Beloit Photography and New Media

Lucia Ganieva

This is a series of photographs made in a textile factory in the town of Ivanovo, some 275 kilometers north-east of Moscow. For a long time, the town had been known as the ‘town of brides’ because the population was mostly women, who all worked in the textile industry.

During the regime of the czars, this town was the center of the textile industry in Russia. There were a lot of different plants where all kinds of fabrics were manufactured, mostly based on cotton and linen.

Over the course of time, mostly due to competition of low labor cost countries, such as China, they almost all had to close down. Today, only a handful of them are still active, and even those will probably not last much longer.

The factory where I made my series, the ‘Kombinat named after F. N. Samoilova’ was a very big plant, where the complete range of working up fabrics was performed, but now it has restricted its activities to only bleaching and printing of fabrics.

My intention was to make a portrait of the factory, by combining its interior, the fabrics they manufacture, and the women doing the work. The fabrics portrayed come from different collections, from over many years, old and new. The same is true of the interior images, where old and newer equipment is shown. And the workers, of course, are women of different ages, as well.

— Lucia Ganieva

see more images here: http://www.lensculture.com/ganieva.html?thisPic=1

Blurd Vision, David Helsham

Bongin Bongin

Bongin Bongin is an aboriginal name, meaning “many shells”. And it is the name of a bay in northern Sydney, Australia, where David Helsham swims every morning, all year round, with a group of friends.

The bay and its surroundings provide the raw material for this magical series of diptychs: Helsham has photographed a small area of the beach and the ocean over several years. In Bongin Bongin, he juxtaposes found objects he discovered on the beach – from discarded toys, to shoes, to skulls – with views of the bay in all weathers and seasons.

Central to the landscape photographs is the man-made rock pool surrounded by railings, which is re-filled by the ocean each day. Helsham describes the pool, “just at the end of the spit of sand, with its ever-faithful and constant companion, the light”. The rock pool we see in the photos almost has its own personality – it’s stranded in sand, inundated by the ocean, surrounded by people, buffeted by waves, and then tranquil, empty and floodlit at night.

The addition of the quirky found objects adds another dimension to the photographs, giving us a deeper insight into the life of the beach. There are broken pieces of watersports equipment and comic grinning toys, along with the shells of dead sea creatures, mysterious plants, and even a venomous-looking jellyfish. The titles of Helsham’s images help us connect these diverse ideas – a crashing wave is combined with a flattened can in “Crushed”, a sunny day on the sand is shown next to a bright orange, smiling toy in “Beautiful Grin”. – text by Zoe Fargher, continue reading here: http://www.lensculture.com/helsham.html?thisPic=1

Me (inoculation), Priya Kambli

Color Falls Down

My photographs visually express the notion of transience and split cultural identity caused by the act of migration.

I have been viewing this issue through the lens of my own personal history and cultural journey from India to the United States. I moved to the US at the age of 18, carrying my entire life in one suitcase weighing about 20 lbs. This journey left me feeling disconnected — unable to anchor myself in any particular cultural framework. I have therefore formed a hybrid identity, a patching together of two cultures within one person.

In my work I explore absence, loss and genealogy through the use of my own family snapshots. These personal artifacts are recontextualized alongside fragmented images and staged imagery to reveal the correlations between generations, cultures and memory. – Priya Kambli, view more photos and text here: http://www.lensculture.com/kambli.html?thisPic=2