Michael Sajic – Crane Kalman Brighton

Jo Crowther • Landscapes

Jo Crowther was born in York in 1963, and a childhood of much travelling resulted in her attending 14 different schools. The constant travel heightening her observation skills and awareness of her surroundings, and Crowther began recording her daily life through photography and processing and printing her own photos at age 14. Her early 20’s were divided between assisting an advertising location photographer and travelling extensively on her own personal projects to Asia, America and Australia. A large collection of her photographs from this time are held in the Royal Geographical Society’s archives.

In 1995 Crowther won her first award in the landscape section from the Association of Photographers for the image ‘Pyramids’. A silver award soon followed this from the Royal Photographic Society. Commissioned by the Royal Mail in 1999, Crowther worked with Pentagram to produce a stamp image for the Millennium series, which went on to win a prestigious Design & Art Director’s award.

Crowther specializes in photographing natural surroundings in soothing sepia tones, the warm tones and dramatic light and shadows of these introspective images often present reality from a slightly abstract perspective. Crowther has exhibited extensively in the UK, as well as around Europe.

Nick Meek • Unreliable Memories

Growing up in the North of England, the short summers and slate-grey winter skies inspired Nick Meek to create imagery exploring the possibilities of light and colour. Nick has subsequently carved out a photographic career that has seen him travel the world. With a clear vision of the world that he looks to define throughout his practice, Nick is drawn to a vibrant colour palette, spacious compositions and a real expertise with light, the antithesis of the landscape of his upbringing.

To see more of the unreliable memories series and visit Nick’s current online exhibition, click the button below.

Jaume Llorens – Gaia

Following on from his series ‘Deep Inside III’ shown in our Summer newsletter, we are very pleased to present Jaume Llorens new and on-going series ‘Gaia’. The series was recently voted ‘Top 10 Picks’ at the prestigious LensCulture Critics’ Choice Awards 2023. The series takes its name from the hypothesis by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis which describes Earth as a single superorganism in which living beings and the rest of the planet establish a self-regulating equilibrium that ensures the survival of the whole.

The series consists of diptychs created by juxtaposing two photographs of natural elements found in Llorens’ local environment. These elements generate a third image that combines these two photographs into a harmonious whole, which differs from the simple sum of its parts, as described by Ralph Gibson with his ‘overtones’. New and balanced realities can be created from this simple juxtaposition. The work aims to reflect on the need to re-establish the connection with nature, neglected for too long, and to feel a responsible part of this marvellous gear once again to ensure the survival of our planet.

Jim Casper (Editor-in-Chief & Co-Founder of LensCulture) on judging the series, commented: “These are masterly diptychs. Each image is remarkable in its own right – the lighting, cropping, the attentiveness to many fine details, the wonders of nature – all of these qualities came through. And when two images are paired so thoughtfully, with such visual grace, the sense of wonder and awe expands and delights even more intensely as the visual echoes reverberate.”

Samuel Hicks – Wilding

Samuel Hicks new series ‘Wilding’ is an urban take on the idea of re-wilding in nature. The photographer was interested in the very current practice of re-introducing nature and wildlife back into areas of the country from where it had disappeared, and wondered how that might be to create your own personal wild space in an urban environment. A place in the city in which nature has started to reclaim the land for itself. The results were the ‘Wilding’ series.

All of the images in the series were shot in different locations in East London including Brick Lane Station Park, Pedley Street in Shoreditch and an old car factory in Honor Oak. The shoot used a mixture of real and artificial flowers to dress each shot, all of which were supplied and reused by a specialist flower and foliage hire company. The Wilding series has been awarded “Official Selection” in the IPA (International Photography Awards), which will be held in October in New York.

Samuel Hicks has carved out a successful career as an editorial and commercial photographer. He has been fortunate to travel the world on various campaigns and assignments, whilst also producing his own personal work. He has won awards from the Association of Photography, has been featured in Creative Review’s annual photography showcases as well as been exhibited at the London Photographic Awards.

Jaume Llorens Bach – Deep Inside III

Jaume Llorens was born in Porqueres, near Girona, Catalonia in 1966. He fell in love with photography during his teenage years having attended a course whilst at high school. Jaume set up a small laboratory in his home where he developed his own black and white prints mostly photographing the inspirational beauty of the natural world around his local lake Banyoles. University, work and family life took over, but in recent years and with the ease and accessibility of digital photography, Jaume once again returned to photography and the beauty of his native landscape.

In 2014 Jaume took part in his first group exhibition. Subsequent exhibition highlights include the LensCulture group exhibition at Photo London 2023, a solo exhibition in 2022 at the Fundació Valvi in Girona, a solo exhibition at the Festival Mirades in Torroella de Montgrí in 2021 and a group show at the Valid Foto Gallery in Barcelona (OFNI Project, 2019). Awards highlights include the 3rd place winner (singles) at the LensCulture Black & White Awards 2022, the selection of his portfolio ‘Deep Inside’ at the Barcelona International Photography Awards, BIPA, 2019 and the 3rd prize of the VI National Photography Competition Canson Infinity (Spain).

Karine Laval – Trembling Giant

Karine Laval’s latest project, Trembling Giant, focuses on Pando, a unique ecosystem located in Fishlake National Forest, Utah. The ancient forest, connected by one intertwined root system, is believed to be the largest and most dense organism ever found and is estimated to have started at the end of the last ice age. The Pando clone, Latin for “I spread”, spreads over 106 acres with over 40,000 individual trees.

As the wind moves through their leaves, the trees tremble and produce a unique and ethereal sound, collectively becoming the Trembling Giant. Laval’s imagery is a visual representation of the wind rustling the leaves in this ancient forest.

Laval’s new body of work continues her ongoing exploration of our relationship to nature. Her images are composite landscapes of natural shapes and radical manipulation of light, which abstract the experiences of memory, narrative and everyday life. The resulting imagery becomes a bridge between the world we live in and a more surreal, dreamlike dimension, which depicts a disorienting representation of nature. The distortions, superimpositions and otherworldly colours are created in camera as single frames using reflective surfaces, natural and artificial light, skewed perspectives and at times extreme crops.

Karine Laval is a French artist based in NY who has worked on commissions for prestigious brands such as Hermès and Louis Vuitton, architects and institutions. Some of her recent public art commissions include a monumental scale installation at 22 Bishopsgate in London, an exhibition of large lightboxes in the New York City subway, and an art commission by Peter Marino for the Cheval Blanc hotel in the newly renovated La Samaritaine in Paris. Last Summer, a major public art installation of her work was presented throughout the parks and gardens of the national museum of Château de Malmaison outside Paris.

Cream 2022

The gallery is pleased to present Cream 2022, a special selection of some of the gallery’s favourite emerging photographic graduate artists who have featured in one of our annual Cream exhibition showcases dating back to 2008.

Shiho Kito

Shiho Kito was selected for one of the first ever Cream shows in 2009. After completing her MA at the LCC, Kito has worked between the UK, Japan and India. Her major project ‘pikari’ (dazzlingly) has exhibited extensively across Europe and Asia and received an Honourable Mention at the Magenta Flash Forward Awards. She has received several grants from the Nomura Foundation, Japan, which included the major exhibition, ‘Another Way of Telling, New Stories from India and Japan’ alongside Karen Knorr at Kytographie, Kyoto. Her current body of work, Kagami (mirror) is an attempt to contemplate the idea of photography within the landscape.

Katinka Goldberg

Katinka Goldberg was also selected for Cream 2019. Goldberg’s work has been exhibited extensively in Europe since her graduation from the Edinburgh College of Art. Her photobook ‘Surfacing’ was included in Martin Parr/Gerry Badger’s anthology A History of Photobooks Volume III, and her latest solo museum show at Norway’s Kongsberg Art Centre features work from series ‘Bristningar’ (Rupture) which uses the amputated and then reconstructed body as a way to visualise fragmented identity.

Chloe Rosser

Since exhibiting at Cream 2013, Chloe Rosser has since received the ArtSlant Prize and won the Tokyo International Foto Awards in 2019. Her graduate work ‘Form’ and her recent project ‘Function’ have been exhibited around the world. The work is an exploration of our experience of being human and our fraught relationship with our bodies.

Nigel Maynard

2016 graduate Nigel Maynard went on to complete an MA at Westminster University. His on-going project ‘Formshire’ has exhibited widely around the UK and featured in several publications. The series looks at how the making of abstract photographs is comparable with the exploration of an unknown landscape.

Angela Blažanović

Angela Blažanović was part of Cream in 2019. She is currently studying for an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art. Her graduate project ‘Fragments of a River’, creating compositions from found objects on the bed of the River Thames at low tide, won several awards including AOP Student Award and was shortlisted for 2020 Photo London Emerging Photographer of the Year Award 2020. Through an approach somewhere between photography and sculpture, the artist investigates the symbiotic relationship between human and landscape, often using overlooked and discarded traces of our human presence.

Kira Krasz

Kira Krasz is one of the youngest photographers in our selection. She was a part of Cream in 2019 with her highly-acclaimed degree project ‘Thought after Taught’. The project received the Photoworks Student Award and her follow-up project ‘A Living Sense of Home’ won the Coup de Coeur Leica Award at the Hangar Art Prize. She has recently received a three-year scholarship from The Hungarian Academy of Arts for her current project ‘From Marble to Stone’.

Ocean Farini

Featured in Cream’s 2017 edition, Ocean’s series ‘Front Door’ is the result of a year long socially-engaged residency on Flakefleet estate. In it, Farini placed herself within the pages of ‘Slimming’ magazines from the 70’s and 80’s. The series celebrates, questions and what it is to grow-up and grow-into a place through photographs, clothes and words

In 2018, Ocean was awarded the LeftCoast Long-Term Residency, where she created ‘Front Door’ .

Nicholas Constant

In his series ‘Predator/Protector’, Constant Explores the evolution of the battle field. Taking a look at the landscape of the British UAV program and its complacency with even more destructive programs around the world, Predator/ Protector aims to contrast the idealistic and unintrusive views with the reality of what is taking place in these locations to show that they are part of the ever-expanding ‘battlespace’ in the information age. These images are combined with representations of aspects that are impossible to capture due to restricted access (the UAVs themselves and the operating rooms.) The juxtaposition reveals interesting parallels that would not have been achieved by photographing the investigated subjects alone.

Shortly after Cream 2015, he won the Magnum Graduate Photographer of the Year Award in 2016 with his project ‘Firn’, and was shortlisted for the Metro Imaging award in 2018.

Karine Laval – Barragan

French photographer Karine Laval’s new series of work were taken in Cuadra San Cristobal, a private estate outside of Mexico City, designed and developed by legendary architect Luis Barragan in the 1960s. Laval produced this series in 2019 during a visit to Mexico City, a city that fascinates her due to its many examples of modernist architecture coexisting with luxuriant nature within one of the largest urban centres in the world.

The series continues many of Laval’s ongoing artistic interests in the notions of space, architecture, colour and how it affects our sense of perception and emotions, and the relationship we entertain with the environment, particularly with the element of water. She also harbours a particular interest in avant-garde and mid-century modern architecture and design with Barragan being one of her favourite architects.

Geometric lines and unusual angles combined with their reflections in water and the intense colour palette and shimmering heat create a dazzling, sun-bleached abstract landscape where memory and reality collide. The new series, Barragan, is being launched at Photo London at Somerset House, 12^th-15^th May.

Rachel Louise Brown – Salty Clowns

The practice and potential of Photo Therapy is something that has long interested Rachel Louise Brown, so during the pandemic lockdowns, she decided to explore for herself, photography’s power to heal. Building a small studio set in her living room, she used the performative nature of self-portraiture as a tool to cope with her grief, frustration and fear, instinctively gravitating towards clowns as a subject.

Alongside conjuring clown characters, having hired archival and historical outfits from the National Theatre & Clown Museum and attempted the art of clown make up, Brown was keen to learn new analogue techniques – particularly some of the earliest ones that have led to the world of photography as we know it today. Using an ex-police dept Graflex 5×4 camera found online & a pneumatic air shutter release cable, she shot the clowns onto paper negatives & developed them in her bathroom.

Since lockdowns have lifted, Brown has attempted to master the historical alchemical process of salt printing. Invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in the mid-1830s, salt printing was the earliest photographic method capable of fixing a negative to positive image on paper. Using salt water, silver nitrate and UV light as the main ingredients, Brown has created unique salt prints of her Salty Clowns. Because of the alchemical reactions that occur at every stage of this lengthy, laborious yet meditative process, no two images are the same. Each clown is toned with selenium to ensure permanence and waxed with beeswax and lavender for protection.

Tim Flach – Birds

Working for years in his studio and in the field, internationally acclaimed photographer Tim Flach has portrayed nature’s most alluring creatures alertly at rest and dramatically in flight, capturing intricate feather patterns and subtle coloration invisible to the naked eye.

From familiar friends including the king penguin and the black swan, to marvelous rarities such as the kagu and the Bali myna, Flach conveys the dazzling diversity of birds. Here are all manner of songbirds, parrots, and birds of paradise; birds of prey, waterbirds, and theatrical domestic breeds.

Witness the shy gaze of the southern cassowary and the fearless stare of the Andean condor; marvel at the peregrine falcon—the fastest animal on Earth—in flight, wings outstretched, and the iridescent plumage of the Himalayan monal.

The result of much patience, precision, and persistence, Birds features more than 180 extraordinary photographs. Putting us face-to-face with some of Earth’s most magnetic living beings, Flach evokes the magnificence of the animal kingdom—and the urgent need to protect and defend it.

Ben Thomas – Water

The gallery is pleased to present our first series of work from acclaimed Australian photographer, Ben Thomas. The Hasselblad Master has a dynamic approach to photography. When he moved to Melbourne in his mid-twenties, the camera was his key to discovering the vibrant city. Since then, he has photographed the Australian landscape in a uniquely hyperreal style, combining a documentary eye with a strong visual aesthetic that slowly reveals a hidden narrative playing out, and asks how people identify with their surroundings.

In his latest series, Water, Thomas explores Australia’s most impressive natural phenomenon: its ocean. Utilising distortion and perspective in his photographs, Thomas casts beachgoers and surfers as minuscule figurines in his vast landscapes, while his bleached-out vistas of saltwater swimming pools and sandy beaches adhere more closely to compositional traditions. Wherever you glance, Thomas is playing with your eye; you have to look twice if you want to experience the full impact of these visually rich and playful scenes.

Adding Hasselblad Master to his list of awards, Ben has been recognized on multiple occasions previously: Winner, LensCulture Emerging Talents 2016 Jurors’ Pick; Finalist, William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize 2016; Winner, 125 LIVE Olympus Vision Award (London) 2015 honoring an established artist for pushing the boundaries of the medium through innovation, technical expertise and originality; Winner in Photography Category, Desktop Create Awards 2015.

Johanna Goodman – The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings

Based in New York, Johanna Goodman is an illustrator and collagist who studied at Boston University’s School of Fine Art and Parsons School of Design (NYC) where she graduated with a BA of Fine Arts in Illustration in 1992. She has been a freelance Illustrator ever since. Her work has garnered awards from The Society of Publication Design, American Illustration and Communication Arts.

In 2017 she was awarded the New York State Council for the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship grant for her on-going body of work The Catalogue of Imaginary Beings. The images, developed from over twenty years of portraiture and collage work, explore a range of themes in popular culture, including the role of the individual in fashion, in history, in the artistic imagination and draws inspiration from magical realism, surrealism and symbolism.

Johanna’s work has been featured in a wide variety of publications from The Guardian and Marie Claire to Vice and Creative Review. Her work has also been included in several books about Illustration, Art and Collage including The American Illustration Annual Book, 3×3: The Best of International Illustration, Communication Arts Illustration Annual, and she was profiled in The Age of Collage: Contemporary Collage in Modern Art published by Gestalten.

Ellie Davies – Stillness

Ellie Davies is a fine art photographer, an LCC MA graduate in 2008, who has been working in the forests of the UK for the past ten years, producing work which explores the complex interrelationship between the landscape and the individual.

Taken in Autumn/Winter 2020, in her native New Forest, Ellie Davies’ new series ‘Stillness’ captures the woodland at a particularly magical and evocative time of day.

”…As the sun sets and the warmth of the day fades, a deep silence falls over the forest. At twilight a thick fog lies over the land, immersing the landscape in stillness…”

‘Stillness’ will be previewed at Photo London, Somerset House from 9^th-12^th September.

All prints are available in two print sizes, 68cmx90cm and 90cmx120cm, both in limited editions of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. As with all earlier series, the editions will be priced with an incremental price structure, so prints increase in price as the edition sells out.

Samuel Hicks – Towers

Fellows Court 1, St. Mary’s Estate, Hackney, London, 2020 – Samuel Hicks

Photographer Samuel Hicks grew up in London, and his new mini-series ‘Towers’, celebrates some of the city’s Modernist social housing developments in South and East London. Looking for an easily accessible subject to get out and photograph after the 2^nd Coronavirus lockdown was lifted in November, Samuel returned to a subject that he had documented as some of his first work as a professional photographer.

Featured in this series are the St. Mary’s Estate in Hackney, Falstaff House in Hoxton and the Dorset Estate in Bethnal Green designed by influential modernist architects Skinner, Bailey and Lubetkin. Built between the 1950s and 1970s, and loved and loathed in equal measure, these estates once covered large parts of South and East London, but many are now being knocked down and replaced. Photographed at dusk, the architecture, and in particular, the lighting of these buildings takes on a new aesthetic and becomes highly cinematic.

Samuel Hicks has forged a successful career in commercial and editorial photography, travelling the world working for clients such as Nike, Land Rover and Coca Cola. His personal work has taken him on location to Sweden, Norway, the US and Ireland where he shot the New York State Circus with projects published in The Independent, Wallpaper and Huck Magazine. In the last few years, his personal projects have included a series of short films on youth culture.

Morgan Silk – Nightwalks

British photographer Morgan Silk has captured his nocturnal wanderings around the United States in a series of beautifully rich and dreamy black and white images. Taken during a road trip across the US in 2014, starting in NY and ending in New Orleans via Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama, ‘Nightwalks’ captures cities and its people in reflective and introspective mood, a certain hush fallen in the small, quiet hours.

Silk states about the project, “Similarly to much of my other work, the images are purely observational and were unplanned without any particular concept or idea of any particular subject, shot on the hoof with a pocket camera and no other equipment. No setting up, no waiting for the light. More akin to street photography in approach. I warm to the concept of no concept when out with a camera, it’s where my love for photography began and I find the best images I make come out of nowhere, unexpectedly and without preconceived ideas. You have to allow yourself to be receptive and let things flow freely, just being there in a totally new place, equipped and present at the right moment. The images instinctively come to you if you are open to seeing them. Thinking can get in the way sometimes so simply going out with a camera in this way is more about photographing by feel and less about thinking.”

Morgan Silk is a highly successful and award-winning advertising and fine art photographer. His highly acclaimed project Zoo won an Association of Photographers Gold Award and an Honourable Mention at the International Photo Awards (2009). His portrait of Jake Tassell from the series ‘After The Riots’ was selected as one of the 6 limited edition covers of 2009’s Creative Review Photography Annual. His ‘Saturn V Rockets’ series won ‘Award of Excellence in Communication’ at the Arts Photography Annual Awards 2016.

Author: Michael Sajic