Emile Ebrahim Kelly

Any one in Cape Town over the next month make sure you get down to this exhibition im involved in at Blank Projects. Its at 113 – 115 Sir Lowry road in Woodstock. Will post info about screenings soon.

INVERTING THE PYRAMID
curated by Jonathan Garnham

Opening: Thursday 10 June 2010 at 18:00
Exhibition closes 10 July

Image: The legendary Manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, Stan Cullis, working out tactics on a miniature football pitch in his office, 1949. (Wilson, J. 2009. Inverting the pyramid - the history of football tactics. London: Orion).

Artists and aficionado’s comment on the beautiful game.

From the 10th of June to the 10th of July, blank will function as a focal point for critical response and inane comments around football. Ongoing research and production will inform the exhibition and extend it out of the gallery.

A screening programme, curated by Emile Kelly (London), showing films about football, will run over the 5 weeks.

Contributors:

Sanell Aggenbach

Matthew Blackman

Chimurenga magazine

Anja de Klerk

Pierre Fouché

Corlia Harmsen

Trasi Henen

Emile Kelly

Moshekwa Langa

Bettina Malcomess

Catherine Ocholla

Sean O’Toole

David Sazo

Blett Sapper

Robert Sloon

Linda Stupart

Adriaan de Villiers

Jasper Walgrave

Ed Young

Mvuyisi Gcogo, 20 - Port Elizabeth, April 2010

Click the image above to launch a gallery. In Port Elizabeth we couldn’t find any football players, but we did find an amazing old football/sports stadium with some young athletes training inside, so we did some nice loose shooting there. Our flash ran out after one portrait, so we just walked around shooting after that, J with the 6×7 me with the 6×6. There’s a couple light leaks and some harsh shadows here and there, but I dont mind them. I will update soon with some out takes and random P.E extras.

My new favourite blog, Jennifer Doyle’s From A Left Wing:

“From A Left Wing takes on a range of issues that the mainstream sports media doesn’t pay attention to because these stories are too complex (the cultural politics of soccer in LA), too low to the ground (amateur & pick-up scenes), or too darned sexy (why do so many lesbians love David Beckham?). When you want more than a match report, when you want to know why John Brown, the raid on Harper’s Ferry, and the history of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” should matter to Tottenham fans, or when you want a perspective on how it is that 90,000 people turn out for a US/Mexico match in New Jersey, and yet the media continues to assert that Americans don’t care about soccer – come to me. If you want transfer rumors & fine examples of cranky fan blogging, check out the great sites under “recommended reading”.”

I can even forgive her for using the word “soccer” and being a bit of a Spurs fan.

Dillon Marsh - Brackenfell South, Invasive Species

Found this great extension of the Becher’s “typology” approach by South African photographer Dillon Marsh. The trees are actually disguised mobile phone towers.

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I arrived in South Africa on Friday morning to find my cameras had been stolen from my bag.. Happy days! Virgin made me check them in because my hand luggage was too heavy, nice one you ABSOLUTE MUGS! I’m saying it was an inside job, the woman at check in saw exactly what I had in the bag. Anyway, I’m still alive so its not all bad, I’m working hard to find replacements (Anyone got a Hasselblad for sale in Cape Town?) so I can continue the project, and I’m making contact with grassroots football projects in the mean time. Will start to update this regularly from now on and the next one will be more positive, I promise.

Parts 1 & 2 of a quality 4 part series on BBC World Service, looking at the history of football in Africa. I found the political links particularly fascinating, lots of high profile African Nationalist figures gained experience in organizing/running football teams, so it’s no surprise that football would take center stage as African countries first started to gain independence. The stories of Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghanaian Black Stars and Algeria’s FLN team, both formed in the late 50’s, are especially interesting. The Black Stars drew 3 – 3 with European champions Real Madrid (Franco’s team!) in 1960 and Algeria’s National football team existed before the Nation gained independence from France! Featuring some of the best players in France  and acting as a key vehicle for spreading the message of Algeria’s plight. Click the “read the rest of this entry” (below Kwame) for links

Kwame Nkrumah on a Soviet postage stamp

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Enter the darkness:

Roger Ballen: Lens Culture Conversations with Photographers from Jim Casper on Vimeo.

My first trip out to South Africa is booked for March 25th. I’ll be in Cape Town til the 5th, when Josh joins me, then we’ll be road tripping it North to Jo’Burg and flying back from there on the 19th. We’ve got two little projects planned, the first is a series of portraits of young footballers, taken as we travel from South to North. The format of these images will remain the same; posed on the halfway line of a football pitch, the idea being that the portraits also act as landscapes, and the landscape will change as we travel. Rineke Dijkstra’s beach portraits (below) are a big inspiration for this.

Rineke Dijkstra - Coney Island NY, USA, 1993

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I let the blog slip towards the end of my last project, but I’m back on it now and ready to get some work done after a pretty lazy Christmas/New Year period (I ate more than you, trust me). The final point I took that project too was quite a chaotic wall based installation that was a portrait of my Dad through photographs and documentation, both personal archive stuff as well as official state documentation (passports, ID’s etc). It focused on and highlighted his life between South Africa and Britain and how this has shaped his identity. I had intended to bring this blog up to date with that project by somehow making a digital version of the installation, I didn’t do that  but hopefully ill find the time at some point because I was quite happy with the work in the end, although there’s definitely room for much more development. I suppose that’s going to be true for any 10 week project. Anyway, the big news is that I managed to get my first 2 trips out to SA booked, one in March/April with my brother from another mother Josh and one solo trip in June for the World Cup. Big plans for both, post about the first trip coming later today!

Did another shoot with my dad last week, and for the most part the photographs are rubbish, but I do like two and ironically they are the only ones that didn’t go to plan. The lighting I set up didn’t fire, creating a silhouette. They were the only two moments that felt like something was happening without being forced, which is why the flash didn’t fire; I was reacting instinctively to a moment that felt right and the flash hadn’t had time to re-charge. I had been really stuck with this project, feeling like my time restriction was forcing me into a contrived reaction to the archive photographs, but after a good tutorial/crit I feel I’ve made a breakthrough…

Vincent standing at the bedroom window

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