Interview with Annie Leibovitz

• Listen to the iTunes Stream here,
• or the Stream here.

Video interview with Colin Finlay

Documentary photographer Colin Finlay has won the award for Picture of the Year no less than 5 times. Tirelessly documenting the human condition, from the melting icecaps, to sacred pilgrimages and genocide, Colin creates dignified images that contain a balance of force and compassion. Unique among photojournalist, Colin is able to self fund his personal documentary work with the proceeds of the commercial advertising jobs he regularly shoots for clients like Sansum, Harris Bank, and Ocean Pacific.

For more info on Colin Finlay - www.colinfinlay.com

Our Dan Boulton has been featured again - this time on a blog which gives a fab plug for his zines.

For the link to the full post:  http://mslarsenphotos.blogspot.com/2008/12/zines-zines-zines.html

Video interview with Harry Benson

From touring with the Beatles in 1964 to shooting for Life Magazine for 30 years, Harry Bensons' list of accomplishments equate to what most would consider a dream photography career. In this video learn about experiences that have helped to define this star studded career as well as the ideals that Harry has maintained resulting in the establishment of Harry Benson as a true icon in the world of photography.

For more info on Harry Benson - www.harrybenson.com

To see more videos by other photographers:

Gray Scott - Fashion Photographer

What is success in the high-stress big money business of international fashion? Gray Scott a young NY photographer has asked himself this question several times. Watch and listen as Gray explains to you how he answers this question while at the same time adding more depth and understanding to his unique photographic style.

For more on Gray Scott - www.grayscott.com

"Today I’m in San Francisco giving a lecture to the Society for Photographic Education. After presenting my pictures and the story of how I became a photographer, I’ll likely be asked if I have any advice for young photographers. Instead of giving just my two cents, I thought it would be cool if I could also offer some advice from my fellow photographers at Magnum. I emailed my colleagues and received 35 different responses." Alec Soth

For the advice click here.

For more info go to: http://www.photobox.com/content/urban-britain

Closing date: 4th December 2008

At National Portrait Gallery, London
From 6 November 08 - 15 February 09


















For more info click here.

New Photography Exhibition in Cambridge

ancestry at Museum of Zoology, Downing Street, Cambridge

From Monday 17th November - Friday 5th December 2008

Opening Times: Monday - Friday 10am - 4.45pm

Entrance free

To see fantastic new work from Magnum photographers - check out Insight America.




InSight America is an innovative documentary project that aims to explore these questions on the eve of one of the most important elections in American history. Calling on the talents of some of the world’s most respected photojournalists, using the Web to update their observations daily, InSight America is a collage of personal investigations and reflections that attempts to capture the things preoccupying Americans during the weeks leading to Election Day.

Some of the recent images are below - this is really documentary photography as its very best!

Image by Bruce Gilden












Image by David Allen Harvey

Paul Fusco
The Robert F Kennedy Train Photographs

To see a slideshow of the images and commentary by Paul Fusco explaining his work - click here.

Image by Paul Fusco

At the National Portrait Gallery, London

International Garden Photographer of the Year 2009
Closing date: 31st January 2009

For more info click here.

Monday 27 October - Saturday 1 November
PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT TAKES PLACE AT THE CAMBRIDGE GUILDHALL
CAMBRIDGE CAMERA CLUB
The Club presents over 200 images by its members covering all types of photography, now more usually digital capture and printing. The subjects are also diverse, featuring people, landscapes, natural history, architecture and creative compositions.
1.00pm - 5.00pm Monday
10.00am - 5.00pm Tuesday-Saturday
FREE ENTRY
MORE INFO: http://cambcc.org.uk or email INFO@cambcc.org.uk

The British Youth Council
Snapshot 60 Photo Competition

This Is War! Robert Capa at Work
Gerda Taro
On the Subject of War

Now at Barbican Art Gallery, London until 25 January 2009
Entrance fee applies

This Is War!
Robert Capa at work
Robert Capa (1913–1954) is one of the leading photographers of the twentieth century and defined how modern warfare was photographed.

This exhibition, which includes over 150 images, some never-before-seen photographs and newly discovered documents, illuminates Capa’s working process and features many of the photographs that have become iconic images of war.

Gerda Taro
a retrospective
The talented and groundbreaking German photographer, Gerda Taro (1910–1937) spent her brief but dramatic career photographing the Spanish Civil War alongside Robert Capa, her lover and collaborator. She was one of the first female photographers to work on the frontline and the first to be killed in action in 1937, aged just 26, whilst covering the battle for the city of Brunete.

Taro’s unflinching images of the casualties of war, distinguished by her experimentation with the dynamic camera angles of New Vision photography, are a remarkable contribution to the tradition of war photography. This is the first exhibition of her work in the UK.

On the Subject of War
artistic responses to Iraq & Afghanistan
Conditions of war have changed since the 1930s and 1940s, but the potential of war photography to shape politics, opinion and lives, remains real.
On the Subject of War presents some of the most significant works of international contemporary art made in the context of current events in Iraq and Afghanistan: Omer Fast’s The Casting, (2007); Geert van Kesteren’s Why Mister, Why?, (2004) and Baghdad Calling, (2008); Paul Chan’s Tin Drum Trilogy, (2002–05) and An-My Lê’s 29 Palms, (2006) and Events Ashore, (2005–08).

Recollections by Phillip Jones Griffiths
National Conservation Centre, Liverpool
18 October 2008 to 15 March 2009.

The first display of his work since Griffiths passed away in March this year, the exhibition will feature around 60 images of Britain in the 1950s and 60s.

Griffiths' depiction of the Vietnam War redefined photojournalism and provided a window on the actions of America. Recollections will showcase lesser known but equally engaging images of Britain, and in particular Liverpool, at a time of social and political change.
Image by Phillip Jones Griffiths

At National Portrail Gallery, London
From 16 October 08 to 1 February 09
Annie Leibovitz, My Brother Philip and My Father, Silver Spring, Maryland, 1988
Photograph © Annie Leibovitz







Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990–2005 includes over 150 photographs by the celebrated photographer, encompassing well-known work made on editorial assignment as well as personal photographs of her family and close friends. "I don't have two lives," Leibovitz says. "This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it."

Tweaker Freaker

At Slam City Skates,Neal's Yard, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9DP

from 16th October to 16th November

opening is thursday 16th October 6pm - 8pm

featuring our very own DAN BOULTON .... check it out!

Whitechapel Gallery, London

Thurs 30 Oct, 7pm
Tom Hunter – photomonth lecture

Photographer Tom Hunter discusses his work and current projects. Known for his images of urban life and ordinary people, often considered social ‘outsiders’, Hunter’s influences range from Thomas Hardy and old master paintings to the Hackney Gazette. Remarkable for being the first photographer to have an exhibition at the National Gallery, London (2005), Hunter’s work has been exhibited widely in Europe and North America. In association with Alternative Arts photomonth£7/5 concessions and Whitechapel MembersFree for Whitechapel Patrons and AssociatesBooking essential
Book Now

£7/5



















Image by Tom Hunter

Spread the story. Stop the disease.

Photographer James Nachtwey has been covering war and human rights

stories for 30 years, traveling from Northern Ireland to Iraq, from the

orphanages of Romania to the deadly killing grounds of the Sudan. He knows the power of news photographs to raise awareness and make real change.
In 2007, he was awarded the TED Prize, which comes with $100,000 and one wish to change the world. These photographs and this project are his wish.

Please spread the word .... for more info: http://www.xdrtb.org

Open Day - Saturday 11th October 2008
Run a BA (Hons) Photography and Digital Media
For more info on the course - click here.

Richard Heeps Exhibition
'A journey through the Fens'
from October 4 - October 26 at:

Haddenham Galleries
20 High Street
Haddenham
Ely, Cambridgeshire
CB6 3XA

Opening Times:
Tuesday - Friday 10-1 & 2-5
Saturday 10-5
Sunday 11-5

There will also be a 'Meet the Artist' on Thursday, 16 October 7-9pm.











Kinema Office by Richard Heeps

Cut and Paste Photomontage 1920-1950
24 September – 21 December 2008

Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, Canonbury Square, London N1

Over the last decade, photomontage has received a fresh and revitalising impetus from technology and contemporary art. This show aims at a rediscovery of the sources of modern image-making, bringing together key works by masters of the genre, which was – and remains – a strikingly modern, popular and international one. It will include original works by artists such as Gustav Klucis, George Grosz, John Heartfield, El Lissitzky and Bruno Munari.

For more information on the exhibition - click here.

Gustav Klucis, Design for a Postcard for the All-Union Olympiad (Spartakiada), 1928
© DACS 2008

New Exhibitions at The Photographers Gallery, London





Exploring a rich dialogue between drawing and photography, Cast is a major exhibition of newly commissioned work by British artist Dryden Goodwin.

Featuring people travelling through the public spaces of London’s West End, Goodwin’s portraits catch strangers engrossed in private moments of quiet reflection. Physically intervening with the image through animation and drawing, the artist disrupts the stalled nature of the photograph, which he describes as a way of ‘thinking into the photograph’.

Caul 1 (detail), 2008 © Dryden Goodwin/Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery (London)


















In the heart of the West End, Soho has long been a haven for creativity and criminals, scandal and sex, and a source of inspiration for photographers.

Featuring the work of Jean Straker (UK, 1913 – 1984) and David Hurn (UK, b. 1934) alongside images from the Daily Herald Archive, these three fascinating archives document this bohemian area of Londo

All night jazz session at the Cy Laurie Club, Great Windmill Street, 31st March 1956.

From the fashionably dressed women of the Bois de Boulogne to fantastic early flying machines, Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) kept a vivid photographic record of his life.

Print Sales revisits the work of one of the first photographers to be exhibited by The Photographers' Gallery, today considered one of the great figures of twentieth century photography

Bobsled race, Zissou and Madeleine Thibault, Rouzat, 1911 © Ministere de la Culture-France/ AAJHL

October is THE month for Photo Festivals in the UK
So here is the quick rundown .......













For more info: http://www.bpb.org.uk









Through September - November 2008
For more info: http://www.teesvalleyphotographyfestival.co.uk/





photomonth 08 the east london photography festival is the largest photography festival in the UK with over 100 exhibitions and events taking place in more than 60 galleries and spaces and featuring up to 500 photographers.
For more info: http://www.photomonth.org/

Ways of Looking

Official launch Friday 12 September in Bradford / Saturday 13 September in Leeds

For the month of September, Leeds and Bradford will be the undoubted destinations for photography and new media, with the first edition of Ways of Looking. Exhibitions, talks, films and events will be happening in museums, historic houses, contemporary galleries, cinemas, stately homes, and even a railway station.

Fourteen organisations have joined forces to present a diverse range of photography and new media work: Axis, Bradford 1 Gallery, Bradford Grid, Brontë Parsonage Museum, The Culture Company, Harewood House, Hyde Park Picture House, Impressions Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds Met Gallery, Lumen, National Media Museum, Pavilion, and PSL [Project Space Leeds]. Highlights include the international premiere of new digital work by Swiss artist Annelies Strba at Bronte Parsonage Museum, original nineteenth century photographs by Roger Fenton at Harewood House, a moving billboard commission at Leeds Railway Station, and the emerging stars of photography at the National Media Museum.

Pavilion ArtistsGallery Two at the National Media Museum, Bradford.13 September until 25 January 2009Pavilion will be exhibiting work by Pavilion's five commissioned artists for 2008. This exhibition will feature five new bodies of work by photographers: Peter Ainsworth, Tess Hurrell, Jo Longhurst, Moira Lovell and Kevin Newark. Each project explores and readdresses concerns pertinent to our time, demonstrating the value of contemporary photography to today's culture and society.

Full details of all Ways of Looking events at http://www.impressions-gallery.com/news/news.php?id=13

Film SLR Camera For Sale

Pentax MZ7 with 28-80mm lens - full working order and in good condition.

Complete with case and UV Filter and instructions.

See Stuart Deering in Design and Technology at Long Road for more details.

Or email sdeering@longroad.ac.uk

Taking photographs in a public place

An interesting short film about the legality of taking photographs on the streets in the UK. There's a nice interaction between the photographer and a couple of Police Community Support Officers in Central London.

Fens Through A Lens Competition

In the summer of the 2008, a group of Long Road photography students and staff visited Lakenheath Fen in Suffolk for a workshop with award-winning wildlife photographer Chris Gomersall.

During the workshop, students got to explore the fen and gain valuable advice from Chris Gomersall on how to approach photographing wildlife.


The resulting images were entered in the Fens Through A Lens competition and all the entries can be seen on the Long Road Photography Flickr site.

One of our current year 13 students, Rachel Abraham won first prize in the 16-19 age category.
Rachel's prize winning image (left)











Rachel Abraham and her photograph at the
Museum of Zoology exhibition (right)






An exhibition of the prize winning entries is currnetly on display at the Musum of Zoology in Cambridge until 31st October 2008.
The exhibition will then tour various venues across the Fens.

For more information:
www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/museum/What%27s%20New. htm

The competition was sponsored by the Museum of Zoology, Cambride, RSPB and The Wildlife Trusts.

Absolute must for those interested in Fashion Photography!!!
Friday Night Late at the Victoria and Albert Museum - Friday 26th September 6.30pm to 10pm

Get Close Up and personal with leading fashion photographers and stylists and explore the world of fashion photography. Watch live photo shoots, listen to leading image makers Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton Jones, Paolo Roversi and Tim Walker talk about their work. Street fashion blogger Face Hunter will be scouting for the best personal style and agencies and fashion magazines will be checking out your photography portfolios.

For info click here.

Marilyn on Long Island (New York) Reading James Joyce's Ulysses" by Eve Arnold (1955)

Magnum's Eve Arnold: It's all about Eve

Magnum is celebrating its original leading lady. Hannah Duguid puts Eve Arnold's adventurous life into focus.There is a photograph of Marilyn Monroe, taken in 1955, in which she is reading a copy of James Joyce's Ulysses, and she is seemingly quite absorbed in the book and unaware of the camera. She still looks like a sexpot and her only visible clothing is a black and white bikini top, but she isn't turning it on for the camera – and she doesn't even appear to be knowingly turning it off, either. She looks natural, relaxed and unselfconscious.

The photograph was taken by Eve Arnold, who photographed Monroe over a period of 10 years, until the actress's death in 1962. They met when they were both young women, just starting their careers, when Monroe was a gauche and naive starlet – not the superstar she would later become. Arnold herself was a neophyte photographer, still unproven in a world dominated by men.

More than photographer and subject, the two became friends and built up a level of trust that gave Monroe the confidence to reveal herself to the camera. And more: on one occasion, during an interview, Monroe began to brush her pubic hair.

Arnold's ability to get close to people, to capture their character in those chance moments, really defined her as a photographer. She was the first female member to join Magnum in New York in 1951, which put her alongside the greats of that era: Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. During her career, she photographed Hollywood stars and Joe McCarthy, Francis Bacon and Isabella Rossellini. She went to Inner Mongolia and photographed political prisoners in Soviet Russia. She turned on Andy Warhol's camera for him as he filmed his first feature, Harlot, although she admitted to being turned off by his attitude and his desperation to become a star.

She was almost entirely self-taught, other than a six-week photography course in New York, during which the instructor said to her: "You do not need class assignments." She learnt by experience, setting herself assignments in Harlem where she photographed fashion shows at a time when white people didn't often go there. And particularly not tiny young women like Arnold, who was only 4ft 10in tall.

The photographer Elliott Erwitt knew her during these early years. "I suspect it was harder for her but I never considered her a female photographer. She had a way of getting on with people, the mighty and the modest, in a way that was quite extraordinary. Photographers often keep a distance [from their subjects] but she didn't. She became part of the lives of many of the people she photographed.

"Maybe her size had something to do with the way she worked with people. She was a tiny, unaggressive kind of person who you wanted to pick up and be nice to," Erwitt says. "Although that was the surface. She had steel and integrity and a work ethic."

Arnold was able to deal with and photograph some of the trickiest stars of post-war Hollywood: Joan Crawford, Monroe and Marlene Dietrich. She was the first photographer to snap movie stars and movie sets as reportage, as the portrait in action, rather than the usual set up studio shots, which masked the personalities of the stars. She captured those moments when a face is unguarded and character revealed. Being one of the few female photographers could be an advantage. She was able to be part of the intimacy of the dressing room and beauty regimes with none of the awkwardness of a male photographer. And actresses seemed unusually willing to bare themselves to her.

When she photographed Crawford for the first time, the actress arrived with her two adored miniature poodles. As she passed the dogs to her secretary, she kissed each dog on the mouth and then kissed Arnold full on the mouth. She stripped off all her clothes and insisted that Arnold photograph her naked. Aware that Crawford had been drinking, Arnold reluctantly took the photographs knowing that Crawford, who was now over 50, would not be happy with the images of her body. Later, Arnold discreetly returned the negatives to Crawford and they were never seen.

With Arnold, her lens might be insightful and revealing but she was never cruel to her subjects – even if they were cruel to one another. Crawford, perhaps jealous of Monroe's youth and celebrity, described her thus to Arnold: "She didn't wear a girdle – her ass was hanging out. She is a disgrace to the industry."

Arnold made her name photographing stars, but became frustrated with the female angle and yearned for more serious political subjects. She persuaded Capa to let her photograph Senator McCarthy. It was 1954, during his time on the House Committee of Un-American activities. She described him as repellent and said that she attempted to capture the ugliness of the whole process in the faces of McCarthy and his henchmen. It was not an easy shoot, which is reflected in these pictures: they seem to lack the insight of her Hollywood work, although they are historically interesting.

One of the people that Arnold never did attempt to charm was George Lincoln Rockwell, who was head of the American Nazi Party in 1961. As she raised her camera to photograph him, he hissed at her: "I'll make a bar of soap out of you." She hissed back at him: "As long as it's not a lampshade."

She did not put her camera down and continued to photograph him at the National Convention of Black Muslims in Washington. He appears cold, sharp and uptight, with legs crossed and arms folded defensively across his chest. The darkness of his character is made plain by the large swastika band wrapped around his bicep.

Rockwell was listening to a speech by Malcolm X – the Nazis and Black Muslims had formed an alliance – and this was the real reason Arnold was there. She had been following Malcolm X for a year and had managed to charm him to the extent that he took her out to dinner in Harlem. Her photographs of Malcolm X continue to define his image – they are part of his legacy. Thirty years later, a young black photographer approached Arnold and said: "Thank you for making him look like a dude."

Arnold is now in her nineties and still lives in London, which has been her home for the past 40 years. She has had an extraordinary life, a woman born into poverty in Philadelphia in 1913, one of nine children, the offspring of Russian immigrants. Like in the movies, photography was a way out, an escape from the grind, and she hit it at a good time, just as reportage photography was entering its heyday.

"We were doing things that were more interesting than things being done today," says Erwitt. "We did big essays and we went to countries for a long time. They were golden times." And it was perhaps time that made all the difference. Arnold was able to spend time with her subjects and photograph them over years as they changed and grew up and, in Monroe's case, as they began to fall apart.

As Arnold wrote in a memoir, In Retrospect: "If the photographer has forged a relationship which permits an atmosphere in which the subject feels relaxed and safe, there is an intimacy that allows the person being photographed to be uninhibited and to reveal unknown aspects of herself."

Article from The Independent, 3rd September 2008

Portraits by Eve Arnold at Magnum London Print Room, 63 Gee Street, London EC1 (020-7490 1771), 18 September to 31 November.

Welcome!

Just a quick hello to all the new AS Photography students joining Long Road this week. We hope you enjoy the subject and get to take some fantastic images during the course.

You should check the blog regularly for cool links to other photographers, exhibitions, competitions and loads of other useful stuff (including homework reminders!).

Also welcome back to our A2 Photography students who deserve congratulations on their fantastic AS results - good to have you all back and looking forward to seeing the images you have all taken over the summer.
Don't forget A2 Personal Study draft deadline is first lesson back for the week beginning 8th September!!

The Long Road Photography Team

Dan Boulton in print again!!!

Once again our esteemed colleague at Long Road has his work published in Document skate mag, and the free giveaway version (Plus1).