holliebevisblog

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MY FINAL EXHIBITION 

June 4th - 10th Merrion Centre  Leeds, West Yorkshire LS2 8NG

Getting my work into the outside photographic world.  Here is evidence of my final exhibition which is in Leeds city centre. 

This work features a set of self portrait instant photographs taken with my instax neo 90 classic. 

Artist statement: Hollie Rebecca Bevis - Instant self  portraits : I am an art based photographer, focusing on creating images from my own imagination and thoughts,most of my projects are lined with a personal thought process and are created with a underlying idea and outlook on life. My photographs in this exhibition are self portraits, taken with a fuji neo classic instax camera.The idea behind the images are left for interpretation, i capture myself depending on my emotion on that particular day. They are a personal set of photographs, in which i only know the true thoughts behind them, they are intended to be viewed with your own personal ideas and hopefully people may have some relation to myself. My images are creations, instead of painting a picture, i simply take one instead. 

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Submit To Exhibit

The Photographic Angle stages free public exhibitions which tour towns and cities around the UK transforming urban spaces into temporary galleries. TPA provides you with a unique opportunity to exhibit your work. It is easy to participate, My Country is now open for submission, you can simply fill in your details below and send us three sample images. Uploading photographs can take some time depending on your connection speed and the size of the files. Should you have difficulty please email exhibit@thephotographicangle.co.uk. Once submitted, your photographs may be selected by TPA to be included in one of our tours. It costs nothing to submit work, and if successful, TPA will cover the costs of reproducing your images for the exhibition (see terms & conditions for full details).

Perfect for monochrome/black and white photographers!!! 

shooting my final images in colour means i am unable to enter into this competition but it is a good link into the photographic industry of exhibiting your work and is something i will relate back to if i am to take more self portraits in monochrome. 

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PHOTOCONTESTINSIDER.

A blog website filled with all the photography competitions and links to apply around the world, i have been looking at this website to find competitions that i would enter my self portraits into but have not yet been successful, however it is a good insight into the types of competitions we can all enter as photographers and the competition out there also ! 

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Visit this website for simplistic yet creative art based photography, i loved looking through these images. Also a great link to the photographers that have created the images on the blog and website, can find them on tumblr too! 

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I came across these photographs off the artistic blog, nothing written.

These balloons, reminded me of my own balloon work that i have previously created at college.

The reason for re-blogging this photograph, is because it has a similarity to my style of work as i have created something similar but this is different. All the photograph is pastel whites and creams, which works really well to blend together and create a innocence in the photograph. The surrealism is the shoes being held up by the balloons. Leading to question , why are they there? why are the balloons holding them up etc. 

The white colours create a sense of innocence, and simplicity is key in this photograph. 

by *petros chrisostomou*

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my photographic scene

 Places to Exhibit

Here i have found a website which has a list of spaces in Leeds, that exhibit art work and photographs, this is something to keep in mind for the future if i am wanting to exhibit my own work.

Exhibition’s relating my work

http://leeds-list.com/culture/little-known-art-spaces-in-leeds/

I am going to be visiting Leeds art gallery this week which features Claude Cahun’s self portraits. Which relates to my ongoing self portrait work at this moment in time. I will be visiting the exhibition and posting in a separate blog about this visit.

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my photographic scene

 Communicating my work with the outside world and engaging in a wider photographic community.

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/about/

Colossal is a website that i have found many photographers and inspiration from, as a website the entitle photographers and artists from all corners of the world to have their work featured on the website, for other photographers and artists to see! 

The website introduces the photographers, explains the series of images, and also links the photographs to the photographers personal links and websites. 

Another platform to show my work would be instagram and facebook.

Instagram is getting largely popular, and people who claim to be photographers are even using it, with the help of hashtags, people are becoming famous for their photographs, even though the files are small and cropped on instagram you are still able to link these posts to you original posts such at Tumblr or Flickr or even your website. Possibly creating a account purposely for my photography work on instagram will give me the chance to get my work into the photographic world. 

Tumblr is something that many photographers and artists use. Being an art based photographer it is the perfect place i have found for me to showcase my work, i can write as much and as little as i wish to explain my photographs, i can also upload as many as i wish in a set. People are then able to re blog, and like my photographs, easily contact me and follow my work routinely. 

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Oleg Oprisco

 “Photographer Oleg Oprisco (previously) who lives and works in Kiev, continues to wow us with his vivid style of conceptual photography that places subjects in the middle of surreal and fantastic tableaus. Oprisco spends large amounts of time scouring flea markets and resale shops to collect props, costumes, and other items for each shot which he often sketches beforehand in a sketchbook, with the final shoot requiring 2-3 days of preparation. I love this bit from an interview with 500px earlier this year where he was asked to give advice to amateur/student photographers:

I strongly advise to use your time wisely. Laziness is your worst enemy. Enough looking at photographs taken by your idols. You’ve commented on enough work that you hate. It’s time to take photos. Your best photos. Let go and shoot, shoot, shoot!”

Oleg’s work is inspiring. He has created individual photographs that each have a lot of detail and effort involved in them. He photographs on the biggest scale he can, and creates colorful effective photographs. I am intrigued by these photographs, and would enjoy re creating some of them myself. 

you can visit his flickr here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/oprisco/

link for quotes

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/07/new-conceptual-fine-art-photography-from-oleg-oprisco/

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Ellie Davies - Stars

“Stars, 2014 explores my desire to find some balance between a relationship with the wild places of my youth, and a pervasive sense of disconnectedness with the natural world.

The Western landscape tradition embodies a pairing that James Elkins calls ‘the subject-object relationship’.  Typified by the ‘scenic viewpoint’ or tourist panoramic overlook, we gaze, often through binoculars or telescopes, at wide vistas and dramatic seascapes, awed and overwhelmed.  But this landscape experience often alienates the viewer from the scene and, just as the landscape itself becomes an object, a separation arises between them.

Today the majority of people live in urban or semi-urban environments, experiencing the landscape from a distanced position mediated through various media and technology.  From this viewpoint the notion of the landscape in all its sensuous materiality, our being within it rather than outside it, seems beyond reach.

Stars, 2014 addresses this distancing by drawing the viewer right into the heart of a forest which still holds mystery, and offers the potential for discovery and exploration.  The series considers the fragility of our relationship with the natural world, and the temporal and finite nature of landscape as a human construct.

Mature and ancient forest landscapes are interposed with images of the Milky Way, Omega Centauri, the Norma Galaxy and Embryonic stars in the Nebula NGC 346 captured by the Hubble Telescope.   Each image links forest landscapes with the intangible and unknown universe creating a juxtaposition that reflects my personal experiences of the forest; its physicality and tactility set against a profound and fundamental otherness, an alienation that separates us from a truly immersive relationship with the natural world.

(Source Material Credit: STScI/Hubble & NASA).”

 Ellie Davies Stars project caught my eye on the colossal website, under the link photography. Her idea’s of creating personal experiences related to her images helps me to understand that this is something i do within my own images. Having a personal thought process or personal level to base your photographs on is important and something that i can see through Ellie's photographs. I always enjoy photographing the woods, but normally tend to photograph people in them at the same time. I haven't yet been able to create a image in the woods that feeds my own personal thoughts without having a person in the frame, this is what Ellie has achieved. These photographs have been a big inspiration for me and are something i can start to build a platform with on learning to not always need a person in my photographs for them to be personal and effective.

http://www.elliedavies.co.uk/

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Lukasz Wierzbowski - Sequin covered swans 

Lukasz work has wow’ed me into photography itself. Looking through his images, you are taken through another world in each photograph. 

None of the photographs have any similarities , which makes each individual image have its own representation, and world that is seen with it.

You are able to interpret each image as you wish, and each have a lot to see in the frame. 

The photographs are beautifully simplistic. Some going to much more composition than others, but this does not matter as even the most simplistic photographs are powerful.

His photographs are of women mainly, in different scenarios/situations.

Some are creative and artistic, some are intense and intimate. All having the same impact when you look at them. They are interesting to look at and very pleasing to the eye. 

I love photographs that don't particularly have a meaning, and these are a big inspiration of what i can create with my own work.

http://sequin-covered-swans.tumblr.com/page/2

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Nan Goldin 

“As a teenager in Boston in the 1960s, then in New York starting in the 1970s, Nan Goldin has taken intensely personal, spontaneous, sexual, and transgressive photographs of her family, friends, and lovers. In 1979 she presented her first slideshow in a New York nightclub, and her richly colored, snapshot like photographs were soon heralded as a groundbreaking contribution to fine art photography. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency—the name she gave her ever-evolving show—eventually grew into a forty-five-minute multimedia presentation of more than 900 photographs, accompanied by a musical soundtrack”

 The sense of unplanned, luck and chance of Nans photographs are something that i admire greatly.

Photographing her life, and something so intimate so effectively is what inspires me the most about her work , she has brought you into her life and world through photography and documentation. The photographs some what resemble a diary of her life. Some are extreme other’s are much softer.

Wonder and question are two things that happen when looking at her work, she is an inspiration to generations in personal documentary photography, she braved into a world that not many people dare step which was her own, mixed with the outside world. Which reacted quite positively. Nan will always be a photographer that will look to if i need help documenting myself through photographs or my friends and family.

http://www.matthewmarks.com/new-york/artists/nan-goldin/

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Gregory Crewdson - Beneath the roses

“Beneath the Roses was an exhibition of twenty new large-scale photographs by Gregory Crewdson. In these pointedly theatrical yet intensely real panoramic images, Crewdson explores the recesses of the American psyche and the disturbing dramas at play within quotidian environments.

In Beneath the Roses, anonymous townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets are revealed as sites of mystery and wonder; similarly, ostensibly banal interiors become the staging grounds for strange human scenarios. In one image a lone and pregnant woman stands on a wet street corner just before dawn, a small but portentous still point in a world of trajectories. On a stormy night in another nondescript town, a man in a business suit stands beside his car, holding out a hand to the cleansing rain in apparent mystification. In a plush bedroom, a man and a woman – prototypes of middle-class American dislocation – are visited by a songbird, who gazes at the woman from its perch on the vanity unit. Crewdson's scenes are tangibly atmospheric, visually alluring and often deeply disquieting. Never anchored precisely in time or place, these and the other narratives of Beneath the Roses are rather located in the dystopic landscape of the anxious American imagination .”

 Crewdson has always been possibly my biggest inspiration and favourite photographer, as i myself enjoy shooting landscape photographs featuring small people i have always admired the scale of his work. It is something i wish to eventually reach in the future as a photographer myself. In the photograph above with the car on the street with fresh tire marks in the snow, Crewdson actually shut down a full street to take the photograph. He has been criticized on being a photographer for only taking the photograph and directing a large army of people to set the scene. I do not believe this is something that Crewdson can be criticized on. He creates an idea in his own imagination of what he wants to create, if he tried to create the sets for the photographs on his own they would be merely impossible. His photographs are shocking in scale and size, and the lengths he goes to create the staged images pays off.

Staged photographs are something i am very interested in creating myself, and Gregory’s use of cinematic lighting will always be my favourite. Normally i like to use natural light when taking photographs, but the lighting that Gregory manages to create looks natural in some photographs. He is a professional photographer and a big inspiration into my work flow.

quote taken from - http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/gregory_crewdson_beneath_the_roses_hoxton_square_2005/

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Martin Parr - Beaches

 Martin Parr has been photographing beaches for a very long time , from England , Spain , Italy and Mexico throughout the early 90′s - 2000′s.

The bright colours and humor in Martins work is brilliant and something i have always admired. Every single photograph there seems to be something that is relate-able to or something to laugh at. He documents the beach in a way i have never seen before in photography, there is no serious at all . Everything is humored even the people that are posing to be serious.

His iconic images, have always made me feel proud to be from England, and is positively documenting the world compared to other documentary photographers which only pursue in documenting the serious within our world.

Although i am not a documentary photographer myself, i am always inspired by Parr’s work and he is someone that i will continue to keep in mind and recommending to look at for inspiration. 

“Martin Parr has been photographing beach life over many decades, documenting all aspects of this tradition including close ups of sun bathers, swimming dips and picnics in the UK as well as in countries as far apart as China, Argentina and Thailand. This exhibition demonstrates Parr engagement with a cherished subject matter, where all absurdities and quirky National behaviours seamlessly fuse together. Reference book: Life’s a beach, Aperture, 2012.”

you can see more images here and where i found mine - all italics quoted from - http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2K1HRGQP4RD

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William Eggleston 

 William Eggleston has been known for working brilliantly with colour film. 

According to the independent “ photography didnt use colour seriously until eggleston came along. Colour was the prerogative of the slick advertising man, that dealer in cliché and banality. Eggleston saw a use for heightened colour; in fact, his colours can be shrill to the point of near hysteria. So he shows us objects that are both ordinary and very particularised, and then ratchets up the tension that surrounds those objects by infecting their atmosphere with shrill colours. He is besotted by the imaginative possibilities of the ordinary. He wants us to rinse our eyes until we see, without prejudice, the exquisite poignancy of the seeming banalities of the everyday. ” 

 The reason that i like Williams work is for the exact reason that is stated above. He is a careful genius with colour. If a photograph doesnt necessarily involve anything exciting , it could be two simple objects in a frame, if the colour is bright and works well with the other colours in the frame then the photograph changes completely.  Eggleston has been a big inspiration for myself as a photographer to be careful on picking and choosing colours that are based in my photographs, i now make sure that this is something recognized in my own personal work.

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Richard Billingham - Rays a laugh

 Richard’s rays a laugh photographs have not left my memory since i first saw them a few years ago at college. 

These are some of the most intimate life photographs i have ever seen, the photographs lack in quality, but in nothing else. They do not need to be high quality images to convey the message they are trying to convey. 

Richards dad was an alcoholic, in which he photographed whilst he was at home, his mother is featured in some of the photographs also.

The title itself says a lot about the series of images. Is it sarcasm? Was laughter a way to hide pain, in the way that Richard has hidden behind a camera lens from his fathers alcoholism. 

These photographs i believe don't need an explanation, they speak a million words. They are sad, informative, and important photographs from a snap shot of a persons life. 

The photographs are widely famous, and not something that i myself are capable of as a photographer, as i am more inclined to staged photography, but real life photographs and documentary photographs have always interested me highly. Rays a laugh is one of my favorite documentary series.

images taken from google.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=richard+billingham+ray%27s+a+laugh&biw=1242&bih=585&noj=1&site=webhp&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=wSR2VbujJqSTyQOhh4PIDw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ

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I came across these images when searching for links to do with Gregory Crewdson ( who is a favorite photographer of mine ). 

I had to re - blog, for somebody at a studying level like myself i think these photographs are brilliant. The lighting is something on a scale that i would love in the future to be able to recreate. 

The photographs are simply of houses, at night. But the cinematic lighting, provides a mystery and narrative similar to that of Crewdson. 

The photographs create a sense of wonder and question for myself personally, who is in the house? why are the lights on? what time is it? etc.

I think a photograph is successful if it makes you question it, or question your own interpretation. These photographs give you a lot of space to interpret how you wish, and in my eyes have a dark feel to them. I do not feel safe looking at the houses, im unsure on if this is what the photographer has initially intended to imply to his photographs, but for me this is how i interpret them.

Overall the lighting is brilliant, and to the standard of Crewdson. These images have inspired me to try cinematic lighting for myself. 

Alex Setzer

Houses at Night 

2014

Digital Images

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Vivian Maier - Self Portraits

  “Well, I suppose nothing is meant to last forever. We have to make room for other people. It’s a wheel. You get on, you have to go to the end. And then somebody has the same opportunity to go to the end and so on.” – Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American street photographer born in New York City. Although born in the U.S., it was in France that Maier spent most of her youth. Maier returned to the U.S. in 1951 where she took up work as a nanny and care-giver for the rest of her life. In her leisure however, Maier had begun to venture into the art of photography. Consistently taking photos over the course of five decades, she would ultimately leave over 100,000 negatives, most of them shot in Chicago and New York City. Vivian would further indulge in her passionate devotion to documenting the world around her through homemade films, recordings and collections, assembling one of the most fascinating windows into American life in the second half of the twentieth century.”

  It was only after Maiers death that her photographs became famous, the self portraits are some of the most intriguing that i have looked at throughout the history of photography. They were found in one of her storage lockers, which was auctioned off due to unpaid payments, was then bought at a thrift auction house in Chicago in 2007.

There is no real reason on why Vivian decided to stack the images and negatives away from her personal life, there are only idea’s of why she would hide her talent. She could have potentially planted them there to be found after her death, maybe she wanted to show the world something she had created without being here to see what they actually thought. Either way she has managed to become famous, and her work is brilliant. The fortunately timed self portraits show Vivian was very creatively inclined as a person, she has directed the self portraits quickly and effectively. She is a big inspiration to film photographers, and self portrait photographers, and has set a new best for self portraits.  

information and photographs taken from - http://www.vivianmaier.com/about-vivian-maier/