"dall'Esterno" - the end

Dear all, 

last night we closed "dall'Esterno", our first exhibition outside of Wales. 

We'd like to thank everyone who made it possible, first of all our photographers: Migle Backovaite, Sonia Firlej, Marina Frolova, Yulia Kazban, Stanka Koleva, Mariya Kozhanova and Alexandra Soman for taking part in the show; everyone at Portico340 for hosting the exhibition; the kind souls who supported us with their donations; everybody who helped with the organisation; and, last but not least, everyone who attended & everyone who couldn't, but was with us virtually. 

Grazie mille!

Dafydd's new project and Kickstarter campaign

Dear all,


we'd like to let you know that 50% of the*kickplate*project, Dafydd Williams, has started raising funds for his project in Naples - building an 8" by 10" camera and using it to document the lives of Sri Lankan community in Naples.

My project is to spend 2 months photographically documenting the Sri Lankan community in Naples, where a large proportion of the estimated 80,000 Sri Lankans in Italy have now settled; many moving there during the 25-year civil war and after the devastating tsunami of 2004. I would like to capture the daily lives of the Sri Lankan community; at home, as they work and how they interact with their new city – and through a series of reportage photos and portraits show how the Sri Lankan community has managed to thrive in Naples. 

As part of the project and as a camera-maker I would like to first build a camera – an 8x10” analogue field camera – for this project. The camera will allow me to use the new Harman Direct Positive Paper (a paper specially made to produce positive images) to create one-off prints that wouldn’t need printing or enlarging like a normal negative. I will also be using the smaller field camera I built (as can be seen in the film) to shoot instant images and smaller film negatives.

Once I have completed the photo series, I would like to use these images to curate an exhibition so I can share the experience and lives of the Sri Lankan community. Hopefully shedding some light on how it’s possible to re-create the feeling of home in a place that can sometimes feel hostile.

I hope that with the techniques I use, these images will give a unique insight into the people who have travelled so far and carved out a space of their own. I’m not usually a documentary photographer and normally use photography as a more conceptual medium, trying to photograph what isn’t there so much as what is directly in front of the lens. And it’s in this way that I’d like to work in Naples.

My goal isn’t to just catalogue the lives of the Sri Lankan people here, but to hopefully capture life in the way that we don’t always see when we are looking directly at it. Using the experimental and alternative techniques I would normally use in my photography, I’d like to add an extra dimension to the images, to not only present the world as it looks to the eye, but to give each image a beauty that could stand on its own.

You can find more information about it here, it comes with a short film about Naples - we would greatly appreciate your help and sharing a link to the project on your blogs and pages. Thank you very much for your support!

"dall'Esterno" - walls, part 3

Afternoon,


on the last day of "dall'Esterno" (which also happens to be the last day of winter and Persian New Year's Eve) we're posting the last part of exhibition images.

Alexandra Şoman:

 Marina Frolova:

Migle Backovaite:

Some colours may differ slightly from reality.

"dall'Esterno" - walls, part 2

Evening everyone,


the day before the end of "dall'Esterno" we're presenting the second part of the images so you can get the idea of their outlay on Portico 340's walls.

Mariya Kozhanova:


 

Stanka Koleva:

* Some colours may be different than in reality.

"dall'Esterno" - walls, part 1

Dear all,

here is the first part of the photographs presented in "dall'Esterno" as they hang on Portico 340's walls for those of you who couldn't make it to Naples.

 Sonia Firlej:

Yulia Kazban:

* Some colours may differ slightly from reality 

'dall'Esterno' - press and some more images

Dear all,

we've just started the second week of "dall'Esterno" and we're happy to say it's been well-received. The exhibition was featured in Neapolitan editions of two Italian journals, Il Mattino and Il Denaro, part of Il Sole 24 ORE. We have also been interviewed by you-ng magazine.

 

 

 

 

 

'dall'Esterno' opening

Evening,


here's a photographic account of our exhibition preparations, installation and the opening night.

thank you to everyone who came to the opening night, we had 

a great time and are happy to say that it was a big success!

We'd also like to thank all the photographers who agreed to participate in the exhibition, it's a pleasure to show your images to an audience in Naples!

introducing 'dall'Esterno' artists: Sonia Firlej

Sonia Firlej is a photographer, painter, illustrator and textile artist living and working in Poznań, Poland.

In her prevalently black and white, analogue photography, Sonia creates intense and often disturbing images. Picturing torpid characters in slightly nightmarish scenes and a distorted perspective, she links neo-gothic style and a 1960s aesthetic. 

Sonia captures her subjects as if in passing, and although the portraits are very self-aware and classical, the blurred focus and partially hidden faces give the impression that the images are a brief encounter or scene in a larger story. 

The effect is enhanced by the removal or addition of certain elements, and sometimes manipulation, which gives Sonia's photographs a surreal quality.  

If you’d like to see more of Sonia’s photos, go to her website,  portfolio and Facebook page.

introducing 'dall'Esterno' artists: Mariya Kozhanova

"I like to work with photography. I love the way how it reflects the world. And I love how it singles out the main essence. Because the most important thing is not what is there, it matters what you are looking at and what you are seeing."

Mariya Kozhanova was born in 1986 in Kaliningrad, Russia. She started with photography classes at the Kaliningrad Union of Photographers, studying analogue camera techniques.

As part of the exhibition we will be showing several images from Mariya’s collection “Two Sisters”, where in a tender series of portraits and still lifes Mariya depicts the complex relationship between two individuals linked in a way that is impossible to separate or escape.

Despite the soft tones and focus, what emerges from the beautiful and graceful imagery is the friction usually hidden in these relationships. What we see penetrating the delicate and misty images is tension – their softness pricked by the points of angular forms and silhouettes.

You can see more of the series and more photographs by Mariya in her portfolio and on her Facebook page.

introducing 'dall'Esterno' artists: Alexandra Şoman

Alexandra Şoman is a Romanian photographer born in Timișoara, currently living in Cluj-Napoca and studying psychology. 

Alexandra takes digital photos and often arranges them into diptychs and kaleidoscopes. The subject she explores most often in her recent work is city life and interactions between people and public spaces.

Through the use of long exposures and by placing her subjects out of focus, Alexandra renders the experience of urban alienation and captures fleeting signs of human presence in otherwise empty streets. A recurrent theme in Alexandra's photographs is the question of identity in a big city - people only appear in passing, they do not seem to own or inhabit the spaces that they live in, but merely travel through them. 

Alexandra's photography is prevalently black and white, and when she uses colour it's often the orange glow of street lamps and headlights that deepen the feeling of non-belonging of people lost by the roadside and in the city streets.

You can find more of Alexandra's photos on her page.