Prague Day 4

Prague Zoo
After spending the first 3 days almost non stop sightseeing, we opted for something more relaxing on day 4 of our trip - Prague Zoo was described as Prague's hidden gem, but seeing as there was a road sign almost outside our hotel we decided it couldn't be that hidden.
How wrong were we?!
The lovely reception guy at Miss Sophie's told us if we got to Nádraží Holešovice that there was a nice relaxing walk through Letna Park that would take 40 minutes or 20 mins brisk walk.
It took almost an hour of brisk walking after having to double back around the expo grounds next to the Tesla arena, however it was worth an exploration with it's fantastic Art Deco buildings



So after a prolonged walk across the park, across the river to Troja and then the Zoo sign posts vanishing, we managed to see a group of school kids and decided to follow, luckily this lead us to the Zoo rather than making us seem creepy.
So we paid the approx £5 entry fee for the day (for a mere £18 you can get a yearly pass!) and entered into the most amazing environment and were immediately face with brightly coloured Macaws.
It just wasn't like any zoo I've ever been to, whilst some areas were 'enclosed' by nets (I assume to stop birds flying away) but allowed you to enter via a kissing gate system, some were just open to allow the animals free reign of the zoo/park which is built into a hillside with a variety of surfaces. Everything from rocks for mountain goats to pastures for ponies, and a very real river running through the middle housing the same sort of wildlife you'd see in a British river - mallards, moor hens and kingfishers.
We spent a good 7 hours there and still missed out a huge chunk of the Zoo, but our personal highlights were the Indonesian Jungle area with Fruit Bats & Talapoin monkey




Also when this monkey decided to pee at me


And the lemur area is amazing, they just sit on the fence literally inches away from you and pose, so cute

and finally the chair lift, I wasn't brave enough to take that transports you from the top to bottom of the Zoo or vice versa

I can honestly say this was a mind blowing visit, totally exceeded al expectations in terms of how close you can get to most of the animals, and for big cats and other more dangerous ones, they are behind thick perspex rather than a cage, also for a top tourist attraction the food and drink was very reasonable once again (less than £2 a large beer etc..)
If you go to Prague and don't czech out the Zoo, you're a fool!

Central Library

A few weeks ago me & a few flickr friends spent some time at Manchester's Central Library, photographing the building before it closes for major renovations. Due to obvious changes that will occur, the library have decided to relax the rules on photography, so as long as we didn't photography people's faces etc (well unless we asked first) we could go mad and also post them to the Get Wisdom flickr group.
I will confess, it was my first time back in the building since I was at university and it was actually a lot more impressive than I recall. Designed by architect E. Vincent Harris and built in 1934 the 'heart of the library' The Great Hall (previously known as a the Reading Room) is probably the most recognized architecturally for it's large glass dome in the roof.
Outside this room is an outer corridor of beautiful arches
and more stacks of books,along with seemingly endless rows of tiny drawers containing microfilm cards etc.. which seemed to hold the group attention for a quite while, yielding some varied results.

Most of the library is now closed, with the ground floor general readers library closing 18th June and the Theatre & Box office closing 4th July with the newly renovated library planned to reopen in 2013 for more info check the Manchester Libraries website

In Conversation with Don McCullin: Shaped By War

The Imperial War Museum North is currently hosting the mind blowing retrospective exhibition Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin spanning his lengthy 50+ year career. Considered one of the most prolific photographers of conflict, the exhibition contains more than 200 photographs along with video interviews and objects including the Nikon camera that stopped a bullet, his US army issue helmet along side numerous visas and assignment letters. The exhibition charts McCullin's career - from the East End Gangsters and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus to the Vietnam War and Northern Ireland conflict.
Don McCullin’s first published photograph: The Guv’nors of Seven Sisters Road, London,1958. Photograph © Don McCullin
A distraught woman flees the village of Gazabaran with her family after the killing of her husband, Cyprus 1964.Photograph © Don McCullin

Along side the exhibit the museum also hosted a talk in March: in Conversation with Don McCullin. Fluctuating sound levels coupled with screeching microphones meant we missed the first few questions. But aside from technical difficulties it was a really enlightening and deeply honest interview. The overall impression of McCullin is of a very sombre and despondent man. He has obviously been deeply affected by what he has experienced and photographed over the years and this sadness carries over into his more recent landscape photography. For me the most surprising comment of the evening was from McCullin on how he looks back over his lifetimes work and feels it meant nothing, as it changed nothing (ie didn't help stop the wars), and I (like I suspect a lot of people) disagree - whilst his photographs may not have forced politicians into action, I think he has certainly influenced and affected, we the general populous. Certainly I think photography in the media was a strong factor in my joining the protests against the Iraq war in 2001. I think war photography was more in your face, in the danger than the tea time television correspondents ever were. So I think he really does under estimate the power of his work.
Back on topic though, as I mentioned earlier McCullin also talked about his landscape work towards the end of the interview - black and white stark winter landscapes that evoke the same sense of sorrow you get from his photographs of war and from the man himself. Dark, yet not depressing the way some landscapes can be, he has been quoted as saying ‘My landscapes have become a form of meditation. They have healed a lot of my pain and guilt.’
Iron Age fort in the snow, Somerset, 1992.Photograph © Don McCullin

Shaped by War is on display at the Imperial War Museum North until 13th June 2010, an accompanying book Don McCullin - Shaped By War is also available in the Gift Shop.

Photocamp Bradford

Now I know this is a bit of a late review, but hey I've been busy!
Photocamps are described as 'Open Photography Conferences' or 'Unconferences' with the simple aim of sharing knowledge.
Whilst quite a few of my friends have attended previous photocamps, this was my first.
Held at the National Media Museum in Bradford, 150 people attended this event which had something for everyone. Starting off with the welcomes and a keynote speech from Natalie Dybisz aka Miss Aniela apparently somewhat a flickr celeb, she gave a run down on how she got started in photography (as described in the link), she seemed to divide the crowd into those who love her and those who hate her given the comments I overheard as we left the theatre & throughout the day. I'm not sure if was arrogance or naivety on Natalie's part but she didn't seem to really understand why people who've put a lot of time & effort going to college/university to study photography, researching, applying for grants etc.. would be somehow aggrieved at someone getting exhibitions and making money from photography (I mean that's the dream right, making a living doing something you love) almost instantly - I suppose it's akin to the whole Pop Idol/X-Factor thing, no longer to you need to spend years struggling playing every dive in every town, instant celebrity is around the corner! But back on subject, I found Natalie's photos quite interesting, with an obvious nod to David Lachapelle's fashion stuff in terms of style.

There was a wide variety of sessions throughout the day, including practicals (making a pin hole camera, creating still life set ups, strobism to mention but a few), discussions and gallery tours it was very hard to choose what to see & do, but I ended up not attending any of the practical sessions which surprised myself.
The Museum had on a exhibition of Don McCullin's photographs In England, gritty black & white shots showing poverty & wealth and that in between - worth checking the above link as (my)words cannot do it justice.

Without waffling on too much, the sessions I attended included how to promote yourself on-line with loads of useful tips to do with building a website etc..
Desmond Wee did a fantastic talk on his project "How to Wear A Camera like a Tourist", which reminded me a lot of of the sort of stuff I did & researched on my MA course many moons ago!
Also the king of the pano's ASBO Allstar aka Neil did a really cool talk on how (allegedly) easy it is to create stunning panoramas and stitch them together


There was also a street session on the Sunday, but I didn't make it to this event but saw some excellent shots from the day. A varied selection from both days taken by organisers & participants alike can be seen here
All in all a fantastic event and I'm looking forward to the next one!

Studio Session

For my City & Guilds Level 3 course in Photography, I have chosen as one of my projects to do portraits. I chose to do portraits as it's something well out of my comfort zone but something I really would like to get into. For the course I need to produce at least 10 photographs, so I'm planning on taking two shots of each person - a formal studio shot and a relaxed candid type shot (of course meaning I need at least 5 willing people). My first shoot was in the studio last week with Jon, Gideon and Adam. I brought a few props with me (a football and a few hats) and the studio itself was equipped with a few bits & bobs to keep ideas going and amusement levels up, Jon & Gids even brought wardrobe changes! Many thanks to the guys as I think I would have floundered badly if I'd had to do a lot of directing myself. I learnt a lot from this shoot, especially around the ideas and planning I need to do myself in future. I've got started on the processing tonight and it should keep me busy for a few weeks yet (managed to take around 150 photos!)






The rest of the photos can be found here (more will be added in future).

Iraq - The Space Between

German born photographer Christoph Bangert has spent several months over the last 3 years in Iraq on assignment from the New York Times - during some of the most dangerous times when most other journalists had long gone. The result is some of the most shocking and stunning photographs I've seen, and I don't shock easily.
I was originally drawn to the exhibition after seeing this image, taken in the Karada neighbourhood of Baghdad, during a sandstorm.

But don't be lulled into a false sense of security - Bangert bridges the gap with unexpected striking and beautiful images of a warzone mixed in with what you might expect; images of death, pain and destruction and then everything in between - the civilians caught in the middle who still have to go about their daily business. I was fortunate enough to go to Bangert's talk at the Midland hotel and it was good to see he hadn't been number or come accustomed to the experiences of war.
He also told us the ironic story behind the image below (the cover image from the accompanying book) of an abandoned children's play area

The soldiers built it for the Iraqi people, but because of it's location people are too afraid to use it. This is a truly breathtaking exhibition that really needs to be seen.
The exhibition Iraq - The Space In Between is on at the Artland Gallery in Manchester until 14th March 2009.

London part 2

On our second day in London, we got up slightly hung over and headed into central London, first stop Oxford Street. With the credit crunch and recession looming it was sale central. We stopped off at Debenhams to browse their sale with up to 25% off, we got loads of bargains and did a fair bit of Christmas shopping. After that it was off to Russell Square to check out the Babylon exhibition at the British Museum in the pouring rain, unfortunately it was sold out for the day, so we dried off by browsing the permanent collections and realised that interspersed with the very old was the very new in the form of Statuephila - Contemporary British Sculpture including Damien Hirst's painted skulls, Antony Gormley's Case for an Angel 1 and my favourite Ron Mueck's mask II - which along with the easter island statue fell foul to the "crushing your head" thing



After grabbing a bite to eat in the nearby Museum Street, we headed off towards the Barbican as we had tickets for the snappy titled This Is War! Robert Capa at Work, Gerda Taro On the Subject of War. it was a very interesting photographic exhibition, concentrating a lot on Capa & Toro's coverage of the Spanish Civil War, but also down stairs included photos and video pieces based on more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought maybe the upstairs section (Capa & Toro) could've been better laid out, it wasn't clear where the exhibition started and finished, and there were several shots that were displayed twice for reasons unknown. But if you're in London, definitely worth a visit. We also managed to visit the Curve Gallery on the ground floor of the Barbican which was hosting Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Frequency & Volume which is a large scale installation piece contains radios (that seem to double as projectors)that you walk past, depending on the size and strength of your shadow on the wall, the projectors tune to various radio frequencies, displayed on the walls. It's quite surreal listening to a mish mash of local, pirate and national radio stations mixed in with emergency services radio frequencies etc... a lot of fun to be had though - great for kids.

It was getting on for after 6pm at this point, so we took the tube a couple of stops to Brick Lane, in my old neighbourhood of Whitechapel to meet with Julia and Carly who I hadn't seen for well over 2 years! We had a couple of drinks in the Archers pub and then went for a curry. Sorry can't remember the name of the curry house, but as usual the standard was high whilst being less that £10 a head including drinks.

Monday was our day home but we still had the morning to kill, so we checked out the Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990–2005 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, just off Trafalgar Square. I was really looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint as one of my favourite Leibovitch photos of the White Stripes was on display

it also contained a variety of "famous" images and faces along side personal photos of the late Susan Sontag. Again, this is definitely worth checking out if you have £12 to spare.

After this there was not much time to do anything except grab a quick bite to eat anc head back to St Pancras for what turned out to be a rather uneventful train journey home.

Photographic Portrait Prize 2007 - The Lowry

I went to the Lowry Centre today to catch the Photographic Portrait exhibition, which closes this weekend. And whilst I found it quite enjoyable I do have mixed feelings over whether I enjoyed the exhibition or not, maybe it was my own fault for expecting something slightly grittier than what I saw, my preconceptions being led in particular by this photograph

Portrait Prize winner Joseline Ingabire with her daughter Leah Batamuliza, Rwanda, from the series Intended Consequences: Mothers of Genocide, Children of Rape, by Jonathan Torgovnik © the artist.
I suppose I was expecting portraits that told a story about the subject, but I found many were simply portraits of children who were in some way related to the photographer, that appeared to have been used for the photo as they were readily available.. or again, maybe I read too much/too little from the snippet of information on the descriptions.
The photos I did find very striking included Alex Hurricane Higgins by Michael Donald (albeit displayed in a rather odd position in the gallery) and Alice & Fish By David Stewart. A small sample of the finalists can be found on the National Portrait Gallery website.