Margaret Bourke-White was born in New York City in 1904, and grew up in rural New Jersey. She went on to study science and art at multiple universities in the United States from 1921 to 1927, then began a successful run as an industrial photographer, making notable images of factories and skyscrapers in the late 1920s. By 1929, she began working for magazine publishers, joining both Fortune and, later, LIFE. She spent years traveling the world, covering major events from World War II to the partition of India and Pakistan, the Korean War, and much more. Bourke-White held numerous “firsts” in her professional life—she was the first foreign photographer allowed to take pictures of Soviet industry, she was the first female staff photographer for LIFE magazine and made its first cover photo, and she was the first woman allowed to work in combat zones in World War II. Gathered here, a small collection of the thousands of remarkable images she made over a lifetime—Margaret Bourke-White passed away in 1971, at age 67, from Parkinson's disease.
Seamus Murphy grew up in Ireland and is based in London. He is the recipient of seven World Press Photo awards for his photographic work in Afghanistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Peru and Ireland. He received The World Understanding Award from POYi in the USA for his work from Afghanistan and a film he made based around this work was nominated for an Emmy and won the Liberty in Media Prize in 2011.
His work has been published and exhibited widely. He has made films for The New Yorker and Channel 4 Television in the UK.
He is the author of four books including A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan (Saqi Books. 2008) is based on 12 trips to the country between 1994 and 2007 and is a chronicle of Afghanistan’s extraordinary recent history. I Am The Beggar of the World (Farrar Straus Giroux. 2014) offers a rare glimpse into the lives of Afghan women through their anonymous Landay poetry.
He has collaborated with musician PJ Harvey on projects for Let England Shake and The Hope Six Demolition Project, for which he won a Q Award for Best Music Film in October 2016.
Patti Smith listed Murphy’s film for Harvey’s The Words that Maketh Murder as one of her Top 10 artworks, saying “... this unheralded piece (directed by Seamus Murphy) is a wisp of humanity celebrating the small things. “
Murphy and Harvey together published The Hollow of the Hand (Bloomsbury. 2015) a book of his photography and her poetry. An exhibition and live presentation of The Hollow of the Hand work took place at the Royal Festival Hall, London in 2015 and at Les Recontres d’Arles in France in 2016.
His latest book The Republic (Allen Lane. 2016) is an immediate and personal portrait of Ireland and was exhibited at The Little Museum in Dublin in 2017.
Several focal points define the work of New York-based artist Eric Cahan. Among them: light, specifically the light generated by the sun at sunrise and sunset, science, nature, and the ephemeral quality of memories. These considerations are in play when, equipment in tow, Cahan heads outside at a carefully chosen hour of morning or evening to begin creating one of his flawless, ethereal works of art.
Cahan himself made most of the work for his current project, Sky Series, during his extensive travels. Each photograph and sculpture is titled with the time and location of its conception. In this way, Cahan catalogues his visual journal. “ During my travels, I discover what I want to document. My works are titled to remind me of the experience, both visually and spiritually.” Cahan’s viewers see in his work his unique interpretation of a specific time and place.
Adi Nes, a photographer working in Israel, makes meticulously crafted images that are both autobiographical and attest to living in a country in conflict. Nes’s photographs are reminiscent of Renaissance or Baroque paintings, often based on parables and collective cultural memory. Sexual tension is ever-present in Nes’ work, as he delves into complex explorations of homoeroticism. His goal is to reveal a universal humanism in his dramatic portraits.
Stéphane Gizard is French photographer, living and working in Paris. Best known for portraits of young people created for his “Modern Lovers” series, photographer Stéphane Gizard’s gentle, kindly eye manages to capture the beauty and fragility of his subjects, which have included many celebrities and strangers. His work reveals their sensuality and brings out the expression of a truth; an intimate questioning. In parallel to working closely with the press and the advertising industry, Stéphane has spent ten years photographing a cross-section of 17-20 year olds; from his perspective the defining and decisive phase of one's life sitting at the end of adolescence and at the beginning of adulthood. A period of self-reflection and fragility.
Alex Prager was born in the bedroom of her grandmother’s house, in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, in 1979. She had an upbringing with few rules and little structure. At fourteen, she spent a summer on her own in Switzerland, where she worked at a knife store. She dropped out of school at sixteen, returning to Switzerland for longer periods, and earned her G.E.D. At twenty-one, while living in L.A., she went to see a show of William Eggleston’s photographs at the Getty Museum. “I felt like I was struck blind by a vision and that was the path I was going to take for the rest of my life,” she said recently. A few days later, she bought a Nikon N90s and began her career. She avoided formal education, and taught herself what she needed to execute her ideas.
Martin Parr was born in Epsom, Surrey, UK, in 1952. When he was a boy, his budding interest in the medium of photography was encouraged by his grandfather George Parr, himself a keen amateur photographer. He studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic, from 1970 to 1973. Since that time, he has worked on numerous photographic projects. He has developed an international reputation for his innovative imagery, his oblique approach to social documentary, and his input to photographic culture within the UK and abroad. In 1994 he became a full member of Magnum Photographic Cooperative. Martin Parr has published over 100 books of his own work and edited another 30.
Jesus Blue announces the publication of North Shore, the first monograph by the Brazilian photographer and surfer, Vava Ribeiro. For the past three decades, Ribeiro has been travelling the world chasing the next picture and the next wave. This stand-alone book represents some of his most compelling images, centred on the place that gives the book its title: North Shore, often described as the surf capital of the world.
Throughout the early 2000’s, Ribeiro spent a great deal of time in this remote part of Hawaii, living among the legendary surfers who have made their homes near its towering and treacherous waves. The pictures he made over these years reveal the hidden, dream-like side of the surfing life, far fr om the crowds of the public surf tour. This book juxtaposes Ribeiro’s haunting images of the Hawaiian landscape and seascape with his intimate portraits of fellow surfers and friends, including world champions John-John Florence and Kelly Slater. The total effect is immersive; Ribeiro’s North Shore is a particular kind of paradise, one where the barriers between life, surf, and art are blissfully dissolved.
When we think of beds, we usually think of them as neatly made, waiting to be used. Noah Kalina wanted to undo that, to pull back the covers and sculpt a monumental shape out of the fabric where our bodies would be, and where our bodies have been, as both a still-life (of the materials of sleep) and a portrait (of someone's presence).
Bedmounds is the culmination of Kalina’s long-term project creating and capturing sculptural forms in the middle of beds around the world. The mounds appear to take on anthropomorphic qualities, highlighting the relationship between presence and absence. Bedmounds takes a common scene and adds a twist – subverting what we are expecting to see by inserting something unanticipated.
Sohrab Hura - A look at Kashmir through the prism of the arrival and departure of the three phases of winter. Mesmerised and deceived by snow at first, as it starts to melt, so does the mask of denial start to slip off my face and I, the outsider, start to come to terms with the land that I find myself in.
