Amelia Beavis Harrison...

Amelia Beavis Harrison is a creator and artist based in Nottingham in the UK. She has a website which documents some of her work produced since 2007. Amelia initiated and runs the Lincoln Art Programme, a live art commissioning body in Lincoln, along side her own work. Amelia makes art work that is informed by histories, mythologies, situations, occurrences,conversations and the production of art. Using research as a process of investigation for creating work, Amelia interrogates subject matters to develop concepts, whilst using snippets of information gathered by common sources such as newspapers and the internet. Many parts of Amelia's work she produces involves audience participation, whilst other times working with other practitioners to bring the work to fruition. 

Photo credit by: Julian Hughes, work by CARGOCULT.

A working title (2011) 

A WORKING TITLE was a concept led platform showcasing new and existing work by artists from the UK and Europe. A number of the works shown over the weekend were new commissions responding directly to the associated themes. 

 Exploring the modernisation of situation, examining how situation has developed as a consequence of modernisation and visa versa, within particular relation to the urban environment and Lincoln as a city, the platform invited artists to respond directly to the presented context.

2010 Challenge (2010-2011) - Photography James E Smith

One project, 12 challenges, 12 months

Throughout the course of 2010 challenges were submitted to be undertaken and used as a starting point for the production of art work. It aimed to test artistic practice by undertaking tasks that were in some way alien, and challenges that didn't allow for easy options and had a high chance of struggle, fatigue and failure. Although the challenges were invited to be open, many of those submitted were personal to the challengers, and relevant to the individual.

Throughout the course of the project the emphasis began to shift. Instead of selecting the most challenging each month, the challenges began to be selected with the quality of art work in mind. The project was an exploration into the collaborative act of an artistic practice, and the exploration was an opportunity to discover, take part, learn, take risks, fail and excel. The project concluded in 2011. 

With Amelia's work, overall i don't find it that interesting but it is nice to  see the different types of work out there, which may help in the future for future pieces of work that i may want to persue. Her work seems to always be on going which shows her ideas are always being changed and expanded. 

John Myers ...

John Meyers Compromises black and white photographs made in the 1970s, Ikon’s selection includes Middle England (1970–1974), a number of portraits of individuals and families living in and around Stourbridge and the Black Country.

Myers’ approach is documentary in style, reflecting the taste, self-perceptions and aspirations of the people he photographed. Thus we observe them in their sitting rooms and bedrooms, or in their leisure or work spaces, surrounded by the telling paraphernalia of their daily lives. They pose with deliberate stances and gestures, responding to the sense of occasion engendered by Myers’ use of a Gandolfi plate camera set on a tripod with a dark viewing cloth. As well as domestic interiors, occupied particularly by couples and women, we see the studio where a young girl attends ballet classes, the back yard where a boy plays football and a club where two men play snooker.

Myers chose to photograph people who lived within walking distance of his own home, and so he recorded the world as he knew it. A kind of natural history unfolds through Middle England, with its depictions of human life and habitats, significantly as the portraits are shown alongside an exceptional image of a giraffe in a zoo enclosure. This juxtaposition reminds us of the fact that we are shaped by our built environments, as much as we shape them.


what i love about his photographs is that they simply catch your eye straight away and they are also very simply to look at so when your viewer looks at the photographs they can tell what they are about straight away instead of the viewer being mindless about the photographs.


 August Sander, Diane Arbus and Lewis Hine are 3 photographers that influenced him for some of his images. He was explaing how he took hundreds of photos before he was happy with any of them! All of his work is highly influenced by other photographers, he likes to create work of the similar style but not the same. He also said that he never uses flash when he takes images, he likes natural light or the simple lights around the subjects.

August Sander 

John is interested in how much space there is in each of his photographs and how much space is used in the images.He is also interested in where things and subjects are positioned in each of his photographs. 

Arbus

John was looking at how the people in her photographs are formed centrally within her images. He's interested in how all the figures are contained within the photographs, we see the whole of the person or figure and not just a fraction.

Lewis Hine

John is interested in all of Lewis' portraits. He likes the fact that the figures are trapped within the space by the surrounding architecture and objects in one of Lewis' photographers.

Jade Birchnall ...

Jade Birchnall started of doing photography at Burton College but then went on to do a Degree in Photography at Manchester Metropolitan University. Jade prefers to use black and white film camera's. Jade decided after photographing her Nan who has senile dementia that she wanted to carry on with a similar project so she got into contact with a Catholic run care home, where she then went to get to know the residents and then once she got to know them she started taking photographs of them and the nuns and nurses. She also created an extra project within this project called 'photographs for the residents' she did this because she thought that most of the images she had created with her projects where quite sad and she didn't want the residents to see themselves like that so she photographed some of the residents when they were laughing and happy so then she could show them then and they be happy about how they see themselves.

the photograph to the left shows her grandma and her brother, she said that she was particularly drawn to this photograph because it shows her brother looking very sad which then represents the sad time that the family has had to deal with for the past couple of months. 

the photograph above shows notes which have been left for her grandma to read and to remind her of the things that need to be done or what not do to, or what to do if something happens, or who is coming over to see her and there are also many examples of notes which i wont go on about too much. then the little heart hanging up in the photograph on the right hand side says "mother in law, you are so important to me" which also ties in nicely into the photograph because it gives her the love and confidence which she needs so that has simply been placed there to remind her grandma that they are always there for her and always love her.

Jade then talked about how she hooked up with one of her uni friends and decided they were both interested in taking photographs of strippers, so they both contacted numerous strip clubs around the area to see if they could do a shoot. They got a response from a strip club called 'Baby Platinum Gentlemen's Club'. Most of the strippers to starts with didn't want their photograph taken but once one of them had told the others they decided they wanted it done, even though most of them didn't want their faces in the photographs. Jade wanted to capture the imperfections in each of the stripper to show that not everyone's perfect. Jade is influenced by many different photographers including Nobuyoshi Araki for the photoshoot that she did in the strip club. She was also influenced by many other photographers who then started her into using film camera's much more. These all influenced her  to make several different types of photographs and images and even influenced her to make an audio to go with some of her photographs to make more of an effect.