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It is an exciting time for image makers as The Photography & Video Show 2024 is fast approaching, from March 16-19 at the NEC in Birmingham, England.
is Europe’s biggest event dedicated to inspiring photographers, filmmakers and editors. Whether you are an absolute beginner or a working professional, the show offers something for everyone. All the major camera manufacturers will be attending, providing a chance to test out all the best mirrorless cameras, the latest lighting kits and photo printers, the best camera bags and cases, not to mention some of the best film cameras for analog lovers.
As well as a chance to check out kit, your ticket gives you access to more than 350 seminars and live demos, with 6 stages and theaters to choose from. Led by experts and legends of photography, filmmaking, and content creation, be prepared to learn new techniques and approaches, and be inspired to change your perspective on how you create!
With such a long list of guest speakers, I like to plan so I don’t miss the talks that most interest me. I have shared below a list of 5 professionals that are already in my diary!
Photographer, Filmmaker, Author & YouTuber
📅 March 16 2024
In addition to being an exceptional photographer and speaker, Sean Tucker hosts a popular YouTube channel, now subscribed to by 550K creatives, and has written and published a book sharing his philosophy for the creative life titled The Meaning in the Making. Sean will be talking about his recent publication in a talk by the same name, as well as holding a discussion with fellow YouTube creator Tom Heaton on their experiences teaching photography on YouTube.
Filmmaker, Editor, and Photographer
📅 March 17 & 18 2024
A Sony creator, Alice has an exceptional talent for video and has a passion for short-form video for social media. She will be giving a talk which will provide a detailed look at a recent commercial video shoot with a clothing brand. It’s not often you get to see firsthand the creation of a commissioned brief by a leading industry professional, so this is a must-see! Alice will also be among the speakers for the Women in Film Business talk, which will highlight their experiences in the industry and generate further discussion.
Photojournalist Specialising In Advertising, Editorial & Portraiture
📅 March 16, 17 & 19 2024
Peter Dench will hold a talk titled Working in Editorial Photography, an area of great interest to me personally. During the talk, Dench delivers his top tips for generating editorial story ideas, income advice and successfully pitching to potential clients. Dench recently shot with the great Don McCullen for The Sunday Times, in a feature that celebrated his photojournalism – a great example of his advice in action.
Video For National Women’s Brands & Talent
📅 March 18 2024
Victoria is the founder of Featured, a London-based production company specializing in video content for national female-focused brands. Ten years of journalism and video experience have seen her work with some of the country’s top brands and celebrities. As well as speaking at the Women in Film Business talk, Hutton will be giving a talk titled ‘So you can shoot video, now what?’ focused on securing your dream clients. This is an important part of working in the creative industry that many fall short on – I for one did. Getting dissemination advice from someone at the top of their field will be a treasure trove of tips and tricks – one not to miss!
President Of AOP, Professional Photographer
📅 March 18 2024 – The NEC Birmingham, UK
World-renowned photographer and president of the Association of Photographers, Tim Flach will join photographer Nick Dunmur in a discussion on AI called Beyond the Lens: The impact of AI on professional image-making. With the ever-increasing use of AI in the photographic world, I am extremely interested to get the take from such an established member of the industry.
The Photography & Video Show will be held at The NEC in Birmingham, UK, from March 16-19. Tickets are now on sale on the Show webpage along with a full list of exhibitors and guest speakers. You can currently get 20% off tickets with our exclusive code, and free day tickets are available for students and professional photographers, so do take advantage.
The show this year will be a must-attend event for professionals working in the photo and video industry, and will provide a good opportunity to test the latest equipment, hear from talented industry professionals like the ones listed above, and network with other like-minded creatives – grab your ticket, it’s gonna be a blast!
The yellowing white wall of a 200-year-old Parsi home in Mau, Madhya Pradesh, has become a photo archive of the dead. It’s lined with photographs of people who once lived there—women in white saris with Parsi gara borders and men in kurta-pyjama, and shirt and suit. The photographer, Divya Cowasji, also makes an appearance in an image, posing in a sari—making her the only living person in the photo series titled Remember Me.
Cowasji’s project was part of Chemould CoLab’s October 2022 group photo exhibition Hearts On Fire—Reflections On Parsi Photography: Past, Present And Future in Mumbai. Curated by Sarcia Robyn Balsari, the exhibition showcased the life of the Parsi community in India. It got the art world discussing the practice of turning the lens to one self, of the impact these works have on the viewers and the reasons behind its new-found popularity, especially after covid-19, amongst young photographers.
In Remember Me, Cowasji looks at her family history through the objects that her ancestors left behind. She contemplates existentialism, while also thinking of her death and the anxiety about the next inheritor of the family heirloom. Cowasji’s photo series started in 2018 when she lost many loved ones, and came to inherit their objects—saris, books, frames, and even her actor-grandmother’s hair rollers.
Also read: How video games and the rise and fall of civilisations inspired ‘Schirkoa’
By turning the camera on themselves, photographers like Cowasji create personal archives of their families, their community, their environment and their bodies. These projects are outcomes of personal crises, overwhelming emotions or the sociocultural and political environment around them. During the covid-19 lockdowns, when photographers went back home from the places they worked in or when they were trapped indoors, they were, in a way, compelled to look within.
“The home is the frontier now,” says Rahaab Allana, curator and publisher at the Alkazi Foundation of the Arts, a Delhi-based charitable trust dedicated to the preservation and study of the cultural history of India. “The home has become a place which you have to fight for. Personal is a space you have to fight for,” he says. When we are constantly informed by different dispensations that our beliefs and everything else can be contested at any point of time, how do we find strategies and alternatives to articulate who we are and where we are from, he asks. “People have started casting a wider net to explore the greater social, cultural and political meaning of their personal life,” explains Allana.
Photographer Jaisingh Nageswaran, raised in a Dalit family in Vadipatti village, Tamil Nadu, documents the lives of marginalised communities, while exploring the theme of gender discrimination, caste inequality and rural life through his family members’ lives and experiences of living in the village in an ongoing project titled I Feel Like A Fish.
Also born during the covid-19 lockdown was Delhi-based Vinati Sehgal’s project documenting her time living in a small basement apartment in London. The series, Waiting For The Sun, saw her composing pictures in the space alongside her own body. Unlike many people who felt lonely and trapped in their homes, Sehgal, 31, found peace in the loneliness and a safe cocoon where she could do what she wanted to and be truly free.
The theme of the body also finds resonance in the works of Bengaluru’s Ankit Banerjee, who was bullied as a child and teased for the way he walked. He uses his body in his photography to deal with anxiety and to express the vulnerability of a male body. Having started as a wedding photographer, Banerjee now takes pictures of his body in different hotel rooms and has compiled them in his ongoing project Hotel Rooms (2015-2022).
Also read: A meeting with Monet, on and off canvas
Moving from the self to the family and community, Goa’s Niharika Chauhan, 26, traces her grandfather’s life as a patriarch of his upper caste community in Shahpur in Uttar Pradesh in an ongoing project titled To Lose A River. It also documents her grandfather’s deteriorating ancestral home alongside the dwindling number of sambar deer in the area as well as the changed course of the Yamuna, where it flows through Shahpur. These works were shown at the Angkor Photo Festival, from 24-28 January, in Cambodia.
‘Graduate Girls, Wanted Beautiful Home Loving Girl‘ by Cheryl Mukherji
Then there is Mumbai’s Parizad D, 31. Her project Khansya, a word from Parsi Gujarati that indicates an indescribable feeling of urgency, is a body of work based on the photographer’s lived experiences as a woman of Zoroastrian and Parsi heritage. “Through it, I create an insider’s archive to preserve the cultural nuances of a race on the brink of global extinction, while also building a visual autobiography of my own complicated interpersonal histories with the community,” she says.
Another deep dive into the family photo album is New York-based Cheryl Mukherji’s Wanted Beautiful Home Loving Girl. An ongoing project, this is an exploration of the histories, legacies and conventions of matrimonial portrait photography in Indian arranged marriages. Inspired by matrimonial photographs of her grandmothers, aunts and mother in family albums, she reimagines the tradition by staging self-portraits within her domestic space that also evoke Indian photo studios, expanding the boundaries of public and private.
“I explore the politics of desirability, femininity, and domesticity in the contemporary context, making feminist photographs as well as ‘thirst traps’ that constitute my matrimonial archive,” says the 28-year-old. The artist visualises her body in scenes that are complex, exaggerated and mundane restagings of found matrimonial photographs. “Focusing on refusal and resistance, the work acts as a counter-archive that emphasises quotidian forms of self-representation through humour, performance and play, allowing for reimagined and speculative feminist futures,” she adds.
Also read: Jitish Kallat creates a numerical biography of Nelson Mandela
From photographer Jaisingh Nageswaran’s ongoing project titled ‘I Feel Like A Fish’
The project was born during the pandemic when Mukherji was working on another project for her thesis—of exploring her relationship with her family and the work it takes to stay a part of the family even when you are physically away from them. The lockdown gave Mukherji the time to revisit her family albums.
It was the same with Nageswaran. He travelled from city to city for 15 years before the pandemic, trying to escape the village he was born in, the discrimination and his caste identity. But he had to go back home during the covid-19 pandemic. That was when he had to confront his reality—that social distancing was not new to them, and that his community has always been isolated for the caste they are born in. “It was also the time when the downtrodden were the most vulnerable with the mass migration and other injustices inflicted on them,” says Nageswaran.
“That is when I turned the camera inwards, photographing my village, the four generations of my family and the discrimination we face. Making these photographs and having them become the visual consciousness of this country is my way of resisting the oppression that continues even today,” he says.
Mumbai-based photographer and teacher Ritesh Uttamchandani points out that everybody’s photography journey begins with looking inwards. When one gets a new camera, one photographs friends, family members and pets. “That’s when a photographer reacts to the camera,” he explains. It is also the phase when a photographer has not learnt to take pictures on the street. “That requires certain practice and where do you do that? At home, where no one will abuse you or slap you for taking a photograph.”
Later in one’s career though, looking inward could come from the realisation that the impetus given to objectivity, especially in photojournalism, can’t be completely achieved. “Your lived experience informs the person you are and that informs your photography as well,” explains Uttamchandani. That is when people turn the lens towards themselves. Commercial projects tend to take one away from one’s roots. Personal photo essays, then, become the tools that reconnect the photographer to the self and help them explore new dialogue and collaboration.
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In Akshay Mahajan’s decade-old project I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone, he becomes poet Joshua Muyiwa’s subject and Muyiwa his. The photographs of them and their friends in the background of the much talked about Section 377 and the beginning of the fight for equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community, is an attempt to normalise queer life. “To tell people that we are just, a regular bunch of young people,” says Mahajan. The project also explores cohabitation, duality and how one artist responds to the other.
Archiving personal histories and narratives has its share of challenges. “I am always thinking about consent and whether or not my dead relatives would have approved of me showing their photographs in public or in a certain way,” says Cowasji. It’s a constant struggle to find these answers and there is never a right one. Then there is also the never-ending quest of finding something new and different and something that arouses your curiosity in the known, in the familiar, which is easily ignored or overlooked. There is also the question of whether that being projected is authentic or staged, especially when the creator inserts himself or herself in the creation.
But it is only through this complex process of internalisation, of navigating perplexing thoughts, of the struggles that come with taking certain liberties that we get to see photographs, which make us question our lives, our relationships and the country’s sociopolitical events.
Riddhi Doshi is a Mumbai-based art, culture and travel writer.
Alphamarine Photography are running an underwater photography workshop event at Red Sea Diving Safari’s Marsa Shagra Village in March 2024.
The event includes eight classroom sessions on different aspects of underwater photography given by Phil and Anne Medcalf over four days, and then repeated. The workshops will start on 12 March and run until 19 March inclusive. There won’t be a need to attend any of the talks in a specific order.
This rolling programme approach means attendees can arrive at anytime during or before the event and as long as they are in the resort at least four out of the eight days, they can access all the talks. That in turn gives lots of flexibility with flight options.
The talks will cover exposure, composition, using light and underwater photography styles and techniques. Each will be about 45 minutes long. Guests will also be able to access Anne and Phil for advice throughout the eight days of the event not just during the days they attend talks.
The duo will run impromptu sessions and give at least an hour’s one-to-one time with everyone who is booked on a workshop. There’ll also be a selection of demo equipment available to try, including wet lenses and strobes.
Between them, Phil and Anne have over 50 years of diving experience, and over 30 years of those taking digital pictures underwater. In that time they’ve dived around the world, including many trips to the Red Sea as well as Indonesia, the Maldives, Australia and the UK.
Together they turned their interest into a business in 2017 and now own Alphamarine Photography, an underwater photography training and retail company. They have a highly rated blog on their website and a Facebook Q&A group with over 2,000 members worldwide.
They’ve written on underwater photography for magazines and presented on the subject at every GO Diving Show since the event began. Their workshops and online courses in photography and photo editing attract students from around the world.
Alphamarine’s expertise ranges from getting the best from budget friendly cameras such as Olympus TGs to using the latest high-end mirrorless options, and experience as retailers gives them a broader knowledge base than many underwater photographer when it comes to the equipment available.
Marsa Shagra village has a range of accommodation from tents to air-conditioned chalets. A standard package will include full board, most soft drinks and five days unlimited house reef diving. Meals are buffet style, with a good range, and the meal times are long enough to allow for early morning dives and night dives without any risk of you missing out.
The house reef diving is excellent and you can dive unguided from 6am to 8pm. As well as accessing the house reef from shore, zodiac dives on the outer house reef are covered in the unlimited package.
Marine life is impressively varied with regular sightings of turtles, reef sharks and dolphins as well as a great deal of macro life to find, and occasional sightings of whalesharks.
Elphinstone can be dived by speedboat with a journey time of about 20 minutes for a supplementary charge, as can a range of other local sites by boat or shore.
The way bookings are handled for this event are that you book your holiday package through Oonasdivers if you are in the UK (contact Red Sea Diving Safari for their agents elsewhere) and, once you’re booked, you pay the workshop fee of £175 to Alphamarine Photography.
The format and the resort setup suits people coming on their own, as a couple or a group. If you have non-photographers with you, they don’t pay the workshop fee.
What do I want from a history of photography now? That’s what I was asking myself as I went through the International Center of Photography show “ICP at 50: From the Collection, 1845-2019,” the stimulating survey of highlights from the New York museum’s holdings, curated by Elisabeth Sherman and staged for its golden jubilee year.
Here’s a well-known bit of trivia, showing how art’s relation to photography has shifted over time: Before the 1990s, the work of Cindy Sherman was collected by the Museum of Modern Art’s department of painting and sculpture, not its department of photography. Sherman had become famous for her “Untitled Film Stills,” using herself as a model and staging scenes that evoked classic Hollywood movies. But though she worked with photos, Sherman wasn’t considered a “photographer.”
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #118 (1983) in “ICP at 50.” Photo by Ben Davis.
Critic Douglas Crimp described the debates over where Sherman belonged as more than academic. He thought that photo-conceptualism was a kind of intellectual timebomb in the museum, set to eventually go off and expose how incoherent the idea of categorizing art by media was—photography vs. sculpture vs. performance, etc. The genre the museum had valorized as “art photography,” Crimp thought, was actually a very narrow idea of what photos could be, focusing on technical prowess. And photography’s full embrace of Sherman would be “the moment in which one would recognize that the way the museum organizes itself is in some form of crisis.”
The angst inspired by such questions is greatly diminished now—not just at MoMA, but here at ICP, an institution dedicated to celebrating the craft of photography. Cindy Sherman appears smack dab at the center of the history being unspooled in “ICP at 50.” Her work Untitled #118 (1983) centers a crowded wall in the show’s second gallery showing diverse modes of photography from the ’80s. When she became an ICP trustee in 2022, the artist told the New York Times, “I sensed that the organization, in asking me to participate, wanted to branch out from its more traditional roots and be seen in a broader sense of how photography is being used today.” That could also be the thesis statement of this show.
Installation view of the two floors of “ICP at 50.” Photo by Ben Davis.
The story “ICP at 50” tells starts with 19th-century experiments, tiny tintypes, early panoramic photos, hand-colored studio portraits, and such. The long mid-section of the show, representing photography’s heroic age, spans roughly the ‘20s to the ‘70s, when photography came into its own as a self-conscious professional and aesthetic community. The highlights here are too many to enumerate, and liberally include oddities and offbeat works by famous names, to convey the eclectic approach to image-making the show wants to emphasize.
There’s a certain notable focus on moments of self-conscious artifice. Gordon Parks appears, not by his classic Civil Rights images, but by a stunning photo-illustration staging a scene from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Weegee appears, not by one of his high-impact photos of New York street life, but via a picture of an actor from the film Dr. Strangelove, frozen mid-yell.
This classic era’s vigor and magnetism clearly comes from the particular status of the photographer during this period: the rise of a new medium brought potential new and popular audiences, yet taking good photos was still considered skilled work, requiring knowledge of a technical piece of equipment. In photojournalism, this led to a certain sense of dignified urgency that came from the belief that photographers have a special role in shaping public perception of important events; in fashion photography, to an aura of rarified glamor connected to the feeling that a special skillset was being brought to bear to style a sitter’s image.
Top row: Cristina García Rodero, La Tabua (1985) and Masaaki Miyazawa, Once Upon a White Night (1985). Bottom: Susan Meiselas, Alphabetization campaign for market sellers, Nicaragua (1980). Photo by Ben Davis.
Cornell Capa founded ICP as a museum in 1974 to evangelize and preserve the tradition of “concerned photography.” That was the name for a style of socially engaged, formally rigorous documentary photography, most famously associated with the Magnum photo agency—and Cornell’s older brother Robert, the great war photographer who died on assignment for Life to Vietnam, in 1954.
Near to Sherman’s painting-scaled Untitled #118 is a smaller, roughly contemporaneous photo by Susan Meiselas (current head of Magnum), a late, great example in that tradition. It is a gorgeously colored 1980 chromogenic print from her famous reportage on Central American conflicts, capturing two teachers at a blackboard, engaged in a literacy campaign aimed at the poor in Nicaragua. (A wall label calls it an “alphabetization campaign,” but I believe that is a mistranslation from the Spanish.)
This juxtaposition of Sherman and Meiselas, for me, symbolizes a pivot point in the show. Indeed, one potential reading of “ICP at 50” is that shortly after the institution put down roots, fifty years ago, the discipline of photography itself became painfully self-conscious.
Gerda Taro, Republican Militiawoman Training on the Beach, outside Barcelona (August 1936) in “ICP at 50.” Photo by Ben Davis.
Up to a certain moment in “ICP at 50,” the big names you will remember are people like Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Gerda Taro, Gordon Parks, Lee Friedlander—a canon recognizably set apart as “photographers.” After, the figures who dominate are Louise Lawler, Bruce Nauman, Shirin Neshat, Martha Rosler, Laurie Simmons, Carrie Mae Weems—basically, the names that one would see as key to any survey of post-‘80s contemporary art, at any art museum, possibly grouped under the unlovely catchall “lens-based practice.”
(The exhibition accompanying “ICP at 50” for the institution’s birthday year, “David Seidner: Fragments, 1977–99,” is much more in the vein of honoring a photo-specific figure who hasn’t got his due. My colleague William van Metier is covering it separately.)
Bill Biggert, no title (September 11, 2001) in “ICP at 50.” Photo by Ben Davis.
ICP director David Little is keen to stress what this show says about the flexibility of the museum’s mission, how the institution has always been hip to “photography in all of its forms,” not just Capa’s “concerned photography.” One of the last photos in “ICP at 50” that actually might fit that foundational rubric—documenting an unfolding reality in an impactful way—is Bill Biggert’s hazy, haunted image of New York on 9/11, which shows an ambulance trundling through dust and rubble. Yet this image also shows how untenably high the bar is for such journalistic images to feature in this narrative: The picture is haunted, almost literally—it’s notable as much for what it shows as for the fact that Biggert himself perished that day in Lower Manhattan. His film was developed posthumously.
Clearly an artist like Cindy Sherman is also “socially concerned”—specifically, her work is full of ideas about how identity itself is formed, and deformed, by the media. The photography world was (and still is, in some quarters) suspicious of Cindy Sherman because it viewed her work as deskilled. Yet in a twist of fate, it is precisely that approach that has made her work so prescient as time has gone on, as images have proliferated. Photo elements have been incorporated into art projects of all kinds, while, more generally, the public itself now communicates via photos constantly, in many fluid ways. The hyper-self-conscious mindset represented by Sherman, conveying identity as a continuous act of self-styling in a world where media is everywhere, has pervaded social life.
Barbara Bloom, Greed (1988) in “ICP at 50.” Photo by Ben Davis.
If a certain genre of gallery art swells to dominate in ICP’s story—images get bigger, becoming painting size (Mickalene Thomas) or become part of installations (Barbara Bloom) or are treated as sculptural objects (A.K. Burns)—that may just be a curatorial choice, a matter of taste. Some part of me does feel that it clearly reflects a waning of confidence in the project of the individual photographic image, on its own, to hold attention.
There is an economic background to this erosion. The photo clubs and photo magazines that created a public for photography and supported photographers from the early 20th century on are long gone. Jürgen Schadeberg’s 1954 photo of the bustling office of South Africa’s Drum magazine, where he served as photo editor and mentor to a generation of South African photographers—including Peter Magubane, also here—now seems like a window into a distant past. And so, the art gallery context looms larger and larger as the site where image-making is taken seriously, and can take on serious value.
Installation view of “ICP at 50.” Photo by Ben Davis.
That background is worth noting, because if the story “ICP at 50” is telling is all about vibing with the “broader sense of how photography is being used today,” it clearly crops out one of the ways that contemporary audiences relate to images—the one closest to “concerned photography,” in fact.
Digital media has changed many things, but the project of raising awareness via striking images continues. There are individual photos, like Getty journalist John Moore’s heart-wrenching 2018 picture of a terrified toddler at the U.S.-Mexico border, that capture a moment and have great impact. More importantly, the decade of Black Lives Matter saw images of police brutality, captured mainly by citizen journalists and bystanders with cellphones, detonate massive protests. And right now, public opinion is being shaped by tragic images coming out of Gaza, both from professionals (often working at tremendous risk) and from ordinary Gazans sharing images of the horror they are living through.
A.K. Burns, In Labor (2012) in “ICP at 50.” Photo by Ben Davis.
Douglas Crimp was talking about a “crisis” for museums at the level of theory. When it comes to a mid-sized, financially delicate institution like ICP, the leveling of categories is also ultimately a practical problem, in terms of defining a clear and distinct pitch to the public, in a world where there is fierce competition for fragmented attention spans. And this show leaves me still asking the questions that I walked in with: What is the project of a photography-specific museum now? Is it just an art museum without paintings?
Don’t get me wrong: There’s something to love in almost all the parts of the story “ICP at 50” tells. Please go see this show! It would be easy to take for granted that a physical space exists where you can discover such a rich collection of historically resonant images, and be inspired to debate what they mean now. Despite or because of that, I think it’s worth noting that the overall effect here is as if you are looking through a camera as someone turns the lens, watching the category of “photography” come into crisp focus—and then go out of focus again and dissolve into a blur.
“ICP at 50: From the Collection, 1845-2019” is on view at the International Center of Photography, New York, through May 6, 2024.
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It was an eerie afternoon in September 2009, at the height of Typhoon Ketsana (locally named Ondoy), when my family’s home in Metro Manila became submerged in flood water. Our old family albums, artworks, tables, and wooden chairs bellowed in the depths of torrential rain from the distant ocean that ultimately surrounds our island nation. I rushed, climbing to the second floor of our house, a privilege, the last island left, as my family’s belongings slowly slipped away. I held on tightly to the loving arms of my parents and my late grandmother. More than 700 people died in the typhoon.
I was 12 years old then. Do we still remember?
Photo by Gab Mejia
More than a decade has passed since that storm, and other deluges that continue to shape a nation of 7,641 islands and 100-million Filipinos amid the ecological crisis. Every colonial history, every personal memory, every culture, every language, and every tide cradles an intertwining story waiting to unfold. An archipelago is what we are, and it will not be too long before the Philippines becomes fully self-aware of its own identity, capacities, and greatness, but perhaps it will be too late. Storms have intensified and the seas continually rise. The sandcastles that we have built now crumble as these waters draw closer to our shores. Despots lead our institutions, wildlife go extinct, populations disperse for greener pastures, forests are destroyed, and the indigenous peoples further crippled from defending themselves and their homes, where by then, we may have nothing left but stories to tell. Stories of water and flood that have shaped my life, communities, and country, and the collective island stories that give me hope and make me dream.
Gab Mejia’s “The Passage of Storms” was awarded first place at the CreateCOP28 Art competition organized by creative agency Art Partner and the United Nations. Photo Courtesy of Gab Mejia
I could not bear to sit idly as the waters continued to rise. We are not victims, but dreamers, and stories are our boats for survival. Much like our seafaring ancestors, who have found their ways in between islands by looking to the stars, I have fondly found my way by looking through the reflections of my photographs; both a tool and a vessel that has allowed me to look closer at these same stars and seas, that there are indeed answers and solutions found within the diversity of our culture and communities in our country amid the polycrisis we continue to disproportionately confront.
Stories like the Agusan-Manobo indigenous people, who have coexisted for centuries in the heart of the Agusan Marshlands. Their ingenious floating houses, which adapt to the rise and fall of water amid changing seasons, are a living testament to the possibilities of adaptability. Stories from the frontlines of the environmental youth movement like For the Future and Kids for Kids Philippines, who have devoted themselves to providing support and relief during the Super Typhoon Odette in 2021, are living beacons of empathy and hope that there exists a space for Filipino children to live, create, play, and dream. Community to community and island to island, stories emerge from a fault line between the collision of the plates of remembrance and dreaming. There in this line exist the gaps we have to collectively fill together, where water can then become a bridge.
Photo by Gab Mejia
By weaving these stories across the islands and regions of our country, beyond the reflections of our photographs and the art we create, I have been reminded of the power of stories, photography, and community, which allows us to affirm the multitudes of our history, identities, and creativity as an elixir amidst the ecological crisis. To grieve for what the floods and seas have taken, and to reclaim and reimagine these island narratives as dreams for the future.
We are an archipelago. Do we remember now?
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There was a time when I felt a lot more connected to my own photography, partially because I felt like every photograph had a creative collaborator. Oftentimes, it was me, the subject in front of me, and my camera. While it seems crazy to personify and give life to your camera, it truly is an essential part of what helps you make your photographs. A painter uses paint brushes, but they usually only have one palette. Cooks have many knives, but they also have one tool that they find to be very, particularly perfect for most things that they do. That’s a reason why I think it’s a great idea for photographers to name their cameras.
When I used to own a Canon 5D Mk II, I named her Dahlia. She helped me found this website over 14 years ago, test other cameras, and overall just do so much more. Without that camera, I wouldn’t have been able to build and do so many other things.
But by giving my Canon 5D Mk II a name, I truly felt like there was a creative collaborator unlike anything else that I’ve worked with. Sometimes, the process of taking photos was me, my camera, and whatever else was in front of us. But no matter what, we were always able to get the shot. There’s something to be said here about how all of those cameras do such a great job and that any camera these days can realistically get the shot. But some of them require more work from the photographer while others don’t as much.
Perhaps this is because I’m an extroverted person more than an introverted person. However, it’s always a nice feeling to know that I’m not alone when I create images. Some photographers want to be alone — they adore the fact that it’s just them and the camera. But the camera is a collaborative tool that you use to make your images. You can make it with any camera, but some cameras are just right for you.
The other day, I was walking with a friend who spotted the Hasselblad camera that I had around my chest. She told me about how she used to work on film photography sets and how if the camera broke down, the entire shoot would stop. And in some cases, the camera needed to be shipped to Europe to get it fixed.
Ultimately, if you own a camera or two cameras, consider naming them. They’re your creative partners and collaborators. And if they’re not working, then you clearly can’t. If you give it a name and take care of it accordingly, it will possibly rewire in your brain how you maintain and care for your creative collaborator: in this case, your camera.
If it’s starting to not perform as well, then perhaps do some maintenance, like cleaning the sensor or the lens contacts. If it’s starting to die, charge it and let it get its fill. Let it go to sleep only after a long period of time; you wouldn’t want to go to deep sleep only to be awoken very often. Just think about how cranky you would be.
I know some of these sound silly, but consider your camera’s strengths and weaknesses. Then, give it a name, and make it an essential part of your creative process.
Analog Forever Magazine proudly unveils its much-anticipated ninth edition, set to grace shelves and mailboxes in early March 2024. This edition is not just a publication but a journey into the soul of film and analog photography, brought to life by ten visionary analog and experimental photographers from around the world. Each artist in this edition challenges the norms, using their cameras to weave stories that captivate and inspire.
In this 150+ page compendium, readers will be treated to exclusive interviews with luminaries such as Mark Sink, David Ondrik, Niall O’Brien, and Norma Córdova. Additionally, the magazine will feature captivating portfolios from Amanda Tinker, David Sokosh, Eduardo Almeida, Kriss Munsya, Matthew Santomarco, and Zara Carpenter, offering a profound insight into the world of analog photography and the artists that inhabit it. (Read our Artist Announcement Here!)
Lastly, we couldn’t make our publication possible without the support of our sponsors. We want to thank the following companies for their support and generosity as we launch Edition 9: Our printer in Richmond, California, and our partners: Blue Moon Camera, Freestyle Photographic Supplies, and Seawood Photo. Thank you!
Magazine Specifications:
-8″ x 10”
-152 pages
– 200+ Images
-Super Smooth Uncoated 176gsm Paper
-Soft Touch Matte Laminate Cover
-Perfect Bound
–ISBN: 978-1-73-415178-7
Please Note:
Shipping Restriction: Due to changes in our shipping policy, we regret to inform you that we no longer dispatch orders to the UK directly. UK customers are encouraged to order through our dedicated partner, Analogue Wonderland.
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