Birmingham’s People is a project influenced heavily by Richard Avedon’s work and is an attempt to capture a snapshot of the people of the second city

I’d like to invite you to see the series in the flesh in an exhibition lasting from the 7th December until the 29th January at the The Drum Arts Centre in Aston.

We’ll have all 170 images on display plus 15 ’spotlight’ images on display as large high quality prints.

I’ll be giving an artists talk on Wednesday 9th December 7PM open to all readers of this blog, for further details and to reserve a free ticket please go to our eventbrite site.

If you require any further information or would like to receive our press release please email hello@birminghamphotospace.co.uk

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to photograph Musituality at St Phillips Cathedral in Birmingham, a celebration of Brum’s multicultural heritage organised by Rich Batsford. It was a deeply moving spiritual event and was set in gorgeous surroundings.

Click here for the gallery

Moseley : A Portrait

Last weekend was Project X Presents… Xhibition in which everyones favourite multidisciplinary Birmingham arts collective took over Moseley Village for a day. I’ve been involved with PXP for a couple of years now documenting their weird and wonderful events but this is the first time I had been asked to contribute a piece of art.

I attempted to capture a portrait of Moseley through compositing over 300 different images in a Hockneyesque style. The collage method injects an element of time into the photograph, creating a truer portrait of the area than simply a static image.

In the end, due to circumstances beyond the control of the Project X organisers, the final print did not make it to the exhibition. It will be exhibited somewhere soon!

Click on the image above to see a large scale version integrated with Google Maps, it loops and you can zoom in to appreciate the level of detail in the final print. There’s also a gallery of pictures taken on the night itself here.

It’s a really exciting project aiming to create a dedicated photography gallery in Birmingham and I’ll be writing posts about photography in general, from practitioners who I admire to techniques that I’m particularly fond of.

My own personal projects I’ll, of course, continue to document here!

I was lucky enough to get the chance to document New Street Station and the Wholesale Markets, two Birmingham locations I’ve never had the chance to take pictures of before.

Karen has created a list of all the bloggers who documented the big night, it’s up here.

And in complete contrast a street portrait from the photographer’s mecca that is the St Patrick’s Day Parade in Digbeth Birmingham.

One of my resolutions this year is to shoot more people, portraiture’s one of the photographic genres that it’s completely impossible to get bored by.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

[Show as slideshow]

Recently I’ve been getting interested in the possibilities of film as a medium and the logical first step, at least for me, was to revisit thesse shots as a short piece of cinema. A return, in some ways, to the source. This is my first piece of major film work and is a bit rough round the edges however I submitted it to the Flatpack Festival in Birmingham and it was accepted. It’ll be shown on the 15th March at 8:30 at Floodgate Kino as part of the Close Down event and I’m very much looking forward to watching it properly with an audience.

This version is a little old now, the film has been rejigged slightly for its showing at Flatpack, especially with the quality of the black and white in the footage. For a better quality viewing you’ll have to come on the night!

Eidolon from Matt Murtagh on Vimeo.

Birmingham is a strange place for the arts in general, possessing lots of creative talent but only recently has it seemed that the arty types in the city have been mobilising and working together cohesively, helped by the various forms of social media that have sprung up in recent years. Most exciting for me has been the emergence of the Birmingham Photospace movement, a grassroots campaign by volunteers to establish a permanent home for photography in the city. This would provide a space for new and emerging photographers within the city to exhibit and develop their skills as well as providing a permanent space for national exhibitions in Brum.

BP began from a Flickr thread which brought together a group of passionate photographers and enthusiastic photography fans but has quickly evolved into an efficient and effective campaign group that I’m proud to be a member of. We’ve organised our first large scale publicity raising event for Saturday 21st March at the Custard Factory’s Vaad Gallery and it’s called Flashswap. We want photographers of all levels to bring prints to the gallery to be exhibited, at the end of the day providing they have left a print they’ll be able to take a different print home. The event will enable people the chance to meet fellow photographers in the flesh, share a drink and see the vast range of Brummie photography that we intend to establish a home for.

To take part, bring your images to the Vaad Gallery in the Custard Factory (next to the Medicine Bar), between 11am and 4pm!

More info here, here and also here

]]> http://www.mattmurtaghphotography.com/?feed=rss2&p=125 http://www.mattmurtaghphotography.com/?p=85 http://www.mattmurtaghphotography.com/?p=85#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:50:55 +0000 Matt http://www.mattmurtaghphotography.com/?p=85 So long between posts! Here’s some snowy Brum shots while I write some proper material!