All photos © Stephen King

Recently featured on the Brighton Photo Fringe, Stephen King’s photos of the Fifth Floor of the now closed Lewis’s Department store in Liverpool, hark back to a bygone retail environment. Although the store as a whole only closed in May this year, the Fifth floor was closed some 30 years ago and remained a space frozen in time.

There’s also an audio slideshow from the BBC - The Last Lewis’s.

Stephen King.

All photos © Al Vandenberg

This week we switch our focus to the Hereford Photography Festival. Al Vandenberg is one of the photographers selected for ‘Twenty’ - the headline exhibition celebrating 20 years of the festival.

Al Vandenberg

Today’s selection is ‘How Annie Got Shot’ an interesting article in the FT discussing the status of photography in the Art Market.

The article uses the status of Annie Leibovitz within the art world to highlight the dichotomy between photographers that have attained the status of ‘artist’ and whose work is therefore marketed and prized within the more lucrative art market, as opposed to a photographer such as Leibovitz who, although extremely successful in her own right as a commercial photographer, has not been able to ‘crossover’ as a collectable artist.

All photos © Alejandro Chaskielberg

We continue our survery of the Brighton Photo Biennial with a selection from Alejandro Chaskielberg who shoots the communities around the Parana River Delta. His pictures are staged, but incorporate real people and situations.

Alejandro Chaskielberg

All photos © Ellie Davis

We continue our focus on the Brighton Photo Biennial and Photo Fringe with ‘Islands’ a project from Ellie Davies which explores the theme of cultural and constructed landscapes. Some photos from the project, along with photos from another project, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ is on show at the Blue Dog Gallery.

All photos © Jamie Stoker

Another selection from the Brighton Photo Fringe. The series was shot in Stanmer Park, Brighton. For more details and an artist’s statement, take a look at ‘Park Life’.

Stoker is one of the participating photographers in the ‘Transmissions’ exhibition at the old Co-op building, 94-101 London Road BN1 4LB.

© Mohamed Bourouissa

On show in the Old Co-op Department Store as part of the ‘New Ways of Looking’ exhibition, Mohamed Bourouissa’s staged images of Parisian youth feel compelling authentic.

This week we are going to focus on photographers exhibiting at the Brighton Photo Biennial and Photo Fringe.

First up is Melanie Clark and her project ‘Archive Revivial’.

Within the series, Melanie has digitally projected photos taken by relatives back into their home environment and then re-photographed the result.

All photos © Melanie Clark

At her exhibition in the Old Co-op Building, the works have been installed inside wooden lightboxes, built by her brother, who is in shown in one of the images.

The effect adds a compelling new dimension to the family album.

Melanie Clark

All photos © Andy Sewell

‘Countryside’ is a project in progress.

From the photographer: “These photographs, from a work still in progress, are taken in the English countryside. I choose a place, sometimes for a specific reason, but more often guided by the poetics of village names (Cold Christmas, Nasty, Little Gidding, Good Easter…) and explore from there. Driving and walking I search for pictures that speak of this iconic yet hard to define thing “The Countryside” and the interplay of the ideas and feelings evoked by it: tradition and modernity, nostalgia, our relationship with nature and to what we eat, the underlying cycle of seasons and festivals.

“The finished project will be a journey from one winter to another formed of the encounters between the countryside of my imagination and contemporary rural England.”

More ‘Countryside’…

All photos © Mando Alvarez

Taken from three different series. More Mando Alvarez.