Lighting the Edges

Cork Analogue Photographer Ann O’Kelly is opening a solo exhibition of her photographs at The County Library, The Square, Tallaght, Dublin 24 on Thursday May 6th at 6.30pm. All welcome.

Anybody doesnt like these pitchers don’t like potry, see?

Chinese cemetry - San Francisco (c) Robert Frank

Wow, and blown over Chinese cemetry flowers in a San Francisco hill being hammered by potatopodge fog on a March night I’d say nobody there but the rubber cat-

Anybody doesnt like these pitchers don’t like potry, see? Anybody dont like potry go home see Television shots of big hatted cowboys being tolerated by kind horses.

Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.

– Jack Kerouac, introduction to The Americans

Desde El Día de los Muertos hasta Semana Santa

Brian Barry is opening a new exhibition of his pin hole photographs at the Basement Project Space in Camden Quay in Cork on Saturday May 1st at 6pm.

New Pinhole Photo Etchings from Mexico, Guatemala & Honduras by Brian Barry
Opens May 1st, 6pm and continues until May 13th

Venue: Basement Project Space, Camden Place, Camden Quay, Cork.
FACEBOOK: Basementprojectspace Cork

This is the second in a series of Pinhole Photos from Latin America by Brian Barry. (see www.cubaobscura.com for previous collection) The images were captured within a six month period beginning in Mexico with the famous Day of the Dead celebrations and finishing in Honduras’ Mosquito Coast during Holy Week.

Mexico’s Copper Canyon, the childhood towns of ‘Pedro Paramo’ author Juan Rulfo, a town destroyed by a volcano and an eruption in Guatemala all provided inspiration for this collection.

All Pinhole Photos are hand printed from copper plates using a Photo Intaglio Etching process and are all of a limited edition.

– Rory

Sanda scans

By Sanda Galina

We’re working hard on getting some more of our work scanned. I guess the main problem with film photography and the internet is that we gotta get our work scanned, instead of just clicking some bazam button on our phone and zapping the photos online. With any luck though it’s a good way of filtering out the shite and just scanning the quality photos! I like this one by Sanda. She sent me a few more that I will bazam up over the next few days.

– Rory

Blue in Heaven

By Rory O'Toole

Another shot from the last couple of colour films that I put through the Holga.

– Rory

Holgraffiti

by Rory O'Toole

I got some Holga films developed and scanned at Fuji Foto-Finish on Ship St in Cork. It’s around the corner from Penrose Wharf commercial center (or whatever that’s called) – ie on the way up to the train station from the quays. If you know Cork, you know where I mean! Anyway, they’re one of the last places that will still develop and scan (and print) medium format film. It was €10 for a develop and scan to cd.

The Holga is always hit and miss – ya never knows what ya gonna get. I tried to take pictures of colour subjects as it was colour film (I have mostly put b+w through the Holga). This one ain’t bad, though I do feel sometimes that taking pictures of graffiti is a bit like stealing! But what the hell. If you know who the graffiti artist is, let me know 🙂

– Rory

“… the alchemy of light on film …”

by Ralph Gibson

“… Digital is a great way of transferring information, but digital imaging systems are not photography, because photography has to do with the alchemy of light on film. Photography creates a new informationthat wasn’t there before, whereas digital transfers information that is in front of you. Like the telephone can transfer my words to your ear …” – Ralph Gibson

I’m loving “Photo – wisdom” by Lewis Blackwell. Purchased in Dublin last week (I was supposed to buy shoes), it contains work by fifty photographers, and an interview with each of them. The book is big, and while there’s just three or four pieces from each photographer, they are beautifully produced and large. Oh, and each photographer chose the work to be shown.

I’ve had the book just a few days, so am not not nearly familiar enough with it to do a full review, but already I’d put it on any photography lovers wish list!

– Rory

eloquent emptiness

By Pamela Condell

CorkAP member Pamela Condell sent me some scans of her work for the portfolio section of the site. I’ll post some of it soon. In the meantime, you can view some more on her blog by clicking here.  Pamela’s current work is primarily based on an eloquent emptiness; site-specific landscapes which are tied to human presence.

– Rory

Peter Gowland dies at 93

Jayne Mansfield by Peter Gowland

Peter Gowland, who used camera, sunshine and imagination to portray ravishing women at a time when the pinup girl was a nearly ubiquitous fixture of American life, died on March 17 in Los Angeles. He was 93.

The cause was complications from a fall, his wife, Alice, said.

Mr. Gowland’s photographs appeared on more than 1,000 magazine covers, including those of Playboy, Rolling Stone and Modern Photography. In 1954, The New York Times called Mr. Gowland “America’s No. 1 Pin-up Photographer.”

Read on at the New York Times by clicking here

– Rory

I never liked photography

Robert Mapplethorpe

I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand. – Robert Mapplethorpe

I wonder what Mapplethorpe would have thought of the lack of the object in modern photography? What percentage of the zillions of digital photographs people take today make it to the stage of a finished print? Tiny I would think. Less than 1%? But I guess that’s a good thing really. If a photograph is good enough, and the photographer likes it enough, a print might be made. The percentage of b+w negatives that made it to finished prints must be pretty tiny too. The days of dropping off your colour film to the chemist and getting back 35 shite photos and one kinda half decent one are pretty much gone, and that’s probably a good thing

– Rory

Brian’s site

By Brian Dunne

CorkAP member Brian Dunne has been posting some of his images to his site – http://brdunne.blogspot.com/

– Rory