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Solo exhibition competition, December 2018

 

 

Winner:

 

Juergen Sarge (Germany): Kohle

Exhibition dates: January 17 – February 16, 2019

 

Please visit Juergen's exhibition page here.

 

 

Honourable mentions: 

 

Larry French (USA): Stories En Route

László Gálos (Hungary): Collodion Archive

Vicky Martin (UK)Selfhood

 

Please click on the names for the galleries of the honourable mentions.

Larry French

Stories En Route
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Artist statement

Larry French: Stories En Route
 

"En Route is made out of movement, it is a losing game we play with time. On the way there are the stories.

A photograph is a short story without words. Instead there is experience, memory and imagination. There are stories of palm trees in the rain, crosses swinging from the rear view mirror.  A Christ figure looms near a road in Santa Fe, his hand pointing the way, to what I have never quite figured out. 

Torn white fabric hangs from a barbed wire fence south of Lone Pine, California. Was it from a wedding dress? The wind blows it around like streams of white memory. An egret dives towards its death or a fish, its shadow close behind looking for answers. The truth? There are no answers.

Time runs out in an intersection while nearby, streams of blood, or something, fill the frame.  A headless shadow moves against a wall, running late for an appointment with the afterlife.

Don’t pack much for your trip, especially memories. The road eats memories for breakfast. You thought she loved you, now you sleep alone in a cheap motel somewhere north of San Diego. 

Pages are missing. A bloody massacre in Torino or just an old woman’s laundry hung out to dry beneath the burning Italian sun while across the sea strange light falls on an empty table in a cantina near Taos.

Stories. Big stories and little stories, true stories and false, they all huddle together by the side of the road. We glance at them without emotion as we speed by. No time to stop or for tears. 

In the end we are all En Route and we find our stories as we go. We pick and chose them, a kind of natural selection although there is nothing natural about it. The days and years slip by, there is nothing but the sound of wind and tires, a country radio station. The road and the miles stretch out for what seems like forever until, one day, they don’t." (Larry French)

Biography

 

Larry French first studied photography at UCLA’s fine art photography program headed by Robert Heinecken.  He continued his studies at the Art Center College of Design. French’s photography has been featured in many group exhibitions throughout North America including the Los Angeles Center for Photography, the New York Center for Photographic Art, the Southeast Center for Photography, the Praxis Photographic Arts center, and others. His work has also been seen internationally in group exhibitions in Moscow, Budapest and Rome.  He was recently profiled on “Lenscratch”, one of America’s foremost photography Blogs.  

He lives and works in Los Angeles.



To find out more about Larry French, click here:

http://www.larryfrenchphotos.com

László Gálos

Collodion Archive
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Artist statement

László Gálos: Collodion Archive

 

"It may be banal to say that every image is a complete story. And, in a similar vein, every image is said to have its own story: a story about the endeavour, the struggle and the occasional playful and impulsive whim that is necessary for the image to be made. It is also a story of the photographer’s relations; of the interaction between the individual, the technology and the vision, or, to put it more broadly, the relationship between the artist and the world.

In most cases, this is a melancholic story. The depressing account of failed, unsuccessful, aborted and resumed images, of what was wanted and what was created. At best, one in every hundred makes it into an actual photographic image. The rest of them sink into oblivion, disappear without a trace, just like the moment that they failed to capture.

Except when it is an ambrotype image. Regardless of what it looks like, the image that was once started, and may not even yet have been exposed, will be there, on the glass plate. It will have a physical reality, a material body, just like we do. It is born into the world as we are. Yet it is destroyed if we do not happen to like it.

We destroy it, even though it transmits its own unique story. A story we did not want, did not foresee, do not welcome and may not even want to know about. Just like the multitude of stories that comprise our lives, our culture, maybe even our whole universe. And it may be worth just as much: our everyday ambrotypes and stories vanish and are forgotten, yet their totality may leave some sort of trace behind. If it is given a chance. That is why I create montages, one after another, using all the images I have ever created. It does not matter how a particular image turned out: once it was born, it may as well have something to tell. If not in and of itself, then as a member of the choir of discarded new-borns.

The glass plates are arranged on photosensitive paper in a way that their properties are considered; they are placed next to one another, they are stacked or rotated when necessary to make them interact: the covered/uncovered parts of the images may sharpen, soften, lighten, distort or even fully hide one another. The process of arranging the plates in the darkroom reveals a tentative outline only, the precise construction of the final outcome cannot be determined or controlled. And thus the ray of light that penetrates the collodion plates, themselves symbols of the documentarist dawn of photography, elevates these montages into the realm of one of the high points of avant- garde photographic artistic endeavours, the photogram. As a result, these particular stories told in images become part of not only a new, composite story told in the present but of a shared history.

History, or even fate. For the creation of every new photogram puts an end to the individual stories of images that were deemed worthless for independent life. Only a couple of outstanding ambrotypes are deemed fit to emerge from the darkroom. The rest, as unnecessary composite parts, are killed off by their creator once they have contributed their part to the composite story of the montage.

Their death, however, does not mean the end of the story of the insignificant ones; a new image, a new story was conceived at the moment their fate was determined by the ray of light – just like the history of photography has not reached its end with the practices of high art. The first such photographic technology – that could hardly be controlled but nonetheless resulted in a more or less precise record of a part of the world – has long put an end to the exclusive appropriation of the art

of “writing with light” by a select few, as if this were to be reserved for strong-headed alchemists locked up in their darkrooms or theorists lurking in dimly lit exhibition spaces with their heads in the clouds.

A compact Polaroid camera, as a source of light, not only kills the old image and inseminates the new; it also creates a record of the moment of deadly conception in a single image.

In a teeny-tiny, impenetrable and unplannable image." (László Gálos)

The project is ongoing with the support of the National Cultural Found of Hungary

Biography

Photography is not the art of the moment. Just the opposite: each picture must contain something from what we cannot experience, living moment to moment. Otherwise, there is no use to spend a second on it. Wet collodion as a picture making mechanism and as a creation method – by default – carries within itself the kind of melancholy, that comes with the acceptance of the meaninglessness and unavoidable decay of our lives.

Since 2015 I almost only use wet collodion for photography. 

 

Solo exhibitions:

 

 2016

  • Apnoe (Incognito Club, Debrecen)

 2017

  • Collodion-archíve : The first year (Artbázis, Budapest)

  • Apnoe (Szerbtemplom Gallery, Balassagyarmat)

  • Apnoe (Gallery Restaurant, Szentes)

 2018

  • Apnoe (Community Centre of Lencsés, Békéscsaba)

 

Group exhibitions:

 

2016

  • 20th Esztergom Photography Biennial (Rondella Gallery, Esztergom; Trezor Gallery, Budapest)

  • The Wet Plate Process – Photo Village Vol. III. (ArtBázis, Budapest)

  • Photo Village 2015 (Szerbtemplom Gallery, Balassagyarmat)

  • Vasvári 130 (Synagogue of Vasvári Pál street, Budapest)

  • 22th Alföld Photography Salon (Community Centre of Szentes)

  • 1st Óbuda Photography Salon (Esernyős Gallery, Budapest)

  • 20th Faludi International Movie Festival and Photo Contest (National Picture-theater, Budapest)

  • 111 years jubilee of Fridrich Photo Studio – Memorial Exhibition (Tokácsli Gallery, Szentes)

2017

  • Feminine/Masculine (PH 21 Gallery, Budapest)

  • Motion (PH 21 Gallery, Budapest)

  • Punctum  (PH 21 Gallery, Budapest)

  • Mono  (PH 21 Gallery, Budapest)

  • 19th Nude Photography Biennial of Szentes (Tokácsli Gallery, Szentes)

  • Alföld Photography Salon (Horváth Endre Gallery, Balassagyarmat)

  • 23th Alföld Photography Salon (Community Centre of Szentes)

  • Stories (PH 21 Gallery, Budapest)

2018

  • The Abstract Image (Southeast Center for Photography, Greenville, SC, USA)

  • Staged (PH 21 Gallery, Budapest)

  • The Photographic Nude 2018 (Lightbox Photographic Gallery, Astoria, OR, USA)

  • Polaroid70 – Present Perfect (Patyolat // Próbaüzem, Budapest)

  • Unexpected (PH 21 Gallery, Budapest)

  • CorpoRealities (PH 21 Gallery, Budapest)

  • Mobile (PH 21 Gallery, Budapest)

  • 21th Esztergom Photography Biennial (Rondella Gallery, Esztergom; B32 Gallery, Budapest)

  • Light and Panorama : The  Metamorphosis of the Budaörsi Airport (FUGA, Budapest)

  • A Nudo (Common exhibition of CSF-Adams and KromArt Gallery at the Rome Art Week, ITA])

  • 24th Alföld Photograpy Salon (Community Centre of Szentes)

 

Awards:

 

2016

  • 22th Alföld Photography Salon – Special prize

  • 20th Faludi International Movie Festival and Photo Contest  – 3rd prize

2017

  • Motion – Honourable Mention / In common with Zoltán Vadászi

  • 19th Nude Photography Biennial of Szentes – Grand prize / In common with Zoltán Vadászi

  • Scholarship of the National Cultural Found of Hungary

  • 23th Alföld Photography Salon – Special prize

2018

  • Scholarship of the National Cultural Found of Hungary

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Vicky Martin

Selfhood

Click on the thumbnail to view the image. Click on the image for a larger view and information.

Artist statement

 

Vicky Martin: Selfhood

"The series "Selfhood" is in part inspired by the proverb "The eyes are the window to the soul" and a desire to challenge the need to see the eyes within a portrait. The intention in each portrait is to create a character and a narrative and encourage an empathy without the visual stimulation of the eyes. 

 

The conscious composition of each image gives the character a foundation in reality whilst combining fantastical creative elements to challenge the viewer's preconceptions surrounding the connotations of each individual outfit and distinctive concealment of the eyes. 

 

The viewer is inspired to make their own inferences about the subject's persona and circumstance by drawing on personal connections and interpretations to each image, whether these be from memory or culture. Therefore each portrait in the series can take on a number of different identities depending on links made by the viewer to their own experiences and opinions.” (Vicky Martin)
 

Biography

Vicky Martin is an award winning fine art photographer based in the UK. Although she studied art and photography in the 1990s it was not until 2008 when she was awarded a prestigious Rhubarb Rhubarb Bursary that she was able to pursue photography full time. Since then Vicky has had her work published and exhibited nationally and internationally: from Europe to the USA in solo and group shows. Her work continues to garner many awards and nominations, including Single

Image Winner in the Professional Fine Art Category at the 2018 12th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards and Winner of the Professional Fine Art Category in the 2016 Fine Art Photography Awards.  

 

Throughout Vicky's practice she explores her fascination with identity and the emotions that are created by considered scenarios that are based in both fantasy and reality. Her work explores identity through staging and creating realities for characters who often display conflicting emotions with situations. Vicky seeks to encourage the viewer to ask questions of her work to which ultimately the answers depend on the viewer’s own personal identity and perceptions.  


To find out more about Vicky Martin, click here:

http://vickymartinphoto.co.uk

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