This page is updated regularly with content mostly inspired by GLOBAL PANDEMIC including works, tutorials and other interesting gestures created by staff, alumni and acclaimed global artists.
ENJOY …
Camera Obscura – An Awesome at Home Demo
By Biggles Riddle –
Senior Lecturer BA Interaction Design ArtsInteractive & Visual Communication, LCC
Untitled
Poem and Photograph by Elin Karlsson
Some risks seem worth taking.
Like, eating a thin sliver of cured sausage,
beef fillet slightly pink,
a nibble of brie, raw eggs.
I mean, licking brownie mixture off a wooden spoon.
Pure vanilla essence though,
should never be licked off a spoon.
No matter how many months pregnant you are.
To lower the love
of my heaviness
over your outstretched body
until I can’t catch my breath and
you retaliate my clutch and
she kicks both of us in the ribs,
with the blinds not quite closed.
Or dial in to join a video call
naked and
take care to slowly dress as it connects.
I am just yet to find a rationale
for for dressing waist down.
Then writing a list of things to do,
pledges to a future self:
Read a chapter
Train dog not to bark at door
Order fabric
Sew (curtains + jeans)
Nap
Make a nice dinner
Take dog to park
Drink 8 glasses of water
Make brownies
Write
Do the laundry + everything left from yesterday’s list.
As if it is a given that
the day will be over before the laundry is done,
just as it was the day before.
Elin Karlsson (b. Gothenburg) is an artist based between Worthing and London. Elin is a practice based PhD researcher at UAL, based at LCC. The title of Elin’s research is “Practicing lewdness, DIY and banishment. Addressing taste, sexuality and cultural form through a practice- based investigation into contemporary domestic spaces”. Upcoming and selected projects and exhibitions include Taking Time, Museum of Loss and Renewal, Collemacchia, Italy (2020), Picturing the Invisible, Chelsea College of Art London (2019), MEAD Rome Residency, British School at Rome (2019), Made for Life, Regency Town House, Hove (2018), The Best Mess, HUTT Collective, Nottingham (2017), Life is On, Jakob Kroon Galeri, Stockholm (2016).
http://www.elin-karlsson.co.uk/
# DoorStepPortraits
By LCC Alumni – Paola De Paola
Raised in Italy, but settled in London with a large family of her own, Paola De Paola is an LCC alumni photographer for alternative, same sex & lgbt couples – specialising in warm, intimate and evocative wedding photography.
During lockdown, Paola De Paola has been putting her skills to good use by capturing the lives of families in SW19 & SW20. Whilst creating lifetime memories & encouraging us to embrace the positives. In doing so, Paola De Paola has also raised over £1000 for the charity, Wimbledon Guild. (http://www.wimbledonguild.co.uk/).
In May 2020 Paola De Paola started #doorstepportraits – photographing people on their doorsteps and documenting the lives of local resident in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It is without a doubt that the coronavirus crisis has been one of the most challenging, heart breaking events that I have experienced so far. While witnessing unbelievable sadness and tragedy around the word, I was very fortunate to be able to photograph families in my neighbourhood. This challenging time has given me and many others, time to reflect and refocus, carefully fine-tuning to the key elements of what is important and what we believe in. This extraordinary time has taught me to respect and treasure what is most important for me. My family, nature, humanity, respect of others, kindness and community. These amongst many more are the core values that have always been at the heart of my life.”
A selection of Paola De Paola’s project is on show below. To see the full set, along with individual stories about the families photographed, please visit Paola De Paola’s Instagram and other social media sites.
Instagram – paoladepaolaphotos
Facebook – PaolaDePaolaPhotography
Twitter – Paola_De_Paola
London Stills In Isolation
Photographs and Text by Noemi Zaltron
LCC Alumni – BA (Hons) Photojournalism and Documentary Photography
The day before lockdown started in the UK, I created an Instagram page where everyday I share a post that depicts day-by-day self-isolation in London during the Covid-19 pandemic – an attempt to maintain inspired and positive!
During the lockdown I felt like a new layer of sensibility has been added to our regular life. Unable to distract ourselves as much as before, we are stuck in a circle of repetitive days, in which we have a lot of time to look into past habits and emotions, whilst also facing new challenges. Through a mix of short videos and photographs, I document daily activities, which often show the emotions experienced: stress, curiosity, instability, isolation, fellowship, distance.
This project is a very personal diary, in which the camera is a tool to register my personal experiences and the feelings that come with it, in order to not forget.
As well as a personal diary, I can define this project as a daily positive practice; up and downs came along the way, but focusing on a way to depict them has been helping me to get through every day with the empathy that each past emotion will make a better tomorrow. No faces are visible in the images because I want to focus on the actions and emotions rather than on the characters of the story, however, I have to thank my flatmates infinitely for allowing me to share our current lives.
The project is still ongoing on the Instagram page @londonstillsinisolation and I am not sure when it will end, but this is what it is all about, isn’t it?
https://www.instagram.com/londonstillsinisolation/
Secret Self-Isolation Moments
by Christopher Fernandez
London based photographer Christopher Fernandez has been shooting people through his bedroom window. Shortly after the lockdown was announced, he put a sign up in his bedroom window where he lives in east London, that read: “Professional photographer looking to document your isolation from over here. DM me if interested.” Within an hour, he had responses from several neighbours who were eager to be photographed. The photos, of course, would observe the two-metre distance rule as Fernandez would shoot his subjects from his own flat, through their windows.
Full article and pictures here …
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/bvg4j3/christopher-fernandez-coronavirus-self-isolation
Lockdown Doorsteps
by Chloe Ellis
A photographer and hospital nursery nurse has been using her daily scheduled exercise time to document lockdown life on the doorstep.
Full article and pictures here …
ALEX SOTH
Alec Soth is a leading contemporary American photographer known and celebrated for his documentary series Sleeping by the Mississippi, Niagara and Broken Manual. Soth has a distinct documentary style merged with a poetic sensibility. He is a member of Magnum Photos and has had various books of his work published by major publishers as well as self-published through his own Little Brown Mushroom.
In this lockdown inspired video Alec Soth shares with us his collection of photography books and explains how they inspire his work. At around 5.10 Soth talks us through some particularly relevant titles by Robert Adams, books that focus in on pictures from around the home and the local area. Followed at 8.30 by a section looking at domestic, personal albums and collections of ‘raw photos’ for dissecting. Perhaps now is a great opportunity to consider and be inspired by similar objects and facets of your own life, family, history and current environment.
FEELING BLUE
by Alex Wojcik
Last week I started to think how I could communicate my mood through the language of art and photography. Every day feels the same, we are stuck in the same environment, we perform the same activities. There is this English expression “feeling blue” – feeling depressed or sad. I looked around my house for interesting objects, but then I thought maybe instead I could focus on something conventionally ‘un-interesting’, like recycled rubbish for example, and transform it somehow into something more exciting. I found some paper and some paint and started painting everything the same colour.
What is COLOUR?
the property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way it reflects or emits light. Objects reflect light in different combinations of wavelengths. Our brains pick up on those wavelength combinations and translate them into the phenomenon we call colour.
Tips:
Photography is not only a way to capture images or moments. Artists use photography to document their performances, actions or artworks that they wouldn’t be able to share without it. Think what can you make with the things you have around you. How can you arrange your spaces and objects or even the people you’re currently living with. Quirky is good! Embrace it!
I constructed my still life setups on a table near a window. It’s really fun to watch how the light changes and I experimented capturing the same arrangements during different times of the day. You may prefer the strong shadows and contrasts or maybe a nice soft light will work better for your artwork.
When light is reflected from a colourful surface, the light will take the properties of that colour. I experimented with reflecting (bouncing) the the daylight from the window using readily available objects such as coloured paper, book covers and even cushion covers.
Here are a couple of ‘behind the scenes’ photos where you can see how the light was reflected …..
I found the work of these artists inspiring … Richard Long, Joanna Piotrowska, Francesca Woodman and Laura Letinsky
Lo Resto a Casa (I Stay Home)
by Danilo D’Auria
We came across this series of lockdown photos by Italian portrait and music photographer Danilo D’Auria. Described in PetaPixel magazine as ‘a humorous series of self-portraits that seeks to capture the “solidarity, fear, and sometimes even madness” that he’s seen from his follow Italians as they’ve all been forced to stay indoors.’
Danilo also documents the making of these photographs on his YouTube channel …
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCanGwlvnW7vPPL21Sru7spg
PetaPixel – the full article here …