Dan Hays Roderick Harris Marc Hulson Peter Lloyd Lewis

Garden of the Sleep of Love is an exhibition featuring work that investigates ideas of the sublime, artificiality, beauty, mortality and the grotesque in relation to painting.

Through a variety of mediums four artists present works that explore these concepts in terms of contemporary phenomena including the media, digital imagery, rock concerts and horror movies.

Taken from the series Colorado Impressions, Dan Hays’ work utilises digital photographic imagery sourced from the internet as a basis for painting.

Roderick Harris presents a series of works which focus on and refigure images taken from a Michael Jackson concert.

Marc Hulson’s work sites itself at the edge of figuration, exploring the imaginary through both representation and abstraction.

Beginning with painting, Peter Lloyd Lewis uses digital manipulation to blur the relationship between painting, object and photography.

Five Years Gallery
Regent Studios
8 Andrews Road
Unit 66
E8 4QN
http://www.fiveyears-unit66.blogspot.com/

Jim writes, “Like a modern-day Weegee, Harri Palviranta cruises the night streets of Finland, armed with his Hasselblad camera and a big flash, looking for a fight to photograph, or the bloodied face of a drunken party-goer, or the scene of a recent brawl. See his series, Battered, in Lens Culture.” Read more…

Source: Lens Culture via digitalarte.co.uk

Mr. Whiskets writes, “My posts tend to be rather long (which I think is a good thing) but there are times when I’d simply like to be brief and spotlight some books I feel I’ve been neglecting. There are many fine titles that I think are interesting and worth your notice but when I sit to write about them, the words don’t come easily. So as an exercise in brevity I am going to start to throw a few short posts into the mix and hopefully I can do so without short changing anyone’s book — or you, the readers.
Recently I picked up the book A Bird (Blast #130) from the Japanese photographer Naoya Hatakeyama. Since this book is simply a sequence of 17 photographs of an explosion throwing earth into the air I thought it would become stale very quickly but much to my surprise it hasn’t. Of all of Hatakeyama’s work, the blast series is the most interesting to me. The limeworks photographs and his other industrial work do little to grab my attention like a good slow-motion explosion that throws earth at your face can.” Read more…

Source: 5B4 - Photography and Books via digitalarte.co.uk

Jacob Leibenluft writes, “After a New Yorker profile implied that “king of the photo touchup” Pascal Dangin had airbrushed photos taken by Annie Leibovitz for Dove’s high-profile “Campaign for Real Beauty,” the company issued a statement last Friday explaining that Dangin had only removed dust and performed minor color corrections. Is it possible to determine whether the Dove photos were retouched?” Read more…

Source: Slate via digitalarte.co.uk

Mr. Whiskets writes, “Most artists need to find ways of paying the bills and this usually involves stepping outside of their immediate interests. Unless, of course, they were born into wealth and the day to day search for money is unnecessary. I have the notion that good art doesn’t naturally spring from that environment but I only have to point to Cartier-Bresson or Godard to look foolish making a statement like that. Having money has the positive effect of freeing up time to create but does the lack of day-to-day struggle for one’s existence have an effect on the work as well? I’d like to think so but perhaps this is simply because I belong to the group of people that hang from paycheck to paycheck. As I’ve said before I make my living as a printmaker and my work week generally exists of two days worth of jobs. If I worked full time, I would never be a photographer (let alone spend the time to write about books) but yet I think if I had all the money that I needed then perhaps I wouldn’t need to make photographs because there would be less at stake if I didn’t. That said, I’d probably give it a go, if just for the experiment.” Read more…

Source: 5B4 - Photography and Books via digitalarte.co.uk

NIKO KOPPEL writes, “BACK in the 1970s, a gutsy blonde named Jill Freedman armed with a battered Leica M4 and an eye for the offbeat trained her lens on the spirited characters and gritty sidewalks of a now-extinct city. Influenced by the Modernist documentarian André Kertész, with references to the hard-edged, black-and-white works of Weegee and Diane Arbus, this self-taught photographer captured raw and intimate images, and transformed urban scenes into theatrical dramas.Her New York was a blemished and fallen apple strewn with piles of garbage. Prostitutes and bag ladies walked the streets, junkies staked out abandoned tenements, and children played in vacant lots. “The city falling apart,” Ms. Freedman said one day recently in recalling that era. “It was great. I used to love to throw the camera over my shoulder and hit the street.”For reasons involving both changing photographic styles and her personal circumstances, Ms. Freedman faded from the scene in the late 1980s. But at a moment when much of the city is bathed in money and glamour, her work offers a vivid portrait of a metropolis defined by violence, poverty and disarray — a New York that once was. ” Read more…

Source: The New York Times via digitalarte.co.uk

John Matthews invites you to his flat to explore images of Mysteries of the Heath.

Photography exhibition and print sale

Friday 14 March - 7pm until 9.30pm (first night opening)
Saturday 15 March - 11am until 6pm
Friday 28 March - 7pm until 9.30pm
Saturday 29 March - 11am until 6pm

When I want to succumb to something beautiful, mysterious and strangely reminiscent of my childhood home, I walk past South End Green and up Parliament Hill. From here I take the measure of the city and turn away to explore the length of Hampstead Heath. I wander the well-scored paths past broken trees, though calm dells and I smile at my fellow conspirators who share this scene with me.

86 Fleet Road, Flat B (door in alley off Cressy Road), London NW3 - 02072 091368

www.flaneurphoto.com

11 Stops to Baghdad
Exhibition Saturday 8th March, 5-8pm Parlour Studios, 181-185 Queen’s Crescent NW5
Chalk Farm/Kentish Town tube

Stories and pictures from New Exposure’s photographers, Tom Saunderson, Tim Smyth and Charlie Thomas, who have travelled over London photographing immigrant communites from countries along the historic Berlin to Baghdad railway line.

Auction of the Great Unknown
Fundraising print auction Wednesday 12th March, 6-9pm (bidding ends at 8.30pm)
Candid Arts Trust, 3 Torrens St EC1 Angel tube

To raise money for New Exposure’s forthcoming project ‘The Berlin to Baghdad Railway Line’, we are holding a blind auction. Images from all the contributors will go unnamed until bidding is completed.
Over 20 contributors range from unknown photographers to more prestigious names such as Martin Parr, Stephen Gill, Timur Celikdag, Ben Roberts and many more…

For more information please visit www.newexposure.net or contact anna@newexposure.net

Mr. Whiskets writes, “Lee Friedlander is often cited as America’s most important living photographer but undoubtedly he is its most prolific. Lee has created substantial bodies of work in every genre of photography and succeeded in making each his own. Self portraits, nudes, social landscape, the American monuments, labor, technology, music, the family album, architecture, flowers, words, and the ever constant landscape have been exhaustively consumed by his tireless lens. One of the threads that has linked much of Lee’s work is his celebration of the great achievements and achievers of this country. His is a celebration tied to labor and craft accomplished by skilled hands driven by a lasting unique vision. A fine fieldstone wall seems more to his liking than microchips and our pixel arranging society. ” Read more…

Source: 5B4 - Photography and Books via digitalarte.co.uk

Jim writes, “Four photographers were named this week as finalists for the annual £30,000 ($60,000) Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. The finalists are: John Davies (UK), Jacob Holdt (Denmark), Esko Mannikko (Finland) and Fazal Sheikh (USA).

Exhibitions of work by all four photographers will be on display in London at The Photographers’ Gallery, February 8 - April 6, 2008. The winner of the award will be announced Wednesday, March 5, 2008.

Lens Culture is pleased to present more than 40 photographs from the finalists, right here. So take a look, and try to pick the winner yourself.” Read more…

Source: lensculture via digitalarte.co.uk