Owen Harvey talk.

Today we had a talk from Owen Harvey about the work he does and how he approaches his image taking. He has worked for some very well known companies such as the BBC, Fred Perry and Sony Music. He also told us about how he did some internships whilst studying at university to help him with his practice. Initially whilst at university, he did a lot of documentary work and he then figured that fashion was another of his interests within photography and therefore combines the two frequently to create work.

MOD UK:

For his final year project at university he created some work which he titled 'MOD UK', which he said he is still shooting to this day 5 years later. He grew up listening to music such as Led Zeppelin which influenced this body of work, and it became quite a personal project. He stated that the images in this project are not from one area, he shoots all over the place to get as many images as possible so that he has a lot to work with. Inspired by the work of Diane Arbus, he shot on black and white film and the images have a very timeless feel to them - as if they could have been shot in the 1960's.




Skins and Suedes:

This project he stated was about masculinity and the sense of identity within a specific culture. One reason for this project was that he didn't have any colour work in his portfolio and so he decided to shoot these images and these are over a 4 year period.




Ground Clearance:

He then told us about how he went to America and stayed there last year for 3 months, purely to shoot some personal work that he wanted to do. He did no commercial work whilst there and funded this himself. The images were shot in Harlem and The Bronx and focused on lowriding and latino culture.





Metro Imaging:

Photo lab with 35 years experience:
-film development
-scanning
-retouching
-printing
-framing
-mounting

With clients such as Mario Testino, Juergen Teller and Rankin.

He then left us with some words of advice:

Stay in touch with your course friends.
Support each other.
Stay engaged.
Go to exhibitions.
Take risks.
Email people and make relationships.
Be patient - it's not going to happen overnight.
Support yourself in other ways - photography isn't going to be the job straight away.

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