Marian Schmidt - Three Regards

We kindly invite all to "Three Regards", an exhibition of Marian Schmidt as part of PhotoIreland 2013.

Marian Schmidt was born in Poland in 1945. He spent his childhood in Venezuela. At the age of 12, while studying at the Liceo de Aplicación in Caracas, he began to take photographs with his father’s rangefinder Konica and make documentary films with his Canon 8mm film camera.

Inspired by the films of Ingmar Bergman, he decided to become a film director and wanted to study filmmaking in Los Angeles.  However, his father would not finance his plans and instead sent him in 1961 to the University of California, Berkeley to study engineering. His professors discovered he had a great talent for mathematics and a year later he transferred to the mathematics department where he obtained a B.A. with honours in 1965. He accepted  a generous scholarship for Ph.D. studies in mathematics from Brandeis University in Waltham (Massachusetts). In his first year at Brandeis he was lucky to meet the great mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr (“A Beautiful Mind”), whom he befriended and admired. During his studies, he returned to his adolescent passions and began photographing again.  Artist Ben Shahn after viewing one of his first pictures encouraged him to continue photographing. Schmidt also made an experimental film with the recently acquired cinema equipment by the university.

prism #12

This July, we celebrate the 2nd anniversary of prism Photography Magazine.

Over the past two years we have done our best to provide our audience with fourteen amazing issues, each one completed with a great selection of contemporary photography. Each year, prism has provided us with new challenges and new experiences, which have been very rewarding for us. We were always thrilled to celebrate established names and happy to promote emerging artists and photographic initiatives. We were delighted to have partnered with photographic festivals and have always been looking forward to setting up new goals and meeting new friends!

We have also created a stable and growing platform for international audience to be exposed to 'what's hot' in the contemporary photography. We have launched a blog platform to provide you with articles, previews, reviews and interviews. We have also organised a few very exciting exhibitions as our own initiative and also in partnership with PhotoIreland Festival: a very successful international Instant Photography Exhibition, numerous group shows and collective shows in the past. During this year’s PhotoIreland we invite you all to an exhibition of Marian Schmidt, founder and director of Warsaw School of Photography, a photographer known for his humanistic approach to photography and his masterful composition skills, who has been widely exhibited around the globe.

We are also been proud to be actively supporting photographic prizes and introducing their winners to our audience. Our May issue featured the winners from The Grand Prix Fotofestiwal Lodz and in this issue we will introduce you to the winners of the 2nd edition of POPCAP'13 - piclet.org's Prize for Contemporary African Photography: Anhua Collective (Alvaro Laiz and David Rengel), Dillon Marsh, Alexia Webster, Graeme Williams and Cristina De Middel. Cristina has also contributed her work to be featured on this issue's cover. POPCAP'13 Winners are also a part of PhotoIreland Festival 2013 and will be exhibited in Dublin, Limerick and Cork.

prism #12 cover image by Cristina De Middel

Prism has always been committed to be partnered with many festivals and photographic organisations and this year is no different: PhotoIreland.org, Belfast Festival, piclet.org, Neu Now, Slideluck Potshow Dublin, Actual Colors May Vary, PhotoMonth Krakow and Fotofestiwal Lodz, to name few of our good old and new friends.

All our efforts have been met with very positive feedback, which has reassured us that our work is noticed and appreciated. We couldn't have expected a better reward.

With this exalted moment of celebration we are thrilled to have discovered and to present, in addition to POPCAP'13 Winners, work of talented photographers: Isabelle Wenzel and her Building Images project, Karena Hutton and the story of her Father, Marieke Gelissen and her interpretation of a physical encounter between the body and the object, Alex Rose presents his myth of everlasting flowers, Nathalie Daoust takes us to a trip to one of the largest S&M "love hotel" in Japan, James Smith studies post modernist architecture, Marlous van der Sloot is featured with her 'body(ies)' of work and Pascal Fellonneau presents his 'Candidates' project.

Again, we would like to thank all photographers, curators and editors who contributed to this and all previous issues, our friends from galleries, institutions and organizations for their support and positive energy, and finally, most of all, we’d like to thank you, Dear Readers for building such a strong, supportive community of photo enthusiasts that keeps us motivated to deliver more amazing material in the future.

Let the light in.
Karol Liver / prism Editor

POPCAP'13 Prize for Contemporary African Photography

We proudly invite all to the exhibition of the Finalist of POPCAP'13 that will take place in Dublin, Limerick and Cork, as part of this year's edition of PhotoIreland Festival.

Piclet.org are interested in the idea of bringing networking back into the real world via social media and events such as POPCAP ‘13. Piclet.org was launched in 2009 by Berlin-based media artist Benjamin Fuglister as an international online portal for the presentation of contemporary photographers’ portfolios and as an international directory of important festivals, creative publications and Photography related institutions.

POPCAP was awarded for the first time in 2012. This year the five chosen works will be presented to both the international arts community and the general public during Art Basel 44 as well as at PhotoIreland Festival 2013. POPCAP ‘13 aims to enhance awareness  and provoke discourse regarding African topics through public events running alongside the exhibition. Due to its extensive application in a day-to-day context, Piclet.org considers photography to be the ideal medium from which to foster an unhindered exchange of ideas.

Finalists of POPCAP’ 13:

Anhua Collective (Álvaro Laiz/David Rengel), Future Plan
Rebels of the Lord´s Resistance Army have been kidnapping children for over 25 years in the border between Uganda and Sudan, where they are trained as soldiers, deprived of education and brought up in a culture of extreme violence where they are forced to abduct and kill. The few that manage to return, including those photographed in this series, are rejected by a society who blames them for the deaths of their relatives and friends. Imagine your life was a great plain wall. Imagine you have a piece of chalk. What would you do with it?

Dillon Marsh, Landmarks
Rather than advocating a particular stance or message, Dillon Marsh prefers to show the subtle and curious manner in which the relationship between humans and the natural environment often plays out. Marsh seeks to find things that are out of the ordinary, picking them out of the landscape where they might otherwise blend in.

Cristina De Middel, The Afronauts
In 1964, still living the dream of their recently gained independence, Zambia started a space program. Led by an ambitious school teacher Edward Makuka, and with only a few optimists supporting the project, this ambitious initiative was unfulfilled as the United Nations declined their support, and one of the astronauts, a 16 year old girl, got pregnant and had to quit. The Afronauts presents this exotic episode of the history of the space race.

Alexia Webster, A village in the clouds
This series explores the unsettled landscape of a mountain village in South Africa. Located high up in the forests of the Amatola Mountains it has been thought of as sacred ground by many the generations of people. Despite its beauty and charm, Hogsback holds a sad and complex history that in many ways mirrors the pain and contradictions that South Africa has faced.

Graeme Williams, On the other side
In small towns, townships and cities throughout South Africa there remains an uneasy stasis as the countrys social and physical landscapes continue to shift. Graeme Williams focuses on isolated, but telling facets of daily life within the country, in an attempt to mirror the complexity and fragmented nature of the process of transformation. The photographs emphasize both change and the lack of change, and comment on the intertwined relationship between past, present and an uncertain future.

Moxie Studios,Pembroke row, Lad Lane, Dublin 2
Opening day: 7pm Thu 11 Jul
Dates: 11-14 Jul
Opening hours: 11-6pm

OCCUPY SPACEOccupy Space, No. 7 Rutland St., Limerick
Dates: 18-21 Jul
Opening hours: Daily 12-6pm

CIT Crawford College of Art and DesignCIT Crawford College of Art and Design
Sharman Crawford Street, Cork
Opening day: 6-8pm Wed 24 Jul
Dates: 24-31 Jul
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 9am-5pm / Sat 11am-5pm