Sam Riviere
May 22nd, 2013
Sam’s 1st book of poetry, 81 Austerities, won the Forward prize last year. The poems were originally posted online and he uses twitter as a more direct communication for his ideas and language. He trained as a visual artist and takes care with the layout of the words on the page. He has a reading coming up at the ICA on 6th June celebrating Independents Day.
This picture was part of a series for Soma magazine.
Street searching
March 30th, 2013
I’m always looking for ideas and great places to shoot. It’s been so grey and cold for so many weeks, I have been researching online rather than getting out there.
When you get a bit of sun through, it brings everything to life and there is nothing like seeing people and places for real.
Craig Green
March 15th, 2013
I shot this portrait of Craig Green for Soma magazine’s fashion issue a month after his headline grabbing Central St Martin’s MA show. Although he only used blacks and whites in his menswear collection, the layering and hand painted materials are painstakingly put together.
I was struck by the mamouth task ahead as the orders come in where Craig must handle the sales, hand paint, cut and sew the fabrics, do all his own PR and come up with his next collection.
Even when you pick up all the awards, it’s a lonely when you leave college.
Laura Letinsky
January 31st, 2013
The Photographer’s Gallery are showing Ill Form and Void Full, the new series by Letinsky. The still life works include objects, cut-outs of previously shot and printed subject matter and found magazine images. The resulting large format prints are so subtle of light and colour it’s hard to believe they weren’t painted. Whispers of Sellotape holding pieces of paper in place are visible only through textural change.
My favourite image is a dented, white paper cup hit by light in a sea of grey. Above is Untitled #37 from ‘To Say It Isn’t So’ series, 2006.
Jonas Mekas
January 17th, 2013
The Serpentine has a great Mekas exhibition on at the moment. The films are so joyful and it’s really interesting to see a nonlinear narrative or maybe no narrative at all, just poetic inquiry in the films.
3 frame stills have been printed up from his Super 8 film diaries and exhibited on the walls. The colour and texture of the prints is amazing and repeated images never looked so good.
Marika Hackman
November 27th, 2012
Marika has a haunting voice, plays piano, guitar and writes her own songs. We made a video portrait of her singing ‘Mountain Spines’.
She was bought up in the country and told us the scar on her eyebrow came from an encounter with a pig when she was younger.
That natural existence seems to inspire her songs but I think that might change now she is spending so much time on the road. With her first UK tour just finished and another coming up at the end of November, I’m looking forward to hearing the new material.
Styling for Soma by Georgina Hodson, Make-up/hair by Annabel Callum.
Photography from the 60s & 70s
October 9th, 2012
The focus of this exhibition at the Barbican is on human rights and politics. David Goldblatt, the 1st of 12 photographers on show, took very detailed notes at the time and his writing is as interesting as the photographs.
Visually, my favourite work was of Raghubir Singh. Like William Eggleston, he is considered a pioneer of colour photography and the quality of the light and colour in the prints is beautiful. The colours melt into one another in a way that makes me feel nostalgic for film over digital.
This amazing image is Coca-cola by Shomei Tomatsu.
Elmgreen & Dragset, Harvest
October 9th, 2012
Elmgreen & Dragset, showing at Victoria Miro, have stripped the top layer from the walls of the most famous institutional ‘white cubes’. The fascination comes in the detail of the wall painting methods from London, NY and Cologne. From familiar roller application to paintbrush and unknown texture and method.
In the upper gallery,they have utilised the pitched, beamed roof structure and transformed it into a hayloft. The smell of the straw is really strong and reminds me of a room installation I saw where the walls, furniture and floor were made of cedar wood. Smell is such a strong sense and stays with you long after the concept has been forgotten.
Conversations
September 24th, 2012
Reading David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous men gave me the idea for Conversations, a series of images shown in the Time issue of 125 magazine. Styled by Georgina Hodson, we shot the story with Georgie Wass and a selection of interesting men – street cast and with agencies.
Peter Doig
September 24th, 2012
Peter Doig is showing his new paintings at Michael Werner. His move to Trinidad in 2002 has influenced the subjects and colour of his work and the thick layers of paint have become lighter with canvas showing through. He only produces 2 or 3 paintings a year and the prices have risen hugely to more than $10m at auction.