Earlier this month I was asked to be part of the Stand Your Ground event conceived and executed by the London Street Photography Festival team. As an avid photographer of Londonium and sensitive industrial areas I am no stranger to heavy-handed, uninformed security guards getting in the way. 6 shooters attempted to work legally in and around central London with a videographer documenting the encounter. The resulting short film below will be presented at a debate and panel tonight. Just glad security didn’t catch me running around a restricted Rare-Earth mine in Inner Mongolia last year even that camp copper at (12min:00s) couldn’t have saved my bacon..
On the 20th July the Frontline Club will be holding a special networking event for Photographers. The event will serve; to build bridges between the different photography elements, free Chivas and deliver a debate on “Who Gets the Credit?” You can reserve a place HERE.
On the 9th of August I will be presenting my China project to an expert panelist at the Frontline. . I am looking forwards to preparing my research further to what I can guess will be a set of testing questions and experienced journalists. Sadly no free Scotch but I might buy a drink for anyone who comes to Paddington on the night. Tickets can be booked HERE.
In the Picture: China’s New Energy Pioneers with Toby Smith
Photographer Toby Smith recently spent two months in China producing his latest project, China’s New Energy Pioneers.
Covering 11 provinces, his work took him to coal mines, wind farms and hydro-electric plants while capturing the landscapes and people implementing the Communist Party’s latest Five Year Plan.
Announced in March 2011, the new Plan is significant in its attempts to address escalating energy and environmental problems. A cap on coal dependency, ambitious targets for non-fossil fuel energy sources and ad rive towards more renewable sources of energy reflect the Communist Party’s intentions to aim for a cleaner, greener kind of growth.
With new power stations connecting to the grid in the People’s Republic of China at a rate of one per day, how China chooses to fuel its booming economy is one of the most important questions for the world of today, and of the future.
Toby Smith is a contemporary reportage photographer and director of Roof Unit, a collective of photographers based in East London. He specialises in environment and energy matters.
Smith’s feature stills and video work has been published by National Geographic, the Guardian, TIME, the New York Times and the BBC among others.
For the last month I have been working in the new studio on a new platform to display my images and video across a map interface. I hope this helps illustrate the work spatially with advantages over a traditional editorial format. I’m going to keep it under wraps until completed, however it has been great to go through the multimedia content from “The Renewables Project”. I’ve finally uploaded an edited version of the montage video that was screened in Toronto as part of the Nuit Blanche Festival in 2010.