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 Editor’s Introduction
Female Gaze
The leading source of inspiration
and insight into cutting-edge
contemporary photography.
How do women photograph women differently to men? It’s one of
theGet
questions we asked
12 issues Charlotte
of BJP Jansen,
with our a London-based
no-risk, writer and
full back money guarantee*
curator who is the author of the recently published Girl on Girl: Art
and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze.
She argues that as more female photographers get behind the
camera and find their audience directly through social media, it
will have an effect on the way we see women. Put another way, as
women gain more control of how they are represented, they change
how women are perceived. “Photography is an expression of power,”
writes Jansen in our cover story. “The photographic act is often
viewed as an assertion of masculine dominance; a predatory point-
and-shoot action.” What is more contentious is the extent to which
women bring a ‘female gaze’ to the subject.
The phrase was first used in opposition to the ‘male gaze’, a term
coined by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in the 1970s to define the
dominant masculine point of view, in which women are presented
Photo © Fredrik Lerneryd

as objects of male pleasure. However, many didn’t like the idea of a

female gaze defined by its male counterpart, or argued that women
couldn’t simply disengage from the influences of society and were as
likely to objectify female bodies as men.
Jansen says the current generation of women photographing
men are different to the second-wave feminists of the 1970s. “It’s
harder for women photographers working now to move against the
CALLING ALL STUDENTS DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES patriarchal system because wherever you put your pictures, you are
invariably consumed by that system,” she writes. But despite the fact
AND GRADUATES 08 MAY 2017 that women are expected to conform with or counter the male gaze,
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CALLING ALL STUDENTS DIANA MARKOSIAN Featured 36 – 49 50 – 66

I'll be your mirror Lost boys
PHOTOGRAPHER, MAGNUM PHOTOS
AND GRADUATES Charlotte Jansen explores the work of
the new generation of women artists
In breaking away from her usual work
in commercial fashion, Zuza Krajewska
EMMA BOWKETT and photographers who are thriving spent a year uncovering the sensitive
DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY,
FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE
in the image-saturated world of social
media, and asks whether this will be a
and, at times, tragic backstory of 32
teenage boys growing up in a youth
MONDAY 08 MAY 2017 catalyst for a new era of the female gaze. detention centre near Warsaw.
VIVIENNE GAMBLE 68 – 75 76 – 81
DIRECTOR, SEEN FIFTEEN GALLERY & PECKHAM 24
BJPBREAKTHROUGH.COM Am I what you're looking for?
Endia Beal taps into the unwritten codes
Secret history
Approaching provocative issues
MAISIE SKIDMORE of the corporate ‘look’ in a work that to expose challenges faced by
ONLINE EDITOR, ANOTHER combines testimonies and portraits vulnerable women around the world,
to expose prejudices and judgements Laia Abril gives an insight into her
LISA FARRELL women of colour experience in an
office workplace.
new project on misogyny, starting
with On Abortion.
HEAD OF EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS,
Supported by BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Featured: May 2017 5
Index
Agenda
10 Photo London returns for its
third, and biggest, edition.
14 South London's upstart
24-hour photofestival
Peckham 24.
16 The seventh edition of the
annual Prix Pictet launches at
London's V&A with a shortlist
of photographers exploring
the theme of Space with
diverse and surprising work.
20 Any Answers:
Anders Petersen.
6 Index: May 2017
WATCH THE XMT
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Projects
23 Lena Mucha captures life
for female army cadets in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
26 Tania Franco Klein explores
the culture of convenience in
her autobiographical project
Our Life in the Shadows.
30 Jennifer Niederhauser Schlup
mixes archival and digitally
manipulated images to
question notions of reality.
16 – 19
©Steve Brown - stevebrowncreative.com
Features
36 Charlotte Jansen looks at
the ways in which female
photographers choose to
represent women in their work.
50 Zuza Krajewska takes a 38 – 39
deeper view of youthful male
vulnerability in her record of a
Polish correctional institute for
troubled boys.
68 Endia Beal examines gender
and race in the corporate
world.
Unmatched
76 Laia Abril delves into the
history of misogyny with her
project On Abortion.
Intelligence 86– 87
Creative
83 Discovering a little-known
collection of Irving Penn's
early work.
86 Creative Brief: Shaz Madani is
Freedom
the co-founder and art director
of women's magazine Riposte.
Technology
89 Focusing on the latest
lenses announced at CP+ in
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from Bowens that has been engineered for speed, reliability and cutting edge
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98 Lise Straatsma's use of Includes TTL, HSS, Strobe mode (up to 100 flashes), 2.4GHz radio control,
survivalist video tutorials and Lithium-ion battery (500 full power flashes), integrated reflector, easy-open Twitter.com/BowensFlash
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Contributors
Capital culture: Photo London,
Peckham Twenty-Four and Prix Pictet
How do women photograph
women differently to men?
Zuza Krajewska
One of the standout fashion and commercial
Editorial Director
Simon Bainbridge
Digital Editor
photographers in Eastern Europe, the Gdansk Diane Smyth
Laia Abril, Zuza Krajewska,
Endia Beal, Riposte magazine

Academy of Fine Arts graduate has produced Lead Feature Writer

Tom Seymour
Established 1854
work that has appeared in Elle, Harper’s
Assistant Editor
Bazaar and InStyle, to name but a few. Izabela Radwanska Zhang
However, her featured project, Imago, set in a Creative Director
Polish youth detention centre, belongs to the Mick Moore
other side of her more personal documentary Senior Designer
Nicky Brown
practice. “I did it for the people living in Poland,
Contributors
also for the kids, so they could learn that life Rob Alderson, Gerry Badger, Taco Hidde
can be cruel,” she says. The project is a step in Bakker, Kathy Ball, Emma Bowkett,
Laurence Butet-Roch, David Campany,
a new direction for Krajewska, whose previous Federica Chiocchetti, Lucy Davies, 
work has addressed stereotypes of gender, Damien Demolder, Martin Evening,
Paul Fairclough, Marc Feustel, Jessica
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zuzakrajewska.com Lauren Heinz, Charlotte Jansen,
David Kilpatrick, Richard Kilpatrick,
Stephen McLaren, Donatella Montrone,
Female Gaze issue Charlotte Jansen Gemma Padley, Colin Pantall, Juan Peces,
Rachel Segal Hamilton, Maisie Skidmore,
May 2017 A British Sri Lankan journalist and editor-at- Shana Ting Lipton, Eliza Williams, Paul
Issue 7859, Volume 164 large of Elephant magazine, Jansen writes Wombell, Sophie Wright, Sonia Zhuravlyova
Cover about contemporary art and culture for Editorial Enquiries
Untitled, from Like a Stone series editorial@bjphoto.co.uk
© Pinar Yolacan.
The Guardian, Vice, Wallpaper*,
Wallpaper* Artsy and
Sales Enquiries
Contemporary Art Review LA, among others, sales@apptitudemedia.co.uk
and also runs the art agency No Way. She is Head of Commercial
the author of Girl On Girl
Girl, a new photography Pax Zoega
book made under the female gaze, which Commercial Campaign Manager
Ameena Rojee
she deconstructs in this month’s issue. “I’ve
Marketing Director
learnt that photography is very important Marc Ghione
as a transformative social tool, and that this Head of Exhibitions & Events
moment is particularly important for women, Lisa Farrell

More Photos.
for both the bad and good,” she says. “I also Media Consultant
Harry Rose
understood selfies aren’t always vapid, and
CTO
that there really is such a thing as sisterhood.” Tom Royal
She is now working on a very different project: Founder & CEO

More Features.
the biography of a 74-year-old Japanese Marc Hartog
erotica artist. In May, she will be speaking at Subscription Enquiries
01795 414682
Fotogalleriet in Oslo alongside Anja Carr and bjp@servicehelpline.co.uk
Tonje Bøe Birkeland, who both feature in Girl Distribution & Marketing Enquiries
On Girl.

More Motion.
marketing@apptitudemedia.co.uk
@omfg_NOWAY

Donatella Montrone
Montrone tells the story of the remarkable
uncovering of Irving Penn’s early work. She
explains: “Many years ago, I worked for a
publisher in Manhattan and shared a cubicle
with Peter Homans – copy editor by day,
composer by night. Peter is Katie Cangelosi’s
husband and Katie is the daughter of Nonny
Our new print partner is an award-winning Gardner, Irving Penn’s first wife. Katie and
London company celebrated for its Peter visited London a year ago and the three
uncompromising attention to quality and detail. of us met for a catch-up at the Ace Hotel in
Producing everything from auction catalogues Shoreditch. I was enthralled listening to Katie
and annual reports to high-end magazines and tell how she and her siblings sifted through
photobooks, Park’s clients include Pentagram, their mother’s belongings after her death and
Christie’s, Mulberry and Lloyd’s of London. Park found this trove of images, and of the journey
is the go-to printer for Mondial, Boat Magazine to getting them authenticated, which involved
and Riposte and is also active in supporting Penn’s brother, the filmmaker Authur Penn.”
cultural initiatives with partners including She adds: “This may well be my biggest story
The Photographers’ Gallery, It’s Nice That, ever, and I content myself in the knowledge
Stack and magCulture. BJP looks forward to that my long-lost friends in New York entrusted
deepening our relationship. it to me.”
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8 Colophon: May 2017

Agenda Photo London co-founder Michael
Benson reflects on the hard work
behind establishing the fair as a key
date in the photography calendar
Photo London
Words by Tom Seymour
Spring is in the air in London and for the
first time this year the sun is shining on the
courtyard of Somerset House. Michael Benson,
one of the two founding directors of Photo
London, sits in its centre, drinking a morning
coffee and soaking up the rays. He could be
forgiven for feeling a little smug but today he
seems merely quietly content that later this
month the art fair will be back for its third
edition, its biggest yet.
“We kept hearing from people that ‘there’s
no market for photography in London, there’s
no interest’,” says Benson. “These were people
in the industry and they should have known
better.” In fact, the fair established itself as a
key fixture on the international photography
calendar and soon this grand old courtyard
and the labyrinthine rooms of Somerset House
will be filled with gallerists, collectors, artists,
curators and exhibitors once again.
Last year’s edition featured 84 galleries
from 19 countries, welcoming more than
Photo London gears
up for its third
edition, bringing in
its wake Peckham
24’s non-stop fringe
show. Plus we
preview the work
in the running for
the Prix Pictet and
hear from Anders
Petersen about
what makes a
photographer
10 Agenda: Photofestival
2
35,000 visitors over its five-day run, with
collectors and VIP photography professionals
visibly active. Most of London’s commercial
photography dealers will be represented
among the 100 or so galleries booked so far
for this year’s edition (from 18 to 21 May);
many public institutions are either directly
involved or programming in response to the
fair, following the lead of Tate Modern, which
has staged Offprint London in its Turbine
Hall since the fair’s inception in 2015. “The
industry has a habit of almost talking itself to
a standstill,” says Benson. “We had to deal
with a lot of scepticism. But I think we’ve had a
rather good start.”
That scepticism was not without merit
– after all, Photo London had been tried
before. A photography fair with the same
name, initiated by UK-based dealer Daniel
Newburg, ran at the Royal Academy’s
Burlington galleries annually for three years
between 2004 and 2006 before it was bought
by Paris Photo owners, Reed Exhibitions, who
closed it after just one failed edition. But
Reed had relocated it to Old Billingsgate on
a Bank Holiday weekend – it’s fair to say the
events organiser misjudged the date and
location – while the mood of confidence from
the first edition had been dimmed by the
absence of North American galleries, some
of which complained they had been burnt by
import and export duties. However, the wider cultural producers and entrepreneurs to
1 CHAPTER XI, A Living Man Declared
Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII, 2011
consensus at the time was that London simply create commercial partnerships with sponsors.
2
© Taryn Simon, courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Dorothy with light face, 1962 © William
couldn’t sustain a photography fair without “When we started off trying to persuade
Klein, courtesy HackelBury Fine Art,
London.
the backing of local institutions or the kind of people to come, they had some bad memories
grass-roots enthusiasm the medium enjoys in of being in London from the previous fair,”
France or Germany. Benson admits today. “It was a very tough
Benson and his partner Fariba Farshad sell. A lot of people had come to London from
(who together co-founded Candlestar, the abroad and discovered that nothing much
producer of Photo London and the Prix Pictet) was happening. I had to act as an evangelist
have since gone a long way to confound for something that didn’t then exist. But I also
those assumptions, bringing to bear years had to convince them that, this time, their faith
of expertise gained working as curators, would be repaid.”
Agenda: Photofestival 11
3
3 Cafe with photo of Dylan Thomas,
Laugharne, Wales, G.B. 1974 © David
Hurn, courtesy Magnum Photos.
4 Thresholds early test visualisation
© Mat Collishaw, courtesy the artist.
5 Drifting Over the Italian Riviera, 2016
© Joshua Jensen-Nagle, courtesy
Bau-Xi gallery
Photo London grew out of the founding
of Candlestar, which helps corporate clients
sponsor major arts projects, and its flagship
project the Prix Pictet, which nine years
ago brought together a Swiss bank and a
major media partner in the Financial Times
to create “a global award in photography
and sustainability”. Both institutions are
also partners in Photo London and it was
through that relationship that Benson met
Maja Hoffmann, a Swiss philanthropist with
interests spanning the worlds of art, film and
photography. She agreed to funnel some of her
formidable funds into a London art fair that
4
5
12 Agenda: Photofestival
might one day rival that of Paris. “Our plan
was to act as if we’d been around for a long
time: as if we were an established part of the
cultural fabric of London,” says Benson. “Since
then a lot of sceptics have become supporters.”
Photo London still has its critics but the
voices that complained of conservatism in
both the programme and the work shown by
many of the selected galleries seem to have
been heard. For a start, this year’s Master
is a 42-year-old woman, Taryn Simon, who
works with conceptual themes guided by
extensive research, presented in museum-style
installations. She will show Image Atlas, a work
created in collaboration with the late computer
programmer and activist Aaron Swartz.
The exhibition will “index top image results
for given search terms across local engines
throughout the world”, Benson says, alongside
a display of Simon’s books — spanning from
The Innocents, first published 2002, through
to Paperwork and the Will of Capital, released
last year.
Fariba Farshad, co-director of Photo
London, says of Simon’s accolade: “The first
two Masters of Photography – Sebastião
Salgado and Don McCullin – are extremely
hard acts to follow. So we decided to turn
instead to Taryn Simon, an artist who is widely
recognised as one of the most important
photographers of her generation.
“We’re delighted she has selected Image
Atlas for her Masters exhibition. The work
pushes the boundaries of what photography
can be – and is, therefore, in tune with our
thinking about this year’s edition. The work
investigates cultural differences and similarities
by indexing top image results for given search
terms across local engines throughout the
world. It is a great example of Taryn’s ground-
breaking artistic practice and confirms her as
an outstanding, pioneering artist.”
And while a lot of the paying galleries
seemed to be playing it safe during the first
two editions, Photo London has encouraged
younger dealers in. This year it has introduced
a new Discovery section, led by Tristan Lund.
“The expansion of the Discovery section
is very much in line with our determination
to establish Photo London as the global
destination for anyone with an interest in
the future of photography,” Farshad says.
“We want visitors to learn about the latest
developments in the market and, in doing so,
discover new galleries and artists from around
the world. We hope seasoned collectors will
find something new, and the Discovery section
is a great place to start.”
Photo London continues to court a
younger crowd of fledgling collectors. “Music
and dancing events,” in Benson’s words, will
take place in the vaults of Somerset House
during the fair in an attempt to reach a more
garrulous, less monied crowd. “Young people
are fascinated by photography,” he says. “They
have a very different relationship to it than
people of my age and generation. There’s an
enormous swell of excitement about it and a
thirst to understand the history of the medium
among younger people. For a long time this
has gone unnoticed, or even been dismissed,
by certain sections of the photography
community. But attracting that demographic is
an extremely important part of what we want
to do.”
Elsewhere, William Klein will develop a
new 18-metre-wide mural in Somerset House,
while Juergen Teller will present a special
exhibition in the Great Arch Hall and, “using
the latest virtual reality technology”, Mat
Collishaw will re-stage British scientist William
Henry Fox Talbot’s first public exhibition,
when he showed his photographic prints to
the people of Birmingham at the city’s King
Edward’s School in 1839.
Magnum Photos will be celebrating its
70th anniversary, with Martin Parr and David
Hurn curating a selection of works that the
latter has compiled over six decades through
a series of swaps with fellow photographers.
Hurn’s own images will be juxtaposed with
prints from photographers including Bill
Brandt, Bruce Davidson, Sergio Larrain and
Diana Markosian.
It augurs well for another year of growth
and a further entrenchment of the fair into the
cultural fabric of London. For now, it seems, the
sun will continue to shine.
photolondon.org
Agenda: Photofestival 13
 In the past decade Peckham has blossomed with the help
of a community of artists, making for a singularly vibrant
cultural scene. The area’s 24-hour-long photography festival,
set during Photo London, celebrates their creativity
Peckham 24 In 1999, when she first arrived in Peckham as
Words by Tom Seymour a recent graduate in modern history from the
University of Glasgow, Vivienne Gamble found
that taxi drivers would refuse to take her to
the south London neighbourhood, such was
its reputation for crime. “It was much rougher
than what I was used to,” she says. “But it’s
changed so dramatically.” The area, which
gained particular notoriety following the killing
of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor in 2000, and
then again during the 2011 London riots, has
always endured a spurious reputation as
one of the capital’s ‘no-go’ areas. Yet it has
1
14 Agenda: Photofestival
long been an artistic centre and, over the
past two decades, has undergone a process
of gentrification to become one of London’s
hippest neighbourhoods. During that time, a
disparate community of artists and creators
used the cheap warehouse spaces Peckham
afforded, while developers updated the
area’s grand but crumbling Victorian housing
stock; the area has become, according to a
recent survey by The Sunday Times, the most
desirable place to live in the capital, not least
for its burgeoning cultural and party scene.
This is encapsulated in Peckham 24,
a round-the-clock celebration of the
neighbourhood’s contemporary photography
scene, which takes place during the weekend
of Photo London and Offprint. The two-day
event, which is this year supported by British
Journal of Photography as its official media
partner, will be centred around the Bussey
Building in Copeland Park – the red-brick
former cricket-bat factory and warehouse
complex that has been at the heart of
Peckham’s creative metamorphosis.
In contrast to the grandeur of Photo
London’s home at Somerset House, the festival
will make use of some rather unconventional
gallery spaces, such as DKUK Salon, where
clients can get haircuts in front of artworks,
and the Safehouses, a pair of derelict
properties on Copeland Road now taken over
for art exhibitions and music-video shoots. The
Nines bar, a teeming local drinking hole, will
host a six-hour continuous screening of video
art through to midnight on the Friday before
the programme continues into Saturday with
artists’ talks, workshops and exhibition tours.
The venue is also due to host the Peckham 24
closing party.
Peckham 24 is the creation of Vivienne
Gamble, founder of Seen Fifteen, one of a
number of galleries in the Bussey Building,
which she founded in 2015 during the week of
the inaugural Photo London. After years spent
in the television industry, she decided to act on
her love for the still image and worked towards
a history of photography MA at Sotheby’s
Institute. She then gained an internship at
Candlestar, the agency behind Photo London.
Gamble is originally from Belfast and
has used her space to give a platform to
Irish and Northern Irish photographic artists.
Ciaran Og Arnold (a recent recipient of the
2
Mack First Book Award), Jill Quigley and BJP
Breakthrough winner Jan McCullough all
afforded solo exhibitions and the gallery has
established itself as a stalwart of the Peckham
scene. “It’s been challenging,” Gamble says of
founding the gallery. “There have been times
when I felt like I could have given up, when the
going got tough; there’s a lot of uncertainty in
running your own gallery. But it’s a dream for
me and something I care about a lot.”
Peckham 24 later started to take shape
as Gamble gained confidence within the
photography industry. It launched for the first
time last year and, although small compared
with this year’s edition, it attracted 2000
visitors over its 24-hour run. “I realised there
was no fringe around Photo London,” Gamble
says. “The photography community descended
on the city for that week and there was a huge
opportunity for artists to initiate their own
events on the fringes of the main festival.”
Hosting the event in the Bussey Building
was important – it was saved from demolition
in 2007 only after a concerted effort by the
local artistic community. The site has long
been the cornerstone of Peckham’s creative
scene. “I don’t think there’s anywhere else in
London quite like the Bussey Building,” says
Gamble. “There’s a real sense of pride that
we managed to save the space.” Her hope
is that Peckham 24 becomes an established
part of Photo London week, and that visitors
to the festival will make the trip south to “see
an area of London where artists are actually
working on a day-to-day basis”.
Peckham 24 will also see the launch, at
Seen Fifteen, of a new exhibition by Egyptian-
born photographer Laura El-Tantawy, who
grew up in Saudi Arabia and studied in the US
3 before moving to London. She was nominated
for the Deutsche Börse prize in 2016 for In
The Shadow of the Pyramids, her photographic
meditation on the Arab Spring in Egypt.
“The series started as a personal journey
into her own identity as an Egyptian woman,”
Gamble says. “And then it changed when she
witnessed, very closely, the events in Tahrir
Square. Now she has circled back to what she
was originally exploring. I’m very excited about
showing this new work for the first time.”
One of the most anticipated exhibitions is
curated by Tom Lovelace, a photography artist
who is a long-term member of the Peckham
1 Merry Widow ©
creative community. For Peckham 24, he has
Julie Cockburn. devised a show displaying various artists’ work,
2 Beyond Here is titled At Home She’s a Tourist, and available
Nothing © Laura
El-Tantawy.
to view in the Copeland Gallery of the Bussey
3 The Open Door,
Building. “The show is a mix of established
Closed and Inverted artists, like Clare Strand, Eva Stenran and
© Tom Lovelace.
Tereza, with lesser-known but exciting names
Images courtesy
Seen Fifteen and Tom
like Emma Bäcklund and Dominic Till.”
Lovelace. seenfifteen.com
Agenda: Photofestival 15
 The seventh cycle of the award, on the theme of Space,
launches its worldwide exhibition tour at the V&A, where
the winner of the £80,000 prize will soon be announced
Prix Pictet Dubbed “the global award in photography and
Words by Tom Seymour sustainability”, the seventh cycle of the Prix
Pictet opens at the Victoria & Albert Museum
(V&A) in London this month, showcasing the
work of a dozen artists and documentarists
under the common theme of Space. Founded
nine years ago by Swiss private bank the Pictet photographic discourse.
Group and Candlestar – the company behind
Photo London, which opens a fortnight later
– the prize draws attention to environmental
issues but also reflects the strategies and
approaches used by photographers to tackle
socio-political concerns.
The first edition, in 2008, was themed
Water and was awarded to Canadian
photographer Benoit Aquin for his photo
essay The Chinese Dust Bowl, while Munem
Wasif was commissioned to shoot a story
on water shortages in his homeland,
Bangladesh. Among the shortlisted names
was Edward Burtynsky, a photographer
whose commitment to documenting
environmental issues through the prism of
stunning landscape photography seemed to
encapsulate the Prix Pictet’s ideals. Indeed,
he was nominated for the first three cycles of
the award but never won. Over subsequent
years more conceptual approaches have been
shortlisted in response to changing themes,
which have included Power, Consumption and
Disorder, won by Lucas Delahaye, Michael
Schmidt and Valérie Belin respectively.
2
16 Agenda: Award
“The intention was never to just feature
photojournalism, much as we all love it,” says
Michael Benson of Candlestar. “It was about
opening up to all genres of photography.”
This year’s Prix Pictet comes through on
that promise, straddling the breadth of
Among this year’s shortlist is classic
reportage in the form of Sergey Ponomarev’s
series Europe Migration Crisis, created in
association with The Sunday Times and on
show at the Imperial War Museum from
27 April to 03 September. For the Russian
photographer, the migrants’ journeys across
Europe represented a transgression of space
– the crossing of literal borders as well as
something much more personal, moving from
home to a place both unknown and idealised.
“Their pasts were no more than a memory
immortalised in the bright family photographs
they’d saved on their smartphones,” he says.
“Their whole lives were encapsulated in the
few possessions they’d managed to bring
along in their rucksacks. These fragments of a
broken, far-off land that each migrant carried
with them are now scattered across Europe
… The refugees continued forward, entering
into a strange, unknown but sheltered space.
Sometimes they didn’t really know where they
were or where exactly they were headed.”
Others have taken on the idea of space
to explore transgression of both territory and
of the relationship between photographer
and subject. Munem Wasif (nominated for a
second time since the Water commission in
2008) photographs the unmarked edges of
the blurred boundary between Bangladesh
and India. In Land of Undefined Territory
this “mundane land” simultaneously hides
and represents the ongoing struggle between
dominance and subjugation, and ideals of
liberty and independence.
Richard Mosse is shortlisted for Incoming,
showing at the Barbican’s Curve Gallery
in London until 23 April. The Irishman also
photographed migrants’ journeys through
Europe using a military-grade thermal camera,
capturing them from miles away, oblivious
to his presence. The heat signatures of the
camera deprive Mosse’s subjects of facial
expressions and cultural demarcations – even
of gender, race, age or sex. By inverting the
sense of space between photographer and
Agenda: Award 17
 3 subject – when so much of documentary
photography is defined by closeness and
intimacy – the idea is that he elevates the
people at the heart of the migration crisis to
symbolic, parabolic stature. “We captured
people asleep, people embracing each other,
people at prayer,” says Mosse. “There’s a
stolen intimacy to it. There’s no awareness,
there’s no self consciousness. They are,
instead, authentic gestures.”
Michael Wolf and Benny Lam provide
a more direct interpretation of space – or
the intense lack of it. Wolf’s series Tokyo
Compression was photographed largely on
commuter trains at Shinjuku railway station,
capturing rush hour at a rail hub that averages
3.6 million passengers a day, making it the
most crowded in the world. His images, he
says, depict “complete vulnerability in the most
extreme of cities”. Lam, meanwhile, focuses
on the private spaces of a city. Commissioned
by the Society for Community Organisation
(SoCO), he created a series of overhead
images of poor families, singletons and elderly
people living in Hong Kong’s cramped outer
slums. “Hong Kong is regarded as one of
the world’s richest cities but lurking beneath
the prosperity is also extreme poverty,” says
Ho Hei-Wah, director of SoCO, referring to the
thousands who live in caged homes and wood-
partitioned cubicles, as well as the constant
flow of new arrivals from mainland China.
Outer limits
From the space between photographer and
4
subject to how a photographer understands
the space around him: Sohei Nishino is
nominated for his ‘diorama maps’ of cities,
each painstakingly created from thousands
of images taken on solo urban wanderings.
Once back home in Tokyo, Nishino edits down
handprints in his darkroom and pieces the
images together in a mosaic. The photographs
are detailed studies of buildings, streets,
people and everything else that goes with city
life. A composite map emerges from each
but such studies share little with geometric
ordnance surveys. This is a more psychological
understanding of space – one in which
1 S#1 © Beate Gütschow, perspective, scale and proportion give way to
courtesy VG Bild-Kunst Bonn.
mood, experience and emotion.
2 Police on horseback escort
hundreds of migrants after
Space has also been used in highly
crossing from Croatia in Dobova, conceptual ways by photographers selected
Slovenia. Tuesday 20 October
2015, from the series Europe
for the Prix Pictet shortlist, not least by Mandy
Migration Crisis © Sergey Barker. Her images could be mistaken for
Ponomarev.
Victorian glass-plate photographs; in fact
3 From Land of Undefined Territory ©
Munem Wasif, courtesy Project 88.
they are ornate, long-exposure studies of the
4 Trapped 03 by Benny Lam, from
plastic debris that pollutes beaches in and
the series Subdivided Flats, 2012 around Cobh in Cork Harbour, Ireland.
© Benny Lam (photographs),
Kwong Chi Kit and Dave Ho
The series is part of an ongoing
(concept). photographic study of human contamination
All images courtesy Prix Pictet. of the world’s oceans and coastlines. The
18 Agenda: Award
work she is nominated for presents unique
‘specimens’ that echo the pioneering
discoveries made by marine biologist John
Vaughn Thompson in the same area during
the 1800s. Thompson conducted pioneering
research on plankton while living in Cobh,
documenting the microscopic organisms
using the photographic technology of the
time; Barker’s plastic particles are presented
as microscopic samples that recall Thompson’s an aspect of the absurd, in that you can
early scientific investigations.
Germany is particularly well represented
on this year’s shortlist, with photographers
Saskia Groneberg, Beate Gütschow and
Thomas Ruff all in line for the prize. Groneberg grew up in southern Israel. Now living
is nominated for her mediations on “artificially and working in Tel Aviv, he is ostensibly
moulded nature”, photographing manmade
parks, landscapes and ornamental plants
designed to mimic the natural world. Here
she focuses on a very specific German term,
Büropflanze, which translates as ‘office plant’.
“These bits and pieces of nature, almost
unconsciously brought to the workplace,
seem to reveal lot about the basic needs of
human beings when artificially placed into
an inorganic, standardised environment
where everything present is assigned to fulfil
a specific function,” she says. By focusing on
such organic forms, often in the context of
highly institutional environments, Groneberg
hopes to capture “a tiny bit of anarchy amid
the rigid clockwork, something amorphous
among the geometric forms, a spark of life
within the mechanisms of control”.
Gütschow interprets space in a way that
might be considered in the canon of Bernd
and Hilla Becher. Her images are architectural disordered space during territorial disputes.”
studies of the borders that exist in a highly
built-up environment, inspired by a line from
Georges Perec’s book Species of Spaces: “To
live is to pass from one space to another while
doing your very best not to bump yourself.”
“The built environment is the greedy
counterpart of the natural realm,” Gütschow
says. “A space is defined only by differentiation years and still takes place every year in March.
from another space, for which it needs walls
that serve as barriers or borders.”
Thomas Ruff, the celebrated student
of the Bechers and the Art Academy in
Düsseldorf, the city in which he still lives,
is also represented on the shortlist. His
interpretation of space veers dramatically
from others on the shortlist, understanding
the term from a different etymological
perspective in his ma.r.s. series, which
considers photography’s relationship with the
universe – the infinite space beyond Earth.
Ruff ’s images are based on black-and-
white satellite photographs of the surface of
Mars taken by the high-resolution camera
aboard Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
These pictures, used by scientists to study the
planet’s geology and plot potential landing
sites, reveal extreme close-ups of the red
planet’s rugged surface, until recently unseen
by anyone. He makes what he calls “visual
statements that are at once documentary and
fictional” by transforming the originals via
chromogenic printing techniques. “Indicative
of Nasa’s own efforts to measure topographic
highs and lows,” Ruff says, “these works add
actually recognise deep relief on the surface of
another planet with cheap 3D glasses.”
The Jewish-Russian photographer
Pavel Wolberg was born in Leningrad and
a documentary photographer but his
nominated work, Barricades, is driven by
personal exploration of his identity. The series
comprises panoramic photographs taken
from within Israel and the West Bank and in
Ukraine during the recent conflict. Each of the
images focus on barricades, dividing fences,
separating walls and improvised borders
as “living signifiers” of conflicts and disputes.
“This is a photographic journey that focuses on
two contemporary conflicts: Israel-Palestine
and Russia-Ukraine,” he says.
Both his Russian and Israeli heritage
comprise active parts of his identity. “Both
places are controlled by a human need to
constantly formulate, define and separate
spaces for living, of nations or communities,”
he says. “Barricades is, therefore, a personal
project – a research into landscape imagery
and its transformation into an emblematic,
Finally, Prix Pictet has shortlisted
Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi,
based in Tokyo, for a somewhat existential
project. Her series focuses on a Japanese
farming practice called yakihata, in which
fields are burned before planting. Yakihata,
Kawauchi says, has been practiced for 1300
The inspiration came from a dream in which
she stood in front of burning fields, prompting
her to travel to the southern Japanese town of
Aso to take these pictures. “Standing by myself,
solitary in that vast land, the feeling that I
was living on this planet called Earth suddenly
welled up inside me,” she says. “Since I never
paid attention to such thoughts in my everyday
life, it was an odd sensation: the awareness
that my legs were, at that very moment, being
pulled by gravity toward the Earth.”
The work of the finalists goes on show at
the V&A on 04 May, when the winner will be
announced by Prix Pictet Honorary President
Kofi Annan. The exhibition runs until 28 May,
before a global tour throughout 2017.
prixpictet.com
Agenda: Award 19
Any Answers My earliest memory is of sitting alone in my grandmother’s cherry tree in her pink
Anders Petersen underwear. I was four years old. Nobody could see me behind the leaves but I could see the whole
Words and portrait by Michael Grieve garden beneath, with apple trees and a cat running over the street far away. It was my paradise.

I was brought up in a privileged and bourgeois family. We lived in the countryside

surrounded by forest and I spent a lot of time there. I must have been a disappointment for them.

The first photograph to make an impression on me was a picture of a cemetery with

footsteps in the snow, surrounded by graves. The photographer must have been there very
early in the morning to capture that dead people met each other during the night...

For me, this was fantastic. It was both a symbolic and a literary way to use photography.
I didn’t know the photographer’s name. Many years later I found out it was Christer Strömholm.

I first met Strömholm when I was illegally using the photography lab at his school.
I had been using it for many months, making many mistakes printing and developing. One night
at 3am he stood at the door and found me.

I looked around and saw only a mess. But he asked to see my pictures. He told me to visit
him the next day, when I thought I would surely end up in prison. But instead he asked if I wanted
to join the school. He became not only a teacher but a close friend. I miss him a lot.

When I was a young man photographing Café Lehmitz, I learned that photography is
not about photography. And being strong is not going to help you much. But being weak – just
enough – opens up a presence. Then you begin to understand that we belong to a big family.

Since the 1970s, I’ve dreamt about a ‘Lehmitz Family Album’. When I was shooting in
the bar I felt like it was a big and warm family. I finally hope this can be realised with a revised
version of Café Lehmitz. It’s a desire to give back something to those I photographed.

I have a profound fear of intolerance. But also a profound excitement at the diversity of
people and different cultures. I profoundly miss a world built on equality and justice.

Failure must be a part of everything. If you are lucky enough to survive a failure or a loss,
you will be stronger. And your new self-confidence makes the impossible suddenly more possible.

I am a father. My son is called Jens and I love him. He brought responsibility into my life.

I was married recently and it feels fine. To experience love is a favour, a present everyday.
Though my wife does keep me awake at night.

I like being Swedish. Emotionally and for many other reasons, such as the stillness of nature.
It doesn’t mean that I’m for everything that happens politically or culturally here. But compared
with other countries, Sweden is privileged. We haven’t been in a war for more than 200 years.
The Swede made
his seminal work I am interested to see what is hidden; what you cannot see. That is a decent explanation
of why I spent so many years photographing behind closed institutions, such as a prison, a
in the late 1960s, psychiatric hospital and a home for old people.
photographing the
I had four walls and my time. I could focus on the people and get to know their personalities,
denizens of a bar on their dreams and secrets and vulnerabilities, their innermost longings.
Hamburg’s infamous
To know I exist, I need to be at touching distance. Not only when I’m shooting. It’s often a
Reeperbahn. Café question of approaching a reality I’m aware of but don’t want to know. This behaviour has many
Lehmitz, published names; one of them could be curiosity.
eight years after In life there is a constant movement between feeling up or down. Between presence
he finished, is and absence, love and hate, defying the natural meaninglessness, as I got to know it. If you are
now considered a unprotected and curious you easily suffer, you are a target.

classic. Petersen When you are older, people expect you to know how things are. But the truth is you don’t
has produced more know at all. The more you know the less you know. When I was younger, I knew everything.

than 20 books since
then, and has been
particularly prolific
over the past decade
My advice to younger photographers is not to be a photographer but to be a human.
It is about you: your emotions, experiences and knowledge. The camera is just a tool. So find a
language with your own distinct smell. It is important to be weak enough to feel and innocent
enough to enter the confusion.
anderspetersen.se

20 Agenda: Any Answers

Intelligence: New Media 21
 Lena Mucha All images © Lena Mucha. media and, more and more, investigations
into gender roles – which led her to the
befriends female female cadets in Karabakh.
army cadets in

To
Their motivations to join the army vary;
Nagorno-Karabakh some yearn for the frontline and some to be
peacekeepers. They are all, however, deeply
while Mexican patriotic. “They grew up in the context of war,”
photographer says Mucha. “Many of their family members
Tania Franco Klein died or they had parents or grandfathers
“It’s what I miss in the media. Some people fighting in the army.”
explores the notion don’t even know where Karabakh is.” The Female training was introduced less than
of isolation in our Berlin-based photographer Lena Mucha two years ago, so the majority of their facilities
evermore connected says this in reference to her newest project, and accommodation is off site. In Karabakh,
Women to the Frontline, which began when they live a 50-minute bus ride away, “but
world. And Jennifer she flew to Yerevan in Armenia last September they are happy to be there,” says Mucha. “I
Niederhauser Schlup with journalist Naomi Conrad. She was think maybe they see it as an honour because
probes how we there on the back of a Reporters in the Field they’re the first.” But some opposition and
scholarship from the Robert Bosch Stiftung scrutiny remains, particularly among the older
construct knowledge foundation in Germany. The duo drove for male officers who rationalise their inclusion by
and historical facts.

your
six hours across the border to Stepanakert
Interviews by Izabela in Nagorno-Karabakh, a self-declared
independent state wedged between Armenia
Radwanska Zhang and Azerbaijan, defined for more than 20
years by its frozen war.
Mucha graduated with an MA in social
anthropology and political sciences from the
University of Cologne in 2011. She has since
been mentored by Max Pinckers, Cristina
de Middel and David Alan Harvey, among
others, and had her images published in Geo
saying that “with the presence of women, the
men should be better behaved – they’re there
to help the men be better,” explains Mucha.
“It’s a story about conflict and society,
without showing the country as a conflict
zone. More, it talks about the girls and
their challenges. When they put away their
uniforms they are just ordinary girls. I became
very close to them and hope that the people
who will see the photos can connect and
identify with them. That’s what I’m looking for

door.
and Der Spiegel. Her work draws attention with my work – to connect.”
to stories that go unreported by mainstream lenamucha.com

Buy the next issue of

BJP direct from us
and have it delivered
straight to your door.
www.thebjpshop.com Projects Lena Mucha
96 Intelligence: Robbie Cooper
23
Projects: Personal 25
 All images © Tania Franco Klein.

We are living in a world where we are more connected than

ever and yet we can still be left feeling completely alone. In
his book, The Burnout Society, the philosopher Byung-Chul
Han explores this, and the idea that the overload of modern
technology and the “culture of convenience” are catalysts
for depression and various personality disorders. Drawing
inspiration from his theories, Mexican photographer Tania
Franco Klein places this contradiction at the centre of her
ongoing autobiographical project, Our Life in the Shadows,
which also explores the pursuit of the American Dream and
facets of perfection. “We have these compulsions to perform
and we live in a society of achievement and positivity that has
led to a constant fatigue,” she says.
The need to escape from media overstimulation is seen
through the eyes of fictional female characters placed in
vulnerable, hunched positions, shot in different rooms of
a 1970s-style house. They smoke cigarettes, stare at the
television and lie on the floor. Some were cast from the street,
with Franco Klein particularly looking for individuals “trying to
be invisible and avoid any attention from the crowd”, but most
are self-modelled. Her clever use of bold, dramatic colour
blocking, which engulfs each image in a separate tone, serves
as a contrast to their introverted behaviour.
“Emotions are the most important for my work. If you can
connect through emotions and the experience of the visual,
sometimes it opens up the door to imagine smells and sounds
and a whole 4D experience.” She adds: “It’s funny because
I’m talking about isolation, but at the same time I realise that
doing self-portraits isolated me more.”
The photographer pays meticulous attention to the
spaces used as backdrops for the sensitivity she seeks to
communicate. She finds specific rooms and locations by
knocking on neighbours’ doors, and constructs her own
sets and props – often entirely from scratch. It is perhaps
no surprise, then, that she came to photography through
architecture, which she studied in Mexico before moving to
London to do an MA in fashion photography at the University
of the Arts London in 2014.
Crucially, although relatable, her narrative carries an
ambiguity, which encourages the viewer to apply their own
story and interpretation, and hopefully think about our
modern-day dual identities. “We are always trying to create
identities with social media to express the good part of
ourselves, as if there is some kind of shame in knowing what
we are on the other side… because we feel that we have failed
in what we are supposed to be.”
taniafrancoklein.com

Tania Franco Klein

26 Projects: Personal Projects: Personal 27
28 Projects: Personal Projects: Personal 29
It’s nearly a half-century since man first set foot on the moon, yet
many remain sceptical it ever happened. Countless conspiracy
theories speculate about inconsistencies and inaccuracies in
the footage of that “one small step for man, one giant leap for
mankind”, ultimately arguing that the Apollo missions were a
highly elaborate hoax.
For Swiss photographer Jennifer Niederhauser Schlup,
it’s a fascinating example of our innate dependence on film
and photography to authenticate – or debunk – perceptions of
historical fact. It’s also the basis of her latest work, Do you really
believe they put a man on the moon?, for which she amalgamates
archival and digitally manipulated imagery with straight
photographs to challenge our assumptions of reality.
The series evolved following an invitation to teach a semester
at Alfred University in upstate New York last year. Niederhauser was
thrilled to discover that not only does the small village of Alfred have
one of the oldest observatories in the country, but that it is also
just a few miles from the birthplace of Glenn Hammond Curtiss,
the aviation pioneer and founder of the American aircraft industry.
It is also the site of the first public demonstration of a powered
aircraft flight in the US. “From this decisive historical fact I drew up
a fictional character, telling an abstract story that combines strange
experiments and discoveries,” writes Niederhauser in her project
statement, entered into BJP’s International Photography Award last
year. “It is a utopian tale of seemingly unattainable dreams, which
alludes to a place of hope and togetherness in a common effort to
transcend natural frontiers, to the moon and back.
“Examining visual and written archives; building useless tools
and an escape vehicle bound to crash as a metaphor for happy
failure; mixing replicas and artefacts with scientific records to
confound their veracity while embodying the wildest of ideas,
Do you really believe they put a man on the moon? questions the
construction of knowledge and the interpretation of history seen
through a specific prism. Borrowing devices that enhance our
perception of the world, it aims to open our eyes to the possibility
of utopia and dreams.”
As well as raising questions of complexity, Niederhauser is
playful in the techniques and devices she employs to enhance
her narrative, which treads the line between fact and fiction. For
example, there is one image of two circular frames of mountains
viewed through a stereoscope, a device that presents a pair of
photographs of the same subject taken from subtly different
angles, creating an optical illusion of a 3D image when viewed
together. “It’s a very old process and another device to enhance
your vision, and,” she says, “it’s actually just a pile of flour –
everything is constructed.”
Although Niederhauser is far from finished with this
project, she hopes to eventually publish it. A selected edit of her
investigations will be shown at Les Boutographies festival in
Montpellier this May. The question remains, does she believe that
man walked on the moon? “Now that I know how I am able to
make things up, I shouldn’t trust it. But I do believe it, because I
want to.”
jennifer-niederhauser-schlup.com

Jennifer Niederhauser Schlup

30 Projects: Work in Progress Projects: Personal 31
 All images © Jennifer Niederhauser Schlup.

32 Projects: Work in Progress

Image © Isabelle Wenzel.

FEMALE
GA ZE
Charlot te Jansen considers a new generation
of female photographer s who make women
their subjec t. Zuza K rajewska goes inside
a y o u n g m e n’s c o r r e c t i o n a l i n s t i t u t e . E n d i a
Beal addresses themes of race, gender
and corporate culture. And Laia Abril
uncovers secret histories in her wide - ranging
e x a m i n a t i o n o f m i s o g y n y.

34
 I’LL BE
YOUR
MIRROR
Charlot te Jansen looks
at how a new generation
of female photographers
are choosing to represent
women in their work

36 Female Gaze: Girl On Girl Habitat: Format Festival 37

Three years ago, I got into a Twitter fight
about selfies. A fiery debate had ensued
about an article I had written, suggesting that
photographs – especially sexy ones – that
women took of themselves and shared online
couldn’t be feminist. Several feminist selfie
artists, including a former Australian TV star
turned feminist magazine editor, disagreed.
I saw this as an opportunity to try to
understand the female gaze and how it was
being used. For the next three years, I began
to look at the photographs women take of
women – either of themselves or of other
women – more closely. It’s not hard to find
them. They are everywhere. But how many
of those images are created by fellow women,
and do they photograph women differently
to men?
I interviewed more than 40 women
photographers from very different
backgrounds, countries and cultures. They
were at various stages in their lives and careers
but have all emerged since 2010, the year the
front-facing camera was introduced to the
38
iPhone. I wanted to find out why and how
they photographed women and what the effect
might be on the way we perceive women in
society. This is what the book, titled Girl on
Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the
Female Gaze, is all about.
The research soon led me beyond the
realm of feminist selfies. There is a wider
shift happening in photography as more and
more women get behind the camera and more
of their work is out in the public domain.
Photographers no longer have to wait to
have their work published to reach a wide
audience. Women are able to control how
they are represented more than ever before in
cultural history.
I was recently perusing the magazines in
the women’s section in a newsagent. On the
cover of one was a picture of a scantily clad
pop star on the beach with the text, “Iggy
Azalea’s Bum Implants Are Sagging!”. We are
so accustomed to this kind of portrayal of
women, and to it being so in our faces, that
the horror of it almost escapes us. Almost.
I don’t know if a woman took the picture
of Azalea but most of the photographs of
women we see daily are made to appeal to the
heteronormative male gaze. We’re supposed
to see Iggy Azalea’s bum, compare ours to
it, panic and then buy things to prevent a
similar physical ‘disaster’. The message such
photographs of women give us is still very
narrow. Photography undoubtedly has an
effect on the way we understand people so, as
more women create photographs of women,
will it change how we understand them?
In the patriarchy in which we live,
photography is an expression of power.
The photographic act is often viewed as
an assertion of masculine dominance; a
predatory point-and-shoot action. This
control over a subject – what to show and
how to frame it – has made photography a
duplicitous partner of colonialism, the sex
industry and the veiled agendas of advertising
and the mass media.
Photography was introduced before
women could vote but it gave women power
from early on to represent themselves. It was
a tool of crucial importance in the Suffragette
movement (Christina Broom, dubbed
‘Britain’s first female photojournalist’, recorded
some of the movement’s landmark events)
but it was perhaps not until the 1970s, during
the so-called second wave of feminism, that
women’s photography became a force for
change in its own right. Experimental artists
such as Renate Bertlmann, Valie Export,
Lynda Benglis and Birgit Jürgenssen – all
included in the Feminist Avant-Garde of the
1970s (2016) exhibition at The Photographers’
Gallery – used photography in their practice
to reclaim their bodies and reveal the artificial
construction of gender roles in mainstream
media to limit their position in both the art
world and society as a whole.
The photographs created by women
in the 1970s were mostly staged – posed
against patriarchy – and they never really
made it to the mainstream. They were part
of a radical, intellectual movement that was
kept away from the press unless it was to
frame the artists as bra-burning, man-hating
psychopaths to be feared. To get noticed in the
world in the 1970s, artists had to go out and
confront it. Valie Export strapped a box to her
bust and invited people to touch her breasts,
or in another action, thrust her bare groin
into a cinema audience’s faces. Photography
in their day was often rooted in performance,
which was then really the more effective form
of disruption.
In the 1990s, as Naomi Wolf ’s bestselling
The Beauty Myth was published, photography
was seen by artists as a more malignant
power. Images of women in the media were
selling a lie: the women shown in ads for the
cosmetics and fashion industry were plastic,
manipulated, unreal. And they were still
presented as objects of male desire. Finally the
first female art photographers photographing
women broke through in a big way: Cindy
Sherman, Carrie Mae Weems, Annie
Leibovitz, Nan Goldin, Shirin Neshat, Sally
Mann, Rineke Dijkstra. Their work paved the
way for understanding women differently
through photographic imagery, making
a significant impact on everyday media.
Suddenly it was possible to be a woman and
photograph yourself or the women around
you as you wanted.
A new generation
In 2017, the age of social media, our
context is totally different. On the internet,
photographs are seen together, juxtaposed,
with their only frame created by the device
used to view them. It’s almost as if we have
to start again. Online, photographs women
take of themselves and of other women still
have the same connotations: that they are
narcissistic, flimsy, vain or vapid. It’s much
harder for women photographers working
now to move against the patriarchal system
because wherever you put your pictures,
you are invariably consumed by that system.
Petra Collins [above] is an obvious example
of this. When in 2013 she made a T-shirt
with a drawing of a menstruating vagina
for American Apparel, the resulting media
Female Gaze: Girl On Girl 39
 outrage made her point, yet she was still
working with a fashion brand known for its
sexualised imagery, selling women’s bodies
for profit. Collins is to mainstream US youth
culture in the 2010s what male predecessors
(and mentors) Ryan McGinley and Richard
Kern were for their times: photographers who
have captured the aesthetic and ambience
that define their generation by being part
of it. Having photographed herself and her
friends since the age of 15, her shoots are
like teen therapy sessions; she emphasises
collaboration, so her models also act as
technical assistants and Collins encourages
full and open conversation.
Her work is often consumed by the
fashion industry, advertising and the media
– the same structures it criticises – but the
content of her photographs is subordinate to
the community she has built through them.
She uses her own image, celebrity and online
platforms, including all-girl art collective The
Ardorous, to interpret feminism for a new
generation of North Americans and talk about
the issues affecting young girls, such as shame,
periods, acne, body image, sex, sexuality and
mental illness in a relatable way. But when she
walks the catwalk for Gucci, I wonder how
it vies with the fashion world that causes so
many problems for the young girls she has
supported through her photography work.
Online platforms have also been
hugely beneficial. Revisiting some of the
confrontational and confessional strategies
of the body- and sex-positive feminists of the
1970s, Molly Soda [page 38] makes art out of
the anxiety and shame she feels about being a
woman who posts ‘private’ pictures of herself
online – with blood, belly hair, thongs – from
the comfort of her bedroom. There’s also
Alexandra Marzella, a millennial version of
Hannah Wilkes and a trained erotic dancer who
keeps a self-reflexive visual diary on Instagram,
at times irreverent, at others inflammatory, and
who is far more influential in terms of audience
numbers than any of her predecessors.
Photographers such as Collins, Soda and
Marzella (or Maya Fuhr and Maisie Cousins,
who also feature in the book, and many
others who don’t) have, for the first time,
taken feminism into the mainstream. They are
creating the photographs we see in magazines,
on billboards and in ad campaigns, and they
give us a different message to the previously
male-dominated images. Their photographs
suggest friendship, hardship, happiness.
Bodies are bodies that go through many
experiences and not only sexual pleasure.
However, there is a problem with that.
These young female photographers have
made their name independently thanks
to the internet. But their impact has been
40 Habitat: Format Festival
so significant that, conversely, it means
other women photographers who also
photograph women have found their work
described in the same terms: feminist, selfie
art, Instagram art and so on. The thing is,
photographs women take of women do not
all have something to say about feminism or
femininity. They are not all a comment on the
body and sexuality. That interpretation proves
that the way we see women is still limited.
Yvonne Todd [page 37] and Juno
Calypso [pages 44-45] are among the women
I interviewed who have been labelled in this
way. They’ve also been compared to Cindy
Sherman and their work called pastiche. They
both use self-staging and fiction to tell truths
about private fantasy, about the subliminal
messages we get from society about how
to behave, about the corrosive effect of
commercial photography. Neither artist
has ever said their work is feminist or even
declared themselves as such.
Female perspective
Many of the photographers I spoke to also
told me that when their work had been
written about, there was often interest in how
they looked in front of the camera, rather
than what they were doing behind it. There
is a commercial undertow to photographs
of women, that it seems the chance to reveal
a woman as good-looking is irresistible.
Photographers such as New York-based
Leah Schrager realised this. The power of a
photograph is not only in what is depicted
but who is profiting from the image. Schrager
raised important questions of ownership and
copyright with her #paythenipple campaign:
a former model, she makes sure she is the one
earning from her image. Women have been
made to feel ashamed for exploiting their own
sexy image but if the woman herself is not
profiting from it then who should?
It was for that reason that I agonised
over what would be on the cover of the book.
The final image, the back cover, by Isabelle
Wenzel, dovetails these issues beautifully: it’s a
compelling image that feels feminine and fun
but is gender ambiguous and doesn’t judge
the form at its centre as anything other than a
surprising and joyful shape.
The female-led shift that’s happening
in photography is so interesting because we
are much more aware of how we engage with
photographs. What seems to matter the most
to women photographers working now is
the community they build and the exuberant
dialogues they are able to have with their
audience. Photography isn’t about finding a
position for women in the art world or in the
field of photojournalism or fashion – it’s about
creating a space in the world.
In 2015, I visited an exhibition of Zanele
Muholi’s work [left] at the Brooklyn Museum
featuring her ongoing Faces and Phases
project; portraits of black lesbian and trans
women that began with her own community
in South Africa. I saw a young boy, no more
than five years old, taking in the pictures,
some of them depicting lesbian weddings
and sex. I realised in that moment how
important photographs are in changing the
future of how we see gender and sexuality.
Muholi photographs with tenderness and
simplicity, usually one subject at a time, shot
in black-and-white. She has given a face to
a community whose stories – many of them
awful, violent, some ending in murder – have
been invisible in the media. Her strategy as
a visual activist is straightforward: show the
real faces of these people without decoration
or judgement. Her photographs are the simple
proof that they exist. Muholi didn’t wait for
the system to change to accommodate these
women, she showed the world herself.
To be in a photograph today means you
are seen. A photograph is presence. Pinar
Yolaçan is aware of the problem in that,
which is to create a singular idea about your
subject through a photograph. The way rural
and tribal women have been portrayed until
now has usually been through a Western
male lens. As a Middle Eastern, Muslim
woman, Yolaçan creates a different picture.
She has spent years with her subjects, which
include female farmers in Turkey, BBW (Big
Beautiful Women) models in Los Angeles
and Candomblé women in Bahia, Brazil. She
doesn’t shoot them in their ‘natural’ setting,
but makes their lives more ambiguous so
that we look at them as individuals. Having
studied fashion at Central Saint Martins,
she creates each ‘costume’ for her subject by
hand, with each woman in mind. They are not
exoticised or eroticised for a colonial gaze but
shown as powerful, fleshly and feminine.
There still exists a generalisation that
women photographing women is one of two
things: a continuation and conformity to
the standardised structures of the clichéd
perception of the female, or to counter and
provide an antidote to the male gaze. Can
selfies be feminist? Yes. Is Instagram a valid
art form? Of course. Do women photograph
women differently to men? Certainly. And
female subjects interact differently with the
camera when a woman is behind it. But
the female gaze is so much more than that.
Women see the world differently, in just as
much colour and nuance. We are beginning to
see that world everywhere we look.
Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of
the Female Gaze is published by Laurence King.
laurenceking.com
Female Gaze: Girl On Girl 41
42 Habitat: Format Festival Habitat: Format Festival 43
44 Habitat: Format Festival Habitat: Format Festival 45
46 Female Gaze: Girl On Girl Female Gaze: Girl On Girl 47
 Page 37: Bo-Drene, 2004 © Yvonne Todd.

Page 38: Mad About U, 2015 © Molly Soda.

Page 39: Untitled #23 from the series Selfie,

2013-2016 © Petra Collins.

Page 40: Xana Nyilenda, Los Angeles, 2013

© Zanele Muholi.

Page 42: Rotation 2, 2014 © Isabelle Wenzel.

Page 43: Untitled from the series Like a Stone,

2011 © Pinar Yolaçan.

Pages 44-45: 12 Reasons You’re Tired All The

Time, 2013 © Juno Calypso.

Page 46: Cetos from the series Spider Monkeys

Volume II, 2015 © Aneta Bartos.

Page 47: Untitled, 2014 © Yaeli Gabriely.

Opposite page: Peonie, Bum from the series

Grass, 2015 © Maisie Cousins.

Right, above and below: From the series

Experimental Relationship, 2017-2016
© Pixy Liao.

48 Habitat: Format Festival Female Gaze: Girl On Girl 49

 LO S T B OY S
Zuza K rajewska f inds good in the
bad as she exposes the vulnerability
of child criminals in Poland.
Words by Izabela Radwanska Z hang

50 Female Gaze: Zuza Krajewska Habitat: Format Festival 51

The drive takes you 30 miles along the
motorway southwest of Warsaw towards
Studzieniec before you make the turn. The
road eventually falls away to a dirt track,
unnoticed by anyone who has no reason to
know where it leads. At this point, you will
lose phone signal, but keep driving. Just as
you think you’ve completely lost your way,
through the trees you will come across a large,
wooden cross towering next to a placard that
reads ‘Ministerstwo Sprawiedliwości, Zakład
Poprawczy’ (Ministry of Justice, Correctional
Division). Past the gated entrance stands a
statuette of the Virgin Mary, shying her gaze
away from a cluster of red-brick barrack
buildings, one grounded by a broad chimney,
and a church. Horses canter nervously around
the yard at the back, and small groups of
crop-haired boys dressed in black tracksuits
pace and stare.
“Where the hell am I?” the Polish
commercial and fashion photographer Zuza
Krajewska remembers thinking when she
first came here in the winter of 2014. She was
52 Female Gaze: Zuza Krajewska
eight months pregnant, sat in the passenger
seat of her boyfriend’s BMW with blacked-
out windows. She didn’t get out, but returned
to the desolate commune half a year later to
begin work on Imago. Taking its name from
an entomological term used to describe the
interim form that insects adopt between
larvae and fully formed adult, the series
follows the lives of adolescent boys who have
repeatedly committed serious crimes but are
too young to be incarcerated in adult jails.
“One beat someone up, another has been
stealing since he was a child, another is a
rapist,” Krajewska writes. But that’s only half
of the story.
What she thought would be a project
lasting a week turned into a year-long journey
of conflicting emotions, questioning of morals
and a test of patience. Terrified at first, she
slowly pieced together the stories of the 32
young offenders. “You have to cross a line,
go into the ‘underground’, so to speak,” says
Krajewska. “You need to learn the rules so
that you don’t get eaten alive.”
The photographer describes her first
scheduled visit there as like “a comedy”. Her,
in an arty T-shirt and “weird trousers and
cowboy boots” with her hipster assistant,
Borys, coming from the city: “A world where
everyone is polite and everything is nice, into
this grime and animosity – the boys’ eyes
hungry like small wolves. We were scared
they’d rob us of our equipment and cameras.”
It seemed like Krajewska may have been
out of her depth here, but this was not the first
time the photographer had found herself in
such company. She grew up in the ‘outer circle’
in Malbork in northern Poland, a large estate
of tower blocks built during the communist
years, “where an academic scholar could
be neighbours with a construction worker”.
“I hung out with boys like that – they were my
pals,” she says. “But when I grew up, most of
them didn’t end up too great. Some got out
but some are in prison, or went to correctional
centres, got into drugs, HIV…”
Having this experience allowed her the
confidence to do more than just observe her
subjects from a distance. She approached
them from a place of empathy and began to
take photographs straight away, capturing
some of her most memorable portraits
in doing so. “I don’t know how else to
communicate with people,” she says. “The
strongest portrait of the twins was from the
first meeting with them.” The twins, Andrzej
and Adrian, came to the youth detention
centre with one another. They belonged to a
gang and were brought in after having robbed
30 houses in the village where they lived. In
their photograph, Andrzej looks directly at the
camera with the glazed eyes of someone who
has seen more in his teens than most will see
in a lifetime. His brow and cheek are etched
with scars from beatings, just like his brother
Adrian’s, whose head he clasps in his hands.
Adrian died not long after the photo was
taken. He drowned while swimming drunk in
a flooded quarry with their 22-year-old uncle.
It was the day of the twins’ 14th birthday.
The centre is one of the few in Europe
that uses education and contact with nature
and wildlife to rehabilitate its inmates. The
director arranges for them to spend time on
children’s oncology wards, to play with the
sick patients and make them laugh by dressing
up and wearing silly outfits. Ex-alcoholics
attend bonfire nights to tell them about
the dangers of drinking. They are schooled
in carpentry, catering and gardening, so
when they leave they might have a chance
of finding a job and leading a normal,
law-abiding life. That is, if they can find an
employer in any of the already over-saturated
villages willing to hire an ex-offender with no
other qualifications.
Mateusz is another whose face features
prominently throughout the series. His
mother is an abusive alcoholic and his
six other siblings are all born of different,
unknown fathers. One image shows the
17-year-old sat in a room surrounded by
wooden cages he built in his carpentry
lessons to house the canaries he is breeding.
The canaries are used to a warm climate, so
the room is heated high and he is topless,
revealing a fake Armani belt around his waist.
Oblivious to the camera, he reclines on a
chair, gently cupping one of the tiny, yellow
birds in his leathered hands. He also breeds
rabbits and “cares about them immensely”,
Krajewska recalls. “Each cage is beautifully
kept and clean. But on the other hand, he is
brutal.” When he showed her the rabbits, he
was rough and cruel, picking them up like
objects. A few years ago his little sister was
bitten by an Alsatian, so he killed the dog by
hanging it.
The division between what is good and
what is bad is warped here; the line that
separates right and wrong is barely defined.
The engrained duality in the boys’ character
makes their behaviour unpredictable and
erratic. Day after day, Krajewska observed
their hierarchies and pecking orders, the
internal feuds that came with gang culture and
brotherhood. At first they would show off; try
to outperform each other. But eventually the
rough exterior was exhausted, and an unusual
bond began to form. “What you have to
Female Gaze: Zuza Krajewska 53
 understand is that this isn’t a prison,” says
Krajewska. “They’re just children. They can
manipulate you emotionally but at the same
time they are desperate for attention. You
can’t dwell on the bad things that they have
done. I’d say to them that just because in here
someone might be the smallest, doesn’t mean
that it will be the same on the outside. He
might be the one that makes it.”
Despite coming from a life of hardship
and neglect, women have a special place for
these children. Their mothers may be elusive,
offering little by way of maternal support,
even forgetting their names, but the boys
“IT WA S still love them dearly and, in a certain way,
respect them too. As a woman and a mother
E A SIER FOR herself, Krajewska recognised this in the boys’
behaviour towards her. “Maybe because they
saw that in me, and saw someone, let’s say,
THE BOYS a little weaker, they weren’t playing games.
They treated me a little differently.” She adds:
TO OPEN “It’s not that only a woman could have taken
these photographs – both a man and a woman
T H E M S E LV E S could view it under the same gaze if they let
themselves. But it was easier for the boys to
open themselves up emotionally in front of a
UP woman than in front of a man, who, there at
least, they always view as a rival.”
E M O T I O N A L LY In assuming this role, Krajewska was
sensitive, but firm. Her attentive approach
IN FRONT OF was unfamiliar, even “an element of surprise”,
and helped to develop a relationship that
allowed her to be bolder in moving to
A WOMAN capture rare giveaways of vulnerability and
quiet – an intake of breath with eyes closed, a
THAN IN uncontrollable shriek of laughter, a flash of a
tattoo that reads “I’m sorry for…”. She, in turn,
FRONT OF would offer compassion, and try to satisfy
their curiosities of the world she came from.
One of these moments came during a roll call,
A MAN, WHO a daily event when each block gathers outside
for registration. To settle the boys, who
T H E Y A LW AY S were pushing each other around, Krajewska
asked them to stand and close their eyes. By
VIEW AS cancelling out just one sense for a split second,
the troubled teens look almost angelic and at
peace. “I managed to get seven frames,” says
A R I VA L” Krajewska. Usually she would only manage
two or three before the distraction of a shove
or a yelp cut off the flow. Things moved
on quickly.
“Everything you give them that is
good, they take like a drug,” she says. “At the
beginning, they just chuck facts at you to
get a reaction, or they don’t want to tell you
anything. Then they open up more and more.
With some I had a flow from the beginning.
With others I didn’t know if they liked me or
not, or if they just had a psychotic character,
or if I was just irritating them. But it’s also a
defensive mechanism. There’s always a side
to them that you can trust and a side that is
54 Habitat: Format Festival
aggressive.” Only after six months of spending
time with them did one of the teenagers sit
beside her and give her a friendly nudge on
the shoulder to say, “You’re alright.”
Even so, there were moments when the
spell was nearly broken. Krajewska recalls
how for the first few months she would always
arrive in her old Nissan, a car that the boys
would come to recognise as hers. When one
day she borrowed her boyfriend’s BMW, they
turned. “They thought that I had sold the
photographs and made money on them; that
I was using them and going to ‘do them over’.”
She explains that as long as she was there, they
never stopped trying to trip her up. “It’s just
how they check people, how they size people
up.” Even now, as Krajewska continues to visit,
she will only drink coffee that she sees being
made. “If they bring it from the kitchen and I
didn’t see them make it, I won’t touch it.”
In March last year, Krajewska held an
exhibition and auction of the Imago work at
the Griffin Art Space, the former Dom Słowa
Polskiego (The House of the Polish Word)
in Warsaw, curated by Michał Suchora. She
invited friends and family, and her contacts
from the Polish popular media, commercial
and fashion worlds. Twelve of the better-
behaved boys, who were allowed to leave
the centre for the day, also came. “It was like
two worlds colliding,” she says. “They were
hanging out, smoking cigarettes together. It
was incredibly moving. For the boys it was
showing there could be something different
out there for them, it’s not all darkness, vodka
and crime. It can be different.”
The dozens of portraits were displayed
alongside objects taken from the boys’
bedroom shelves: cheap deodorants, rosaries,
photos of girlfriends. And letters – messages
written from the boys to their loved ones and
to each other, but also letters to the director
from old boys who weren’t able to break out
of the vicious cycle and write of regret from
the inside of prison cells. Krajewska explained
that she wanted to show beauty in their loss
and help people understand that these were
just children that needed to be looked after.
“People began to cry when they read those
letters,” she says. “Andrzej began to cry too
and ran out when he saw the photograph of
his brother, so we had to take it down.”
The event touched and spoke to many,
and Krajewska donated all the proceeds
from the auction to the boys’ personal funds
and the detention centre. The series began
to attract more interest and was featured in
magazines in Poland and abroad. But it was
not appreciated by all. After the success of the
auction and exhibition, Krajewska was invited
to speak about the series on national radio,
but her interview was unexpectedly cancelled
Female Gaze: Zuza Krajewska 55
56 Female Gaze: Zuza Krajewska Habitat: Format Festival 57
58 Habitat: Format Festival Habitat: Format Festival 59
60 Habitat: Format Festival Female Gaze: Zuza Krajewska 61
62 Habitat: Format Festival Habitat: Format Festival 63
 “ T O T H E G O V E R N M E N T, P L A C E S
L I K E T H I S D O N ’ T E X I S T: P O O R
KIDS IN DE TENTION CENTRES
W HO ARE NOT WAN TED”

64 Habitat: Format Festival Female Gaze: Zuza Krajewska 65

All images from the series Imago the day before. On 07 January 2016, Poland’s
© Zuza Krajewska.
newly elected conservative government,
PiS (Law and Justice), implemented a
controversial law that gave it a monopoly
of control over state media outlets, defining
their content and programming according
to their nationalistic policies and “Christian
values”. Imago, Krajewska believes, does not
“fit the vision” of the new editorial directives.
“To them, places like this don’t exist: poor
kids in detention centres who are not wanted.
The fact that these kids need help from the
justice system means that it’s all hush-hush.”
Krajewska believes that if she sought to do the
project now, the government would not have
allowed it. “Right now, in Poland, we’re not
living in the greatest times to be doing this
sort of thing.”
The project was very personal to
Krajewska, rooted in her childhood, unlike
much of her day-to-day work in fashion
and beauty (which has been published in
Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour,
Men’s Health). Her childhood friend from
66 Female Gaze: Zuza Krajewska
Malbork, Ostryk, who now lives in England,
saw the series on the internet and sent her
a Facebook message saying: “Those kids
look like us!” The monograph will soon be
published by KAHL Editions in Paris, but
then it will be time to “close the book” on
Imago. “I can’t look after them and hold
them by the hand, but they promised me
that they’d use the money to get their driving
licence and refurbish the blocks.”
The boys, some as young as 11, stay at the
centre until they become a legal adult at 18.
When they are released, some hope to move
to the bigger cities or abroad, wherever they
can find work. But more than half will quickly
return to crime and end up behind bars. A
short video to promote the past exhibition
shows one of the boys climbing up a tree in
full blossom. With sunlight flickering in and
out, the camera follows him up as he narrates
some details of his life and lists his crimes.
“Time for regret is when I’m up there,” he
says. “Now I gotta live.”
zuzakrajewska.com
 AM I
W H AT
YOU ’RE
LO O K I N G
FOR?
E n d i a B e a l ’s p h o t o g r a p h s h i g h l i g h t t h e
judgements and prejudices facing young
women of colour in the corporate job
mar ket. Words by Laurenc e Butet- Roc h

68 Female Gaze: Endia Beal Habitat: Format Festival 69


[Above and opposite page] From the series Can I Touch It?,
which looks at the types of hairstyles typically seen on black
women in the corporate world of work.
[Previous page and pages 72-75] From the series Am I What
You’re Looking For?, which investigates the experiences of
young women as they attempt to adapt for job interviews.
All images © Endia Beal.
70 Female Gaze: Endia Beal
“At Yale University, I found myself in a place
of double consciousness,” recalls Endia Beal,
citing WEB Du Bois. She was the only black
person in the 2013 cohort for the fine arts MA
in photography, as well as in her workplace:
the IT department. “I grew up in one culture
and now inhabited another, becoming a
mediator between these two worlds,” she
adds. Upon learning that her hair, a red
Afro, fascinated her colleagues, she turned
the tables on them, allowing them to feel it
but recording their impressions. “It felt like
I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to
be doing but wanted to do,” admits one of
them, while others speak of the moment being
“uncomfortable”, “voyeuristic” or “awkward”,
highlighting the inappropriateness of the
question, “Can I touch your hair?”.
Beal’s work since has continued to
question and provoke, often challenging
the uniformity of corporate culture. In an
amusing but no less incisive series, she styled
seven white women in their forties with
‘black’ hairdos, then took head shots of them
in corporate garb and pose. Their coifs stand
out not merely because they look incongruous
to the sitters, but because they contrast with
the otherwise indistinguishable dress of white
shirt and dark jacket. Evidently there’s little
room for expressions of individuality within
the corporate sphere. So much so that as soon
as someone is different, it is immediately
noticeable and therefore must be tamed.
“These women had their own stories about
being stuck in situations where they were
made to feel uncomfortable for who they
were. For instance, one of them is called Ann
but her real name is Desiree. When she started
working, she was asked to change it because
Desiree is too exotic for the office,” says the
photographer. “It’s not just a minority thing.
It’s a woman thing,” she told The Huffington
Post. “All women can relate to that experience
in some way. So I really learnt something
through this project as well.”
Now an associate professor of art
at Winston-Salem State University, an
historically black institution in North
Carolina, Beal still hears about her students
being asked how they do their hair, whether
or not they have children and where their
‘interesting’ name comes from when seeking
employment. Reflecting on the moment when
young women of colour are preparing to enter
the workforce, she began a project titled Am
I What You’re Looking For?, which sheds light
on the choices they must make.
Asking her subject to dress as they
would for a job interview, she poses them in
their childhood home in front of a backdrop
depicting the Yale office space she once
worked in. By juxtaposing the two, private
and public personae meet. The edges of the
frame show family pictures, trophies, musical
instruments, heirlooms and other decorations
that hint at how they grew up and remind us
that there’s more than meets the eye.
While the subjects play the part of
candidates, presenting themselves in a
deliberate way in a bid to make a good
impression, the viewers become the
interviewers, judging the efforts of the
person in front of them. In doing so, we
are confronted with our own biases and
presumptions. What is our conclusion and
what is it based on? Do we focus on what
the applicant is wearing or the environment
that surrounds her? Would we hire the one
wearing patterned shoes and a bold dress
or the one with a demure outfit and genteel
haircut? What do our decisions say about us?
“No matter what I did – straighten my
hair, put on less make-up, wear blue, black
or grey, don pearls and earrings – I was still
‘othered’. People would make comments that
made me feel uncomfortable and like I didn’t
belong. And the more I tried, the more I was
losing myself,” remembers Beal, ultimately
asking herself, “Why should I have to alter
myself to fit in a space that was never designed
for me?” But rather than throw in the towel,
she is trying to transform corporate culture.
In the hope of initiating a conversation
around hiring practices, her photographs
serve as the basis for talks on diversity and
inclusion. She’s spoken to career counsellors
across the United States as well as company
managers. She’s also creating a book destined
to be a teaching tool that combines her images
with first-person testimonies. “My job as an
artist is to add to the existing narratives,”
she says. “Although there are movies such as
Working Girl and 9 To 5 that speak of women’s
experiences in corporate spaces, there aren’t
any about women of colour. It’s the same thing
in fine arts. So I thought, ‘I’m a woman, I’m
black and I’m going to do this right now.”’
endiabeal.com
Female Gaze: Endia Beal 71
70 Habitat: Format Festival Habitat: Format Festival 71
72 Habitat: Format Festival Habitat: Format Festival 73
 SECRE T
H I S TO RY
E v e r y y e a r, s o m e 47, 0 0 0 w o m e n d i e
from backstreet abor tions because
of a lack of legal or free access.
Those who sur vive are alienated
a n d s t i g m a t i s e d . To l a u n c h h e r
n e w w o r k o n m i s o g y n y, L a i a A b r i l
visualises the space in between,
f r o m r e p e r c u s s i o n t o r e c o v e r y.
Words by Izabela Radwanska Z hang

76 Female Gaze: Laia Abril

 [Previous page] A set of household abortion tools
from Vienna’s Museum of Contraception and
Abortion, from A History of Misogyny, Chapter
One: On Abortion.
[Opposite] Portrait of Marta, 29, Poland, from A
History of Misogyny, Chapter One: On Abortion.
[Overleaf] Images from On Abortion: Illegal Stories,
a photonovel that details the experience of the
subject of Portrait of Marta, 29, Poland. From
A History of Misogyny, Chapter One: On Abortion.
All images © Laia Abril, 2016.
Laia Abril is no stranger to themes of distress.
Bulimia, coping with the death of a child, the
asexual community, virtual sex-performer
couples – these are all topics that the
Barcelona-based photographer has explored
and attempted to demystify with her multi-
layered, story-based practice. The subjects
she tackles are complex and provocative, but
ones she is able to connect with by way of
female empathy, “where I can be involved
emotionally”, she says.
Her most extensive work to date explores
the struggle of eating disorders and is divided
into chapters, starting with a short film titled
A Bad Day. Next came Thinspiration, a self-
published fanzine exploring and critiquing the
selfie culture used by the pro-ana community;
and finally The Epilogue, which follows an
American family in the aftermath of losing
their daughter to bulimia. Separating the work
into sections allowed her to approach different
aspects through different platforms, not only
in the multiplicity of perspectives but also in
a constantly evolving visual stimulation. Her
new work, A History of Misogyny, also adopts
the use of a layered representation.
“The ‘history’ part is important,” she
says. “Every time I tried to talk about female
issues or any kind of situation that I saw
was not right, I was confronted with people
telling me that it was in the past and it doesn’t
78
apply to the situation we are in now. But just
because something is now the law, that doesn’t
mean it’s fine. There’s always a risk.”  For
Abril, looking back is necessary to “highlight
the long, continuous erosion of women’s
reproductive rights”.
She begins with A History of Misogyny,
Chapter One: On Abortion, the first episode
of a project that will attempt to “visualise the
comparison between the present and the past,
so we understand that we have always to be
conscious that things are not as certain as we
think”. In the UK it has been legal to terminate
a pregnancy of up to 24 weeks since 1967,
yet it was only in March this year that MPs
voted to decriminalise it entirely, regardless of
circumstance or time constrictions. Western
society is considered to have liberal views
on cases of abortion but in the Republic of
Ireland and in Poland it is illegal, with the
exception of cases posing a risk to the health
of the woman or in the event of a pregnancy
arising from rape or incest. In Malta, it
remains forbidden altogether.
The project is not about the experience
of abortion itself but about the repercussions
of women not having legal, safe or free access
to the procedure, often forcing them to use
dangerous alternatives and causing physical
and mental harm. “A woman was using a coat
hanger to perform a DIY abortion in Uganda
and I hear the same story in Tennessee. [The
problem] is everywhere, with pretty much the
same consequences.”
Rather than focusing on one story in one
location, as has been the tendency, she casts
her net wide, “trying to create a conceptual
map to connect the repercussions so that
we can empathise more with these women”.
There is a series of black-and-white portraits
to accompany personal, graphic testimonies
of women who have had to turn to illegal
terminations. Marta from Poland was 29
when she went through the traumatic ordeal,
which lasted 15 hours. She recalls how, on
telling her boyfriend of her experience of the
stuffy, overcrowded room where it took place,
he responded: “That seems right, murderers
should be treated like cattle.” There is also a
series of images of ‘DIY Abortion Methods’,
such as a steaming, scalding-hot bath and
a bunch of ruda and chiplin herbs, as well
as ‘artistic’ still lifes of instruments made
in Vienna’s Museum of Contraception and
Abortion, a collection of Peruvian ads for
helplines and clinics that “regulate” menstrual
delays, and an image of a drone used by Dutch
pro-choice organisation Women on Waves to
fly packages of abortion pills from Frankfurt
to Słubice, Poland, in June 2015.
But despite a stint in reportage that
followed her degree in journalism and
communications from the University of
Barcelona in 2008, Abril insists that her work
is not documentary. Photographing the harsh
realities of post-war life in the Balkans not
long after starting out, she realised she was
“never going to be able to understand” the
region. “So I started working on stories that
were closer to me,” she says.
With her previous work, Abril
experienced an overwhelming reaction from
her audience. Sufferers of eating disorders
and their families wrote to her to share their
experiences; observers called to empathise
with devastating realities. Not so with On
Abortion. It may be that the exhibition and
series has not yet reached a wide enough
international platform; she had hoped to
display it in Ireland this year but was refused
space by all the galleries she approached
(“Even those that liked my work”). But she
also believes it is partly due to the illegality of
abortion and that women are scared to come
forward and share their experiences.
Nevertheless, she has travelled and held
meetings about the repercussions of abortion
in Poland, India, Nepal, Turkey and Brazil
among others – countries where the subject
is still taboo. Sometimes she shows a small
selection of images but mostly it is about the
action of conversation. “I’m trying to adapt
the project for the opportunity to go to places
where I can’t have an exhibition because it’s too
uncomfortable. At least we can talk about it.”
As she prepares to manifest this first
chapter in a book, to be published by Dewi
Lewis this summer, she starts work on
the second episode with the working title
of On Hysteria. She plans to focus on the
historical tendency to accuse women of being
crazy or possessed as a form of dismissal,
together with analysis of menstruation myths
and other constructed ‘mental’ and ‘female’
illnesses used as a justification for control.
“I’m not an activist,” she says. “I’m not
trying to change anyone’s mind or fix the
situation because I don’t have the power to do
that. But maybe I do have the power to shed
some light on the stories that we don’t think
about or that don’t get the same audience
that I’m reaching.” She describes her method
of working as being “like a strategy”, not
wanting to “shout” but instead materialise
what is invisible and give prominence to
the overlooked.
“I’m trying to visualise the history of
misogyny so we don’t forget what’s in the past
and don’t get too comfortable in the present;
so we take a look at things that sometimes we
don’t want to – in a visual way that doesn’t
make you just turn the page but makes you
engage somehow and think a little bit.”
laiaabril.com
Female Gaze: Laia Abril 79
80 Habitat: Format Festival 81
Next issue Intelligence The early years of Irving Penn
June 2017
1
Ones To Watch, BJP’s annual talent issue, returns with our pick
of emerging photographers drawn from across five continents.
Selected from the hundreds of nominations we received in
March after a call out to photography experts worldwide,
these are the names we believe you’re going to become better
acquainted with over the coming months and years, and our
Subscribe for just £39 for the next by Direct Debit; thereafter
Ones
paying £65.95To Watch
annually initiative
(still saving 31%). You’ll also receiveis designed to help them on their
a free Tote Bag worth £10 with UK orders only, upon renewal
way. Now insavings
itsmaysixth edition,
(your second payment). Promoted offer is redeemable by UK
subscribers only. Price and vary depending on it is the most far-reaching and
comprehensive
ie, Print, Digital or Pack. Imagessurvey
the country, payment method, subscription term and product
type; of its kind, committed to discovering
used are for illustrative
purposes only. Offer ends 06 January 2016.
talent beyond established photography centres in Europe and
North America to include new voices and perspectives in the
developing world. Photographers previously selected include
Sohrab Hura (2011), Namsa Leuba (2013), Jack Davison (2014),
Diana Markosian (2015) and Diego Moreno (2016).

On sale 03 May

Eva and Kyra, Merthyr Tydfil © Tom Johnson

As a major retrospective at The Met husband – as named on the certificate

celebrates a century since his birth,
the recent discovery of a black-covered
photo album reveals the formative
years of one of the 20th century’s
true photographic legends – and his
first marriage, to British-born Nonny
Gardner. Words by Donatella Montrone
Not long before Katie Cangelosi’s father died
in 1999, she visited him in the nursing home
We preview a little- where he would eventually see out the rest of
known body of work his life. As he rambled about his wife, Nonny
from one of history’s Gardner, who had died the year before, he
kept muttering the word “Penn”. She took it for
most influential the confusion of weakened health, but later,
photographers, while after his death, she and her siblings started to
our Creative Brief clear out their childhood home and discovered
a trunk full of negatives and photos that
is Shaz Madani, belonged to their mother – boxes of memories
co-founder and of a life shared with another man. They knew
art director of she had been married once before, but the
details remained secret until after their father’s
innovative women’s death, when a search at the local marriage
magazine Riposte bureau revealed that their mother’s previous
recorded by the Office of the City Clerk in the
City of New York on 2 October 1940 – was
Irving Penn.
The discovery of their mother’s
previous marriage to one of the most feted
photographers of the 20th century led to
an extraordinary and emotional journey
that begins in a cupboard in the attic of
their childhood home in East Northport,
Long Island, and ends at the photography
department of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York, where freelance curator
Maria Hambourg has been preparing a
blockbuster exhibition of Penn’s work, a century
after his birth, along with an accompanying
catalogue that contains three images “relating
to Gardner”, including two from the revealing
collection that Katie and her siblings found
while sifting through their mother’s keepsakes,
and one from the Penn archives.
Her mother attended Dartington Hall
in Devon, a progressive school that focused
on the arts, from 1928 to 1932, and was
then awarded a scholarship to study at the

82 Intelligence: New Media Intelligence: Report 81

 1 Cuzco Children, 1948, a platinum-
palladium print of which, created in
1968, is showing at The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, in Irving
Penn: Centennial from 24 April to
30 July. The Met was given the print
as a promised gift of The Irving Penn
Foundation. Image © Condé Nast.
2 A page from an album of photographs
attributed to Irving Penn and kept by his
first wife Nonny Gardner, who features
here getting ready for a Surrealist Ball
in Philadelphia in 1937. It was given
as a partial gift to The Art Institute
of Chicago from the family of Nonny
Gardner Cangelosi. Image © The Irving
Penn Foundation, courtesy The Art
Institute of Chicago/Art Resource NY.
Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art
[now the University of the Arts, Philadelphia],
taking classes in costume design, theatre and
photography in her freshman year. That’s
where she met Irving Penn. They both studied
under Alexey Brodovich, the Russian-born
photographer who went on to become one of
the postwar legends of magazine design in
his influential role as art director of Harper’s
Bazaar from 1934 to 1958.
“My mother kept all the photographs of
herself taken by Penn during their relationship,”
says Cangelosi. “We found them stored
away, along with negatives, letters and other
memorabilia,” she explains. They included
a black photo album, tucked deep into the
bowels of a cupboard. Hand-assembled, with
covers constructed of paper-wrapped boards,
it contained 327 gelatin silver prints adhered
to black paper.
“The Black Album contains numerous
photographs Penn took of my mother and
other people modelling costumes that she
had created for the Surrealist Ball,” explains
Katie. It was 1937, a time when Surrealism
was engaging the imagination of students
across the nation, not least those at PMSlA,
who organised the Surrealist Ball at the
Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. Penn
photographed Gardner and other fellow
students wearing Surrealistic costumes, often
in provocative poses. One image depicts
Gardner kissing a skeleton, its hand cupping
her left breast. Others, taken from above,
depict Gardner lying naked on a white sheet,
objects placed strategically on her body to
cover her modesty. Some images are inscribed
with the words ‘Beaux Arts Ball’ in blue ink,
in Gardner’s own hand, and there are many
close-ups of a beautiful Nonny gazing into
the distance.
She and Penn moved to Manhattan in
1938, where Penn worked as a freelance artist
82 Intelligence: Report
and Gardner found a job as a docent at the
Museum of Modern Art. They married in 1940
and soon after left for Mexico, where Penn
had intended to paint. “They travelled by train
to Washington DC, and through the South to
New Orleans,” says Katie. Penn chronicled
their journey along the way, and many of those
images are contained in the Black Album.
There are photos depicting Mexico and local
people and markets, but there are also still-life
shots with plants and animals. “My mom
appears in many, sometimes as the subject
and sometimes camouflaged among dense
vegetation in the gardens. In one shot she is
holding two baby chicks on her head.”
Gardner and Penn returned to the US
as the threat of war in Europe grew, and
they divorced not long after. “We found out
that before leaving Mexico, Penn burned all
the paintings he’d made while there,” says
Cangelosi. He initially intended to become a
painter but in his mid-20s took a job designing
covers for Vogue, where he soon established
himself as a formidable fashion photographer.
In 1950, he married model Lisa
Fonssagrives, who was the subject of much
of his work. He also became an influential
portraitist, doing shoots of celebrities, and
experimented extensively with platinum prints
of everything from female nudes to cigarette
butts and detritus. He played with tonal range
and texture, giving his work a Surrealist quality,
and he’d flit easily between the artistic and
the commercial. He’d often travel the world on
commissions and would erect a portable tent,
or rent a makeshift space, to serve as a studio
in which he would do shoots of indigenous
people outside of their surroundings. One such
example is Cuzco Children (1948), which was
taken in an antiquated studio he borrowed
during a trip to Peru, featuring a boy and girl,
both barefoot, hands clasped together, posing
against a table in what appears to be Western
dress. Undoubtedly, though, he is most famed
for elevating fashion photography to an
art form.
“We tried to piece together our mother’s
life with Irving Penn – before she married
my father and dedicated her life to raising a
family. It all seemed so bohemian and artistic
and full of adventure, so I took off on my
search for the story behind those photographs.
This led me to Vasilios Zatse, associate director
of the Irving Penn Foundation, who confirmed
the identity of the man behind the lens,”
says Cangelosi.
“Surprisingly, little is known of Irving
Penn and Nonny Gardner’s time together, and
apparently the pair did not remain in touch
upon parting,” writes Zatse in his appraisal
of the Black Album in 2013. “Although it is
known that Penn photographed in Mexico, the
Foundation was not aware of the photo album,
and it came as a surprise. The Foundation
has both acknowledged the authorship and
relevance of the album.”
Penn died in 2009, but in 1996 he
donated his archive to the Art Institute of
Chicago, which also now holds the Black
Album. “We decided to donate it to the AIC
because they already hold an archive of Penn’s
work and we felt they were best-placed to
preserve it. The Black Album was exhibited
by the AIC in 2014, at the anniversary of the
opening of the new photography gallery at the
Institute,” explains Katie. 
Hambourg, founder of the Met’s
photography department, and Jeff L
Rosenheim, curator in charge of the Met’s
Department of Photographs, have organised
the Irving Penn Centennial Exhibition, a major
retrospective of Penn’s work, to mark the
centennial of his birth. It opens on 24 April
and runs until 30 July, comprising more than
200 images, the core of which are taken from
work gifted to the museum by the Irving Penn
Foundation in 2015. The show will travel to the
Grand Palais later in the year (21 September to
29 January). “When Katie Cangelosi brought
her family album to our attention, Penn’s last
years in art school and his somewhat later trip
to Mexico became more vivid, more alive with
detail,” says Hambourg.“We had not known
about the images relating to the Surrealist
Ball at the Philadelphia Museum School of
Industrial Art, for example, and they filled in
that moment with the gaiety and spontaneous
creativity that so often characterise the
interactions of art students at play.
“In the accompanying catalogue we
have included three images by, or of, Gardner
because they illustrate early moments in
Penn’s life, about which we had only the
barest scaffolding of facts. One is a portrait of
Penn in Mexico, which was made by Gardner.
Two more depict Gardner. One is a solarised
image of a nude woman we assume is Nonny
Gardner. It is from the Philadelphia Museum
School years, and we think it was made by
Penn to illustrate a poster for the Surrealist
Ball. The third is a picture of Gardner in the
garden in Mexico, taken presumably by Penn
from, it would seem, a second storey window
or the roof.”
“My mother always had lots of stories to
tell,” says Cangelosi, “though none of them
included the fact that she had once been
married to Irving Penn.” While the discovery
of this phenomenal trove of images cannot
be underestimated from a photographic
standpoint, for Cangelosi and her siblings, it
raises as many questions as it has answered.
metmuseum.org
irvingpenn.org
Intelligence: Report 83

Creative Brief
Shaz Madani
1 Deborah Sussman, issue 2,
shot by Jiro Schneider.
2 Kelsey Lu, issue 7,
shot by Laura Coulson.
3 Anna Trevelyan, issue 3,
shot by Francesca Allen.
4 A feature on Nova, the legendary
lifestyle magazine of the 1960s and 70s,
issue 5. Image © Catherine Losing.
5 A feature on Bidoun, an arts and culture
magazine published in the Middle East,
issue 2. Image © Catherine Losing.
86 Intelligence: Creative Brief
Arriving in London from Tehran, aged 10,
and not having English as a first language,
Shaz Madani remembers finding “great
comfort in the universal language of images
and pictures”. That refuge in the visual was
probably the genesis of her career, as more
than a decade later she graduated from
the London College of Communication with
a degree in design for advertising. Three
years on, she set up her own studio, and
soon after, a mutual friend put her in touch
with Danielle Pender. Together they founded
Riposte, a biannual “smart magazine for
women”. Now in its seventh issue, the award-
winning title, edited by Pender and art directed
by Madani, is lauded for its intelligent voice
and smart aesthetic.
The Iranian-born designer continues with
project work, including commissions from
MoMA, Wellcome Trust, Elephant magazine,
and two books for photographer Giles Duley.
Why doesn’t Riposte have
a front cover image?
Riposte came about as a response to the
barrage of image-saturated magazines we
were seeing on the shelves, which too often
focused on unrealistic or negative visions of
female beauty; either highly unattainable,
heavily retouched women in expensive clothes
or celebrity gossip mags berating women for
not being perfect enough.
We wanted to create a platform that
celebrated talented women, with a space
where they could have open and honest
discussions about their failures and successes
and the issues that matter to them. With the
cover concept, it seemed like the perfect way
to wipe the slate clean and shift the focus back
to these women, and champion them for who
they are and their achievements rather than
their faces or bodies.
1 2
Do you prefer to use female
photographers?
We love working with talented female
photographers but would never disregard a
male – it’s not about excluding genders. We
work with whoever is most suitable for the
job. It’s really important both in our visual
and editorial commissioning to include male
viewpoints and collaborators.
What are your main considerations
when commissioning?
It’s a massive contradiction but the first thing
I always ask is, “Does this feel like Riposte?”,
but at the same time we’re looking for work
that challenges our ideas about what we
should feature. Honesty has been a constant
criteria. I’m interested in photographers who
have a nuanced approach; an eye for detail
and the ability to break down the wall between
the subject and viewer. We try to use natural
lighting where possible and avoid over-styling
3
or heavy post-production.
How do you collaborate
with photographers?
It’s about understanding them and how they
work best as much as it is about knowing what
you want from the project. It’s a fine balance.
Sometimes too much direction or involvement
can stifle or confuse people. We usually give as
much freedom to photographers as possible so
they are able to express their own creativity. If
we do the first part of our job right, which is to
pair the right person to the right brief, the rest
should work organically.
Is it important to be active
on social media?
Definitely. I’ve only recently (and reluctantly)
taken to platforms such as Instagram for
research and for sourcing commissions. It’s
a great place to see more casual work or
4 5
look at personal projects, and to get some
extra insight into the sort of photographer
someone might be.
How much value do you place
on experience?
It’s not always about being really experienced.
It’s more about a photographer’s eye and
natural ability. There may be situations
where, due to time constraints or the nature
of the shoot or the subject, you definitely
want someone who is well skilled, will know
what they are doing and is able to conduct
themselves professionally. Other times,
when there is more freedom to be playful,
a young or less experienced photographer
can bring unexpected and raw interpretations
to a brief.
smadani.com
Intelligence: Creative Brief 87
 Technology News
Japan’s annual photography trade fair CP+
delivered plenty of news, much of it lens-
related. Sigma, whose factory is a four-
hour drive north of the show’s location in
Yokohama, led with three top-of-the-range
DG HSM Art lenses: two primes and a zoom,
designed for full frame Canon, Nikon and
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THE GAME Sigma claims is the “world’s first and only f/1.8

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Technology: News 89
Prices correct at time of going to press. E&OE. Job No.1354 09.03.2017
 Irix 15mm f/2.4
Blackstone
[Above] Wide open at f/2.4, the Irix 15mm can be pre-focused for street photographs. Here, with the stallholder’s face very sharp,
there’s a visible change in focus between the awning and the building beyond, while foreground text remains sharp.
[Left] It required stopping down to f/7.1 to remove strong vignetting where the upper corners were already very dark. The geometry
of the lens needed no correction and the sharpness is very high, except at the bottom of the shot due to the closeness of the ground.
Illustrative images © David Kilpatrick.
Designed in Switzerland with Polish input
and South Korean manufacture, Irix is a new
name in manual focus SLR lenses in Canon
EF, Nikon G and Pentax K-AF FA-J electronic
aperture-coupled mounts. The product design
and the packaging point to high ambition. The
first lens is a 15mm f/2.4 full frame rectilinear
wide-angle in two versions: the lightweight
consumer Firefly at a little over £400 and the
magnesium-alloy, weather-sealed Blackstone
at just over £600.
The Blackstone looks like it’s worth
twice the price, with its well-designed
box, inner metal tin and press-formed zip
lens case. The Zeiss 15mm f/2.8 Milvus
is almost four times the price, yet Irix can
be considered a viable alternative. There’s
no OLED focus display and the manual
focus travel is 145 degrees instead of 270
degrees, making the useful depth-of-field and
hyperfocal markings tightly spaced.
This lens has adjustable focus scale
calibration to overcome poor tolerances on
bodies and adaptors. The focus goes past
infinity (soft clickstop) to benefit from live
view focus without recalibration. Live view
magnification reveals how wrong your focus
can be even if the Nikon D810 (used for this
test) manual focus signal is positive.
Newcomer Irix makes The Nikon EXIF data gives aperture
an impressive debut figures in third or half stops (Canon reports
with its 15mm f/2.4 f/2.5 for f/2.4). Focus distance is transmitted,
giving correct flash control. There is no
wide-angle lens, says aperture ring on the lens itself and it must be
David Kilpatrick set on the body. Although the front element
102 Technology: Camera Test Technology: Lighting 102
is small by Distagon standards, it does not
bulge out – the filter rim is 95mm and the
bayonet lens hood, with its matt silicon inner
face, has a hatch to access polariser rotation.
The rear element has a slip-in frame to accept
30×30mm gel filters. This allows high ND
filters at low cost without the problems of
front mounting, but you have to use live view
to compose.
The Irix 15mm has excellent geometry,
with slight barrel distortion on distant
horizons increasing, as usual, to stronger
curvature at closer focus (down to a useful
28cm). It’s easily corrected even without a
lens profile. Vignetting is dramatic – more
than three stops loss at f/2.4 in the corners.
It’s a look you may prefer to even illumination
with noisy, low-contrast corners caused by
correction. Flatness of field is good for distant
views but you might want to curve a group
taken wide open indoors.
Central sharpness is superb even
wide open, while outer-field sharpness
benefits from stopping down to at least f/8
(typical with a 110-degree view). Flare is
well controlled by the hard, dirt-resistant
multicoating but can throw up sharp
reflections from light sources in-shot; f/11 or
less is recommended for iris stars. The South
Korean partner is almost certainly Samyang,
although the Irix designs are not shared with
its brands.
Overall, a fine debut product. We now
await Irix’s 11mm f/4 and 45mm f/1.4.
en.irixlens.com
Technology: Lens Test 91
AF-S Nikkor
105mm f/1.4E ED
When lens tests concentrate on a design’s
MTF performance at full aperture, there’s a
temptation for the maker to look for the best
readings and forget that lenses have other
qualities. Not so Nikon. In making the first
ever 105mm f/1.4 (sounds unlikely, but true),
it has given the lens many qualities – from
handling to rendering – with the aim of
pleasing photographers, not lab technicians.
From the start, the 985g weight and
106mm length of this lens – compared with
what’s coming out of the workshops of Zeiss,
Sigma and other rivals – is immediately
appealing. It uses a reasonable 82mm filter
thread, hugging the fluorine-protected front
element closely. The light, super-proportional
action of the 95mm-diameter focus barrel,
which occupies the front half of the main
David Kilpatrick puts
Nikon’s lightweight
prime to the test
92
parallel section of the lens body, works
because it is hand-sized yet finger-friendly.
If you want to focus manually, just place your
thumb to support the mount and rotate it
with your forefinger touching the underside.
It’s effortless.
With the current Nano Crystal coating
and a conventional Nikkor design and
construction, this Chinese-made lens is well
sealed against dust and moisture. Inside,
there are three extra-low dispersion elements
but there are no aspherical elements, which
means there is no moulded glass and a very
clean bokeh.  the bokeh at f/2 shows less longitudinal
At a little over £1500, it’s a fairly priced
lens for its specification. The SWM motor is
almost silent, although most will prefer to
use manual focus. Thanks to the internal
focus, it does not have to shift 14 elements,
while clever design has enabled Nikon to
avoid serious focus breathing and achieve
a 0.13× image scale at the one-metre close
focus limit. The autofocus is surprisingly fast
and, over a range of situations that included
night shots, it needed no AF micro correction
on the Nikon D810 body used. Close and far
AF never failed to be spot on.
Examining the images, those at f/1.4
have just the slightest glow to them – a
softening of micro contrast that gives skin
tones a flattering texture. It’s still there to
some degree at f/1.6 and f/1.8, disappearing
by f/2. Even so, there’s a distinct dominance
of higher-contrast detail, such as eyelashes
and hair, in portraits over the lower contrast
of skin pores. This quality is combined with a
warm, clear colour rendering.
“The difference between 85mm and
105mm might seem small but once you
enter a crowd or a room with people,
it has real impact”
[Opposite page] In this distant view of St Mary’s
Lighthouse, Whitley Bay, an aperture of f/2 allows
hand-holding by the last rays of midwinter sun,
keeping the lighthouse in sharp focus with a small
trade-off in sharpness on the closest figure.
[Left] For background bokeh, f/2 is probably
the optimum aperture, as it produces the most
consistently circular blurred highlights. Although
there are fussy details in this street scene, the Nikon
105mm bokeh is smooth and in no way distracting.
Illustrative images © David Kilpatrick.
The lens shows no distortion worth
correcting, though the Adobe profile makes
an adjustment you can hardly detect. It’s
suitable for copying or accurate record work.
Vignetting is a different matter; it’s got fairly
strong fall-off to the corners at full aperture,
two stops relative to illumination at f/5.6 or
smaller settings. You can choose to use this,
or lose it by using the lens profile.
Sharpness across the frame shows
only a very slight loss to the outer field – f/4
achieves optimum across the frame, the
edges matching the centre at f/2.8, though
all apertures from f/2 to f/11 look equal
in practice.
The Nikkor is supplied with a fairly deep
circular lens hood, matt-painted inside without
any ribbing. It’s not all that effective but the
lens resists flare from sources outside or inside
the frame. The nine iris blades create a nearly
perfect circular aperture between f/1.6 and
f/2.8, gradually acquiring a polygonal look.
They are positioned far back in the optical
design, resulting in a slightly swirled look
to backgrounds far out of focus, but nothing
like the effect of a classic Sonnar. Nor is it
like a symmetrical Planar. Although many
photographers will want to work wide open,
chromatic shift and a better circular rendering
of blur discs. If you are used to the effect of
an 85mm f/1.4 used wide open, the 105mm
achieves about the same visual result at f/2.
The difference between 85mm and
105mm might seem small but once you enter
a crowd or a room with people, it has real
impact. The distance you must step back to
frame a portrait, two people together or a
full-length shot is critical. Many rooms allow
us no more than 6ft to 8ft of clear space. The
105mm will need a 10ft working distance,
whereas an 85mm needs 8ft. There are more
situations where you can’t frame your subject,
or where someone may step between the
subject and the camera. It’s not an alternative
choice but an additional lens, or one that
may fit your special requirement: ideal, for
example, for music gigs, theatre, some sports
and for studio head shots (if you have a large
enough studio). For this, 105mm has always
been the choice.
europe-nikon.com
Technology: Lens Test 93
 ADVERTISING FEATURE ADVERTISING FEATURE
ADVERTISIN
G FEATURE

Stuart’s photo-homage to
Fujfilm telling your
stories in the national
photo press: every month
specially commissioned

F D-Day heroes
or those born after the Stuart’s regular lab is One interviews and features
Second World War it’s Vision, and they were only on new work, exhibitions,
difficult to imagine the too happy to get involved books and specialist If only Mich
elang
horrors that confronted a from the outset, agreeing to Wallpaper onelo could have used Fujifi
imaging services have been WHEN A NEW the Sistine Ch
restaurant
apel…
lm
previous generation. While produce the necessary exhi-
commissione nature of the
d a motor- job and who

put in the press spotlight

themed displa suggest a suitab might
y for its bar area

Over 70 years on,

photographer le media to print
Nick Turley turned on. “The first
CC Imaging and to step was to measu and printed on
Fujifilm’s Wallpa all the bays very re an Epson Stylus
Media for help. per carefully,” says 11880 64" inkjet Pro
Nick, “and then

young men and women these bition prints, which will all
printer. The whole
Michelangelo to produce scale process was really
drawings. Then

by Fujifilm.
may have I had straightforwa
established the to produce a The ink went rd.
trend for ceiling visual design down really well,
with his celebr art and make any no smudging with

stories of those who

ated treatment they asked chang es or banding, and,
Sistine Chape of for. At this stage importantly,
l, but the princip the go ahead and I could the colours from

days have all the everyday be output on Fujifilm’s iconic

creating rich le of produ ce the finished roll also matched perfec roll to
visual artwork files, tly.”
above the heads entertainment all at the
“I chose to work correct sizes.”
Great care was
of visitors is still taken to ensure
that the colour
Imaging in Leeds with CC

land
going strong s would be resista
some
years later - albeit five hundred a lab I knew well
because it was to fading. “We
did some tests
nt

took part in D-Day e

FEATURE in a 21st centur and I was aware where we coated

The lie of th
Crystal Archive DP II profes-
y

worries that come with mod-

ENT
ADVERTISEM of their reputa the paper
While the newly tion for high cellulose spray,” with a
printing and quality says Mark, “but
Waterwheel restau -opened They advised
attention to detail. quickly becam
e apparent that
it
Mark Senior of
Yorkshire might rant in Howden, would be the
that Fujifilm Wallpa
per CC Imaging with media was actual
ly really durab
the
not share the perfect media on Fujifilm’s Wallpa output and it wasn’t le
same sweeping Halifax-based to use.” per Media requir
quite lightweight ed. It was also

ern living, such as landing a sional paper.

dimensions as Nick provided
joint

continue to inspire.
the Vatican, this comprehens despite comin
an ambitious lab.
upmarket new ive printing faced were ensuri rolls that were g in
venue nonet instructions and ng we got the 42 inches wide,
er mounted
heless boasts measu rements spot
a sizes to CC our fear that and
pro sumptuous interio
of Westminst ifilm and the Bayeux
Imaging. Mark handling the on and also of it might be difficu
r
setting for a remark that’s the Senior, the non-standard to hang was lt
University
company’s joint sizes unfounded. In
Fuj able overhead and overlaps. short,
tes from the sible by support from
MD says, “This Fujifilm has got

job, making ends meet and “We use this media for One Vision Imaging, Stuart’s choice for printing and framing his Fujifilm
artwork, design a first for us but was the product exactl
ed and create
ent gradua d by we knew we “The images right.” y
were created
rec de pos the facilities to had

Stuart Wood FMPA

up of ma Fujifilm Image in
in June,
cope and we
A gro “There’s a motor confident that felt Hunter softwa Mark also apprec
in London
ing theme Fujifilm’s Wallpa re iated the fact
running throug that, like genuin
exhibition hout the whole media would per e wallpa per,
be up to Fujifilm produ the
“In fact, the only the job.

getting on the housing lad- virtually everything we

ct had the right

DP II Pro prints. See: http://bit.ly/fujifilmDPII

were briefed issues we when it was wet smell
by our (“a little fishy”)
at putting togeth client to look Fujifilm Imag it was pasted
up at the restau
, and
er a selection eHunter rant

was determined
photographs of by two profes
that tapped into Software sional paper
hangers
and which would this working off a
scaffol
be displayed record the choice d. For the

der, those who were their age print,” confirms One Vision’s
the ceiling/wall on Fujifilm’s Image
in the bar area. Hunter produ of adhesive was
The manager Peter ct Erfurt Mav ready
Hayward sugge mixed paste
this RIP softwa sted to CC Imagin the mounting and
re, designed g that of the 24 prints

Looking for leads

large and wide specifically for achieved in just was
use with

to play his part in

format printe two days.
printing job. rs, might be “The result is

seventy years ago were facing product and marketing man-

Senior produ perfect for this breathtaking
ct specialist
lab through
the set up. Image Mark Wade then particular comments Nick.
“Photograph
,”
cropping with Hunte guided the the ceiling look s of
an accurate previe r delivers easy resizing, amazing, but
an image into tiling and don’t do justice they
borderless strips w and also offers the ability to the actual
Download a - perfect for to divide effect.” ‘wow’
trial version a project of this

a far sterner test, an ultimate ager Adam Scorey. “As a pro

at: http://www.

honouring this heroic

fujifilm.eu/es kind. For more inform
p Nick: www.inside-o ation see:
utbranding.co
CC Imaging: www.c m
cimaging.co.uk
15" up to
x 15

battle for freedom. They faced lab it’s crucial we offer top
size from 11 print sizes

It wasn’t the easiest of pro- “This worked out spectac-

– ranging in x 40
40"
30" and 60

but now dwindling

giant 40 x 30 lm Crystal
ced on Fujifi matching
– was produ ctly
e paper, perfe individual
Matt C-typ ach of the

supreme sacrifice to liberate quality and consistent results,

antly appro

‘Being In-betw
graphers const the fine art

jects to get moving because ularly in the case of Ernie, an C

reative photo ers.
ce thought photograph orship enabl
ed the ADVERTISEMEN
strive to produ and expose it to While spons
T FEATURE

band of survivors.
provoking work possible – and of Modern Life
Topography there was still a need for
audience as

een’
as wide an catalyst in come together, within which to displa
y

Europe. and that’s what Fujifilm paper

a key

Stuart had no personal con- ex-artilleryman I’d sourced

often prove
exhibitions a prestige venue ry was an obvio
us
Galle
that mission. y of Modern
Life’ it, and the 71a
The ‘Topograph n’s 71a Galle
ry
ited at Londo
show exhib cased the

Those who survived the gives us: beautiful colours and

in June show

nections with veterans and through my local paper. I W

in Shoreditch ion of photographers est Yorkshire-bas
work of a select t first class graduates ed portrait
who are all
recen
of Westminster
. photographer Caroly ‘Inside me is
n still
sat in the cup the gap-toothed small girl
Unive rsity the Mendelsohn
from the was set up
with too well that magica remembers only

storming of the beaches of deep contrast.

The exhibition board dreamin who
bit to ensure that this dimin- a book that would raise funds
x and awkward age betwe l and potentially

was struggling to find his first went to his house in my

m and Bayeu I wanted to take
support of Fujifil nts showing his work, becoming a young en childhood and – Carolyn Men g of Narnia’ beautiful portrai
ts
one of the stude also happens to adult, and it’s proved delsohn of these girls and
opportunity to
give them the
uren, to be priceless celebrate who
is Gage Solag l imaging experience for they really
r and a digita project/exhibition. her latest are at this point
in their lives.”
be its curato

Normandy and all the other “Exhibition printing is

ition
lab. “The exhib ings

ishing band would never be for the National Memorial subject. Eventually, however, usual way and was scanning
at the last 12 years The mome As part of the
technician and mean lab for the nt that stands process Caroly
temporality worked at the targeted is a
mix Carolyn Mende out for invites each subjec n
explores the factors that we lsohn t to bring their
home and the . Top right:
by nce
and the audie within the photograph
ic her personal ‘in-bet as the epitome of choice of clothes own
of place and raphy that surro
und
Top left: by
Jasper Jones
s Berrington. als ween’ years (loosel along to the sitting
shape the topog “Every student came Brick by Jame of profession curators, and defined as that y just to make them –
Leticia Batty. seen below graphers, and age feel comfortable.

activities that supported it all nothing new for us and we’re

Solaguren, world, photo mics within twelve when childre between ten to also interviews

forgotten. “I thought my con- Arboretum. I wasn’t looking

ins. She

through his local branch of every room to see if there was

us,” he expla ach, and Above: by Gage Bayeux. ssional acade each
own appro at also the profe ng market.” from their ‘cute’ n have moved
on pertinent questio girl and asks them
up with their include a look
at a checking prints of the housi phase but have ns – and for the
subjects cover ed
ern Engla nd the politics Fujifilm with
its to mature into yet Mill exhibition
the audio incorp
Salts
town in north Meanwhile, rting industry
young adults) was orating
post industrial ination of a of suppo incident at home an the girls’ voices
was incorporated
personal exam ination of long tradition tandem with a on
evening. She had a balmy summer’s

those years ago are old men regularly involved in some

through to a ‘soundscape’, created into a

tribution would be a selection to make any money out of the Armed Forces charity SSA- something I could use, when
and an exam newcomers
– in
with Bayeux plucked up the choral trainer Graham by composer and
childhood home through the form of relationship courage to ventur
e downstairs wearin
crisis commercial – also Coatman.
the housing ” several years a pair of garish g
house brick. x arose stretching back e a sponsor of the lime green shorts. The art of exh
the ubiquitous
presentation ibition
with Bayeu “I was only a small
assoc iation
course of agreed to becom thing at the

and women now, most well really big shows, such as the
The
through the worktime,” she recalls, “but I was

of portraits of D-Day veter- the project, not even expens- FA, he came across Charlie, he suddenly invited me out-
naturally since of the students had show. this most of the self-co incredibly
As a result of nscious. The shorts
their studies
all that 71a Gallery exactly weren’t Over the years
of the discounts walls of the subtle, Carolyn has becom
taken advan
tage
many had seen on the al Archi ve and
pape rs
I remem ber walking acutely aware e
students and slowly
m Cryst downstairsgton of the need to
the lab offers d and mounted there ation on Fujifil e call Peter Wigin to be met by my work effectively present

into their nineties, but their Comedy Wildlife Awards and

For more informsample print pleascomme nting: ‘Oh my – mum Carolyn checks and for ‘In-Bet

ans,” he says, “that would es, because, to me, that would

their work printe e shows.

an old soldier who lived near side to see his air raid shelter.
st a your prints emerging she decided to ween’
degre or to reque chubby!’ hic-paper/legs look so by Louise Rayner from the system have
for their final always been ing
involved
on 01234
57213 8, email tofinishing
/photograp . Below, Alice,
December 1st
at CC Imaging in
Leeds, right (photo slightly larger than the pictures printed
“Bayeux has oducts/pho Photographs © 2015; right, Eve, life, and to mount
, “help m.eu/uk/pr Carolyn Mende April 1st 2015. graph them unframed
says Gage www.fujifil lsohn – see www.c to Dibond (alumi
with students,” itions and providing arolynmendelso
hnphoto.com which made them nium),

experiences can never fail to the Pink Lady Food Photogra-

them with exhib ssional advice on how rigid and more

include both men and women have felt wrong. Instead my him in Derby. A meeting was I didn’t know what to expect,
robust. She also
them with profe they’ve graduated. I’ve opted for a painte
once feel, achieved by rly
to proceed using the Giclée
process and output
ting the work on
ADVERTISING FEATURE Fujifilm Fine
Art Photo Rag

inspire. and representatives from all reward would be the chance phy competition.
a cotton 100% media,

set up and then Stuart had to but there was indeed a shelter ‘Psst – tell me a joke and I’ll
rag traditional
paper featuring fine art
a special, smoot
coating. h matt
“When I was invited

Stuart Wood considers “We can’t wait to see Stu- take your picture and make a
growing body to exhibit my

of the armed forces. My aim
to meet some of these remark- explain his idea and persuade there, now requisitioned for
of work
Gallery I was delight at the Artlink
arts council fundin ed to receive
g
mount the exhibit to enable me to

real exhibition of you’

ion in the way

them to be his ultimate art’s amazing imagery printed

would best suit I felt

was to produce around 20 able people face to face and to Charlie to be part of it. “I just gardening uses, and I knew
the photographs,”
says Carolyn. “At
this point I contac
Chris Baxter, the ted
creative directo

L
ife as a stand-up comedian is them to contribute a one-line joke CC Imaging in r at
Leeds, to discuss
might be the best what

heroes, and, as such, he was and framed when the venue’s

no laughing matter. There’s and a few unknown facts about

or so images and pull them spend some time listening to immediately this would work
material to print

told him that I wanted to do

endless amounts of travelling; themselves. Although there had on. He recomm
ended
hours of hanging around never been the intention to turn test prints he produc Photo Rag. The
backstage just waiting to go on; the series into a full-scale project, simply breathtaking ed for me were
the fear of encountering a difficult eventually there was enough , so we went ahead
with the rest and

determined to do his personal together in an exhibition and their recollections.” been finalised.”
the end result

perfectly as a setting.”
audience and too many late nights material – pictures of around 450

him justice in his picture and

stunning, way was
to mention, but still this is a career comedians, ranging from famous beyond what I
hoped for. originally
that those involved would never names such as Jo Brand, Sean Lock,
swap. Lee Mack, Harry Hill and Sarah Every portrait just
which adds to looks so real,
In this ‘another night, another Millican through to complete the compelling

that was enough,” says Stuart. For Stuart the real joy of
town’ environment Steve Best unknowns who were just working of the show, and nature
appreciates more than most just the circuit – to compile a book,
while the finish
“I ran upstairs prints is matt and of the
how unique this business is, and Comedy Snapshot mortified and didn’t non-reflective they
show my legs for all rich in colour.
over the twenty years he’s been Such was the positive reaction years. Eventually me thinking about The texture invites are
friend commented a the in-between to reach out and you
treading the boards he’s built up to its appearance in 2014 that on her confusion where we’re all age famous Salts Mill touch them.
so vulnerable.”

With the project finally the project was meeting a

a special camaraderie with his it very quickly becameabout my attitude to
obvious The more that in Yorkshire where “Those who see
that a second volumeand wasI called
my ‘chunky legs,’
realised I was worryi Carolyn ponde it will be part of
the commenting about the work are always
fellow performers and a unique
nothing. The truth ng about this largely ignore
d group, the more
red that’s taking place Saltaire Arts Trail People love it,
the print mediu
m.
understanding of what makes for, and at this point Steve
was they were realised she had she from May 28-30. and there’s no
thin.toItadopt stick discovered an engag “I can so relate it brings out the doubt that
them tick. “I realised some time London-based stand-up comedian Steve Best decided that he needed was ridiculous,
funny and a little personal project
, which has now ing she says, “and
to my subjects,” best in the work. I’m
so grateful to have

wide variety of people who

ago that I was in a very privileged a more serious attitudesad,tothat
his

underway Stuart trawled the

I give
position to be on the inside of started taking a camera along with him to his photography. had created
one throwaway
comment into an exhibit
ion, ‘Being In-betw
turned who they are and them space to be Fujifilm Fine Art
been introduced
to
This was initially een.’ to talk while I
this profession,” he says, “and at He began to look around for aso much impact, but it got shown at the Artlink Girls of this age listen. Photo Rag.”
gigs and over the years has used his ‘inside track’ Gallery in Hull are bombarded
that time I started to take a simple more advanced camera that would and it’s moving advertising and with For information
point and shoot camera along with still suit his candid approach and on to the marketing aimed on Fujfilm Fine n
‘tweens’, but it at Art
status to build up an outstanding collection of shouldn’t define Photo Rag Paper

internet for leads and got had amazing experiences to

me so that I could take some snaps
of the people I met up with along
the way.”
Steve’s interest quickly
morphed into a formula: he
found what he was looking for by them. see:
hanging out in Park Cameras and http://tinyurl.com/jd
images of his fellow performers trying the kit that was on sale.
6b8ax
The camera he fell for was the
For more information on Fujifilm Crystal Archive papers Fujifilm X-Pro 1 plus 18mm and

in touch with regiments to share and he listened en-

would take un-posed pictures of
his subjects using available light,
whilst at the same time asking
or to request a sample print please call Peter Wigington 35mm lenses: “It was the perfect
on 01234 572138, email photoimaging@fuji.co.uk or visit
tool for me,” he says. “I loved its
www.fujifilm.eu/uk/products/photofinishing/photographic-paper/
retro styling and, although it was

A trio of true ta
ADVERTISEME
Making the Prints
see if they could help in his thralled as one lady, found
NT FEATUR
E

ALL OF THE PRINTS for Steve’s show were made by theprintspace,

lent and prints

to
which is located right in the centre of Shoreditch, London’s creative

last a hundred
hotbed. First opening its doors in 2007, the company has now grown to

search. What finally opened through the blind veterans’

become one of the UK’s leading providers of professional photo and fine

years
art printing services, offering printing, mounting and framing, both online
and in-house. A firm favourite with creative artists and photographers,
theprintspace’s award-winning service offers gallery-standard quality at
Woodshedding

things up for him was a meet- association, described how

affordable prices, which is why Turner Prize-winning artists and National it
Portrait Gallery award-winners consistently choose to work with them. in the Fenlan
ds –
Another service recently launched by theprintspace is thehub, a new Alastair Bartle
tt
online ordering system that allows users to store their images online for
easy reprints and to create customised branded online art stores where

ing with George Batts, the she was an air operating

they can sell prints of their work directly to the public.
“We’ve been working with Fujifilm ever since theprintspace first
opened,” says Dave Lucken, the company’s operations director. “After
extensively testing a wide range of products we discovered that Fujifilm
papers gave us the most consistent results and the most neutral prints,

chairman of the Normandy officer for flight control

especially when we were working with black and white images, which can
be very tricky to print on colour papers.
“Steve was introduced to us via Fujifilm and we saw straight away
that this project was a unique take on what you usually see at a comedy

Veterans Association, who during the Battle of Britain.

show. It was a rare, almost backstage, viewpoint on how a comedian
might see their show, and we loved the work. The decision to print it all
out on Fujifilm’s DP II Matte media was a simple one: it really suited the
images and, in our opinion, it was going to be the best all-round paper in
terms of being able to cope with the different lighting levels that Steve

was not only the subject of “She was actually in the room
encountered in the course of shooting his images.”
www.theprintspace.co.uk

Putting som
ething back
a portrait but a man with a when Churchill famously The Metro Imag
– Metro Me
ntorship
programme launc e Mentorship

treasure trove of contacts. asked how many reserves we

hed in 2005. The
set the platform lab
up because it felt
bridge between the

ing
graduates comp

at’s boom
FEATURE their education leting
and the industry
Alastair bangs
had and was told there were
ADVERTISING

“I had to win him over and

port lab th
broken down. “The had
re was no clear the drum for Fuj
ers ifilm Crystal Arc
communication

The Stock rowing online ord

between indus IT WAS while
that of emerging
photographers,”
try and tourin
that Alastair Bartle g as a drummer in a band
tt first realised
hive
none,” Stuart says in awe.
One of the big

convince him that I was

Professor Steve says genuine passio
n for photography had a
he benefits of the

g
Macleod, abov Alastair was the mentorship for

thanks to
se, Metro’s creat e, it overto ok my obsession with . “Eventually fact that it introd
unf old ed but tho ive director. “and I decided music,” he says, pro lab standa
rds and quality
uced him to
olution to the “We introduced a schem to head to university to opene d his eyes to Fujifilm , and in particular it
s as the digital rev bus ine ss thanks supp e that
time.” While there
Alastair won the study it full
Paper, which perfec Fujifilm Crystal

“Someone who witnessed his-

in
genuine,” recalls Stuart, “but ny prolab surge orted graduates as they prize mentorship Archive
enjoying a
offered by Metro tly complement
ak for ma transition from made the Imaging with ‘Here “The quality of ed his imagery.
looked ble d are now ordering educa Are’ – a series We Fujifilm Crystal
The future
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that survive l growth of online We enlisted many tion to industry. Cambridgeshire ed around the second to none,” Archive is
our Labs, Fenlands (above asserts Alastair.
“My work can
exponentia
be very subtle
like DS Col advise and supp industry leaders to provided a huge ). The
boost to his career award
and the vivid colour

tory in the making and here

really help to bring s of this paper

once I did he simply asked me

ort the progress validated the work and not only out
rd- mentee. The platfo of each enable he was producing hues. I’m still blown the different tones and
r, the forwa

J
rm but also
resourced by Metro is fully funded and expert feedbato benefit from a wide selection
onathan Porte of DS Colour
d him is output on this away every time
r
thinking owne Stockport, is of paper. There’s just my work
Imaging and is ck and tangib describe that exhila no way to
Labs in Redd
ish, established in now “Winning the Metro le material support. rating feeling when
both academic
they were, sitting in front of
t the

to give him a shopping list of

he talks abou Mentorship Prize print for the first you see a
candid when faced this family- academic route and non- an incredible feeling was time.
so archivally stable The fact that the paper is
challenges
that s into the indus be a lonely place ,” he says. “Photography can is anothe
ess just a few years
www.metro.co try.” and self-doubt me. People really r big plus point
for
owned busin r in: awards and can easily creep do look out for
Set up by his
grandfathe .uk prizes are a great and silver halide that reassurance,
ago. company know what you’re way to technology is one
1950s, the doing is both releva let you

the people I was looking for my camera.”

in the early Didsbury appreciated.” guaranteeing this way of
of a shop in nt and incred
operated out prolabs, More information: ibly important factor.”
many other
and, like so core www.alastairba
its traditional rtlett.com
was seeing and fast
processing
services of

With his project now com-

et steadily

and he put me in touch with ng for the pro mark

printi of digital.
the advance
eroded by decline
“There had
been a huge what online
” says Jonat
han, “and
our eyes to
in business, lves, for opening athan Porter,
plete Stuart is proud to have
ing to ourse

them. Things really started ifilm to thank s owner Jon

we were think from here? We
where do we
go
the original
premises ‘We have Fuj r’ – DS Colour Lab ters
were still in over ld offe film prin
ordering cou team and Fuj
in
started out e to be
that we had small book servic
r and it was
line-up of lab lay flat photo the range

played his own small part

fifty years earlie no room for

moving after this.”

a year after
and cramp
ed with
we weren’t above with offered, and
was introduced
it’s proving
to be
At that time
expansion. .” lar.
that we had a future extremely popu nly’ packages
even sure ess “Despite ‘CD-o quarters
of the busin
The saviour in some Fujifilm Crysta

in honouring the heroes of

of l Archive

From the outset Stuart’s

atic grow th taking over high
was the dram coupled with demand for Type II freshly
’s still a huge on processed
online order
ing,
of a
there20
• MAST booksPHOTprinted out
and courage quality photo ER OGRA
Jonat han.
the foresight that, four years halide paper,” says PHY MARCH/APR Fujifilm Crysta
l
nt team silver ers not IL 2016
manageme to relocate photograph Archive Fujitra
the decision “And for those album approach ns

plan was to photograph D-Day, and the body of work

ago, made an full
to a unit on going for the cts that
DS Colour Labs times other produ
that was ten there are many cases,
industrial site ke such as CD
out in bespo they can offer, folios. You can
the size, fitted for the needs of and
cards, boxes it all
fashion to cater to match and

everyone as an individual and that’s resulted will ensure

l get everything professional.”
the business. m to thank icolor Crysta looks extre
mely d a bit
“We have Fujifil to what
prints on Fuj into Success has
now create
for opening
our eyes
ing could offer,”
notes How bigger ught DSCL for DS Colou
of a challenge already filling the
r Labs.
online order ing -II Paper bro is
was an amaz
Archive DP The company it’s taken on and

to arrive for his sitting with that the extraordinary stories market
Jonathan. “It one that
opportunit
y and we were ed.
to get fully
involv lay-flat photobook the larger prints
needed
extra space
five internal
walls have
had to
te
of the first graphers the Previously inkjet to accommoda
wedding photo much larger ced using an be taken down been

T
Previously could he move to to be produ the inery that’s
use us if they ed the door couldn’t match the extra mach future even

Has a Fujifilm
would only printer, which

a deliberately blank canvas, they had to tell will live on.

Even
their films off. premises open a grand halide and
was
brought in.
In the
to be
physically drop wasn’t secure to expansion
on quality of silver ises may need in any
ry the most recen
t
expensive. bigger prem han is not
special delive with unprocessed one of more mess age but Jonat
scale, and r Labs is push the sourced, quite
trust “We always the business

Á
enough to t that s at DS Colou vity
That mean installation a major y and longe hurry to move
wedding films. very local, but lab printer, about the qualit

product featured
a giant Laser output,” says

so that he could react in re-

was d yet. e feet
our clientèle l files that has move of silver halide superb “We’ve got
6,000 squar
can send digita investment level. prints look to
because you now gettin
g on to a new Jonathan. “The nce is still got room
here we’re everything al ssional audie here, so we’ve says.
from anyw world.” Fujicolor Cryst and our profe them because moment,” he
all over the Working with r halide based
)
happy with grow at the for
orders from UK-ba sed ve DP-II (silve very mess age to is a very exciting time
er of

in YOUR current
Archi up to a great “This most

More information:
“The numb e services are

al-time to what he found. “In

with in deliver prints it provides Our
ers we deal paper it can of surfaces, own clients. us and onlin success of
photograph , thanks to on a range convey to their days to inkjet future. The
flourishing 49.5x30ins , certainly our much
particular is today . If it’s as gloss y, lustre and pearl only output these
and canva s.” book s shows how
speed such the lab can fine art the photo and
our turnaround a standard print means that printers is to of the new could be there
time and it now of the jobs The acquisition ed a new potential there quality of Fujifilm
ordered in vast majority

success? If so, we
day and g

my job I often have to work

out the same er output the the outstandin

www.stuart-wood.com
media, also allow got great
order will go couri e on the same y. printer has es that we’ve
goes for the they receiv
er consistenc
media ensur customers.”
if the client day offer to our
e then it will be a next Mail ensuring great al Archi ve papers products to ation :
servic
wise it’s Royal m Cryst Wigington More inform
delivery, other ation on Fujifil e call Peter lourlabs.co
.uk
clientèle loves se For inform print pleas o.uk or visit www.dsco

want to know –
st a sample imaging@fuji.c tographic-paper

like that,” he says, “and it’s

first class. Our

www.stuartwoodweddings.com
becau or to reque
service, and 8, email photo g/pho
this kind of produced in on 01234 57213 /products/photofinishin
we offer is .eu/uk
everything lete www.fujifilm
s we’re in comp
house it mean
thing.”

Photographs from Stuart’s documentary essay on D-Day veterans – above, a just a case of being able to www.onevisionimaging.com
control of every

2 • MASTER
PHOTOGRA
PHY SEPTEMBE
R/OCTOBE
R 2015

contact us now!
Nanza Hughes; right, Ernest Turner. think on your feet. http://bit.ly/fujifilmDPII editor@iconpublications.com
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 Personal
Archives
Lise Straatsma
Words by Simon Bainbridge
Installation views of Lise Straatsma’s
The Alpha Strategy – An Index Of The
Unpredictable showing at the Royal College
of Art in The Hague, February 2017.
All images © Lise Straatsma.
Photo © Fredrik Lerneryd
“I am fascinated by order and chaos,”
says Amsterdam-based photographer Lise
Straatsma. “The two go hand in hand; where
you try to create order, more chaos seems
to emerge.” It is one of the central themes
of her latest work, The Alpha Strategy – An
Index Of The Unpredictable, which also
became something of a personal battle as she
struggled with the sheer volume of research
materials she collected online.
The 26-year-old, a recent graduate of
CALLING ALL STUDENTS the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague,
describes the project as an investigation into
AND GRADUATES “the quest for self-reliance”, focusing on the
guides and tools developed by survivalists
and ‘preppers’ for living back in the wild. And
EXHIBIT YOUR WORK while she describes it as an “ongoing research
on how to weapon yourself against fear and
GET FEATURED IN BJP anxiety”, it also addresses one of the more
existential questions of our time: “Living in
MEET INDUSTRY EXPERTS the information age, we have access to a
multitude of sources, data and visuals,” says
LAUNCH YOUR CAREER Straatsma. “This research tries to grasp ways
98 Personal Archive
‘Prepper’ tutorials and how-to drawings
are the source materials for a Dutch
photographer’s failed attempt to create
order out of chaos
to deal with the unpredictable. It poses the
question of where the dividing line is between
useful information and knowledge possibly
being completely useless. Is knowledge power
or is ignorance bliss?”
The title of the project originates from
a bestselling book published in 1980 by
economics commentator John Pugsley, which
detailed strategies for preserving wealth
in the face of inflation, but it is now used
in a wider sense as a term for preparing
for disaster scenarios. “There is something
romantic about the idea of not having modern
technology, it being just you and nature,”
says the photographer. “The urge to survive is
also this very primal need, and then there is
this modern phenomenon of online tutorials
and how-to drawings. This juxtaposition is
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interesting. Survival tutorials might be the
most useful ones out there, since we are all
08 MAY 2017
so dependent on modern technology that
there are not that many people left that carry
this knowledge.”
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She originally began watching the
tutorials so she could create her own clean-
water filter in the wild or bush-craft a shelter
in the woods, both of which she built and then
photographed. But as she delved deeper into
her research and began to feel overwhelmed
by it and unable to contain the growing chaos
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with her own sense of order, she realised this
dichotomy could feed directly into the work.
“After working on the project for a year, I
felt I was drowning,” she says. “The amount of
information I had gathered was enormous and
I started doing something I always do at that
point: I put my research and photographs into
categories. My walls were full of Post-its and
colour-coordinated stickers. And when I was
done, staring at my walls, the ridiculousness of
me colour-indexing the end of the world as we
know it was just so apparent. It said so much
about me, as a person and as a photographer,
that I wanted to incorporate this in the project.”
For her graduation show she combined
her research, including a split-screen projection
of 16 clean-water tutorials, with her own
photographs and portraits of preppers
alongside survival tools she created from the
guides, all presented together in a kind of
organised chaos that echoed her wall layouts.
“When I started working on the project it
was much more traditional, in the sense
that I was only using my own photography www.bjpsubs.com
SAVE
to tell this story about people preparing
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themselves for major disasters. It fast became
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 Capital culture: Photo London, How do women photograph Laia Abril, Zuza Krajewska,
Peckham 24 and Prix Pictet women differently to men? Endia Beal, Riposte magazine

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