Salon #14 – Jessa Fairbrother, Lucy Helton, Virginie Rebetez & Delphine Bedel

12 October 2016: An evening of photobooks with Jessa Fairbrothers, Lucy Helton, Virginie Rebetez and Delphine Bedel.

With so many incredible photobooks being published by women photographers and editors, this 10×10 salon showcased past and present projects by 4 women who all hail from Europe.

The evening’s presentations included writer and publisher Delphine Bedel and Swiss photographer Virginie Rebetez presenting their new publication Out of the blue, a conceptual work about the disappearance of teenager Suzanne Gloria Lyall*; British artist Jessa Fairbrother sharing her exquisite hand marked photobooks that explore gesture and the self performed; and New York-based British photo artist Lucy Helton discussing her inventively designed photobooks that unearth beauty in decaying fictive and real landscapes.

*We were also fortunate to have present at the salon Suzanne’s mother Mary Lyall.

Bristol based photographer Jessa Fairbrother explores the familiar and the personal, where yearning and performance meet each other in photography. She holds an MA in Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster and is the recipient of bursaries and honorable mentions in the UK, Europe and Canada. Her work is held in the libraries of both the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the permanent collection of the NHS and many private collections.

Born in London and based in New York, Lucy Helton received her master’s degree in fine art photography from Hartford Art School, CT, in 2014. Her first book Actions of Consequence was nominated for the MACK First Book Award 2014, shortlisted for the Kassel Dummy Award 2015, and The Anamorphosis Prize 2015. Her most recent book Transmission (Silas Finch, 2015) is a communication from our future to our recent past and was shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture First Book Award 2015. Helton is immersed in photo book making and has participated in various book fairs and festivals in New York, L.A., London, Germany and France.

Delphine Bedel is an artist, editor, publisher and lecturer, specialized in emerging practices in photography, design and publishing. The founder of Meta/Books and Amsterdam Art/Book Fair, she regularly contributes to books and magazines, and is a member of the advisory board of the Mondriaan Foundation and the German Photography Academy. Meta/Books is a publishing and academic research platform, developing cutting-edge projects at the intersection of visual and digital cultures. She teaches at the Design Academy Eindhoven and at the Piet Zwart Institute (NL) and is doctoral researcher at UCA – University of Creative Arts (UK).

Virginie Rebetez is a photographer based in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2014, she was selected by Le Canton de Vaud to spend 6 months in New York as an artist in residence, where she realized Out of the blue. The project was selected for the Swiss Design Awards in 2016 and shown during Art Basel. She has received numerous awards including the Prix Leica during the 29th International Festival of Fashion and Photography in Hyères and the prestigious grant from La Fondation Leenaards, in 2014. Her work is part of museum and private collections internationally.