Festival Begins June 1, 2012

Only one month remains until the 2012 London Festival of Photography takes over some of London’s most celebrated venues, with 18 exhibitions and over 30 events transforming the city into a vibrant hive of photographic activity.

The festival will have outposts across London and a central hub in the King’s Cross area, making most exhibitions within convenient walking distance of one another. Venues include St Pancras Station, British Museum, British Library, Kings Place, Tate Modern, Museum of London and Guardian Gallery. The comprehensive range of festival content on offer will ensure that photography lovers of all types will find something of interest within the programme, which includes everything from pinhole camera workshops and historic archives to interactive contemporary installations and portfolio reviews with industry professionals.

www.lfph.org

Image: Phillip Stearns

Exhibition: May 3 – June 23, 2012

Featuring:
Phillip Stearns
Christian de Vietri

A Camera Darkly introduces two contemporary artists that share an interest in bringing this experimental genealogy of photography to bear on the medium’s contemporary digital discourse. Using a digital camera and an optical scanner, respectively, these two artists treat their digital photographic technologies like physiological systems, subjecting them to electric shocks and paradoxical orders that push them to their points of failure. By questioning the integrity of the technological systems that supplanted human sight, these artists redouble the 19th century’s critiques and speculate on the beginnings of a new era in the history of vision.

www.cameraclubny.org

Salt & Truth

Exhibition: May 4 – June 30, 2012

Shelby Lee Adams was born in 1950 in Hazard, a small town in eastern Kentucky. Although he grew up in the back seat of his father’s car, moving from place to place, he settled near Hot Spot, living with his grandparents while he attended high school. It was there, trapped between the worlds of country and town kids, that Adams found solace in art and photography books.

Then, in the mid 1960s, the Peace Corps and other government agencies descended on Appalachia to document the poverty sweeping the area. When a film crew visited his hometown, Adams took them to his meet his grandparents and his uncle, a country doctor. When the media described them as malnourished and poor, his friends and family felt betrayed. This devastated Adams, who felt he had misled the people he so dearly loved — an experience that profoundly impacted his life and launched a career in photography dedicated to the region.

For more than thirty years, Shelby Lee Adams has been photographing in Appalachia, visiting families within the mountain hollers. Salt & Truth is his fourth book dedicated to the people of this region, and is a testament to his commitment to present his friends and family with dignity and truth. Although he now lives in Massachusetts, Shelby Lee Adams’ heart is forever in Appalachia.

www.edelmangallery.com

Dead Men Don’t Look Like Me

Exhibition: April 26 – June 2, 2012
Reception: May 5, 2012

Presented are 15 portraits of men re-photographed from 1950s-era mug shots found by the artist’s friend Mike Brodie in an abandoned Georgia prison. Brodie gifted the mug shots to Schiek, who then edited the original cache of hundreds down to a select few, cropped the images to remove all official documentary references while leaving stains, staple marks, tears and other signs of age, and enlarged the prints on highly reflective chromogenic paper to imbue them with personal and cultural meaning beyond their original purpose.

www.paulschiek.com

www.wirtzgallery.com

Young British Naturists

Exhibition: May 3 – June 29, 2012

This series builds upon Pannack’s recent explorations of individuals on the fringes of society and her interest in underrepresented stories, particularly within youth culture. Pannack’s work exudes a kind of still beauty, maturity, and timelessness, particularly heightened in this show by the complicity and disclosure of her subjects.

www.laurapannack.com

www.one-and-a-half.com

Cuba 2012: Pain That Doesn’t Kill You Doesn’t Last Forever

Exhibition: May 5 – June 3, 2012

Jacques Maudy is a Brisbane based photographer and a native Spanish speaker. He recently spent three weeks in Cuba documenting the radical changes that are taking place both socially and economically.

Raul Castro’s project is to change Cuba from a 100% state run economy to a model like China where people are allowed to prosper but are controlled with a tight political fist. The government plans to shift 1.3 million workers – that is approximately 25% of the active population – from state employment to the private economy within a single year in a country where private enterprises and the entrepreneurship culture do not yet exist.

The changes are already being implemented but the Cuban people are not yet aware of the scope of the shift. A massive program of training in accounting is underway in every town. The official discourse is still “we will never give up our revolutionary principals” when in fact Fidel Castro’s dream of the New Man has failed and will die with him.

www.jacquesmaudyphotography.com

www.qcp.org.au

Stranger Than Family

Exhibition: May 3 – 24, 2012

“For many, hearing the word “family” brings other words to mind; mom, dad, brothers, sisters, love and birth. But what if you were flown into your mother and father’s arms not by a stork but by a Boeing 747. My siblings and I were all adopted across the pacific from the countries India and South Korea, we came from foster mothers and lonely orphanages to parents and a little home in Illinois, some of us healthy and some with life-inhibiting special needs. For at one time we might have all been strangers, but with time, love and perseverance we are fortunate to call ourselves one family.”

- Matthew Avignone

www.matthewavignone.com

Small Moments: The Human Face of Semana Santa

Exhibition: April 18 – May 19, 2012

Carrying just a single, unobtrusive camera, Piers Rawson spent several days on the streets of Seville during the Semana Santa Easter celebrations.

He was looking for the more intimate, human face and telling details behind the solemn outward formality and religious fervour of the Spanish Holy Week. Behind the showy theatricality and emotional intensity of the famous processions, this is a time for families, for commercial opportunities, for display of social status – and a lot of waiting around!

One of the images was selected for the national touring exhibition “100 years, 100 images”, organized by the National Union of Journalists to celebrate a century of photojournalism.

www.scenae.co.uk