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Jose, Author at The Open College of the Arts - Page 5 of 5

To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

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Jose


On an exhibition 'crawl' at Brighton Photo Biennial thumb

On an exhibition 'crawl' at Brighton Photo Biennial

Yes, the analogy is not inappropriate. By the end of a long weekend of exhibition visits at Brighton Photo Biennial, OCA’s Director Gareth, photography tutor Clive, a selected group of students and myself felt very much intoxicated with photography. Such was the variety and sheer number of exhibitions in Brighton this year. The Brighton Photo […]

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A man shaped by war thumb

A man shaped by war

  Don McCullin once gave me a valuable lesson. Yes, I’ve met the man, not in a far-flung war zone but in the safety of a lecture hall. I was responsible for introducing him to the audience and for operating the audiovisual equipment. As soon as he arrived, well before the talk started, McCullin handed […]

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Street photography…start by putting your camera away thumb

Street photography…start by putting your camera away

Bear with me; this is about photography after all. I felt an urge to write this post after visiting Steve McCurry’s exhibition in Birmingham. The text introducing the exhibition described McCurry’s images as ‘street photographs’, which I would dispute. To make matters worse, I learned about the Street Photography Now Project, a ‘street photography’ exercise […]

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Steve McCurry – Retrospective thumb

Steve McCurry – Retrospective

The second exhibition visit organised by the OCA took a group of students, director Gareth Dent and myself, to Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. The stunning Victorian building was the perfect venue to host a selection of some of the most memorable and distinctive photographs by the renowned Magnum and National Geographic Photographer. Steve McCurry […]

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Unwanted tourists? Just 'photoshop' them thumb

Unwanted tourists? Just 'photoshop' them

There is no doubt that the new release of Photoshop Elements (9) is a powerful tool that continues to bridge the gap between the consumer and the professional versions of the Photoshop software. What strikes me is the marketing language used in advertising this new release, and most importantly, the ethos behind it. This is […]

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Caught 'in the black' thumb

Caught 'in the black'

It seems that Stepan Rudik went a few steps too far when he submitted this photograph as part of a portfolio for this year’s World Press Photo Award. He was disqualified after it was found that he had digitally manipulated the image. The latest edition of the British Journal of Photography (BJP) magazine – which […]

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A photograph of the wind… thumb

A photograph of the wind…

The Sirocco of Northern Africa, to be precise. It was taken in southern Morocco by the late José Ortiz Echagüe. This image has always captured my imagination because it seems to distill the essence of the desert. Its lack of focus, the gosthly turbaned figures, and the swirls of sand; it is like seeing a […]

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