Lensmodern member Clare Park was recently awarded a Gold Medal and the £2000 Allen & Overy Prize in the Royal Photographic Society's 153rd International Print Exhibition for 'From the Real to the Sacred', an image taken from 'Breaking Form', a narrative photographic study of Buz Williams and Parkinson’s disease, developed over the past fifteen years within a context of its creators’ personal lives and shared professional backgrounds of theatre, movement and dance. "The images are built on small details that tumble out of memories and imagination," says Clare, "yet it is the perspective beyond the day-to-day reality of Parkinson’s imbued within the imagery, that offers inspiration to Buz, as well as the possibility of a personal connection for the viewer. Placing himself in the public sphere and gaze gives Buz a sense of power and self-recognition at a time when control is diminishing in his everyday life, yet the intimacy and tenderness of this portrait hopefully extends outwards to remind people of the universality of our human condition." To read about Clare's experience of the nude as a subject for photography, click here to download a PDF. Also featured in the exhibition is an image by Paul Brooking entitled 'To Have and To Hold'. Paul's image is based on the theme of loneliness within relationships. A woman, dressed in civilian clothes, is juxtaposed against a bleak war torn background of a battlefield with trenches and a tank. The woman doesn’t see the battlefield, she feels it - it’s a physical representation of her paranoia; she is alone in a world of conflict. Her mind is obsessed with the dominance of her partner, the entrenchment of ideals, the suppression of her free spirit. The image is one of several that form part of sequence of a short film which reveals more of her story.
The 153rd International Print Exhibition begins its tour this week at Allen & Overy, One Bishops Square, London E1, from 15 July to 31 August. It will then go on to Aberystwyth Arts Centre from 11 September to 6 November, Banbury Museum & Gallery from 11 December to 22 January 2011, the Bonjga Gallery on the Shetland Isles from 29 January to 13 March and Birmingham Institute of Art & Design from 26 April to 26 May. For further details visit www.rps.org.
Photographs by Clare Park (above) and Paul Brooking (right)
Lensmodern member Clare Park was recently awarded a Gold Medal and the £2000 Allen & Overy Prize in the Royal Photographic Society's 153rd International Print Exhibition for 'From the Real to the Sacred', an image taken from 'Breaking Form', a narrative photographic study of Buz Williams and Parkinson’s disease, developed over the past fifteen years within a context of its creators’ personal lives and shared professional backgrounds of theatre, movement and dance. "The images are built on small details that tumble out of memories and imagination," says Clare, "yet it is the perspective beyond the day-to-day reality of Parkinson’s imbued within the imagery, that offers inspiration to Buz, as well as the possibility of a personal connection for the viewer. Placing himself in the public sphere and gaze gives Buz a sense of power and self-recognition at a time when control is diminishing in his everyday life, yet the intimacy and tenderness of this portrait hopefully extends outwards to remind people of the universality of our human condition." To read about Clare's experience of the nude as a subject for photography, 