The picture above is Boundary II by Barbara Walker. Looking at it on screen really doesn’t do it justice though and I wholeheartedly recommend you go along to Birmingham Seen at BMAG to see it nice and big.

It’s a great exhibition with a fair few highlights – the early photography of the city is absorbing, the Derek Fairbrother timelapse is morbidly fascinating with few sticking around to watch it a second time and the 1940’s (?) plans for the city’s civic area were .

I also loved the paintings by Paul Hill, a long-time Castle Vale resident. Unfortunately it’s tricky finding any decent examples of his work online. I also liked Michelle Lord‘s work, including this titled Ultimate City #1:

So yes, get along and see it if you can. It’s at the Gas Hall until 3 Jan.

Ian also sent over a biog of Derek Fairbrother (1931-99), whose images they are. The following is an extended copy and paste job:

In the 1960s and 70s research chemist and amateur photographer, Derek Fairbrother, made over 20 photographic time-lapse sequences showing the demolition of old buildings and their replacement by new buildings and new road systems in Birmingham city centre.

The completed sequences, often running to some fifty images taken over a period of five or more years, were then connected together in a narrative sequence in the form of a strip of postcard sized prints. Fairbrother intended to use a cine camera to photograph each sequence, thereby compressing years of work into a series of short films. However this ambition was not realised in his lifetime.

After his death in 1999, his widow Gaynor gifted his prints and negatives to the photography collections at Birmingham Library.

These short films, which will be shown for the first time in the exhibition Birmingham Seen (Gas Hall, 31st October 2009 – 3rd January 2010) have finally enabled Fairbrother’s work to be seen in the way he intended.