Highlights From LCC’s MA Photojournalism & Documentary Photography Graduate Show
By Something CuratedThe London College of Communication’s MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography has an impressive track record of honing the skills of a significant number of photojournalists each year—many of whom have gone on to become recipients of internationally renowned prizes such as the World Press Photo Daily Life Singles category and the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize. Notable alumni include Jordi Ruiz Cirera, Kazuma Obara, and Juno Calypso. The MA programme offers numerous occasions for emerging photographers to delve into aspects of the medium with which they previously had little experience, such as cross disciplinary experimentation, developing film in the dark room, and collaborating with others. Students are constantly exposed to practitioners in the field, via members of the teaching staff and visiting artists, and are provided the time and resources for working on personal projects.
Naturally, attendees will have high expectations for this year’s final show which is entitled Invisible Edge and runs from 1st to 6th December at Ugly Duck in Bermondsey. Topics explored by the class of 2016 range from introspective explorations of self to broader questions that reflect on histories and often social injustices. Despite the diversity of subject matter, there is a sense of cohesion that ties all of these projects together. The MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography final exhibition celebrates the hard work of the students as they prepare to leave LCC. Something Curated takes a look at the highlights from this year’s offering.
Meeting Myself Coming Back || Wei Wu
Before coming to LCC, Chinese photographer Wei Wu completed a bachelors degree in Broadcasting, TV Editing and Directing at Chongqing University, during which she also studied abroad in both Taiwan and Glasgow. After graduating the artist took a gap year, during which time she had the opportunity to participate in a black and white workshop led by Taiwanese photographer Ryan Yizhong. This summer she returned to Chengdu, her hometown in the Sichuan province of China, with the intention of walking the entire course of the city’s river Funan from source to mouth.
She spent three months walking over 300km, and on route captured local peoples’ daily lives along the river and the relationship between people and their environments. The photographer elaborates: “This journey is a gift to myself, because it allows me to review the past, encounter my future and step into the flowing stream of the present life. It’s also a present for all of you, people living by the river experience their own birth, ageing, illness and death as well as having pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy in different life stages.”
And in love, light and truth || Stephanie Rose Wood
Stephanie Rose Wood graduated from Falmouth College of Arts with a degree in photography back in 2007. Between then and now she photographed individuals in small NGOs focusing on women’s rights in Sri Lanka, worked on a personal project in India and more locally produced work for a coalition group’s campaign to save the Latin American market in Seven Sisters. And in love, light and truth is, in the artist’s own words, “an installation of still images and sound reinterpreting the space of a Spiritualist church”. The project documents the everyday in three of these churches which are situated in London suburbs and investigates spiritualists’ beliefs in mortality. For those not accustomed with the religion, spiritualists believe that there is an afterlife; furthermore, the spirit world they perceive is not static, but constantly evolving.
Through a medium, believers are able to communicate with those who have passed over to this other realm—these spirits can send healing energies through the hands of mediating healers to relieve earthly ailments. The artist elaborates: “Spiritualism is more than a religion for those that believe; many say that it is a way of life. The belief in the spirit world is interwoven in to the fabric of their existence and daily lives, becoming a reassuring mechanism to those that are in mourning or looking for a deeper meaning to life and death”. The images shown here are stills from the installation, so to experience it as intended we recommend you find the time to see them in situ—the sound and space are integral components of the work.
Life and Death inside the Gambo Rural Hospital || Guillem Trius
A graduate in Journalism from Blanquerna-Ramón Llull Universitat in Barcelona, Spanish photographer Guillem Trius has been working as a freelance photojournalist for the past five years. He has exhibited his work in Barcelona and was the recipient of the Compact Click award; his photographs taken principally in West and Central Africa have appeared in Spanish newspapers including ‘La Vanguardia’ and have been used for campaigns by NGOs such as Nutrition Without Borders. Life and Death inside the Gambo Rural Hospital captures exactly what the title implies.
The hospital is located in the southern part of Ethiopia’s isolated and rural Oromiya region, and its construction was part of a nationwide project to decentralise and extend medical services within the country. Though gravely understaffed with just three doctors servicing an average of 250 patients per day, Guillem was impressed by the level of commitment of the individuals working there. The project reflects on mortality, the struggle for survival and hints at the photographer’s optimism regarding humanity.
Los descendientes del henequen || Michael Vince Kim
Michael Vince Kim was born in Los Angeles to Korean parents but grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There he studied Film Directing at Fundación Universidad del Cine prior to relocating to Scotland to complete an MA in Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. His dissertation on the rare Korean-Russian dialects of the former USSR led him to pursue his first photo project in Kazakhstan, where he portrayed the descendants of the Koreans deported from East Russia to Central Asia under Stalin’s ethnic cleansing regime in 1937.
The project gained recognition from various photography organisations, was exhibited internationally and won Magnum’s 30 under 30 award. Los descendientes del henequen is the photographer’s attempt at revisiting and rewriting a segment of history that has largely been forgotten. Michael travelled to Mexico and Cuba in search of the descendants of Korean indentured labourers who left their homeland, hopeful of finding prosperity that was only attainable in the old world. Upon arrival they discovered their new reality entailed harvesting henequen under the scorching sun and earning a meagre salary that could only be spent in the haciendas which effectually enslaved them.
Polaris || Leonidas Toumpanos
Greek-born Leonidas Toumpanos (b.1983) studied photography in Athens prior to studying Social Sciences in the UK. His work is mainly concerned with capturing human behaviour in changing circumstances and social developments on an international level. Polaris is the result of a long-term project exploring the unprecedented social and environmental impact of opening the Arctic region to commercial development—mainly through the consumption of water and exploitation of land.
The artist elaborates: “The rapid environmental changes, together with technological progress and the global resource depletion make the Arctic resources reachable and commercially seductive. These new conditions bring disruptive changes to the Arctic environment that confronts political, economic and cultural shifts. Development plans shape economic dynamics that map new trading sea routes, open the way for the world’s largest remaining oil and gas reserves, the exploitation of mineral deposits, while affecting fisheries and indigenous populations of the Arctic.”
Solastalgia || Yangkun Shi
Yangkun Shi is originally from Zhoukou in the Henan province of China, though studied Journalism at the Anqing University in the neighbouring Anhui province. Since relocating to London he received the first prize of the Urbanphotofest with a single street photograph, which he accepted at the Tate Modern reception. “Solastalgia”, explains the artist, “is a form of melancholy evoked by changes that have happened in what used to be a familiar home context, referring to a special homesickness sensed by people when they are still within the home environment”.
Yangkun experienced solastagia when he returned to his hometown and realised that the relationship between his memories and the current realities had fractured. In order to better understand this process, the photographer tried to capture the uncertainties in and around places of personal familiarity during this transformative period. Despite its apparent introspective focus, this project is analogous of China’s youth and their collective drive to weave together new identities from the old and new threads in a rapidly changing country.
Xenitia || Etienne Audrey Bruce
Etienne Audrey Bruce completed a degree in International Development and Spanish at the University of Sussex before deciding to pursue photography at LCC. Her book Xenitia presents the viewer with a refreshing perspective to the dominant representation of refugees seen in mainstream media—which is both visual and textual, and oscillates between stories of arrivals and associated departures.
The work stands at the intersection between art and documentary, ambiguously drawing the past into the present and including the transcriptions of interviews, poetry and prose contributed by the refugees in Greece today. “Xenitia”, explains the artist, “is a Greek term that encompasses ideas of foreign lands, the state of being a foreigner, otherness, to be estranged, loss, distance, and a profound yearning for home soil.”
Text by Elizabeth Sulis Gear | Images courtesy of Photographers