As the annual travelling exhibition reaches London, AnOther's photographic editor Holly Hay selects seven of the featured artists as ones to watch
“Foam is interesting in how it brings together so many different aspects of emerging photographers’ practices,” says Holly Hay, AnOther’s photographic editor, of this year’s Foam Talent, a travelling exhibition which opened in London last week and runs until June 18 at Beaconsfield Contemporary Art. Foam’s annual Talent Call is a unique opportunity for image-makers aged between 18 and 35 to showcase their work; this year the submissions numbered almost 1,500, and of those that entered 24 were chosen to exhibit in the month long show by Foam magazine’s editorial team. The variety of the exhibition’s featured photographers is particularly noteworthy, Hay points out: “There are people that work very much in the fashion arena and then there are people who have a really gallery-based practice; there are people who deal with mixed media; people working in kind of documentary-style photography. So Foam is a platform that represents all these different genres of photography, and supports these artists in all of their different practices.” We asked her to share her thoughts on this year’s offering from Foam; here she takes us through seven of the photographers she’s keeping an eye on.
Jack Davison
“What’s amazing about Jack’s work is that he comes very much from a portraiture and slightly documentary background, and how that has fed in and inspired his fashion work,” Hay says of English photographer Jack Davison, whose work featured in the latest issue of AnOther. His images are often black and white and always convey a timeless and distinct atmosphere. “What’s interesting about him I guess is that it feels like you’re going back to this Magnum style of photographer, which you just haven’t seen in editorial for so long.”
Andrea Grützner
German photographer Andrea Grützner’s painterly photographs all centre on the same subject – The Erbgericht, a hotel and guesthouse in Germany – but it’s represented in such a manner that the viewer is never entirely sure of the image. Textures, abstract and complex shapes and shadows come into play here, aspects that make clear Grützner’s fascination with the building and its intricacies. Hay notes that Foam is a key platform in allowing photographers to hone in on each individual curiosity they may foster, as is clear in Grützner’s work. “I think it’s interesting for all of these young photographers to be able to work in all of these different ways and always maintain a personal practice.”
Juno Calypso
Juno Calypso has become synonymous with her fascinating and somewhat discomforting self portraits. Calypso stars as Joyce, a character she has constructed and uses to communicate uncomfortable truths regarding society’s expectations of women. In The Honeymoon we see Joyce in various stages of seduction, construction and deception, all shot in an American honeymoon hotel; the series won the British Journal of Photography’s International Photography Award in 2016.
Hay is looking forward to the new directions Calypso’s work may take, having recently joined an agency in London. “Juno is incredible. She’s signed to We Folk, an agency which represents artists who bridge that gap between the fashion world and fine art world, so I’m really excited to see how she takes that on.”
Nico Krijno
For Cape Town-based photographer Nico Krijno, there is as much importance in the editing and manipulation of a photograph post-shooting as in the capturing itself. His images are sometimes confusing to look at, featuring photographic layers that may have been altered or moved to create unsettled proportions, yet at the same time the shapes and aesthetic are recognisable and digestible upon first glance. Therein, of course, lies the charm of Krijno’s images. It’s this method of distortion that leads Hay to wonder about the place of photography in practices like these: are you first and foremost a photographer or an artist, when so much creativity can be fostered once the camera’s been set aside?
Felicity Hammond
“Some of her work is weird and utopian – it’s so strange,” muses Hay excitedly when faced with Felicity Hammond’s images. The English photographer’s series Capital Growth is an interrogation of computer-generated luxury in today’s ever-changing socio-political climate. “It’s like these scenes that you kind of recognise, but it’s totally twisted,” she continues, “and every surface is a different photographic texture.” The myriad references featured in much of Hammond’s work are initially subtle, but become so impossible to ignore that one could lose hours unpacking her images.
Daisuke Yokota
Also partaking in a practice involving distortion and manipulation – here to the point of destruction – is Japanese photographer Daisuke Yokota, who won last year’s Foam Paul Huf Award. Yokota uses both digital and film cameras to produce his images, which are re-photographed on separate devices before various aggressions are applied to them, from heat and light to acid and flames. This unconventional technique makes for vivid and surreal photographs that boast visceral colours and textures. “I feel like this is almost like when it goes wrong in a dark room,” says Hay, “and then the distortion is layered. It looks like a painting.”
Louise Parker
The recurrence of different techniques or perspectives across the spread of Foam’s talents each year presents an ideal opportunity to pinpoint trends as they crop up, says Hay. “You can see that collage and re-appropriating imagery is having a moment now, you can see these threads weaving through.” Such is true of Louise Parker’s idiosyncratic work, but where Parker differentiates herself is in her use of found images of herself to create her pieces. It was her work as a model that sparked an interest for Parker in image-making, and her series Pieces of Me is exactly that: bits of Parker, from images she’s modelled in for magazines that she takes and transforms into collages.
Foam Talent: London is at Beaconsfield Vauxhall Gallery, London until June 18, 2017.
