InterFaces

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

My Rockstars, Volume 1: Hassan Hajjaj

  [The Guardian, 25th October 2012]

    “Take, for example, friends, Simo Lagnawi — gnawa-player, member of London-based "eclectic groove adventurers" Electric Jalaba — and Paris-based Kora-player Boubacar Kafando: "the stuff they're wearing is all theirs, apart from their sunglasses, shoes, headband…"

The frame around this portrait is a neat shelf crammed with 7 Up and Coca-Cola cans, symbols of a burgeoning import market, the artist explains, designed to "trap the eyes, bring the viewers to your work."

The design of the frame is important, he says, "I'm trying to create something which has as much of my identity as possible … something that is fresh in Europe and Africa … it's like when you see the jars and the sweets in the shop as a child."

Do you feel there's a difference, I ask, presenting work in Morocco and London?

The frames, he says, give people something "quite immediate" to react to, whether it is in Morocco or London. They harness "the power of brands as a sense."”

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/moroccan-rock-stars-hassan-hajjaj

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

'Miss Subways': A Trip Back In Time To New York's Melting Pot

Between 1941 and 1976, New York commuters were charmed by posters of regular New York women while riding the city's trains and buses. "Miss Subways" was selected each month by New Yorkers, in a pageant that reflected America's diversity long before the nation's other beauty contests.

For more than 35 years, riders on the New York City subways and buses during their daily commute were graced with posters of beaming young women. While the women featured in each poster — all New Yorkers — were billed as "average girls," they were also beauty queens in the nation's first integrated beauty contest: Miss Subways, selected each month starting in 1941 by the public and professionally photographed by the country's leading modeling agency.

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - Nights to remember

  [part of The Memory Marathon at The Serpentine Galleries: October 2012]

    “Parents, Brothers, Uncles, Aunts and Family Gatherings.

  ...

  Nights (And Days) That I Cant Remember Because I Wasn’t Born”

    http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/memory-marathon

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

The Disposable Project: Raul Guerrero with the Newlands area of Moshi, Tanzania

  [2011/2012]

    “Collaborating with Born to Learn, a program giving disadvantaged children the opportunity to receive an education, (Raul Guerrero) provided 100 Kodak disposable cameras to Alex Charles, Jenifer Wilson, John Leo, Kamili Kalist, Peter Michael, Petro Ngowi, Samson Modest, Sebastian Simon, and Stanley Felix. Teaching the students basic photography skills, Raul developed creative methods for them to share their stories by documenting their everyday experiences. Working as a collective, these nine students bring the faces of their community to you.

The Disposable Project is their story.”

  http://www.the-disposable-project.com/about

  http://the-disposable-project.tumblr.com/

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

... some have similar, some have shared and some have entirely different experiences of being mix-d

Mix-d: Parent Pack (April, 2012)

http://www.mix-d.org/archive/mix-d-parenting

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

Samsara: Director Ron Fricke and producer Mark Magidson

  [Wired, August 2012]

    “ “Samsara is a word that means birth, death and rebirth, or impermanence, so there are broad themes that flow from that word,” said Fricke, but the main objective was an eye-pleasing stream of evocative imagery. “Flow was really our intention.”

And flow Samsara does. Images of natural beauty (a Hawaiian volcano, African waterfalls) blend seamlessly with shots of humanity’s endeavors, old and new (ancient statues in Turkey, an ornate French palace, a modern robotics factory). Some shots — like portraits of Ethiopian villagers wearing face paint and toting rifles — effectively blur the line between yesterday and tomorrow.

“I think we’d say the most powerful images in this film are when that flow gets interrupted … the animals in cages, people in prison and walls around religions … also dolls that replicate humans,” said Fricke. “The flow is different, much more intense.” ”

   http://www.barakasamsara.com/

http://www.wired.com/2012/08/samsara/

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

Heritage Lottery Fund: All Our Stories, 2012

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England Uncensored: Peter Dench

  [Reportage by Getty Images, 2012]

    “Why, then, do so many of the English still insist on embarrassing themselves, wearing laughable clothing, eating terrible food and behaving inappropriately? That was the question on the mind of photojournalist Peter Dench, when he set out on a photographic tour of England. The 40-year-old English photographer wanted to create a comprehensive portrait of a the first decade of 21st-century England. Dench didn’t want to produce a glossy, idealised brochure of a green and pleasant land: he wanted the truth, warts and all. No bizarre or outrageous sight would escape his view.”

    http://www.reportagebygettyimages.com/features/england-uncensored/

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

Awol Erizku

  [The Huffington Post: by Priscilla Frank, 22nd June 2012]

    “Documenting the rising hip-hop sensations A$AP Mob and citing famed professors like they were treasured baseball cards, Erizku treats the cultural landscape as a game that he is winning. But beneath the hype, the Ethiopian-born, Bronx-raised artist possesses a strong vision of a future where black artists have their place in art history, and Erizku is seeing to the fact that he will be named among them.

  Erizku scouts models online and on the streets to sit for classical portraits, and his images often riff off art history's most renowned nameless women. "Girl with the Pearl Earring," for example, becomes "Girl with the Bamboo Earring," and "Lady with an Ermine," becomes "Lady with a Pitbull." Leopard print and Louis Vuitton replace fur stoles and family crests. What saves the works from falling into a formulaic gimmick is their cinematic intensity; it's not surprising that Erizku began his artistic career in film. The models are removed from the present moment yet still float somewhere between their contemporary garb and the historical ghosts they inhabit. There is an honesty to their expressions despite the fact that we're staring at pure fiction.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/22/awol-erizkus-remixed-clas_n_1606818.html?utm_hp_ref=arts

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

The Alphabet of Democracy: Anton Kannemeyer

   [The Artists’ Press]

    “The first were done in 2005 "J is for Jack Russell" and "D is for dancing ministers". The initial reference is to childhood primers and illustrated alphabets, Letter-land gets political...The text on the prints reflects his obsession with hand typography and the style of the prints recalls his earlier silk-screens with the backgrounds of flat colour. The appealing primer like text is deceptive, on closer inspection the one image is of a blood spattered blanket covering a murdered farmer with his, still living, Jack Russell curled up asleep on top of him. A documentary image from Zimbabwe given a dagger like twist by the artist.The Alphabet of Democracy is an ongoing project and is one set of alphabets that are not going to make it to the Foundation Phase classrooms of the Department of Education.

  ...

  Ironically he is frequently accused of being a racist by people who take a superficial look at his work. It is the continued existence of racism and double standards in Africa that Kannemeyer is looking at. With his confrontational images and humour he brings to attention prejudices that can then be dealt with and hopefully be done away with.”

    http://www.artprintsa.com/anton-kannemeyer.html

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

In Translation: Women, Migration and Britishness

  [Manchester Art Gallery exhibition: 25th February 2012 to 5th May 2013]

    “This exhibition is part of a major project working with women who have migrated to the North-West of England from all over the world. The women, drawn from a range of diverse backgrounds, are working with artists’ collective UHC (Ultimate Holding Company) to co-curate a display featuring and inspired by Manchester City Galleries’ collection of Empire Marketing Board Posters.

  These posters were produced by the Empire Marketing Board, a promotional body set up by the British government in 1926. They are large, colourful lithographic prints, which are now regarded as a rare example of peace time government propaganda. Each set of posters promotes a way of thinking about the Empire – for example, as an eager market for British exports, or as a bounteous source of produce for the British tea table. Any darker ideas of ruthless colonial domination were kept at bay by the sheer brilliance of the posters. The poster campaign ran nationwide on Britain’s streets from 1926 to 1933.”

   https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchester_city_galleries/collections/72157629157846093/

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/index-itemID=84.php.html

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

Guardian exhibition: Insider, Outsider? Challenging perceptions of the developing world – audio slideshow

The Majority World photo agency showcases the work of photographers from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

Humanae: Angelica Dass

  [Designboom: 6th July 2012]

    “The project applies the alphanumerical classification of the pantone coloring system to human skin tone, communicated through a photographed portraiture series. The background of each piece is dyed the exact shade extracted from a sample of 11 x 11 pixels from the very face of the people depicted, with the ultimate aim being to record and catalog, through a scientific measurement, all possible complexions.”

    http://www.designboom.com/art/pantone-skin-color-spectrum/

  http://humanae.tumblr.com/

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

AgeMaps: Bobby Neel Adams

[MyModernMet: 7th February 2012]

“For each piece, he takes two photographs of the same person from different times in their life, prints them at the same proportions, and splices them together by hand. This process, which he has dubbed “photo-surgery,” results in one unique representation of each person across decades. "The point at which the images are physically torn together becomes the boundary line (or bridge) between decades of passing time," Adams explains, ‘To me they provide an eerie life-map, staring towards our future.’ ”

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/bobby-neal-adams-agemaps-photographs

Follow-up project: Family Tree

“a photo series that juxtaposes the portraits of two relatives. Rather than simply seeing a before and after shot of one person, we see two people in the present day that display a feasible version of themselves from the past or the future in their own kin.

While the series does also address the aging process, it takes an additional look at the likeness between individuals who share bloodlines, specifically those that are immediate family members—father/son, mother/daughter, father/daughter, mother/son. Even if the coloring is a little off, silver on one side and brunette on the other, there is an undeniable resemblance. Using his signature method of piecing together two torn photographs, Adams presents a intriguing look at ‘the visual DNA passed from generation to generation.’ ”

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/bobby-neel-adams-family-tree

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

A Girl and Her Room: Rania Matar

  [Lenscratch, 23rd April 2012: by Aline Smithson]

  “I initially started this work focusing on teenage girls in the United States and eventually expanded the project to include girls from the two worlds I am most familiar with, the two worlds I experienced myself as a young woman: the United States and the Middle East. This is how this project became very personal to me. I became fascinated with the similar issues girls at that age face, regardless of culture, religion and background, as they learn to deal with all the pressures that arise as they become conscious and aware of the surrounding world wherever this may be.”

  “In my earlier work, I felt that being originally from the Middle East and understanding so well the culture I was able to photograph it with an understanding and an affection that is very personal to me. Living in the United States, I was able to convey my perception of my world over there to my world here, at a time where the news were very focused on a lot of negativity coming from the Middle East.

What I knew was different and I wanted to make sure my audience in the US saw that Middle East I knew and was discovering further through my photography. Photography led me to areas of Lebanon I had never been to before and introduced me to people I would have never met. And I found that regardless of religion and political affiliation, people were just people. They were warm, welcoming, and resilient; they kept their dignity and their humanity despite all they had lived through. They trusted me and opened their doors to me with a humbling hospitality. I wanted to convey that through my work. Now my being a woman and a mother definitely shaped my work as well.”

    http://lenscratch.com/2012/04/success-stories-rania-matar/

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

The Desert of the Unreal: Fatima Al Qadiri & Sophia Al-Maria

  [Dazed, September 2012: by Karen Orton]

    “The Gulf paradox – a headlong sprint into the future tempered by ultra-conservative Islamic codes – defines everyday life in the region, and continually re-emerges in the duo’s work. “It’s a very bizarre, liminal space,” Al Qadiri says, “always looking forwards but clinging desperately to the moral rules of the past.” Despite strictly conservative gender roles, forbidden subcultures flourish in the malls, such as groups of girls called “boyas” (the feminine conjugation of “boy”). “Gender-bending in the Gulf is really interesting,” Al-Maria says. “Boyas trickled down from a lifestyle to a fashion thing for young girls. They’ll wear a men’s Rolex, cologne and basketball shorts and cut their hair short underneath their abayas.” Boyas get sent to rehabilitation centres, “the same shit the Christian right does,” as Al Qadiri points out.

...

For women, the Islamic cultural codes really come into play once they hit puberty. Protecting one’s “honour and dignity” becomes paramount, as girls don abayas and stop interacting with the opposite sex, resigned to a life at home or at the mall.”

  http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/15040/1/the-desert-of-the-unreal

[cmpickard-interfaces-blog]

Drone Shadows 001 by James Bridle and Einar Sneve Martinussen from AHO and Voy, Norway

  [11th October 2012]

    “the thing that bothered us the most then, staring at the little pieces, the models of drones which we had to hand,  was trying to get a feel for what it would be like to stand next to one. To stand before, or under, it. I envisioned drones in tanks, a la Hirst, the ability to touch the cold metal of it, to measure oneself against it. Despite occasional appearances in the day-to-day world (air shows, for example, or museums), most people have never seen one IRL; in operation, their very point is invisibility.

So we drew one.”

http://shorttermmemoryloss.com/portfolio/project/drone-shadows/

http://booktwo.org/notebook/drone-shadows/