Photo Fringe extended beyond Brighton this year, with locations in Lewes, Shoreham, Worthing and Newhaven – 31 in all. I visited a selection in Brighton:
Greater Brighton Metropolitan College
This was a student group exhibition on the theme Climate Change – Real Utopias, although I must admit I was disappointed with the overall quality. Context provided seemed to follow the standard photographic education rote, and was used to justify the images – one of which seemed to be a sunset photo from somebody’s holiday.
Nevertheless there was interesting work by Nolwenn Douglas which seemed to raise issues and the prospect of a narrative.
Phoenix Art Space
This space featured mini exhibitions by a series of collectives, each on a titled theme – although those themes were often very loosely followed. Again the suggestion of a narrative was a distinguishing factor in the work, with images combined in collages, sometimes using layers and both framed and unframed pictures to create a 3D element. The “collective” notion worked best for me in the images of London, where the photographers had stuck to their subject and were able to exhibit their images in a dynamic grouping that acted as one work.
Jon Tonks, now represented by The Photographers Gallery, displayed a selection from his ongoing series Pub Town. This is an interesting idea that brings portraiture and place together by photographing all the staff and regulars of traditional pubs – sites are scouted in advance and a date set to encourage everyone to turn up. It’s a good expression of community – it’s fun to speculate about all the different characters and how a venue brings them together.
These images were b&w shot with a large format camera – large full frame prints were made to show the detail. Other b&w shots in the exhibition included a couple of interesting images that featured objects (such as a chair) with a small round mirror that featured a human detail such as a hand pointing – which looked a bit like a fragment from “Creation of Adam”. However as a series this was perhaps a bit limited.
35 North Gallery
I was rather bemused by Sarah Ketelaars project Wherever We Go. It drew on family history and portraiture as well techniques such as collage and hand-colouring and painting on the prints to explore a Latvian heritage from a modern British setting. At its best there was some wonderful portraits, including of a girl with plaits that one the metro imaging award and a young woman in traditional dress turned away from her camera being hugged by her much smaller grandmother (?) of whom only the arms are visible as they encircle her granddaughter. But it was rather a jumble of b&w and colour and other techniques and to some extent seemed like a rather self-indulgent family album (which was incidentally also my wife’s opinion).
Paxton+Glew
This was a more commercial gallery featuring more affordable prints. There was some excellent drone photography of Brighton – especially the pier – by Jack Parker that made it appear like a section of a circuit board.
Sussex Contemporary
Visiting the Fringe also allowed me to see my own image on show at the i360 as part of an exhibition celebrating Sussex Food and Drink portrayed by Sussex Artists (although this was not technically part of Photo Fringe and different media were represented).
There were also some “swimming panoramas” on display at the i360 West Beach Cafe Bar – a very specific genre (!) taken from in the water looking back at Brighton, these were actually quite beautiful with interesting use of colour and particularly of note for the use of the panorama format to lay out the (liminal?) space.
Gallery Lock In lived up to its name by being a locked up garage space that the owner seemed to have abandoned for the afternoon!
The Regency Town House
This was my favourite space with two rooms of cyanotypes. The first featured work by Tolly Robinson on This Septic Isle, and points out that the cyanotypes technique was developed at the same time as the Brighton sewage system but the latter has only deteriorated since then. A cyanotype printed on linen had a particularly interesting texture. Salt prints were also made using Brighton salt water (note I have discussed doing this at Rye Harbour), the dirty brown tone reminiscent of the faecal waste they were referencing.
The second room featured Elissa Jane Diver’s series Wilding, a response to the rewilding project at Knepp. Here the prints were toned using infusions of natural materials like acorns (particularly relevant for an image of an oak silhouette). The brown suited the woodland subject, and also displayed well against the light brown Victorian paint scheme. There was also an experimental aspect to the work featuring nude self-portraits of the artist with deer antlers and skulls, sometimes using multiple exposures and slow exposures. A large one printed on linen was particularly challenging to print as it needed a large acetate negative professionally printed from a roll and a bath to tone and wash it. I was unsure about the actual image idea but found myself considering it again while writing this – it has something primeval about it and also manages (due to the multiple exposures) to entwine human and natural elements (limbs and antlers) in a dynamic confusion.
Both artists were happy to spend time discussing their techniques with me (I was surprised for example that the Tolly’s cyanotypes were not fixed as I thought they would fade in the sunlit room) – so this gallery visit in particular was a useful learning experience.
One feature of rewilding or nature projects that has always fascinated me is the fact that, in the anthropocene era, a space is never simply left – it needs to be protected, fenced and managed in some way, even if nature is largely left to its own devices. Diver drew parallels with her work, where she makes a space within a frame, starts with a plan but allows improvisation to help fill the space.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- https://2022.photofringe.org/ (Accessed 25.10.2022)
- https://pub.town/ (Accessed 25.10.2022)
- https://www.sarahketelaars.com/whereverwego (Accessed 25.10.2022)
- https://www.jackparker.org.uk/drone (Accessed 25.10.2022)
- https://www.tollyrobinson.com/septic-isle (Accessed 25.10.2022)
- https://2022.rca.ac.uk/students/elissa-jane-diver (Accessed 25.10.2022)
Level 3.1 Learning Log 