Brenda Ann Kenneally!

Nuff said? (is this still acceptable outside of the 90's..)

Brenda's a fantastic photographer and she's making the trip from bustling Brooklyn, NYC to bumbling Blackborough in the beautiful Devon hills to mentor 10 participants in this close and intimate residential workshop. There is loads more information about the workshop at www.thehinterlands.co.uk or feel free to email me with any questions at mike[at]thehinterlands[dot]co[dot]uk.

The lovely Gill Chattey designed this flyer for us and we hope you can find a place to make it shine. Maybe print it out and stick it on your fridge, your window or at your place of work or you could email it facebook it post it on twitter - or just generally "social media it".

New updated Hinterlands for 2012!

I've spent the morning outside of my flat, outside of the office and outside of the screen on my computer. With the beautiful spring weather we've been having it's been really hard to have been sat inside tapping away working on the new Hinterlands website although now it's done I think it was well worth the effort.

Take a look at www.thehinterlands.co.uk and let us know what you think...

Last years Hinterlands workshop celebrated the great outdoors, photography, photofilms, tasty food, a sense of community, yurts, having a drink around the fire and storytelling in equal measures and was a big success. Fifteen happy people walked away from their time in Devon with the skills to make a photofilm after a week of learning in the big barn with duckrabbit.

This year we are adding another workshop to the roster so we thought it was time for an upgrade to our presence on the web. duckrabbit are back for 2012 and will be playing host to 15 trainees at The Hinterlands. Be prepared to be immersed in a world of photofilms and storytelling and ready to increase your potential to use multimedia as part of your work.

'Dana`s sister, Jessica, on her 22d birthday. A friend gave her pellet guns.' - Part of the series Upstate Girls - © Brenda Ann Kenneally.

On top of this we have, all the way from New York city the wonderful Brenda Ann Kenneally. Brenda is a skilled storyteller and has many comprehensive bodies of work under her belt. Ten lucky participants will be taken under her wing for a week to thoroughly look at their working practice and to build upon their skills using a multi-layered approach to documentary storytelling. Brenda also

We are so pleased to be working with such talented people like Brenda and duckrabbit and will also be getting in some great speakers to keep the trainees evenings jam packed with interesting talks and screenings. On top of all of that we are chuffed to be welcoming back the wonderful Olivia in the kitchen who will again be cooking up a storm of wonderful food to feed those creative appetites.

The best thing about The Hinterlands this year is the fact that it is still a small workshop that holds true to it's values. We source local food and drink and all of the trainees will work on stories in the local environment, stories that we hope the subjects will come and view later for themselves over a beer. The participants share yurts with solar lights, compost loos and warming wood burning stoves and get to know each other enhancing their learning experience. Our workshops aren't up on a pedestal and all of the people involved are normal people who enjoy sharing their knowledge and skills. If you come down to The Hinterlands this year you will eat, drink and relax with the trainers, our cook, Rebecca and myself (that would be us the organisers..) and generally be part of the whole experience. This is really important to us, it's how a workshop should be and it's how The Hinterlands is and we are so happy to be running it.

Jonathan Worth from the online photography class #phonar, a speaker at the 2011 Hinterlands workshop.

Obviously I am slightly biased as I am part of the workshop but I really do believe it's a great experience and that we offer something truly individual. So biased or not - get on the website and have a read about what we do, look at some of the testimonials or watch our photofilm featuring last years trainees. I think you'll like it and I hope you will want to come down and become part of it this summer.

Oh and I had an idea. I need to clear it with Olivia but I was thinking of making fresh sourdough loaves every morning. There really is nothing better than a hunk of fresh sourdough, a bit of butter and a spoon of marmalade coupled with a fresh cup of coffee to start a creative day in the countryside....sounds good to me!

Right well I think I'm going to have another cup of tea and then wonder what to do with all of the veg that I foraged this morning. I have wild garlic which will definetly end up as a wild garlic pesto, nettles which I am slightly less well versed in and primroses which are great in salads all to look forward to....yum!

flickr is rubbish and this is not..

A good friend and follower of the westcountrysnapper just informed me that flickr is rubbish and has been hiding Thomas Denny and Heather Fell's portraits from my site. I was never a massive fan of flick and I don't really know why thos portraits ended up there but they are back up on the site.

So there uyou have it flickr is rubbish and these are not.. aurora borealis in Norway by my good friend and helicopter aficionado Jonno. He's been hassling me about getting a zoom lens as these all on wide primes so maybe next year we will see a bit more aurora and a little less of everything else.

OMG - It's Brenda Ann Kenneally!

The Hinterlands is sooo darn excited to say that The Hinterlands will be hosting acclaimed American photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally for a brand new workshop this summer. Details to follow but expect to be bowled over by Brenda's enthusiasm, tenacity and immersive style of working. Also expect plenty of great food, yurts, open fire's and large mugs of coffee!

For more details follow @the_hinterlands

Brenda Ann Kenneally is a mother, activist, and visual journalist who lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her long-term projects are intimate portraits of social issues that intersect where the personal is political. Brenda's own involvement in the criminal justice system when she was a child has given her an insight and commitment to projects that reveal the human cost of misguided public policies in The United States.

The result of a decade of reporting, Kenneally’s book and web publication MONEY, POWER, RESPECT; Pictures of My Neighborhood have received numerous awards: The W. Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, a Soros Criminal Justice Fellowship, The Mother Jones Documentary Photography Award, and The International Prize for Photojournalism in Gijon Spain. Kenneally was among the earliest to embrace multi -platform media. Her independent collective pioneered in making and distributing serialized reporting via the web. In 2006 the multimedia component of Money, Power, Respect, won the Best of Photojournalism Award for overall Best Use of the Web by the National Press Photographers Association. Kenneally is working to push the boundaries of the social document, using the web as a tool to expand and contextualize her Gonzo-immersion style of reporting.

In this spirit Kenneally and independent producer Laura Lo Forti founded The Raw File, a digital theatre dedicated to providing a space for provocative open-ended media.

In 2004, Kenneally began reporting on the lives of an extended family of teenagers who would come of age in the iconic post- industrial City of Troy, New York. The ongoing project Upstate Girls; Unraveling Collar City aims deep into the emotional and psychological cycle of poverty from a women’s eye view. The project has been supported to date, by a Nikon Sabbatical Grant, The Alicia Patterson Foundation, and The Cannon Female Photojournalism Grant. Getty Grant for Editorial Photography and an Open Society Distribution Grant, A New York State Council for The Arts Individual Artist Grant and a print acquisition form The United States Library of Congress. The project was awarded The Pictures of The Year International Community Awareness Award and First Place for Daily Life Stories at World Press International. The project is ongoing and has been exhibited through out the United States, Europe and Latin America.

Tom Denny

Tom Denny, Gloucestershire 2011 © Mike Lusmore

I had the pleasure of meeting Tom Denny last year during the installation of a new stained glass window designed and created by him at a tiny church in the Forest of Dean. Abenhall church's new window was created to celebrate the Freeminers of the forest and I was kindly invited along to see it's installation.

Tom's work was so different to any stained glass I had ever seen before and I was really captivated by the detail and the story that he managed to convey. I admired his attention to detail and was jealous in his ability to see every part of the process through, from the concept, the design and construction and all the way through to the installation.

I had a small amount of time to photograph Tom after his long day and above is my favourite frame.

blossom_one

Tusker, Tanzania and a Tree.

Looking out onto the Indian Ocean from Dar Es Saleem, Tanzania.

I'm sat in my hotel in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania wondering whether I should head back downstairs and grab another beer or whether I really need to wake up early in the morning... I'm writing this post in a place I never envisaged even visiting let alone working in and to tell you the truth I'm really enjoying it.

I didn't really know what to expect but after my recent visits to Bangladesh I was a little sceptical about travelling in general by now. Our Bangladesh trip finished up with more flights than comfortable to get to the northern tip of Indonesia just purely so that I could feel really ill and visit a doctor (I think). Since then I'd had a few days to move house in Bristol before travelling to London for some work, a weekend in Norway (ok that was a fun visit..) and a week working in Birmingham just as a sort of icing on the cake affair. All I really wanted to do was sleep..

End of the day light catches the sand on the beach in Dar.

I've been in Dar Es Salaam for three days now though and I like it. The people are very friendly, the view of the Indian Ocean is beautiful, the light is gorgeous and the beer is cold. What's not to like. Of course I am here doing some work here and I suppose that was what I was most worried about. It's always possible to deal with stuff if your just on a trip by yourself with mates but when you have a job to do and the travel, the accommodation, the food etc..isn't easy it just makes your work really hard. I gotta say though that's hasn't been a problem here and everything's been great - even the food (touch wood..no really touch wood).

I haven't really had much time to explore yet and I don't know if I will as we have a tight schedule in the days but here are a few pictures of what I saw today.

Georgina's shoes infront of the pool where we're relaxing with a well deserved beer after day 1 of training.