Tim Flach: More Than Human

Monkey Eyes
Following the success of Equus and Dogs: Gods, photographer Tim Flach has embarked on a new project that explores the relationship between humans and animals, focussing on how we engage with them within the contexts of history, culture, politics and science. Entitled More Than Human, the new work will be published by Abrams Books in October this year. As the title implies, one of the dominant concepts dealt with is the nature and prevalence of anthropomorphism throughout human culture, the departure from the ‘wild’ identity of animals to their use as a vessel for the projection of our uniquely human characteristics – and our growing obsession with cross-breeding and genetic modification of animals to mould them to our own ends and needs. A graduate of St. Martin’s School of Art, Tim Flach had a long and distinguished career in advertising before turning his focus to personal projects, mainly dealing with animal behaviour and human interaction with the animal world. His highly stylised portraits of animals have brought him world-wide attention and his work has appeared in publications across the world, received numerous awards and been exhibited in Europe, the US and Far East. To see more of Tim’s work, go to the Photographers section.

Simon Roberts: Pierdom
Simon Roberts’ new project, Pierdom, looks at a quintessentially British architectural remnant of a oncethriving leisure time of our recent past. Mostly built in the 19th Century, piers were originally constructed as landing docks for pleasure steamers, but developed to cater for the needs of seaside day-trippers escaping the city. In their heyday, the ‘pleasure piers’ incorporated cafes, casinos, theaters and even tramways. While some were modest, others were characteristically Victorian – elegant, exotic and grand. At the turn of the last century, almost a hundred piers existed: now only half remain and many face an uncertain future. All have interesting tales to tell, and Roberts has been documenting the remaining piers, mostly out-of-season, using his signature landscape style and traditional 4″x5″ plate camera. The photographs echo his work in We English: topographical landscapes, sometimes figurative and with a minimal colour palette. Simon Roberts’ two principle bodies of work, Motherland and We English, have met with great critical acclaim and have been published as monographs by Chris Boot. Roberts was also commissioned as the official Election Artist by the House of Commons to produce a record of the 2010 UK General Election. His photographs have been exhibited widely including a recent solo show at the National Media Museum, and are represented in major public and private collections, including the Deutsche Börse Art Collection and George Eastman House. Crane Kalman Brighton has a limited number of prints available from Simon Roberts’ Pierdom series.

Morgan Silk

Berg Park II, 2010

Morgan Silk has been involved in creating photographic images since the mid-1980s after graduating from Blackpool and the Fylde College. He began his career as a creative re-toucher working alongside photographers for advertising clients, and then began to experiment with his own photography, predominantly colour landscapes, his skills as a re-toucher continuing to be employed to give an unusual and personal touch to the finished work.

Now a highly successful photographer in his own right his major commercial clients include Land Rover, BMW, Umbro and Nike. Commissions in 2009 included a project run by FHM magazine as part of a new drive to help recruit RAF Regiment Officers, and a campaign for Network Rail.

His highly acclaimed project Zoo won him an Association of Photographers Gold Award, and Morgan also received 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 six chosen limited edition covers of 2009’s Creative Review Photography Annual.

To see more of Morgan’s work, go to the Photographers section.

Rosa Basurto: Mirando al Cielo

Mirando al Cielo 1
Rosa Basurto is a self-taught photographer from Spain who, within a short space of time, has become widely recognised for her work. Despite no formal training, Basurto demonstrates a highly impressive command of different photographic techniques, producing images that are poetic in style and create an imaginary and dream-like world within a seemingly normal landscape. Although each image features quite life-like ‘real’ subjects, such as trees and birds in flight, the spaces they occupy within Basurto’s photographs create an alternative, somewhat mysterious atmosphere – a darker landscape of the imagination. Basurto’s work has been exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions around Spain, Portugal and France. Her work has been widely recognised, receiving various awards including the Jury Prize for the “Historia de Invierno”, PhotoEspaña, 2010, 1st Prize for the Bienal Internacional SICAFI, Argentina in 2008 and was also shortlisted for the Descubrimientos, PhotoEspaña in 2008 and the X Biennal Internacional AQÜEDUCTE, ‘European Wildlife Photographer of the Year’ in the ‘Landscapes’ category in 2007. To see more of Rosa’s work, go to the Photographers section.

Karine Laval

Poolscape #1, 2010
A native of France, Karine Laval has successfully carved out a career in the New York photography world. She produces a highly distinctive and idiosyncratic style of images both for newspaper and magazine assignments as well as for her own personal work. She has exhibited twice in solo shows at Crane Kalman and has recently featured her third solo project at New York’s leading contemporary photography specialist, the Bonni Benrubi Gallery. Laval’s new project, Poolscapes, continues the themes of her earlier work, most notably her continuing obsession with water, but rendered in a more ethereal, abstract way. In a recent review , The New Yorker Magazine, wrote: “…the coolest pictures are Karine Laval’s pool photographs. Laval has always had a special relationship with the element of water. Her pool project started in 2002, when she obsessively took pictures of bathers at Barcelonetta, a public pool in Barcelona…Pleased with the result (she) continued to take pool pictures all around Europe. Laval’s more recent pictures aredreamier and more elusive, beautiful in a painterly way; they seem to reveal hidden worlds. My mind is seduced into lingering in spaces between the real and the imagined. I want to float in cool waters and forget about the heat wave in steaming New York City.” To see more of Karine’s work, go to the Photographers section.

Shiho Kito: pikari

Untitled (Vyaramata Mandir-4, Ahmedabad, India, 2010, from the series 'pikari')
Shiho Kito’s work was first exhibited at Crane Kalman Brighton in the Cream: Graduate Showcase in 2010, showing images from her on-going ‘pikari’ series. Since then, Shiho has begun to study for an MA in Photography at the London College of Communication, and has exhibited her work as part of a cultural exchange programme between the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham and the Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, where much of the ‘pikari’ series has been photographed. pikari is an onomatopoeia in Japanese, which means ‘shining’ or ‘flashing’. The idea for pikari came from ‘star-navigation’, the ancient technique of Polynesian sailors who would find their location and direction guided only by the natural environment. Since leaving Japan, Shiho has used lights in cities all over the world to find her path. The photographs have been created using a large-format camera with 20-80 minute exposure time. Shiho won the Prime Minister’ Initiative Fund from the British Council and has worked for this project mainly in Ahmedabad, India since 2008. To see more of Shiho’s work, go to the Photographers section.

Hugh Holland: Locals Only

Down on the Corner, Danny Kwock, Balboa Beach, 1975 (from the series 'Locals Only')
Hugh Holland exhibited his ‘Angels’ series at Crane Kalman in 2007. The images captured the Los Angeles skateboard revolution during the mid-Seventies from an insider’s perspective. At the beginningsof a cultural movement—before extreme sports and corporate sponsorship—Holland documented rebellious teens gliding through the drainage bowls and emptied pools around Venice, Orange County and Brentwood’s Kenter Canyon Elementary School. ‘Locals Only’ is his second collection of these images brought together to coincide with the release of a recently published monograph of the same name by AMMO Books. Unlike most photographers, Holland shot with old colour negative movie film, rendering his images in warm, soft tones that beautifully capture intimate images of a generation of boys discovering their identity amidst the backdrop of a cultural phenomena that shaped a generation. To see more of Hugh’s work, go to the Photographers section.

Ellie Davies: Come with Me and Knit One, Pearl One

Come with Me 7, 2011
Two new bodies of work by young British photographer, Ellie Davies. A graduate of the Photography MA at the London College of Communication, Ellie exhibited her ‘Silent, Dark and Deep’ series at Crane Kalman Brighton alongside four of her LCC contemporaries in the ‘New Landscapes’ exhibition in 2009. Her two new series ‘Knit One, Pearl One’ and ‘Come With Me’ continue themes present in her earlier work looking at our relationship with the landscape and the cultural meanings we bring to it. 2011 is proving to be a breakthrough year for Ellie. Following groups shows in London, San Francisco, Tallinn and the New Visionaries exhibition at the New York Photo Awards, she will be involved in her first two solo shows later this year in Kiev and London. She has also received several notable awards over the last 12 months including Honourable Mentions in the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards, The Paris Photo Awards, The New York Photo Awards and 1st Place in the Fine Art Landscape category of the 2010 PX3 Paris Photo Prize. To see more of Ellie’s work, go to the Photographers section.

Jeff Liao: Coney Island series

Luna Park (Coney Island series), 2010
Jeff Liao exhibited his first major project, ‘Habitat 7’ with the gallery in the Visions of America exhibition in 2008. His most recent project, ‘Survey’ is shown here, and like his earlier work, features large-scale panoramic photos that capture magnificent details of the urban and social environment of New York City. ‘Habitat 7’, which recorded the ethnic communities that had grown up around the IRT 7 train line in Queens, won the first ever New York Times Magazine ‘Capture the Times’ Photography Contest and was exhibited at the Queens Museum of Art. Work from that series now features in the collections of George Eastman House, the Harvard Business School and the Getty Museum. A monograph was published by Nazraeli Press in 2007. In 2009, The Bronx Museum of the Arts commissioned Liao for a major project entitled Intersections commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Grand Concourse in New York. In 2010 Liao exhibited alongside Catherine Opie and Soo Kim at the Getty Museum Los Angeles in the group exhibition, Urban Panoramas, and his new work ‘Survey’ which focuses on Coney Island just received its first showing at the Julie Saul Gallery in New York. Nazraeli Press plan to publish a second monograph on Liao’s Depth of Fields stadium project documenting the evolution of an ordinary parking lot in Queens into Citi Field, the new home of the NY Mets baseball team, later this year. To see more of Jeff’s work, go to the Photographers section.