Guest Speaker

So today in place of our lecture we had a guest speaker in, Angela Kelly.

Angela is originally from Belfast but is now based in Rochester, upstate New York. She gave us a talk on her exhibit called Catharsis: Images of Post Conflict Belfast, which has only been publicly shown once before, a few weeks back in China, so we got a bit of a privileged look into it =)

A lot of the work is drawn from her 'love' of family album images and she displayed various images from her childhood and her family around her. Speaking about growing up in Belfast, where for some 30 years the city was governed by a military presence and a religious divide, she has been back to see how life has changed and the city has grown.  Belfast is still divided throughout the city by sectarian and political means and this is what Angela has profiled.

I found the talk quite interesting, especially looking at the old images as I like to learn about history, especially local history. I like to look at these such images and imagine the stories that go with them. You certainly find some characters when you look back at old images! Documentary photography is obviously a lot different nowadays because people are a lot more used to seeing cameras now, whereas when you look at old images, of say like old factory workers, everyone seems to have a curiosity as to what's going on, everyone has to have their face in the picture!

After the talk we were invited to come back after a break and see some of her students images from the university where she teaches, I took this opportunity because I always think it's a good idea to see what other peoples work is like, who it's inspired by, if anyone and just to get some general ideas for myself and some inspiration maybe too.

Here's the link to Angela's page if you fancy taking a look around...
http://angelakellyphoto.com/mainpage.html

As ever, thanks for stopping by and taking time to read through my ponderings!

Grazie..