Louis Herron and the Resurrection of the Victims of Columbine

The final post on this year's Documentary Photographers is Louis Herron's Columbine. For this project Louis scanned the internet for images of victims of the Columbine shootings, then recreated them using 3D imaging softwared - the intention being to print them out using a 3d printer. It's a strange form of digital resurrection of the murdered people gaining some kind of new half-life through the technology that was, in part at least, linked directly to their killers.

Coorey de Pooter

This is what Louis says about the project

Columbine

On April 20th 1999, two high school seniors carried out one of the most infamous shootings in contemporary America. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold spent the majority of their adolescence attending Columbine High School together. Both had unextraordinary childhoods, took part in extra curriculum activities and were employed by a local pizza shop. Despite this seemingly blissful suburban life, they jointly harbored a sinister hatred of society that came to fruition on this day. Together they plotted to murder hundreds of their peers in a symbolic act of defiance and revenge. Assembling an arsenal of almost one hundred IED’s and enough ammunition to kill every student in attendance, the pair sought a way to write themselves into history.

Dan Rohrbug

Over the preceding days, weeks and months the pair’s actions continued to not only affect the lives of the small community of Columbine, but America as a whole. During the fallout, legislation was passed requiring all guns to have a safety lock and the implementation of metal detectors and armed guards in schools across the country, with increased scrutiny of both journalism and video games for their perceived roles.

Harris and Klebold continuously positioned themselves within the digital, hosting sites dedicated to the game DOOM whilst also acting as a platform to air their ideologies. In recreating the events of the shooting within a digital realm, it removes the immediate ramifications formed by our collective trauma, allowing an objective insight.

Dave Sanders

Contact Louis at: louis.t.herron@googlemail.com

Follow Documentary Photography's 3rd Years at Two Eyes Serve a Movement on Instagram here

You can see  other documentary work in London opening 16th June at Seen Fifteen Gallery, Peckham. We'd love to see you there so come and say hello! There's free cocktails and everything.

Jon Windsor: The Geological, Economic and Personal Mapping of a Valley

Jon Windsor is next on the blog with a personal take on the Ebbw Valley of South Wales, and the way that geological, industrial and personal history are woven into the fabric of an area that has been devestated on environmental, community and economic levels over the years. It's a touching story where this devastation is marked onto the skin of the valley, and is remembered with a mix of nostalgia, anger and despair, but with a little bit of contemporary joyfulness thrown into the mix. I love the fact that the places where the contour lines get close, there are perpendicular lines made by walkers, bmx-ers and bikers, a different kind of mapping. 

Below is what Jon has to say about the project.

I was born in Risca at the bottom of the Ebbw Valley. It’s an area of former industry, an area that my family worked in during the glories of the mining era. My father worked in the Celynen South Mine until Margaret Thatcher took away his job following the miner’s strike in 1985.

After that he worked in construction, he drove a taxi, and now he works in retail. In a way, his life mirrors the changes that have happened in the valley. From being a site associated with coal and industry, it is now a site associated with deprivation, EU-funded infrastructure projects, and the zero hours economy.

Although my family is steeped in the history of the Valleys, I didn’t know much about it. My life was based more in Risca, Newport and Cardiff. This project is my attempt to reconnect with the nostalgia and longing for the past, as expressed by my family history, and the way the area has become a reflection of the new valleys; a shadow economy that is a mix of new industries, commuter housing and economic initiatives that never quite happened.

For this project, I followed the the old Ebbw Valley Railway line from its start in Ebbw vale to its end in Newport docks. The line was at one point used to carry freight from Ebbw Vale steelworks to Newport docks between 1962 and 2002, stopping at each town throughout the valley along the way. Using this track as a guide, EBBW uses present day photographs from each of these towns, coupled with Ordinance Survey maps from the time such industries were operating as a means of examining in detail how the landscape has changed over the last 50 years.

Contact: jwindsor94@googlemail.com

See more work here.

Follow Documentary Photography's 3rd Years at Two Eyes Serve a Movement on Instagram here

You can see this and other documentary work in London opening 16th June at Seen Fifteen Gallery, Peckham. We'd love to see you there so come and say hello!

And if you do have any spare cash and want to be a patron of some truly great photographers, go to the Kickstarter Page here. We need a little money!

Luke Richards: Fascists Here, Fascist There, Fascists Every...

Luke Richards is the next Documentary Photography student to appear on the blog. Under Black Sun is work that is a mix of Clavarino and Marchetti, a cinematic take on fascism where the posing, the staging and the set design all play a part, but one where the performance of the Italian male is centre stage with the past, present and future all serving as an eternal backdrop. It's both sinister and, though seeking an understanding, very much unsympathetic in its approach. 

And if you do have any spare cash and want to be a patron of some truly great photographers, go to the Kickstarter Page here. 

Luke Richards

Under Black Sun

In his vision of founding a unique, homogenous identity, Mussolini created the concept of the New Man, placing himself as the hegemonic masculine ideal and using the language, symbolism and values of the Ancient Roman past to gain popular support. It was an attempt to oversee a reclamation of Roman virility through the performance of a dynamic and charismatic character, proliferating this image through various forms of propaganda in radio broadcasts, speeches, still and moving images. At the height of his power, he oversaw the construction of large, state-of-the-art film production facilities, home to vast sets of Ancient Rome; itself surreally located within the capital city.

Under Black Sun traces this legacy through the performance of it’s modern-day followers, once again depicting the New Man against the backdrop of contemporary Rome. Across Italy, like Europe, the influence and appeal of the Far Right is increasing and with this, a complication of how the country confronts and recounts its various histories. 

The reaffirmation of these values indicates an inability to reconcile the displacement of their identity and value system within an increasingly globalised and progressive West, once defined by their Ancient counterparts. 

Shot on motion picture film, the work follows how Far Right political parties in Italy continue to use the Fascist aesthetics of Roman symbolism and Gladiatorial performance to promote their agenda; blurring the lines between reality and the cinematic, present and past. 

See more of Luke's work here.
Contact Luke here: lukerichardsphotography@gmail.com

Follow Documentary Photography's 3rd Years at Two Eyes Serve a Movement on Instagram here

And see their work on show opening 16th June at Seen Fifteen Gallery, Peckham. We'd love to see you there so come and say hello!

Polly Garnett: Liberate Women and you Liberate the World

 With Her in Our Land

Next up on the blog in the series of posts on Documentary Photography students work from Cardiff (formerly Newport) is Polly Garnett's With Her in Our Land. This is a complex, ongoing examination look at the history of feminism, the symbolism of feminism, and how it connects to the land and the anti-fracking movement. There's performance, ice-casting (of arm gestures from feminism's past) and projection!

 You can see this and other documentary work in London opening 16th June at Seen Fifteen Gallery, Peckham. We'd love to see you there so come and say hello!

And if you do have any spare cash and want to be a patron of some truly great photographers, go to the Kickstarter Page here. We need a little money!

This is what Polly says about the project.

Both women and nature have come to be devalued and dominated in Western Culture so as  result there is an idealisation of a time in prehistory where women and nature were united in a mythical female-nature form. 

The idea is that if you liberate women then you liberature nature and humanity will live as one with the world.

This project looks at climate change from a feminist perspective through cultural eco-feminism. In particular the anti-fracking movement at Preston New Road. I organised a protest and an event in collaboration with Gillian (one of the main organisers) where we had a water ritual and then a walk up to the protest site.

Through the whole time I’ve been looking at female utopias and the fictional idea of this such as Charlotte Perkins-Gilman’s Herland. I also worked with Melanie Wilson who created an piece called Opera for the Unknown Woman. In this opera she looked at the idea of women from all over the world coming together to save a woman in the future – the last woman on earth. 

This used gestures from the history of feminist movements and these gestures were replicated both in the performances I made as well as being cast in ice to show a very visual and tactile reference to climate change and global warming. 

See more work at: http://cargocollective.com/pollygarnett

Contact Polly at: garnett.pcpmg@gmail.com

Follow Documentary Photography's 3rd Years at Two Eyes Serve a Movement on Instagram here

And see their work on show opening 16th June at Seen Fifteen Gallery, Peckham. We'd love to see you there so come and say hello!

Zsofi Bohm: Growing up in Uranium City

Next up from Documentary Photography at Cardiff, which is where I teach, is Zsofi Bohm.

In the UK we have an election coming up in which the ruling Conservative Party are guaranteed to cut wages, kill free health care, destroy housing and make education even more unaffordable. 

They will make you poor, they will make your children poor, they will make your parents poor. Unless you're incredibly rich and then you'll get richer on the cries of other people's suffering. Who could possibly vote for them? 

It's a similar question that Zsofi asks about the fantastically named Uranium City, a city where Zsofi grew up. It used to be the centre of Hungary's uranium industry, a model town, a place where the workers were models of the modern socialist state. It was also a town that would kill its inhabitants, a toxic city that (like the Conservative Party) would poison you from within... enough, this is what Zsofi has to say about it.

URANIUM CITY (2017)

Zsofi Bohm

In Hungary, uranium mining began in the 1950s in the Mecsek Hills, and lasted almost fifty years. The aim was to support the supply of the country's first atomic plant and to contribute to the Soviet Union’s ambition of becoming a nuclear superpower.

An entire modern district was built for those who worked in the mine industry, which still today is called Uranium City. The quality of life, regardless of the physically challenging work, was promising in comparison with that of the average citizen of the Eastern Bloc. The tallest building in Uranium City is a 17-storey block of flats. My grandparents live on the 9th floor.

When I was 15 I moved in to the 9th floor to live with my grandparents. I instantly knew there was something strange about the place. The people were so proud and acted like they were real aristocrats. But to the 15-year-old me, it was obvious this wasn’t the case. It was also obvious that this was a people living in denial. The industry was dying, the town was dying, and because of the radioactivity, the people were dying too. 

This death continued after the fall of communism in 1989,  when uranium mining was abruptly discontinued because of the high production costs. This created serious economic problems for the area and a rise in unemployment. In addition to the financial hardships there were also serious health problems for those that worked in the mine, due to radiation contamination; many died young from lung cancer. 

However, there is a common denial of radioactivity amongst the inhabitants, including my own grandparents. The denial extends to medical records. There seems to be an increased cancer risk because of the uranium mining, but because the medical records are not open to scrutiny, nobody knows. So people stay ignorant about the real health risks. They like it that way. 

The people of Uranium City have always been grateful to the former USSR and its system. The nuclear industry not only pulled them out of financial insecurity, but also elevated their social status into a privileged and respected position. Being a uranium miner and living in Uranium City was prestigious and something to be proud of.

See more of Zsofi's work here. 

And contact her here: zsofibohm@gmail.com

Follow Documentary Photography's 3rd Years at Two Eyes Serve a Movement on Instagram here

And see their work on show opening 16th June at Seen Fifteen Gallery, Peckham. We'd love to see you there so come and say hello!

Giuseppe Iannello and The Dying Memories of Gibellina

All images by Giuseppe Ianello

The end of the academic year is coming and so it's time to start showing the work of the final year students on the Documentary Photography course I teach on in Cardiff, formerly at Newport (it moved.)

It's a tricky time for students because this is when you have to transfer your voice to something more attuned to the art/gallery/commercial/funding and publishing worlds, it's the time when you have to accelerate your workflow and adjust who you are working for, who you are talking to,

In previous years, there have been students whose best work was really still in the making, or was yet to come, or had not been expressed in the manner most suited to meet new audience's needs and expectations. But that's all part of the process and in the last year or two, the high-profile recognition our recent students have had is unprecedented (Bar Tur, Jerwood, Firecracker, BJP Breakthrough, Hyeres, Deutsche Bank)- and we get the feeling that the best is yet to come. So our current students have something to live up to.

And they do, starting with Giuseppe Iannello whose work focuses on Gibellina in Sicily, a town that was flattened in an earthquake in 1968. It's a project about what happens when your town is destroyed and your memories gradually wither away.

It's a beautiful project where the archival images that Giuseppe projected onto the brutalist concrete structure (the Cretto di Burri) that was built on the ruins of the destroyed town decay in the crumbling cement of the concrete monument; a poetic and moving portrayal of memory and loss if ever I saw one. This is how Giuseppe describes it

Gibellina 1968 otto minuti dopo le tre

At eight minutes past three on 15^th January 1968, the small Sicilian town of Gibellina was destroyed in an earthquake.

In the aftermath of the quake, a new town was built and the population moved 20km. A huge brutalist concrete land installation was built on the old site (designed by Alberto Burri) as a memorial to the death and destruction of 1968.  But in new Gibellina, as the population aged, the memory of old Gibellina was gradually lost.

This project combines images of both Gibellinas. Incorporating projected images of the pre-earthquake town on Burri’s land installation with images of new Gibellina, an economically depressed and isolated town that is being destroyed by its present, it tells a story of lost nostalgia, lost memory and a disappearing way of life. 

See more of Giuseppe Iannello's work here.

Contact Giuseppe at giu.iannello@gmail.com

Follow Documentary Photography's 3rd Years at Two Eyes Serve a Movement on Instagram here

And see their work on show opening 16th June at Seen Fifteen Gallery, Peckham. We'd love to see you there so come and say hello!

#TESAMPHOTO17

Chicken Sculptures, Billy Bear Face and other meat-eating delights!

It's coming to the end of year shows at British universities so it's soon time for me to go into full Documentary Photography mode - that's the course I teach on at the University of South Wales. It's a great course which has had huge success this year.

But before going into showing the work of the third year students, I thought I would show the work of Lowena Poole. Sometimes people ask me what is documentary photography (with the idea it's something to do with black and white and that's it) and I will  claim anything that is good as documentary - as long as it tells a story well using pictures, words, sound, light, dimensions, touch, whatever. I'm very open-minded about it.

So I was thinking about all that the other day, as well as thinking about what we would have for our sunday lunch. Would it be chicken, or beef, or pork? And then Lowena's pictures popped up and spoiled everything for me. In the UK there's something called Billy Bear Face - it's meat made to look like sliced bear face - well there's a picture of it. It was probably one of the best things invented to stop people eating meat. And then Lowena came along. And meat's off the menu! Damn!

The project is called Farm Fresh and it's about the meat industry, and the toxic industrialised complex of the processed products it churns out. The models are made out of these products and photographed against idealised farming backdrops. It's Stubbs for the modern age.

But is it documentary photography? Of course it is.

This is what Billy Bear Face looks like - it doesn't even look like a bear. I don't think it's part of a Mediterranean diet.

Last Post from Documentary Photography: Lua Riberia's Noises in the Blood

Last up from the Documentary Photography Course at the University of South Wales (formerly known as Newport) is Lua Ribeira's Noises in the Blood. 

This is a look at Dancehall Culture from a perspective that preserves the ritual, the mythical, and the sexual in a very direct manner. 

Last year, Lua won the Firecracker Photographic Grant (which is open to entries now) for an earlier incarnation of Noises in the Blood, a project which has significantly got a thumbs up from Professor Carolyn Cooper who wrote the book from which Lua found her title - and you can see Professor Carolyn Cooper's Noises in the Blood here.  

'Noises in the Blood, is an interpretation of the Jamaican Dancehall ritual. The work reflects on the richness of this Afro Caribbean form of folklore, currently developing in the United Kingdom. My intention is to explore the complexity and importance of this cultural expression in relation to a Western perspective, embracing the impossibility of fully understanding it, as starting point of a greater dialogue.'

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Daragh Soden's Young Dubliners

 Next up from the Documentary Photography Course at the University of South Wales (formerly known as Newport) is work by Daragh Soden. Daragh is a multi-talented photographer from Dublin. These images are from his series, Young Dubliners, but he also makes more conceptual work that questions the role of the photographer and the assumptions of documentary.

Young Dubliners already has a life of its own; it will be shown in Dublin later in the year as part of a wider project on Irish youth, and Daragh is working on how to integrate text and image through pieces of his fictional writing based on his own experiences growing up in the city.

This is what he says about the work.

"Young Dubliners is a celebration of the unique character of Dublin's youth, the place where I grew up. During a time of time austerity, the young people who would inherit the consequences of actions taken by the powers that be are championed in empowering portraits."

"It's one of the things about adolescence, everyone goes through it. Yet, it's different for everyone. Everyone is dealt a unique set of problems and challenges, some much more so than others."

"The young Dubliners in the pictures are all united in their youth, but are divided in Dublin. Around the figure in the foreground, the extent of social division in Dublin is apparent."

 A man was cutting the grass when we ran down the big hill to the chipper at lunch time. When we got to the road the sweet smell of the grass changed to tarmac. Dylan’s da was there, raking the hot black stuff.

-Is that your da Dylan?

-Yeah, he said looking down at the ground.

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