The Source Graduate Online for 2012 is now live! My work, as well as all the other talented photographers who will be graduating from Leeds College of Art this summer is being showcased there. Have a look at our course and lots of other from around the UK too!
Source
ate
An outtake from the Newmarket project that didn’t make it on the website…I love the guy in the corner though with his cheeky bottle of Fanta.
www.hannahreynoldsphotography.co.uk has been updated! The Newmarket section has a completely new edit, which reflects a lot of the content that will feature in the self-published book. So check it out!
Photographer David Michalek created a series of slow motion videos entitled ‘Portraits in Dramatic Time.’ Shot on high definition and slowed down from 10 second sequences to sometimes 10 minute films, they were projected on a 40ft screen last year on the front of the Lincoln Center in New York. The only video available to watch online is of Alan Rickman, but its completely mesmerising.
After a completely manic week, one very broken hard drive, and one extremely stressed photographer, the Newmarket body of work is one step closer to being completed! Shooting finished a few weeks ago, scanning the negatives on our badass Hasselblad scanner finished this morning, so now it is just the simple task of editing, sequencing, finalising the design of the book and sending to the printers!
My living room has now been covered in prints ready to sequence, being the only room in the house that has a big enough floor to lay them all out.
Me and my graphic designer Arthur Carey have been working on some pretty exciting ideas for the design of the book, more of which I will be able to reveal in a few weeks, when I will also be taking pre-orders for the limited run of 20 copies in the edition.
Yesterday I came across Timemachine Magazine, an Australian photography magazine which has some really good work in it! Whilst browsing through the past issues (which are all available to view online) I came across Elena’s Dorfman’s series The Pleasure Park. Its amazing how I keep stumbling across other photographers who have made work about horse racing as well through the course of this project! Elena is a photographer based in Los Angeles.
Elena’s work stems from her own experience as a competitive horse rider, and combines both film and video stills to explore both the horse itself and its rider.
‘The metaphoric potential that exists between representations of the horse—and the jockey—in movement and the spectator’s gaze, particularly in racing, is at the forefront of my new work. At the track, expectations of the horse and rider are still insatiable, and conjure in the viewer motion, athleticism, sexuality, power, performance, vulnerability, competition, financial gain, and fetishism – the same issues humans are faced with in a society that worships commodity culture and winning at all costs.’
More of the work can be seen on Elena’s website, or read the interview in Timemachine Magazine.
Stephen Gill - A Series of Disappointments
In 2008, Stephen Gill visited the 71 betting shops in Hackney. From these shops he collected betting slips from those who had not won any money from them, and photographed them in a studio environment with a plain grey background. The collection of images was published in a book entitled A Series of Disappointments.
The images are a very clever, subtle way of exploring the frustration, anger and despondency in the moment of losing their bet. Regardless of this moment, they will no doubt go on to place another, and another; the infallible and endless hope that the next race will be the winning one, and if not then the one after that.
Saturday was arguably the biggest day of the horse racing calendar on an international level; the Grand National at Aintree. A race that divides peoples opinions every year, but particularly so now because in the past two years two horses have been put down in each race following injuries sustained during the race.
Divided opinions aside, I wanted to find some photographs that summed up the atmosphere of the day; having not been there myself to document it, falling out of my remit for this project as its not in Newmarket, I had a scout around the internet for some interesting images.
The first is actually the photo finish image, used to decide who the winner of the very close race would be. Visually very bizarre, a strange kind of functional montage of a moment that couldn’t be captured by the human eye.
I delved into the confusing archive that is flickr, and found largely scathing documents of half cut ladies in uncompromising situations…some of the softer ones are quite humorous though.
‘hell hath no fury like a womans corns’ by Dave Browniee.
Another one by Dave Browniee.
My favorite has to be this one, taken by Tom Jenkins for The Observer. For me it captures some of the drama and anticipation of watching a race perfectly; the range of reactions caught is amazing.
Embarking upon long-term projects, Hannah Reynolds’ practice centres on documenting facets of society and their inherent issues. In her latest body of work, Reynolds investigates the small East Anglian town of Newmarket, internationally renowned as the epicentre of Horse Racing.
www.hannahreynoldsphotography.co.uk
