Tickle Your Fancy – #32

Lucy Davies at The Telegraph speaks with Alberto Garcia-Alix a 19 year old law student in Madrid as he looks close to scoop the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. ‘‘I didn’t know anything about photography,’ he says. ‘All I wanted to do was take photos of motorbikes.’ The timing was more propitious than either he or his parents could have imagined, coming within days of the death of General Franco, who had held Spain under his dictatorial thumb for nearly 35 years. Franco’s demise would herald a new era for both the country and García-Alix’.

Read more here

‘Nan Goldin is best known for a work she first showed 35 years ago. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a series of photographs of her bohemian, drug-taking, sexually avid friends during the hedonistic heyday of Eighties New York. Sensual, sleazy, exuberant, the images were shot in a casual, “snapshot” fashion that would come to influence a generation of fledgling photographers, who fell into her truth-telling wake’.

With all this in mind, it comes as a surprise to learn that her latest endeavor is a book of photographs of children – really fascinating – read more here.

There are currently 200,000 migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, a small country of four million. Maids save on rent, bills, and food costs living with their employers.

Caritas Migrant Center, an NGO which aids and shelters maids who have run away from their employers, are receiving between three and six cases of abuse per day, from abuses that range from rape, physical violence, trafficking and starvation.

Fascinating images here

Waterbearer, 1986 © Lorna Simpson

Deutsche Börse shortlisted artist Lorna Simpson (b. 1960) speaks about her work.

Nominated for her exhibition Lorna Simpson (Retrospective) at Jeu de Paume, Paris (28 May – 1 September 2013).

Over the past 30 years, Lorna Simpson has created an extensive body of work incorporating performance, photography, text, film, drawing and collage. Her work engages issues including race, gender and aspects of American identity, and it is through her subtle interplay of text, image and other media that she challenges stereotypes and destabilises assumptions.

At The Photographer’s Gallery, London – Sunday 11 May, 2014 – 16:00

Find out more here

“Safari,” 2011. “As many people guess, this gorilla was not actually on the top of this vehicle,” Seckler says. “I shot the gorilla for about 20 minutes as it posed for me. It was a star performance” –© Zack Seckler

Zack Seckler started his photography career in a tried-and-true way: shooting assignments for newspapers and wire services in Boston and later in New York City. But he soon decided to break out from straight documentary work. “One thing that frustrated me with photojournalism was having to follow the ethical guidelines of not interfering with a scene or asking someone to do something,” explains Seckler, 33. “There would be times when I was just waiting for a person to repeat something—you’d see them do it once and hope they’d do it again. Just waiting. It can be very frustrating.”

Totally fascinating images view more here.