Espy is a biannual photography award in conjunction with Elysium Gallery Swansea. Set up by Dan Staveley, professional photographer and lecturer,
Espy wants to show photography at its best, both online and in the print competition. The award is judged by highly respected professionals such as
Richard Billingham and Iain Davies, who awarded the prizes for 2014.
Thanks goes to Nicole Mawby for building and maintaining the blog.

Friday 18 April 2014

James A. Hudson


All the images were taken during the last few auctions at the Livestock Market in the town centre of Abergavenny. The market had been a regular meeting point for the local urban and rural cultures for 150 years. It finally closed on 10th December 2013 following the sale of the site to William Morrison Supermarkets PLC by Monmouthshire County Council. 

These five images are from a series of 30 images taken on the last days of the old market and the first day of the new market at Bryngwyn.

The Escapee, 2014

Trailer Cleaning, 2014

Freedom, 2014 

Ghost Sheep, 2014

Shutting Up Shop, 2014

Wednesday 16 April 2014

Mikaela Toczek

Another Side of Existence

"As a little nursery child… sitting alone behind the nursery curtain to watch the great resplendent planet in the evening sky near sunset.  The wonder and deep admiration I felt was surely something quite outside me, coming from another side of existence, of which I knew nothing, only that it was enchanting."
Thereza Dillwyn Llewelyn, quoted in Mary T. Bruick, Women in Early British and Irish Astronomy: Stars and Satellites, (London: Springer, 2009), p. 117.

Thereza Dillwyn-Llewelyn (later Story-Maskelyne, 1834-1926), was the daughter of John and Mary Dillwyn-Llewelyn, the progressive Victorian family from Penllergare, near Swansea. She was a woman of many talents. Throughout her long life, Thereza’s interests spanned the sciences, politics, culture, and, importantly for this project, photography and astronomy, all of which she explored on her family’s estate. Indeed the landscaped Penllergare estate was designed as a place to ponder the picturesque, yet Thereza’s inquisitiveness drove her to look beyond such grounded beauty toward the boundless possibilities symbolized by the cosmos. This fascination with the ‘resplendent planet[s]’ encouraged her father John to build a magnificent observatory at Penllergare, and it was here, in 1858, that father and daughter collaborated to produce the now iconic - and at the time groundbreaking - photograph of the moon. Thereza was instrumental in the making of this image and it places her as an important figure in both astronomy and photography.  Ibid. p. 118.

Thereza Dillwyn-Llewelyn was a forward-thinking woman who strove relentlessly to look above and beyond her own horizons at a time when this was not the accepted norm for women.  Working in collaboration with the Penllergare Trust, Another Side of Existence forms part of an ongoing project that aims to bring this exceptional woman’s life back into focus. Both the observatory and the estate are currently being renovated, encouraging us to re-engage with Penllergare’s history and reconsider its relevance today. And though the windows of the observatory are fogged with almost 150 years of history, we are able capture fleeting glimpses of a distant historical moment.

Another Side of Existence, 2014

Another Side of Existence, 2014

Another Side of Existence, 2014

Monday 14 April 2014

Thibault de Puyfontaine

"A universe that is everything except naive; on the contrary, it is sensual, strange, resonating with the life which gravitates around it, uniting with the photographer falsely considered to be a simple spectator. "
Déclic photo magazine. Article : Nathalie Degardin

"His images are sensorial pitcures. Textures, colors, music, every senses are stimulated."
Azart photo Magazine. Article : Sophie Gamand


Colours Between Rural and Urban, 2012

Colours Between Rural and Urban, 2012

 Colours Between Rural and Urban, 2012

Colours Between Rural and Urban, 2012


Born in Clichy, Thibault de Puyfontaine lives in Paris and travels regularly throughout the world.

After some years of technical training in the studios of Paris, he put his knowledge to use in photographic journalism, advertising and portraits.  His journey to Egypt in 2007 was a revelation, which encouraged him to gradually abandon commercial work in order to dedicate himself to his personal photography.

Since 2010 Thibault de Puyfontaine has participated to a various number of exhibition around the world such as Art Elysées (fair OFF of “la FIAC”) and Fotofever (fair OFF of “Parisphoto”), « blue sky – the Optical » (Oregon federal centre of photography, USA), Marachech Art Fair and ManifestO.  

Thibault de Puyfontaine is still producing his night pictures around the world.

Thursday 10 April 2014

Robyn LeRoy-Evans

Artist working with the human body, objects, spaces... ever in search of the erotic.

Untitled (back), 2013

"My work is underpinned by my fascination with, and personal understanding of, eroticism. I see the creation of my images as a private act, one that allows me to access parts of myself that are normally kept buried. I work to stimulate my viewer by using my body, and the objects that surround me, to generate physical, emotional, and psychological responses to the spaces I inhabit, visit, or stumble upon.

The female form features heavily; the viewer is confronted by awkward, unusual, and, at times, disturbing postures or poses. These are bodily manifestations of my own personal fears, anxieties, frustrations, and desires. Occasionally, the female figure is signified through its absence, being represented instead by vessels or draped fabric. I wish to provoke without becoming too over-prescriptive, to arouse without overwhelming. The formal, compositional, and aesthetic qualities of an image determine its construction.

My research into erotic literature, Japanese aesthetics, and the fashion photography of Guy Bordin, inform this methodology. A pivotal exhibition for me was Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism (2008); it was here that I first viewed the photography of Francesca Woodman. To me, Woodman’s images demonstrate a disturbed femininity, a sort of cryptic eroticism…elements that I hope to bring into my own work.

My most recent photographs have led me to question my work and position as an artist: What are the boundaries between photography and performance? What is the significance of the headless/faceless woman? What role does the female figure play in contemporary photography? How do I feel about being at once the (female) artist, subject, and (sex?) object? Finally, what is considered ‘erotic’ today?"


Tuesday 8 April 2014

Irena Siwiak Atamewan

Irena is an artist working with a camera and a photography educator. Following a background in Medical Photography, a clinical approach to her subjects is reflected in the style of her work; whether it's a domestic space or an urban space. She came to photography as a second career following many years of extensive travelling with camera in hand.


Urban Trees

Urban Trees: ESPY Photography Award
My work explores the homogenisation of our modern cities. The Urban landscapes in this work springs from the areas between the buildings, exploring the street furniture. Stationary objects, practical objects, giving orders, instructions and lighting the way to all who happens to pass.
Amongst this functional furniture, trees are brought in to decorate the urban landscapes, to reside on the tarmac and paving stones that covers the soil of its origin. Solitary trees in the shadow of modern urban living, its function in life to garnish and decorate in a square metre of growing space, controlled and tamed.
These images document trees in the shadow of dominating street furniture, blending nature into its man made environment. The style is a straight-on view point, breaking rules of composition and landscape photography, placing the point of focus in the middle, sometimes cutting the image in half.
This work is an ongoing project, expanding into different cities and countries.


Other projects
Presenting a series of portraits of octogenarian sisters in Sardinia. One morning at breakfast the light was just right as they sat talking and I just had to capture them in full flow. They quickly forgot I was there, this allowed me to capture natural expressions and emotions. They spent their time reminiscing, remembering and relaying stories from their childhood.
One sister lives in Sardinia and one sister lives in the UK, the last of eight siblings. The family dispersed by war, meetings were infrequent. The last time they had seen each other was eighteen years ago.
They got together for one week in July 2013, maybe for the last time.

This work explores how we use objects and spaces to give definition to our lives, these spaces could be the home, the office, the car, the shed, to name a few.  Spaces representing an aspect of ourselves, highlighting areas we would like to show and give attention. It's a human need to connect emotionally to a space.
'One of the basic human requirements is the need to dwell, and one of the central human acts is the act of inhabiting, of connecting ourselves, however temporarily, with a place on the planet which belongs to us and to which we belong.
Charles Moore, School of Architecture: Foreward. In Praise of Shadows. J.Tanizaki 2001 Vintage


New Work
After the Chemo
For as long a I remember my sister had a beautiful print by Giovanni Ambrogio de Predi, the painting is of a woman in profile.  This was the inspiration for this portrait. 
During my sister’s chemo treatment she wore a series of hats and combination of hats, which I felt took on the shape of a headdress worn by women in the era of the painting.  Combining the beautiful window light and my sister’s strong profile, I wanted to capture the strength of surviving and looking beyond the treatment.


I want to create a body of work photographing women undertaking or finishing chemotherapy, wearing a variety of headwear, scarves, hats, wigs etc. then photograph them in the style of Italian Renaissance Portraits, where the women in these paintings are beautiful and elegant in their head wear and hair styles. This is the first image in the project and I am in the process of finding other people willing to be photographed.

When I collect enough portraits, the work will eventually be made into a book and the proceeds of the book will go to cancer charities.

______________________________________________
_________________________________________________
  • Photography MA 
  • Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) 
  • Photography BA (Hons)
  • Selected for ESPY Photography Awards Exhibition: Elysium Gallery, Swansea. 7th – 29th March 2014
  • Photographer’s Profile invite: Lens Culture 2014
  • Altrincham Arts Festival, October 2013
  • Source Magazine, MA Online Showcase, 2012
  • Book Showcase Brighton Biennale, August 2012
  • MA Show. Manchester Metropolitan University. 29th September – 6th October 2011 
  • MMU Masters Showcase, 52 Princess street, Manchester 17th July 2010 
  • Eye to Eye, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool. 22nd July - 24th July 2010
    - Resulting in the publication of 'Eye to Eye' Book in collaboration with The Open Eye Gallery, September 2011
  • 50x50 by Slaughter House Studios, Holden Gallery Café, Manchester Met Uni. 25th November 2010
  • MMU Masters Showcase. Hotspur Press, Manchester.  14th - 18th October 2010 
  • Curated and contributed to Photography Exhibition 'Challenging Concepts (Aesthetics of the Body)' showcasing the work BA students, in Lahti Finland as part of the Aesthetics in Practice Conference.
    The work continued at The Broadway Art centre Nottingham. 1995
  • Curated and participated in "Signals: Festival of Women Photographers", a group exhibition 'Girls on Film', Observatory Gallery, TNTU Nottingham, England, 1994
  • Joint Exhibition: Jill Regan / Irena Siwiak: The Anatomy of Risc / Monuments of the Past, or Signposts to the Future? Observatory Gallery, TNTU Nottingham, England, 1994
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Sunday 6 April 2014

Welcome to The Prefab Museum

The Prefab Museum
17 Meliot Road, Catford, SE6 1RY

The Prefab Museum, opened on March 8th, is a resounding success!  In just two weeks, the museum has attracted more than 700 visitors! Thanks to the TMO (Tenants Management Organisation of the Excalibur Estate) and our lovely volunteers, the Prefab Museum will stay open until May 31st!

See the special wall of Jane Hearn’s photos, where Excalibur residents, past and present, can take away a framed photograph of the prefab they live or have lived in!



Elisabeth Blanchet is available for interviews

Follow Prefabs - Palaces For The People on Facebook for photos, films, updates and events