Raoul Ries - New Publication

MAP6 Photographer Raoul Ries has a new publication of his series Comfort Zone Helsinki. The work was made as part of the MAP6 Finland: The Happiness Project and explores social behaviour as a main factor in individuals’ happiness. Raoul asked strangers in Helsinki if he could take their picture from various distances ranging from public and social spaces to personal and intimate spaces. As soon as a person indicated he was getting too close, he stopped photographing.

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52 pages

148x190mm

Printed on Xerox iGen, 4/4c,  170 g/m² matte paper

Soft-touch cover 300 g/m²

100 numbered copies

Purchase for €10 from Raoul Ries website

Barry Falk: Undiagnosed Exhibition

In response to the Covid-19 Pandemic, MAP6 photographer Barry Falk decided to capture some of the atmosphere of these strange times. His method was to photograph as many of my friends and neighbours as possible within walking distance of where he lives in Worthing. He was restricted by Government Guidelines around public safety; going out was itself a risk, so he limited himself to one or two photoshoots per daily walk. This required careful planning, setting up a system of appointments, maintaining a safe distance, using a long lens for the close-up shots. The response was overwhelmingly affirmative: people wanted to be a part of a collective project, to be noticed in this time of social distancing. As the project developed it began to link people together, forming a collective sense of self during this socially isolated period. 

Undiagnosed will be exhibited for the first time as part of the Brighton Photo Fringe 2020. The show will comprise of 30 portraits of people living within Worthing. The exhibition is outdoors and will therefore be open to viewing 24/7. The show opens on the 3rd October at the West Buildings Shelter, Marine Parade, Worthing. You will be able to meet the artist, and appointments will be available to book soon.

www.barryfalk.com

Guest Feature - Giuliana Borrelli

Parsellhager is a documentary project looking at the allotment gardens in the city of Oslo and the people that are passionate about city and gardening culture. The series consists of both portraiture, still life images and and landscapes.

I met with both young and older people growing their vegetables amidst urban surroundings. The photographs document the nurtured landscapes and philosophy of what has been called the ‘green lungs’ of the city. It aims to portray the cycle of nature and its transformation, from winter to a more temperate climate. During summer, they dig and plant seeds, during winter they wait until the season begins again.

Giuliana Borrelli (b.1990) is an analogue photographer from Italy. She is a recent graduate of BA Photography at the University of Westminster in London. Giuliana currently works and resides in Oslo, Norway. Her main photographic interests are documentary, where she focuses on social and environmental topics.

giulianaborrelli.com

Guest Feature - Francesco Fantini

I am currently working on a project called 33 which is a journey through the 32+1 Greater London boroughs. The Project is created from a curiosity to observe and understand the vast territory that forms The Greater London perimeter, where I have lived for five years. I enjoy walking, and I walk to try to discover and capture the contrasts of each Borough. I am generally a very curious person and photography is one of the tools that helps me feed this thirst. Daily life in London is fascinating for this type of voyeurism, and the camera is a congenial instrument for me to be able to capture it.

I often have a pre-established route, areas that I know and I never get bored of. For the unknown places I decide on a few focal points and start to walk around following my instinct, waiting for something to happen. I am more attracted to residential areas where I can find ordinary daily life, where as I see Central London as more of a transitional space. I work with film cameras such as a Contax G1 and Mamiya 645 and use Kodak Portra 400 film.

Francesco Fantini is an italian photographer based in London. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna (MA Photography) and moved to the UK in 2014 he where lives, works and shoots mainly on 35/120 mm films.

francescofantini.co.uk

Guest Feature - Jenny Nash

Mid March during the lockdown imposed by the government, I retreated into isolation after contacting the virus Covid-19. The stockpiling of medication resulted in a 50% rise in demands for repeat prescriptions. The advice from the National Health Service to order prescriptions no more than ten days before required, was not heeded. The consequent strain on the NHS led to delays in restocking which led to shortages. I could not obtain the medication I take to manage bipolar disorder, resulting in the experience of my own intense withdrawal symptoms over seven days.

It could be said that our personality is made up of our masks. Some we chose to wear, some we wear through a necessity to survive and some are inflicted on us. Caught between the analysis of others that reflects back a sense of their personal worth in which the self finds or seeks affirmation that they are enough. These feelings of depersonalisation that came over me during my week of withdrawal are symbolised as masks. Not the self looking back as an image in a mirror, but reflected upon as if looking into a mirror that might reflect my mind.

Jenny Nash began as a documentary and protest photographer documenting specifically LGBTQ + Pride and her work with Stand Up To Racism. She documents spaces of memory and appropriates PTSD treatments, such as returning to sites of past trauma. She also confronts past traumas in self portraiture sessions. Jenny Nash has a Distinction in a Masters of Research at The Sir John Cass School of Art, and is currently an intern at the L A Noble Gallery.

sullenriotphotography

Guest Feature - Holly Passmore

Until relatively recently life in rural England would have been very different from how it is today. Full or partial self-sufficiency would have been common, fixing and re-using would have been a necessity, waste would have been minimal. That is, however, a bygone era. Consumerism obliges us to continually modernise instead of adapting what we already possess or purchasing second-hand. People who do not live like this are unusual.

Diary No.30 explores the realm of place, time, and memory through the life of Nanda: an elderly woman living in a small village in England’s rural South West. Utilising a combination of contemporary and archive imagery, with text taken from audio recordings of dialogue between Nanda and myself, this ongoing body of work attempts to lace together Nanda’s past and present.

The decision to photograph Nanda grew out of a personal fascination with her lifestyle and a growing desire to explore and understand the origins, growth and maturing of her identity.

Holly Passmore is a British photographer based in the South West of England. She is fascinated by cultural variation and the ways in which people live. Her photographic practice frequently examines the relationship between humans and nature and other contemporary social issues which are explored through constructed and documentary approaches to photography. She graduated from the University of Plymouth in 2020 achieving a first class honours degree.

hollypassmore.com

Guest Feature - Hannah O' Hara

The Quiet Place is an autobiographical series which explores the absence of my father and grandfather through revisiting physical spaces of embodied memory. The photographs give a physical form to memory and consider how heritage and identity are informed through the temporality of place. The work is durational and is an attempt to piece together a broken and incomplete narrative to represent my own challenge at trying to understand my patrilineality.

The work is based in specific locations around Sheffield, Rotherham, Blackburn and London relating to my father and grandfather. My father left very suddenly in the middle of the night when I was nine and I never saw him again, and my grandfather became a surrogate father until he passed away when I was in my teens. I had this overwhelming need to return to places which I had shared with them as a child.

I used the same two cameras that I had used when I was seventeen, a 35mm Vivitar and a Mamiya 645, as I wanted to look through the same viewfinder and take these objects back to the spaces where I had learnt to use them. The final image 'The Sportsman Inn' is where my great grandmother lived, and is a pub that has since shut down. I spent a great deal of my childhood there and apparently my dad used to drink in there regularly, so it's a location that we never visited together but that was significant to both of us.

Hana O' Hara's artistic practise explores temporality and place, considering how place operates as a site of experience and memory. She considers how personal narratives and stories reside in the landscape, and the way in which places and objects retain memories and evoke nostalgia. Working with analogue photography and moving image, her work often incorporates and repurposes archived photographs and materials. She graduated with a degree in Photography, Film and Imaging from Edinburgh Napier University and is currently studying an MA in Photography at The University of Brighton. She currently divides her time between personal projects, commissions, mentoring and working with community groups and art organisations in Sussex as a photographer and artist facilitator.

hannahohara.com

Barry Falk - Portrait of Britain

MAP6 are delighted to announce that Barry Falk has been shortlisted for The British Journal of Photography's Portrait of Britain 2020 with one of his portraits ‘ Sam and Jonty’. The image is from the series Undiagnosed. Barry will also be featured in the third Portrait of Britain book, and be part of the outdoor exhibition at various locations around the country.

Featured Collective - Document Scotland

We are are big fans of Document Scotland and have been following their work since they first began in 2012. For the first of our ‘Featured Collectives’ MAP6 had the opportunity to speak with Document Scotland’s three members to get a further insight into their work.

© Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land

Can you tell us a a little about Document Scotland, how you began, and what were your intentions when creating the collective?

Document Scotland began in a bar in Beijing, in 2012, discussed over beers by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert and Colin McPherson, two Scottish photographers who’d known each other for many years, and were on a photography assignment in China. By the next morning we’d enlisted a third Scottish photographer, Stephen McLaren, and very soon after we got back to Scotland, Sophie Gerrard joined the group. All four of us had been living or working outside of Scotland for some years, and with the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence in our sights we knew it was time to return home, to see our country, and to photograph at this important period. We also wished to highlight the breadth and quality of documentary work being undertaken now, and to try and redress the balance where documentary photography from Scotland seemed to have finished in the 1970s. 

Can you tell us more about each member, what are your individual practices and interests? 

Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert has been working professionally for 30 years or so, with his work appearing in all the main newspapers and magazines worldwide. As well as editorial work, he photographs for corporate and NGO clients, he was a principal photographer for Greenpeace International for two decades. Through his work he’s travelled extensively, photographing on assignment in over 100 countries, and across many oceans. But in saying that he’s just as happy working on a story or self-initiated project in Scotland, photographing as a way to learn about topics himself. His images have been widely published and exhibited. 

© Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land

© Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land

Sophie Gerrard began her career in environmental sciences before studying photography in her home town at Edinburgh College of Art and completing an MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at The London College of Communication in 2006. Working regularly for clients such as The Guardian Weekend Magazine, Financial Times Magazine, The Independent and The Telegraph Saturday Magazine and on long term self initiated projects, she pursues contemporary stories with environmental and social themes. A recipient of a Jerwood Photography Award, Fuji Bursary and several other awards, Sophie’s work has been exhibited and published widely in the UK and overseas and is now held in a number of national and private collections. She is represented by The Photographers’ Gallery in London.

© Sophie Gerrard, from the series Drawn to the Land

© Sophie Gerrard, from the series Drawn to the Land

© Sophie Gerrard, from the series Drawn to the Land

Colin McPherson has been photographing in Scotland and abroad for the last three decades. He undertakes long-term projects alongside commissions and assignments for a number of newspapers and magazines and is represented by Getty Images. Colin’s work is published internationally and held in archives and collections such as the Scottish national photographic archive and the University of St. Andrews University Library’s Special Collections. His photography has been featured in more than 30 solo and group exhibitions and his major Document Scotland projects include A Fine Line, The Fall and Rise of Ravenscraig, When Saturday Comes, and Treasured Island, the last of which was his contribution to the collective’s 2019 touring show entitled A Contested Land.

© Colin McPherson, from the project Catching the Tide

© Colin McPherson, from the project A Fine Line

© Colin McPherson, from the project A Fine Line

You have all been working professionally as photographers for many years before Document Scotland, why did you feel the need to collaborate and create a collective? 

We felt that with the Independence referendum coming in 2014 that all eyes would be on Scotland and it would be a great opportunity to promote documentary photography from our country. We were all keen to be back photographing in Scotland, some of us had lived abroad for many years (Jeremy in Tokyo for 10-years, Sophie in India and London, Colin in Liverpool). It would also be a new way of working for us, bringing new challenges and opportunities.

© Sophie Gerrard, from the series Drawn to the Land

How do you work together as a collective, do you have individual roles, and what is your creative process like? 

We each bring something different to the table, whether that is networking skills, or organisational skills or bid writing, or website work. We each have our strengths. We talk frequently, we’re in touch most days, that is crucial to keeping it all going, and when busy on projects we have frequent Zoom/Skype chats, we delegate tasks, and keep an eye on how we are progressing with deadlines. 

Creatively we work on our own projects, occasionally sharing work to each other for comment. When we have a group show coming up then ideas and work is discussed and viewed more often, but ultimately we trust each other to do our own photography. 

© Colin McPherson, from the project A Fine Line

In 2018 you premiered a major new show A Contested Land at the Martin Parr foundation in Bristol, before it went on to tour a number of galleries in Scotland. Can you tell us a little more about the motivations behind the work and how people reacted to the work?

We were invited to have a show at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, and for that we wished to provide a portrait of contemporary Scotland, moving away from images of tartan kilts, Highland shows and cattle. We wished to show the country we know and love, with all that makes it a modern, vibrant country. The show was well received wherever it travelled. After the Martin Parr Foundation, the show was beautifully presented at Perth Museum and Art Gallery, and then at a small arts centre in Dunoon Burgh Hall. As with all shows we do, we work hard to collaborate with the host venue to provide talks and to generate as much publicity as possible around the work and exhibition. 

© Document Scotland's exhibition A Contested Land at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery

© Document Scotland's exhibition A Contested Land at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery

Four photographers made individual projects for the show, can you tell us a little about each individual project?

Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert showcased a selection of work from the streets of Glasgow, from the myriad of demonstrations and rallies that had been taking place over recent months and years. Always a politically opinionated city, Jeremy wished to show that there are numerous nuanced political views held over Scottish independence, or Brexit, not just Yes or No, Remain or Leave.

© Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land

© Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land

Sophie Gerrard’s work focused on the expansive peat bogs of Scotland’s Flow Country exploring how this precious environmental resource has been desecrated and denuded over generations, and how these almost magical places are being revived and reinvigorated through careful and considered conservation. This is no abstract notion: survival of the peat bogs is a touchstone for the health of the nation. Once seen as ‘fair game’ for industrial-scale exploitation, Sophie poses a metaphorical question, asking us to consider our relationship with local and national areas of outstanding beauty and how these places of natural resources fit into Scotland’s topography and consciousness, linking people to the land, and vice-versa.

© Sophie Gerrard, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land

© Sophie Gerrard, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land

© Sophie Gerrard, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land

History is the starting point for Colin McPherson’s visual exploration of life on Easdale, the smallest permanently-inhabited Hebridean island on Scotland’s long, varied and sparse west coast. Once the epicentre of Scotland’s renowned slate quarrying industry, this fragile parchment of rock, sitting two hundred metres off the adjoining island of Seil, has become a by-word for repopulation and reinvention as its current community continues to battle traditional adversaries: economics and the environment. At its height in the 19th century, Easdale housed four hundred people; the quarrying provided work for the men and the slates they produced roofed the world, from the cathedrals in Glasgow and St. Andrews to the New World. When an epic storm decimated the island in the 1880s, the island went into decline and depopulation, only for a new band of pioneers to resettle and revive Easdale nearly a century later. The photographer’s personal connections with the island date back thirty years, and in this series he offers a contemporary commentary about the parallels with the past and how many of the 65 current residents live their lives.

© Colin McPherson, from the Document Scotland Exhibition A Contested Land

Building on previous work which looked at the historical ties that bind Scotland with slavery through the sugar industry, Stephen McLaren returned to the theme to explore and examine the hidden and almost forgotten link between Edinburgh’s wealth and the slave trade with Jamaica. In the immediate aftermath of this year’s Windrush scandal, it is a timely and forceful reminder that the past, in all its forms, is immediately around us. Behind the front doors of Edinburgh’s New Town lies the legacy of British colonial exploitation. With each pound passed down through the generations, Scotland distanced itself from its inheritance as architects and perpetrators of the widespread and cruel exploitation of many thousands of bonded and chained men, women and children. Stephen’s work does not exist merely to prick our consciousness, but to start a national conversation about acknowledging an historical wrong and discussion about reparations. It should also force Scotland to examine and re-evaluate the relationships with people and communities within and outwith its own borders.

What projects have the members of Document Scotland been working on lately?

Since A Contested Land we’ve continued working on our own projects and undertaking assignments. In between assignments, Jeremy continues photographing the Roman-era Antonine Wall across Scotland; Colin continues photographing football culture and Easdale Island, and Sophie continues her work photographing female farmers and their landscapes all over Scotland.

© Sophie Gerrard, from the series Drawn to the Land

Can you tell us a little more about your Patreon scheme and any plans for the future?

Since 2012, Document Scotland’s website has grown to be a great resource for those looking for information about documentary photography from our country. We showcase not only our own work but also the work of many photographers. But this website and the work involved to make it happen, and the salon events (evenings of photography and discussion held in galleries that we facilitate and host) take time, and have costs. To continue we needed to make it more sustainable. We also rely on funding for our own projects, one of the important ethos of Document Scotland is that we try to have all that we do externally funded. Thus, during Covid-19 lockdown in early 2020, we decided to launch our Patreon supporter’s platform. We felt that we had earned the trust enough of our supporters that some of them would understand that for Document Scotland to be resilient and sustainable then we have to ask for contributions to enable us to continue. It is early days but already we have seen the benefits, we’ve engaged more with supporters, we’ve been producing exclusive content for them which has leads us to create new work, make new contacts and work slightly differently. It’s exciting for us to build a new platform and community, and for us to further that which we love, showcasing great documentary photography from Scotland. By pledging a monthly donation, to a value they are comfortable with, supporters gain behind-the-scenes access to projects as they develop and the photographers undertaking the work. To show your valuable support and find out more please visit here. 

© Document Scotland's The Ties That Bind exhibition, including Unsullied And Untarnished at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

You can find out more about Document Scotland on their website below.

www.documentscotland.com

Guest Feature - Kai Yokoyama

“The war has begun again.” An anonymous woman from Gaza Strip in Palestine.

For his ongoing series I miss the smell of jasmine in Palestine, Japanese photographer Kai Yokoyama has been photographing the daily life of an anonymous Palestinian woman living in Tokyo.

On November 12, 2019, 34 people were killed by Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip. She says that she doesn't want to be connected with being a Palestinian anymore. Two years ago she left her homeland via Israel and Jordan and arrived in Japan to start a new life. Although she told her family that she would return within two months, she intends not to return to Palestine. She hasn't seen her family since the day she left.

“My father died of cancer due to the banned chemical weapons in Gaza. He asked me to cut his nails, It was just before he died and he found that it was difficult to cut them by himself. I haven't told my family about my life in Japan, as I don't want them to worry. I miss the smell of jasmine in Palestine."

Kai Yokoyama is a Japanese photographer based in Tokyo, Japan. Starting out as an architecture student at Saitama University, he switched his major to photography and completed his studies at Tokyo College of Photography. After working as an assistant to contemporary art photographer Izima Kaoru, he has become a full-time freelance commercial photographer. In 2020, he received the Yumi Goto (RPS’s) one-year mentorship program to make photobooks in Tokyo.

www.kaiyokoyama.com

Guest Feature - Aaron Yeandle

Guernsey has an ancient language with a long and distinctive history. Guernésiais, is the name of the Guernsey language; which derives from the ancient Normans. Today, the number of the original native speakers in Guernsey is in fast decline. It is estimated that in 2019 there are possibly fewer than 200 fluent speakers of the language and these are mainly aged over 80. I feel it’s imperative to capture this critical changing situation, as an important part of Guernsey’s social heritage and for the future legacy of the Island. Furthermore, communicating this social issue to the International community. In doing so, I have captured a part of social history, which can be so fleeting.

The Voice – Vouaïe comprises off intimate portraits of the Guernsey speakers. All of the portraits have been taken in people’s homes, showing their private and home environments. I have also photographed the Guernsey people’s personal objects, which reminds them, of their heritage, family or of their homeland. I spent over two years working on this project and have photographed over 100 people.

From the outset the Voice – Vouaïe project has reached people who would not normally take part in the arts. Through this project I have worked with the wider island community and developed relationships with people from all over the island. Furthermore, the project has brought strangers and lost relationships together, through group and individual meetings. The majority of people who and will take part in the project, were not evacuated in WW2 and spent their childhood under the Nazi occupation. In 2020 it will be 75 years since the Liberation of Guernsey. This will be a special year for the Guernsey inhabitancies and especially for the Guernsey people who experienced this troubled period of their history.

Aaron Yeandle has exhibited nationally and internationally. His education includes a B.A (Hones) in Photography, M.A in Fine Art and a PGCE. He has taught and delivered workshops and masterclasses on photography and on his own photographic practice. Aaron was the winner of The Guardians Britain Is Competition, with the photograph, The Western Ranger. He has completed four Artist-in-Residencies which were all exhibited. For the last two years Aaron has been working with the Guernsey people and photographing the last indigenous speakers of their endangered language named Voice-Vouaie. He has photographed over 100 people for this social and historical project. Aaron works mainly on long term social projects.

www.aaronyeandle.com

Guest Feature - Mark Adams

‘Outbound to Sunset’ is a project about the outskirts of a city as seen from a 1st floor apartment window in the Sunset District of San Francisco. The project records observations of the relationships between the rhythms of public life and anonymous individuals that inhabit or pass through a place. The Sunset District is situated on the western edge of the city next to the Pacific Ocean and was originally called ‘The Outside Lands’ in the 19th Century. Before 1900 the sunset consisted of rolling sand dunes, scrubland and sparsely inhabited tract homes. Over the 20th century the Sunset developed into suburban area of stucco housing and quasi-Spanish colonial architecture reflecting the cultural diversity of the inhabitants. 

The geographical location of the Sunset is significant to this project; it’s about as far west as you can go until you reach the ocean. On a symbolic level this signifies the edge of the western world, a place where the sun sets. The district has been referred to as a place that embodies ‘the end of America’s Manifest Destiny’ suggesting dialectic tension between closure, finality and Californian optimism. Photography’s ability to capture peripheral views and fleeting observations is employed here as a tool to decode the relationship between the street, the rhythms of public life and the interiority of people passing by. Captured on film, a certain spirit of place or ‘genius loci’ is embodied by strangers who walk or commute to the ocean engaging in the cyclic and repetitive rhythms of sunrises, sunsets and the banal activities of urban life in an American city.

The project reflects on Henri Lefebvre’s reflective writings on the city and like the ‘Critique of Everyday Life’ and his final book ‘Rhythmanalysis’, attempts to capture the innately temporal character of the street and identify the spirit of a place through the arrested movement of people. 

“It is to be noted that a deserted street at four o’clock in the afternoon has as strong a significance as the swarming of a square at market or meeting times.” 

Mark Adams is a photographer whose practice and research is concerned with landscape representation. His work explores the cultural forces that impact upon landscapes as well as the personal narratives that are woven into everyday places. Over the past 20 years Mark has exhibited in galleries and museums the United States, Europe and the UK. His work appears in Paris Lit Up magazine, Next Level, Der Greif magazine and recently in the American Landscape publication 'Observations in the Ordinary'. He is member of Millennium Photographers Agency and currently lives in North Tyneside.

www.markadamsimages.co.uk

Guest Feature - Ethan Lo

In the 1980’s the Hong Kong Government began a development plan in the Rennies Hill, moving residents to a nearby area named Tseung Kwan O. Years later, as the Tseung Kwan O development continued to grow, a police station was built on the top of the mountain to watch over the area. Eventually came a water and electricity supply, and an interconnecting road to Kowloon was built. The police station however was left abandoned on top of the mountain.

In 1996 the Po Yin Temple rented the empty police station from the government. For 19 years they were based there until they were forced to move out due to a further development plan by the government, to turn the police station into a Heritage Museum. In an unsuccessful attempt to remain at the temple, the residents protested and Liu Jianguo the owner of the temple, self-immolated setting his arm on fire. The temple has been present throughout the development of the Tseung Kwan O area, but due to the past political incidents connected with the building, the government chose not to include it as part of Tseung Kwan O’s history. This project is about this omission from history, and the series questions how the Hong Kong Government educated the public about its past.

Working with a 4x5 camera, Omission consists of photographs taken in Tseung Kwan O, now one of the fastest growing districts in Hong Kong. The population is increasing, housing developments are booming, and the transportation system is becoming more efficient as highways and bridges connect to other districts. Now there are plans for a Tseung Kwan O Heritage hiking trail, which is designed to educate the public about the history of the Tseung Kwan O area. At the end of the trail there will be a Heritage Information Centre and Museum, which will be housed in the old police station.

Ethan Lo is a visual artist and archivist based in Hong Kong. He is a recent graduate from Savannah College of Art and Design majoring in photography BFA. Much of his long term projects revolve around land use and human-altered landscapes. With his work he hopes to raise questions and draw attention to history and environmental issues. 

www.ethanlo.co.uk 

Guest Feature - Mark Massey

The Collins Concise Dictionary in my local library defines an ‘Essex Girl’ as “a young working-class woman from the Essex area, typically considered as being unintelligent, materialistic, devoid of taste, and sexually promiscuous.” . Other dictionaries there have similar definitions. It’s a stereotype based on a mixed bias of gender, social class, and geography, dating from the early 90s and more recently perpetuated by the TV series ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ (TOWIE).

As a lifelong Essex resident with a working-class background, I am challenging this pejorative, stereotypical portrayal with this ongoing series of portraits of real ‘Essex Girls’. I’m a father to two young daughters, and wonder whether the stereotype will still persist by the time they become adults.

Each portrait is a collaboration and I encourage suggestions on location such as poses and dress, so that sitters are projected in the way that they would like to be portrayed. All participants have a connection to Essex, and I aim to include a diverse range of backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, body shapes, sexualities and geographical locations.

Mark Massey is mostly self-taught, focusing on documentary and portraiture with an element of street photography. He is interested in photography as ‘social documentary’ - observing and discovering everyday places, and the interaction between people and the environment. His community is also important to him, so local issues have formed the focus of several personal projects he has worked on or are currently in progress.

www.markmassey.co.uk

Guest Feature - Kees Muizelaar

“Quiet, serene and filled with memories wandering through the gently sloping and woody landscape. This is my story about an unprecedented beautiful piece of Friesland, Myn Heitelân. Extraordinary encounters and enchanted hidden places. Meet Gaasterland.”

For Gaasterland Kees Muizelaar was commissioned by the state Friesland to tour through the area of Gaasterland, the place where he was born. During his journey he captured landscapes and made portraits of the local people that he met. The assignment was intended to share the area, which is a former municipality in the northern part of the Netherlands. Its official name is West Frisian which in Dutch is Gaasterland. In 2014 it merged with the municipalities of Lemsterland and Skarsterlân to form the new municipality called De Fryske Marren.

Kees Muizelaar is a Dutch documentary photographer who investigates things that are already there, but most people forget to look at. The characters in his photos choose their own paths through life and sometimes live on the periphery of society: truck drivers, a never-married farmer, the inhabitants of a commune in the forest. Muizelaar's photographs are characterised by their melancholic, almost poetic style, and a deep sense of respect for their subjects. Muizelaar graduated from the Utrecht Academy of Fine Arts in 2011 and now works on personal and commissioned projects.

www.keesmuizelaar.com

Guest Feature - Ilari Kallinen

Outside the Garden is a series that looks at religion from a personal and social point of view. The series explores the buildings that represent religion and the angle of view from the point of an individual human being.

'“The series began when I arrived to Rovaniemi in late summer 2018. I was walking around the city in the evening and noticed a bright red cross overlooking the streets and fields of Rovaniemi. I found it unusual that a cross on top of a church was lit bright red, the likes of which I hadn’t seen in Finland before. The church represents the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland”.

I wanted the images to express feelings of a small human being encountering these buildings and their towers. I used longer exposure times and zoom to create a sense of disorientation. For me religion in general is a question of power and these buildings represent that power.

Ilari is a Media Science student and photographer from Finland, now based in Rovaniemi. MAP6 first encountered Ilari during our visit to Rovaniemi earlier this year.

www.llarikallinen.com

Barry Falk featured on The Story Portrait

Barry Falk was invited to discuss his image Elderly Jewish Man, Holocaust survivor, Zvenyhorodka, Ukraine on The Story Portrait. Throughout the course of the interview he talks about the image in the context of his series ‘In Search of Amnesia’. You can read more by clicking on the image below.

Guest Feature - Peter Basden

Peter Basden is interested in capturing the poorer, fringe areas of the South East of England such as the Medway towns - the home of Charles Dickens. These are the areas that “have been held back by Brexit and smothered by the pandemic” is where he grew up, works and resides.

“Through little snippets of light taken here and there, in areas inhabited by a dying breed of eclectic characters who can appear to be at times out of sync and almost bruised by life, I am moved towards an answer as to why I’m drawn to this routine of documenting partially stagnant areas that I know like the back of my hand.”

Peter Basden is a candid street photographer based in the South East of England. He predominately works with a manual 35mm camera, black and white film and a small wide angle lens.

www.peterbasden.com

Guest Feature - Ryan Trower

The series Gable Ends began when I started to photograph the estate that I live on. Having photographed around there fairly often, I wanted to try and find a new approach, so it came to mind that it could be interesting to photograph the sides of the houses, with the intention to process and arrange them in a typology. I live on an estate of new build houses, where there are only five or six different designs of houses; arranging them in such a way would allow me to notice the subtle differences between them, as well as highlighting the seemingly little effort made by developers when designing the back and sides of the houses.

What started as a quick exercise continued as I began to notice the sides of more and more houses and other buildings wherever I travelled. They are simple images, yet when put together I feel they are an insight into an aspect of our built world which is often overlooked.

Ryan is a photographer based in Somerset. A recent graduate from Ravensbourne University London, his work focused on the built environment, drawing inspiration from the New Topographic movement of the early 1970s. He has made many small scale projects, but has found that the work which draws the most interest are his long-form images from the places he has lived, or holds close.

www.ryantrower.com

Guest Feature - Jennifer Forward-Hayter

Today we hear from Jennifer Forward-Hayter about her series People Buy People, which follows the public lives of aspiring professionals. From strategy workshops to exclusive wealth management parties; insecurities are systematically exploited as people look for what to do with their lives.

The initial beginnings for my project People Buy People came from a small off-the-cuff remark. My brother, a traditional independent farmer, was getting married and he got himself a suit, the first formal suit he’d bought himself since his school prom. His friends joked with him, saying he ‘looked like a London banker’. When I finally came down from London for the wedding and saw the suit, it was nothing but a normal blue suit. Growing up in Dorset, I had never really seen a businessman in a suit.

This project started from a space of ‘othering’. I didn’t know this group of people, they weren’t my culture, and I wanted to know what they did. I searched Eventbrite and Facebook Events for ‘how to become a millionaire’ workshops, exclusive networking events, even oil conferences. In these places, I found the ones most devoted to evolving themselves to fit the 9-5 lifestyle, the ones desperate to succeed at it.

The personal development industry which I came to know is worth £14-15 billion, with seminars often run weekly by each company, not to mention constant webinars, phone support, and books. Attendees come from all across the country to attend certain events, and whilst some (initial) meetings are free, they are often £3000 – £8000 for a weekend. At these events, you’re told you should no longer be comfortable with being comfortable. Why earn £30k a year, when you could earn a million? From strategy workshops to exclusive wealth management parties; insecurities are systematically exploited as people look for what to do with their lives.

Attending these events, I went in disguise, wearing a mangled together jumble sale suit, which was 4 sizes too big. I told people I was a landlord; a double-barrelled name gets you far. Although it didn’t particularly matter if I got kicked out, there were hundreds of these events every night. The Excel centre, now the NHS Nightingale, held 4 at the same time over the same weekend, and I signed up for each of them! I was honest, I’d ask lots of questions and take notes on their answers. I’d watch speakers deliver lectures through an 800mm sports lens, trying to photograph their hand movements and shiny watches. I didn’t want to frame these people as ‘money-hungry Tories’, but just ordinary individuals, who just want to better themselves. 

Jennifer Forward-Hayter is a photographer primarily focused on documentary and social performance. Her work records modern history, particularly showcasing communities who are traditionally alienated by the art community.

Jennifer was born in Dorset, and her early arts education consisted of reading Sunday magazines. This mass art rhetoric brought foundations of history, TV, pop culture, philosophy, story-telling and journalism into Jennifer’s own work. She recently graduated from Middlesex University and held her debut solo exhibition at the Truman Brewery earlier this year,.

www.jenniferforwardhayter.co.uk