“Just press the button and we’ll take care of the rest”, Kodak used to say some time ago. Is this the meaning of photography? Partly, but not only. Photography as a dispenser of images is everywhere: on the bus, on the walls, in magazines, on our food, etc., and we’re so used to it that we underestimate its communicative value.
Born as a “poor art”, photography is now one of the most important meanings of expression in contemporary art, alongside painting, sculpture and architecture.
From Warhol’s symbol-narrative photography to Sherman’s conceptual photography and virtual and digital images, photography has taken on a variety of different forms: in size, printing technique, in single or limited edition prints.
This is where LONDON GROUP SHOW comes in.
It is dedicated to 7 photographers of the present: artists linked with a particular way of using the idiom of photography.
What sets them apart from their modern predecessors is the fact that they question the foundations of art and aesthetics, turning to the eternal themes of the nude, nature and landscapes in an instinctive, unconventional manner employing new techniques and methods.
Most of them use photography, but have not studied it. The cultural message is a product of experimentation, manipulation, putting the emphasis on choice or reception of the user, rather than the quality of use.
ANDREW BETTLES
1965 born in England
1984-1986 attends Bournemouth and Pool College of Art & Design
starts his career in photography working for CBS and WEA record companies
1987 The Face publishes his early photographs
Exhibitions: numerous group shows including: Hamiltons Group Show with Alan Delaney and Graham Cornthwaite, 1989; Aperture Fashion Photograph Show, 1991; Hamiltons Group Show with Alan Delaney, 1991; Amnesty International Flower Show, Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milano, 1995.
His images have been published in the magazines: Elle, Harpers & Queen, Vogue England, The Sunday Times, Observer, Tatler, The Independent, Mirabella England, Madame Figaro.
Andrew considers himself a still-life and fashion photographer with a particular propensity for still-lifes.
As an advertising photographer he produced campaigns for Christian Lacroix Couture Collection in 1988 and DD Tights, Audi, VW and Remy Martin in 1990. Bettles seeks out details: leaves, accessories, flowers, taken out of context and proposed in a strong, incisive manner.
ALVIN BOOTH
1959 born in northeast England.
1976 leaves school to become a professional hairstylist.
Later moves to Oxford, where he becomes interested in photography.
1989 moves to America where he now lives with his wife in New York.
A self-taught photographer, Booth started out with innocent, almost naïf nudes.
His use of unusual materials such as Indian jute, latex and body painting led him to rethink the way we perceive the forms of the nude.
In its most static form, even when immobile, the human body is never completely still but continues its mysterious movements. The soul, the eye, even if merely glimpsed, have a dominant influence on the material nature of bodies. Booth represents the body in a partial, disconnected manner: with an incomplete vision, an unfinished partial posture, a sense of the subject that controls the degree to which it is revealed.
Shyness, power, rejection are revealed in his undressed bodies; and the more opaque the image, the more complex the message is. Old and new, modern and eternal, idealised form and “reduced” form are expressed in a single blurred lens, a single flawed frame.
With Booth, the print and the subject univocally tell the story of the decay inherent in the nature of living, the beautiful, the loved.
ALAN DELANEY
1981 graduates from Berks College of Art and Design.
1989 exhibits his works in a group show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
1991 exhibits his works in a group show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
1993 exhibits his works in a solo show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
Phaidon Press publishes “London After Dark”, edited by Robert Cowan.
Exhibitions: Weston Gallery, Carmel, CA, USA; Private View, Paris; Baudoin Lebon Gallery, Paris; Tony Stone Images.
His photographs have been published in: Architects’ Journal, World Architecture, Sunday Times Magazine, Nippon Camera.
London is Delaney’s favourite subject, for he is fascinated by the diversity and unpredictability of this city, which he sees as a provocation. The light the city gives off in the darkness allows him to reveal some surprising details which would be banal in daylight. Delaney photographs garbage, puddles, fireworks, crushed cars; subjects he considers just as important as historical buildings or magnificent cathedrals.
Delaney says: “I like to find beauty in what is normally considered ordinary or unimportant, and be appreciated for this”.
KEVIN GRIFFIN
1964 born on October 13 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, U.K.
1985 attends Watford College.
1986-1990 assistant to a number of advertising photographers.
1990 works on numerous advertising campaigns.
Exhibitions: Hamiltons Christmas Group Show, London, December 1993; Positive View, Paris, September-October 1994; Hamilton Christmas Group Show, London, December 1995.
Griffin’s grandfather was a photographer and introduced him to the art.
Don McCullin convinced him of the potential of black and white, the technique he continues to prefer.
Though his work is often linked with advertising, Griffin considers personal experimentation the most important aspect of his work as a photographer. In his horizontal landscapes, man and nature are “presences” which are sometimes imperceptible, sometimes declared.
Alongside his suburban landscapes and architectures, Griffin shows us true “installations” of land-art: the signs man makes on earth.
ALLAN CHRISTOPHER JENKINS
1969 born in England.
1989-92 attends Barnsley Sixth Form College, “Art & Design” Foundation.
1992-1995 specialises in “Visual Communication & Photography” at the University of East London.
Jenkins applies a series of original rules to his work as a photographer. The most important rule is use of a natural source of light: light flowing in directly through a window or in an open space. Jenkins is very interested in light, in controlling it, which is why he uses the “calotype process”, because with it he can obtain discrete, intimate images, classic atmospheres, romantic elements. The result is more pictorial than photographic: still lifes, compositions of objects reminiscent of seventeenth-century mannerist figurative art, of the Lombard school of the Baschenis; timeless images of ancient memory.
Use of the warm hues obtained by this process helps produce sensitive images rich in variations in light and hue and fixes the details of the images. The photographer considers the most exciting thing about an image or a composition to be the mystery in the elements that make it up.
MALCOLM PASLEY
1956 born in Goldalming, Surrey.
Attends Harrow College of Art & Technology.
1978 assistant to advertising photographer Bill Ling for two and a half years.
1981 works in the commercial and publishing sectors, specialising in fashion and beauty.
1990 moves to Los Angeles.
1991-95 teaches himself platinum printing and starts working on personal projects.
1994 moves back to England.
Pasley photographs dried plants and flowers because, as he says, they are much more interesting than living ones: their appearance changes as they decompose, so that a sunflower may look like an alien, a banana plant a mysterious being.
Pasley also photographs nudes: timeless, enigmatic, mysterious women.
Fascinated by the oldest printing processes, he is interested in platinum prints, a technique which is difficult and expensive, but not enough to stop Pasley, who, bored with fashion photography, says: “I got to the point that I wanted to see something else. I went to Hollywood with my wife, who is an actress, and I discovered platinum printing, and it changed my life.”
PLATON
1989-90 attended Central St. Martin College of Art & Design, specialising in Graphic Design.
1990-92 Master of Art, Fine Arts, Photography at the Royal College of Art.
His images have been published in the magazines: Vogue, Elle, Arena, i.D., Vanity Fair, Glamour (France), George (NY), Sunday Times Magazine, Harpers & Queen.
He has recently produced advertising campaigns for Issey Miyake and Moschino.
Awarded Creative Futures: Nominated by Vogue, 1990-92; Vogue/RCA Art Award, 1992.
Platon is a fashion and portrait photographer.
His work is linked with the GRAVITAZ group established out of the partnership of three former St. Martin’s students.
GRAVITAZ has a completely new way of expressing itself in photography.
The fashion creations of stylists Moschino, Miyake, Westwood, even Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen and Owen Gastor are interpreted with high resolution computer graphics. New technology is combined with the “traditional” technology of the photographic process to create unusual effects for advertising.
The image arises out of the clothes and their characteristics to take on the semblance of bizarre creatures and distant landscapes, becoming a sort of challenge/provocation of the ways in which fashion is normally represented.
ANDREW BETTLES
1965 born in England
1984-1986 attends Bournemouth and Pool College of Art & Design
starts his career in photography working for CBS and WEA record companies
1987 The Face publishes his early photographs
Exhibitions: numerous group shows including: Hamiltons Group Show with Alan Delaney and Graham Cornthwaite, 1989; Aperture Fashion Photograph Show, 1991; Hamiltons Group Show with Alan Delaney, 1991; Amnesty International Flower Show, Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milano, 1995.
His images have been published in the magazines: Elle, Harpers & Queen, Vogue England, The Sunday Times, Observer, Tatler, The Independent, Mirabella England, Madame Figaro.
Andrew considers himself a still-life and fashion photographer with a particular propensity for still-lifes.
As an advertising photographer he produced campaigns for Christian Lacroix Couture Collection in 1988 and DD Tights, Audi, VW and Remy Martin in 1990. Bettles seeks out details: leaves, accessories, flowers, taken out of context and proposed in a strong, incisive manner.
ALVIN BOOTH
1959 born in northeast England.
1976 leaves school to become a professional hairstylist.
Later moves to Oxford, where he becomes interested in photography.
1989 moves to America where he now lives with his wife in New York.
A self-taught photographer, Booth started out with innocent, almost naïf nudes.
His use of unusual materials such as Indian jute, latex and body painting led him to rethink the way we perceive the forms of the nude.
In its most static form, even when immobile, the human body is never completely still but continues its mysterious movements. The soul, the eye, even if merely glimpsed, have a dominant influence on the material nature of bodies. Booth represents the body in a partial, disconnected manner: with an incomplete vision, an unfinished partial posture, a sense of the subject that controls the degree to which it is revealed.
Shyness, power, rejection are revealed in his undressed bodies; and the more opaque the image, the more complex the message is. Old and new, modern and eternal, idealised form and “reduced” form are expressed in a single blurred lens, a single flawed frame.
With Booth, the print and the subject univocally tell the story of the decay inherent in the nature of living, the beautiful, the loved.
ALAN DELANEY
1981 graduates from Berks College of Art and Design.
1989 exhibits his works in a group show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
1991 exhibits his works in a group show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
1993 exhibits his works in a solo show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
Phaidon Press publishes “London After Dark”, edited by Robert Cowan.
Exhibitions: Weston Gallery, Carmel, CA, USA; Private View, Paris; Baudoin Lebon Gallery, Paris; Tony Stone Images.
His photographs have been published in: Architects’ Journal, World Architecture, Sunday Times Magazine, Nippon Camera.
London is Delaney’s favourite subject, for he is fascinated by the diversity and unpredictability of this city, which he sees as a provocation. The light the city gives off in the darkness allows him to reveal some surprising details which would be banal in daylight. Delaney photographs garbage, puddles, fireworks, crushed cars; subjects he considers just as important as historical buildings or magnificent cathedrals.
Delaney says: “I like to find beauty in what is normally considered ordinary or unimportant, and be appreciated for this”.
KEVIN GRIFFIN
1964 born on October 13 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, U.K.
1985 attends Watford College.
1986-1990 assistant to a number of advertising photographers.
1990 works on numerous advertising campaigns.
Exhibitions: Hamiltons Christmas Group Show, London, December 1993; Positive View, Paris, September-October 1994; Hamilton Christmas Group Show, London, December 1995.
Griffin’s grandfather was a photographer and introduced him to the art.
Don McCullin convinced him of the potential of black and white, the technique he continues to prefer.
Though his work is often linked with advertising, Griffin considers personal experimentation the most important aspect of his work as a photographer. In his horizontal landscapes, man and nature are “presences” which are sometimes imperceptible, sometimes declared.
Alongside his suburban landscapes and architectures, Griffin shows us true “installations” of land-art: the signs man makes on earth.
ALLAN CHRISTOPHER JENKINS
1969 born in England.
1989-92 attends Barnsley Sixth Form College, “Art & Design” Foundation.
1992-1995 specialises in “Visual Communication & Photography” at the University of East London.
Jenkins applies a series of original rules to his work as a photographer. The most important rule is use of a natural source of light: light flowing in directly through a window or in an open space. Jenkins is very interested in light, in controlling it, which is why he uses the “calotype process”, because with it he can obtain discrete, intimate images, classic atmospheres, romantic elements. The result is more pictorial than photographic: still lifes, compositions of objects reminiscent of seventeenth-century mannerist figurative art, of the Lombard school of the Baschenis; timeless images of ancient memory.
Use of the warm hues obtained by this process helps produce sensitive images rich in variations in light and hue and fixes the details of the images. The photographer considers the most exciting thing about an image or a composition to be the mystery in the elements that make it up.
MALCOLM PASLEY
1956 born in Goldalming, Surrey.
Attends Harrow College of Art & Technology.
1978 assistant to advertising photographer Bill Ling for two and a half years.
1981 works in the commercial and publishing sectors, specialising in fashion and beauty.
1990 moves to Los Angeles.
1991-95 teaches himself platinum printing and starts working on personal projects.
1994 moves back to England.
Pasley photographs dried plants and flowers because, as he says, they are much more interesting than living ones: their appearance changes as they decompose, so that a sunflower may look like an alien, a banana plant a mysterious being.
Pasley also photographs nudes: timeless, enigmatic, mysterious women.
Fascinated by the oldest printing processes, he is interested in platinum prints, a technique which is difficult and expensive, but not enough to stop Pasley, who, bored with fashion photography, says: “I got to the point that I wanted to see something else. I went to Hollywood with my wife, who is an actress, and I discovered platinum printing, and it changed my life.”
PLATON
1989-90 attended Central St. Martin College of Art & Design, specialising in Graphic Design.
1990-92 Master of Art, Fine Arts, Photography at the Royal College of Art.
His images have been published in the magazines: Vogue, Elle, Arena, i.D., Vanity Fair, Glamour (France), George (NY), Sunday Times Magazine, Harpers & Queen.
He has recently produced advertising campaigns for Issey Miyake and Moschino.
Awarded Creative Futures: Nominated by Vogue, 1990-92; Vogue/RCA Art Award, 1992.
Platon is a fashion and portrait photographer.
His work is linked with the GRAVITAZ group established out of the partnership of three former St. Martin’s students.
GRAVITAZ has a completely new way of expressing itself in photography.
The fashion creations of stylists Moschino, Miyake, Westwood, even Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen and Owen Gastor are interpreted with high resolution computer graphics. New technology is combined with the “traditional” technology of the photographic process to create unusual effects for advertising.
The image arises out of the clothes and their characteristics to take on the semblance of bizarre creatures and distant landscapes, becoming a sort of challenge/provocation of the ways in which fashion is normally represented.
LONDON GROUP SHOW
Andrew Bettles fashion and still-life
Alvin Booth human body
Alan Delaney urban night landscapes
Kevin Griffin landscapes
Allan Christopher Jenkins still-life
Malcolm Pasley flowers and nudes
Platon fashion and portraits
“Just press the button and we’ll take care of the rest”, Kodak used to say some time ago. Is this the meaning of photography? Partly, but not only. Photography as a dispenser of images is everywhere: on the bus, on the walls, in magazines, on our food, etc., and we’re so used to it that we underestimate its communicative value.
Born as a “poor art”, photography is now one of the most important meanings of expression in contemporary art, alongside painting, sculpture and architecture.
From Warhol’s symbol-narrative photography to Sherman’s conceptual photography and virtual and digital images, photography has taken on a variety of different forms: in size, printing technique, in single or limited edition prints.
This is where LONDON GROUP SHOW comes in.
It is dedicated to 7 photographers of the present: artists linked with a particular way of using the idiom of photography.
What sets them apart from their modern predecessors is the fact that they question the foundations of art and aesthetics, turning to the eternal themes of the nude, nature and landscapes in an instinctive, unconventional manner employing new techniques and methods.
Most of them use photography, but have not studied it. The cultural message is a product of experimentation, manipulation, putting the emphasis on choice or reception of the user, rather than the quality of use.
ANDREW BETTLES
1965 born in England
1984-1986 attends Bournemouth and Pool College of Art & Design
starts his career in photography working for CBS and WEA record companies
1987 The Face publishes his early photographs
Exhibitions: numerous group shows including: Hamiltons Group Show with Alan Delaney and Graham Cornthwaite, 1989; Aperture Fashion Photograph Show, 1991; Hamiltons Group Show with Alan Delaney, 1991; Amnesty International Flower Show, Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milano, 1995.
His images have been published in the magazines: Elle, Harpers & Queen, Vogue England, The Sunday Times, Observer, Tatler, The Independent, Mirabella England, Madame Figaro.
Andrew considers himself a still-life and fashion photographer with a particular propensity for still-lifes.
As an advertising photographer he produced campaigns for Christian Lacroix Couture Collection in 1988 and DD Tights, Audi, VW and Remy Martin in 1990. Bettles seeks out details: leaves, accessories, flowers, taken out of context and proposed in a strong, incisive manner.
ALVIN BOOTH
1959 born in northeast England.
1976 leaves school to become a professional hairstylist.
Later moves to Oxford, where he becomes interested in photography.
1989 moves to America where he now lives with his wife in New York.
A self-taught photographer, Booth started out with innocent, almost naïf nudes.
His use of unusual materials such as Indian jute, latex and body painting led him to rethink the way we perceive the forms of the nude.
In its most static form, even when immobile, the human body is never completely still but continues its mysterious movements. The soul, the eye, even if merely glimpsed, have a dominant influence on the material nature of bodies. Booth represents the body in a partial, disconnected manner: with an incomplete vision, an unfinished partial posture, a sense of the subject that controls the degree to which it is revealed.
Shyness, power, rejection are revealed in his undressed bodies; and the more opaque the image, the more complex the message is. Old and new, modern and eternal, idealised form and “reduced” form are expressed in a single blurred lens, a single flawed frame.
With Booth, the print and the subject univocally tell the story of the decay inherent in the nature of living, the beautiful, the loved.
ALAN DELANEY
1981 graduates from Berks College of Art and Design.
1989 exhibits his works in a group show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
1991 exhibits his works in a group show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
1993 exhibits his works in a solo show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
Phaidon Press publishes “London After Dark”, edited by Robert Cowan.
Exhibitions: Weston Gallery, Carmel, CA, USA; Private View, Paris; Baudoin Lebon Gallery, Paris; Tony Stone Images.
His photographs have been published in: Architects’ Journal, World Architecture, Sunday Times Magazine, Nippon Camera.
London is Delaney’s favourite subject, for he is fascinated by the diversity and unpredictability of this city, which he sees as a provocation. The light the city gives off in the darkness allows him to reveal some surprising details which would be banal in daylight. Delaney photographs garbage, puddles, fireworks, crushed cars; subjects he considers just as important as historical buildings or magnificent cathedrals.
Delaney says: “I like to find beauty in what is normally considered ordinary or unimportant, and be appreciated for this”.
KEVIN GRIFFIN
1964 born on October 13 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, U.K.
1985 attends Watford College.
1986-1990 assistant to a number of advertising photographers.
1990 works on numerous advertising campaigns.
Exhibitions: Hamiltons Christmas Group Show, London, December 1993; Positive View, Paris, September-October 1994; Hamilton Christmas Group Show, London, December 1995.
Griffin’s grandfather was a photographer and introduced him to the art.
Don McCullin convinced him of the potential of black and white, the technique he continues to prefer.
Though his work is often linked with advertising, Griffin considers personal experimentation the most important aspect of his work as a photographer. In his horizontal landscapes, man and nature are “presences” which are sometimes imperceptible, sometimes declared.
Alongside his suburban landscapes and architectures, Griffin shows us true “installations” of land-art: the signs man makes on earth.
ALLAN CHRISTOPHER JENKINS
1969 born in England.
1989-92 attends Barnsley Sixth Form College, “Art & Design” Foundation.
1992-1995 specialises in “Visual Communication & Photography” at the University of East London.
Exhibitions: Galeria D’Art “Reus”, Spain, 1992; Galeria NIT Celeste, Barcelona, Spain, 1993; Charles Barker, Deans Street, London, 1996; “New Works & Recent Acquisitions”, Hamiltons, London, 1996.
Jenkins applies a series of original rules to his work as a photographer. The most important rule is use of a natural source of light: light flowing in directly through a window or in an open space. Jenkins is very interested in light, in controlling it, which is why he uses the “calotype process”, because with it he can obtain discrete, intimate images, classic atmospheres, romantic elements. The result is more pictorial than photographic: still lifes, compositions of objects reminiscent of seventeenth-century mannerist figurative art, of the Lombard school of the Baschenis; timeless images of ancient memory.
Use of the warm hues obtained by this process helps produce sensitive images rich in variations in light and hue and fixes the details of the images. The photographer considers the most exciting thing about an image or a composition to be the mystery in the elements that make it up.
MALCOLM PASLEY
1956 born in Goldalming, Surrey.
Attends Harrow College of Art & Technology.
1978 assistant to advertising photographer Bill Ling for two and a half years.
1981 works in the commercial and publishing sectors, specialising in fashion and beauty.
1990 moves to Los Angeles.
1991-95 teaches himself platinum printing and starts working on personal projects.
1994 moves back to England.
Pasley photographs dried plants and flowers because, as he says, they are much more interesting than living ones: their appearance changes as they decompose, so that a sunflower may look like an alien, a banana plant a mysterious being.
Pasley also photographs nudes: timeless, enigmatic, mysterious women.
Fascinated by the oldest printing processes, he is interested in platinum prints, a technique which is difficult and expensive, but not enough to stop Pasley, who, bored with fashion photography, says: “I got to the point that I wanted to see something else. I went to Hollywood with my wife, who is an actress, and I discovered platinum printing, and it changed my life.”
PLATON
1989-90 attended Central St. Martin College of Art & Design, specialising in Graphic Design.
1990-92 Master of Art, Fine Arts, Photography at the Royal College of Art.
His images have been published in the magazines: Vogue, Elle, Arena, i.D., Vanity Fair, Glamour (France), George (NY), Sunday Times Magazine, Harpers & Queen.
He has recently produced advertising campaigns for Issey Miyake and Moschino.
Awarded Creative Futures: Nominated by Vogue, 1990-92; Vogue/RCA Art Award, 1992.
Platon is a fashion and portrait photographer.
His work is linked with the GRAVITAZ group established out of the partnership of three former St. Martin’s students.
GRAVITAZ has a completely new way of expressing itself in photography.
The fashion creations of stylists Moschino, Miyake, Westwood, even Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen and Owen Gastor are interpreted with high resolution computer graphics. New technology is combined with the “traditional” technology of the photographic process to create unusual effects for advertising.
The image arises out of the clothes and their characteristics to take on the semblance of bizarre creatures and distant landscapes, becoming a sort of challenge/provocation of the ways in which fashion is normally represented.
ANDREW BETTLES
1965 born in England
1984-1986 attends Bournemouth and Pool College of Art & Design
starts his career in photography working for CBS and WEA record companies
1987 The Face publishes his early photographs
Exhibitions: numerous group shows including: Hamiltons Group Show with Alan Delaney and Graham Cornthwaite, 1989; Aperture Fashion Photograph Show, 1991; Hamiltons Group Show with Alan Delaney, 1991; Amnesty International Flower Show, Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milano, 1995.
His images have been published in the magazines: Elle, Harpers & Queen, Vogue England, The Sunday Times, Observer, Tatler, The Independent, Mirabella England, Madame Figaro.
Andrew considers himself a still-life and fashion photographer with a particular propensity for still-lifes.
As an advertising photographer he produced campaigns for Christian Lacroix Couture Collection in 1988 and DD Tights, Audi, VW and Remy Martin in 1990. Bettles seeks out details: leaves, accessories, flowers, taken out of context and proposed in a strong, incisive manner.
ALVIN BOOTH
1959 born in northeast England.
1976 leaves school to become a professional hairstylist.
Later moves to Oxford, where he becomes interested in photography.
1989 moves to America where he now lives with his wife in New York.
A self-taught photographer, Booth started out with innocent, almost naïf nudes.
His use of unusual materials such as Indian jute, latex and body painting led him to rethink the way we perceive the forms of the nude.
In its most static form, even when immobile, the human body is never completely still but continues its mysterious movements. The soul, the eye, even if merely glimpsed, have a dominant influence on the material nature of bodies. Booth represents the body in a partial, disconnected manner: with an incomplete vision, an unfinished partial posture, a sense of the subject that controls the degree to which it is revealed.
Shyness, power, rejection are revealed in his undressed bodies; and the more opaque the image, the more complex the message is. Old and new, modern and eternal, idealised form and “reduced” form are expressed in a single blurred lens, a single flawed frame.
With Booth, the print and the subject univocally tell the story of the decay inherent in the nature of living, the beautiful, the loved.
ALAN DELANEY
1981 graduates from Berks College of Art and Design.
1989 exhibits his works in a group show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
1991 exhibits his works in a group show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
1993 exhibits his works in a solo show in Hamiltons Gallery, London.
Phaidon Press publishes “London After Dark”, edited by Robert Cowan.
Exhibitions: Weston Gallery, Carmel, CA, USA; Private View, Paris; Baudoin Lebon Gallery, Paris; Tony Stone Images.
His photographs have been published in: Architects’ Journal, World Architecture, Sunday Times Magazine, Nippon Camera.
London is Delaney’s favourite subject, for he is fascinated by the diversity and unpredictability of this city, which he sees as a provocation. The light the city gives off in the darkness allows him to reveal some surprising details which would be banal in daylight. Delaney photographs garbage, puddles, fireworks, crushed cars; subjects he considers just as important as historical buildings or magnificent cathedrals.
Delaney says: “I like to find beauty in what is normally considered ordinary or unimportant, and be appreciated for this”.
KEVIN GRIFFIN
1964 born on October 13 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, U.K.
1985 attends Watford College.
1986-1990 assistant to a number of advertising photographers.
1990 works on numerous advertising campaigns.
Exhibitions: Hamiltons Christmas Group Show, London, December 1993; Positive View, Paris, September-October 1994; Hamilton Christmas Group Show, London, December 1995.
Griffin’s grandfather was a photographer and introduced him to the art.
Don McCullin convinced him of the potential of black and white, the technique he continues to prefer.
Though his work is often linked with advertising, Griffin considers personal experimentation the most important aspect of his work as a photographer. In his horizontal landscapes, man and nature are “presences” which are sometimes imperceptible, sometimes declared.
Alongside his suburban landscapes and architectures, Griffin shows us true “installations” of land-art: the signs man makes on earth.
ALLAN CHRISTOPHER JENKINS
1969 born in England.
1989-92 attends Barnsley Sixth Form College, “Art & Design” Foundation.
1992-1995 specialises in “Visual Communication & Photography” at the University of East London.
Exhibitions: Galeria D’Art “Reus”, Spain, 1992; Galeria NIT Celeste, Barcelona, Spain, 1993; Charles Barker, Deans Street, London, 1996; “New Works & Recent Acquisitions”, Hamiltons, London, 1996.
Jenkins applies a series of original rules to his work as a photographer. The most important rule is use of a natural source of light: light flowing in directly through a window or in an open space. Jenkins is very interested in light, in controlling it, which is why he uses the “calotype process”, because with it he can obtain discrete, intimate images, classic atmospheres, romantic elements. The result is more pictorial than photographic: still lifes, compositions of objects reminiscent of seventeenth-century mannerist figurative art, of the Lombard school of the Baschenis; timeless images of ancient memory.
Use of the warm hues obtained by this process helps produce sensitive images rich in variations in light and hue and fixes the details of the images. The photographer considers the most exciting thing about an image or a composition to be the mystery in the elements that make it up.
MALCOLM PASLEY
1956 born in Goldalming, Surrey.
Attends Harrow College of Art & Technology.
1978 assistant to advertising photographer Bill Ling for two and a half years.
1981 works in the commercial and publishing sectors, specialising in fashion and beauty.
1990 moves to Los Angeles.
1991-95 teaches himself platinum printing and starts working on personal projects.
1994 moves back to England.
Pasley photographs dried plants and flowers because, as he says, they are much more interesting than living ones: their appearance changes as they decompose, so that a sunflower may look like an alien, a banana plant a mysterious being.
Pasley also photographs nudes: timeless, enigmatic, mysterious women.
Fascinated by the oldest printing processes, he is interested in platinum prints, a technique which is difficult and expensive, but not enough to stop Pasley, who, bored with fashion photography, says: “I got to the point that I wanted to see something else. I went to Hollywood with my wife, who is an actress, and I discovered platinum printing, and it changed my life.”
PLATON
1989-90 attended Central St. Martin College of Art & Design, specialising in Graphic Design.
1990-92 Master of Art, Fine Arts, Photography at the Royal College of Art.
His images have been published in the magazines: Vogue, Elle, Arena, i.D., Vanity Fair, Glamour (France), George (NY), Sunday Times Magazine, Harpers & Queen.
He has recently produced advertising campaigns for Issey Miyake and Moschino.
Awarded Creative Futures: Nominated by Vogue, 1990-92; Vogue/RCA Art Award, 1992.
Platon is a fashion and portrait photographer.
His work is linked with the GRAVITAZ group established out of the partnership of three former St. Martin’s students.
GRAVITAZ has a completely new way of expressing itself in photography.
The fashion creations of stylists Moschino, Miyake, Westwood, even Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen and Owen Gastor are interpreted with high resolution computer graphics. New technology is combined with the “traditional” technology of the photographic process to create unusual effects for advertising.
The image arises out of the clothes and their characteristics to take on the semblance of bizarre creatures and distant landscapes, becoming a sort of challenge/provocation of the ways in which fashion is normally represented.