Steve Bloom

The Spirit of the Wild outdoor exhibition opened in St Andrews Square, Edinburgh last Thursday. The exhibition, held in conjunction with the International Year of

Spirit of the Wild, St Andrews Square, with Edinburgh Castle. Photo: Jill Todd

Biodiversity, forms part of the Edinburgh Science Festival. This is the eleventh venue for the exhibiton and the first in Scotland. The opening received wide press and TV coverage (see http://bit.ly/ceezt2 and http://su.pr/1Ax3cW and pictures at http://tinyurl.com/ygfx5a4) .

The images are accompanied by informative captions, designed to raise public awareness of wild animals and the environmental issues which affect them. The visual narrative enables viewers to go on a journey to all the world’s continents as they move around the exhibition.

Spirit of the Wild will run in Edinburgh until 16th May 2010.

Spirit of the Wild is a spectacular outdoor exhibition of animals around the world, taken by the award-winning photographer, Steve Bloom. Never before staged in Scotland, the exhibition will celebrate the International Year of Biodiversity at the 2010 Edinburgh Science Festival. Edinburgh will host the eleventh Spirit of the Wild exhibition, which has been seen by several million people across Europe.

St Andrews Square, Edinburgh, Scotland, 12 March – 16 may 2010.

WISH YOU WERE HERE – Click here for more

In November 1980 Camera Magazine published a cover story about Steve Bloom’s series of twelve multi-layered unique hand-made Cibachrome prints of British people on holiday in the UK. Around the same time, an exhibition of the work was held in London’s Photographers’ Gallery and Bristol’s Rainbow Gallery.  Amateur Photographer Magazine also ran an article about the work which was titled ‘Wish You Were Here’ .

The photographs had been locked away from early 1981 until December 2009, but have recently been scanned and made available for public viewing.

This satirical look at the British at play shows people in incongruous settings, and Bloom’s sharp eye caught moments during the odd rituals of ice-cream, tinsel, kiss-me-quick hats and seaside frolics which were so prevalent at a time before low-cost air travel lured people away to more exotic climes.

Bloom wanted to illustrate, photographically, the contrast between the actual experience of being on holiday and the fantasies that holiday resorts evoke. The original photographs were taken on black and white film, and then converted to false colours using a unique and complex process which he developed. At a time when documentary photography was almost exclusively in black and white, Bloom decided to falsify colours and so echo the intensification of colour at holiday resorts. It as if, by heightening colours at resorts, the experience of being on holiday in itself became heightened. By doing a similar thing to photographs, the images form a powerful narrative about British people at play.  

The series was first published and exhibited six years before Martin Parr published his book The Last Resort, Photographs of New Brighton – another powerful satirical look at the British on holiday.

The printmaking process was complex in the extreme. Each negative was exposed onto a 12X16 inch sheet of black and white film, to produce a photographic cell. This was done four times using a pin registration system that ensured each cell could be realigned in exact register when contacted separately onto Cibachrome colour paper. Cibachrome has always been the most intensely saturated photographic process using traditional printing methods. 

Three cells were retouched by bleaching or dying certain areas. One cell served for each of the subtractive primary colours: magenta, cyan and yellow. A fourth cell was for more subtle colour control in areas such as flesh tones. Each cell was selectively masked to the required density with either dye (for subtle graded areas) or photo-opaque (for more saturated areas). Areas which required more delicate toning were hand coloured on the fourth cell, before contact printing all four cells, one at a time, in exact register onto the Cibachrome paper. The colours were made using the additive process.  Yellow, for example, was made by first exposing the paper to green light through a green filter, and then to red light through a red filter. Yellow reflects red and green. By doing it that way, the magenta and cyan dyes are bleached out, leaving a more vivid yellow than could have been achieved by simply exposing the paper to yellow light. This technique yields the most highly saturated colours that can be produced with a traditional photographic process.

Click here to see the pictures.

The question ‘What is photography?’ is not an easy one to answer. Many thousands of words have been written in an effort to do so, in academic journals and in books by cultural commentators such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes. If we acknowledge that it is impossible to provide a definitive answer, can we at least distil the meaning of photography into somewhat fewer words, and get to the very essence of the medium without diminishing its importance as an art form? This book aims to do just that. David Clark has selected 50 iconic images by some of the world’s greatest photographers and asked them to explain how the pictures were made and their creative approach. From these interviews he has chosen 100 words that encapsulate their philosophy, and which are picked out in bold in the text.

The book is now available and includes the work and views of photographers Steve Bloom, David Bailey, Steve McCurry, and Albert Watson.

Steve Bloom and Dave Cash

Legendary DJ Dave Cash invited me on to his Sunday BBC program where we chatted about Trading Places and the possibility that A Walk Down Kitengela Road might be the widest continuous panoramic photograph. During the program Dave mentioned a Danish photographer who made a 100 metre long image shot over 20 days. I had not seen the picture so I could not comment fully on air. On reflection, My Kitengela Road image differs in one fundamenatal and vital way – it is of a single location shot in one session, rather than unconnected photographs joined together. The Kitengela image is perceived as one visual experience of one location.

I always enjoying appearing on BBC Kent, drinking BBC Coffee and mixing chat with music.  Dave was at the launch of Trading Places in London. 

You can listen to the show here. We start talking after 28 minutes.

Kitengela Road can also be seen on YouTube in HD here.

BBC Television Interview about the work can be seen here.

Trading Places launch party

The launch of Trading Places – The Merchants of Narobi took place at London’s Chiltern Street Studios on Thursday 26th November. People travelled long distances for the event; some from as far afield as Devon, Cardiff, Rye, Northampton and Cambridge. Many large format archival prints from the book were on display, including a single 13 metre print of a Walk down Kitengela Road , a multiviewpoint image which is possibly the widest panoramic ever made.  Robin Gibson from BBC Television came on Friday Morning to feature the work, which was broadcast on BBC South East on Friday 27th November at 6.45pm. See the broadcast here.

Join Steve Bloom on BBC Radio Kent on Sunday 29th November from 6pm, when he will be a guest on The Dave Cash Show. One of Britain’s pioneering pirate broadcasters, Dave Cash started on Radio London with the legendary Kenny Everett, and was a launch presenter on BBC Radio 1 in 1967. Steve and Dave will chat about Steve’s photography, including his latest book, Trading Places -The Merchants of Nairobi.

Steve Bloom has been added to the lineup of speakers at The British Journal of Photography’s Vision event on 27th November. He will be speaking about his latest book project photographing the shopkeepers of Nairobi.

 Vision is an event for early career photographers. Other speakers at the event include Martin Parr and Eugene Richards.

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