International Photo Stage For Graduates' Powerful Pictures
7 March 2013
'Uncollectables: A Museum of Being' by Lauren Spencer.
Preparing to shoot 'Blast Sequence' by Simon Weldon.
Mimi Dendias's 'The Pink Lens Effect'.
A lost industry, our 'rose tinted' view of loved ones and political corruption are among the subjects tackled in University of Derby graduates' exhibitions for an international photography festival.
The FORMAT International Photography Festival, held in Derby every two years, will launch at 6pm this evening (March 7) with a fire walk at the city's Cathedral Green; followed by a spectacular outdoor show. Exhibition launches will follow at 7pm at QUAD, Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Déda, St Werburgh's Chapel, The Silk Mill, Artsmith, Banks Mill Studios, Derby Westfield and Artcore.
Exhibitors will include University of Derby BA (Hons) Photography and Commercial Photography degree graduates, whose work can be seen at the Banks Mill Studios at 71 Bridge Street, in Derby, throughout the month-long free festival.
Their exhibitions will include Chris Baker's beautiful display of 'cyanotypes' - one of the earliest photographic printing processes, which creates vibrant blue images - to display plant images on silk.
Chris, 25, originally from York, explains: "I chose the photographic process to celebrate the work of Anna Atkins (1799 - 1871), a botanist and one of the first female photographers, and the now largely vanished silk industry, which was a major employer in the city in the 19th Century.
"The plant and flower images on the cyanotypes are also a comment on how nature has now taken over these once busy industrial sites."
More modern issues and techniques inform the work of fellow graduate Gavin Wells. His series of images, called Absolute Power, takes images of politicians and cultural figures, and adds collected headlines documenting alleged political misdeeds into the digital code of the image. These headlines 'corrupt' the digital portraits, acting as a visual metaphor which reflects the accusations of corruption in professional lives.
Derby-based Gavin, 31, said: "So much of modern politics is about appearances, when what's going on underneath might be very different. By electronically 'corrupting' the politicians' images, here we get to see what lies beneath."
Changing perspectives, this time of the ones we love, is also at the heart of an exhibition by Mimi Dendias.
The 27-year-old Derby graduate, originally from Canada, has called her exhibition The Pink Lens Effect. Digital film portraits of men and women shift in seconds from a normal photo, to an altered and flawless one, to one shot with a pink tinge.
Mimi said: "The pink lens effect is what psychologists call the early period of a relationship when partners' brains have difficulty seeing the flaws in each other, or you could call it seeing through 'rose tinted spectacles'. I was interested in visually representing this occurrence, which can have both positive and negative results."
Other University of Derby graduates' exhibitions at the Banks Mill Studios during the FORMAT festival will include:
- Uncollectables: A Museum of Being - a chest of collector's drawers filled with individual prints showing images of birds in flight, skies, clouds and other fleeting moments. The photographer is Lauren Spencer, 26, of Derby.
- Blast Sequence -16 to 24 - a series of powerful images of blasting at the Tunstead limestone quarry in Buxton, Derbyshire. The images are by Simon Weldon, 23, originally of Farsley in Yorkshire.
- 60/134 - a series of Facebook portrait photos converted to QR (or Quick Response) Codes (a barcode containing information, 'readable' by mobile phones and scanning devices), as a comment on modern technology's tendency to cause social isolation. The series is by Michelle Robinson, 22, originally of Berkshire.
Professor Huw Davies - Dean of the University's Faculty of Arts, Design and Technology; and a co-organiser and exhibitor at the FORMAT festival - said: "FORMAT 13 is a terrific, internationally renowned showcase for photography and for our graduates to be a part of."
FORMAT is curated by Louise Clements, Artistic Director of QUAD and FORMAT, and hosted and organised by QUAD and the University of Derby. For more information about the FORMAT festival go to its website at www.formatfestival.com
For further press information please contact Sean Kirby, University of Derby Press and PR Officer, on 01332 591891 or email:
s.kirby@derby.ac.uk
