The Unframing Photography project initiated by the urgency to reconsider the medium as a technology of visuality and its frame as an ideological dispositive of control that distances subjects, sustains an attitude of superiority and enforces an absolute perspective.
Unframing Photography is a collaborative endeavour comprising of different phases and outcomes:
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10 x photographers based in Folkestone have been selected through an open call and invited to confront on a debate about the practice, presence and influence of photography on our daily life with the aim to identify and expose some of the main problems of the art form. (We photographers are used to praise and celebrate the medium and this project offers a rare opportunity to focus on its issues and controversies). Click here to meet the selected photographers.
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The main points of the discussion have been explored by Manuel Vason as conceptual narratives for the realisation of 10 x Public Interventions performed by his alter-ego, the PhotoPerformer and documented by the participant photographers. Click here to view the 10 live actions.
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The resultant photographic documentation has then be printed and presented on large sculptural structures constructed with found and recycled materials and temporary displayed on key locations in Folkestone. Click here to view the 10 Artworks.
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Each sculptural display has been documented with a 360º camera and uploaded on Google Street Map so to facilitate the encounter with a larger virtual audience. Click here to view the sculptures on Google Map.
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The 10 x resultant artworks and their photographic documentation have been exhibited at the Brewery Tap Project Space (Folkestone) alongside the projection of specially commissioned video documentary showing the various phases of the project and the launch of a publication. Click here to view documentation of the exhibition.
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A video documentary directed and edited by Alex Davies showing the different phases of the project has been projected at the auditorium of Quaterhouse. Click here to watch an edited version of vimeo.
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A publication of the project will be launched in August 2022. Click here to view more info.
The 10 photographers based in Folkestone selected through an open call
Aida Silvestri
Aida Silvestri is a visual activist and educator of Eritrean descent based in the UK. Her innovative mixed-media portraiture and multi-faceted practice amplify marginalised voices and migrant/displaced/diasporic communities - raising awareness of human rights issues and representational politics in the arts and beyond.
Amy Johnson
Amy Johnson is a Fine-Art photographer based in Folkestone with a passion for the environment and ecology. Graduated from Solent University, alongside her BA she was also awarded the Rosy Maguire Memorial Prize in recognition of her dedication to working in the darkroom, as greatly encouraged by Rosy herself. The artist explores a variety of mediums both in the analogue and digital workspace, frequently merging experimental techniques from the two.
Chelsey Browne
Chelsey Browne is a Canadian photographer and curator who divides her time between
Folkestone and London. She studied Fine Art at Central St Martins in London and has
curated over 20 exhibitions.
She is an established portrait photographer, travelling the world for VIP shoots with private
clients including celebrities, presidents and Royal Families in the Middle East.
As well as project manager for Venice Agendas and Strangelove festival, she is the founder
of Arts Council England funded projects Platform Art Projects and Print Editions Gallery.
Igor Emmerich
I’m a Spanish-born photographer and filmmaker whose work is known for its imaginative and original slant on subjects.
With over 30 years experience of shooting on location and in the studio for editorial, design, and advertising clients in the UK and worldwide, I approach each job with a fresh perspective and the highest attention to detail.
My work is about capturing both portrait and lifestyle imagery by spotting the unusual in the world and capturing unique moments in time.
I enjoy taking photos of candid, everyday observations of the world and the people around me, focusing on finding the beauty in the mundane and celebrating human ingenuity and real life stories, creating positive and funny images. Regardless of the location or lighting scenario for each project, I love coming up with inventive and spontaneous ideas.
With my portrait photography, I like to inject my sense of humour which helps build a connection to the people who are sitting for me, capturing something both distinctive and natural.
I like to use the same approach to filmmaking as I do to my stills, whether they’re promotional videos or short films.
I directed my first short film The Beast of Romney Marsh, a comedy, which has gone on to win several awards on the film festival circuit in 2021.
My clients have included BT, Oracle, Canon, GSK, Unilever, Virgin, Vodafone and Diageo and my work has won awards from AOP, Communication Arts, Color Awards and Design Week.
Jacqui Taylor
#jacquitheartist is a character that has been created for the camera aiming to highlight the effect Neoliberalism has had on the individual and society. Repetition, humour, and absurdity are used to create a character that is desperate for attention and at the same times reveals the characters inner anxieties for approval and acceptance.
Lee Hooper
Lee Brodhurst-Hooper is a visual artist based in the coastal town of Folkestone, Kent. With a B.A and M.A in Photography, Lee has both an academic and creative background.
Lee has worked extensively in photography, having worked as picture editor for publications such as The Stool Pigeon newspaper, Artrocker Magazine, with photography commissions from Dazed and Confused, the BBC and The Guardian.
With a varied creative background, it’s Lee’s experience of working in creative strategy for organisations like Getty Images that have cemented Lee’s holistic take on photography.
Lee’s photographic work is centred around behaviour, through his voracious fascination with people, and their lives. He’s particularly interested in tribes, and their unique visual nuances and behaviours.
Using a mixture of traditional film techniques and digital practice, Lee aims to capture emotion and reality of each of his subjects and their surroundings, creating visuals that tap into a feel, and start a conversation.
Matt Rowe
Matt Rowe is an artist, photographer based in Folkestone.
Rowe’s practice is focused on vernacular symbols and the language of folklore.
He often combines various disciplines, ceramics, model making and textiles to produce sculptural costumes and props that play with notions of regional and local identity.
Continually photographing his structures, he is developing a portfolio of landscape images that blur the real and the imaginary conveying a sense of indigenous folk practices and mysterious phenomena lurking in the routines of daily life.
Born Wakefield 198, Rowe studied ceramics at University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.
Recent shows include:
John barley corn must die, New Brewery Arts. Cirencester
The 58th art video program, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Waking the Giant, Fort Burgoyne, Dover.
Mick Williamson
"I find the everyday world an exciting and intriguing place, and for the last few years, one aspect of my photographic work has been the daily use of a small film camera to photograph the ordinary and everyday events around me, extending notions of the family album and the diary where daily events are celebrated and memories constructed.
I was Senior Lecturer in Charge of Photography at Sir John Cass School of Art in London to 2018 when I left to concentrate on my own practice. I have also had various exhibitions and run photography workshops in this country and abroad."
Thiery Bal
Thierry Bal is a photographer specialised in contemporary art. He creates photographic work with and for artists, and commissioned photography for galleries, arts institutions and editorial publications internationally. His approach to photography is to place and apply it in relationship
to other art forms, such as dance, architecture and moving image.
This is a video recording I created and shared with the 10 photographers/collaborators to highlight some aspects of photography that normally are ignored or purposely left 'off the frame'.
