Sunday 19 June 2011

London's Calling

On Friday I went up to London for the first time in a while to see some new exhibitions before they all finished. First I headed to Whitechapel Gallery to see one of my favourite photographers Paul Graham. I love his snapshot style portraits that capture the individual perfectly. His vibrant colours and great compositions make his portraits unique and inspiring in so many ways. The exhibition covered the various projects throughout his impressive photographic career. I absolutely loved it and the exhibition catalogue is definitely on my birthday list!















I then headed on down to Tate Modern, one of my favourite exhibition spaces to see some of my favourite pieces in their permanent collection as well as having a look at what they have new to show. I was pleasantly surprised to view an exhibition of Diane Arbus, one of my favourite photographers, as well as Burke + Norfolk: Photographs from the war in Afghanistan, and a piece of work by an unknown photographer to myself, Tayrn Simon.

Diane Arbus









The Burke + Norfolk exhibition was really fascinating, Simon Norfolk went back to some of the sights John Burke photographed back in the C19th, recapturing contemporary versions of Burke's original Afghanistan images. The exhbition was really thought provoking and I loved Norfolk's vibrant, beautiful images of a war torn country, avoiding directly rephotographing Burke's original images and staying away from the cliched black and white war torn images, instead showing beautiful parts of the country along with war images.









I love London, it is definitely my favourite city and I am so lucky to live so close. I always just pop up, without planning to see anything in particular and love just wandering around the art galleries all around London and finding out about new artists. So I encourage you all to just take a day out your busy schedules, head up to London and just wander around all the art galleries. Apart from the big exhibitions it's always free to do so!

Thursday 9 June 2011

Laila Muraywid

As you regular bloggers may recall, last October I went to Paris for the Paris Photo weekend, whilst I was there I went into a little art gallery and came across an artist, that I recently rediscovered during the daunting process of packing all my belongings up and moving out of my student accommodation of the past three years. When I saw Laila Muraywid's work I found it breathtaking and took a brochure home (which is how I rediscovered her again) and so I thought I would share her work with all of you out there. She is a photographer, sculptor and painter and her work is fabulous. She hand makes all the bejeweled props that you see in her images and also paints over the top of the photographs to add bits of colour.

Her work is daunting, powerful and most of beautiful, exploring and celebrating the various female form. She is a huge inspiration for me and I love her work so I hope you do to!









Friday 3 June 2011

Old Disposable Found, Finished and Developed

Just as the title suggests, I found an old disposable camera that only had a few photos taken on it, so I used it up, developed it and loved the results of pictures taken over a year ago with recent spur-of-the-moment shots. Enjoy!

Click on image to enlarge





Self Portraits (above)