The Three Disciplines is a project curated by Stuart Pilkington who invited 16 photographers to create three images in response to three disciplines outside of their comfort zones.

On 1 November 2014 all sixteen photographers submitted their images and they were all uploaded on the project website which you can browse here.

Portrait by Elizabeth Heiten

Landscape by Christina Marie Hicks

Stuart also has an ongoing portrait project called The Swap featured on Central Station here.

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

Adam Lee is a freelance photographer based in Liverpool UK. For his personal and commercial photographic work his clients include the Wigtown Book Festival, The Observer Escape Magazine, Granta Books, Sara Maitland, and DaDaFest amongst others. Adam also works as a freelance facilitator of participatory photographic projects with commissioners including PhotoVoice, Preston City Council, Liverpool City Council and Minerva Arts. Adam is Chair of the board of directors for LOOK: Liverpool International Photography Festival. Here are his first five jobs:

1. My first job (other than working at McDonalds and for a local gamekeeper when I was at school) was for Ladbrokes the bookmakers while I was at university. I started this job in my third year and carried on until I went travelling, six months after graduating. I started off as a cashier and eventually worked my way up to the assistant manager’s role at a shop in Toxteth, Liverpool. It was quite fun (due to the customers, not the work) and was my first experience of any kind of people management. On the whole, I think I learned a lot about customer service, managing staff and it was a crash course in scouse banter!

2. After university and a bit of travelling, the first job I got was as a Student Support Worker for Liverpool John Moores University. I have been doing the job for over ten years now and cannot see myself quitting soon. This is a great job: it’s fulfilling, particularly knowing you’re helping people rather than creating profit for shareholders. Furthermore, I get all the good sides of being a student (attending lectures, receiving an education and being paid to be there) but with none of the exams or coursework. Over the past ten years this role has taught me skills and knowledge I still use today. The job has opened doors into the arts world that I had never considered when first starting: I work regularly as a photographer in this field as well as delivering participatory projects to disabled groups. Finally, it forms the basis of a sustainable business model to support my fine art photographic work.

3. I got my first project with PhotoVoice, a London based charity that delivers participatory photography projects nationally and internationally, in 2009 based primarily on my experience with disability from my support work role (I had limited, professional photographic experience at this stage). I didn’t really know what participatory photography was until I saw this role advertised. Since then I have built a pretty solid career from this type of work. I work regularly for PhotoVoice and now have an extensive portfolio of freelance participatory work and projects. I find the participatory work to be an excellent string to my bow – it is again very fulfilling, helps me to think about the visual literacy side of photographic work, is highly practical and brings in a good bit of money.

4. Since starting the support work job in 2003 I haven’t had any other types of “employment” (other than my freelance photographic and participatory work). I had been volunteering for Redeye, the Photography Network, since 2009 as host of their Liverpool network meetings and when the post of events co-ordinator became available in 2013, I thought that this would be a great job to support my own personal practice. It was a fantastic job – I got to meet some of the big names in photography, to establish myself as a figure in photography in the North West of England and to deliver some great events – from talks to masterclasses to conferences and mass participation projects. In the end, I decided to leave the job earlier this year, as I wanted to refocus on my personal photographic work, having been awarded a residency at Metal in Liverpool. I continue to work voluntarily for Redeye now, resuming my role with the Liverpool network meetings.

5. Since 2008 I have been working on a voluntary basis for LOOK: Liverpool International Photography Festival. I was brought onto the board of directors when the festival moved from Manchester to Liverpool in 2008. Since then, I have fulfilled a number of roles including treasurer, company secretary and web and social media manager. In June this year I was made chair of the board of directors. Despite being unpaid work, LOOK is something I strongly believe in and have put my heart and soul into for the past six years, helping to deliver two highly successful festivals in 2011 and 2013 and am now working with the board and executive director to plan for LOOK/15 next year.

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We’ve asked professionals in creative industries what jobs they have had in the past to get their foot through the door (or at least pay the rent). For more in the “My First 5 Jobs” series look here.

Tell us about yourself.

Since my teenage years my biggest passion was photography, combined with general interests in art, literature and history. I enrolled to study philosophy at University of Lodz in Poland however I quickly found out that it wasn’t this that I was looking for. In 2005 I came to London and after moving from place to place in and around the Big Smoke and having various – less or more interesting jobs I decided to move to Edinburgh. Not long after that I enrolled at Stevenson College to study Professional Photography, which I finished in 2012 with a degree in Bachelor of Arts. In September 2012 I moved to Aberdeen where I am continuing work on my portraiture and landscapes projects.

In “The Neighbours” project, I am trying to create a portrait of contemporary and multicultural Scottish society and investigating its links with the rest of the world. To highlight that migration, and multicultural societies are not a new occurrence, I am researching on communities and individuals who came to Scotland many years ago. But of course the main part of this project is about more recent changes. In the last ten years many people from new EU countries like myself settled down here which resulted in Scotland being even more diverse and multicultural. The main idea is included in the title – In today’s well connected world anyone regardless of nationality, cultural or religious background can be our neighbour.

“Sikh family” – Edinburgh, 2012 – The Neighbours

Where do you work?

For now, most of my work is done in Aberdeen and Edinburgh but the further stage of my project would require me to travel to different areas of Scotland.

When I am making portraits, I am always working in my sitters’ homes or places, which are related to their stories. I like that every person’s home has its own unique mood and story. I prefer to be out there that’s why I am very rarely working in the studio, but of course I have some ideas for studio-based projects as well. When it comes to landscapes, I am trying to combine my interest in places and scenes, which are aesthetically attractive to me with my interest in the history of the city, its inhabitants and their everyday activities.

“Jozefina” – Slovakia, 2013 – “Domov” – project recently shortlisted in The Jill Todd Photographic Award

Tell us about your process:

I choose to work in a genre of portraiture photography as this form gives me the possibility to meet a variety of different characters and listen to their stories, whilst observing them in their private domestic environment. I would describe my work as a formal environmental portraiture. My portraits are always a result of collaboration between the portrayed person and myself, however I always keep at a distance. I am the one who is recording their appearance and the story but in most cases I act more like a guide rather than a director. I am aware of the fact that photography – as any other medium – is very subjective but I want my sitters to be as truthful to themselves as possible. I want them to forget about the presence of the camera for a while. To achieve this I am always asking them to imagine that they are seeing a mirror instead of the camera. These mirrors are double-sided and I hope that the viewer looking at my portraits will be able to find himself in one of the pictures and translate the stories of my sitters to his own experiences. I think that these portraits also reflect who am I.

My landscapes are about juxtaposition, local history and mood of a particular place. My own perception of the place is also playing a very important role in the whole process of creating the photograph. I am often attracted by landscapes where mainly everything is designed by man or it is a result of mans’ activities as this can say a lot about the time and the conditions in which we were/are living.

“Polish- Russian family” – Aberdeen, 2013 – The Neighbours

What’s your typical day like?

This changes from time to time. When I am preparing for new projects, I tend to spend some time on looking for possible sitters, locations, funding sources and also on promoting ongoing projects that I am doing right now. But the research process is constant, as you never know what you may come across. When projects are in the implementation stage, I visit people or locations and take their portraits. I also work part-time in the evening so my photographic activities are from early morning until late afternoon. Very often I spend nights on the post production of the photographs from the past weeks. I try not to look at the new pictures immediately as I like to develop a sort of fresh view which allows me to look at them more objectively.

“Dr Kazimierz Durkacz” – Edinburgh, 2012 – The Neighbours

Where do you find inspiration?

This is a tricky question. If I knew where I could always find inspiration, I would not “waste” my time on looking everywhere I think I might find it!

It could be everything! From a short note in a local paper, word in the dictionary, book, story someone told me or most often by just walking around the city and being a bit nosey and curious about people and places.

What are your future plans?

At the moment I am taking part in “The Quality of everyday life” exhibition, which is on display in the Summerhall gallery until 22 November. I am showing some of my portraits from “The Neighbours” project there. Apart from continuing my work on this project, I am also working on a landscape series called “Gray City” and I am in the research stage for another portraiture project called “The Picts.” As my career progresses, I see myself working on collaborative projects with anthropologists and historians, combining social sciences with photographic art for the benefits of society. That’s my dream.

I would like to use this opportunity to encourage everyone who has foreign ancestors or those for whom Scotland is a new home to contact me, as I would love to hear your story and take a portrait of you or your family. I am looking forward to meeting you!

More: Website | Email | Flickr | Twitter

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PART ONE
Project origins – The Balkans

“But this is no time to dredge up vague premonitions. Savage, bestial city destroyers with no conscience are hard at work gutting, sacking, murdering the population, burning archives and libraries, demolishing museums and houses of worship.”
- Bohdan Bogdanovic, Serbian Architect, 1994

Comparing Bosnia to Glasgow is probably going to confuse and possibly upset some people, especially Glaswegians. But the inspiration for my project – The Glasgow Renaissance, with its doomed high rise flats, empty homes and desolation take me back 18 years to 1996; to the ethnically cleansed and destroyed towns of Croatia, and the jaw dropping citywide destruction of Sarajevo.

The connection between the two places is of course, far-fetched. People in Bosnia and Croatia had their homes destroyed, or had to flee them for very different reasons than the Glaswegians I have documented, and it is impossible to downplay or be-little the savagery that swept across the region. After the war, much of Bosnia’s landscape was ruined and empty and that’s when my journey began – and the comparisons began to emerge. Placing photographs of destroyed, empty landscapes of Glasgow side by side with those from Bosnia, with no captions and you may find it difficult to choose which is which.

Pakrac, Croatia – photo by Pete Pawinski

Pakrac Croatia, 1996. I spent 5 months here, working on a volunteer social reconstruction project in this destroyed and divided town.  Pakrac was 80-85% destroyed during the war and was in many ways, the middle of nowhere. In my time off I cycled around the ruins of the ethnically cleansed and destroyed homes. Sometimes quite stupidly (the area was littered with landmines) I ventured into abandoned buildings and homes.

Left behind were photographs, clothes, pictures on walls. As the homes were emptied most of the buildings were set on fire, so there wasn’t much to photograph but occasionally you would find the odd solitary shoe lying amongst the carnage and you only hoped that its owner had escaped and survived.

12 years later whilst out running I first discovered the Oatlands estate in Glasgow. Abandoned and partially boarded up, the flats had been emptied years before, but they remained littered with personal belongings such as letters, photographs, clothes and toys. It felt like people had fled in a hurry, unsure of where they were going, or their final destination.

Walking around what was left of the Oatlands I was taken back to my days in Pakrac. My wife freaked out claiming it could be dangerous, with security fences, rotten collapsed floorboards, and leaking gas meters – and sometimes it could be. But this time there were no landmines to worry about…

I moved back to Glasgow in late 2004 after 5 years in a sleepy Wiltshire town of thatched cottages, no crime, no litter and not even a sniff of dog s**t on the street, the polar opposite to the streets of Bridgeton. I remember driving past Ardenlea / Summerfield St in Dalmarnock on a cold misty winters evening at 4 in the afternoon and being transported back to the first time I drove into Sarajevo in 1996.

The Whitevale Flats have the most striking physical resemblance to the UNIS towers in Sarajevo. The UNIS towers were clear targets for the Serb artillery and a symbol of Sarajevo’s financial sector. Partially stripped back of their glass and facade the buildings resembled the brutalist concrete structure of the Whitevale flats, almost as if the latter are half constructed buildings, just awaiting their shinny coat of a glass and steel facade. (Maybe even putting cladding and glass on the Whitevale flats could be an option rather than wholesale demolition.)

The regeneration of Glasgow and the destroyed landscapes left by the process are temporary, these structures that will only exist for a limited time. Just like in Bosnia, they will be rebuilt in time.

In Bosnia the hope is that war will not return to create more havoc and destruction. In Glasgow we can only hope that in 30 years time the new homes and communities we are building now do not suffer the same fate of ‘knock em down, build em up again’.

Written by Chris Leslie

Chris is looking to get the project exhibited / published. If you’re interested please email him at chris@chrisleslie.co.uk.

More: Website | Chris Leslie | Vimeo | Twitter

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Take a look at Part Two of Chris Leslie’s Glasgow Renaissance here & Part Three here.

Christian by Glasgow based photographer, Martin D Barker.

Flickr |Facebook | Twitter

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Discover more work by creatives we’ve featured, here.
If you have a Flickr, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Behance or Cargo account connect with us.

Who:
Glasgow based photographer, Andrea uses the alter ego Flannery O’Kafka for what she terms as Melancholy Merry-Making. This mother-of-five documents her ‘making’ process through daily life on her blog where you will find a mix of family snapshots, portraits, commercial/editorial work often featuring her children.

Harris Tweed Fashion Show, Hillhead Bookclub, Glasgow’s West End

Why we like it:
Flannery O’Kafka blogs openly in a photo-diary style. Her strong talents as a photographer are plainly evident in all of her work, whether it be an editorial shot or a quick snapshot of one of her kids; her compositions are well-considered and beautiful.

Sisters in Babiekins magazine published

Hidden treasure:
Amongst all the photos of O’Kafka’s children, we stumbled across this rare and rather striking self-portrait of O’Kafka herself.

Self-portrait

Where to find out more:
Website | Facebook | Twitter

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Want to take a look at more suggested blogs by artists? Look here.

Aberdeen by Glasgow based photographer Derrick Argent

Website | Flickr | Twitter

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Discover more work by creatives we’ve featured, here.
If you have a Flickr, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Behance or Cargo account connect with us.

Bread Collective is a creative collective based in East London, made up of illustrators, graphic designers, art directors, set designers, photographers and filmmakers. We have four core members: Luke James, Owen Phillips, Victoria Walmsley and Jo Lee, regularly collaborating with a wider network of creatives.

The Walls Have Ears Murals

The Walls Have Ears Murals

Having worked with each other in the past, we began as a group of friends discussing how we could stretch ourselves creatively and work on more ambitious projects by combining our different skills. We chose the name Bread, as we liked the idea ‘to break bread’, meaning the idea of a friendly social interaction where something is shared.

Golden Moments Art Direction

Bread was officially established in 2012 after we were awarded funding by the London Legacy Development Corporation for a community project to improve the area where we all live in Hackney Wick, just outside the Olympic park. The project was enthusiastically received by local residents and attracted media attention by the Guardian, the BBC and a list of top design magazines and blogs, such as Creative Review.

Carhartt Installation

As the year has progressed, we have been extremely lucky to work with a variety of great clients, including: Carhartt, Maharishi, Monkstone Knitwear, Samsung, Beck’s, Lovebox Festival and Cnwd.

Monkstone AW12 Video Lookbook

Where possible, we strive to work on worthy projects that we believe in, and we’ve enjoyed running workshops with the public. This has led us to work on inspirational projects such as the Do Lectures, and Kaleidoscope Festival which launches at the Barbican in November.

Monkstone AW12 Video Lookbook

We’re always keen to hear from people who would like to collaborate with or commission us, so please feel free to give us a shout at:
Website | Blog | Vimeo | Facebook | Twitter

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See more arts collectives we’ve featured on the site. Think we should feature your collective? Get in touch.

Alex Boyd with his portable camera, Downpatrick Head, Ireland

For several years now I’ve been working as a photographer specialising in historic processes such as wet-plate collodion. This is one of the earliest ways of making images and was first invented in 1851 by Frederick Scott Archer.

Den Bruiste Sea Stack, County Mayo, Ireland

This process has the slight downfall that it requires you take your studio with you, with enough chemicals, supplies, water and materials to make images wherever you are working.

Alex’s portable studio

It currently takes a car to move my studio from one location to another, with little room left once the camera and my darkbox are packed alongside me. If I’m working inside, in a dedicated studio space, or an improvised one such as the vaults of Stirling Castle, then making images is fairly straightforward, as long as there is an ample supply of light and water, and the chemicals such as silver nitrate are behaving themselves.

Inside the darkbox, portrait on tintype

Louise Boyd

Working outside in the landscape however brings a whole new set of challenges, difficulties and frustrations, however it is probably where I most enjoy working with this process. Setting up my portable darkroom, in effect a large wooden box in which I can work in the field, I need to contend with high winds, rain, snow and intense heat and in the case of a residency on the Atlantic coast of Ireland I undertook earlier this year, all of these within a matter of hours. Difficult locations also mean that you have to drag all the gear to where you want to make images, sometimes a back-breaking and laborious task.

Alex’s studio, WW2 bunker, Downpatrick Head, County Mayo, Ireland

Scottish artist Hugh Loney

To date I’ve worked across Ireland, Scotland and England with my darkbox, everywhere from Rannoch Moor up in the Highlands, to the ruins of several Second World War clifftop bunkers in County Mayo in Ireland. Working in this way allows me to completely immerse myself in each location, due to the slow and methodical approach to image making, with each plate taking 15 minutes from the moment I pour collodion on the glass, to the final development using potassium cyanide.

Darkbox, camera and chemicals in studio

I’ve been asked many times why I persevere with collodion photography, especially given the difficulties in producing images using chemicals and the need to bring so much equipment with me. The answer is a straightforward one – it perfectly complements the way I make images. I found that with film and digital my approach was slowing down and becoming more contemplative, and that I was investing more time into each individual shot. This of course does change with the subject, however for landscapes I would say that my pace at the moment is fairly glacial.

Cashlanicrobin Rock, County Mayo, Ireland

The approach also produces distinct images. Aside from collodion’s unique aesthetic, each image is a moment in time recorded on glass, not just the scene before me, but every flaw and imperfection which goes into making that image. This can range from chemicals producing chaotic and unexpected results, to blades of grass from the side of Loch N-achlaise or midges from Glen Etive trapped forever in the collodion like amber. The corner of every image also contains my fingerprint from where I held it during its creation, a marker which signifies that I was there.

The Old Tree Graveyard, Ballycastle, Ireland

Alex Boyd is currently the RSA Artist in Residence at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in Skye.

Find out more:
Website | Blog | Flickr |Facebook | Twitter

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.

Who:
Richard Gaston is a young photographer based in Glasgow.

EDINBURGH by Richard Gaston

Why we like it:
Gaston uses light and colour in a unique way, creating his own quirky style which is perceptible across his work.

Hidden treasure:
With summer now at an end, we liked the picture below and remain optimistic for an Indian summer this autumn.

SVEN COOLS by Richard Gaston

More: Website | Flickr

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Want to take a look at more suggested blogs by artists? Look here.