Rebecca McGetrick

Taken over the course of a year, They absent themselves deals with the reflections of a visiting migrant to their birth place. Things are much the same, yet, different.

There’s an uneasy realization that once familiar places no longer exist and that once familiar faces no longer recognize you.
I've aimed to explore a narrative which follows my memories of the past as well as my impressions of the present.

Ultimately this project is a meditation on rural life as
Lived by my childhood self.


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Richard Kolker

After Juan Sanchez Cotan 1602

Juan Sanchez Cotan’s 1602 painting, “Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber”, although 400 years old, refers to many of the visual signifiers of a computer generated image. The preciseness of the composition and Cotan’s handling of light, together with geometric forms of the fruit, themselves, that reflect the geometric primitives which comprise the building blocks of the 3D computer generated space, led me to construct a response as a way of exploring the three dimensional space of the virtual, computer generated environment. 

Although the images are created using a computer, the workflow is fairly conventionally photographic; build the set, light the scene and photograph it with a virtual camera which has the same controls and conventions as a traditional ‘physical’ camera ie depth of field, film sensitivity, shutter speeds, exposure and a single perspective. Any post-production Photoshop work is very minimal and limited to colour correction work; the finished image as basically straight from the final render.

There is also a real/unreal conflict in the painting that similarly refers to that inherent in CGI; the fruit appear both very naturalistic whilst at the same time bizarrely suspended on strings in a heavy frame, cloaked by a dense black negative space.

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L'Art en Vigne : Thibault de Puyfontaine

Following on from ESPY, Thibault de Puyfontaine is one of several artists exhibiting in France at L'Art en Vigne...


From 7 to 9 June 2014, contemporary art comes to life in the vineyards around a greedy and sensitive walk.
The Art Vine invites you to a sensory experience of taste and contemplative pleasure merge.

So for the 6th edition of Art in Grapevine, wineries north of Aix become "art spaces to live" and expose artists in places usually closed to the public: the vaults, cellars, and also outside around the vineyards.

This year, the Château La Glassware south of the Luberon, the Château Val Joanis in Pertuis and Castle Vignelaure 400 m altitude at the foot of the Sainte Victoire mountain, delight the taste buds of visitors: the wine Château Glassware Rosé 2013 bio is a spicy and lively wine on blood orange with a free key on the white pepper,the Red Cherry Val Joanis 2009 Castle reasoned culture is a powerful wine red dress adorned with a purple, shiny and clear, the Red Castle in 2009 Vignelaure conversion offer with a dominant Cabernet Sauvignon structure and elegance and excellent aging potential.

Become Rendez - you art lovers ... and wine; Art in Grapevine, boosted by a labeled MP2013 year 2014 reveals the CRU ARTY, artists to know absolutely, right now, with good aging potential!

You will discover works - photos, paintings, sculptures - and also meet the artists, some already known, others to discover urgently, all followed by regional or international Parisian art galleries.

Thibault de Puyfontaine

The Art Vine

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Toumpanos Leonidas

Hidden Life

Our way of life is becoming faster and faster. Due to technologic innovations we have the ability to travel and transport goods and products all over the world.

This convenience instead of providing us with more free time and happiness captivates us in a vicious cycle of working long hours and consuming more and more. We live alienated from the nature and we shrug off the simplicity of life. 

The project “Hidden life” is about people that are trapped in the urban way of life. I capture their portrait in the city environment in which they live and are familiar with; and subsequently I follow them in a natural environment where I observe their reactions and feelings. 

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Tomasz Fall

"The placebo documentary is a personal concept which takes its name from the medical jargon. It's supposed to provide the viewer the same artistic experience that classic and contemporary documentary but without the use of harmful agents. Its research is mainly centered on the photographic representation of the real. It has its origins in the issues raised by the French realist painting and identifies itself ideologically with documentary photography. It nevertheless differs from the latter favoring a more allegorical approach to social facts, minimizing the importance of a particular phenomenon to focus on a broader and transhistorical reading of topics. The placebo documentary advocates the total staged photography, enlightened that all visual production comes from an artificial construction. It takes shapes in aesthetically independent photographic paintings (tableaux) of large format. Thereby, it distances itself from the overproduction of memory-images, deliberately abandoning the contemporary dynamics of serial work. It's firmly positioned against a part of contemporary photography (and art) made for the viewer, thought to seduce him and who forgets the art's prerogatives."

Avila Test Copia

Ourense Termas Test

Pancorbo Test Copia

Lewys Canton

Homeless, 2012

Homeless, 2012

Homeless, 2012

Homeless, 2012

This exploration of work is aimed to produce a documentary series to capture the inner struggles and perceptions people have toward homelessness. This idea was based on the concept of human experience and emotional connections.  I have use photography as a means to document the world around me. I enjoy taking pictures that call attention to things that other people overlook. My interest comes from ideas about the way people live their lives within a contemporary society. In a way these images are constructed with the intent and purpose to comment on preconceived ideas of what its like to be homeless and undermines this nostalgic pre-conception we already associate towards these people. 

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Lesley Farrell

Perennial Gardens

This series includes images of tools and household items found, over time, on my allotment, some no longer functional and some that I continue to use. The smaller items are carefully arranged in groups, as if staging a formal portrait and shot on the site where they have been found. 

Allotments, as spaces that commonly exist on the peripheries of towns and cities, represent, for many users, an escape from an urban lifestyle. They are also places where items from the city that have outlived their original function are collected and recycled, this process of regeneration mirroring the perennial nature of allotment life and produce.  They are both communal and private spaces. Whilst users may mark out their territories, allotment tenants are temporary occupants, nothing is owned, and everything is passed on and reused until items eventually decay.

In the most recent images I have combined the man-made artefacts with animal structures also found on the same allotment.  I am interested in the coexistence of the natural and man-made in our urban spaces, and the constant cycle of rebirth, reuse and decay. Photography provides a unique medium to explore this relationship, the still image interrupting the cycle, in a would-be attempt to stall the passage of time.

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Catherine Jacobs

Visionary architect Jan Gehl stresses that “lively, safe, sustainable and healthy cities can be strengthened immeasurably by increasing the concern for pedestrians, cyclists and city life in general”

Created from small everyday objects, without the use of digital manipulation, In Proximity is an ongoing series of unpopulated, high-rise urban landscapes. Hovering between image and sculpture, reality and fiction, this ambiguity perhaps allows space to contemplate how architecture and ways of moving through cities influence the way we feel.

In Proximity

In Proximity

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Phillipa Klaiber

'Last of the Free Miners' is an on going project documenting the few remaining Free Miners of the Forest of Dean. The practice itself is no different to conventional mining; it is the traditions of eligibility combined with the modernisation of such an industry that make it so unusual. The mines that remain today are hidden away within the forest, each worked by two or three men. As a whole, the series endevours to document the working lives of the Free Miners and their Forest, exploring both recent changes in the landscape and those made hundreds of years ago in the ancient iron mines that have since been reclaimed by the forest. In our society of vast industrial and commercial growth, the Free Miners of the Forest of Dean represent a more traditional way of life that is easily forgotten.

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Owen Harries

Wales was once a country famous for its industry, the south in particular being home to countless factory and mining towns, but in recent years these industrial hubs have all but disappeared. Port Talbot, where these images were taken, is the last true industrial Welsh town. A blight on the horizon, and unavoidable point on the M4 corridor, it holds a strange place in every Welshman's identity. A place everybody passes but nobody ventures into, I have chosen to document this town, the industry surrounding it, and it's effect on the natural landscape.

Derelict Warehouse, Briton Ferry

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John Trickey

'on the edge' is my Final Year Project on the BA(Hons) Photography at the University of West London, Ealing, London

This defines the abstract edge created between the rural and urban, using the symbolism of man-made objects within the construct of the scene.

The project reflects upon personal issues spent living on this edge - liberty and confinement - and the movement not only between the two, but discovering the liminal point where the moment and movement exists between life and death.

Contact John Trickey for more information

Gideon Vass

This project is a study into the suburban areas of south Manchester. The main focus is the relationship between people and place, how the structures and obstacles within this environment interact and obscure the view of the figure. I often direct the camera towards the household, the concern being how people act in their comfortable and immediate surroundings and what they are willing to expose to the outside world. Through these observations I aim to highlight the interplay between human actions and architectural arrangement.

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Rupert Howe

These images, the second of which was selected for the ESPY Award, form part of a continuing photographic essay which takes as its starting point the boundary of the Cotswolds AONB, the largest of the UK's Areas Of Outstanding Natural Beauty, designated 1966 and expanded 1990, as it skirts the perimeter of Stroud in Gloucestershire.

Running along footpaths, roads and parish boundaries, and marked on the AONB's interactive official map as an unbroken thick red line, the actual margin turns out to be a variegated interzone – or “edgeland” – cluttered with rural-urban motifs which challenge long-standing conventions of beauty and the sublime: untrimmed hedgerows, collapsed fences, walled-off private gardens, knotted tree stumps, angled telephone poles, the glistening steel tracery of the Cheltenham-Paddington railway.

Initially presented as a slideshow with an audio soundtrack, the project will continue to evolve across a variety of media and exhibition spaces.

Standish Woods

Stroud Bus Depot

Thrupp Lane

The Camp

Conygre Wood

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Dan Mariner

"I am a documentary photographer living and working in London, England. I Studied a BA in Documentary photography at the world-renowned Newport University in South Wales.

My personal reportage highlights underlying social issues and culture around us. I am a photographer of people, exploring how their lives interconnect with and shape their communities. As time goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more intrigued with the anthropological side of photography and aim convey this in my future work.

I am particularly interested in communities and individuals on the edge of society; communities whose contribution to society is hidden from the gaze of the mainstream media. I endeavour to use photography to highlight them with sensitivity, empathy and integrity. For me, photography is the perfect medium to convey stories and provide insights into the lives of others. I would like to think that through my photographs I can engender greater understanding and promote greater tolerance of the people and the world that we live in. I hope that this ideal and my passion will fuel my work for many years to come. To date, my subjects have included: Urban bee keeping, Young Carers, Organic Farming Communities, Political Refugees and Community- led Food Bank Initiatives. 

I am a highly motivated, energetic and creative individual constantly seeking to push myself in my photographic practice. When undertaking a new photographic essay I seek to work outside my comfort zone in terms of who I approach to photograph and how my work will be perceived by the viewer. With each new body of work I undertake I always look to convey something poignant, as I feel photography can provide such powerful messages using only a small number of images. Through my work to date I have developed excellent listening and communication skills, sensitivity, empathy, patience and on the spot problem solving abilities. I am very confident in embracing new situations and environments. I enjoy a challenge and am willing to work extremely hard to gain the results I desire.

I find inspiration from the likes of David Chancellor, Alec Soth, Zed Nelson, Michael Wolf and Mark Power."

High Rise Honey

High Rise Honey is a celebration of the urban beekeepers at The London School of Economics. I followed the ecology department as they prepared the apiary for winter hibernation and collected this summers golden harvest.

As urban bee keeping is becoming an increasingly popular trend among city dwellers and businesses who seek to bring a rural twist to fast pace urban life. I set out to photograph the capitals high altitude beekeepers who promote this vital skill, while remaining largely unseen from the gaze of the public.

High Rise Honey

High Rise Honey

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Featured Photographer: Justine Sawicz

As well as featuring photographers from ESPY 2014, we will also be celebrating emerging photographers from all over the world. Justine Sawicz is our first, born in Canada and studying in Carmarthen, we are all big fans of her work and very excited to see her progress...

"Up until February 2014, I had never taken a photography class before in my life. Within a semester abroad to study art at Colleg Sir Gar in Carmarthen, Wales, I had gone from complete photographic ignorance to a greater understanding, appreciation and affinity to the medium.

My fascination with photography had been more of a tinkering effort to take good photos. It had been easy for me to gravitate to the camera and take "good" photos. But, I found my true calling with film photography when I tried it here in Wales. More specifically, I taught myself how to double expose on film and have made this my signature effect in this book. It is the unpredictability, surprise and challenge of taking double exposures that fuels my passion for it. All these photographs have been solely on 35 mm film. They include pictures of my friends that I have met during my exchange in Wales, self-portraits, nature, architecture and anything I've found to be unexplainably inspiring during my travels. I hope that they capture my fascination with the mystical spirit of the nature in Wales, the haunting and gothic beauty that I see in the landscape, ridden with legends, stories, and history as well as the beauty I find in the crippled, shrivelled, decayed, dying, resurrected, blossoming, and the impermanence of life.

I try to maintain a natural quality to my photographs, using only natural lighting for every image without any post-editing besides photo cropping and lightening the exposure.

Below are some photos I've included in a series called, Theomorphic (literally meaning being formed in the likeness or image of God), I am commenting on the fact that I create my life the same way I create these images, metaphorically speaking. The beauty that I create in my photographs, is the same beauty I can create in my life with my thoughts, actions and decisions.

It is coming to Wales to study art that has brought me to produce these photos. But it is coming to Wales that has also brought me to produce innumerable experiences, life long friends and memories that I will cherish and remember for a many lifetimes. I believe that my external world is God. I see God, the Universe, however you refer to it, in everyday life. In everything I see. Particularly in people, nature and our creations. And this is how I find the respect and beauty in life and approach it with a liveliness, vivaciousness and childish excitement every day."

James Elliott Dixon

"I am interested in art that can realise the extrasensory, humanise the abstracts of the macrocosm and the microcosm and defamiliarise the known.  My work and research to date has centred on the consideration of landscape as a medium through which to represent or allude to these larger physical or metaphysical zones. Through this immanence I hope to address the spiritual in a way that is relevant to a secular age.

I believe that grounding these vast concepts in the language of the everyday does not diminish them, on the contrary, these associations are necessary to re-enchant our experience of the world and to confront complacency.  Through an equal recognition of darkness/light, silence/sound, stillness/movement I hope to achieve a more lucid experience of space and time."

Between the Darkness

Black Pool

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Espy Installation Shots