Round Up Week of March 10th
/The Producer’s picks for this week’s news relevant to the photography, art, design and production industries:
1) Gender During the Pandemic – in Pictures
© Lee-Ann Olwage
From transgender sex workers living in a mass shelter whose health relies on backstreet clinics, to community leaders making changes from the ground up despite a system that is stacked against them, This is Gender 2021 is the world’s largest photography competition looking specifically at gender and health. The collection offers an insight into our gendered world during a time of pandemic.
2) National Sony Photo Awards
© Min Min Zaw
The National & Regional Awards supports photographers of all abilities worldwide and celebrates their achievements. Selected from entries to the Open competition, the National Award winners are given Sony digital imaging kit plus global and local exposure, the programme has rewarded more than 500 photographers and currently operates in 51 countries.
Read more…
© David Nana Opoku Ansah
3) Ghanaian Photographers Changing the World with their Lens
It’s taken over a century for African photography to be recognised as it should worldwide, and the art form and its artists have been blossoming. Photography in Ghana, on the world stage, was long defined by press imagery and propaganda, focusing on the major struggles for an independent Ghana. Today, a new cohort intricately portrays the transition from colonialism through the early heady days of independence and into an sometimes bleak, sometimes thriving present. Always, there is a celebration and drive to showcase the African spice of life and art, a unique variety that challenges clichés of both the colonial and postcolonial era.
Celebrating 64 years of Ghanaian independence, here are some of the country’s best young photographers, including Carlos Idun-Tawiah, David Nana Opoku Ansah, and Michael Aboya.
4) A Dreamy Day Out: Brooklyn’s Prospect Park
© Irina Rozovsky
In her new book In Plain Air, photographer Irina Rozovsky pays tribute to one of New York’s diverse and nourishing green spaces.
Rozovsky pays tribute to this “melting pot”. In it, we see hazy, cinematic portraits of the New York park’s dwellers, whether they’re fishing, smoking, playing sport or reclining in trees. The result is a soothing, utopian vision of a democratic and nurturing public space. “[There were] family, lovers, friends, different ethnic backgrounds, cultures, religions,” says Rozovsky in the book’s foreword, “all sharing the same place, the same lazy instant.”
Read more…
5) New Podcasts Worth Listening To
© Thomas Adam Curry
From a podcast that invites anonymous callers to share their secrets, to a show that offers intimate conversations on the future of culture:
- Goodbye To All This
- The Secrets Hotline
- Shaking Out The Numb
- Resistance
- How It Happened
- Canary: The Washington Post Investigates
- 3.55 – The Chanel Podcast
6) Banksy Shares a Behind-The-Scenes Look at His Latest Artwork
© Banksy, Create Escape still
The street artist has claimed the artwork at Reading Gaol, the site of Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment, with a video documenting the painting’s creation.
Earlier this week (March 1), a Banksy-esque painting was spotted on the side of a former prison in Reading, showing a prisoner escaping over the wall with a typewriter. Now, the elusive street artist has confirmed that the artwork is in fact his, posting a video of the process intercut with clips of the American painter – and “king of the tingles” – Bob Ross.
The video, shared to Banksy’s Instagram, provides an insight into the artist’s latest work, which is titled “Create Escape”. Of course, like previous behind-the-scenes images, it doesn’t give away any identifying features.
The ex-prison is a significant site for the new artwork, as it famously held the poet and playwright Oscar Wilde, who was sentenced to two years after being accused of gross indecency in 1895. Wilde’s poem, Ballad of Reading Gaol, was written following his release, and campaigners are calling for the jail to be turned into an arts and culture centre, instead of being sold for housing.