Women in the City - Liverpool Photography Festival

Women in the City

As part of the Liverpool Photography Festival 15 - 31st May 2015 to celebrate the visit of three famous Queens: Mary II, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria,  There was a call for photographers to submit their images celebrating Women in the City, to showcase in our online gallery. From female photographers, to images of the women we admire;shots of majestic liners and Grandmothers entertaining the young, let your imagination run wild, capture and share your moments in Liverpool.

I submitted two photographs from my maternal Grandfathers photograph archive. William Turner had a Tattooing and Photographic studio on Lime Street in the early 1900's. He was well connected with the circus and music hall folk...

The photographs are on an outdoor display in Thomas Steers Way in the Liverpool One shopping mall. The upper one is of my great grandmother preparing Sunday dinner in the backyard. The other is of Annie Jones the bearded woman. A famous member of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. 

Photographs by Johnny Parker

Photographs in Women in the City - Liverpool Photography Festival

Women in the City

As part of the Liverpool Photography Festival 15 - 31st May 2015 to celebrate the visit of three famous Queens: Mary II, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria,  There was a call for photographers to submit their images celebrating Women in the City, to showcase in our online gallery. From female photographers, to images of the women we admire;shots of majestic liners and Grandmothers entertaining the young, let your imagination run wild, capture and share your moments in Liverpool.

I submitted two photographs from my maternal Grandfathers photograph archive. William Turner had a Tattooing and Photographic studio on Lime Street in the early 1900's. He was well connected with the circus and music hall folk...

The photographs are on an outdoor display in Thomas Steers Way in the Liverpool One shopping mall. The upper one is of my great grandmother preparing Sunday dinner in the backyard. The other is of Annie Jones the bearded woman. A famous member of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. 

Photographs by Johnny Parker

The Frailty of Memory

There comes a time when the function and frailty of memory becomes a preoccupation. Forgetfulness is perversely accompanied by an increased acuity of distant memories. Nostalgia becomes a way of life… a fleeting reflection… an ethereal glimpse of something familiar through the mind’s eye… fragments of memory like shards of mirror… a vision barely visible through the broken glass in the window of time.

 The digital projector is employed as a modern day Camera Obscura to explore Barthes notion of the ‘Punctum’ and the ‘Noeme’ (that-has-been). The projected image starts with a familiar image that could be carried in the wallet or reside in a well worn family album. The image is initially vivid, nostalgic – the ‘Punctum"’ – but with the passage of time, it decays, leaving an enduring memory – the ‘Noeme’ (that-has-been). This work considers one of the earliest attempts to explain visual memory, by considering the analogy of Plato's wax tablet, Freud's mystic writing pad and even the modern computer, all of which consider memory as layers.

This is a video taken of my graduation project. In a blacked out space the animation, Fading Memory as seen in my previous post, was projected on to a translucent screen made from tulle behind which was a further much darker version of the image an acrylic sheet so this was also semi translucent. When the animation starts the second image is virtually invisible (difficult to capture this in this video)  as the front image decays more light falls on the back image and as the viewers eyes adapt to the darkness the back image is slowly revealed. 

This installation which was part of my BA (Hons) Fine Art & Professional Practice final show, endeavours to portray the durability of the Photograph compared with the fragility of memory.

Exhibition - Kiln House Gallery

Wreck #15

I have an exhibition of photography "Rot and Rust" at the Kiln House Gallery, Thornton Cleveleys, FY5 4JZ, from 7th November to 1st January.

The Kiln House Gallery is a unique gallery space, connected to Thornton's Marsh Mill Windmill.

Open Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays.

Opening times:
Winter 11am-3pm
Summer 10.30am-4.30pm

The exhibition has been curated by Sue Godsiff. Sue is a second year student on the Fine Art and Professional Practice BA (Hons) degree course at Blackpool Art School.

"I have been photographing the numerous wrecks and rotting hulks that littered the banks of the River Wyre Estuary for over 4 years, remnants of a once thriving fishing industry. During this time, many of these historic remnants have been vandalised or plundered for their scrap content and some have disappeared forever. By recording these remains of the past I hope to at least preserve a memory of them.

If you have any knowledge of the history of any of these remains please post a comment."

You can see this and other work at www.alistairparkerart.com

Photo Tampering Throughout History

An interesting article for the photographers by Hany Farid, Professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA.

• Photography lost its innocence many years ago. In as early as the 1860s, photographs were already being manipulated, only a few decades after Niepce created the first photograph in 1814. With the advent of high-resolution digital cameras, powerful personal computers and sophisticated photo-editing software, the manipulation of digital images is becoming more common. Here, I have collected some examples of tampering throughout history.

• Just days after Sarah Palin’s selection last August as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, a photo of a bikini-clad, gun-toting Palin blitzed across the Internet. Almost as quickly, it was revealed as a hoax — a crude bit of Photoshop manipulation created by splicing an image of the Alaska governor’s head onto someone else’s body. From start to finish, the doctoring probably took no more than 15 minutes. We review the impact of digital photo manipulation, and recent advances in digital image forensics to detect such manipulations. more........

13 photographs that changed the world

"Omaha Beach, Normandy, France" Robert Capa, 1944

This post may be a little late for some. I would assume that many of these images could have been the subject of the last essay assignment, for the photographers anyway.

The photographs are aggregated and commented on on Neatorama's blog.

Possibly the most interesting part of the post are the comments suggesting other images which could have been included.

How many more could you add to the list?