RPS Conversations about book making

Join us for an evening of dialogue about the photobook-making process. We’ll have Lee Elkins; director of The Lost Light Recordings, in conversation with photographers Cian Oba-Smith and Lewis Khan. They’ll be talking about their time collaborating and working together to bring their respective books to light.  The event has been arranged and is hosted by UWE photography students to raise proceeds for their graduation publication. After the talk, there will be time for Q&A from the audience.

The event costs £3.50 and will support the student graduation publication. Book directly here. 

Lee Elkins is the founder and Creative Director of The Lost Light Recordings. Established in 2018, Lost Light Recordings is an independent publisher that works with photographers to realise projects through the medium of the photobook. The books he has created under the imprint since 2018, including Cian Oba-Smith’s Andover & Six Acres, Sadie Catt’s Woodstock and the forthcoming Harrowdown Hill by John Spinks, explore the political landscape and its effect on people and place.

Passionate about creating authentic expressions of photographers’ work, Elkins collaborates creatively with both established photographic artists and new talent to create distinctive photo books. Elkins manages the whole process of creating a book with intense detail: from the editing down and sequencing of photographs with the artist, the graphic design, materiality, personally overseeing the printing, to hand binding the books. This attention to detail calls on Elkins conviction that a photobook is more than a book of photographs, which in the right hands can become a complex intellectual dialogue between photographer and reader and his experience as a master bookbinder in the printing industry. Elkins worked as a bookbinder for twenty years in Frome, Somerset, for one of the UK’s most significant printers before gaining a first-class BA (Hons) in Photography from the University of the West of England and an MA in Photography and the Book from Plymouth University.

Lee Elkins is Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of the West of England, Bristol.

Cian Oba-Smith (b. 1992) is an award-winning photographer from London. Represented Worldwide by Wyatt-Clarke + Jones. He graduated from the University of the West of England with a BA in photography in 2014. His work has been featured on Paper Journal, Pylot, iGNANT, Creative Review, The Guardian, British Journal of Photography, It's Nice That, Dazed & Confused, Wonderland, Splash & Grab, to name a few. Currently, he lives and works in London and focuses on personal projects whilst taking commissions as a freelancer.

Lewis Khan b.1990 is a photographic artist from London, working with stills and moving images. His portrait-based work is a study of emotion, relationships, and identity.

Khan’s graduation piece from UWE, Bristol – ‘Georgetown’ (11min, 20sec) was picked up and exhibited widely, notably at The Photographers Gallery as part of Fresh Faced + Wild Eyed, it was also awarded 1st Prize at Shuffle Film Festival by Director Danny Boyle.

Following that Khan’s practice has taken him further afield, shooting projects commercially and personally in countries across Europe and The Americas. At the same time as this Khan has undertaken an Artist Residency spanning 4 years across two general London hospitals; The Chelsea & Westminster and the West Middlesex. The resulting project ‘Theatre’ offers a complex web of associations based on the universal human qualities of strength & fragility. The project is situated in the context of the contemporary landscape of UK healthcare; the potential privatisation of the NHS, and the allegorical connection between the immediate themes explored in the project and the unfolding wider political situation.

Arranged by UWE Photography students, with the support of The RPS. 

Image courtesy: The Lost Light Recordings / https://lostlightbooks.com/