The Third Thursdays

For the past couple of months I had the honour and pleasure to be invited to participate to a new art programme in Reading, the town where I live: The Third Thursdays, another brainchild of the art organisation Jelly. 

The Third Thursday is a monthly event showcasing the creative talent of Reading and includes visual, literary, music and performing arts in non-traditional arts venues. This is another of a series of programmes and events that contribute to the enhancement of the local cultural life.

The launch event included an art auction where attendees had the opportunity to buy original works raising monies for charity.

Below is the image of my piece that was sold at the auction. Part of a Venice inspired lith prints series

the second and latest event took place last week and it was a great evening of photography, stories and poetry from Reading. I was invited to present and talk about my latest project and exhibition and I was glad it had such a positive response. People showed interest in the exhibition and asked questions about the stories behind it and the people that participated and about my photography and approach.
Particularly rewarding and chuffing was listening to the poet Anna-May Laugher from the Brickwork Poets group read 2 poems inspired by my exhibition.
You can read here a review of the event and I suggest you take a look at the Jelly website to find out more about them and the great things they do.

40 people: 40 little stories

“40 people in Reading: 40 stories of passion”
it is a photo portrait project and exhibition to explore, talk to, acknowledge and celebrate people within the community in Reading that dedicate themselves in activities motivated by a passion, a personal drive (could be volunteers, artists, activists, entrepreneurs). It is a local project, as it focuses on people that work within and with the local community and look more into what possibly is an aspect of Reading that many people do not look at or are not aware of. As we know normally Reading gets a pretty bad press (see the recent “clone Towns” survey or the notorious binge drinking culture) for me this is also a way of telling a different story and putting some faces in this story of people that break a mould. All these people have some form of connection with Reading, either through live, work, education or taking part.

The images are now an exhibition part of the Open for Art programme by Jelly, in 173 Friar Street, Reading town centre

I would like to thank the individuals and the following organisations for participating in this project:

• Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC)
• Reading Refugee Support Group (RRSG)
• Rising Sun Arts Centre
• True Food Co-op
• Jelly
• Amnesty International, Reading group
• Age UK
• Age Concern Berkshire
• Progress Theatre

nuit blanche 2010, part deux: what did we do?

we were at The Artpad - aka Jelly's home in Market Place in Reading.  We set up a special photo studio (more a corner with a very basic lighting setting) from 6 – 8.30pm. The aim was to photograph 100 visitors to the Nuit Blanche event using a medium format camera and roll film (i.e. my normal 6x6 kit and medium). We wanted to take just a quick spontaneous record of the visitors, showing them how they are and how they wanted to be as in a sort of photobooth. People were great in participating, getting into the spirit and having their photos taken.  We did not quite make the 100 but quite a few though. You can see the effort here and the related post on the Jelly's page.

1st nuit blanche event in Reading, 15th october 2010

I had the honour to be invited and participate at the pilot event of the Nuit Blanche in Reading and I was hosted in the premises of the art organisation Jelly. It was all very enjoyable, met great people and I am already looking forward to next year. Here some of the images I captured as a small record of the evening.

exhibition

4th to 6th November 2010 at the Progress Theatre in Reading, during "Write Fest", Exhibition "Ribalta Veneziana: on the Venetian Stage" a series of darkroom lith prints inspired from the Carnival in Venice.

Below some details about lith prints (quoted from the World of Lith Printing, by Tim Rudman)

"Lith printing is a simple but ‘different’ Black & White printing technique, using ‘ordinary’ negatives, a suitable black & white paper and Lith developer – from which the process gets its name.
...... The results can be immensely diverse in different hands, according to the choice of materials and the techniques used. Lith prints possess unique characteristics and properties and these can be exploited to get different effects, so it is a flexible, adaptable and therefore very creative way of printing. It is all to do with grain size…
What drives this process and allows it to be so creative and variable is a property of lith developers known as ‘infectious development’. Put simply this means that as tones get darker they develop faster, so they get even darker, develop even faster, get darker still, and so on. This results from a chemical chain reaction and consequently development of the darker tones in the print accelerates exponentially, leaving the lighter tones lagging way behind.
The significance of this is that during development the silver grains in the paper’s emulsion grow steadily larger and in doing so, they change in appearance in a number of ways:
The fine grains of early development are generally super-warmtoned, soft and creamy in texture, grainless in appearance and low in contrast. The large grains of late development are colder in tone, coarse in texture, very grainy in appearance and high in contrast. In lith printing, this can be exploited by stopping the development when the balance of large and small grains (in shadows and highlights respectively) is as you want it – l the ‘snatch point’.
There is no right or wrong choice for this moment. It might be when the print it is predominantly fine-grained (warm, creamy, grainless, low contrast) or later in development when predominantly large-grained (cold, coarse, grainy and contrasty) – or it might be with a balance of small-grain light tones and large-grain dark tones (warm, soft and grainless highlights with cold, grainy high-contrast shadows). The choice of snatch point has a profound effect."

also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lith-Print

masters of the darkroom

a video documentary about master silver printer Robin Bell, for sure of great inspiration for us photographers and printers.
this is the trailer
enjoy.

many thanks to the authors for producing this documentary

Edit, 2nd Sept 2011
A new trailer has been just released, also looking very good.

outside/inside festival in Reading

in addition to "that" Reading festival, there are more things going on around here, the Outside/Inside Festival being one of those. Sadly missed most of it but I managed to attend some of the events, here some snippets from the performances taking place on 21st August 2010

rising sun arts centre – here comes the sun

I had the pleasure to attend part of this fund raising event at the great  Rising Sun Arts Centre, 7th August 2010. Some moments of that afternoon.