Tag Archives: [( 6 )]

UPDATE!

November 22, 2016

It’s been a busy few months traveling here and there and I have been very lax at blogging so here is an update after the fact of what I’ve been up to since September.

[( 6 )]

We went to Oxford.
2 summers ago [( 6 )], the photography collective I am in, held an exhibition in Sheffield, but not all of us attended, and as such the six of us had never met all together! This autumn we had a plan to not only get together but also to photograph at the same time.

We spent a September weekend in Oxford, UK, finally all meeting and ‘doing’ Oxford in our various photographic fashions. Here are 5 of the [( 6 )] (Yes it has been summer of the selfie!)

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2 of the [( 6 )], Rob™ and I, gathered everyone’s prints and made our way to Oxford, Nova Scotia, Canada where we met with Mathew Aldred who runs the Oxford Riverside Gallery. The three of us along with invaluable helpers, framed and hung 72 photographs and opened the exhibition on Friday October 21st. BTW if you happen to pass through Oxford NS with your camera, the gallery will be hosting an exhibition of photos of its own Oxford in January 2017.

[( 6 )] Website
Oxford Riverside Gallery Website
Review
CTV

Here are some installation photographs of the whole gallery and my wall specifically.

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Whilst we were in Oxford, NS I also took a few photographs, at some point in the future I will add both Oxfords to the project page of my website – please be patient with me!

TATE MODERN

Last week I was thrilled to have two of my photographs shown at the Tate in London. Shown on the same night as a talk by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen who’s work I really like.

I had two photographs selected in the call for photographs on the theme of (re:) thinking the street put out by UPF – Urban Photo Festival. Fellow [( 6 )] photographer Keith Greenough also had a photograph selected and he was lucky enough to get down there. I was lucky that he took some shots of our work, Thanks Keith! All 20 photographs were screened for the duration of the evening.

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(mine, Keith’s, mine – installation photos by Keith Greenough.)

UPF Website

My next project is to take some time to process my Oxford UK and Oxford CA photographs and to hit the streets of NYC again. Hopefully back here rather sooner next time!

A busy day for [( 6 )]

Today the [( 6 )] team descended on Bank Street Arts in Sheffield to hang five galleries of work ready for Wednesday’s opening night and Private View.

I don’t want to spoil it for you by revealing the galleries in all their finished glory, but as a sneak peek here is Nigel measuring for ‘Walking the Gamut’.

Great job hanging lads and lasses! Photo © Rob™

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7 days to go…

Only a week to go until the exhibition [( 6 )]  opens at Bank Street Arts in Sheffield.

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Originally scheduled to open with the private view on 9th July (let me know if you didn’t get your invite) and due to end on the 19, [( 6 )] has, even before it opens, been extended to run until August 1st. So no excuses about not being able to come because it’s on during school time!

As the six of us; Dewald, Keith, Nigel, Pete, Rob™ and myself make our final preparations, Elizabeth Underwood our intrepid publicist asked us for a quote to sum up our collective works.

Rob™ came through with the most amazing description of  our journey together as photographers.

“Being 9000 miles apart could have been a logistical nightmare, but after years of communicating with one another electronically, the time difference proved to be the only real issue. What we’ve tried to do is to cross those borders of time and space to create something coherent yet oppositional – tranquillity and chaos, disability and athleticism, near and far, being lost and found. Personal explorations, bound together using a common visual language.” Rob™ 2014

Before it becomes all about seeing the work, I’d just like to give a shout out to

Dewald, Keith, Nigel, Pete and Rob™ for accompanying me on this journey. Thanks go to Elizabeth Underwood our intrepid publicist for her utmost patience and hard work. Dealing with 6 photographers at once, even as a collective, calls for a high level of calm and diplomacy, attributes that stand out in Elizabeth.

Thanks also to OCA, the entity that initially brought us together and that continues to support us. So much more than an organization, a collective of the most available, caring  people. OCA is sponsoring the private View and they do a good bash, so I hope you will take advantage of their generosity!

Finally grateful thanks to Business Vector and Paul Graham Image Specialists for their sponsorship of [( 6 )]. Check out the links below, maybe they are just the people you are looking for for your next business or photographic project.

For more information check out the exhibition website for dates, directions and bios:

http://six-scapes.weebly.com

We’ll be using the hastag #6scapes during the exhibition and we hope you’ll use it to let  us know your experience at the exhibition.

7 days to go…

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OCA- Open College of the Arts http://www.oca-uk.com

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Elizabeth Underwood, Underwood Works https://twitter.com/UnderwoodWorks

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Business Vector www.businessvector.com

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Paul Graham Image Specialists www.paulgrahamltd.com

 

Another’s thoughts on [( 6 )]

Another’s thoughts on [( 6 )]

As we lead up to the exhibition in July the [( 6 )] of us are getting excited! You may have read my brief introduction to our work:

http://tanyaahmed.com/2014/06/12/6-whats-it-all-about/

but, as the 6 of us produce different works so the six of us see things from a slightly different angle. Why not check out Rob™’s blog as he gives his thoughts on each of our projects.

http://www.robtm.co.uk/blog_files/category-exhibition.html

Rob will be at Bank Street Arts for the Private View on the 9th of July and also on Saturday the 12th so stop by for a chat with the man himself.

Rob

 

Photograph © Rob™

[( 6 )] ? What’s it all about?

[( 6 )] : Personal Explorations in Photography

[( 6 )] ? What’s it all about?

Life that’s what. People, places. How we are, where we are, how we make our way through our day, through our environment. Mentally, physically and of course photographically.

We are six photographers. We didn’t set out to create an exhibition, but we gravitated together at a fortuitous time. We’ve got to know each other’s work, and each other, over the past few years, which is a feat as we currently live in the USA, the UK and China. We will be presenting photographs capturing life in the USA, the UK, France, China and Japan.

Despite the geographic distance and our differing genres, landscape, portraiture and documentary, collectively our work interlinks with the exploration of social themes. Our images cut across the divide of distance and culture, as we reveal our use of and the role of photography to understand the world and our place in it.

This is not a group show in the usual way, a curated theme we all submit a couple of photographs to. We have taken over a floor of Bank Street Arts, consisting of 5 separate galleries. Each gallery holds different sets of work so in effect you are seeing six separate photographer’s exhibitions consisting of 10 different bodies of work.

There is though an incidental large-looming central theme running through all of these works. The pulling of the viewer into the reading of each image. We as photographers aren’t making statements so much as asking for your interpretative viewing.

What follows is the briefest of introductions to some of the work that we will be showing at Bank Street Arts.

Rob’s luscious woodland images in A Forest expose the beauty and richness of nature and then he trips you up with the decanted unnatural objects he stumbled upon and then juxtaposed with the forest scene. The pairing of the two photographs invites you to put the object he pulled out of the scene back in as you imagine what led it to be there in the first place thereby discovering a third, latent image in your own mind.

You can get a sneak peek of A Forest, one of the two bodies of work Rob will be showing, in hashtag magazine. http://www.robtm.co.uk/blog_files/dabe9e996904fe4635cb72704f69fbc6-74.html

Hashtag Magazine http://www.hashtagphotographymagazine.co.uk

I take this idea a collaborative step further with one of my two projects, Untitled. I present spaces that are purposefully made for rest and contemplation. The settings vary though and one person’s calm oasis is another’s awkward reminder of an experience gone by. As the viewer you share, through captioning my photographs, what thoughts and connections you make when you encounter these images. This project is an extension of a previous online collaboration. Does the gallery space affect how these images are received, I hope to find out.

In my second set, Walking the Gamut, I lead you through the pedestrian’s experience of navigating construction where new obstacles and routes are thrown up inhibiting easy access and creating a confusing array of colours and shapes. This theme of access is continued in an exploration of another point of view by Pete.

As a wheelchair user Pete takes us on another path as he re-presents a familiar city landscape. Through his viewpoint and experience Pete helps us reassess access within a landscape that we see but do not understand in the same way as a physically impaired person does.

Whilst Pete shares much about himself, we get a real sense of him and his engagement with the world, he does not use portraiture through the three projects he presents. Pete is not asking that we look at him but that we experience the social landscape as he does. His work looks outward to the world he encounters and gives us a new way into it.

Keith, perhaps the opposite of Pete in mobility, is an Ironman. His works in [( 6 )] focus on people that are active participants in this strenuously physical lifestyle. Rather than show us the subjects as they are competing, which is perhaps what we might expect from a group of people obsessed with physical activity, Keith instead uses classic portraiture techniques to distill the essence of each subject. Questioning whether we can see the spark that makes them Ironmen (and women).

Whereas Pete is stilled by his impairment yet fights to be mobile, Keith’s subjects are stopped from their activity and made still in a studio setting. Presenting two bodies of work, in the first, I am an Ironman, Keith photographs himself repeatedly after finishing training a time when he barely has the energy to even pose. This presents us with a conflicting view of someone who is incredibly active and strong and yet is reduced to such a state of exhaustion that he appears immobile.

Finally, we look at the work of Dewald and Nigel who consider how the environment affects mental as well as physical interaction as they find themselves in a landscape that is culturally different than their own. Nigel’s work is concerned with transience and transitions. He presents here, in a departure from his usually studio based work, the aftermath of the Tsunami on the north east coastline of Japan after the wreckage had been removed. Nigel’s work shows an in-between time where life is unresolved. The debris has gone but normal life has not yet resumed and may not. The once populated area seems to be suspended indefinitely. With the rich blue tones consistent throughout each print we are lulled into the beauty of the sky and landscape, only to feel the blue as melancholy when our eyes fall on the disrupted urban structures.

Dewald also has a particular colour palettte, one that is slightly muted. It bestows an ethereal presence on the tranquil spaces Dewald discovered in the otherwise gritty urban landscape of the Suzhou ring road. More than just a exploration and document of the road itself, Ring Road exposes the need to step out of the onward flow in the busy city and take the time to assess the moment. Dewald perhaps has discovered on his walking quest of where the road goes that ‘the journey is the destination’. (Dan Eldon)

[( 6 )] kicks off at Bank Street Arts in Sheffield, UK with a private view on July 9th where you can meet four of the photographers. (let me know if you didn’t get an invite). The exhibition continues from July 10th until July 19th. You can download a flyer with the exhibition details and get a taste of each photographer’s photographs over at:

www.six-scapes.weebly.com

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[( 6 )] : Personal Explorations in Photography

[( 6 )] : Personal Explorations in Photography

This is the big one for 2014. I am teaming up with 5 photographers and together we will be taking over the ground floor, 5 galleries, of Bank Street Arts in Sheffield, UK.  Between us we will be showing 10 bodies of work.

YOU ARE INVITED!

The private view is on July 9th, 1730 – 2000 by invite only but I will happily guarantee you a personal invitation if you would like to attend. Just let me know.

I’ll give more info as the time approaches but for now you can get a sneak peek of what will be on offer at Bank Street Arts and a look at the work of the other photographers, RobTM, Pete Mansell, Nigel Haworth, Keith Greenough and Dewald Botha at our exhibition website:

http://six-scapes.weebly.com

[( 6 )]