Mark Griffiths

Mark Griffiths

Dana Stirling

Healing Land | The Chernobyl meltdown was the biggest nuclear catastrophe in world history. 99 per cent of the Belarusian land has been contaminated to varying degrees above internationally accepted levels as a direct result of the disaster. The villages and towns that are in close proximity to the epicenter of the reactor have been eerily abandoned and remain desolate.

The people of Belarus are very self-sufficient, they grow their own crops and vegetables, farm livestock and source water from nearby lakes and reservoirs. With 70% of contamination coming from food and water however, the poisoned earth continues to infect those that depend on it.

An astonishing 85 per cent of Belarusian children are deemed to be Chernobyl victims: they carry “genetic markers” that could affect their health at any time and can be passed on to the next generation. A vicious cycle that unfortunately could continue for hundreds if not thousands of years.

The government of Belarus and the Ukraine established that all affected children should leave the contaminated regions for at least one month abroad every year. They believed the fresh air and uncontaminated food would give the children a vital boast to their immune system.

The Chernobyl children’s lifeline was founded to help affected children receive the recuperation they so vitally need. The charity carried out scientific research to determine whether a clean environment would benefit those affected. From 4000 children that were examined the results determined that the radioactive elements in a child before and after a 4 week visit to the U.K dropped by an average of 68 per cent. The immune system of a Chernobyl child needs a kick-start to help fight potential illnesses and diseases.

This year 8 children were brought to the pristine county of Pembrokeshire in West Wales, U.K. the region is considered an area of outstanding natural beauty. The environment boasts clean air quality, blue flag beaches and spectacularly dense woodland and breath taking countryside views.

The children participate in a number of recreational and educational activities and outings during their stay, from long sunny days at the beach to indoor karting. They also receive free medical check ups including eye tests and dental appointments to ensure a clean bill of health.  The aim of the charity is to make the experience as enjoyable as possible while the clean air and unpolluted land takes its natural course of healing the wounds

Marco Barbieri

Marco Barbieri

Dana Stirling

The Granary | An epiphanic journey through nationalism, religion, economic crisis, a glorious past and a failing infrastructure in Ukraine, the second (and often forgotten) biggest nation in Europe. Shot in medium format during two trips to Ukraine in 2017 and 2018. www.mbarbieri.com @_m_barbieri

Adam Razvi

Adam Razvi

Dana Stirling

MY MAY YOUR MAY | ‘…the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night...’ - W.G. Sebald 

The work addresses the relationship between photography and memory like a pair of untrustworthy twins. Reflecting on past events in Zurich and Athens encountered by two individuals, (who now live together as a couple in London), the individuals return to reclaim fragments of memories - four years removed from critical experiences, which took place simultaneously in May 2014. Collectively, a new narrative is born, as the reality of actual events blur and transform with the passing of time. 

The series’ contact sheet, is traditionally a working-tool for photographers to glimpse what they have captured on a roll of film. The sheet helps to situate a single image within a wider context. But this contact sheet is not to be trusted. Freud suggests that recollections of past events are distilled by what we want, or perhaps need to remember. Indeed, consciously or not, we are not passive viewers of our experiences.  Freud's notion is visualised with prints of enlarged details extracted from the contact sheet, which can be considered significant and traumatic 'fragments of memory'. For every year passed from the actual events that took place, another fragment has been produced by making a contact print from the preceding print. This results in a chain of distortion – perhaps a more truthful representation than the original photograph or projected memory, highlighting photography's limitation to show 'the complete picture' and memory's subjective and non-fixed nature.   

The work is made solely with analogue techniques in a black and white darkroom. As unique objects, the 20''x24'' prints embody durations of time and processes, representative of the memories reflected on and examined by the protagonists. 

Stefano Barresi

Stefano Barresi

Dana Stirling

Eulogy to Solitude | The Solitude is normally a feeling that's people considered negative but is also one of the most universal feelings that exist. When the disorder of the world is rising, even the background noise grows to cover any coherent signal and that's when we hear the strong call of the sense, the most true and pristine.

The sense of the origin The return to our origins is the pursuit of our loneliness that leads us to the comparison with the other's loneliness. In your solitude you have a time to knows yourself to think about your positive qualities and your negative side. You have a time for understanding the world around you and find consciousness.  

So if loneliness can teach something then it is not wasted time. I think that, if you are not able to be alone with yourself, probably you will not be able to really be with others. Walking with a camera in hand, looking around catching details even unintentionally looking for that sense that otherwise can not be caught so by osmosis between the bla bla bla of worldly chatter because; "there is nothing like the solitude of an endless walk for poor roads, where you must be miserable and strong, brothers of the dogs." (Pier Paolo Pasolini)

 Eulogy to Solitude is a part of a project that i called "About photography". I hope that you can look at this series of photos as a meeting between mine and your solitude. And enjoy it. www.instagram.com/maskedsuperhero

Max Heller

Max Heller

Dana Stirling

This collection of images was taken over the past several years, shot while visiting my grandparents in upstate NY.  Ever since I was a kid, visiting this place has always felt something like a journey through time. Tucked away in the hills and river valleys just south of the Adirondack range, the village of mohawk sleeps quietly. Here amidst the rust belt decay I find beauty in the physical erosion, fossils and gemstones, glacial potholes and other traces of the ancient past.

Gleb Simonov

Gleb Simonov

Dana Stirling

"The world has no name, he said. The names of the cerros and the sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them so that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. That they cannot find for us the way again." – Cormack McCarthy, "The Crossing" (1994)

Places are animals: we encounter them unexpectedly and on terms that are not entirely clear to us. Foreign and inarticulate, they present us with semiotics unlike our own, our efforts to understand them now scattered across a variety of sciences, arts and fields. We don't even know, which part of it is important.

Uneven Encounters was shot in the deserts and reservations of new Mexico. It seeks to cover the broad range of the land's structural and geologic variety in an attempt to engage with it.

Jeanne Menetrier

Jeanne Menetrier

Dana Stirling

HEN | Sensitive, complex, nuanced, exacerbated, sexual, homo, bi, hetero, white, black, woman... man. There a re a plethora of terms defining a person. But gender is one of those archaic concepts still defining our modern society. Exempt of nuances, this binary idea is, today, questioned. With it, our whole identity evolves. It is then the nuances of the infinite plurality of the interval that humanity is exploring.

Free from all constraints, Jeanne Ménétrier draw up a 3-year cartography of emotional travel where the limit, the box, the sharpness, the simplicity give away to the unknown, to the confusion, to the incoherence of the infinite ambiguity of genders.

With her work, she explores this infinite complexity of human identity, meeting characters, whose only criterion of selection was the emotion they gave to her. Jeanne records the unsettling, foggy and hazy reflection of their gender, but above all, their identity.

Lauren Grabelle

Lauren Grabelle

Dana Stirling

PHOTOGRAPHER X | In the late 1990’s I slipped anonymously into a job in the surveillance department at one of the largest casinos in the world.

There I found myself with over 800 cameras at my fingertips, and at the push of a button, the option to print a frame seen on the monitor before me while searching remotely for human indiscretions.

I became Photographer X.

Pablo and Roxana Allison

Pablo and Roxana Allison

Dana Stirling

Whilst studying photography in 2005 my brother Pablo was commissioned to take pictures inside Wormwood Scrubs Prison for the council-led project Prison Me. No Way! Pablo was unaware at the time that seven years later he would be back in serving a nineteen-month prison sentence.

In early March 2010 the police raided Pablo’s room; cameras, rolls of film, sketchbooks, pens and his computer were all confiscated and he was subsequently arrested. He called me that morning to tell me that this would be the beginning of a long police investigation involving several graffiti artists. We learned that Operation Jurassic (the official case name) was a major anti-graffiti police investigation being carried out since 2003.

 The Crown Court sentenced Pablo and four other graffiti artists to various prison sentences in November 2012. The combined lengths amounted to 11 years.

The result of our journey is this eight-year-long photographic collaboration titled Operation Jurassic. Our visual account includes legal documentation, paperwork, letters, diaries, drawings and photographs that uncover emotions and the passing of time offering the viewer an intimate approach of the legal process whilst raising issues on freedom of expression and justice.

A limited edition self-published book with an introductory essay by writer, curator and educator Pete Brook was launched in 2018 and is now sold out. To view the project visit: www.roxanaallison.co.uk

Wayne Swanson

Wayne Swanson

Dana Stirling

Self-Portraits with Stenosis | I’m not that old. At least, that’s what I like to tell myself. But my body would beg to differ. What began as soreness and stiffness in my legs progressed to more intractable pain, stiffness, shocks, and numbness. Getting to “why” involved understanding a fundamental disconnect between cause and effect: the problem is in my back, not my legs.

 The diagnosis: Severe spinal stenosis and degenerative disc disease. The effect: Narrowing of the spinal canal, which constricts the nerves leading to the lower body. The result: Lumbar laminectomy and thoracic fusion — so far. The prognosis: Who knows?

 I began this series assuming that I was documenting an episode. I now realize that it’s a new reality, shared by many, when we must question basic assumptions about health and personal mobility.

Maria Ansell

Maria Ansell

Dana Stirling

89 | I am currently in my third year studying photography at Manchester School of Art, I have an interest in developing narratives based around specific people, places and objects. Especially those I have a personal connection to. I enjoy both traditional documentary portraiture and appropriation. By investigating multiple approaches to image making I aim to create a broader picture of my subject.

  These images are from my personal project '89'.  In this series I have approached the topic of memory in the photographic image. My grandfather's recent Alzheimers diagnosis has challenged the way I think of memories and our obsession as a society with capturing ‘perfect’ moments. So much so that I think we distort our own memories until we no longer know what is true. I am aware that my perspective is biased, I am photographing from the point of view of someone pre-emptively mourning, I am intentionally looking back on fond childhood memories and trying to immortalise a feeling of comfort.

 I have combined both appropriated family photos and created my own images, focusing on the house in Nottingham my grandfather has lived in for 50 years, which he has now left to come and live in our family home. I am trying to encapsulate the sense of nostalgia in a grandparents home which I think a lot of people can relate to. There is a strange juxtaposition in his house, warm childhood memories combined with the sombre feeling of leaving a space and being unwilling to lose the memories attached to it. My aim with this work was to draw on shared experiences, nostalgia and stereotypical family moments. I hope that after you view these images you are reminded of your own family, moments and spaces you find important.

Emily Porter

Emily Porter

Dana Stirling

This collection of work is from multiple series, shot while traveling and living in the west coast, meeting amazing individuals, grieving my first love to addiction and finding love again.

Due to my work, travel used to be a constant. This aided the creation of several bodies of work filled with inspirations, chance encounters and character defining interactions. While my work is soul searching in its’ own right, it is also therapeutic and cathartic. Some photos defining each step of my grieving process but also narrating a journey into a new chapter of my life.  

At the same time it is an ode to the ever wandering being. We wander to find ourselves, we wander to find the individuals who become our family and we wander to experience the essence of the flora that creates the world around us. This life and world are temporary and fleeting but the desire to find oneself and create connections is universal and unyielding. Taking it all in while we exist is how we remember that we are alive and I do so by photographing the world around me. www.emilyporterphotograph.com

Evan Perkins

Evan Perkins

Dana Stirling

I began photographing my younger brother, Ryan, on his 11th birthday. He was born when I was eleven years old, and with working parents, I became his caretaker. At a young age, that responsibility hastened my own necessary maturity from boyhood to adolescence, fostering a relationship between us that was more complicated than just brothers. 

On Ryan’s eleventh birthday, I began to notice traits in him that I also possessed when I was his age. I began to reflect on the origins of our relationship, and this photographing lead to an exploration of Ryan, myself, and boyhood on the blurred line of adolescence. These images are a documentation of my brother and the landscape in which he’s maturing, yet they also contain my own reckoning with his growing up and the nostalgia of youth that accompanies it. 

Kerry Mansfield

Kerry Mansfield

Dana Stirling

THRESHOLD | noun: thresh•old / The magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result or condition to occur or be manifested.

Extreme sleep deprivation will push you to the edge of sanity’s cliff. Once you’ve crossed that threshold jumping is the only remaining option. In early 2016 a doctor directed me to stop taking a mental health medication incorrectly prescribed 7 years prior. Unbeknownst to me, withdrawal from the drug Seroquel is considered markedly worse than heroin withdrawal, often lasting for 3 months or more. And so my unintended journey into a timeless world began.

Patricia Bender

Patricia Bender

Dana Stirling

Euclidean Pursuits | After producing traditional analog photographs for many years, working with black and white film in the chemical darkroom, I recently decided I want to be even more hands-on in creating images, and I began to experiment with photograms.  At first I played with typical photogram stuff, arranging plants, glass objects, fabric, and other sorts of odd things on photographic paper to get a feel for the process of creating these camera-less images.  I was uninspired, and so was the work.

Then, with a bow to Bauhaus, I set my sights on constructing geometric abstractions, largely from collaged paper cutouts and hand-drawn paper negatives, and an obsession was born.  I could not get enough, and I have been working with single-minded intensity on this series for the past year.

An image of complex and intricate beauty can be developed from the simple mark of a line.  This fascinates me.  Rudimentary geometric forms -- circles, squares, dots -- can be combined in infinite ways to generate moving and mysterious nonobjective images.  A line leads to a triangle, which leads to a cascade of circles, and before you know it, you have created something no one has ever seen before.

This, for me, is the wonder of abstraction and the crux of its power:  its ability to move you in deep, inexplicable ways with the simplest of forms and with no reference to reality.

This work has been guided by a constant voice in my head asking, “What if I . . . ?”  What if I added crayon, folded the paper, smudged the graphite?  My creative process for all this work has been a joyful, intuitive, ongoing series of experiments in the darkroom to see what will happen if I . . . . 

My only rule has been no erasing, no removing.  Every mark or fold or tear I make stays and serves as a building block for the next mark or fold or tear.  There can be no mistakes because the image I’m creating does not exist in the real world.  It can’t be wrong.  This rule has helped mute the insistent critic in my head and given me the freedom to try new things until an image feels right.

So I continue to play and experiment with objects, lines, papers, shapes, light, shadow, texture, size, and depth in the darkroom to construct my own abstract creations. To paraphrase one of my heroes, the artist Dorothea Rockburne, I want to create photograms that are solely of themselves and not about something else.  It’s a heady and exciting process.

C.J. Pressma

C.J. Pressma

Dana Stirling

Evidence & Inhabitance | In 1972 I was watching the Fellini film Roma and was captivated by splashes of light involving sparks from a street car at night. It seems strange to me (almost absurd) that such a momentary scene became a motivation for an entire body of work that is interwoven throughout my artistic career. I call this series Evidence & Inhabitants. They are the evidence of places and people I can never fully remember, but manifest themselves in the photographs I make. Today, I am still discovering what this work reveals to me. Its dark nature and surreal quality causes me to think that it constitutes a narrative about my subconscious life.

I have always been interested in surreal art and this interest has caused me to be influenced by the photographic works of Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Clarence John Laughlin, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, and Frederick Sommer. Their work has inspired me to create the Images & Inhabitants pictures.

I have been drawn to make these pictures in abandoned places and of inhabitants who might have or may still be living there. I search for the “evidence” of humans where very few humans currently reside. I am like an archaeologist sifting through a dream-like landscape trying to imagine what these people were like. www.cjpressma.com

Daniel Kariko

Daniel Kariko

Dana Stirling

Suburban Symbiosis: Insectum domesticus | This project is an investigation of our relationship to suburban landscape through micro images of locally found insects and other arthropods. My images utilize the combination of Scanning Electron Microscope and optical Stereo Microscope, in order to achieve a “portrait”-like effect inspired by the tradition of 17th Century Dutch Masters.

Insects find way into our homes no matter how vigilant we are in our effort to keep the nature on the outer side of our windowpanes. During my inquiry into suburban experience, I started recording the indoor wildlife consistent with the environment my subdivision occupies.

 These little (and sometimes not so little) invaders are natural product of our own occupation of their habitat. As we keep expanding our subdivisions to the outskirts of towns, we inhabit recently altered environments. In general, I study environmental and political aspects of landscape, use of land, and cultural interpretation of inhabited space. This anthropomorphic presentation of our closest, often invisible, co-habitants in a humorous, quasi-scientific way, is an invitation to consider the evidence of the human impact on the landscape as we constantly redraw boundaries between us and the natural environment.

Insects I photograph are found during my daily routines, either at home, or at work, and are titled after an unspecified location, and a partial date, further hinting on scientific specimen presentation device. These Images are meant to be portraits of our often-overlooked housemates.

Orfeas Sampatakakis

Orfeas Sampatakakis

Dana Stirling

I don't like writing statements for any of my series. In my photography there are no intentions, I don't want to say anything. I think I'm just trying to find beauty in the commonplace. And it's not prerequisite to go far to find that, so I go for a walk and take my camera with me. I believe in seeing photography without context, without having to explain it with words. Thus resulting in fewer assumptions. This way you allow more space for the photographs to exist.

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