#creative fusions

[iamrobgray]

Back in Derby!

This time I was helping Carla with her project for our exhibition in June. It's a film-noir series that explores the Femme Fatale figure and her relationship with the social shifts of the 1940's and 1950's.

I went down with our friend Alice who was modelling for Carla, it was a lot of fun! We shot all of it on location. Carla had rented out a small village hall in a place called Lockington, it was absolutely perfect for what Carla wanted - there were plenty of old fashioned chairs, tables, all sorts! 

[iamrobgray]

Back to school

It was back to school for me the other day. I was shooting another photograph for my dream series. This dream is one of my sisters and I've been waiting to do it for a while now! She frequently has dreams where she's having to revise for a test at school, despite leaving three or four years ago.

I've had this shoot planned for quite a while, but as you can imagine its a little difficult to organise a photoshoot in a school with it being so busy all the time. Thankfully the kind people at Immanuel College let me in during the Easter holidays.

Really happy with the end product, it was a lot of fun to set up and shoot, despite having to move half a classroom so I could get the lights set up properly! It took me a while to black out all of the windows too since the sun was getting in far too much. 

[iamrobgray]

Tom Martin Archive @ White Cloth Gallery, Leeds

Tom is a friend of mine, he's joined the third year of my course so it's not the first time I've seen his work! Tom's been the official photographer for bands such as Elbow, Basement Jaxx, and The Courteeners whilst working for the NME and Kerrang!

I went down the other afternoon and had a look at what he'd got up. There is a mixture of Tom's work up - music stuff, portraiture, fashion. It's a really good mix. The White Cloth is one of my favourite venues in Leeds, so well done to Tom for getting his work up in there.

Looking forward to seeing his end of year exhibition!

Check out Tom's stuff: 

Website: http://tmoose.co.uk

Blog: http://tommartinphoto.tumblr.com/

[iamrobgray]

The beginning of another series

That's right, another!

Carla moved down to Derby in February, so I went down and stayed over for a couple of nights. We'd decided that we were going to start shooting one of our projects but we hadn't quite decided which! After a good chat we'd decided to run with out 'abandoned' theme and set about purchasing props and finding locations, which was fun since neither of us know Derby at all! 

We'd both decided that we really really wanted to photograph the shed in Carla's garden - in fact we've wanted to do something with a shed for a little while now. We'd decided on making it look as though a children's party had been abandoned. We bought a birthday cake (it was delicious), cups, decorations and all sorts so that we could make it look exactly how we wanted. It was a lot of fun to set up! The end product looked better than what we'd imagined, which is pretty awesome. 

The moon was rising as we were shooting and it was huge! Sadly it was in the wrong part of the sky for us, as well as being obscured by other houses. It would have been amazing if we'd managed to get that in the shot as well.

The other shoots we'd done were of an abandoned pram in a skate park, and an abandoned car in the middle of a road. We're dead happy with how they've turned out too.

[iamrobgray]

Lord Whitney - Lore of the North book!

This morning I received my copy of Lore of the North, it came in a really awesome little package with a hand written note from Bek and Amy. I made a post about their exhibition last week here. 

The book itself does not tell the stories one by one, instead it is set out in a similar way to the 'choose your own adventure' style books you used to read as a kid. In doing this, Lord Whitney have let their readers navigate their own way through these tales of folklore. It's a really fantastic idea, and the book itself is very well put together.

The book also comes with a huge folded up map, which maps out all of the stories. Great stuff! 

[iamrobgray]

Lord Whitney - Lore of the North @ Munro House, Leeds

Lord Whitney are Leeds based artists that specialise in photography, set design, illustration and art direction. I recently discovered their work at the back end of 2013 and I absolutely love it! They've been drip feeding information about a book & exhibition through their Facebook page and Twitter timeline and I've been really looking forward to seeing it. 

They had the exhibition in a room behind Colours May Vary in Munro House - it's a nice little space and I didn't even know it existed before visiting! 

Lore of the North explores folklore and traditions from the north of England, particularly Yorkshire. The creative duo have gone about Yorkshire searching for tales of folklore and stories of odd traditions, collecting them, and then making them into photographs.

The photographs were exhibited in a slightly unorthodox way, one which worked quite well for the series. Two wooden poles were attached to either side of the print, and then leant against the wall all the way round the room.

You can really tell that they've spent a lot of time preparing and creating the sets in these photographs, and scouting locations too. 

I've ordered the Lore of the North book, so I can't wait to see what that's like too! 

There's a really nice interview with Lord Whitney from The City Talking here - http://thecitytalking.com/lifestyle/2014/4/17/lord-whitney-lore-of-the-north

[iamrobgray]

Philip-Lorca diCorcia @ The Hepworth, Wakefield

So Philip-Lorca diCorcia has finally decided to exhibit his work in the UK, and he's chosen to exhibit it at The Hepworth in Wakefield. Amazingly convenient! Usually we have to go down to London and other such places to see exhibitions of this magnitude. So to have one in West Yorkshire is brilliant. Well done to everyone at The Hepworth.

It was great to see huge prints of these photographs I know so well. I'm used to seeing them in books or on screens, so to see them as large format print was fantastic.  

Philip-Lorca diCorcia is one of my favourite photographers, and a great inspiration to me. A lot of his photographs appear to be very banal, often showing scenes of the every day life for a lot of the earth's population. A lot of them also take on a very 'documentary' aesthetic and feel, but this is deceptive since diCorcia stages his photographs exactly the way he wants. This can be seen in his series 'Hustler' which is by far my favourite from him. The series depicts male escorts of Hollywood in a carefully selected location, with carefully selected lighting. The escorts first name, age, location and the amount that diCorcia paid them all appear within the title of each photograph, allowing the viewer a small glimpse in to each of these mens lives. 

The exhibition featured work from a number of his other series' too, including the controversial Heads (2000-01), Streetwork (1993-99), Storybook Life (1975-99) East of Eden (2008 - present) and Lucky 13 (2004)

Check out The Hepworth's rundown of what's on here: http://www.hepworthwakefield.org/whatson/dicorcia/

Get yourselves down to have a look, you won't be disappointed!