Collections

Karine Laval

NY based, French photographer Karine Laval, has just launched a new body of work entitled Altered States, which pushes still further her development into a more abstract, conceptual style of work. The title of the series references different states of transformation, such as physical transformation and distortion; and altered states of consciousness and perception, but it also reveals the transformative power of the camera.

Once again using water as the subject for her work, Laval continues to explore the vagaries of perception and challenges the way we see by combining performance and the mechanics of photography itself. She tests the limits of the photographic medium by using water as a distorting lens and choosing a stark color palette – the result of her signature film processing – to generate images which alternate between representation and abstraction, and blur the boundary between photography and painting.

Karine Laval was born in Paris, and has been living and working in New York since 1997. Her works have been widely exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and internationally at such venues as the Palm Springs Art Museum, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (USA), the Sorlandet Art Museum in Kristiansand (Norway), the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (France), and at several photo festivals throughout Europe and the US. Her video “Inferno” was presented at Centre Pompidou in Paris as part of the official selection of the ASVOFF International Film Festival in 2011. Laval was a finalist of France’s Villa Medicis Hors Les Murs and she is the recipient of the Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant.

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

Ellie Davies: Dwellings

Developing on from themes within her previous bodies of work, Ellie Davies new series, Dwellings, looks at man-made structures within the natural environment. Once more using the woods as her creative backdrop, the new work finds Ellie creating nest or den-like constructions using a variety of traditional and improvised building techniques and created from material gathered from the forest floor.

Re-visited and photographed over time, each dwelling changes and is changed by the natural elements around it, inextricably becoming part of the woodland, transformed into something independent from what was made by its creator and blurring the delineation between structure and woodland and becoming an entity in its own right. Dwellings is being produced as a 90cmx60cm limited edition of 7 with prices starting at £800.

2012 has been a really break-through year for Ellie with several significant solo exhibitions taking place in London and abroad, work showing at major international Photo Festivals including Arles, receiving an Honourable Mention in the Professional Women Photographers International Juried Exhibition and being featured in two new publications WUD: Four Fictional Walks in the Woods and Open To Interpretation – Intimate Landscapes.

Press article: Hot List – Into the Woods [PDF, 2.3MB]

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

Rosa Basurto: Primo Tempo, Blanco and Bolonia

Rosa Basurto is a self-taught photographer from Spain who, within a short space of time, has gained significant international recognition. Originally a painter, 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. Her images feature life-like ‘real’ subjects, landscapes, trees and birds in flight, but the spaces they occupy within Basurto’s photographs create an alternative, somewhat mysterious atmosphere – a darker landscape of the imagination. Having extensively exhibited her series Mirando al Cielo (Looking at the Sky), we are now presenting three other bodies of work – Primo Tempo, Blanco and Bolonia – all of which feature characteristically unusual, but slightly unsettling and surreal landscapes. 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.

Chris Frazer Smith

First shown as part of the annual Foto8 Photography Awards exhibition at Crane Kalman in 2010, Chris Frazer Smith’s powerful and evocative Hong Kong Apartments II has subsequently gone on to win several awards and been featured in many prestigious exhibitions, including this Summer’s Royal Academy exhibition in London. A highly successful commercial photographer for the last fifteen years, Chris has worked for advertising agencies, record companies and publishers. He has been in the Campaign “Top 10 Photographers” for the past decade, and his work has received many international awards from The Association of Photographers, American Photography Magazine, The British Journal of Photography, Campaign Photography, Creative Review and Photo District News. He was awarded the Lucie International Photographer of The Year Award in 2003. Success in the commercial world has allowed Chris to pursue his own personal projects. His personal work is heavily influenced by cinema and directors such as Kubrick, Coppola and Ridley Scott. The work tends to explore patterns of contemporary human existence in sophisticated urban environments, particularly in the mega-metropolises of Shanghai, Bejing and Hong Kong. To see more of Chris’s work, go to the Photographers section.

Michael Schachtner: Converse

Following a highly successful showing at the recent Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park in London, Crane Kalman is pleased to present the work of German American photographer, Michael Schachtner. First seen as one of the finalists in the recent ‘Peaches & Cream Photography Awards Exhibition’, held in conjunction with Millennium Images, Michael’s series of photographs of Converse boots are a fittingly cool and stylish tribute to a truly iconic American institution. Based in New York, Michael has been a successful art director and photographer for advertising agencies, both in the US, and before that in his native Germany, most notably with Saatchi’s. He describes the series thus “Converse are not just shoes. Converse can be an emblem of individualism, a rejection of the mainstream. They become evidence of a life lived. That’s what gives them their soul and makes them a portrait of their owner.” To see more of Michael’s work, including prices, download his catalogue

Judith Lyons: A Different Nature, Meditation on a Spring Garden, and Photographic Reproduction series

Judith Lyons is a new artist to feature with Crane Kalman Brighton, although one of her images was shown in The Foto 8 Awards Exhibition in 2009. The image featured was from A Different Nature – a series of beautiful still-lives created in the darkroom without a camera or film. The final images were both the result of the coincidence of light, the subject matter and photographic chemistry, and look at the ability of the photographic process to both reveal and transform the world around us.

Her latest body of work, Photographic Reproduction, features images from the human reproductive cycle that are scanned, duplicated and manipulated to create complex, geometric patterns which parallel contemporary photographic processes with the modern developments in conception that enable human life to be created in the laboratory. A graduate of Central St. Martin’s and the LCC, Judith’s work has been published and exhibited both nationally and internationally, and her latest series has been awarded a silver medal in the 2012 PX3 Awards.

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

Rob Carter

One half of highly acclaimed husband and wife team, Rob and Nick Carter, Travelling Still, is Rob’s award-winning solo project. Begun in 2005, the work is a series of beautiful, unusual and, in many cases, almost completely abstract landscapes. The images, appearing as if taken from a moving car, are all about creating the feeling of movement within a still image and try to represent the experience of travelling itself. The images stretch the ‘moment’ both literally – in that the camera shutter is held open – and visually, as the details of the subject blur out horizontally. All the images are shot using a revolving-lens camera. The movement is created ‘in camera’ on to film, with no digital intervention – and are subsequently printed directly from the original transparency onto Cibachrome paper. The series has won highly prestigious awards from The Royal Photographic Society, Creative Review and the International Colour Awards Photography Masters Cup. More recently, Rob has been commissioned to create a Travelling Still film for the offices of Land Securities and a large scale photographic installation for Great Ormond Street Hospital. Prints are produced in limited editions of 12 and prices start at £850 (excl. VAT) for a framed print. To see more of Rob’s work, go to the Photographers section.

Tim Flach: More Than Human

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

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

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.

Foto8 Awards 2011

See Exhibition Archive for full size/price details.

Karine Laval

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.

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