This week on Friday Round Up three exhibitions feature, one in Melbourne and two in Paris. Next week I'll be posting from Paris Photo. Plus a preview to Greg Constantine's new book Nowhere People.
Exhibition:
Melbourne
John Williams - Taking a Camera for a Walk
My First 60 Years on the Streets
John Williams describes himself as “an historian who makes pictures and a picture maker who writes history…History can never be absolute fact, any more than photography tells truths or simply describes facts. The best the individual photographer/historian can hope for is to accumulate and interpret aspects of time and place. In his or her turn, the viewer-cum-reader brings to the image-cum-text a raft of accumulated beliefs and prejudices that enable the possibility of a whole new set of readings and interpretations beyond those imagined by the author”.
During the mid-70’s Williams, who was married to Australian photographer Ingeborg Tyssen, was the co-founder of The Photographers Gallery in South Yarra. His earliest work was captured in square format on a Rolleicord TLR and forms part of this exhibition.
This is the first exhibition of William’s work in Melbourne since his retrospective at the NGV in 1991 and he says “Treat these as an old man’s cry of alarm and sigh of resignation. Enough to say that I’m not finished yet with either the streets or the anti-landscapes to which they led me”.
Until 28 November
Artist Talk: Saturday 7 November
CF Gallery
409-429 Gore St
Fitzroy
Paris:
Who’s Afraid of Women Photographers
Musée de L’Orangerie and Musée D’Orsay
Until 24 January
A brilliant collection from some of the earliest female photographers and photojournalists.
Bishareen children Egypt 1914 Helen Messinger Murdoch
Self-portrait c1896 Frances Benjamin Johnston
New York c1940 Helen Levitt
President Roosevelt, 1904 Jessie Tarbox Beals
Trude and I masked, short skirts, 1891 Alice Austen
Vivien and Merlin 1874 Julia Margaret Cameron
We are Three Women. We are Three Million Women 1938 Barbara Morgan
Young Suffragettes 1909 Christina Broom
Magnum Photos and UNEP Exhibition
Above: (C) Paolo Pellegrin, eco-district France
In the lead to the COP21 climate summit in Paris this exhibition portrays the problems and some of the solutions for climate change. Commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) this group show features the work of ten Magnum photographers - Jonas Bendiksen, Michael Christopher Brown, Bieke Depoorter, Thomas Dworzak, Chien Chi Chang, Stuart Franklin, Sohrab Hura, Moises Saman, Paolo Pellegrin and Jerome Sessin.
(C) Bieke Depoorter Trinidad and Tobago
(C) Ethiopia Jerome Sessin
(C) Sohrab Hura Philippines
(C) Jonas Bendiksen Kenya
(C) Michael Christopher Brown Brazil
(C) Moises Saman, Chile
(C) Stuart Franklin, Peru
(C) Thomas Dworzak, Liberia
Until 4 January, 2016
Musée de l'Homme
17 Place du Trocadéro et du 11 Novembre
Paris, 75116
Book Preview:
Greg Constantine - Nowhere People
Over the past decade Canadian-American photographer Greg Constantine has travelled to 18 countries documenting some of the 12 million people who live without citizenship. These stateless people live on the fringes, unable to officially work, receive aid or health care or education.
Constantine says his interest in statelessness was sparked when he was living in Tokyo in 2005. “One of the first stories I worked on as a photographer was North Korean refugees. Most of the North Korean refugees I met in South-east Asia were women giving birth to children in China. The children were not North Korean citizens, they were not considered Chinese citizens, and until they actually set foot on South Korean soil, they would not be considered citizens of South Korea either, so really these kids were stateless”.
Since then Constantine has worked with NGOs, and received grants from the likes of the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Open Society and others to help fund this massive undertaking. This work forms the basis to his new book Nowhere People which was released this week and is available from nowherepeople.org and Amazon.com.
“The intention of the...books is not so much to chronicle my work. They're really designed to let these people tell their stories and let my photos weave in and out of their testimonies,” he concludes.
(C) All images Greg Constantine.
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