Rebecca Beinart

Rebecca Beinart is a Nottingham based artist, who did a fine art degree, which was a 3 year course at Nottingham Trent. She works with people from different disciplines. At uni she become interested in how art could be an experience looked at narratives. The things she made were visual but shown as an event. Her degree project was a treasure hunt - clues led you to a place. It was fun but also educational - you would learn something form the hunt.
She went to do an MA - Art and ecology in Devon. The course was experimental by nature. She was taught by writer, artists, scientists and more.
She uses photography to document her work and live events.
She has done comissioned work.
In Bristol she did work where she held a drawing infront of a view. She walked along a river in Bristol seven times and took sketches of it, and place that in the landscape.
She learnt a lot of different facts about the river and also some stories.

In London, she went looking for food to create a meal . Not from bins, but from the wild life in forests etc. She works on her own and also in groups to do workshops.
In Loughborough she made her own bread, which was passed on like Herman which means she used some of it and added to it and passed it on for other people to add things, to lots of different people.

The next project she worked on with her sister was origination - investigation of own family history. Identity - family tree. She made a video in Africa, of a dinner party with no guests but the food gets eaten. It was in response to finding out that their great great grandas sold salt so the performance was set up on where the salt was.

She went to look how nature (plants/leaves) can be used as medicine. 'Poison' was the name of the next project. She was looking at plants that were poisonous and plants the are used as medicine. She gathered information on medicines and the history of giving out medicines. She made liquid that would be dangerous to drink, but she was interested in how you could create something dangerous from pretty flowers.

She also did a project on wasteland. She took photos of land which was not being used, and where buildings have been knocked down. She says these were place for imagination, because everywhere else is set in stone.
One project within this involved her taking photographs of every 50 steps.
She is working with a few different artists, and they all did this in Bali within the project.

Alongside making artwork, she works in the field of education. She works at colleges and in the community.

Brian Griffin

Brian Griffin is photographer and has been for over 40 years. He started taking photographs using a film camera. He didn't go to university to get a degree, he just has a diploma.
Tony Ray Jones influenced him to do his work. When Brian was younger, nobody encouraged him to have a career in photography, even his family, because they looked down on photography and didn't think you could make money out of photography.

When Brian finished his diploma, he did a bit of travelling, which inspired him to take lots of documentary style photographs, of whatever he came across, mainly street scenes.
Another person who inspired him, was Barney Bubbles. He recommends everyone to check him out.
He took many portrait photos which he then got his friend, Barney to illustrate the pictures with lines - different sorts of lines like straight wavy etc. This was a self published book.

He made his own lighting equipment as he didn't have a lot of money when he started out. He shot the portrait images of his friend, Barney in his apartment as his backdrop - he used what was around him.
He said it has taken many years for people to acknowledge him and his work. He was also inspired by Casper David Friedrick . He knew from the beginning that photography was going tobe his life, and he desperately wanted to make it as a photographer.

He has dones commissions for magazines to earn money (Financial Times). He always thinks of a concept before he takes pictures for an art project.
Deep down he wanted to be a fashion photographer, but ended up taking photos of business men. He thought this was ok to get started and start earning money. As the 80's approached he became more and more famous - people commission him for art projects as well - varying his work.
He always had a side project alongside the commissions he did. - personal project.

He went on to get a studio as he had a budget to work with as time went on.
He liked working with other artists. Barney Bubbles was a graphic designer. hey got money to make a newspaper £4,500. The art world began to support him. When he first started trying to sell his work, nobody was interested in buying it but now he sells books for £300 or more.
He was experimental - did double exposures and played around with light - long exposures and more.
He has also took photographs for album covers.

Brian took photos of politicians and people in high up positions.
He has taken photos throughout the midlands - Birmingham, Nottingham, Derby, Burton and so on.
He is very good at thinking of ideas. Some projects required a team of people. Some images - the tie series - in Broadgate are quite funny. He took those photos in 1987 - it was a response to the development theme.
He also did a series for the workers of Broadgate.
The next series he did was 'Water People' corporate job. He used a variety of equipment for this.
Sometimes he made films in response to his ideas - in Iceland. This was shot on a compact camera - for this he did a series of portraits in London, walking round a building site, so the made him a studio to allow him to achieve his goal, which was to take lots of photographs.

He has embraced digital photgraphy. Recently he has made work about his life. He goes out of his way to take his photos, and he gets what he is aiming for.
He has photographed people who have taken an important role in the olympics. "Part of being a photographer is giving your subject confidence. You need good people skills if you want to be a good photographer." He quoted. He observed people getting married in China, and he took some series of photographs of weddings in China.
On the 8th, 9th and 10th March 2013 He will be taking part in the Format Festival. He will be exhibiting his work, in Derby.

David La Chapelle

David LaChapelle is a modern day photographer, who is known to have made photography modern. He travels the the world to take photographs, and he pushes the boundaries, to get striking amazing images. He He is currently working in New York, taking photographs, but moves around a lot.
He has photographed many celebrities, including Janet Jackson, Madonna, Tupac Shakur, Shakira, Eminem, Paris Hilton, David Beckham, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hillary Clinton, Muhammed Ali, Britney Spears, Elton John and many more.

He is influenced by Andy Warhol, and he admires his work. He is addicted to the rush of meeting a deadline, and he tries his best to acomplish it. He is interest in popular culture, the world and people in the world.
By looking at his photographs, it shows you he is a contemporary photographer. His pictures are surreal and sexy. He naturally crosses the art/fashion genre.

David makes a statement, saying "Have fun with your photos and subjects", as he describes his photos as fun. He tries to make his photographs different from others, so they are striking images.
He was introduced to photography by his mother, as she used photography as an escape, making pictures look better than they actually are.

He is a good team worker, and works with lots of people in a team, helping him set up for his shoots, and helping him with ideas. They help him contruct the images, and the backdrops0.
His approach changed after 8/10 years, as he started off doing wedding photography, however he wanted to make a change and do things how he wanted and be creative. He describes himself as a conceptual photographer.

Money is not a limit according to David La Chapelle. Sometimes he will have to use extra of his own money to get the right shoots. He has worked on shoots over a period of 2 days for big sets. He has colaborated with different artists and painters for his backdrops of sets.

David plays music on his sets, so he can make the stars feel comfortable infront of the lens. He does research on each artist to get inspiration and ideas for his shoots, and then the celebrity/artist would choose their favourite idea. He says "Theast part is taking the pictures, putting it all together and pulling the shoot off is the hardest part/making it work."

He likes to make the people in the pictures look beautiful and sexy, and he says that hius images arent dark or harming the persons career. People are larger than life in his photos, you never really know what you are going to get, there is no repetition within his photos. He said he gets very nervous before the shoots, but he can relax afterwards.

David LaChapelle wasn't born into a rich environment, he did have lots of money to start with. He came from a small town where he didn't feel like he fitted in. He felt that there was no other option but to go to New York, where he could make his dreams come true and make a difference.
He went to art school, where he met Andy Warhol. He got a photography job by him, and his aim was to make everyone look good in these photos. He worked for magazines such as 'Time Vogue' and 'Vanity Affair'. He said the difference between doing an editiorial shoot and a celebrity shoot is the time limit. Celebrities are in a rush, whereas art/editorial shoots are more experimetal and there is more time.

The colours in his photos are bright, rich, bold, full on and over saturated. He is trying to achieve perfection when he takes a photograph and when he edits the photo.
He tries not to over re-touch the photos, so that his pictures are more honest, and aren't fake.
"Photography is like a painting, it can be anything I want it to be" He quotes. He didn't want to photo the horrors of the world, he wanted to capture the beauty.

Some of his photographs look like the theme is a nightmare or dream.
He never thought that his images would be in a gallery, he was only aiming for them to be shown in magazines. He says "Purpose of art is to make people think". His goal for life is to photograph people that make up the world and people from popular culture.

Here are some of his striking, colourful images, they are really in-your-face photographs, and they are fun to look at.

Salbastio Salgado

Salbastio Salgado is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist, who has travelled to 100 different countries to take his photographs.
He started to take photographs in the 1970s and onwards. He was trained as an economist and changed careers to become a photographer. He presents his work in the form of an artists, in published books.

His subject is people, essentially he photographs the result of globalisation. He photographs the reality of out lives, poverty being one of the main themes, and how it effects people.
He used 35mm cameras mainly to shoot with, all of them being black and white. He printed all of his own images himself. All of his photographs are very moody, atmospheric and powerful.
His images are educational, showing how people actually live in different environments.
He doesn't want people to give up on the homeless, he wants somebody to find a solution for poverty.
All of his photographs are beautiful pictures revealing reality, they do not look down on anybody. Just one picture which can take a second to take can show a whole story on what is actually happening in the world. His pictures are very emotional and expressive.
His photos speak 100 words, as they are describing a lot, within the pictures rather than being written down or said.

Salbastio Salgado says it is a privilege to take these photographs, and he has gained trust through living with the people he photographed.
Some people would ask him if he could photograph them, so this gave him a huge responsibility to photograph these people with respect and showing the right message.
His audience are very rich people, with nice houses, have good jobs, a family and a happy life, which he is aware of, these are very different people to the people who are in his photographs, and they live very different lives.
He did a series of head and shoulder shorts, or sitting portraits of children who are homeless, partly because they wanted to be photographed and let him get on with it.
The children look directly into the lens, on the photographs and their eyes speak in the images, showing emotion.

These are just some of the photographs Salbastio Salgado captured, portraying how these different people live and and how it's completely different from our lives.