Feature Shoot

Liam Henry was born in England in 1986 and currently lives and works in Leeds, UK.  He studied Photography and Digital Imaging at Leeds Metropolitan University.  His work has been included in many exhibitions including Urban Outfitters Exhibition (Leeds), Articulate Magazine Launch, and The Broland Fabrication.

London born Poppy de Villeneuve grew up dividing her time between West Sussex country life and her mother’s family home in Ohio. In 2002 she received a BA in photography from London College of Printing, graduating with the cover of the prestigious Art Review’s student issue. The following two years she trained in the Method acting technique, influencing Poppy’s ongoing projects as a professional photographer. De Villeneuve has exhibited in group and solo shows in the UK and US. Shows in London included “Culture Bound VII” at The Courtauld Institute and “I shot Norman Foster” commissioned by The Architecture Foundation as well as solo show “The Strangers” at University of the Arts gallery, May 2007, as part of its emerging artists program. Poppy was part of “Being True” a group show for Nike in New York and Los Angeles. Most recently Poppy was commissioned by London’s Bloomberg Space for “Within,” an exhibition where she photographed sextuplets and their relationships with each other. Living in New York, de Villeneuve divides her energy between fashion and fine art, bringing life to both in equal measure.

William Hundley was born in St. Paul Minnesota and studied at Southwest Texas State University. He has been part of numerous group and solo exhibitions, including 2006’s Outside In at Okay Mountain and the Predator/Prey show at Halcyon. He lives and works in Austin, Texas.

Deanna Ng is a freelance photographer specialising in documentary, portraits and off-beat travel photos. In 2006, Ng was selected as an International Participant for the Prestigious Missouri Photo Workshop by the University of Missouri. As she started photography late in her life, she believes in teaching photography to the youth. She has taught in numerous schools in Singapore and also at Objectifs: Centre for Photography and Filmmaking. Her clientele includes Ink Publishing, the Australian High Commission and the Singapore Tourism Board among others. Her photographs have also been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions in Singapore. In 2008, Ng exhibited in her first international group exhibition for The Month of Photography, Tokyo.

You didn’t start out as a full-time photographer. What inspired you to make the leap?
‘I took this workshop called “Shooting Home” at Objectifs in 2004. The workshop challenged participants to find our own story in our backyard. For the workshop, I wanted to shoot Singapore as an accidental tourist. I spent a few days trying to formulate my idea but everything was thrashed by the faculty. In the end, I went down to my neighbourhood market and shot the portraits of the hawkers. I thought if I’m a tourist, I would want to see the daily lives of the locals and nothing was more real than that.

‘Through that experience, it really opened up my mind to how photography can be used as a medium to formulate ideas and tell a story. It is a channel for expressing my ideas instead of a series of pretty pictures that don’t say anything. With that, I decided to become a photographer’.

Let’s talk about your exhibition on your travel series Phsat - Siem Reap in the Month of Photography, Japan 2008. What’s the motivation behind this series?
‘Phsat - Siem Reap was taken in 2007. It’s continuation of my market series. Siem Reap is famous for Angkor Wat but I was also interested in finding out the real life of the locals behind Angkor Wat. The Phsat was an amazing avenue into the Cambodians’ daily lives. The little details of how the girl who ties her money in a plastic money and hangs it on her shirt, the muddy grounds of the market, locals going to their dentist there and when you make a turn in the market, suddenly there was a whole section of goldsmiths – all of which I did not expect to see in a market. There was just so much life in it’.

Your latest work on Hospice patients is a departure from your travel and street photography. What is the goal of this series and what have been some of the challenges you have had to overcome?
‘I was approached by Lien Foundation last April. It was the second time they were doing this campaign. For the first project, the focus was on the hospices and the care hospices provide. When they asked me to photograph for the second project, Life Before Death Campaign, the objective was to create a legacy album for hospice patients. This legacy album would be a memory for the family members. Through this album, they also wanted to get the families talking the inevitable — death.

‘When we started this project, it was the first time we were doing it. In the album, we compiled past pictures from the patient’s collection as well as my pictures. I thought it would be difficult for the families were to see how fragile their loved ones have become. As a photographer, I questioned if I was doing the right thing, too. I was worried that the family member would be sad. But at the end of the day, we did find moments of tenderness that I thought that family members would like to keep.

‘Another challenge for me was to face death. When I first started the project, I was depressed and my earlier pictures in this project reflected that. I couldn’t imagine if I was in their position. In particular, I thought of Mr Phua who was a competitive tango dancer in his retirement years and became bed ridden. He was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease four years ago. However, I think the one lesson that these families have taught me is to count my blessings’.

Because you are a photography teacher, you see the work of many budding photographers. What qualities make an exceptional student with a promising career stand out from the rest?
‘As a teacher, I look out for their own personal input into their work. It’s hard to come up with an original idea since everything has been done to death but by shooting from the heart, the pictures come alive. I think this is what makes the pictures special and it is something hard to replicate’.

Photo by Andreas Weinand

Photo by Ahndraya Parlato

Photo by Amy Stein

Photo by Kelli Pennington

Photo by Nicolai Howalt

Jaimie Warren (b. Waukesha, WI, 1980) is a curator, performance artist, and photographer who makes theatrical, humorous, self-portraits in different scenarios and locations, including at parties, in her kitchen, in her car, and at the zoo. She is represented by Higher Pictures, New York, and has exhibited at White Flag Projects, St. Louis; Smith-Stewart, New York; Getsumin, Osaka; Beida University, Beijing, and Rocket Projects, Miami, among other venues. Her photography has been published in dozens of national and international publications. She currently has a solo show at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. She is also very involved in the art scene and has started the whoop dee doo project which has shows coming up worldwide.

Dutch photographer Marleen Sleeuwits studied at The Art Academy of Breda. Her work has been featured as part of numerous exhibitions, most recently at Amsterdam’s Hof and Huyser Gallery. Of her photography, she says: ‘I am researching the conceptions of time and place in my work. I want to create an image of time-placelessness, so the here and now is taken out of the photo. For example, in my last sequence, all the interiors are made inside and exclusively with artificial light, so you lose the feeling of day and night. In addition, it becomes no longer obvious as to where the space actually is. A photo of a shopping mall in Shanghai could just as easily be of a waiting room at Schiphol airport’.

University of Alabama college student Miller Mobley shoots both advertising and editorial photography. He started shooting seriously in 2006 and his personal project, Missionary Boys, was subsequently chosen for American Photography 25. Of his photography career after he graduates, he says: ‘I’m not sure where I want to go, but New York sounds great!’

Currently the Artist in Residence at Abbadia in Pays Basque, France, Philippe Herbet is represented by Camera Obscura. His work has been featured as part of recent exhibitions at Théâtre Royal de Namur and the Jacques Cerami Gallery.