Back in June I travelled out to Switzerland with Cycle Sport magazine staff writer Andy McGrath to photograph Daniel Teklehaimanot at the UCI World Cycling Centre in Aigle; the feature appears in the new October 2010 issue and I’m pleased to say that they’ve done a very fine job with image selection and layout with only one photo that isn’t mine sneaking in via a side-bar with Sky rider John-Lee Augustyn about the difficulties for Africans making it to the professional ranks. This was a great assignment to get and was quite different from the usual celebrity athlete interview feature (not that I don’t love those too…); currently relatively unknown, Teklehaimanot was born and raised in the African country of Eritrea (a country with a strong cycling scene as a result of it being colonised by Italy from 1890 to 1941 but also a bloody war-torn history and ranked as the worst country in the world for press freedom violations) and poised to become the first black-African cyclist to make it to the top-tier of professional cycling despite undergoing a heart operation just last year after tests indicated that he had tachycardia. Big thanks to Ed Pickering for assigning me and Andy McGrath for being such a good travel companion and doing such a great job with the words; you can read the article in full by picking up a copy of the new issue from any good newsagents.
Out-takes: I really wish I’d stepped back and taken a wider set-up photo of this first one (an alternate from the photo that ran as the double page spread opener); there were four of us all hunkered down in the wheat; as well as Daniel and me, Andy (writer) and Michel (Daniel’s coach) were holding onto a softbox for dear life as gale-force winds blew through the valley.
Portraits of competitors at the finish-line of the 2010 Bontrager 24/12 mountain bike endurance race held this past weekend at the Newnham Park Estate in Devon. The 24 Hour Solo Male category winner completed 26 laps of the technical 14KM course (or 364KM in total…) in 24:00:17 with the second placed rider equal on laps but 26 minutes 10 seconds behind.
The full gallery of this series is now available to view at:
http://www.simonkeitch.com/#/Portfolios/24%20Hour%20Racers/1
If you happen to find yourself on board a BMI Baby flight anytime soon you’ll see a feature in their Yeah Baby in-flight magazine’s current Summer issue that I shot for them on location at Watergate Bay near Newquay on the north coast of Cornwall a few weeks ago. The shoot happened to coincide with a short break already long planned at the Headland Hotel (location for the 1990 film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches) in Newquay on that weekend so when I got the email from the magazine’s Picture Editor I jumped at the chance to mix a little business with pleasure.
Despite visiting Newquay a few times over the years I’d never previously been to Watergate Bay just down the coast. It’s a pretty unique beach; very wide and completely flat; the sort of beach which which lends itself very well to kite buggying although there were none on the beach while we were there. As with most outdoor shoots the weather was a worry and we anticipated a disaster first thing as we woke to black skies and intermittent rain and of course the client wants blue skies. This time we got lucky though and the sky soon brightened with some beautiful diffused light coming through the early haze and the sky got bluer as the day went on. The assignment was to include portrait and documentary photography of the people either work or leisure on and around the beach including the team of RNLI life guards, Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant which overlooks the bay, and the surfers competing in the 2010 English National Surfing Championship. Big thanks to Yeah Baby’s Picture Editor Julia Holmes for assigning me, to Art Director Julia Murray for doing such a great job with the layout and image selection, and finally to Editor Ginny Cummins for being such good company on location and making the whole shoot seem easy.
Out-takes:
The new April 2010 issue of Cycle Sport is now on sale and includes an article I shot for the magazine on location in Holland with Rabobank team rider Robert Gesink. There was a big train crash in Brussels a few days before we were due to head out to meet Gesink at his home in Holland not too far from the German border which nixed the original plan to catch the Eurostar out to Belgium and hire a car from there, so plan B was to drive out the whole way to avoid any possible issues with the train service that may of caused us to miss our very narrow window. Three long days of traveling across northern France, Belgium and Holland and back again on a road that I can only describe as consistent was made more bearable with the company of Cycle Sport staff writer Lionel Birnie and we kept ourselves entertained with some good conversation and dreams of a large glass of Leffe at that night’s hotel. The shoot was the usual affair with a limited location and time and we were in and out of Gesink’s home in a little over two hours including the interview but with some solid images and several different options in the can. As always there were many good photos that didn’t make it into the final article but the magazine did a great job with the layout which as always is best appreciated in print so be sure to pick up a copy from any good newsagent. The rest of the layout is below, along with some out takes that didn’t make the final cut.
A couple of portraits of Bleeding Through keyboard player Marta Peterson produced in a matter of minutes prior to the recent show supporting Machine Head at the Pavilions in Plymouth recently. I was at the show to photograph the live performances as well as some backstage portraits to illustrate interviews with relevant band members for Rocklouder. I have a ton of material from the show so I’ll post up some more images over the next week or so.
I first met documentary film maker Mark Kidel last Summer when he was in Plymouth to film one of my photo shoots with performance artist Francesca Steele – Mark is producing a documentary about Francesca’s bodybuilding performance piece ‘Routine’ – and we’ve met up a few times since with me turning the camera on him more recently. Mark has forged an amazing career producing and directing films on a broad range of subjects including artists as diverse as Ravi Shankar, Mario Lanza, and Tricky, was a founding producer of the groundbreaking BBC arts documentary series ARENA and even collaborated with Peter Gabriel on the concept for a world music festival that eventually grew to become the world famous WOMAD festivals. For more information about Mark Kidel’s work head over to http://www.calliopemedia.co.uk/
Promotional portrait of Devon based singer/songwriter and musician Katie Marie; we shot this in a ruined railway cottage on the edge of what’s now the Plym Valley cycle route on the edge of Dartmoor. Another in a series of recent very wintry outdoor portraits and there was still a little -albeit slushy – snow on the ground at the time. As well as writing and performing on her own albums Katie has just launched her own record label; for more information check out her website HERE
A few months back I received a phonecall from Francesca Steele – a Plymouth based Performance Artist – who asked me to photograph her for an upcoming book being produced by the Plymouth Arts Centre to coincide with the Pigs Of Today Are The Hams Of Tomorrow performance arts show which is taking place at The Slaughterhouse – a nearly 200 year old dis-used slaughterhouse – at Royal William Yard in Plymouth this month which is being curated by Marina Abramovic. The deadline for the images was extremely tight but we pulled together a two location shoot over the course of two days; one studio shoot with a black background and a second on location at The Slaughterhouse itself; Francesca was great to work with and the images were delivered in time and so far with a lot of very positive feedback so I’m looking forward to seeing the finished book. Francesca’s current project – Routine – has involved her transforming her body within the relatively short space of a year through the adoption of bodybuilding training, diet, and finally competition, and we did another shoot together at Francesca’s first bodybuilding competition – Miss Plymouth 2009 – a few weeks later where I produced documentary photographs both backstage and front of house of the preparation and competition. I decided to do a little Q&A session with Francesca to give a better insight into what the project is all about.
SK: How did this project begin; where did the idea come from?
FS: The idea for the project grew initially from working with [bodybuilder and gym owner] Stuart Core on a different project – Horticultural Healing – a rehabilitation project for clients with acquired brain injury. Stuart collaborated on a series of photographic outcomes to the project, also working with a magician Christopher Howell; the photographer for this project was Manuel Vason – commissioned by Groundwork South West in Plymouth. Also around the same time I had been working at Derriford hospital in the Histopathology lab – which included the cytology unit and also the morgue – here I was working with the body in a dislocated, close up and visual way, using microscopes to examine, and learning more about bodily and cellular structures. With both of these projects on my mind and also at the time feeling a dissatisfaction with elements of my practice, the idea formed to use my own live body as more than a ‘tool’ within my work. To attempt to make the body/life into an artwork, in some sense. I started going to Stuart’s gym – Core Fitness – and felt aware it was unlike most gyms I had been to, and that the atmosphere was quite different. I felt fascinated when I heard men talk about food, and when they were so critical about their physical form and aimed for constant improvement. I talked my idea over with Stuart, and with his and Lewis Breed’s help and consistent advice and support I began to body-build. It took me some time to get around a few aspects of it; as a woman the focus had always been on eating less and losing weight, lots of cardio etc, but to body-build I had to completely change my diet and actually eat all the food I was told too and aim to gain weight. It did take me a while to really understand – and stop fighting what I’d been brought up culturally to believe about my body. To be honest this took me a couple of months – where initially I lost weight rather than gained, but it did eventually sink in! I set the goal of competing in a regional bodybuilding contest to have a goal and timetable to work to. This gave me 8 months of gaining and 4 months dieting down for competition. I gained a stone and a half in my gaining period and lost it during my diet – although my body changed dramatically over the year – and although I was the same weight at the beginning and the end of the year I looked completely different.
Backstage at Miss Plymouth 2009
SK: How does such a long term project translate into an individual live performance piece; for example the Pigs Of Today Are The Hams Of Tomorrow show which you’ll be appearing in?
FS: Simply – I don’t think it can. I have always thought that one of the biggest and more difficult tasks of being an artist is in the selection of what you show. Obviously with this work, it has become impossible show to everything – and really now this year is coming to an end it feels more that the process of making work has just started rather than finished. Competitive bodybuilding has two main elements - the work that you put into your body, lifestyle, food & exercise – and the showmanship of posing and performing on stage. For the Pigs Of Today Are The Hams Of Tomorrow project, I am going back to my established one-to-one performance practice with some of what I have learnt from the performative side of bodybuilding. I am looking at the piece as a long slow tense piece of choreography where viewers have the opportunity to view one at a time.
SK: What you were aiming to achieve when you started this project; were there specific goals you had when you begun, and if you did do you think you’ve realised them or have they changed during the process?
FS: Apart from the duration act of bodybuilding for a year, there were initially a number of aims or ideas; these were partly to do with data collection and to investigate masculinity and feminity. The data collection I found fell to pieces as I went along. I found the process of bodybuilding itself to kind of wipe it out; it seemed to become irrelevant - and the data really didn’t change much! As I became more immersed in the lifestyle of bodybuilding it seemed less verbal or intellectual – but almost more of a meditative act – more about calm concentration and attitude making it possible to push yourself further and further; which somehow left less room for diary keeping. I was also interested in investigating masculine and feminine beauty; what attributes a female could take on or borrow from masculinity and where these boundaries between feminine and masculine lay in terms of the aesthetic of the body. I gave myself the goal to compete to give me a real objective to work towards and to help me to try to follow the process to the best of my ability, and also for the work to exist in the world of bodybuilding rather than just that of art. During the process most of my goals have changed as I have begun to understand more about competitive bodybuilding and can contemplate more of what its potential is within my art practice. I have decided to continue bodybuilding and competing, and using it as source and fuel for my artwork; I feel a year is really only enough time to get started and I am still enthusiastic and excited about what the future possibilities and dialogues can be for this work.
Francesca Steele will be performing ‘Routine’ at the Pigs Of Today Are The Hams Of Tomorrow taking place at Royal William Yard in Plymouth over the 22nd/23rd/24th of January 2010 with the book publication launch taking place on the 21st.
Plymouth Arts Centre presents The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow, a curatorial collaboration with the Marina Abramović Institute for Preservation of Performance Art. The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow will stage, document and discuss groundbreaking international performance art in order to examine and sustain the future of the medium. The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow takes place over three days at Royal William Yard with performances by six renowned artists and artist-collectives.
This is the first curatorial project of the Marina Abramović Institute. Marina Abramović has pioneered performance art for over four decades on an international scale. Her major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, opens in March 2010.
The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow is a translation of the title of a conceptual piece of writing by Georg Jappe published by KunstForum International in 1978 on the contemporary state of art practice in relation to global political agendas.
One of my previously unpublished portraits of Nicolas Roche ran in Ireland’s best selling newspaper the Irish Independent recently. It’s always great to see unpublished photos finally go to print especially as this image was one of my own personal favourites from the shoot.
Issue 51 of Shred magazine is now available featuring my photos of British cross-country mountain bike legend and Giant Global Team rider Oli Beckingsale on the cover and illustrating the feature interview; I shot these images way back in the summer in Oli’s hometown of Bristol and it’s great to finally see them in print. Read on-line or order a good old fashioned hard-copy HERE or pick one up from any good UK bike shop.
