Esko Männikkö (born 1959, Finland) has been awarded the 2008 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. The £30,000 award was presented last night at The Photographers’ Gallery where all the shortlisted contenders are on show until 6 April 2008. The other shortlisted photographers in this year’s Prize, each awarded £3,000, are: John Davies (1949, UK), Jacob Holdt (1947, Denmark) and Fazal Sheikh (1965, USA).
Once again Ag magazine will be at Focus On Imaging, forming The Hub with Linhof & Studio, BJP and Land & Light, and helping present a series of free seminars. Focus is held at Birmingham's NEC from Sunday 24 February until Wednesday 27 February. Ag editor & publisher Chris Dickie will be giving a talk on How to Make & Publish a Photobook on the Sunday afternoon, and copies of his new book on the subject will be available on the stand (Q26). You can download a pdf of the full 4-day seminar programme by clicking here.
Rhubarb-Rhubarb, organisers of the UK’s International Festival of the Image, is putting on a series of three Saturday events at London College of Communication, London SE1, for photography graduates and others beginning in the business, under the heading Cultivate. The aim is to provide information and advice for those embarking on a career in the field. The seminar series will be held on the 9th and 16th of February, and there is an all day portfolio review session on 1st March.
For full programme and booking details click here.
For a recently completed project Mick Davidson undertook to make at least one self-portrait a day for a year. He’s ended up with 425 shots, all of which can be found at his website. A selection of the work, along with studies of Spanish graffiti, will be on show throughout February at Fotoacademie, Korte Prinsengracht 33, 1013 GN Amsterdam, Netherlands. To visit Davidson’s website click here, and for the gallery site click here.
Ag50 will be in the shops this coming weekend, with subscribers’ copies arriving next week. We are celebrating our 50th issue with stimulating portfolios from Lynn Geesaman (front cover), Michael Marten, Stefano Bernardoni and others; Bill Jay writes tongue-in-cheek about how to become a famous photographer, Adam Woolfitt explains the techniques and advantages of stitching digital stills to create panoramas, David Lee admires the work of Robin Grierson, Eddie Ephraums considers what has made Ag stand out from the crowd and Tim Daly describes his technique for inkjet transfer printing. Plus the regular Scene Around section on new photography and New in Print coverage of the latest photobooks.
Jessops plc, the UK specialist photo retailer, has released its trading figures for the last quarter and the seven weeks up to and over the holiday period.
The group has not been enjoying the tough market of late and began an extensive restructuring exercise last year, during which CEO Chris Langley fell on his sword; Langley had been in photo retailing man and boy, previously with Dixons.
Jessops figures for the Christmas period however compare favourably with much that has been reported from the UK’s high streets. Although total sales for the seven weeks were down around 20 percent compared with last year (the group closed around 25 percent of its stores as part of the restructure) like for like sales were level on a year ago; further, despite stiff competition the group managed to maintain profit margins during the last quarter. Stock levels have also been more tightly controlled and were almost half that of last year at the end of the period.
Victorian Visions is an exhibition and events programme being held at Lady Lever Art Gallery (Port Sunlight Village, Wirral, near Liverpool) from 1 December until 16 March 2008 featuring several famous names from the period. A series of free talks during December and January has already been timetabled and you can find full details at the Lady Lever Art Gallery website.
The Association of Photographers is holding a print auction on 12 December in support of SightSavers. Bidding starts at just £40 and prints will be available to take away on the evening. 18.00-21.30 at the AOP Gallery, 81 Leonard Street, London EC2. Click on the invitation above for a larger version.
On Saturday, 17 November 2007 the 12th WestLicht Photographica Auction ended with a sensation: the most spectacular lot of the auction, a 0-Series Leica No. 107 was sold for an unbelievable 336.000 Euros hammer price including premium - the highest sum ever achieved at an auction for a 35mm camera or indeed a Leica. You can read the full story at the auctioneers' website.
Adobe has released updates to Photoshop Lightroom and the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in, both available immediately as free upgrades for existing users. The Lightroom 1.3 update provides added support for Apple Leopard Mac OS X 10.5 and includes a technology preview of the Lightroom Export SDK, available as a separate download on the Adobe Labs site. The Lightroom 1.3 and Camera Raw 4.3 updates also include raw file support for seven additional digital cameras including the Nikon D3, Nikon D300 and Canon 1Ds Mark III.
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3 update is available as a free download for existing customers. The Photoshop Lightroom Export SDK technology preview is available as a separate download on the Adobe Labs site.
