Photo-Forum

On Thursday 12 August we will have Carmen Valino and Patricio B Fuentes showing their work.

Carmen Valino is a freelance photographer and has been based in London for six years. Before coming to London she worked for the newspapers El Ideal Gallego, Deporte Campeon and La Voz de Galicia in Spain. Carmen is a regular contributor to El Pais, El Mundo, Publico, the Archant Group
and Trinity Mirror newspapers.

Carmen has also worked for National News and Pictures, Camera Press and PA with her work published in The Guardian, The Times, Daily Express, The Daily Mail, The Independent and The Evening Standard. She also covers music and musicians for Rolling Stone magazine (Spanish edition)
as well as shooting video for newspaper websites and is the main photographer for The Olympic Park Legacy Company.

Carmen Valino will show her portfolio of news, entertainment and features together with a selection of her work from East London.

Patricio B Fuentes was born in Santiago, Chile and describes himself as a documentary, social, street photographer. He has been documenting the richness and diversity of cultures in South and Central America since 2003 with personal projects on religious celebrations, carnivals, rituals and everyday life. He graduated from Reportage and Photojournalism course at London College of Communication last year.

Patricio will present stories about worship in the Mexican culture and its religious celebrations including The Virgin of Guadalupe, the cult of St Death, The Day of the Dead and St Judas Tadeo.

As always we’ll raffle prints from the photographers to help fund Photo-Forum. The raffle pays for food in the pub after the show (so please come along to share a plate and a glass!) with donations to good causes when there’s any left over. The Photo-Forum raffle is the cheapest ever way to buy a print from one of today’s leading photographers, please support it and you could win some great work for just a few pounds.

This month Susannah Ireland and Steve Forrest will be showing their work.

Susannah graduated from the NCTJ photojournalism course in 2005 and spent a year learning the ropes with News Team International in Birmingham covering everything from page 3 to premiership football. Susannah won The Times Young Photographer of the Year in 2007 and moved to London on a six month contract. She now freelances in London working primarily for The Times and The Independent on news and features.

Susannah will show photographs from Afghanistan last August where she covered the elections for The Independent while embedded with the Welsh Guards. We’ll also see her ongoing project on rowing and boat clubs in London as well as a look behind the scenes at the Royal Ballet commissioned by The Times but which never saw the light of day.

Steve Forrest originally trained in graphic design/advertising and started his career as an Art Director in one of London’s most prestigious advertising agencies, before working his way down to a small crappy ad agency on the Edgware Road. Realising that this career path was going in the wrong direction, he quit, bought a camera and went traveling before enrolling on a press photography course at Stradbrooke College in Sheffield, aged 30.

Following a stint as a staff photographer at a local Oxford paper photographing sunflowers and face-painting he spent six months covering the first Intifada in The Gaza Strip, five years working for the world’s maddest boss at Guzelian in Bradford before escaping to Africa to cover the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia. After a year of that Steve came back to London and took over an agency called Insight-Visual. He now runs a small agency called Workers’ Photos with his partner Amaya Roman and is also a member of Panos Pictures in London. For the past seven years he has been a regular freelancer for The New York Times and other international newspapers and magazines.

Steve Forrest will show some of his portrait work and photos from two projects: Paranoid Britain and The Westminster Village.

As always we’ll raffle prints from the photographers to help fund Photo-Forum. The raffle pays for food in the pub after the show (so please come along to share a plate and a glass!) with donations to good causes when there’s any left over. The Photo-Forum raffle is the cheapest ever way to buy a print from one of today’s leading photographers, please support it and perhaps win some great work for just a few pounds.

On Thursday 10 June we will have Irina Kalashnikova and Tal Cohen showing their work. We’re going to start the evening at 6:00 prompt with our much delayed snowy weather slide show and that’ll be followed by our British election 2010 slide show. If you have pictures for either show then please send jpeg files to: photoforumuk@gmail.com as soon as possible and by 9pm Tuesday 8th June at the latest.

Snow pictures need to be from this last winter and for the election slide show we’d like anything connected to the election, not just the mainstream events but local ones, meetings, leafleting, protests, jokes and stunts – anything at all that has to do with the election and the period immediately following up to the State Opening last Tuesday.

Russian photographer Irina Kalashnikova will be showing work from her two trips to North Korea in 2008 and 2009. Irina has been working as photographer since graduating from the London College of Printing in
2006.
Recent exhibitions and awards:

• The British Press Photographers Year 2009 – show at the National Theatre, London;
• The National Union of Journalists’ “Stand Up For Photojournalism 2009”;
• ‘The North Koreans’ slideshow presentation in Foreign Correspondents Club, Beijing, China (August 2009);
• New York PhotoFestival by Trolley (May 2009);
• FormatFestival, UK (March 2009), Bang and Olufsen showrooms, Derby, UK (March 2009);
• Colour Photography Award (2007)
• Book ‘The North Koreans’, Trolley Books, UK, June 2010.

Tal Cohen will be showing his work and talking about going from photographer to photo editor. Tal has been working as a press photographer in Israel and the West Bank since 1992. From 2001 until 2005 Tal was working for the French Press Agency (AFP), as their photographer in Tel Aviv. He then relocated to London in 2008 and after two years working as a freelance photographer in the UK he was appointed by Israel’s oldest daily newspaper “Haaretz” to the role of Chief Photo Editor.

As always we’ll raffle prints from the photographers to help fund Photo-Forum. The raffle pays for food in the pub after the show (so please come along!) with donations to good causes when there’s any left over. The Photo-Forum raffle is the cheapest ever way to buy a print from one of today’s leading photographers, please support it and perhaps win some great work for just a few pounds.

This month we will have Ant Upton and Sarah Lee showing their work.

Ant Upton began working shifts on the Daily Mirror in 1990. He has also worked for the Daily Star, the Sunday Express, Today, and was at the Times for seven years before starting his own PR and Marketing company. For the last two years he’s been a regular with the Telegraph and PA. Ant will be showing his photographs of disabled servicemen training at a paralympic centre in San Diego, USA.

Sarah Lee has worked for The Guardian since 1999 as one of their team of photographers working on freelance contracts. She mostly shoots arts features and portraits rather than hard news. Sarah will be presenting a set from her work on the Ian Dury film “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll” as well as a selection of her other work for the Guardian.

This month we have a show of work from Alan Davidson and James Vellacott.

Alan Davidson started straight from school as a messenger at Keystone more than 40 years ago. Since 1977 he has worked mainly for the Daily Mail as a contract freelance, specialising in showbiz and social but with a news photographer’s view. Nowadays Alan shoots mainly news and politics, just a different flavour of showbiz but starting at 7am instead of finishing at 7 am. He will be showing us his early black and white showbiz, social and royal photographs.

James Vellacott started out working in a camera shop in 1987, James worked for The Daily Mirror from 1995 until last year. He will show us a selection of his work and talk about making the move into video.

As always we’ll have a raffle of prints from the photographers to help fund Photo-Forum. The raffle pays for food in the pub after the show
with donations to good causes when there’s any left over. The Photo-Forum raffle is the cheapest ever way to buy a print from one of
today’s leading photographers, please support it and perhaps win some great work at a giveaway price.

Upcoming Events

The London Photographers’ Branch is proud to announce a pre-election
rally on Terror Laws, Civil Liberties & Press Freedom. Supported by
the National Union of Journalists, NUJ London Central Branch and I’m a
Photographer, Not a Terrorist!
http://bit.ly/bM80Gf
Friends Meeting House in Euston.
Tuesday 13 April 7:00pm

Photographers & the Police Seminar
http://bit.ly/cMCduo
Speakers; Human Rights Lawyer Shamik Dutta, Photographers
David Hoffman & Paul Stewart. Chaired by Nick Dunmur
AOP 81 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4QS
Wednesday 14 April 2010 6.30pm – 8.30pm