A fantastic selection of catalogues featuring three distinct voices in contemporary photography.
Going Back Home To Where I Came From includes photographs by Mahtab Hussain taken in Kashmir during research for his residency on Ikon’s Slow Boat in 2016. The project, entitled The Auspicious Journey, examined the construction of the Mangla Dam in the 1960s and the mass displacement it caused. Many of these people settled in the West Midlands to work on the canals, linking back to the artist’s own heritage.
Varna Road forms part of a ‘photo-essay’ Mendelsohn made as a student at the University of Birmingham during 1967–69, the photographs depict everyday life in the inner-city district of Balsall Heath, focusing in particular on a young woman referred to as Kathleen, with whom Mendelsohn formed a close relationship. By using photography as “a tool for cultural analysis”, she provides a unique insight into a transforming community.
Beat Streuli’s New Street combines hundreds of photos of both Birmingham and Castellon, in a kind of portraiture of urban life. Streuli’s work contains close-up images of people, often captured unawares as they negotiate city streets. In the midst of abstract city details, their faces, gestures and looks engage us in unremarkable, everyday drama.
These catalogues usually retail for £55.
