James Allen - 'Five Hat Racks'

The project shown above is titled 'Five Hat Racks', we were asked to find five genuinely discarded objects from the environment. I managed to accumulate a variety of objects: a lampshade, an exhaust pipe, a builders hard hat, a candle holder and a bottle of Magners. The project had two parts, the first being to run these objects through a system know as the 'Five Hat Racks' which consist of: location, alphabet, time, category and hierarchy. Each system had to have an A1 visual outcome for each object, this was aimed to make us look closer at our objects and become familiar with them.

The second part was to take these same five objects and run them through an emotive set of categories and produce another five outcomes that could be a size and format of our choosing. Some of the emotive categories were as follows:

Temperature / hot – cold

Intrigue / fascinating – banal, dull

Sentiment / soft, tender, alluring – hard, tough, and the list goes on.

During this point of the project I started to become frustrated, after having a few bad critiques by tutors about my first set of posters I started debating whether the categories listed above were actually emotive, in my opinion they are descriptive. Being able to emphasize my hatred towards the project in this emotional part of the brief I decided to show this by breaking the objects into pieces using a hammer. Questioning why we were doing a project of this type in a graphic design class that specifically focuses on typography it dawned on me that this project was more fine art than design. This is what lead me to design/photograph the objects in the style I did, purposely mimicking and ridiculing the brief with a parody on fine art.

http://www.jamesaallen.com

Pavel Fiorentino - 'Walls of Brazil'

I worked on this project while traveling in Brazil this January. Finding myself on the opposite side of the world, where literally everything was different, I went through various stages how I perceived my surroundings - from fascination to alienation. While trying to record my feelings with the camera, I realized that the images of “exotic” places and people that were around me were the last thing I wanted to bring back home.
So I started looking at the way people arrange their living space in Brasília, the capital of the country, and a small old town of Luziânia about 60 km from it. Suddenly I realized that the walls, simple walls surrounding houses and yards of any type, represent the essence of Brazil for me. Looking at the wall itself, the pavement or the road below and what I could see above, I could imagine what life was like behind the confines of the wall. This was purely a product of my imagination. But isn’t it what we get when we go abroad thinking that we can gain a greater understanding of peoples’ needs and values in such a short period of time?

Besides, these three horizontal partitions (sky, wall, ground) form unique abstract compositions like those of Mark Rothko, delving deeper into levels of reality perception as a combination of simple forms. I saw these compositions as real masterpieces created by nature (sky and the trees), humans (wall) and time (ground that holds a function of memory, walls’ mould and cracks indicating the flow of time).

JoAnn Kneedler - 'Portraits'

Kneedler was born in Stockholm, Sweden, but grew up in Denmark from the age of eight. She has also lived in Germany and the UK. Her project featured here is from the first year of her study at Brighton. The subjects depicted are foreign students who are pictured with the objects and decorations that they have brought from home. These people are very interesting but the relationship with the photographer is my concern. The project was done at a period when she herself was adjusting to living in the UK and coping with the alienation and barriers of language. There is a profound strength in the background of this work and Kneedler is careful to portray her subjects with defined dignity and a deep intimacy with their surroundings and their reflection on the idea of ‘home’.

Phil Bedford


kneedler@gmail.com

Jamie Orlando Smith - 'RGB'

Smith is originally from Herefordshire; his progression through the editorial course has led him to a certain archaeological influence in his photography. Smith doesn’t necessarily look for ‘traces’ but more finds the objects and signs of an institutions structure. The images in ‘RGB’ are taken from a photo lab and his recent project on the Fabrica gallery demonstrates that the backbone of a space is made up of the chairs, tables, lights, offices and desks that help an organisation function. Smith presents us with a banality that is photographed rather beautifully but draws our attention to the details that we ignore in our everyday lives. These details become not only visually exciting and intriguing when presented to the camera but also remind us of that which we take for granted.

Phil Bedford

jamieosmith.photography@googlemail.com

Kristina Sälgvik - 'Conversation Piece'

There is something incredibly beautiful about the way that Sälgvik documents her friend’s bipolar manic depression. The work describes the habits of a troubled man, a personal side of himself that is presented to the photographer. Bipolar manic depression alters your eating and sleeping patterns and makes your emotions run abnormally in mood swings and strong depression. Sälgvik’s title may refer to using the camera to communicate with her friend, understanding his difficulties visually rather than verbally or analytically.
Through these softly aesthetic images, we as viewers gather a sense of empathy that is slightly disturbed from the way Sälgvik photographs. The proximity of the camera to the subject is awkward; shot from the floor or obscured by a plant. We only have a glimpse of this person’s life, a fleeting glance into his unknown world, his left behind porridge bowl or his belongings spread across the living room floor. The subjects that Sälgvik documents become metaphoric, we connect with these almost banal household objects as the emotional traces that are left behind.

Phil Bedford


kristina.salgvik@gmail.com

Harry Watts - 'Studio'

This is my most recent work, I felt it would fit posting the two founders of the magazine 1st, and I would still love you guys to send your work in, as it will go either on this blog or maybe in the magazine. So send the images along with a small description of the work to, info.phmagazine@gmail.com

Following an intense period of time spent as a studio assistant, in London. I observed the repetitive re-use of the objects and equipment integral to the photographic studio. The monochrome space and items presented would be reconstructed on a daily basis to create colorful sets of magical lighting; alterer worlds resulting in sleek images of fantasy and desires, which are so readily and hungrily consumed.

This stark body of work literally strips away the glamorous and illusional. The studio space is potentially, yet invisibly occupied by objects which exist only as a aid to the visual creation, rather than meant to be seen as themselves. Created and coated in grey light absorbing materials these objects stand mono-chromic in a empty person-less studio.

By revealing these devices, out from the darkness, come the stains and marks of the make shift, covered with human alterations and adaptations. The studio space becomes a place for theatricality of recorded life.

Images: (Top to Bottom)
Untitled 8
Untitled 4
Untitled 2

This work has also been published on the current, Issue 9, of SeeSaw magazine, here the series is complete.

Phil Bedford - 'Territories'

A 2nd year photography student, at Brighton University, and co-founder of pH magazine Phils work gained inspiration from Michael Schmidt’s book, Waffenrue (Ceasefire) where he produced images about the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain. This work is shot in black and white, the absence of colour allows for deeper ambiguity in the close-up images. This style allows the reader to dwell upon the metaphorical signs that may be drawn from the decayed structures and almost alien terrain. I have also found John Gossage’s Vocational Ruins work to be slightly similar and his use of depth of field very inspiring. The abstraction of these images is important as it is only the details of these boundaries that interest me, the fact these details give us reassurance that our personal space is ours. The psychological boundaries such as picking at a couch or etching names into a table allow us the privacy we desire within the public space but also leave traces behind on our primitive territory.

Images: (Top to Bottom)
Sofa, 2007
Table, 2007
Window, 2007