (£3.50 Students, Photofusion & LIP members)
Caroline Knowles will lead a tour of the exhibition with the photographers. Caroline is a Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths and a widely published author.
Night Vision
Fri 20th June 2008, 11.00pm – 04.00am. £20 (£18 Students, Photofusion & LIP members)
This four mile night walk, led by photographer Stephen McLaren, takes advantage of the late sunset and early sunrise of the summer solstice and offers on-hand tutoring along the way. Starting at Blackfriars Bridge, the walk will end at Primrose Hill.
Programme curators: Paul Halliday and Catherine Williams
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PHOTOFUSION
17A Electric Lane
London
SW9 8LA
ONE MINUTE FROM BRIXTON TUBE
w: Weblink
e: gallery@photofusion.org
t: 020 7738 5774
CHANGING SPACES:
Laura Braun
Simon Rowe
Mandy Lee Jandrell
Isidro Ramirez
Gregor Stephan
16 May – 21 June 2008
Private View
Thursday 15 May, 18:30 – 21:00
FREE BAR UNTIL 19:30
This exhibition brings together five recent Goldsmiths’ MA graduates whose work addresses the changing nature of urban space. The exhibition reflects on a range of visual styles, narratives and research methodologies drawing on documentary, fine art and landscape practices. Admission free, open Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 6pm, and on Thursday evening by appointment only.
Changing Spaces is part of the Urban Encounters programme, developed in collaboration with Goldsmiths College, and includes a 2 day conference, a series of workshops, gallery talks and curated walks that explore photography and urbanism.
Curated Walks
Sunday 18 May 2008, 12.00 – 2.00pm. £15 (please contact gallery for meeting place)
Choice of three curated walks which explore the cultural and historic nature of London’s urban spaces from a visual, sociological and literary perspective:
i. Smithfield: Led by Giles Lane; ii. Deptford to Greenwich: Led by Simon Rowe & Ben Gidley;
iii. Crystal Palace: Led by Ingrid Pollard
Shot in the Dark
Thurs 29 May 2008,7.15pm. £10 (£8.50 Students, Photofusion & LIP members)
Illustrated talk and practical demonstrations exploring different approaches to photographing the city at night. Speakers Stephen McLaren, Richard Primrose, Maciej Dakowicz, Robin Maddock.
Gallery Talk
Tuesday 17th June 2008, 7.15. £5 (£3.50 Students, Photofusion & LIP members)
Caroline Knowles will lead a tour of the exhibition with the photographers. Caroline is a Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths and a widely published author.
Night Vision
Fri 20th June 2008, 11.00pm – 04.00am. £20 (£18 Students, Photofusion & LIP members)
This four mile night walk, led by photographer Stephen McLaren, takes advantage of the late sunset and early sunrise of the summer solstice and offers on-hand tutoring along the way. Starting at Blackfriars Bridge, the walk will end at Primrose Hill.
Programme curators: Paul Halliday and Catherine Williams
--
PHOTOFUSION
17A Electric Lane
London
SW9 8LA
ONE MINUTE FROM BRIXTON TUBE
w: Weblink
e: gallery@photofusion.org
t: 020 7738 5774
The Vanishing Of The Images By Florian Beckers
My work is about photographic images that emerge from darkness and disappear partly into it again. The world in the images seems to be shrouded in permanently retreating darkness. In some cases the process will be pushed to the limit of visibility. But the vanishing of material recognizability has its own character of announcement, like the showing of it. In other photographs the vanishing will be defined as a central theme by the content or the subject. Space and time can no longer be registered. This creates a field of tension between illusion of three dimensionality and surface, between representationalism and abstraction, between documentary realism and fiction.
In some images the "fragments of reality" will be reduced to an almost complete vanishing of reality. How much must be shown to the observer in order to make a notion of reality visible. I understand my work as plumbing the the limits of the medium photography. By that I understand an omission, a veiling, a covering, but not the complete elimination of material representation. The things which are just visible serve only to trigger off something that exists beyond reproduction but means the essential. The process of reduction, of the taking away, of blocking out induces a process of decoding in which the observer is included. The images can thus only disclose themselves to the observer himself. They must be completed by the power of his imagination.
Text by Florian Beckers
You can see a portfolio of Florian's work at Here
Florian Beckers:Born in Düsseldorf, Germany 1971, "Abitur" in Düsseldorf, Germany 1990, Half-year of practical training in the printing works "Tiefdruck Schwann-Bagel" in Düsseldorf and Mönchengladbach, Germany 1990 - 91, Compulsory community service 1991 - 92, Photography studies at the "Folkwangschule" (University GHS Essen, Germany) 1992 - 99, During study period practical training at the "Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln", the photographer Wim Cox in Cologne and activities as assistant with various photographers in Germany, Graduation with distinction (Prof. Osswald and Prof. Wippermann) October 1999, Freelance artist and photographer from 1999, Residence in Barcelona, Spain ("Villa Massimo"-scholarship) 2001
Selected Awards:-2005: "Descubrimientos 2005“, Photo Espana, Spain; Final „Fringe Prize“, Voies Off Festival, Arles, France 2004: Recognition "Marianne Brandt-Prize“ in Chemnitz, Germany; Selection-Title "German Photobook-Prize 2004“ in Stuttgart, Germany; Scholarship of the Foundation for art and culture NRW, Germany 2003: Nomination for the „Umbo-PhotoArtPrize“ in Lippstadt, Germany 2001: Main Prize „PhotoVision“ from the publishing house „Photographie“ in Düsseldorf, Germany; „Staatspreis NRW“ of the departure NRW, Germany;
"Villa Massimo-Prize“ from the ministry of culture in NRW, Germany 2000: "Reinhart Wolf-Award“ of the Reinhart Wolf -Foundation in Hamburg, Germany; Main Prize of the Society for Photography in Berlin, Germany 1997: "Carl Lauterbach-Prize“ of the Carl Lauterbach-Foundation in Düsseldorf, Germany
Selected Publications Include:- 2005:"Photosummer Stuttgart” (Text: Dr. Andrea Jahn), Edition Braus/Publishing House Wachter, Bönningheim (Germany) 2004: “The poetry of the functional” – International Marianne Brandt Contest 2004; Industriemuseum Chemnitz, Chemnitz (Germany) 2003: “Umbo – Photoartprize” (Text: Prof. Dr. Herbert Molderings), Atelierschiff Frankfurt, Frankfurt a.M. ( Germany) 2003: “Florian Beckers: The cathedral of Xanten – Secrets of a space” (Text: Prof. Klaus Honnef); Publishing House Boss, Kleve ( Germany) 2003: “Florian Beckers – Photographs”, Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf (Text: Dr. Werner Alberg); Publishing House Richter, Düsseldorf (Germany) 2001: “manu factum 2001”, catalogue of the Niederrheinisches Museum Kevelaer, Kevelaer ( Germany) 2000: “100 images of the year 1999”, catalogue of the Society for Photography Berlin; Marianne – Publishing House, Berlin ( Germany); 2000.
Selected Individual Shows Include:-2005: Gallery Alfred Böttger, Bonn, Germany; Gallery "Bij de Boeken", Ulft, Netherlands; Gallery Andrea Brenner, Düsseldorf, Germany; Galeria Sicart, Barcelona, Spain 2004: Technical Museum of Slowakia, Kosice, Slowakia 2003:Regionalmuseum Xanten, Germany; Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf, Germany; 1997:Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf, Germany
My work is about photographic images that emerge from darkness and disappear partly into it again. The world in the images seems to be shrouded in permanently retreating darkness. In some cases the process will be pushed to the limit of visibility. But the vanishing of material recognizability has its own character of announcement, like the showing of it. In other photographs the vanishing will be defined as a central theme by the content or the subject. Space and time can no longer be registered. This creates a field of tension between illusion of three dimensionality and surface, between representationalism and abstraction, between documentary realism and fiction.
In some images the "fragments of reality" will be reduced to an almost complete vanishing of reality. How much must be shown to the observer in order to make a notion of reality visible. I understand my work as plumbing the the limits of the medium photography. By that I understand an omission, a veiling, a covering, but not the complete elimination of material representation. The things which are just visible serve only to trigger off something that exists beyond reproduction but means the essential. The process of reduction, of the taking away, of blocking out induces a process of decoding in which the observer is included. The images can thus only disclose themselves to the observer himself. They must be completed by the power of his imagination.
Text by Florian Beckers
You can see a portfolio of Florian's work at Here
Florian Beckers:Born in Düsseldorf, Germany 1971, "Abitur" in Düsseldorf, Germany 1990, Half-year of practical training in the printing works "Tiefdruck Schwann-Bagel" in Düsseldorf and Mönchengladbach, Germany 1990 - 91, Compulsory community service 1991 - 92, Photography studies at the "Folkwangschule" (University GHS Essen, Germany) 1992 - 99, During study period practical training at the "Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln", the photographer Wim Cox in Cologne and activities as assistant with various photographers in Germany, Graduation with distinction (Prof. Osswald and Prof. Wippermann) October 1999, Freelance artist and photographer from 1999, Residence in Barcelona, Spain ("Villa Massimo"-scholarship) 2001
Selected Awards:-2005: "Descubrimientos 2005“, Photo Espana, Spain; Final „Fringe Prize“, Voies Off Festival, Arles, France 2004: Recognition "Marianne Brandt-Prize“ in Chemnitz, Germany; Selection-Title "German Photobook-Prize 2004“ in Stuttgart, Germany; Scholarship of the Foundation for art and culture NRW, Germany 2003: Nomination for the „Umbo-PhotoArtPrize“ in Lippstadt, Germany 2001: Main Prize „PhotoVision“ from the publishing house „Photographie“ in Düsseldorf, Germany; „Staatspreis NRW“ of the departure NRW, Germany;
"Villa Massimo-Prize“ from the ministry of culture in NRW, Germany 2000: "Reinhart Wolf-Award“ of the Reinhart Wolf -Foundation in Hamburg, Germany; Main Prize of the Society for Photography in Berlin, Germany 1997: "Carl Lauterbach-Prize“ of the Carl Lauterbach-Foundation in Düsseldorf, Germany
Selected Publications Include:- 2005:"Photosummer Stuttgart” (Text: Dr. Andrea Jahn), Edition Braus/Publishing House Wachter, Bönningheim (Germany) 2004: “The poetry of the functional” – International Marianne Brandt Contest 2004; Industriemuseum Chemnitz, Chemnitz (Germany) 2003: “Umbo – Photoartprize” (Text: Prof. Dr. Herbert Molderings), Atelierschiff Frankfurt, Frankfurt a.M. ( Germany) 2003: “Florian Beckers: The cathedral of Xanten – Secrets of a space” (Text: Prof. Klaus Honnef); Publishing House Boss, Kleve ( Germany) 2003: “Florian Beckers – Photographs”, Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf (Text: Dr. Werner Alberg); Publishing House Richter, Düsseldorf (Germany) 2001: “manu factum 2001”, catalogue of the Niederrheinisches Museum Kevelaer, Kevelaer ( Germany) 2000: “100 images of the year 1999”, catalogue of the Society for Photography Berlin; Marianne – Publishing House, Berlin ( Germany); 2000.
Selected Individual Shows Include:-2005: Gallery Alfred Böttger, Bonn, Germany; Gallery "Bij de Boeken", Ulft, Netherlands; Gallery Andrea Brenner, Düsseldorf, Germany; Galeria Sicart, Barcelona, Spain 2004: Technical Museum of Slowakia, Kosice, Slowakia 2003:Regionalmuseum Xanten, Germany; Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf, Germany; 1997:Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf, Germany
Link: http://www.milim.com
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