....Roberts, Swannell: some really big name bargains to be had!

There's an amazingly rich and varied auction of contemporary landscape photography coming up next week to raise funds for Positive View, the highly influential 'new kid on the block' charity for participatory photography in the UK. Some of the contributing photographers are listed above and, rather than reproduce all the images here, you might want to have a look at the catalogue because, whether or not you are able or willing to support the charity by bidding on a print, it contains some amazing images from many of the world's elite photographers and represents a veritable tour d'horizon of what is hot in the genre.

Positive View (run by the very well connected photographic expert Andrew Page) was founded in 2011 and has already staged some fascinating exhibitions. It aims to make significant grants to other organisations with the established methodologies to run participatory photography projects with young people. This auction (on Wednesday 15th May 2103 at Christie's in London) will see the formal launch of the Positive View Education Program, through which these grants will be made. Global auction house Christie's have very generously waived all fees - which will make acquiring one of these amazing images even more of a bargain.

As regular readers will know, I am an ambassador for Photovoice, an amazing charity that has for many years been honing the participatory methodologies that Positive View seeks to encourage and support.

Photovoice 'does what it says on the tin' which is:

"PhotoVoice’s mission is to build skills within disadvantaged and marginalised communities using innovative participatory photography and digital storytelling methods so that they have the opportunity to represent themselves and create tools for advocacy and communications to achieve positive social change."

The charity has been doing this since 2003, with roots stretching back a further five years. I personally give proceeds from some prints sales to them and support them in other ways too - including encouraging visitors to this site to donate! I have also worked on one of their projects, for users of mental health services, over the course of many weeks and can testify to the transformative powers of the method. I watched people who have been dealt a very poor hand in life blossom before my eyes as they gained the skills and confidence to document their own lives and to allow other people to see those lives from an inside perspective. Many of the participants also made work that put my own to shame, in terms of honesty, originality and sheer creative zest.

Photovoice gets its hands dirty: its dedicated staff and volunteers have worked with street gangs, victims of sex trafficking, children's rights groups, sexually exploited children, and a host of other projects with vulnerable and disadvantaged children and adults in the UK and around the world. They do this in circumstances that are often uncomfortable or dangerous and they do it with very limited funding.

So if you are a photographer with any belief that image making with a camera has the power to transform the way that you, and others, see the world - and if you would love to combine your passion with some directly relevant charitable giving, please consider looking at the auction lots. You don't have to be there on the night: there are instructions on the Positive View site as to how you might bid in either the Live or Silent auctions from anywhere in the world. But if you do want to be there, let me know via this site and I will try to arrange tickets - I can't promise, they are the hottest tickets in town at the moment, but I can try.

And for the gear heads: I have two images in the auction and they were both shot on a Sony RX-1 (which I have previously reviewed on this site) so, as you can see, that diminutive camera really is capable of results that can hang in any company.

Thank you for listening.

Tim