Season's Greetings

Woman at Sensō-ji Temple © Kate Elliott

Wishing you all a fabulous 2016 full of opportunities and happiness

Christmas Print Sale

If you're struggling with ideas for what to buy someone (or yourself!) for Christmas, why not pick up a bargain-priced limited edition print!

15% of all proceeds will go to The Albert Kennedy Trust, supporting LGBT homeless young people in crisis.

Each image comes in an edition of 20, printed on 30 x 40 cm (standard frame size) archival photographic paper and priced at £40.

Prints are signed and numbered on the reverse.

For all purchases, and for further information about each of the images, please click here.

*Please note, in order to guarantee delivery in time for Christmas, all orders must be made by the end of Friday 11th December.*

Boxing Boys

I have just been sorting through some images in my archive and came across this project that I shot almost 10 years ago. The images feel very relevant to what I am currently working on so I thought it was timely for a post.  

 

All images © Kate Elliott

The above images were taken during an Amateur Boxing Association try-out in Thame, Oxfordshire. These boys start out young – as young as five – and in their pursuit of boxing are bound in a close-knit community. There is a huge pressure to succeed, but within the ring this macho passion contrasts with the boys’ youth and vulnerability. It was this contrast, that I was interested in exploring in my photographs.

Siobhan Davies Dance youth commission at The Photographers' Gallery

Last weekend a group of young performers, in collaboration with choreographer Freddie Opoku-Addaie, presented a dance piece developed using The Photographers’ Gallery’s camera obscura. A Siobhan Davies Dance youth commission, this piece was performed both within the darkened space of the camera obscura and in the public square outside the gallery. 

Below are a few images I took during the performance - Darkened Room: What do you see?

 

 

 All images © Kate Elliott

Translation in the Margins and National Poetry Day

I may be a day late but yesterday's National Poetry Day came as I was busily working to a deadline for a job I did last weekend for Writers' Centre Norwich, during which I photographed a day long symposium titled Translation in the Margins, at the Free Word Centre in Farringdon. My ears always seem to switch off when I am taking photos, but the snippets I did catch sounded really interesting.

I was also asked to take a few portraits during the day. The image below is of Writer and Poet Yrsa Daley-Ward who did a live reading from her self-published book bone. (I have since ordered myself a copy from Amazon!)

 Yrsa Daley-Ward © Kate Elliott

Click here for further information about the event.

Contemporary Portraiture at the V&A

A couple of weeks ago I ran a course on Contemporary Portraiture at the V&A. When I was first approached to put together a plan for the course, I was very excited to see it would coincide with a new display at the V&A called Facing History: Contemporary Portraiture. 

Photograph by Bettina Von Zwehl from the series 'Made up Love Song', exhibited in Facing History at the V&A

 

Much of the thinking that goes into my work involves 'looking back', whether it be making historical references or a more personal exploration of the past, so I was pleased to be able to incorporate a discussion around how contemporary practitioners have been influenced by history into the course. 

Click here for further information about the course, and to see some of the photographs taken throughout the day.

The Study of Peter Pan - continued

Click here for further information about the project.

The World in London, in China

The World in London is currently showing as part of the exhibition Work, Rest and Play at OCT Loft in Shenzhen, China. 

Work, Rest and Play is the first touring exhibition in China devoted to British photography and it features some of the most significant photographers of the time, including Shirley Baker, Cecil Beaton, Terence Donovan, John Hinde, Tony Ray Jones, Martin Parr, Tim Walker, Tom Wood and Catherine Yass. It explores the diversity of fifty years of British Photography, revealing the quirks of a national character and the traditions which fed into its everyday life.

The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with The Pin Projects and has been produced with the support of the British Council as part of the UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange.
 

Installation photograph from Work Rest Play at the OCT-Loft, Shenzhen
(The World in London is being exhibited as a slideshow on the above screen)

© The Pin Projects

Courtesy of The Photographers' Gallery, London

Tigana Sari by Kate Elliott - for The World in London

The World in London is a major public art project initiated by The Photographers’ Gallery in 2012 to coincide with the London Olympic and Paralympic Games. The project presents 204 portraits of people living in London, taken between 2009 – 2012 by British and international photographers. Each portrait shows a person or people from one of the 204 nations taking part in the London 2012 Games, accompanied by individual stories. It is a celebration of photographic portraiture as an artistic form of expression as well as the city’s rich cultural diversity. Click here for further information.

Contemporary Portraiture Course at the V&A

After the conclusion of a six-week Creative Photography Course I ran at the V&A at the end of last year, I was very pleased when they invited me back to teach another course. This time it is a one-day course in Contemporary Portraiture, taking place on the 1st August.

The Summer booklet, featuring the course, popped through my door this morning. So now's time to start thinking about what I'm going to do... Perhaps a good excuse for another trip to the Museum...

Visiting Photographer - City of Westminster College

Yesterday I went to City of Westminster College to lead an end-of-year crit for HNC Photography students, together with UCA lecturer Grant Petrey.

Having studied photography in the past (and having taken part in many crits as a student) it was really interesting to come at it from a visiting practitioner and tutor's point of view, and to be able to view the work, and listen to what the students had to say about it, without any preconceptions.

Click here for more information about the course, the students, and their work.

Documentation photos © Diane Bielik