User:Rutpera

Mel Sewell

Mel Sewell (Christened Melvyn Anthony Sewell) was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire on the 10th March 1945. His mother, Joyce Sewell (nee Austin) was in the WRAF while his father, Tony Sewell (Ernest Frederick William Sewell) was a multi-decorated Spitfire pilot with the RAF and at the time of Mels’ birth was reported as ‘Missing in action’ over Nazi occupied Holland.

Joyce was snapped up by Norman Hartnel (the Royal couturier) as a house model.

In 1948 his father (who had been found wounded in a Nazi prison in Holland and subsequently recuperated back to England) was seconded to the Royal Rhodesian Air Force in Gwelo and this began Mel’s love affair with Africa and hot, sunny climates. The outward journey from Southampton began aboard the Arundel Castle - Mel nearly drowning in the swimming pool and being saved by the captain of the Springbok Cricket Team. From Cape Town the journey continued for several days and nights by train, running through the Karoo, past Bloemfontein, Johannesburg and then into Bulawayo ending at Gwelo.

Their first home on the Selukwe Road was very isolated and only had the bare essentials, with no hot water and no electricity. But there were compensations with abundant wildlife taking regular walks through their property including Lion, Impala, Hyena, Waterbuck, Nyala, Kudu, Ostrich, Giant Tortoise, Green Mamba, Gekko and a myriad of bright, colourful birds, such as Weaver, Bokmakierie, Ibis, Hoopoes, and Sunbirds. By night, the air was alive with the flight and sound of bats and insects and Mel came to know and appreciate spectacular scenery such as Victoria Falls. Mel attended the Cecil John Rhodes School in Gwelo.

Tony was an avid amateur photographer and kept detailed albums of their life there. Mel believes that it was this that set him off on the path of being interested in photography.

Later, in 1957 the family moved to Salisbury where Mel was enrolled at Allan Wilson Technical High School to undertake a technical education which was completed in 1963 with his ‘Matriculation’. In the meantime, his father encouraged him to apply to the DeHavilland Aircraft Company in Hertfordshire, England to undertake an engineering apprenticeship, which Mel was fortunate to gain. This eventually involved a six year ’sandwich’ course in which half of each year was spent at the company’s factory in Hatfield, where the Trident airliner was built and the other half at college. Mel eventually qualified as a mechanical and production engineer, specialising in systems analysis. In 1967 Mel won the Sunday Times Vehicle Safety Design contest, judged by Colin Chapman of Lotus Cars.

On the completion of his apprenticeship Mel immediately departed for Johannesburg, South Africa where his parents had settled a few years beforehand. Wishing to pursue a ‘Creative’ career, Mel found a position in the Johannesburg advertising agency Kluth and Odes, where he quickly learned the creative ropes and took these skills with him to Durban, where he opened his own advertising agency, which specialised in the retail motor trade. It was at this point that Mel’s interest in photography began to flourish with numerous campaigns utilising his photographic images including that for Ford, Mazda, Fiat, Jaguar, Austin and Triumph.

Meanwhile Mel's Father had become the head of Revlon which took in most of southern Africa, while his Mum ran her bookshop.

Mel travelled extensively around South Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland and Botswanaland

Mel then decided that he didn’t know enough about the big world of advertising and joined J. Walter Thompson, in Johannesburg as their youngest ever account director on the British Leyland account. Mel was back again working on cars and steered the agency’s creative teams into new approaches for the entire range of vehicles, gaining a number of New York creative awards along the way. Throughout Mel observed and worked very closely with local commercial photographers.

At about this time Mel's Father took early retirement and he and Joyce moved to Somerset West, adjacent to the Helderburg Mountains in the Cape. Joyce took up pottery, while Tony was the chemist, mixing and working with the glazes.

By 1980 Mel felt that he couldn’t further his creative career in South Africa, so he moved back to London and within two weeks had gained himself a position as art director at the Harrison McCann advertising agency. The next ten years Mel worked mostly in the role of creative director in London advertising agencies Bates MSG, D’Arcy Macmanus Masius and GGST.

As a creative director his rolé merged a number of disciplines: Client liaison usually meant meeting with the client and agency directors, understanding their target market and marketing plans; Ad agency liaison involved tearing apart the clients brief, understanding the market's needs and building strategies; Creative synergy was developed working with writers, visualizers, printers, photographers, typographers and graphic designers to produce presentation material that could be translated into production for the mass media.

He also began to hold exhibitions of his own photographs, firstly experimental Polaroid, then colour prints and latterly black and white Platinum prints, which his then second wife, Marion Cairns expertly printed.

As a polo player at Ham Polo Club and latterly Knep Castle Polo Club, Mel constantly had his camera to hand and took many equestrian and player images. In 1989, he organised an international polo photographic exhibition at the Belgrave Gallery in London, with entrants from around the world, as well as a significant proportion of images from the archives of Horse and Hound Magazine. Sir John Mills opened the exhibition and Mel created an award for Best Contribution to Polo Photography, which he awarded to Mike Roberts.

The event that catapulted Mel into landscape photography occurred in 1992 when one of his clients at GGST was the package holiday group Caravela - a division of TAP, Portugal Airlines. The client admitted that he couldn’t afford the artwork fees for the brochure the agency had been working on and as a deal agreed to take Mel to shoot some images in Brazil, in exchange for writing off some of the costs. In Brazil, while visiting Rio de Janeiro, Buzios and Angra dos Reis, Mel found his true vocation - a combination of travel and photography. On the trip back to the UK, Mel had decided to stopover in Portugal to visit his cousin Deanne Castro de Nascimento, who showed him the sights of Sintra, Guincho, Cascais and Lisbon.

It was late September and Mel became impressed with the scenery, the climate, the lifestyle and, more importantly the light, which was good even at that time of the year - whereas back in the U.K. he would have been suffering exposure problems.

Mel immediately decided that if he lived in Portugal his ratio of photographs to available shooting days would soar. Two months later Mel had returned to Lisbon, shown his creative director portfolio to half a dozen ad agencies and by the time he had returned home found a fax offering him the position of Creative Director at Grupo McCann - the country’s biggest advertising agency. This was to provide much needed financial stability while Mel established his photographic portfolio.

Mel quickly realised that his trusty 35mm Canon and standard Hasselblad 500CM were not up to doing the job that he required - wide view, big negative and depth of field - and so began the search for a good, second hand Hasselblad SWCM , which he found in the pages of a photographic magazine, from a shop in Brighton.

During the next two years, Mel spent every available minute exploring the Portuguese countryside, taking thousands of photographs, almost exclusively in black and white, while holding a number of one-man exhibitions in and around Lisbon. One of these exhibitions was held at the Galeria Potthoff in Chiado and for this Mel persuaded the English printer Pete Trew to print mostly selenium-toned black and white, with a few in tritone.

Mel also travelled to Spain, Morocco and Israel during this time and had also attracted attention from a number of sources: The Sierra Club Magazine, originally set up by the photographer Ansel Adams awarded him an honourable mention; The Portuguese travel publication Volta ao Mundo lauded his work with four awards; the Portuguese Sunday magazine DNA published a full four pages of his images; and Eyestorm/ Britart, the one on-line gallery began to represent him.

Mel also began an involvement with ‘Artists’ - a film location company based in Cascais and spent several years being paid to hunt down obscure locations, which further added to his knowledge and database of the country. And also became accepted on the board of the British Portuguese Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Lancaster Lodge.

Towards the latter part of the millennium Mel began to notice a slowdown in the country’s economy and spent many months contemplating his next move, concluding that Portugal was a great place to photograph, but a bad place to sell and market his work and that regretfully he would have to return to the UK.

Settling near his parents in Wincanton, Somerset in 2003 Mel set about the lengthy task of catalogue-ing his work and establishing a database of contacts.

After contracting out his printing and being disappointed with the results, Mel decided to purchase his own printer, finally settling on an eight colour, Epson R2400. After experimentation with many paper types he eventually concluding that Hahnemuehle Photo Rag paper would give the best results.

It was during this period that he met and struck up a good relationship Steve Ballard at Eyestorm Gallery in Exeter, who showed great interest in exhibiting some of Mel’s work and keenly accepted Mel's limited edition, signed and numbered, 21 image, boxed portfolio 'Retro Folio.'

Mel’s was next invited to exhibit at the Sherborne House Open 07 art exhibition, which was given the theme ‘Margins’ and the River Parrett proved to be Mel’s inspiration for his entry. Considering the size of the venue and the number of exhibitors Mel concluded that he would divide the image into 42 parts, then enlarge and print each part to A3 while finally mounting them all together - to become, once again a single image. The printing and construction finished up almost three metres by two metres.

When Mel was in Portugal in September 2007, he had discovered the small, but very arty Off The Wall Galeria in the tiny, picturesque village of Alte, in the Algarve and struck up an agreement with Susan Searle, the gallery owner, to hold an exhibition there in 2008. This was duly organised and Mel was present for the opening on May 1st, 2008. Susan then created a blogsite for Off The Wall Galeria, which featured Mel’s work during the month of the exhibition.

For the opening of the Frome Art Festival 2008, Mel attracted the attention of the Black Swan Arts Gallery manager Sally Fawcett who took seven mounted black and white prints for display.

Mel is currently working on new marketing opportunities as well as the design of a new website for a limited selection of his images.

C.V.

Exhibitions

1984 Visions Gallery, London.

1984 Collett, Dickson, Pearce Advertising Gallery, London.

1985 Aspects Gallery, London.

1987 Richmond Gallery, Windsor.

1989 Belgrave Gallery, London - International Polo Photography Exhibition.

1994 Galeria 12a, Lisbon.

1995 Galeria 12a, Lisbon.

1996 Expoarte96, Lisbon.

1998 Galeria Potthoff, Lisbon.

2001 Own website at [www.mels-images.biz]

2002 Represented on-line by Britart/ Eyestorm at [www.britart.com]

2004

1.Docklands Development East, London.

2.Galeria de S. Rita, Sintra, Portugal - “Paintography.”

2005

1.Paintography blogsite at www.paintography.blogspot.com

2.CAD05, Cidadela de Cascais, Portugal.

3.Photography workshop lecturer, St Julian's, Carcavelos, Portugal.

4.Listed on-line at www.somersetarts.com

2006

Saatchi Gallery on-line at www.saatchi-gallery.com

2007

1.Black and white images blogspot at www.melsbwportfolio.blogspot.com

2.Britart/ Eyestorm Gallery, Exeter: “Retro Folio” limited edition, boxed portfolio of 21, A3+, black and white images, signed and numbered. Also on exhibit -“Train”, “Traffic”, “Station” and “Azenhas do Mar.”

3.Sherborne Gallery, Sherborne: Open ’07 ‘Margins’ Exhibition - “Mud” installation of 42 images.

4.Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton: Evolver Magazine Competition finalist – “Pool”

2008

1.Off The Wall Galeria, Alte, Portugal: “Special Edition,” 20 images - colour, B&W and tritone.

2.Blogsite presence at [www.offthewallgallery.blogsite.com]

3.Black Swan Arts/ Frome Festival.

4.New work at Saatchi Gallery on-line at www.saatchi-gallery.com

Publications

1984 Blitz, London.

1985 Creative Review, London.

1994 A Capital, Lisbon.

1996

1.A Capital, Lisbon.

2.DNA Magazine, Lisbon.

1999

Atlantis In-flight Magazine - TAP Portugal Airlines.

2007

1.The Western Muse Magazine.

2.Art in Devon.

3.Black and White Photography Magazine.

4.British Journal of Photography website.

5.Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation website.

6.Evolver Magazine.

7.Own catalogue.

2008

1.The Portugal News.

2.The Euroweekly News.

3.The Portugal Resident.

Awards

1997

Sierra Club Magazine, honourable mention.

1998

Volto ao Mundo Magazine, Portugal.

1.Honourable mention x 2.

2.Best black and white landscape.

3.Best finalist.

Collectors

There are over 70 collectors of Mel’s work, worldwide.

Education

1957 - 1963

Allan Wilson Technical High School, Salisbury, Rhodesia: 8 ‘O’ levels.

1963 - 1970

British Aerospace, Hatfield, Herts: 6 year indentured mechanical and production, engineering apprenticeship; HNC Mech Eng.

Professional

1970 - 1972

Kluth and Odes Advertising, Johannesburg: Art director - Renault, Hoechst, Trevira, Revlon.

1972 - 1976

Formad Advertising, Durban: Executive Creative Director - Mazda, Fiat, Ford, Jaguar, Mini, Triumph.

1976 - 1979

J.Walter Thompson, Johannesburg: Account Director - Leyland Cars and LCV’s (Mini, Triumph, Marina, Jaguar, Land Rover), Caltex, Safmarine, Yardley.

1979 - 1980

McCann Erickson, London: Art Director - Triumph Motorcycles, Futura Books, Pyrex, Ladbrokes.

1981 - 1982

D’Arcy MacManus, Masius, London: Art Director - Ross Foods, BP Oil, McVities, British Rail.

1982 - 1986 Bates/MSG, London: Creative Director - Pye Audio and Video, Van Heusen, Best Western Hotels.

1986 - 1993

GGST Advertising, London: Executive Creative Director - Guernsey Tourist Board, Magic of Italy, Caravella Tours.

1993 - 1995

McCann Erickson, Lisbon: Executive Creative Director - Offley Port, Martini, Olá, FIMA, General Motors.

Personal

Travel: USA, UK, Ireland, Guernsey, France, Spain, Holland, Luxembourg, Italy, Israel, Balearics, Morocco, Kenya, Portugal, Brazil, Madeira, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Botswanaland, Swaziland, Portugal.

Computer literate: Word, Windows up to Vista, Excel, Power Point, Photoshop 7, ACDSee, Adobe Front Page, Coral Draw.

Languages: English - good spoken and written. Portuguese - good spoken.

Web Presence

[www.melsbwportfolio.blogspot.com]

[www.paintography.blogspot.com]

[www.somethingaboutmel.blogspot.com]

NB: Some of the above web presence may not exist at the time of viewing this article.