Samuel Hicks

LA River

After turning his back on in his Fine Art studies, Samuel Hicks turned to photography. He began assisting a series of photographers in London, mainly in the advertising world, serving a six year apprenticeship, before starting out as a photographer in his own right. Since then, Hicks has forged a successful career in commercial and editorial photography, travelling around the world and working for clients such as O2, Land Rover, Lucozade, The Times, The Independent and Wallpaper Magazine.

In the last few years his personal projects have incorporated working on location in Sweden, Norway, and Ireland where he shot the New York State Circus. His photograph of a Kendo Fighter Smoking was a winner in the Lifestyle & Portraiture category of the Association of Photography Awards. Samuel’s work has featured in Creative Review’s annual photography showcases of the last few years. As well as exhibiting work at the London Photographic Awards, he was also selected for the Foto8 Summer Show in 2009 and had his first solo show at Crane Kalman Brighton in 2009.

Samuel’s work is characterised by his fascination with light; how it can transform a scene, change colours, create a mood & bring subjects to life. Often he will combine photographic lighting with natural light to lend a filmic quality & create a powerful narrative, never more so than with this new series of work taken in and around Los Angeles earlier this year.

To see more of Samuel’s new collection of work, please go to the Photographers section.

Elliott Wilcox: Real Tennis

Real Tennis 07

Elliott Wilcox is a London based, British photographer who recently graduated from the University of Westminster, MA Photographic Studies programme. He first exhibited with Crane Kalman as part of the Cream 10 Graduate Showcase in 2009, featuring early work from his celebrated ‘Courts’ series.

Since then, he has gone on to be the recipient of several awards including a Judges Award at the Nikon Discovery Awards and a New York Photo Award. Elliott recently won a prestigious Lucie Award for the Discovery of the Year at the International Photography Awards. His work has been exhibited internationally, featuring as part of the show ‘PRUNE – Abstracting Reality’ at FOAM Gallery Amsterdam with guest curator Kathy Ryan, editor of the New York Times Magazine.

Wilcox’s has now completed his second major series ‘Walls’, which was recently exhibited at the Bau-Xi Photo Gallery in Toronto. The new work continues to explore Wilcox’s interest in minimalism and abstraction through its focus on the outwardly simplest and uniform of subject matters.

To see more of Elliot’s work, and for sizes and prices, go to the Photographers section.

Philip Gatward: Dahlia

Dahlia 1, 2013

Philip Gatward has worked as a successful photographer, predominantly in the advertising industry for over 20 years. During that time, some of his most significant campaigns have included work for Nike, Conde Nast, Elle Decor, Phillips, Boosey & Hawkes, Coca-Cola, Heineken, the V&A, Wrangler and the Design Council.

Philip has exhibited work at Crane Kalman since its first group show ‘Eclectica’ back in 2006, featuring his on-going major project ‘Dahlias’. Focusing on one of the plant world’s most varied and diverse flowers, Philip chooses to photograph each flower, close-up, against the same neutral background to heighten the extra-ordinary detail and beauty of these flowers. His new work looks at this favourite of subject in stunning monochrome to create the most timeless and elegant of flower studies.

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

Cream 13: A Showcase of Graduate Photography Talent 2013

Little Box of Milk
After a hiatus of 2 years, Crane Kalman Brighton Gallery is pleased to return to Brighton audiences with Cream 13, an exhibition featuring a new selection of some of the most interesting and diverse photographic graduate talent to emerge from 2013. The exhibition includes BA graduates from some of the most prestigious Photography Courses from Universities and Colleges the length and breadth of the country from Westminster to Glasgow; London to Newport and Brighton to Ulster. Cream 13: A Showcase of Graduate Photography Talent 2013 will first be exhibited at the University of Brighton Gallery from Thursday 15th to Friday 30th August, and then marking the start of a new series of collaborative exhibitions, the show will move on to the Brighton Dome from Saturday 14th September to Sunday 27th October 2013. Please note: on occasion Brighton Dome Founders Room may close for private events. To check exhibition opening times please download details (PDF, updated 13 Sep 13).Photographers This year’s showcase features: Eugenijus Barzdžius (University of South Wales, Newport) – ‘Harvest of Wetland’ documents a self-governed settlement in a Lithuanian wetland, built by a bunch of citizens frustrated with the long journey to legal allotments on the outskirts of the City. The space means escape, survival, and responsibility to its habitants. Tine Bek (University of Glasgow) – Bek treats the issue of the social norms and the conventional lifestyle with spontaneity and a little irony. His characters “Bend over Backwards”, as they are trying desperately to adapt to the external expectations posed upon them. Joseph Conway (University of Brighton) – ‘Nine Miles as the Crow Flies’ documents a series of interventions in the landscape. The playful images are informed and situated within a history of Land Art. Jacqueline Douglas (University of Ulster) – ‘Thank you for being my family’ plays a tribute to the life of Esperanza, Douglas’s Peruvian nanny who left her own family behind 50 years ago to become a part of Douglas’s in Ireland. In 2013 however, Douglas travelled to Peru to photograph Esperanza’s own family. Laurence Harding (University of Westminster) – ‘House of Cards’ draws attention to the fragile foundations of our economy and personal ambition. As we perform our social roles according to pre-packaged lifestyles, our individuality is regularly challenged. Leanne Healey (Falmouth University) – The series ‘Familiar Dreams’ works as a psychoanalytic experiment drawing on common archetypes and symbols in dreams. The pictures set the spectator’s unconscious in motion to recall memories of their own. John Jordan (Dun Laoighaire) – In ‘Shannon Stopover’, Jordan juxtaposes existing photographs of Iraqi dead, military planes and airport infrastructure to comment on the Irish Government’s authorisation of Shannon Airport as a refueling point for US military aircraft on their way to the war on Iraq – an abrogation of Ireland’s long-held policy of neutrality, and against the wishes of its people. Simon Kaye (University of Essex) – ‘Structure of Power’ explores the physicality of an immaterial subject such as energy. Apart from allowing the viewer to glance at the physical aspect of electricity the series conveys an allegorical comment as well. Junko Ogura (University of Westminster) – in ‘Little Box of Milk’, Ogura shows the long-term effects of the nuclear catastrophe that happened in Fukushima, Japan. The leakage of radioactive materials poses an invisible threat to the lives of the population since 2011. Chris Pledge (University of Portsmouth) – ‘Days of Future Past’ captures the nuances of movement and the modulation of time using experimental techniques such as long and multiple exposure. Chloe Rosser (University of Falmouth) – ‘Form’ speaks of the human condition and our increasing alienation from our own bodies. The unsettling photographs contort bodies to become seemingly inhuman figure studies. Sarah Smith (University of Westminster) – ‘As the Crow Flies’ is about the continual chasing of an elusive and unattainable phenomenon, an obsession never to end or be fulfilled. Smith addresses this feeling with the symbolism linked to birds. Susie Tsang (Stockport College) – ‘What’s Left Is Unsaid’ talks about a ritual that opens up the narrative of a delicate and intricate relationship between a daughter and her mother: a constant flux of confusion and clarity, ease and frustration. Chelsy Vaney (University for the Creative Arts, Farnham) – ‘The Landscape Experience’ is a search for a faithful representation of an experience within a landscape. By interfering with the physical object of the photographic prints, Vaney enhances the material qualities of the landscape representation, and at the same time overcomes its limitations. Saxon Whitbrock (Falmouth University) – Images of ‘Logolepsy’ represent the extrapolation from word to understanding, and thus the inherent beauty in the human desire to communicate ideas. Simple and expressive, Whitbrock’s photographs are substitutes for words. Byoung Joon Yoon (University of Westminster) – ‘Agency of Light’ consists of diptychs depicting colour compositions. The work explores the link between colour and light within the frame of photographic practice, yet in an abstract and allegorical sense. Jiaxin Zheng (London College of Communication) – ‘The Shroud of Beauty’ reflects on the pursuit of Asian girls to become the Caucasian beauty ideal. Zheng visualises their struggle to ‘mask’ their original personality in order to conform to the societal expectations of beauty.

Venues

Cream 13: A Showcase of Graduate Photography Talent 2013 will show at two venues: University of Brighton Thursday 15th – Friday 30th August 2013. Open Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm (Closed Sundays) University of Brighton Gallery, 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton BN2 0JY. Tel: 01273 643010. Web: arts.brighton.ac.uk Brighton Dome Saturday 14th September – Sunday 27th October 2013. (On occasion Brighton Dome Founders Room may close for private events. To check exhibition opening times please download details (PDF, updated 13 Sep 13) or visit brightondome.org) Brighton Dome, Founders Room, Church Street, Brighton BN1 1UE. Tel: 01273 709709. Web: brightondome.org For further information, and for images, please contact Crane Kalman Brighton on 01273 697096. To see previous years’ graduate showcases, go to the Photographers section.

Morgan Silk 2013

Bay of Fires
A winner in the Association of Photographers 2012 Annual Awards, Morgan Silk’s latest body of work Tasmania, was inspired by the extraordinary natural beauty and wild landscapes of the Antipodean island. Whilst on an assignment for One Life Magazine, to track the story of sightings of the Tasmanian Tiger, widely believed to be extinct since the 1960s, Silk was captivated by the unusual and majestic landscapes around him. From exposed tidal beaches which created strange uniform ridges in the sands that went on for miles, to the almost prehistoric nature of some of the unique island vegetation, and the extraordinary unspoilt beauty of the Bay of Fires, regarded as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, Tasmania made an indelible impression on the photographer. A selection of images from this body of work can now be viewed on the gallery website. In addition to a series of high profile recent commissions for the likes of Mastercard, Wired Magazine, Land Rover, Shell and RBS, Silk is working on a new collection of images on British Traditions and Folklore. To see more of Morgan’s work, go to the Photographers section.

Karine Laval

Untitled #1 (Flux), 2012

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

Dwellings 5, 2012

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

Primo Tempo 1
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

Hong Kong Apartments II
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

Converse – Stars & Stripes, 2011
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

A Different Nature #3, 2009

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

Lenk, Switzerland, 2007
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

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.