An Interview with Alexandra Lethbridge

Forming the first in a series of interviews highlighting young, upcoming photographers that we meet through our industry partnerships, mentor work and those that simply come through the lab doors we talk to Alexandra Lethbridge, winner of the Danny Wilson Memorial Professional Choice Award 2014.

1. Firstly congratulations on being awarded the Danny Wilson Memorial Professional Choice Award at this Brighton Photo Fringe 2014 (BPF) – what does it mean to you to have won?
Thank you! It was a great honour to have won, the calibre of work in the Brighton Photo Fringe was extremely high so it was a lovely surprise to be chosen.

2. Can you tell us a little about the work which you chose to enter for the competition?
Absolutely. The body of work is called The Meteorite Hunter. It’s focused around the idea of a meteorite hunter as someone who searches for and collects space rocks, playing with notions of reality and fiction. The work is mixed media in both the image making as well as how it’s presented.3. It’s early days but has the prize had any positive impact upon your career as yet?
The prize came at a good time as I had just finished my MA in Photography and it has helped to establish myself. It also gave me the confidence to continue to put the work out there.

4. One of the prizes is a year’s mentorship with Metro Imaging, what are you looking forward to learning or hoping to gain from the experts here at Metro?
I think the mentoring is actually the most exciting aspect of winning for me. The prospect of working with the printers to find alternative ways of producing my ideas is hugely inspiring. My work tends to use less traditional methods in the making and presenting of it and with the amount of unconventional techniques that are available at Metro, I’m excited to get started.

5. Have you always had an ambition to become a photographer and if so what do you think sparked that interest?
I’ve wanted to be a photographer since I was in college and since then it’s been clear that was what I was working towards. I’ve always worked in a more visual way and my interest in photography came through studying Graphic Design. From there it was a natural progression, the more I knew about photography, the more I wanted to know.

6. You have an interesting concept for your photography work, that being the relationship between reality and the imagined. What inspired or led you to these ideas?
Reality and Fiction is something that’s always interested me. I love the idea of Myths and Folklore as well as things like Science Fiction. The mixture of fiction and reality and the narrative that opens up when you’re not sure what it is your looking at is a very interesting notion to me. I make work off these ideas and use different subject matter to express those concepts.

7. Have you any interesting current projects or upcoming exhibitions you’d like to share with us?
I’m just starting working on my next project, which is based around Alchemy. I’ll be working alongside Metro to produce it, which is exciting. It’s early days yet so I can’t say too much more but I’m excited to get working on it.

8. Do you have any photography/career goals you’d like to achieve?
I have lots of things I would love to have happen! I enjoy making books so to have a collection of books that I’ve made sitting on my bookshelf would be amazing. To be honest, if I can continue to make work and I’m still doing that in 40 years time, I’ll be happy.

For more information about Alexandra Lethbridge & The Meteorite Hunter
For more information about the Danny Wilson Memorial Award
For more information about Brighton Photo FringeImages © Alexandra Lethbridge, The Meteorite Hunter, 2014

We offer the following types of printing

Partial photo of a face covered in hundres and thousands printed on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper which is available in both gloss and a semi matt finish.

C Type Professional Photo Printing

We have been printing the highest quality C-Type prints for decades and digital C-Types produced on our Lambda have the archival and tonal benefits of traditional photographic papers, with the advantages of digital photo printing. C-Types are a conventional photographic print from a digital file, and as such is the most suitable option when printing a colour photograph.

Printing linking you through to our giclee printing service.

Fine Art Giclée Printing

We have Hahnemuhle and Canson Giclée Certified Studio staus and with over 30 years experience in photographic printing we use the most advanced inkjet technologies. Giclée is a gallery-quality inkjet print onto fine art watercolour paper. This is most suitable for art illustrations, but can also be used for colour and B&W photographs.

This a picture take of a very large black and white ilford fibre based print of two people.

Black & White Printing

We have worked in collaboration with Harman Technology to develop genuine B&W silver gelatin Fibre-Based and Resin-Coated photographic prints from digital files. The Resin-Coated is suitable for most types of B&W printing, and Fibre-Based is ideal for exhibition quality.

Picture of a Duratran. Duratrans are a real chromogenic print on translucent material and are then mounted on lightboxes.

Duratran Printing

We produce Duratrans at a quality level unmatched by anything else out there. Duratrans have to be lit from behind, so need to be mounted in a rear lit display, or we can produce led lightboxes, which are conventional photo frames containing the Duratran and led panel.

Metro called it Direct to Media. Essentially this is a UV printing machine that can produce very large, up to 3m x 2m prints on any flat material less than 10cm thick. So we can print on wood, metal, slate and pretty much anything you can think of.

Direct to Media Printing

Direct to media printing is exactly that; we print your image directly to a substrate of your choice. Be it paper, card, aluminium, Perspex, canvas, wood, slate… Our Jetrix UV inkjet flatbed printer can print on any flat surface up to 3m x 2m, less than 10cm thick. To ensure your material is suitable, we can print test prints around A4 in size.

This is a print on adhesive vinyl. The vinyl is on a roll and 1.2m wide, but it can printed in multiple pieces in order to cover a wall.

Vinyl Printing

Vinyl Phototex is chosen for its high-quality Giclée finish as well as its ease of application to wall or mounting material due to its self-adhesive properties. We can print on vinyl using our direct to media printer, in strips of 1.5m x 3m and these can be applied to the wall in the fashion of wallpaper to cover a complete wall or interior.