ma photography, london college of communication 2013 · inroduction 6 wirya adenatya -echoes 8...
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MA PHOTOGRAPHYLONDON COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION
2013
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Inroduction 6Wirya Adenatya - Echoes 8Alejandro Arango Garcia - In-between 9Magali Avezou - Everything is Blue 10Marcela Barragan Leon - Waiting to be Shot 11Céline Bodin - The Confessional 12Ruth Campbell - Once a Year and Now 13Jodie Chandler - M/other (Kate) 14James Duncan Clark - Direction of Travel 15Tanya Clarke - A Point of Balance 16Rick Cordell - Field Notes 17Barbara Cucinotta - Il Cancello Della Foresta 18Carla Cuomo - Ellipsis (falling short) 19Maria Gafarova - Andreas I 20Luciana Giobellina - Who Keeps the Dog? 21Christopher Hench - The Darkest Side 22Olwen Holland - Langsamer Satz 23María Alejandra Huicho - Shadows Fighting in the Dancehall 24Georgina Jordan - Something and Nothing 25Eva Kornblum - Reminiscences 26Hyungwook Lee - The Arrival 27Jetsada Leelanuwatkul - Whisper from the Garden 28Wang Lin - Lavendar Marriage 29Yinni Ma - Address Unknown 30Siân Macfarlane - We Will Meet Sooner than Two Mountains 31Elina Moriya - The Ghost that Wasn’t 32Alice Myers - Nothing is Impossible Under the Sun 33Mike Pevsner - Working from Home 34Elena Raschi - The Performer 35Daniel Regan - Insula 36Michael Rodgers - Actual Imaginaries 37Ian Rudgewick-Brown - Point of Influx 38Won Ki Seo - 별 (byul) : Star 39Marcello Simeone - A Gradual Approximation to the Sun 40Sayako Sugawara - Stanley and Claire 41Matilda Svensson - When I Wake Up 42Ammar Syed - Observational Paradox 43Donna Toroni - Yesterday’s Girl 44Patty Yung-Chen Tseng - Allegory of the Frame 45Zody Tseng - Anonymous 46Alkistis Ven - The Self 47Sara Wellenkamp - Achilles’ Heel 48Nick Wiltshire - In Memory of Chaos 49Shankun Wu - Big Mountain 50Ge Zhang - Toxoplasmosis # Case1 51Lijie Zhang - Embedded 52Linfei Zhang - Who I Am 53Acknowledgments 54
www.map13.info
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15 YEARS OF MA PHOTOGRAPHY FINAL SHOWS AT LCC
Dear MAP13,
Here is a visual thought for you: Imagine aphotograph of your year group on the day youstarted your MA Photography with us here at LCC.People pooled together from a variety of differentcountries, backgrounds and professions, all of youstanding there next to each other – arms dangling orfolded, heads facing forward with slightly confusedsmiles or caught in the process of first exchanges –with at the time very little in common other thanwhat brought you to us: a strong interest inphotography and a promising project proposal. Andnow imagine a group photograph of your graduatingcohort today. The proximities and distances moredistinct, the expressions toward the camera possiblymore obvious, reflecting more of the relationalelements, even though – of course! you hear mesaying – any photograph would fail to undo these.
Proxemics analyses the human use of space, i.e.the space surrounding a person when interactingwith other people, as visualized by Edward T. Hall inhis diagram of personal reaction bubbles rangingfrom Intimate Space (within 0.45m) over PersonalSpace (1.20m) to Social Space (3.60m) and PublicSpace (7.60m).1 Even within the artificialcircumstances of staging a group photograph,proxemic behaviour must have an impact not onlyon how individuals are positioned with each otherbut also on how the visual field is framed and how itis read. Look out for unintentional elements of bodyspacing and posture; how close are the shoulders,the knees touching or not, the body slightly turned toone side, chin up, hands on laps getting ready tostand up or not quite yet in place; physical distanceand spatial relationships possibly reflecting degreesof social distance or closeness. Nicholas Nixon’songoing portrait series The Brown Sisters springsto mind.2
Surely there’s always a lot going on with manypeople in one image. Good group photographs, wehear, are testimonials of perfect timing, experienceddirecting and skilled lighting: everybody should bevisible without shadows overlaying any of the faces,keeping all individuals at the same distance from thecamera, photographing them with an aperture of F8 or higher to increase clarity in a relaxed butfocused atmosphere.
The same could be said for shepherding a group ofwonderfully disparate individuals through theprocess of doing an MA in photography. Everybodyhas to be visible and carefully exposed to light in aconstructive but equally challenging environment (ifonly one could swap heads, as in Photoshop). Theproxemic experience thus includes the immediatepersonal space during interpersonalcommunication as well as the more social space ofthe seminar, in which evidently many differentproxemic behaviour patterns mix and mingle. But inthe end, in order to position everyone in this MApicture, one plainly needs to engage in some kind ofmilitary campaigning – which often feels not all toounlike the activities that must have gone on behindthe scenes of the panoramic group photographs byEugene O. Goldbeck in the 1920s, some of whichinclude more than 20,000 people.3
Yes, MAP13 is indeed the fifteenth final MAPhotography show at LCC, which should becelebrated! And this is not the only anniversary as itis the tenth year of the Sproxton Award forPhotography – given in honour of Andrew Sproxtonby his brother David from Aardman Animations. We are also very happy to again be able to host thePhotofusion Prize as well as awards by Photoworks, Michael MACK/MAPP and TroikaEditions, all honouring different aspects ofphotographic practice.
1 Edward T. Hall: The Hidden Dimension. Garden City NY, Doubleday,1966.2 Nicholas Nixon: The Brown Sisters; Thirty-three Years. The Museumof Modern Art, New York, 2007.3Kitti Bolognesi and Jordi Bernado (eds): Goldbeck. ACTAR,Barcelona, 1999.
After running the MA from its very beginnings withits first graduating cohort exhibiting in the fall of1998, Anne Williams has now decided toconcentrate on her role as Programme Director ofPhotography at LCC, and I am sure you all want tojoin me in thanking her for making this one of thevery best MAs in Photography, with a greatinternational standing and many, many successfulalumni around the globe, who are now active infields ranging from editing and publishing overcurating to production and postproduction,undertaking PhDs and becoming academics,working in art institutions and the creative industriesas well as being respected as inventivephotographers, showing artists and critical writers.Fortunately Anne will stay involved in teaching anddeveloping the course in what seems to be one ofthe most challenging times for postgraduateeducation in this country. Furthermore I would liketo thank our dedicated MA Photography team andour wonderful technicians for keeping the students’journey as positive and as calm as possible.
But, most importantly, we want to shower all of you new MAP graduates with our very best wishesand celebratory hoorays!! – well done, and do keepin touch.
Dr Wiebke LeisterCourse Leader MA Photography
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Wirya Satya AdenatyaECHOES
“A painter paints his pictures on canvas. Butmusicians paint their pictures on silence. Weprovide the music, and you provide the silence.”(Leopold Stokowski)
In visual arts, there is always a sensitive yet richspace between abstraction and representation. This area is worth pursuing. Echoes is an explorationtowards music and visual arts, perceptive reality andpresence, and abstraction and representation. Theproject is a form of reflection and an appreciation forthe artist’s musical life in London as a foreigner.Music is not abstract, it is part of reality, but itspresence cannot be seen. Its presence is similar to apainting’s presence, you can hear music as well asyou can touch paint. Music places a person in anew perceptive reality. The ‘reality’ might be senseddifferently from one to another.
Alejandro ArangoIN-BETWEEN
The city is where everything happens as my stepfather used to say.
Promise of order and shiny newness. At my arrival, however, it was too late.
I am astonished during my journeys, by all the routes that have been traced.
All full of borders, full of amusements, the modern times that fade away.
This is the reason why I take pictures, to shape the dreams before they are dead; tostroke the borders, scan the margins of that which never may have been there.
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Magali AvezouEVERYTHING IS BLUE
George?! Can you see?
I am not sure… It slips away. Is itmoving? What is it?
I don’t understand, George.
Is this real? Do you see the same?
Do you know?
Marcela Barragán León WAITING TO BE SHOT
When we are asked to pose for a photograph, we turn ourselves intothe image that we would like to come out as a result. The subjects aretold that they are going to be photographed at any moment, so theywait and hold their pose for the click that will capture their image. Theresulting videos are a reminder that photographic portraits usually onlyshow a fragment of a second of what a person is like.
[email protected] marcelabarragan.tumblr.com
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Once a year and now is a series of photographs thatfocuses on the annual event of a birthday,specifically the homemade birthday cake, an objectrepeated within our everyday life. The decoration ofthese cakes expresses parts of the mother anddaughter’s personality. The images are acombination of family photographs that were neverinserted into the ‘family album’, juxtaposed with newimages. By making the missing cakes that werenever photographed and re-living the act of blowingout the candles, the images acknowledge andcelebrate the care and attention shown by a motherin this yearly celebration.
Céline BodinTHE CONFESSIONAL
In ‘The Confessional’, portraits ofyoung women question the notionof consciousness andobjectification within the femalebody. Representation is a processconditioned by its creators andspectators, as well as the result ofa digested inheritance of thecodes of posing. The authenticityof the self is therefore a quest,and the photographic space willre-enact a possible confession.
In between modesty and shame,the ambiguous will to show whatis right is the projection that veilsone’s body’s reality.
The images expose the momentof expected disclosure, where onemight find a reading of presencethrough the body’s owndisruption.
Ruth CampbellONCE A YEAR AND NOW
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As a woman I have oftenstruggled with the feeling of losingone’s own identity through the actof becoming a mother. I am nolonger an individual in my ownright but referred to assomebody’s mum. I have becomesomething else, somethingdomestic, something other.
This series of images takesinfluence from Victorian “hiddenmother” photographs, where themothers are rendered invisiblebeneath rugs or curtains, onlythere to pacify the child for theduration of the exposure. She ismerely the backdrop. Shebecomes, quite literally, a piece ofthe furniture. In ‘M/other’ ablanket is used as a metaphor fordomesticity, it renders the womana domestic object. The woman'sindividual identity is denied,suffused with that of the child.
James Duncan ClarkDIRECTION OF TRAVEL
‘Direction of Travel’ documents a landscape still in transition on theperiphery of London’s Olympic Park. Using photographs and foundephemera from the streets of east London, the body of work questionsthe commonly accepted narrative and seeks to distance itself from thecommunal endorphins supplied by the transitory Olympic spectacle. Itattempts to grapple with the everyday and the commonplace, andexplores the complex relationship between the landscape and itsinhabitants during a time of radical change.
www.jamesduncanclark.com
Jodie ChandlerM/OTHER (KATE)
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Tanya ClarkeA POINT OF BALANCE
Rick CordellFIELD NOTES
The blooming of a flower, formany, represents the culminationof the growing process: nature atits zenith. The afterworld of decayand change is often ignored – atbest, tolerated – as a necessarypenalty, balancing the precedingbeauty. Within this micro-universelies a rich vein of visual imageryand an important aspect of the lifenarrative. The breaking down andchanging state of organic matteris a vital process that nurtures andsustains the next life cycle. Theseimages investigate the echo ofthat original bloom, documentingthe visual aspects of this processof change.
When I was 8 years old I broke my arm. I was showing my friend how I could climb upthe side of a doorframe and swing from the top. As I got to the top of the frame, my handslipped and I dropped to the floor. Sitting awkwardly on my arm as I fell, one of the bonesin my wrist cracked.
Many years later, inspired by the achievements of three women – a gymnast, acosmonaut and a mountaineer – I perform three more balancing acts, carefully, inamongst the household paraphernalia of family life against a background of foundimages, TV footage and radio commentary.
www.flicker.co.uk [email protected]
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CorrespondencesNature's a fane where down eachcorridor of living pillars, darklingwhispers roll, - a symbol-forestevery pilgrim soul must pierce,'neath gazing eyes it knew before.like echoes long that from afarrebound, merged till one deep lowshadowy note is born, vast as thenight or as the fires of morn,sound calls to fragrance, colourcalls to sound. […] (CharlesBaudelaire)
I use walking as a way of findingmy gaze, and imagery to sustainmy gaze. Sometimes a gaze canwrap up things, soaking themwith grace and melancholy.Everything can appearprovisional. The texture of theworld can evaporate, leaving onlythe trace of someone passingthrough. Every passer-by seemsaware of his unique and regalencounter with destiny, and abattle can be seen as a dance.Existence escapes meaning, butat least leaves us some poetry anda reason to smile.
Carla CuomoELLIPSIS (FALLING SHORT)
My first visual initiation has been with a poster of a rough sea in a nowhereplace hanging in my room as a child. I used to spend good amount of timestaring at it silently without understanding why I felt so strangely attractedby its unsettling yet restful dimension.
I never knew what happened to that image once I got older, but theempathetic and introspective eye is still operating in me, in the way Iengage with reality, in the way I question myself about existence, in theway I look for the visible beyond the invisible.
In relation to my work, this research took two main routes: on one side thepersonal struggle for expressing the fragility of the mind, the physicalcondition of absence and the uneasiness of dealing with emotions; on theother side the attempt to deal with formal art-immanent questionsconcerning the picture, the material and the installation. Ultimately mywork can be read as an extended and oblique self-portrait, where imagesand objects are combined to deliver an unexpected perception of the self.
Barbara CucinottaIL CANCELLO DELLA FORESTA (THE GATE OF THE WOODS)
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Maria GafarovaANDREAS I
This project explores thephotographic image inrelation to gender andresemblance. The boymimics a lineage offorms and gestures. Hisbody yields to andbends under objects -sometimes a ball, or ahand. A play betweenpersonhood andobjecthood takes place.
Luciana GiobellinaWHO KEEPS THE DOG?
In contemporary society, the relationship betweenobjects and human beings is constantly evolvingand quickly changing. In this sense, people developnew ways to interact and understand spaces,objects and other people in their surroundings.
As the starting point, the artist examines aninscription written in a second hand book in order todisclose aspects related to absence, presence, loss,time and memory.
By mixing factual and fictional resources, ‘Whokeeps the dog?’ creates an intimate world, by puttingtogether fragments of personal stories published onthe internet.
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The individual members of a string quartet are recorded in rehearsalspaces playing the separate parts of one piece of music.
The music played, titled ‘Langsamer Satz’ (meaning literally “slowmovement”) was written in 1905 by the composer Anton Webern(1883 – 1945). His music, inspired by the natural world, crossed fromRomanticism to Modernism at this point in time, and this score layundiscovered, and was first performed in 1962. He was a majorinfluence on the work of John Cage.
The idea of the space of the music is used as the framework toapproach the still image as part of a fluid, moment. This work suggestsa fragment of time extracted from the music score.
Christopher HenchTHE DARKEST SIDE
Darkness [dahrk-nis]: 1. absence or deficiency of light 2. wickedness or evil3. obscurity; concealment4. lack of knowledge orenlightenment
How we imagine objects indarkness in the mind maymisrepresent the truth. This seriesof images explore nature as stilllife through the twilight hourswhile working thorough mentalsymbolism in nature mythology.In each image, a night-timephotograph is overlaid with aphotograph of the exact samelocation as per global positioncoordinates in the day light hours,thus cresting the visuallyunsettling image, pairing with thementally unsettling question, “Arethings revealed in lightness thesame through darkness?”
www.christopherhench.com
Olwen HollandLANGSAMER SATZ
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María Alejandra HuichoSHADOWS FIGHTING IN THE DANCEHALL
Focusing on small physical gestures, these photographs intend toemphasize the emotion that radicalises reality, even if onlymomentarily. The dancers’ angst, desires and obliviousness play outagainst a backdrop of their erased daytime lives. I found these dancersin the place that they had disappeared into, removed from theirsurroundings and performing their chosen reality. To me, theyrepresent every person, every background, age and trade, and in theirdance, their guard is low and quietly introspective.
www.malejandrahuicho.com
Georgina JordanSOMETHING AND NOTHING
'Something and Nothing' is a collection ofphotographic images of well-known buildings andlandmarks shot with prolonged exposure andvertical hand held camera movement. A minimalistand abstract series, these images are a study intime, representation, perception and the veryprocess of seeing, offering a commentary on theborders of contemporary visual culture.
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Eva KornblumREMINISCENCES
Hyungwook LeeTHE ARRIVAL
‘The Arrival’ aims to explore the relationship between non-places and people in a specific group. This seriesof photographs represents subtle feelings and figures when arriving at the airport on a flight from theircountry and entering the country for the first time.
Non-places are places that lack a sense of identity, history and relationships, unlike traditional places. Also,a sense of solitude is one of the noticeable characteristics of ‘non-places’.
My intention has been to consider the similarity between non-places and the people in these places.
The series of family figures are presented asarchetypes of a memories scheme. Hence it ishistorical and nostalgic as well as haptic andsensual. The blurred aspect of the photographsresonates with the fuzziness of every remembranceand its inherent fragility. The images grasp a sight ofthe infinity of the past through remembrance; theyalso give a distanced point of view on the loss andthe time passing by.
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Jetsada LeelanuwatkulWHISPER FROM THE GARDEN
Wang LinLAVENDER MARRIAGE
Generation after generation, Chinese peopleperceive the notion of a ‘family’ as the mostimportant social unity and its essential purpose is toreproduce offspring to carry on the family name. Asa gay man, one may perform a lavender marriageand marry a woman to deceive others about hissexuality; as well as for the sake of procreating heirs.This project presents the artist’s journey as a gayman seeking a suitable wife. By interviewing womenwith different culture backgrounds and occupations,the artist investigates the notion of a ‘lavendermarriage’. As the artist and his potential ‘wife’ sit infront of a traditional Chinese wedding setup, the redbackdrop incongruously symbolizes the blessingand happiness of this unity.
A public green space iseveryone’s natural private garden,depending on different uses andpurposes. I, personally, use agenre of impressionist landscapephotography to transform publicgreen spaces into my naturalprivate garden, as a place to hideaway from the complexity ofmodern urban life.
My garden represents an idyllicspace for relaxation andcontemplation. ‘Whisper from theGarden’ explores thespontaneous relationshipbetween self and nature in amoment.
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Yinni MaADDRESS UNKNOWN
Facing this disordered, open andpotential urban aggregation, Ifocus on the relationship betweenpeople and their surroundings.How people present themselvesin public area, what they want toshow, and how they connect withcommon places.
I use parts of the human body aswell as specific livingenvironments to rebuild anunlimited urban text, which couldbring more cinematic, awkwardspaces to explore and imagineinstead of the inherent,monotonous urban sight.Through photographing thesurface of real life, I want to reveala personal hidden city.
It is about an anonymous journey,a psychological theatre.
[email protected] [email protected]
Siân MacfarlaneWE WILL MEET SOONER THAN TWO MOUNTAINS
A series of annotated photographs from 1946 charting a trip across North Wales.
An archive of letters between a Victorian artist, Lily Whaite, and herfather, and boxes of ephemera, gallery listings, pamphlets, driedflowers.
A re-encounter with a place I had never been to, but experiencedthrough the photographs, a feeling of familiarity.
The work explores a place where people and their experiences exist aslatency, and a search to reveal them.
Through mirroring and doubling, the events of their lives are revealedto be both unique and shared, playing out simultaneously, place actingas a palimpsest.
Activating a feeling of presence and absence, the intention is to revealthat place is transformative, and in a state of flux. Characters exist astheir experiences outside of time, and experiences exist as ghosts.
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Elina MoriyaTHE GHOST THAT WASN’T
Alice MyersNOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE UNDER THE SUN
Calais is the French port closest to the United Kingdom. It is not known how many people attempt to cross the border herewithout documents.
I travel easily and often across this border, getting to know those who hide in trucks, those who smuggle them across, thosewho are homeless, claiming asylum in France and those with no legal status and no plans to leave.
By negotiating the terms on which I take photographs, and incorporating diverse materials such as drawings, writing andsound recordings, I shape a complex representation of people who are legally invisible.
The disparate imagery and fragmented, partial narratives of this slideshow evoke the parallel existence to which peoplewithout papers are consigned. Here the presence of the human body itself is disallowed. Here is repetitive, futile effort,occasional farcical comedy and the impossibility of rest.
More information on Calais: calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.comMany thanks to IdeasTap for their support.
www.alicemyers.net
Fascinated by Finnish and Japanese folklore ghoststories, I set out on a journey to investigate whatghosts represent and the values they echo in bothcultures. Questioning how values and beliefs arerooted within history and how they are passed onfrom one generation to the next, I searched forcultural cues that are visible but silent, intangible yet tactile.
In the film, predominant narratives from ghost filmsare deconstructed and reframed to form newnarratives.
On two screens events are simultaneously occurringacross multitude of locations in mixtures of visualgrammars, symbols, aesthetics and styles, operatingin multidimensional, subconscious paradigms andconceptual frameworks. However, none of theresulting elements can be placed into fixed locationsnor can be attributed a verifiable source. Thischallenges what is recognised as an acknowledgedvisual grammar, with its related aesthetics and anappropriate paradigm, and ultimately all answersremain as floating as the images.
www.emoriya.com
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Mike PevsnerWORKING FROM HOME
‘Working from Home' examines the creation of offices within the home.
The former separation of home and office was punctured in the first instance by theinsertion of reminders of the home into the office space.
Now hot-desking is clearing the office space of these mementos while desks, computers,offices files and work telephones are appearing in our domestic worlds.
The people pictured worked within the same team, myself included, spending hoursworking closely together over many years but rarely visiting each other’s homes.
A typological study of their home offices opens up these new spaces to us whilepermitting me a farewell visit after I left the team.
Elena RaschiTHE PERFORMER
This project focuses on theperformative aspects of thephotographer working in thestudio environment. Observingsome photographers at work, myattention was drawn to theirmovements and to how theyrelate to the set itself, with itsspace and its objects. I foundmyself thinking about similaritiesbetween the photographer andthe performer, and between thestudio and a theatre stage,visually recalled in my pictures bythe red elements.
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Daniel ReganINSULA
‘Insula’ embodies a continuous cycle of recoverywhere chaos reigns supreme. Documenting themind and body under duress and their struggle toachieve equilibrium, this personal work highlightsthe enduring search for light amongst the darkness.
Through a triptych and book of sensitive andemotional images the artist provides a glimpse at alife of anguish entwined in hope, often promptingthe viewer to reflect on times of their own emotionaldifficulties.
Michael RodgersACTUAL IMAGINARIES
The on-going series ‘Actual Imaginaries’ explores urban space and photographic space as parallel sites of the imagination.Michael's approach combines etching and colouring techniques with photography in a creative dialogue that extends beyondthe surface of the print and into the image. Such careful applications aim to activate the photograph and render forms thatare as 'real' as the scene depicted. In correspondence, the process opens up relationships between people, objects andarchitecture as spaces for engagement and imaginative projection. Through an emphasis on the imagination, works in theseries offer the viewer opportunities to consider worlds of possibility within his or her surroundings. As photography and theurban increasingly embody our image of society, ‘Actual Imaginaries’ is a reminder that neither the city's fabric nor thephotograph are fixed, and that it is vital to grasp the potential of both spaces present before us.
www.lostlights.org
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Won Ki Seo별 (BYUL) : STARReality is already and always subjectively tinged.
The night sky I gazed upon one day was not theusual one. On that occasion, the dots of starsformed other lines and figures that were shapedcontinuously by my thoughts and feelings. Infinitepossibilities inhere in our world, but often passunnoticed or unactualized. Everything depends onthe way we look.
A Korean word ‘별’ means ‘a star’ and ispronounced as ‘byul’.
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Ian Rudgewick-BrownPOINT OF INFLUX
This film takes us on a journey to a period when our perception of proximity and time changed forever.
The invention of the telegraph saw the rapid spread of submarine cables trailing the ocean floors around the world, many ofwhich funnelled into the small unassuming cove of Porthcurno in Cornwall. This gave birth to the era of the Victorian Internet,creating for the first time a neighbourhood of the world. Using historical research as a point of departure, this project aims tocollapse time and space into a single cinematic sequence punctuated by sensory dislocations. Recorded on HD video wetransverse backwards and forwards between Hi-Fi and Low-Fi through various modes of representation.
[email protected] www.rudgewick-brown.com
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Marcello SimeoneA GRADUAL APPROXIMATION TO THE SUN
Sayako SugawaraSTANLEY AND CLAIRE
‘Stanley and Claire’ is a three wayconversation between twoadolescents and the camera.
Inviting the viewer to take part, thetriangle reveals the liminal state ofthe twelve years olds and recallsintimate memories.
‘Since authentic life is impossible without significant actions, literaryforms that focus on actions are the best media for presenting authenticlife’. (Jacob Golomb)
Staging the paradoxical struggle of the individual to adapt to objectivereality, in my actions I focus on the inner pathos of the subject caughtup in the process of be-coming, on what Kierkegaard calls ‘subjectiveinwardness’. The work is rooted in ontology and is a personal take onphilosophies of ‘authenticity’ and particularly the existentialist idea offreedom as the ‘overcoming of the self’.
The subtle but incessant movement of self-transcendence and selfcreation is captured by the camera in a language that explores aborder territory between slapstick and conceptual drama.
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Matilda SvenssonWHEN I WAKE UP
‘When I Wake’ Up explores how to visualize personalexperiences and emotions. In this series, I am usingmy own life to document my feelings during aspecific time period. This work examines theborders between the inside and the outside, thesubjective and the objective, by documenting aninner state of mind with a medium that seems torecord only the surface of things.
Ammar SyedOBSERVATIONAL PARADOX
The series of work investigates the banal object and its perception in the gallery space. In this instance, the artist’s focus is onthe ‘CCTV camera’ mounted on a column. The works seek to unpack different narratives of the everyday object, bydefamiliarization and through placement in a different context. As a Muslim living in London the artist feels that Muslims ingeneral have become extremely paranoid and somewhat conspiracy theorists, constantly feeling being observed or undersurveillance. With the aid of Islamic patterns, and referencing Persian miniature paintings from the Mughal era, the artistseeks to create a new visual narrative for the viewership of the gallery audience.
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Donna ToroniYESTERDAY’S GIRL
Patty Yung-Chen TsengALLEGORY OF THE FRAME
As the still life genre often constrains one to simply“read” the objects in the artworks as icons, thisseries investigates the transitory nature oficonography. The minute subject of the fragmentedand scattered egg piece needs to be searched andpieced together as a whole by the viewer, yet themeaning of the egg can never be fully grasped. Anegg serves as emblems for different religions,multiple abstract concepts and various emotions;thus, ultimately its abstract significances becomecontradicting and abstruse. As a result, the viewer ismanipulated and unable to comprehend thenuances of the artwork in order to understand itsmultiple and evolving values. By deconstructing andrefuting the “egg” as an icon, the delicaterelationships between reality and art, perceptionand representation, object and allegory aredisclosed.
‘Yesterday’s Girl’ juxtaposestraditional photographicrepresentations of young girls withappropriated online images takenby the girls using smartphonesand broadcast across the Internetin a virtual popularity contest.
Young girls today are the mostphotographed generation of alltime, this body of work questionswhat more art photography canattribute to the documentation ofyoung girls in the face of onlineimage saturation.
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Zody TsengANONYMOUS
http://zodytseng.tumblr.com/[email protected]
Alkistis VenTHE SELF
‘The Self’ is a collection of works based on real lifeevents from both the past and present where theartist recreates the biography of her life.
The mind and the body of a fragmented identity aredocumented by revisiting post-traumatic events inorder to find equilibrium.
Capturing the human need of manifesting amemory into a permanent photographic experienceis an integral part of the process.
Her work combines painting and photography toform an object-like presence, creating originalphotographs. The photographic series are differentinterpretations of a divided existence, all embracingchange.
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A photographic and performative experience toexplore and capture the tension in the act ofundressing.
A search for the true self. Every piece of clothingrepresenting a superimposed mask.
Nudity as the act of becoming exposed. Where asubtle gesture may represent a dialectic relationbetween vulnerability and power.
Who are we, when naked?
Powerful protagonists, but also human andsusceptible, as Achilles?
Nick WiltshireIN MEMORY OF CHAOS
Nick Wiltshire’s large, black and white, abstract images depict views of London streets and the dailycommute. They challenge the perception of the commonplace, everyday locations that are travelledthrough time and time again and are only thoroughfares and cannot be anything else. It is only when lifecircumstances change drastically (in the case of the artist, the effects of his partner being severely injuredin the London Bombings) that the perception of these commonplace locations become abnormal,emotionally complex, feral.
Sara WellenkampACHILLES’ HEEL
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Shankun WuBIG MOUNTAIN
Ge ZhangTOXOPLASMOSIS: CASE STUDY #1
Toxoplasmosis: a parasitic disease primarily affecting cats. Can be passed on to other warm-blooded animals includinghumans. Latest research indicates toxoplasmosis may affect the brains of infected animals, making mice lose their fear ofcats and humans develop a symbiotic relationship with them.
‘Big Mountain’ presents a world by theunderstanding of what the world is to thephotographer. As technology develops so rapidly,the world is totally changed, more than we couldever expect. What is virtual now is more complicatedand difficult to understand, it conveys a sense ofillusion and makes us rely on it more and believe itas truth. Therefore, it should not be referred to as‘virtual’ because that is what has become real. Eventhe way we identify reality should be changed. BigMountain is like a self-portrait, not just because twoof the Chinese characters that spell 'Shankun' mean‘mountain’, but also because the photographer'sfeeling of living in the digital era is conflicted with alove of nature, for him a symbol of eternity.
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Linfei ZhangWHO AM I
Linfei Zhang’s work explores the connectionbetween public and private, fiction and reality, andthe relationship between her own and internationalsociety. As an overseas student, she expresses herpersonal emotion by dress crossing. Turning thecamera on herself she transformed into a Britishman, Muslim, young student and so on. The workrefers to the multi-culture shock observable inLondon.
Lijie ZhangEMBEDDED
Through sequences of fragmental scenes,Embedded explores the diversity of Chinesecollective memory from a personal perspective.Either narrative or random, conscious orunconscious, those images seem potentiallyconnected, coincidentally, which is the way memoryworks itself.
Employing various mediums, from documentaryphotography, collage, poster to staged imagery,Embedded aims to introspect the human kind,especially in the Chinese identity, and symbolize thedilemmas within the context of cultural and politicalhistory of China.
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Published to coincide with the exhibition MAP 13
All images and text © The artistsIntroduction text © Wiebke Leister
Published by London College of Communication
No reproduction in any form is allowed without the express consent of the publishers.
MA PhotographyLondon College of CommunicationUniversity of the Arts LondonElephant and CastleLondon SE1 [email protected]@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Tutors:Nicky Coutts, Edward Dimsdale, Wiebke Leister, Anthony Luvera, Effie Paleologou, Sophy Rickett, Paul Tebbs, Anne Williams
Technical staff:Richard Coles, Wendy Ennis, John Mc Carthy, Daniel Salmon, Burkhard Vogeler
Sponsors:David Sproxton and Aardman Animations - Sproxton Award for Photography,Michael MACK/MAPP, Photofusion, Photoworks, Troika Editions
Design and layout by Syd Shelton/Graphicsi
Printed by PMS printers Ltd
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ual: universityof the artslondonlondon collegeof communication