Steve Bloom

Crowds at Salvejas Exhibition Barcelona Zoo

Our tenth giant outdoor environmental exhibition opens. 

The Exhibition in Barcelona Zoo is called SALVAJES after Steve Bloom’s book of the same name (Untamed in English), and was organised by the publisher Lunwerg.

Watch a video of the exhibition.

See the exhibition website.

Info and video about other previous exhibitions.

PhotoWisdom

PhotoWisdom by Lewis Blackwell is now available.

Photowisdom explores the richness of contemporary photographic practice. Photowisdom features commentaries from original interviews with world-leading photographers alongside exquisite reproductions of key images chosen by the artists themselves.The result is an unprecedented collection of  images showcasing each master photographer’s work and their unique voice. Photowisdom will support a project with award-winning charity PhotoVoice to help children in rural Afghanistan express their concerns, and grasp opportunities through photography.

Featured photographers include Steve Bloom, Albert Watson, Stephen Shore, Tim Flach, David Goldblatt, Joel Meyerowitz, Chuck Close, David LaChapelle and Nadav Kander.

Read the Photowisdom interview with Steve Bloom.

Published by PQ Blackwell. ISBN 0473150948

Steve Bloom recently judged the Digital Camera Photographer of the Year competition. http://poty2009.dcmag.co.uk/ His next judging assignment will be the Travel Photographer of the Year Competition, due for judging in November.  http://www.tpoty.com/

I spent all day on Friday accompanied by distinguished people from the photography world. We were doing the final round of judging for the Digital Camera Photographer of the Year competition (DCPOTY). Over 100,000 pictures were entered, making it the largest photography competition in the world.  It’s a huge responsibility, especially since so many of the entries were the outcome of immense effort – each one a carefully considered labour of love for the entrant. A judge has an obligation to be totally focussed, never faltering in concentration. The standard of the entries was very high, and I left feeling energised by the by the privilege of seeing so many visually compelling images.

Legendary photographer Irving Penn died recently aged 92. He had the ability to take the most mundane of objects, and inject life into them. I have always loved his work, and my favourite is a platinum print of cigarette ends. He mastered the platinum printing process, producing prints with a richness in the shadows and a warmth that must be seen to be believed. Penn achieved the goal of making us look carefully at ordinary objects, and see them in a new light. He photographed a variety of subjects, from South American tribes to eggs, showing a great versatility in his ability to interpret all that filled the world around him. Penn recently had a magnificent exhibition in London’s Hamiltons Gallery.

Nick Brandt has a new book out, called A Shadow Falls. To coincide with the book’s publication, Nick is having several exhibitions in galleries such as Atlas Gallery, Young Gallery  and Camerawork Gallery. In the introduction to his book, Vicki Goldberg points out that many pictures convey a rare sense of intimacy. Nick avoids the use of telephoto lenses, choosing instead to incorporate the landscape and get close to the animals in a way which is more akin to normal seeing. We don’t see life through telephoto lenses. His large scale sepia images are indeed intimate, and his use of medium format film gived the images an endearing quality.

In a moving foreword to the book, Animal Rights Campaigner Peter Singer points out that animal sentience is clearly acknowledged in the images, describing animals as conscious beings capable of suffering and enjoying their lives. I have always maintained in my own books that only by recognising animals as fellow sentient beings, will we find it repugnant to abuse them.

Why is his book called A Shadow Falls? It forms the middle of a trilogy of books, the titles of which will make a complete sentence. The first was On This Earth, so I guess we will have to wait for the final book to know the entire sentence.