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My second exhibition at the Ritzy is on!

Good Afternoon people,

I set up my exhibition at the Ritzy on Wednesday. Just incase you don’t know the Ritzy is one of the oldest independant picturehouses in London and has an exhibition space on the ground floor. There is also a huge film festival taking place form the 15th October. So I am sure there will be a good selection of people coming through the door.

I respect the Ritzy it’s giant slabs of cake and good quality coffee that it produces are the best in Brixton. If you get a chance please take a trip to take a peek at my photographs and eat a piece of scrumptious cake!

Enjoy,

Laura

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Annie a lady with a lens

The Leibovitz family moved frequently with her father’s duty assignments, and she took her first pictures when she was stationed in the Philippines.

Rolling Stone magazine

When Annie Leibovitz returned to America in 1970, she worked for the recently-launched Rolling Stones magazine. In 1973, publisher Jann Wenner named Leibovitz chief photographer of Rolling Stone. Leibovitz worked for the magazine until 1983, and her intimate photographs of celebrities helped define the Rolling Stone look. In 1975, Leibovitz served as a concert-tour photographer for The Rolling Stones Tour of the Americas.

Vanity Fair magazine

Since 1983, Leibovitz has worked as a featured portrait photographer for Vanity Fair.

Lennon and Ono

On December 8 1980 Leibovitz had a photo shoot with John Lennon for Rolling Stone, promising him he would make the cover. After she had initially tried to get a picture with just Lennon alone (she would recall that, “nobody wanted [Ono] on the cover.”), Lennon insisted that both he and Yoko Ono be on the cover. Leibovitz then tried to recreate the kissing scene from the Double Fantasy album cover, a picture that she loved. “What is interesting is she said she’d take her top off and I said, ‘Leave everything on’…not really preconceiving the picture at all. Then he curled up next to her and it was very, very strong. You couldn’t help but feel that she was cold and he looked like he was clinging on to her. I shot some test Polaroids first and when I showed them to John and Yoko, John said, ‘You’ve captured our relationship exactly. Promise me it’ll be on the cover.’ I looked him in the eye and we shook on it.” She was the last person to professionally photograph Lennon — he was shot and killed five hours later.

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Reza Deghati an Iranian Photojournalist who has won a bag full of awards!

Deghati was born in Tabriz, Iran. He studied Architecture at the University of Teheran. A French citizen, today Reza is a renowned photojournalist highly regarded. Published by the most prestigious International magazines, he travels the globe from Lebanon to Afghanistan.

He has given many lectures at universities such as Stanford, George Washington, South California, Beijing, Istanbul. National Geographic television has produced several films portraying Reza and his photographic and humanitarian work. If that isn’t enough he received an Emmy Academy Award in 2002.

In 1991, Reza and his brother founded a Photo Agency, which has been distributing their own archives but also those of several other photographers. Having been a consultant to the United Nations in Afghanistan in 1990, being culturally close to this country and particularly being a journalist led Reza to found AINA. The NGO Aina, that is based in Paris, Kaboul and Washington D.C., struggles for developing a civil society and cultural expression by empowering media and communication. In November 2005 Reza was honoured with the title of “Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite”, the French award for distinguished services in a public or private capacity.

He also was awarded the prestigious “Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Services in Journalism” from the Missouri School of Journalism in “recognition of his lifelong contributions, through brilliant photojournalism, to justice and dignity for the world’s citizens”.

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A hungarian photojournalist who carved his own path

Kertész Andor (July 2, 1894 – September 28, 1985), was a Hungarian -born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition. In the early years of his lengthy career, his then-unorthodox camera angles, and his unwillingness to compromise his personal photographic style, prevented his work from gaining wider recognition. Even towards the end of his life, Kertész did not feel he had gained the worldwide recognition he deserved. He is recognized today as one of the seminal figures of photojournalism.

Kertész’s early work was mostly published in magazines. This continued until much later in his life when he stopped accepting commissions. He served briefly in WWI and moved to Paris in 1925, against the wishes of his family. There he was involved in the artistic melting pot  of immigrants and the Dada movement. The imminent threat of World War II pushed him to emigrate again to the US. He took offense with several editors, who he felt did not recognize his work. Despite the numerous awards he collected over the years, he still felt unrecognized, a sentiment which did not change even at the time of his death. His career is generally divided into four periods based on where his work was most prominent at these times. They are called the Hungarian period, the French period, the American period and, towards the end of his life, the International period.

Kertész bought his first camera (an ICA box camera) in 1912, as soon as he had earned enough money, despite his family’s protests to continue his career in business. In his free time away from work, he began taking photographs of the local peasants, gypsies, and landscape of the surrounding Hungarian Plains (the puszta).

Kertész emigrated to Paris in September 1925 against his mother’s wishes, leaving her behind along with both his brothers, his wife and his uncle Lipót, who died shortly thereafter. Jen? also left Hungary to live in Aregntina, but Elizabeth remained until her future husband was well established in Paris and they could live together. Kertész was certainly not the only artist emigrating to Paris; Man Ray, Germaine Krull (who also took part in exhibitions with Kertész) and Lucien Aigner all emigrated there during this period. In Paris he found critical and commercial success with magazine publications after doing commissioned work for several magazines across Europe from Germany to France to Italy.

Kertész’s work itself is often described as predominantly utilising light and even Kertész himself said that he writes with light. He was never considered to “comment” on his subjects, but rather capture them – this is often cited as why his work is often overlooked; he stuck to no political agenda and offered no deeper thought to his photographs other than the simplicity of life.

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One of the first environmental activists

Gertrude “Trudi” Duby Blom  was a journalist, social anthropiligist and photojournailst who spent five decades documenting the Mayan cultures of Chipas, Mexico, particularly the culture of the Lacandon Maya. She was also a pioneering environmental activist. Her home in San Cristobal de Las Casas has been preserved as a cultural and research center devoted to the protection and preservation of the Lacandon Maya and La Selva Lancandona rain forest.

Gertrude Duby was a photojournalist and anti-fascist organizer during WWII. In 1940, weary of war, she journeyed to Mexico, where she decided to reinvent herself as a jungle explorer. She bought an old camera and taught herself to use it. Then in 1943, she convinced a government official to let her join an expedition in search of the legendary Lacandon Maya.

The only Maya never conquered by the Spanish, the Lacandon had lived free for centuries deep in the Chiapas jungle. They were rarely photographed and only had sporatic contact with the outside world. Not only did Blom photograph the Lacandon and write a book about her experiences with them.

The systematic deforestation of La Selva Lacandona by loggers, immigrant settlers, and the Mexican government changed the direction of her life yet again. In the 1970s, Blom decided she must speak out, and thus became one of the first environmental activists. She traveled the world, lecturing from first-hand experience about the death of the jungle and showing slide shows of her documentary photographs. In three languages, she wrote hundreds of articles protesting Mexican policies. In 1975 she started El Vivero, a tree nursery that still distributes free trees for reforestation.

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