The Abbey Road Music Photography Awards returns for its second year, with Cat Burns and Sophie Ellis-Bextor among the judging panel this time, with Rankin remaining on as lead judge.

The annual event is designed to celebrate the best in music photography, with this year’s instalment celebrating the best of 2022’s offering.

The awards are for both the established and the undiscovered, with six open-invite categories and four invited categories on offer, all of which are aimed to spotlight the most memorable music moments and the photographers who captured them. 

Among the judging panel for the four invited categories – which include a ‘Portrait Award’, ‘Editorial Award’, ‘Artist At Work Award’ and ‘Icon Award’ – are an esteemed collection of names from a combination of music, photography and styling backgrounds.

They include, BRIT Award-nominee Cat Burns; photographer Vicky Grout; leading stylist and consultant Karen Binns; kitchen disco icon Sophie Ellis-Bextor; the winner of 2022’s MPA Icon Award, Eric Johnson; stylist and creative director Matthew Josephs; and New York Times Deputy Photo Editor Nakyung Han.

Abbey Road Studios photographer-in-residence Simon Wheatley, meanwhile, joins the panel for the ‘Underground Scenes’ category.

The group is of course also joined by the award’s co-founder and leading force in British photography, Rankin.

Speaking of the awards, the seminal photographer has said: “I’m thrilled to announce the 2023 Abbey Road Studios Music Photography Awards is now officially open.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re emerging, or a celebrated professional photographer, we want you to enter because we want your photographs to be seen.

“The MPAs is close to my heart because I founded the awards together with Abbey Road. This is our opportunity to celebrate what music photography means, not just to the audience and the musicians, but to the photographers behind the lens.

“This year, I’ll be giving you the opportunity to win a day’s mentorship with me on a music shoot, so make sure to get your entry in before 18 July.”

The categories for this year’s open-invite categories, meanwhile, which are designed for those with no prior experience or acclaim, include: ‘Undiscovered Music Photographer of The Year’, ‘Music Moment of The Year Award’, ‘Live Music Award’, ‘In The Studio Award’, ‘Underground Scenes Award’, ‘Hip Hop 50’.

For more information and for ways to apply, visit the site’s website here.

Toronto creative Khary Safari, known on social media as the dancing photographer, is a producer, event manager, photographer and artist.

He’s one of Toronto’s biggest hype men behind the camera, and he does it on roller skates.  

Safari is also the owner of Content Day Studio and the creator of Open Concept TO, a performance art party that showcases local creatives.

Raised in Parkdale, he has been long grounded in community and art. 

Having run his own businesses since he was 19, Safari taught himself how to photograph, building himself up from a freelance photographer to the owner of his own studio.

With a big heart and an open door policy, his main objectives are to inspire, encourage and support local artists. Those who get to know him, fall in love with his energy.

Safari founded his first creative content studio in 2021. During the pandemic, he had begun meeting with a creative team once a week, trying to uplight local brands by creating content for them.

“It was a free day of creating just for the fun of it. So when I had the opportunity to open up my first studio, it was natural to call it content day,” he said. 

The first iteration of Content Day Studio opened in a storefront underneath Safari’s Dundas West apartment, but he had to say goodbye to that space when a developer purchased the building.

Fortunately he had been working closely with OBJX Studio in the Stockyards District and became aware of a vacant studio space neighbouring them, so he moved in and opened Content Day Studio as it exists today.

The space is available to rent for anyone who wants to create content, or host an event. You can also take advantage of Content Day’s own team and book a photography or video session.

Safari says he’s known as the dancing photographer because he often dances with his camera in hand.

It’s safe to say he’s a fast learner since he’s only been behind the camera for five or six years, and more shockingly, roller skating for two. 

This spring/summer season at Fashion Art Toronto, he even debuted as a model, walking down the runway for designer Dean Ellis while taking photographs of audience members.

Ellis explained that Safari was hand selected for his personality, precisely because of the dynamic energy he’s known for in the local arts community.

Safari credits the friends he’s known all his life who he shared creative outlets with at a young age – from boxing, and dancing to filming movies on their families’ camcorders and pretending to be in boy bands – to making him the artist he is today.

In fact, Content Day’s in-house DJ, Dear James, is one of Safari’s Parkdale friends of at least 20 years. 

Safari says his biggest influence as an artist is his mom however, who has always been passionate about bringing people together and bettering the community.

“I feel like she was a good influence in Parkdale,” he said. As it happens, she is also the likely reason that Safari took to photography so naturally. 

She was a hobby photographer with a film camera, who shot every family event Safari remembers. So I played with her camera, but I never considered it a passion. It was just a way of capturing our lives, he said.

It wasn’t until much later that he borrowed the camera of an aspiring photographer who he was dating in Vancouver and found himself unable to put it down.

“She was jealous of me because I just had a knack for it,” he smiled, as he described buying his own camera and photographing everything that captivated him in the city. 

Safari’s roller skates became attached to him in a similarly serendipitous way, via another person’s creative objective. This time it was local artist and OBJX studio manager Katrina Anastasia who had ordered a pair of rollerskates for a music video. She’d received two pairs instead of one, and gave the extra set to Safari. 

Even though he’d never roller skated before, he wore them to shoot a portion of Anastasia’s music video.

“When it comes to video, it allows me to get those stable, gliding shots,” he said. Not to mention, it makes things more fun. Now you can regularly find Safari roller skating during photoshoots, and at events, hyping up his subjects while he dances around them with his camera.

“Life is a production and I want to produce the best life for myself and the people around me,” he said. In order to continue hyping up local creatives, Safari has opened the doors of Content Day for an open studio every Thursday.

The studio’s free Content and Chill event, allows creatives to network, socialize, and create content in the space. Safari curates sets for photographers to play with and they’ll bring their own models, props and lighting. 

DJ Dear James also hosts a DJ social so emerging artists can learn to DJ and practice. We have a whole DJ guild now, because we have all these intro level DJs playing with professionals, said Safari proudly. 

“I’m just glad that what we’re doing is cultivating authentic artists,” said Safari. The creatives that find themselves in the Content Day Studio aren’t people looking for a quick fix. They’re artists who want to learn, express themselves, and do it all surrounded by good people.

Margate-based Max Barnett is an artist and photographer who’s popped up on our site a few times before, but never in his own spotlight. That’s because Max has been prolific in producing incredible content for many years now behind an array of different projects, such as magazine Pylot from 2014-2020. Just as he did in the magazine, Max is a photographer who continues to champion the analogue medium. Now, however, he’s experimenting with all sorts, including his old love of collage and image manipulation. “I still like the work to look realistic and textural, like a blending of the analogue and digital world,” he tells It’s Nice That.

As a creative always “spiralling off into constant tangents”, Max is on the lookout for new terrain to cover all the time. “If I were to think about the themes present in my work I would say there is a queerness,” he remarks. “Some of my work is loud and features movement, yet some quiet and contemplative, so I think my need for balance in life is reflected in my work.” You can see that in all of Max’s work, the balance between stillness and movement, between the silly and the serious. We’ll be eagerly awaiting to see what Max gets up to next.

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Visitors are urged to share their reactions to images showcasing English documentary photographer Martin Parr’s view of Scottish life and Scottish stereotypes in a new exhibition taking place this summer.

Martin Parr will be displaying his satirical view of Scotland in an exhibition at the grand Pollok House on the south side of Glasgow in Scotland. The exhibition features a selection of works from Parr’s exhibition, Think of Scotland, which was originated by Aberdeen Art Gallery and shown as part the reopening gallery program in 2019 following a £30m redevelopment. Martin Parr, originally from Surrey, is best known for his books of photography, most notably, The Last Resort, a depiction of people and life at the seaside in New Brighton during the 1980s.

When I heard of this exhibition style, I was keen to find out what local visitors thought about their depiction through Parr’s images. Participatory art is designed to actively engage and involve audiences, encouraging interaction with a body of work. This is something which I am very much interested in within my own practice as a photographer, as collaborating with communities can help to break down barriers, promote dialogue, and widen perspectives. The ultimate goal is to foster a deeper connection between the audience and the artists’ work. Participatory practice is not commonplace in major photography exhibitions. In most cases, some viewers might leave their thoughts through a line of text in a visitors book. However, in this particular exhibition, they are actively encouraged to provide individual comments on every single image on display.

Visitors to the exhibition are asked to contribute their voice by leaving comments about the images on display. The labels for each photograph have been designed as a notebook, and visitors are encouraged to contribute by writing their reactions to the images spanning a period from the 1990s to the 2010s that explore leisure activities and national Scottish stereotypes.

Printed on the front of each notebook, along with the image title, are sample comments to prompt viewers with their own writing. I wondered how much this influenced the thoughts of each person who opened the notebook to leave their own comments, as the prompts were overwhelmingly positive. When reading the names cited in each prompt, I learned that they were left by staff members from the Trust, with a prompt label even written by Susie Parr, Martin’s wife. I can’t help but think that a notebook with just the image title on the outside with an invitation to leave thoughts inside would have been a more impartial way to seek responses.

Upon looking through the notebooks, I found that many of the responses are indeed positive. There are many who have used the notebooks to leave general comments on the exhibition as a whole and others who have left positive comments about how beautiful Pollok House is. For those who have commented so far on individual images, there were a mix of feelings, such as one commenter who found the images: “All very interesting, but I wonder how the people in the photographs feel about their portrayal.” Depicting any social group, including the working class, in a way that perpetuates stereotypes or diminishes their dignity is potentially harmful or disrespectful, even if this is intended to be satirical.

In true Glaswegian humor, one commenter simply wrote “Taps aff” in response to the Burntisland image, a common response translating to tops off, to the fact that Scottish people have a more flexible description of weather conditions we consider to be hot. One viewer commented that this image was “Very much an accurate representation” of Scottish people. Another viewer commented “Burnt’ Island indeed,” a notion of true Scottish humor.

Some pressing inquiries came in response to the cupcakes image. “Why are the cupcakes sad,” one viewer wanted to know, while another asked, “Why is this in a gallery,” seemingly in response to their analysis of the quality of the close-up image shot with direct flash.

A firm favorite image of the exhibition seemed to be the Barrowlands image, which one viewer stated: “Shows Glaswegian life and what Glasgow is all about. Composition is excellent too,” while another commented: “I think this could be staged! You don’t stop in the middle of the street to read a newspaper!” Perhaps this viewer believes that this image does not conform to their understanding of documentary photography.

Further contributions will be made by local community groups, who have been as part of a community outreach program being trialed by the team at Pollok House. I will make a point of revisiting towards the end of the exhibition run to read through the labels again to gather the thoughts of a higher number of visitors.

Context matters for the location of exhibited artwork, and Pollok House presents an intriguing choice for participatory art. As one of Scotland’s grandest Edwardian homes, now managed by the National Trust for Scotland, it holds historical significance as the ancestral residence of the Maxwell family. Pollok House showcases renowned art by El Greco and Blake, complemented by opulent Edwardian furniture. It is situated in Pollok Country Park, a beautifully maintained 146-hectare greenspace south of Glasgow City Centre, and former winner of Best Park in Europe.

Stuart Mackinnon, National Trust for Scotland Operations Manager for Pollok House, said of the exhibition: “The labels aim to encourage participation and to engage with a diverse range of people to widen access and interest in art by asking visitors to explore their own reactions and share their thoughts and reflections about the images on display.”

In my view, widening participation and diversifying audiences cannot be achieved in a meaningful way while charging admission to interact with the work on display. This exhibition can only be viewed by paying to enter Pollok House, which has a standard entry cost of £8.50 per person or £6 on a concessionary rate. That acts as a barrier, which limits access for those who cannot afford the entry fee, especially at a time where people across the nation are tightening their spending due to the cost of living crisis. I couldn’t help but make a connection between this fact and the working class people depicted in the images. Can you encourage widened participation and charge an entry fee? Whatever the case, choosing a gallery space that requires an entry fee feels antagonistic when considered alongside the satirical content of Parr’s work. Perhaps that was intentional. To help make this a true, widened access participatory experience, this article gives further space for anyone with an internet connection to comment. 

The Martin Parr: Think of Scotland exhibition will show at Pollok House until Sunday August 27, 2023 and be available for viewing from Thursday to Monday each week.

Lead Image: GB. Scotland. Glasgow. Eating place in Paddy’s Market. 1999. Martin Parr. All article images courtesy of Magnum Photography.

… in little more than five hours it will be the drive down to Lake Pleasant and hopefully a good morning of shooting … the lake is at its highest levels of the year and within a few weeks they will start draining it for use in agriculture … most of it anyhow. Bringing my 24-70 lens down with me too so I can kind of do some landscape type work from the boat.

The shot above is from my trip to Filoli Gardens last month … wild turkeys roam the property and I was lucky enough to see them as we were driving out … amazing the number of creatures we get to see!

The shot below I found in some old folders and it shows my fuel tank almost full … an average of 3.36 kts of lift and only 153 feet to go until full … not supposed to bust 18,000′ without contacting Albuquerque Center … the San Francisco Peaks are just above the nose … It was a strong day and we flew a 500K … propeller feathered and of course, engine off.

Have a beautiful day … smile and make a new friend today … at least keep breathing and smiling!

Ted

Let me not follow the clamor of
the world, but walk calmly
in my path. Give me a few friends who will love me for what
I am; and keep ever burning
before my vagrant steps
the kindly light of hope.

excerpt from A Prayer by Max Ehrmann

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The easiest way to reach Mr. Grussing is by email: ted@tedgrussing.com

In addition to sales of photographs already taken Ted does special shoots for patrons on request and also does air-to-air photography for those who want photographs of their airplanes in flight. All special photographic sessions are billed on an hourly basis.

Ted also does one-on-one workshops for those interested in learning the techniques he uses.  By special arrangement Ted will do one-on-one aerial photography workshops which will include actual photo sessions in the air.

More about Ted Grussing …