Once again, Halloween rears it’s ugly head at us, and the shop windows are full of ghouls, werewolves, spiders, bats are all things scary.
Of course, what would Halloween be without pumpkins?
I’d rather watch a horror movie at home actually, perhaps Halloween? More later…
© Steven Lee 2011
This year’s AOP Open Awards Exhibition, Presentation and Party will be taking place at The Dray Walk Gallery in London’s vibrant Truman Brewery.
My entry here is in the shortlist and will be exhibited and included in the accompanying catalogue. It was taken in Nice earlier this year, from my series ‘Azuristic’, documenting the tourism industry of the Mediterranean coast.
The Exhibition also falls within East London’s Photomonth and will be open to the public on the 14-16 October Friday 11-8pm, Saturday & Sunday 10am-6pm. The Private View is taking place on Thursday the 13th October.
The AOP Open is RSVP only!
© Laura El-Tantawy 2011
In the Shadow of the Pyramids is Laura El-Tantawy’s current project documenting Egypt’s popular uprising. Her Artist Talk yesterday evening at the Green Cardamom Light Gallery was informative and totally engrossing and drew a small crowd of interested audience. Egypt is experiencing a change that is unprecedented in the modern historical context. As an Egyptian and living in the UK, she is determined that her work be seen by Egyptians in Egypt. That is her ‘end game’ to this current project. And a book.
Ultimately, though, she would love to be able to display her powerful and moving photographs in Tahrir Square one day, and invite the people of the revolution to see them at “Ground Zero’ as it were. Liberation Square as it is also known, was the hallowed ground on where the Cairenes gathered in their thousands to over several weeks prior to the ousting of the president. It was also the place where they celebrated with street parties after Mubarak’s resignation.
© Laura El-Tantawy 2011
For me, Egypt has also carved a significant moment in my life.
At 8:45am on 17, November 1997, 58 foreign tourists and 4 Egyptians were brutally massacred by terrorists at the entrance to the Temple of Queen Hapshetsut, Valley of the Queens in Luxor. This was a dark day for Egypt. My parents, aunt and I were with a group, about to enter the Valleys at about 8:30 am led by our tour guide. Usually, the guide would lead the bus driver pass the ticket office and straight to the Valley of the Queens first, being the closer of the two Valleys. That fateful morning, our guide decided to head for the Valley of the Kings instead. Had he stuck to his routine, our bus would have arrived right at the moment when the attack took place. The two Valleys are separated by a hillock. We were fortunate. Not so, for a South American couple who shared our dining table on the Nile boat. They joined another tour group and left earlier that morning.
Myself, taken by my aunt outside KV7, Tomb of Ramses II, Luxor, approx. 9:00 am, 17 November 1997
My discovery tour to Egypt ended abruptly the next day as I was ‘forced’ to fly home via Cairo, ordered by my better half, who read the headline news on the Evening Standard in the London underground. My discovery of Egypt is thus incomplete, and what better way than to make a return to the Land of the Pharoahs, a historical Biblical land to so many, and a nation that is in transition.
Thank you to Laura who’s work peeked my curiosity once again to visit Egypt, and thank you to all those that attended explorenation’s inaugural Artist Talk.
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See also here.
In May this year Andy and I ran a half-day Camera Clinic for some students from the Limkokwing Global Classroom in their London campus. Once again, last Thursday, 29th, I led another similar workshop, in sweltering 28C temperatures here in sunny London. This time, there was supposed to be 30+ students, but only about half materialised from the Indian Summer weather we have been enjoying in early Autumn. Nevertheless, we had a Go! and I sent all of them out in groups of 4 or 5, onto the streets on an assignment for a ‘make-believe’ inflight magazine article, requesting images of ‘Summer in London.’
With students in various disciplines, from Business Studies, Accountancy to Graphic Design and Games Software, it was difficult to run a technical photography class. Hence, I resorted to good old creativity, imagination and Lady Luck which I believe every one of us possess in some form or another. Thanks to Linda Noor for organising this session.
I am awaiting results from the challenge.
Laura El-Tantawy , 2011 by Steven Lee
I met Laura briefly at the National Gallery cafe to talk about her fund raising efforts through emphas.is a crowd funding website to enable her to complete the final chapter in her documentation of the popular uprising by the ordinary people of Egypt. These events which centred in Cairo, and particularly Tahrir Square was broadcasted all over the world by mainstream news channels and literally shook the leaders of the Arab world off their feet.
Laura’s photographic style is unique, part journalistic, part documentary and part fine art, raw and powerfully emotive, and totally artistic. Trained as a journalist and worked as a newspaper photographer in the USA, she is passionately absorbed to covering the forthcoming elections in a ‘new’ Egypt in October and November.
[Check out Magnum’s David Alan Harvey’s skype interview with Laura here. DAH’s BURN magazine are Laura’s media partner on this project and they sponsored her in February to cover the revolution in Egypt. Their continued support now is part of their counted effort to see the project through to print as a book.]
Laura will be giving a talk about her latest project, accompanied with a slide projection of photographs taken before and during the uprising in Egypt. This is a fund raising evening (non-obligatory), which is open to anyone who would like to learn a bit more about the events unfolding in Egypt, her style of photography and her first hand experience on the ground. Your support is most appreciated. Watch the video below for her personal address, and help spread the message. Apologies for the rather short notice of this event, but I’m sure it will be a great evening out!
Laura has indicated that the first 20 RSVPs will receive a special ‘memento’ postcard print from her on the evening!
Venue
Green Cardamom Light Gallery, 5a Porchester Place, London W2 2BS
Time : 7:00 to 10:30pm : Free entry
Date : Friday, 30th September 2011
RSVP to : info@explorenation.net or leave a comment below.
(Nearest tube : Marble Arch or Edgware Road)
About Laura
Laura El-Tantawy is an Egyptian photojournalist & artist based in London. She studied journalism & political science at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia (USA) & started her career as a newspaper photographer with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Sarasota Herald-Tribune (USA). In 2005, she started work on her first book documenting a changing Egypt. As part of the urge to understand the issues, in 2009, she accepted a six-month fellowship at the University of Oxford (UK) to research free speech in Egyptian media.
In 2008 she was nominated and accepted to take part in Reflexions Masterclass, a two-year photography seminar directed by Italian photographer Giorgia Fiorio and French curator Gabriel Bauret. Her work has been published & exhibited in the US, Europe, Asia & the Middle East. She exclusively works on self-initiated projects.
Laura is the founder of www.illdieforyou.com, a project documenting farmer suicides in rural India.
www.lauraeltantawy.com
This event is organised by explorenation.net
I brought along my trusty Rolleiflex 3.5 and several rolls of Lomography 120 film to the Notting Hill Carnival recently and just picked the scans up from the friendly Lomography store in London’s Carnaby Street. I had been trying out their Red Scale 120 films. This is a 200 ISO rated film which has been reverse wound onto the spool. Exposing it at 200 will result in a red and orange tint, whilst giving it more exposure (rating it from 50 to 100 ISO) will result in green or blue tints, depending on the quality of light. It’s a hit and miss result, so there’s no hard and fast rule about your exposure. I guess that it the charm about shooting ‘Lomo’ style pictures. You just don’t know what you are going to get. I like the organic quality of film, the grain and the cross-processed look, which is done chemically rather than through Apps or digital filters.
Met up with Revi, Kirsten and Malika this morning at 9:30am at Cafe Nero by Notting Hill Gate station and headed up to the pre-start area of the street parade, up by Kensal Road W10. Having attended the carnival for several years now, I still find it a great opportunity to photograph street portraits and scenes of performers real close, without any form of intrusion or barriers. The street performers and dancers always willingly oblige to have their photographs taken, without any reservations, and the music and dancing is always a spectacle to behold, not to mention the fantastic colourful and elaborate costumes which adorn some of them. So much effort has gone in to the design and manufacture of them, for months before the carnival. Here are some images from today. For more Carnival photos from previous years, please look here.
Enjoy!
A week after the most violent and widespread riots in London and in the UK for over 25 years, I urged myself to go have a first hand look at the place where it all kicked off, that is Tottenham High Road, in north London. Last evening, I tossed and turned in bed, just willing myself to go check out the situation on the ground and meet some of the local traders and shopkeepers that had been affected. A little voice kept urging me to ‘take camera’ and ‘go shoot’ Tottenham one week after.
Monday morning, I sms’d Zarina, a video journo who runs Sojournposse.com and suggested the idea to her. We met up and tubed it up to Seven Sisters where we walked the half mile north towards Tottenham High Road. It is after all, over 1 week since the fires were lit and a sense of normalcy has returned to the streets. Without careful observation, one would not have guessed anything significant had happened. As we approached the flashpoint (the Police Station), we could see some shopfronts boarded up, some fire damaged was evident, black charred facades and melted signage. Many glass frontages had some damage but were left as they were. Almost all bus shelters had their glass sides broken, including telephone booths. Most local authority buildings like the youth centre, job centre and housing offices were completed burnt or seriously damaged and were closed. The road section where the double decker bus was set alight melted away and had just been resurfaced. The pub adjacent to the burning bus had all their windows panes melted due to the heat. Workmen were busy installing new glazing.
I, like so many, have read the hundreds of column inches of news that have been written about the riots in the press and online, listened to hours of news and radio coverage, debates, and discussed at length with friends about the causes, reasons, justifications of these horrific uprising of humans against humans. I had to experience it first hand. So far at least 5 people have died, hundreds have been made homeless, hundreds of stores looted, millions of pounds lost, families wrecked, over 2,500 rioters arrested, many charged and imprisoned, many buildings, cars and stores fire damaged and destroyed.
The riots spread from Tottenham across many parts if London, including Enfield, Croydon, Clapham, Wood Green, Notting Hill Gate, Kings Road, North End Road, Peckham, Ealing and many other spots, plus in other UK cities like Manchester, Birmingham, and Nottingham as well over several days. Of course, the causes will be debated ad naseum by politicians, the police, sociologists, celebrities, journalists, etc. None will the be the wiser.
It was as if an airborne virus has infected, spread and triggered off some people, and a temporary antidote had been found. There is still tension in the air that one could feel. It was surreal, as if walking in a fog.
Ask any Tottenham local.
Pete Irving © Steven Lee
Urban Kings Gym is a new state of the art martial arts and boxing gym in the heart of Kings Cross. Opened about a year ago, the gym looks more like a lounge club than a typical ‘sweat n sawdust’ fight venue. Andy and I were invited to make some portraits and abstract studies of the staff and management team, which may end up as wall prints or on their website. Bunmi, our contact is running the therapy and massage outfit there and is pretty useful as a boxer too.
These are portrait from a series, which I made of Bruno, the Trainer Manager and Pete Irving who prides himself with his awesome tattoo motifs. He is the BJJ and MMA trainer.
Photographed with the Fuji X100 with the built-in ND filter at 640ISO.
Finally, Summer weather has descended over the UK. For good is a hard thing to ask, perhaps for the next week at least. Please. It has been so wet and miserable over the last couple of weeks, I thought this year we are skipping Summer, and headed straight towards Autumn.
explorenation.net ~ photography posts, workshops, writings and thoughts by Steven V-L Lee 
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