Portrait Salon

Adrian Nettleship

Drowning

Adrian Nettleship’s portrait (below) was selected for the first Portrait Salon in 2011 and he tells us more about the series it belongs to called ‘Drowning’.

‘I started work on this series, titled ‘Drowning’, towards the end of 2010. It was around the time that the Bush administration had been experimenting with different interrogation techniques and recasting the common definition of torture in order to accommodate them. I’d produced a small piece of work for an activist magazine on the subject, but I was concerned that my approach was too literal and I wanted to try something that touched upon the theme without being limited to it. I’d seen Emma Critchley speak about her series ‘The Fear of Falling’, a beautiful set of underwater portraits, although it’s not immediately apparent how they were shot. I’d been inspired by the idea she’d spoken about, simply of exploring how people react when placed out of their element, how the appearance of the face changes underwater and I was keen to experiment with this myself.’

‘I’m a strong believer in the idea that in order to create something that satisfactorily expresses a certain idea, it’s important to take action, even if the initial attempts result in failure. Too many of my own ideas have been set aside because I’ve passed through the stages of initial excitement through to questioning the foundations of the idea without ever trying anything out. I think it was Annie Leibovitz who I first encountered talking about the idea of going back, again and again to the same subject, to refine her approach, all the time gaining familiarity. It’s a very different approach to the constraints of commercial work where getting results first time are essential. Through the process, something often emerges which can be carried forward, and so the two motivations above formed a basis for experimentation.’

‘I borrowed a small fish tank and asked for volunteers, and it quickly became apparent that the total internal reflection that arises from shooting a subject in the denser medium of water allows for a great deal of control if the lights are placed in the less dense medium of air. The sidewall of the tank became a large soft light source and anything not in the water received very little light at all. It also became quickly apparent that I would need seriously to consider a risk assessment. Water, electricity, glass and people all in one place carry considerable possibility for problems. We went through a good many revisions of the instructions we gave our subjects to get the desired result – variations on asking people to hold their breath repeatedly, taking in only the air they needed. I had quickly abandoned the somewhat reckless idea of jumping on an unwitting subject while their head was submerged, in an attempt to capture their resulting panic. There are limits.’

‘The final step once we were satisfied in principle was to build a fish tank large enough to give space around the subject for the shot, ordering panes of glass cut to size, fixed together with silicon sealant. I was very fortunate to be able to call upon a wood turner friend with considerable carpentry skill who built an over engineered stand to hold the tank, with a window in the bottom to shoot through. As a tank of water gets larger, the weight grows exponentially, which proved to be a limiting factor on how big we could build. We eventually settled on an estimated weight of 150kg for the water alone.’

Adrian Nettleship is a photographer based in East London. He has been working professionally in stills and video since 2005 and clients include The Wire Magazine, RWD Magazine, Tate and Lyle, and Christian Aid.

adriannettleship.com
@anettleship

James O Jenkins

Laura Dodsworth

Marriage

Laura Dodsworth’s portrait of ‘Debbie’ (below) was selected for the first Portrait Salon in 2011 and is part of Laura’s photographic series ‘Marriage’ about the significance of the wedding dress.

Debbie

‘Marriage is a series of portraits of women in their wedding dresses in their homes. Women are to some extent defined by marriage, as wives, homemakers and mothers. The portraits are taken in their homes to contrast the ‘fairytale’ of a wedding day, epitomised by the dress, with the domestic reality of marriage.’

Bella

Reshma

‘A wedding day is romantic, full of optimism and the bride and groom are poised on the brink of their journey through life together. The wedding dress is the single most significant item of clothing a woman will ever wear – it’s more than a dress, it says so much about the wearer, and evokes ‘forever’, ‘love’ and your hopes for the rest of your life. Dreams, expense, effort, time are invested in a wedding day. Yet all this is for one day, and bears little relation to the day to day domestic reality of marriage.’

Rhiannon

Cath

‘What does marriage mean for women? There are so many answers. The series as a whole de-romanticises the dress, raises questions about the wedding day as fairytale and imparts a common experience married women can relate to. At the same time each photograph in Marriage tells a story unique to the subject and provides a window into their domestic world.’

Lucy

Jackie

‘Marriage prompted me to take a longer more intimate view through the window of women’s lives, and I went on to spend two years photographing and interviewing women about their breasts, bodies and lives for my first book, ‘Bare Reality: 100 women, their breasts, their stories’.’

Chantal

Laura Dodsworth is an award-winning people photographer and her work is a personal enquiry as much as it is an exploration of people, their loves, their lives and their place in the world. While the human body and human relationships are important current inspirations, her art/social projects are often driven by deeper socio-political as well as spiritual questions.

Laura has just published her first book, ‘Bare Reality: 100 women, their breasts, their stories’. See more at barereality.net

lauradodsworthphotography.com

James O Jenkins

Travis Hodges

Tim Andrews

Travis Hodges’ portrait of Tim Andrews (image on the right of the diptych below) was selected for Portrait Salon 2013 and is part of Tim’s photographic project ‘Over the Hill: A Photographic Journey’. Tim was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2005 and subsequently left his job as a solicitor and set upon a journey turning himself into a photographic project and has now been photographed by over 300 photographers.

‘This portrait is part of an unusual set, unusual in the sense that the subject is the curator of the series. Some viewers will recognise Tim from other photographer’s portfolios and even from the walls of the Taylor Wessing Prize itself. Some 350 fellow photographers have created a portrait of Tim making a fascinating insight into both his life and the work of so many photographers.

Beginning in 2007, when he answered an advert in Time Out from a photographer looking for a nude model, Tim has journeyed through the photographic landscape offering to model for known and unknown image makers. The project has become a way for Tim to collaborate with artists and be part of the process, it also charts his life with Parkinson’s Disease. This is something that I, like many photographers, have touched on in the image.

My image began from the idea of separating the subject from the viewer with a non physical layer designed to mirror an emotional barrier. The pattern projected over Tim becomes both separating and protecting, reminiscent of watching the rain from behind a pane of glass. We experimented with a few different projections but settled on one that reminded us of both star constellations and medical scans.’

Read Tim’s blog about the shoot here.

Travis Hodges is fascinated by people and uses his camera to explore what makes them interesting, from well-documented celebrities to those who have never stood before a professional photographer in their lives. His work, from time-pressed editorial shoots to longer-term personal projects, is people-driven and examines what makes us who we are. His client list includes Adidas, The New York Times and Virgin Media and his images are seen in magazines such as The Independent New Review, Wired and ES. Personal projects allow him to further explore the human condition and consider how people come together in tribes through common interests or habits. His projects Follow Me and The Quantified Self investigate how technology is impacting on the way we live.

His awards include the Royal Photographic Society 155th print exhibition; the Observer Hodge Award and the Jerwood Photography Award. When he’s not behind the camera, Travis organises the monthly Photo-Forum talks in central London, where working photographers can discuss and debate their images, ideas, and approaches.

travishodges.co.uk

@travishodgesuk

James O Jenkins

Carly Clarke

Reality Trauma

Carly Clarke’s self portrait (below) was selected for Portrait Salon 2013 and is from her work ‘Reality Trauma’, a self-portrait photographic series she produced in March 2012 when diagnosed with stage 4b Hodgkin Lymphoma, a rare cancer and with a large tumour inside her right lung during her final year of a BA photography degree at Middlesex University. The portrait below is Carly on her last day of chemotherapy.

‘While I was overwhelmed with chemotherapy treatment for 6 months and the idea of possibly dying, I felt a necessity to record my journey and document my life as it changed so drastically. This led to examining not just myself, but the whole of life’s meaning on many levels. My body became a shell, limited in movement, filled with pain, while I could do nothing but hope and wait for every treatment to end. The image of who I thought I was became unfamiliar, almost alien, losing my hair and so much weight, unable to recognise the reflection in the mirror, which I avoided at all costs. The hospital staff and doctors became like a family to me. I put my trust in their hands through every biopsy and every significant event that required me to surrender to all that was beyond my control. My identity felt crushed, yet I didn’t mind because I knew this perception of a helpless human being was not really me, for inside I was strong, determined and hopeful, and utterly terrified.’

‘My life slowed down to concentrating on getting through each moment, drug to drug, endless exams, giant needles, biopsies drilling deep into bone, tubes down my throat, and hoping for some day, the pain to end. A plastic line inserted to my heart fed sickening but healing medicine through my arm, trying to kill the cancer but taking my strength with it. The cure is as dangerous as the disease, and chemotherapy takes one to the very edge of life. Rapid downhill weight loss was, the most visible threat, and my skeleton became more visible by the day, a reminder of each precious pound lost. The powerful pain killers pushed my fragile life boat even further from the shore of what was once life, nauseating and bending every sense, but I held on. Will I live through this? I did not know.’

‘A meditative focus on the small things that mattered really helped. I found much comfort talking to those in hospital of similar experiences, and spending time with family and friends.  Those moments can best be recalled through the use of a single memorable photographic image.  Nothing but a photograph can take me back to my time with cancer, that moment in its entirety, as if I were there again, re-living the sensations, the feelings I felt and the fears I held in my mind.’

‘These photographs evoke some painful memories for me; however they also remind me of the huge capacity of my own human body to endure through such hellish times. My body, mind and soul were tested to the ultimate ends unimaginable and I experienced life on an unbound level. This self-reflective collection of images gives only glimpses into that time but my hope is that the audience can see not just the horrifying aspects, but also the promise that being a survivor of cancer gives and the tremendous hope for others facing a similar condition.’

‘Traumatic times can be reflected upon as lessons in survival that awaken us to cherish the subtleties of everyday life and our reality that can so easily be taken for granted. The immense persistence, willpower and courage we as human beings possess when required to is sometimes overlooked. We do not give ourselves the credit for fighting some of life’s toughest battles. This period in my life, is evidence that no matter what life throws at us, we can get through it, even when words cannot explain who ‘we’ are anymore, why we are here or even what has happened to us. We are more than survivors; we are more than we think we are and capable of anything if we believe in ourselves and push those boundaries beyond limits visible. What makes us important as human beings is being able to evolve and become and to create anything in this lifetime. We must allow ourselves the credit we deserve, and see beyond the ‘now’, because anything that we believe we are now, in this very moment in time is temporary, for we are always changing and becoming something else.’

‘Change is the biggest part of our identity, of who we think we are, and my ‘self-portrait’ is a portrait of a person I perceive that I am, but only in one moment in time, and not necessarily the next. This work is a collection of moments and identities, as is the practice of photography.’

Carly Clarke is a British documentary and portrait photographer who works in medium-format photography. Documenting in a creative, cinematic style, her work looks at social issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. Storytelling through the voices of subjects she photographs is key to her work.

She has recently completed her MA in Photography and previously BA (Hons) in Photography at Middlesex University, London.

carlyclarkephotography.co.uk

@ClarkeCarly

James O Jenkins

Giuseppe Lo Schiavo

Ad Vivum

Giuseppe Lo Schiavo’s portrait (below) was selected for Portrait Salon 2013 (and used on the back cover of our publication) and is from his work ‘Ad Vivum’, a photographic series that translates from Latin as ‘to that which is alive’.

‘I have imagined this photographic series as a journey with no space-time boundaries , a bridge that links the Flemish painters such as Vermeer, Jan van Eyck, Robert Campin and even Tiziano, Antonello da Messina with digital photography; an amalgamation of the classical aesthetic with a modern medium.’

‘I wanted to create portraits without explicit time references, chronologically uncertain. In these images, warm and cold colors coexist which are diffused and distributed through the subjects – in a similar manner as in the pictorial portraits – creating sculptures, motionless subjects, smooth and stiff like marble.’

‘The Latin name ‘ad vivum’ is taken from the engravings that some painters inserted under their paintings in order to specify that the painting was painted live.’

Giuseppe Lo Schiavo was born in Italy and now lives and works in London. He studied Architecture at the University of La Sapienza of Rome and specialized in Architectural 3D Visualization. He has exhibited at The Saatchi Gallery in London, The Aperture Foundation in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art of Acri in Cosenza, Mixer Gallery in Istanbul and in galleries in Rome, Turin and Munich and Miami. He has also presented his work at art fairs such as Contemporary Istanbul, SCOPE Art Miami, The Affordable Art Fair Milan and Paratissima.

giuseppeloschiavo.com

Instagram: @giuseppeloschiavo

Adam King

Chip Off The Old Block

Adam King’s portrait of ‘John’ (below) was selected for Portrait Salon 2014 and is from his work ‘Chip Off The Old Block’, a photographic series about father figure influences in his life.

John

‘This body of work has been an explorative journey into male roles that have featured throughout my life.  Some of these father figures have been an influence across informative years of childhood or have given further guidance into adult life. The project’s origins started with a construction worker I met in the summer of 2013.  Liviu, a Romanian migrant, was working and living in the UK after moving with his family from Spain.  Working alongside Liviu I got an insight into a man that seemed to be the opposite of what some media representations had labelled him or his culture.  The man I was working with was an educated, sensitive, religious and caring man whose main ambition in life was to provide for his family.’

Lalo

‘My project took a change of direction when it was suggested that I look further into myself than into the subject I was documenting.  The very notion of documenting another’s life, one which could be deemed the life of a minority, and of hot political debate, could have aroused suspicion of my agenda as a photographer, rather than the project’s subject.’

Paul

‘Recognising what I admired about Liviu I used this as a catalyst to search into my childhood and specifically that of the father’s role throughout those formative years.  Having a far from linear but also, far from abnormal upbringing, I discovered that these fatherly role models were either given to me or chosen by myself.  Even to this day I have surrounded myself with father figures to guide me into my adult life. The photographs in the series are an examination of not only the individuals and their environments, but also my relationship to those individuals when sitting side by side.  The subtleties of body language may indicate the condition of those relationships, however no intentional references were made to highlight importance or significance to either of the subjects.’

Mick

‘This series has also been a confirmation of my continuous search for portraits of males.  Discussions of projection into those I seek to photograph will continue to be of importance in my photographic practice.’

Cliff

Adam King is a British photographer, who graduated from the University of the Creative Arts, Rochester in 2014.  Adam is currently living and working in London and continuing to practice his personal projects. The majority of Adam’s images are a subtle observation of the community around him who inhabit a workplace, social space, or presumed isolation. His interest in masculinity combined with the life he had before photography is often embedded and referenced in his images, however the path his work takes him on is the leading narrative.  Adam’s signature is his portraiture and he is predominantly an analogue photographer, preferring the process and the relationship it can construct between him and his subject.

adamkingphotography.com
@kingadam82

James O Jenkins

Rory Lewis

The Northerners

Rory Lewis’s portrait of Sir Ian McKellen (below) was selected for Portrait Salon 2014 and is from his work ’The Northerners’, a photographic series about well known faces from the North of England.

‘If I was to achieve my goal I needed to produce a body of work that was unequivocally what I wanted to do, and this would help me to attract the attention of magazine editors and photography agents. I decided that the best way to proceed would be to set myself a project, and being someone who was born and bred in the north of the country the idea of celebrating others who had their roots in this part of the world came to me’

David Warner

Paul Barber

Rory’s ‘Northerners’ is a collection of over 100 portraits featuring a cross section of Northern celebrities, sports personalities, actors, politicians and people encountered.

Brian Cox

The Northerners toured the UK being exhibited at Calumet in Manchester, London, Bristol and Birmingham during 2014/15. Money raised from the exhibition was donated to UNICEF.

Rory Lewis is a portrait photographer based in Liverpool.

rorylewisphotography.com

Benjamin Haywood

Uckfield Matters

Benjamin Haywood’s portrait of ‘Karen’ (below) was selected for Portrait Salon 2014 and is from his work ‘Uckfield Matters’, a photographic series about his hometown of Uckfield in East Sussex, England.

‘We’d had dinner and I was in the garden with Karen and her son TK playing with their dog Archie. I took Karen’s portrait there whilst the sun was going down. Karen doesn’t much like having her picture taken.’

‘It is a part of a sweet tale of suburban, middle class Britain centred around the town of Uckfield. A body of work that is ongoing, Uckfield Matters depicts a town that is – all at once – awash with nostalgia and intimacy, introspection and distance. Central to the photographs is a sense of place, memory and belonging. It is a survey of the contemporary suburban landscape.’

‘Uckfield is my home. I like to photograph there because it is comfortable for me and I know the people there. Part of my work is about understanding what draws a person to photograph something.’

‘I am fascinated by the transformative power of photography and art. I am not very interested in photographing, for want of better words, exciting or beautiful things. I am much more interested in taking completely, undeniably ordinary subject matter and making it exciting and beautiful.’

‘Uckfield is about contemporary everyday life. It’s about how we live, where we live, who we are.’

Benjamin Haywood received his Batchelor in Photography from the London College of Communication in 2014 and works as a freelance photographer and artist on a range of more and less dignifying projects. ‘Uckfield Matters’ continues to evolve and reshape. Other projects about other subjects are coming up too.

benjaminhaywood.tumblr.com

@benjaminhaywood

James O Jenkins

Noriko Takasugi

Fukushima Samurai

Noriko Takasugi’s portrait, ‘Fukushima Samurai’ (below), was selected for Portrait Salon 2013 and is part of her series ‘Fukushima Samurai – The Story of Identity’.

Takakatsu, 68. When it gets closer to Soma Nomaoi, he practices horse racing every 4am morning with his stable mates in the beach. His house facing the beach, destroyed and some of his horses in his stable next to the house were washed away. September 2012.

‘Since 2011, I have devoted my time to capturing the survivors of 3.11. While I am listening to their story, I could not ignore the unique spirit emerging in these people. For my project, I especially focused on the people who were once residents in the 20km radius of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. These photos are part of my long-term project that differs from the major news stories about the disaster, having been investigating the evacuees not as victims, but as part of a 1000 years old folk culture of the area and representative of Japanese identity, examining how they are surviving such hard times and fighting their fate to retain their sense of self, both as individuals and as part of a group.’

Shingo, 34. His ‘favourite house’ with an ocean view on a hill was washed away 10-meter inland by the tsunami. “All the belongings including armor for the Soma Nomaoi annual celebration and two horses that we had taken care of as family were washed away.” September 2012.

Kunihito, 40. “I lived here since I was born until the disaster occurred. Roof tiles fell off and walls cracked due to the earthquake, but the house is habitable only if the level of radiation exposure was normal.” September 2012.

‘About 18,000 people have past away or missing due to the disaster. It triggered the nuclear explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. About 230,000 are still living as evacuees. Related death in Japan is more than 3,000 including more than 1,700 in Fukushima. The majority of people who lived in Fukushima at the time are still living the life of evacuees, devoting a great deal of their time to dealing with the effects of nuclear contamination.’

Yoshiyuki, 59. His former house was also his small furniture factory. He had lived here since he was born and worked locally for more than 35 years. In July 2012, he moved all the equipment from his former home to his new one in the neighboring city, where he evacuated to and live now, to restart the furniture business. September 2012.

Masaki, 31. Masaki used to live with his three children in Odaka. After the disaster he decided to stay in the next town instead of evacuating farther afield. “Of course I worried about the radiation effects but I did not want to move too far from my town because it is the place where Soma Nomaoi is held”. September 2012.

‘Soma Nomaoi is an annual celebration of Samurai culture in Fukushima more than 1000 years old. About 2000 people died in Fukushima due to 3.11, most of who were from the area where the Soma Nomaoi is held. Despite the harsh conditions, loss of lives and loss of hundreds of their horses and much of their armory, the majority of the surviving Nomaoi Samurai warriors agreed to hold the gathering in 2011, just a few months after the disaster. It is not just an event but also an embodiment of their identity and fight for survival. Here, the samurai way of life, “Bushido”, corresponds to the concept of chivalry. This sense of identity represents how and why, they live. The Nomaoi Samurai warriors portrayed here were once residents in the area close to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Most of them are no longer allowed to live there but they can enter the area during the day. Each of them stands in the places that had a personal meaning to them in the area in their everyday life, reviving their memories of home.’

‘Although the typical image of current Japan might be still positive with Tokyo’s high-tech buildings, to people outside Japan, the country remains a hidden world. I would like, through my photography, to show this secret part of Japan: the mentality, inner warmth and profound sense of beauty triumphing over adversity, and awe to the nature. Those secrets part are not the extraordinary things for us but accumulation of our choices in our ordinary life. Such qualities are often obscured nowadays in the world as a whole, not just in Japan. My ordinary life and Japanese root came across to these Samurai people while I am taking the light and shadow of them by my camera.’

Hironobu, 44. He took me to a horse stable that his family member and he built on his wife’s parents’ property after the disaster. “I am now taking care of several horses that did not have anyone to rely one anymore because of the disaster”. The three kids and their parents are living separately in different municipalities as an evacuee life. “It is hard to only see the kids on weekends.” September 2012.

Kunio, 65. “I used to stand in front of this kamidana (a household altar) sacred to Odaka Shrine and pray every morning when we were living here before the disaster.” He prayed when somebody in his family got sick, when his daughter-in-law gave birth and also for other occasions. Standing solemnly in front of the kamidana with gratitude as part of his daily routine was such a precious and calm moment for him. He cannot live here now but he prays to the kamidana whenever he visits here. August 2012.

Born in Japan and based in Tokyo, Noriko Takasugi graduated with an MA in Photojournalism & Documentary Photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Working as an editor for monthly graphic magazines led Takasugi to increase her passion for photography and storytelling. She has always been fascinated with connecting with people whose culture is strongly associated with the land and integrating herself with them through photography. Takasugi’s work has been exhibited widely in UK and published in The Telegraph, Independent, Wired.com. She was awarded the Konica Minolta Foto Premio 2014, selected as a finalist of PhotoQuai 2015 Biennale and a finalist of Critical Mass 2013 (Photolucida).

Takasugi’s hand made self-published photobook, “Fukushima Samurai – the story of identity” has been selected for E Book Show and G Book Show.

norikotakasugi.com

James O Jenkins

Sarah Lee

Sidewalk America

Sarah Lee’s portrait, photographed on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles (below), was selected for Portrait Salon 2014 (Sarah’s portrait of Wallander actor Krister Henriksson was also included) and is part of a long term project with the writer, broadcaster and novelist Laura Barton about the urban American experience. It’s working title is ‘Sidewalk America – This Is Your Land’.

Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles

‘Sidewalk America: all these images are part of a wider project I’ve been working on where I’ve been walking the length of the main streets in five American Cities from dawn till dusk. I have no fixed rules other than I must keep moving forward.’

Broadway, New York City

Broadway, New York City

‘Sunset Blvd in LA, Broadway [from the Staten Island ferry to 189th St], Pennsylvania Avenue in DC, 8th Street in Miami, and Woodward Avenue Detroit. My aim has been to observe the America that isn’t often commented upon the city from the sidewalk itself. A series of road trips fuelled only by shoe leather and caffeine, rather than by gasoline and horsepower.’

Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC

Sunset Boulevard Los Angeles

‘I’ve found that the people I’ve met along the way have been surprisingly willing to chat and tell their stories and to let me take their portraits. I worked only using prime lenses and a manual camera, keeping them as color with the intention of trying to remain as honest to the subjects as I can be.’

Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC

Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC

‘I only photographed people and places as I encountered them without having any “control” over them or the environment. This was enormously liberating. I’m not American, but it’s a country that I love [my Mother is a citizen, I met my husband here] and that I keep coming back to trying to understand it more. This project has been part of that process.”

Broadway, New York City

Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC

You can hear Sarah Lee and Laura Barton discussing ‘Sidewalk America’ for The Guardian and Observer here.

Sarah Lee has been a contracted freelancer for The Guardian and Observer since 2000 and specialises in portraiture, features and the Arts but is interested in all photography that focuses on people, and our shared human experience. Her work has appeared in many publications and places including the cover of TIME magazine, Billboard, Rolling Stone, The Sunday Times, Intelligent Life and many others.

sarahmlee.com

Twitter: @SarahMLee47

James O Jenkins