Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition

What can you do on rainy Sunday evening? I could choose something else to do but… I decided to go the Natural History Museum, which I have not visited yet after living in London for more than two years.

I found there the Wildlife Photographer Competition, this year it finds the very best wildlife images taken by the world’s top professional and amateur photographers.

Visit here the online gallery.

You can visit the exhibition until 26 April 2009.

Natural History Museum, by Arantxa Alcubierre

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2008

I visited on Tuesday the National Portrait Gallery. If you go before February 15, you will have the opportunity to see the The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2008.This exhibition showcases the work of international emerging young photographers, photography students and gifted amateurs alongside that of established professionals.

Quints, 2008 by Lottie Davies

More than 6,700 images were submitted this year. Through editorial, fine art images and advertising, the mix of entrants have explored a range of themes, styles and approaches to the contemporary photographic portrait, from formal commissioned portraits to intimate moments capturing friends and family and more spontaneous.

Here you will see many images previously unpublished, a unique opportunity to see some of the most exciting contemporary portrait photographers working today.

World Press Photo Exhibition

I was at The Royal Festival Hall (London) last Monday. One more year you can see there the World Press Photo Exhibition.

Since 1955, World Press Photo has invited press photographers of the world to participate in the premier annual international competition in press photography. This exhibition showcases the best photojournalism of the past year; it covers a wide range of topics from hard news to sports and portraits.

“Restrepo” by Tim Hetherington.

This year’s competition attracted 80,536 entries. For the first time since 1980, the main prize has been won by a British photographer – Vanity Fair photojournalist Tim Hetherington.

We can also find Spanish photographers among the winners, like Cristina Garcia Rodero, Miguel Riopa, Lorena Ross and Emilio Morenatti.

“Collective Rite” by Cristina García Rodero.

Robert Capa and Gerda Taro

This Is War! Robert Capa at Work , Gerda Taro On the Subject of War at Barbican Art Gallery.
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”.
Robert Capa (1913-1954), the legendary Hungarian-born war photojournalist, and of the founders of Magnum, chose the Leica as a tool. He became famous for capturing the ultimate in decisive moments - the death of a Spanish Civil War soldier cut down by a bullet in 1936. When Civil War became World War, in 1939, Capa bought fame, heroism, and charisma to the war photographer. Working for Life Magazine he recorded that the first rule of photojournalism was ‘to get close’ and the second, ‘to get closer.’ It earned him a reputation as the world’s greatest war photographer and its first real celebrity.

Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936.

I was last week to Barbican Art Gallery to see Robert Capa’s Exhibition. I found there some of his famous photographs, and some prints made from the films founded at the beginning of this year. I really enjoyed by looking at some manuscripts he wrote, documentation from his pictures, and some of the letter to his family, and by looking Gerda Taro’s photographs.

Republican militiawoman training on the beach, outside Barcelona August 1936

The same exhibition is featuring more war photographers work, among them Gerda Taro (1910–1937), a German photographer who spent her brief but dramatic career photographing the Spanish Civil War alongside Robert Capa, her lover and collaborator. She was one of the first female photographers to work on the frontline and the first to be killed in action in 1937, aged just 26, whilst covering the battle for the city of Brunete.

Your guide through the everyday and the unexpected

I have been watching this film tonight. Presented by Martin Parr and Erik Kessels.

A collection of pictures used on photo cards, commercials and others… taken by anonym photographers.

It is a curious film that worth be watched. Just click here.

Annie Leibovitz. A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005

I went last week to the National Portrait Gallery to see Annie Leibovitz’s exhibition. It includes over 150 photographs (taken from 1990 to 2005). The exhibition threads the two sides of Leibovitz’s work chronologically and creatively, the artist’s private life and the backdrop of her public image as one of the world’s best-known portrait photographers.

What I really enjoyed at the exhibition was I did not only features her assignment work, but her personal photography. As she said: “I don’t have two lives. This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it.”

I spent almost an hour at looking Leibovitz’s personal photography documents scenes from her life, including the birth and childhood of her three daughters, vacations, reunions, and rites of passage with her parents and extended family.

I strongly recommend it.

After holiday…

I am back in London again after almost one month holiday.

I have been doing the “Camino de Santiago”, an old pilgrimage route; cycling during two weeks, meeting people, feeling how far you body and your mind can go. So far one of the best experiences in my life, I really recommend it.

It is time now to start working and have fun with friends. And enjoying this weather, of course!

Henri Cartier-Bresson, 100 years ago…

He is one of my favorite photographers. Henri Cartier-Bresson was born the 22th of Agust 100 years ago, and he is considered the photojournalism’s father.

He is the founder of Magnun, with Robert Capa and David Seymour among others.

It was this image that inspired HCB to take his camera and go out in the streets.

Fashion in the Mirror

I have been today at the Photographer’s Gallery just to see Fashion in the Mirror.

This exhibition features work by leading international photographers like Mario Testino, Richard Avedon or Irving Penn. Revealing the fashion industry’s secrets and undermining its glamorous illusions, the photographers in this exhibition create work that exposes this world from within.

What I liked the most is I how the photographs show the “theatre” of fashion in order to create a perfect beauty.

Do not miss it!