Bohm hits Manchester Gallery

@mcrartgallery It reads like a WWII headline but the Bohm in question is Dorothy Bohm.  In the days of the war in 1942 she exploded onto the photography scene in Manchester having graduated from the College of Technology, working in a leading studio of the time and ultimately opening her own 'Studio Alexandria' a few years later.

Currently on show in Manchester Art Gallery, Dorothy's work is displayed from her early days through to her latest pieces, spanning an incredible 60 years.  The scope and scale of the exhibition gives us a glimpse of a fascinating and talented individual as we are given the opportunity to travel with them through their professional career whilst giving us a fresh perspective of cultural change across more than half a century.

 Written across the walls of the exhibition are Dorothy's words, capturing the beating heart of her craft. This is highlighted most profoundly in a quote reflecting her deep psychological and emotional connection to her work and a desire to understand and capture the transience of beauty.
"The photograph fulfils my deep need to stop things from disappearing. It makes transience less painful and retains some of the special magic, which I have looked for and found. I have tried to create order out of chaos, to find stability in flux and beauty in the most unlikely places."

Perhaps in her most recent colour works this statement rings most true, where the feeling has shifted from tonally beautiful representations of people and places through to a more abstract, subjective beauty from the arrangements of colours, shapes and textures of scenes where it seemed least obvious.  Leaving the prints untouched of any enhancements adds to this innate beauty she strives to capture.

Throughout much of her career she focused on black and white, with little attention to colour, moving away from portraiture to open air 'street' photography which she nurtured in Switzerland.  Interestingly, despite this transition she still maintained the 'human presence' as the main focus of her work.

For us today, viewing her work gives us glimpses into a changing world, both at home and abroad, with it's changing people and places.   This is emphasised further by her own transition from black and white to colour, which she finally adopted in the 80's after visiting the colour-soaked continent of Asia, sparking a new era in her illustrious career.

The exhibition is on at Manchester City Art Gallery @mcrartgallery until 30th August.

Dorothy Bohm Website
Manchester Art Gallery 

J J J J R

OK, so sadly I won't be writing about the music producer J.R. Rotem, who you may have heard in a whole host of songs combining 1 to 3 elements of 'J.J.J.J.R', a large air-horn or 'Beluga Heights'.

No instead I'm talking about JR, the French 'pioneering' photographer, 'pioneering' perhaps as much in his political motivations and ideals as he is a visualist and artist.

He's responsible for some incredible 'installations'...well, more 'mega-prints' in the biggest art gallery in the world:  The planet is his canvas.  Just like his prints, his lens isn't focused on the ordinary or the conventional. His website biog states that his work  fuses "Art and Act, talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit."  After kick-starting his photographic career capturing the portraits of Parisian gangsters and displaying them  in the bourgeoisie districts, JR was always going to continue to make bold, politically and culturally subversive statements. The boldest of all being his 'Face to Face' project. It was largest illegal photography exhibition ever, putting photographs of Israeli and Palestinian faces side by side in cities either side of the border as well as either side of the fence that separates them.
More recently his 'Women' project aimed to represent and highlight the dignity of women who are the target of conflicts.  As with much of his work, once the original 'exhibitions' have been completed, from walls in India, trains and bridges in Kenya to the hill slums of Brazil, it's taken to European cities to be displayed and reinterpreted. The 'Women' photography was displayed along the Seine and there is a video on the site which captures its creation and its passing.

In many ways JR's work is about hope. It's about representing the unrepresented and those discriminated against (rightly or wrongly) in such a way as to be provocative and challenging.  The focus and placement of his work forces the observer to remove the boundaries of subject and object.  More than that, there is a humour in his work that subverts any political or cultural discrimination of the subjects and for that reason he creates a glimmer of a changed world for just a flitting moment.  The disposability of his installations, on piles of bricks, soon-to-be-demolished buildings', highlight the transience of these moments and are brilliantly summed up by the final piece of the Women exhibition washing into the gutter in Paris. (See video on his homepage [below]).

Whether I keep being drawn to the anonymous type or its just a popular artist's marketing trend, JR is another one keeping his identity a secret.  If the work that Bansky, Miss Bugs and JR produce is anything to go by, I'm looking forward to finding some more of the 'shy artist' types.

J.R

http://jr-art.net/

J.R. Rotem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._Rotem

Will Robson Scott - Urban Photography

This guy's shots stood out for me at the Homegrown Hip Hop Exhibition in Urbis. The light boxes helped but there was a griity realism and a real stylised sense of the illicit that he captured perfectly in the shots of grafitti artists hunting for a canvas

http://www.dazeddigital.com/Photography/gallery/27/3889/6/Creative_Portfolio_Will_Robson-Scott

3D Photography

What with Avatar reigniting everyone's passion for cinema, the growth of 3D is bound to keep taking leaps forward.Here's a look at the static side of film and how it is embracing 3D. Not exactly good for your eyes methinks? Someone is really going to have to think of something better than 'NHS prescription' glasses and eye crossing to make this truly accessible out of cinema format - contact lenses?

If you want to see the image (right) in 3D do this:
1. Go crosseyed until you see a third image between these two
2. Concentrate on the third image
3.Relax the eyes and let the image come into focus

Who first came up with this method I don't know!

http://digital-photography-school.com/9-crazy-cross-eye-3d-photography-images-and-how-to-make-them