We’re very sorry to have to cancel tomorrow’s Photo-Forum due to flooding at Jacobs.

Apologies for the short notice, please tell anyone you think may be planning to come. We expect to be back in action next month, second Thursday of June, as normal.

For our April Photo-Forum we’ll be showing photographs by Rick Pushinsky and Natalie Behring.

Rick Pushinsky, born 1976 in Manchester, England, has been a professional photographer for 4 years. Prior to that he studied fine art and was a practising artist for over 10 years while working part time as a picture researcher and editor at a number of newspapers and magazines.

His editorial clients include The Financial Times, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times and The Independent.

Rick’s personal projects include The Death of Arthur, a series of images depicting scenes from the stories of King Arthur. He is currently working on a film based on the Old Testament story of creation.

Rick Pushinsky will show us his portrait work and talk about what he thinks about while he takes them. His show will include influential paintings and drawings by others as well as his own work.

Natalie Behring is a freelance photojournalist based in Portland, Oregon. She has photographed news events, portraits, and documentary reports in the USA, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Asia.

A Chinese speaker, she has spent more than a decade documenting the modernization of China. She has won several awards in the NPPA and POY contests. Working languages include Chinese (Mandarin) and German.

Natalie Behring will show us work from her ongoing long term project on New Cities and if time allows she’ll also present other recent work.

Fire regulations limit us to 100 people in Jacobs’ Pro Lounge. We rarely hit this limit but if you can come a few minutes early there’s less chance of being bounced if the evening proves more popular than usual.

As always we’ll raffle prints from the photographers showing their work 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 own a print from one of today’s leading photographers, please support it and you could win some great work for just a few pounds.

We’d also like to let you know about another Jacobs event that promises to be a great evening:

Sean Smith – Conflict in the 21st Century
Thursday 29th March 2012 6 till 8pm

Jacobs Professional are very pleased to invite you a talk and slideshow by Award Winning photographer and Film-maker Sean Smith. Sean will be showing pictures from his recently published book ,Frontlines and more recent work from last year’s events in Libya and Egypt. Sean will also be showing a couple of the short films he has made in the last few years. Copies of the book will be available to buy, Sean will be happy to sign them.

Q+A session after the show, no doubt in the pub later as well. Please arrive for a prompt start at six as this is likely to be a busy event and we only have limited seating available.

For our March Photo-Forum we’ll be showing photographs by Chloe Dewe Mathews and Simon Brown.

Chloe writes: After a degree in Fine Art at Oxford University, I worked in the film industry for four years.  Though an exciting world to inhabit, I found myself questioning its extravagance.  I wanted to work on something quieter, more economical, with room for spontaneity and intimacy with my subject.

My subject matter has been diverse, from Uzbek gravediggers on the Caspian coast, to Hasidic Jews on holiday in Wales. My work has been exhibited in London, Berlin, Buenos Aires and Toronto. Most recently I converted a car-spray workshop into a gallery for the show *Banger Boys of Britain*.  This series was exhibited alongside a crumpled banger car, fork-lifted into the space.

In 2010 I spent nine months hitchhiking from China to Britain, which became a recce for a lifetime’s work ahead.  For the work made on that trip I have been given the Julia Margaret Cameron New Talent Award, a Flash Forward Emerging Photographer’s Award by the Magenta Foundation, and most recently I won the BJP International Photography Award.  As a result CASPIAN was exhibited as a solo show at Foto8 Gallery, London in November 2011.  I will be developing this long-term project into Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran in the year ahead, which will culminate in an exhibition in London in October 2012.

My work is published in magazines internationally including the The New York Times, the Telegraph, the Sunday Times, Huck, Riders (Italy), Dazed and Confused, Vision (China) and Harpers Bazaar.

I have led photography workshops for the charity *Photovoice* in China, Mexico, and Britain.

During this month’s Photo Forum Simon will share some of his favourite images, plus a few failures that highlight the challenges of photography in the underwater world.

As always we’ll raffle prints from the photographers showing their work 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 own a print from one of today’s leading photographers, please support it and you could win some great work for just a few pounds.

For our February Photo-Forum we’ll be showing photographs by Will Hartley and Finbarr O’Reilly.

Born in 1986, Will Hartley grew up in the South West of England. In 2005 he went to Newport University in Wales to study documentary photography. Since graduating he won the ‘shots young photographer of the year 2008′, ‘Ag Magazine Brilliant book awards 2010′ and ‘Vice Kopperbarg Klash 2010′ with his long term project ‘in between dreams’ which followed a group of squatters living in London. The work was exhibited in Candid Arts Trust in London with ‘off the real’ as part of a collective, and a print was selected for the Getty images gallery with the Ian Parry 2010.

He then moved to Bristol and began a long term story of a couple in and out of homelessness, called ‘Lawrence Hill’. Yasmina Reggad from photo festivals curated a projected slideshow called ‘Travelog’  with the project and took it to ‘Paraty em Foco’ in Brazil. The work has since been projected in London, Beirut and Zaragoza photo festival in Spain.

In 2011 he was awarded Honourable Mention in the Magenta Foundation, long-listed for the Terry O’Neil award and exhibited with the Third Floor Gallery in Arles. He now lives In Cardiff, working as a freelance photographer and on long term personal projects.

Finbarr O’Reilly is a Reuters photographer based in Dakar, Senegal. He began his journalism career as a writer and has covered Africa for 10 years. He turned to photography in 2005 and was awarded the World Press Photo of the Year in 2006 for his image of a mother and child at an emergency feeding center in Niger.

He has since won awards for his multimedia work and photography, including first place awards from POYi and the NPPA. His solo exhibition, “Congo On The Wire” has shown in France and Canada. His series on white poverty in South Africa was included in the exhibition “After A” in Italy in 2010. Finbarr is among those profiled in the 2011 documentary “Under Fire: Journalists in Combat, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Academy Awards.

As always we’ll raffle prints from the photographers showing their work 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 own a print from one of today’s leading photographers, please support it and you could win some great work for just a few pounds.

For our first show of 2012 we’re pleased to announce presentations from Elizabeth Dalziel and Carlos Jasso.

Elizabeth Dalziel started her career as a photographer for Siglo 21 newspaper in Guadalajara in 1995. In 1997, she joined the Associated Press covering Latin America from Mexico City. She moved to Israel in 2000 to be a photographer for the AP’s Jerusalem bureau, where she covered the second Intifada. From 2002-2005, she was the South Asia photo editor and chief photographer for the AP in New Delhi, she also took part in photographing the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. In 2005 she was relocated to China, as an AP Beijing bureau staff photographer where she covered mainland China, as well as stories throughout the far East including North Korea. In 2007 She was awarded the John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University, and after a year’s sabbatical she returned to her base in China in 2008 and remained in Beijing until 2010.

Elizabeth is currently based in London, where she works as a freelance photographer specializing in news, feature and daily life photography.

Awards throughout her career include a Human Rights Photography award from the Rutherford Institute for her coverage of the Acteal Massacre in Chiapas and a John Faber award from the Overseas Press Club of America for her coverage of the Second Intifada. The AP has also recognized her work with a President’s award for her coverage of the war in Iraq and a Managing Editor’s award for her coverage of the 2004 Tsunami off the coast of Sri Lanka. She received an Award of Excellence in Pictures of the Year International in 2007 for an Issue Reporting picture story and a Best of Photo Journalism award in 2010.

At the beginning of 2011 he moved to Mexico City where he has been working as the main stringer for Reuters, sporadically covering the drug war and developing a variety of stories on the Mexican culture: female wrestlers, clowns, sex workers on the Day of the Dead , yoga in prisons etc. Prior to Mexico, Carlos worked for 5 years as a freelance photographer in London for the Independent newspaper, Bloomberg and National.

Carlos will present a collection of his work mainly on the drug war but will also show a few stories about Mexican culture

Contact Filip or Donal on 020 7436 6996, prosales@jacobs-photo.co.uk for more info.

As always we’ll raffle prints from the photographers showing their work 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 own a print from one of today’s leading photographers, please support it and you could win some great work for just a few pounds.