Exhibition  
Private View Evening 

The AOP Gallery showcased a stunning array of contact sheets in its forthcoming exhibition, Contact Sheets: A Closer Look. Alongside two unseen contacts from AOP late member Patrick Lichfield but there will be work from 17 current AOP members.

From a contact sheet of Banksy at work to Gilbert & George at home, to experimental cross processing and stunning paladium contacts, to the infamous Katie Price, Singer Debbie Harry and the Duke of Windsor. 

Images show from : Alwynphoto - Frank Herholdt, Jillian Edelstein, Patrick Lichfield.

 

Victims of the Amboseli

Award wining photographer Alwynphoto is used to focusing on celebrity subjects including Jerry Hall, Val Kilmer, Matt Lucas and Jordan – but there is little doubt where his real passion lies.

Alwyn recently returned from Kenya where he captured the plight of many animals living through the country's worst-ever drought and now he hopes his stunning – often haunting – images will raise awareness of the problems as part of his voluntary work with the Born Free Foundation.

The Amboseli Game Reserve in Kenya has not seen significant rainfall in more than three years as climate change has turned lush grasslands to desert.

The cost in animal terms has been great, with more than 50 elephants dying aleady this year – around 5 per cent of the area's total population.

Alwyn said: "My first introduction to Amboseli was sitting in the Born Free Land-Rover in the middle of a dust storm. Visibility was zero. You couldn't see the front of the car. Dust was seeping in through every crack, filling the interior, making breathing difficult. The four of us sat with our shirts up over our faces.

"What must it have been like for the animals outside you could only imagine.

"Locals I talked to said that the dust storms are more frequent these days but don't last long and are actually the sign of rain coming.

"That evening back at the lodge I found myself looking out over the the Amboseli desert with huge rain clouds overhead, thinking great, at last it's going to rain. But the rain never came. This has been the story for three years."

Alwyn's reputation has grown through his fashion and advertising work and a mounting number of celebrity commissions. He is currently showing work at two prestigious exhibitions in the capital. It was on one fashion shoot that his links with the Born Free Foundation were forged. "I was doing a shoot for TM Lewin and one of the models was a lad called Dan Travers. The conversation somehow got round to wildlife and I told him of my lifelong love of elephants and he suggested I got in touch with his mum's charity.

"I wasn't sure what he meant but it turned out he was the son of Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, founders of the Born Free Foundation."

Alwyn took up the offer and has done work for the foundation ever since.

"I always say that my day job allows me to go off and do all the other stuff. I'm going back to Africa before Christmas all being well and then to Borneo in the New Year to photograph orangutans."

Many of his images are used by Born Free to raise awareness of their various campaigns and Alwyn also aims to put his pictures in book form, which he will print himself with any profits going to the foundation.

"When you get the opportunity to see these magnificent animals in their natural habitat it is a real privilege. But when you see the difficulties they face, you automatically want to help.

"The thing that sticks in my mind was when we saw a huge bull elephant in the distance and I asked the ranger to drive us over to get some shots. When we got there the elephant was not moving at all and one leg had swollen to about twice the size of the other.

"It had been injured by a poisoned spear and the ranger was going to put it down. I felt awful, almost as though it had been my fault for drawing attention to it. But I managed to persuade him to leave it for 24 hours and, if it had still not moved by the time we returned, he was probably right.

"When we came back the next day this magnificent animal, which was about 65 years old, had moved to a waterhole about a mile away and seemed much more alert, so I like to think there was a happy ending to that particular story.

"There have been droughts before, of course, but times have changed. When such conditions existed in the past the elephants and other animals would simply move to other places to find water. But over time they have been left with less and less land to live on. Elephants need water every day and as the local water holes dry up they start to walk longer distances. The lack of rain means less and less vegetation and in the end the land dries up and turns into a desert.

"Huge herds split up trying to find food and water. And elephants are crossing over to Tanzania and finding food in farms. Farmers attack elephants protecting what precious crops they have, elephants then don't trust humans and attack them, escalating the animal-human conflict."

Black & White Spider Awards honours
Photographer Alwynphoto of
Great Britain

LONDON - Professional ALWYNPHOTO of GREAT BRITAIN was presented with the 5th Annual Black and White Spider Awards prestigious Nomination & Winners Photo Show attended by 35,000 online viewers who logged on live from 154 countries to see the climax of the industry's most important event for black and white photography.

Thousands of images were received from 68 countries worldwide. The awards international Jury included captains of the industry from Magnum Photos, The Armory Show, Fratelli Alinari, Contrasto to Tate and Hamiltons in London who honored Spider Fellows with 84 coveted title awards in 28 categories. The judges reviewed the entries online for eight weeks before making their final nominations and Alwyn's photograph, an exceptional image entered in the nude category, received a high percentage of votes overall.

"The Spider Awards celebrates photographers who operate at the highest levels of their craft," said Basil O'Brien, the awards Creative Director. "Alwyn's work represents black and white photography at its finest, and we're pleased to present him with this Award."

BLACK AND WHITE SPIDER AWARDS is the leading international award honoring excellence in black and white photography. This celebrated event shines a spotlight on the best professional photographers worldwide and honors the finest Cimages with the highest achievements in black and white photography.

ATHENA POSTERS, 

WONDERWALLS by Lindsay Baker, The Guardian, Saturday 10 November 2001 - There was the tennis girl, that man and baby, the icy, airbrushed women with electric blue eye shadow and glossy red lips. Think of the pictures that bedecked the bedrooms of teenagers 20 years ago and one name springs to mind: Athena. As the 1980s enjoy a revival, Lindsay Baker looks back at the poster company that became a phenomenon

[Athena Poster] Beyond City Limits by alwynphoto was another huge seller, a black-and-white picture, colour-tinted, depicting a male and female model on a motorbike - shot in Surrey with a dramatic fake sky superimposed. It was a veritable nostalgia-fest: Sheila Rock's images of young couples in retro clothing, shot in moody lighting, recalled Doisneau's The Kiss, a classic shot from an earlier era that had already been a big Athena seller.

Jerry Hall : Daily Mail Newspaper

Jerry's Hall of fame: A celebration in pictures of the Texan supermodel's life

Jerry Hall in The Graduate - photographed by Alwynphoto

Daily Mail Newspaper

"She’s the smalltown Texas girl who became a supermodel, married Mick Jagger, then reinvented herself as a star of stage and screen. In an extract from her new book, we celebrate Jerry Hall’s life less ordinary in pictures"

"Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson: a publicity shot for the London production of The Graduate, 2001. 'I was so nervous - I hadn’t been in a play for quite a while, and this involved being nude on stage. But I ended up loving the experience and we played to packed houses who roared with laughter.'"