Bulletin

In merriment of International Women’s Day earlier this year, many inspiring women from all different fields were celebrated for a number of different things. Being honoured in such a way was a real privilege in the eyes of many women, except one.

Dorte Mandrup, Danish architect extraordinaire, stood up for her beliefs after being included in Dezeen’s list of top 50 inspirational female architects. Even though Mandrup was flattered by the gesture, she believes that promotion of women in this way should come to an end. ‘Allow me to explain.’ Mandrup declares, ‘I am not a female architect, I am an architect.’ The Danish architect wants to bring to our attention that when the topic of gender crops up it is only women which are discussed, not men. Men are never considered as ‘male architects’ they are simply ‘architects’, so why should it not be the same for women?

Don’t you agree with Dorte Mandrup and feel as though it is about time that men and woman deserve to be regarded within the same boundaries?

Ever feel like you are in a rut and need to shake things up a bit? Perhaps get that new haircut you’ve been thinking about for a while or try a new recipe instead of having the same meals week in, week out. Why not go really wild and move out of your home into a canal boat in Hackney? Well, that’s exactly what Sirena Bergman did and she learnt a few lessons along the way.

Even though a typical day consisted of leaky windows, frozen pipes and wrestling to get jumpers out of vacuum-packed wrapping, Sirena discovered that the experience taught her more lessons and skills than she could have ever imagined and that living in a small space with the bare basics is sometimes all you need.

Moving into a boat in Hackney may not be something that you have ever considered, but living the simple life on the water in this peaceful pocket of London could be the adventure that you have always been waiting for.

Read more about Sirena Bergman’s life on a canal boat here http://bit.ly/2qTAUFi

It’s not a secret that most of our Instagram feeds are flooded with images of delicious looking food. I’m sure some of us are even guilty of climbing on restaurant tables to get that perfect shot of our weekend poached eggs with avocado mash. Do you ever wonder where our fixation with food photography all began? This topic is exactly what inspired author, Susan Bright, to create Feast for the Eyes, a book which aims to provoke food for thought about the relationship between what we eat and photography.

Over the past few hundred years, the evolution of food photography has been outstanding. In fact, these days we are taking snaps of our food more than ever before. It is quite amazing to think that 1827 marks the year when the first ever food photograph was taken by Nicéphore Niépce, a budding photographer of that time. Bright is enthusiastic that her book will stimulate our senses, but also give us the bigger picture about what the images represents; ‘In this book I really wanted to convey that pictures of food are rarely just about food – food is becoming increasingly political and our ideas of what is healthy is becoming ever more complex.’

Feast for the Eyes features work by many esteemed photographers including Martin Parr and Laura Letinsky.
If you want to get your hands on a copy, visit http://amzn.to/2syWArG