Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 13th February, 2015|Photography Art Definition

This week #dysturb comes to Melbourne, in Sydney Louise Whelan's African/Australians is on show at Customs House, Australian Raphaela Rosella wins at World Press Photo and Photobook Melbourne, Canadian Paul Zizka shows us the beauty of nature and Head On Photo Festival Awards, with a prize pool this year of more than $50,000, calls for entries. And if you're in Melbourne check out the photobook fair at the Centre of Contemporary Photography this weekend as part of Photobook Melbourne.

Taking Photojournalism to the Streets:

#dysturb in Melbourne

Photo by Philip Montgomery - Ferguson, Missouri - November 25, 2014. Riots break out on West Florissant Avenue between Ferguson Avenue and Chambers Road following the news that the St. Louis County grand jury has decided to not indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown. © Benjamin Petit

This week #dysturb's Pierre Terdjman and Benjamin Girette flew in to Melbourne from Paris for the inaugural Photobook Melbourne Festival. The pair will spend the next nine days pasting large format black and white posters of photographs by some of the world's leading photojournalists. I caught up with them today and my interview will be published here next week.

#dysturb will be popping up in the inner city suburbs of Fitzroy, Footscray and Brunswick. Keep your eyes peeled for these fantastic images that are literally taking photojournalism to the streets. To find out more visit the website.

Exhibition:

Louise Whelan - African/Australians

Australia’s reputation as a multicultural society has been tarnished in recent times by the antics of our politicians, yet Australians in general are a welcoming bunch who recognise the amazing contribution that migrants have made to our country over the decades. Without the diversity of our multicultural communities, and our Indigenous peoples, this nation would be the equivalent of plain, white bread.

Celebrating this multiplicity is at the heart of the portraits that feature in a new exhibition by Sydney photographer Louise Whelan: African/Australians. This body of work is part of a larger project Louise has been working on for several years – to document more than 180 nationalities that live in New South Wales (NSW). Initially commissioned under the auspices of the State Library of NSW, the project has now expanded to include others states such as Queensland and Western Australia. There is also a book, New Settlers, which was released in 2013.

‘African/Australians’ is the next instalment in a project that she says continues to evolve “just as we are as a nation”. These portraits feature people from Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan and South Sudan, encapsulating the diversity of Australia’s African migrant population.

African/Australians – Louise Whelan

Until 22 March, 2015

Customs House

31 Alfred Street, Circular Quay

Sydney

Awards:

World Press Photo

& Photobook Melbourne Winner

Yesterday the winners of this year's World Press Photo Awards were announced. Australian Raphaela Rosella, from Nimbin, won in the Portraits category for "Laurinda waits in her purple dress for the bus that will take her to Sunday School."

She was also the winner in the Australian Photobook of the Year Award for her unpublished work, We Met A Little Early But I get to Love You Longer, a book concerning teenage pregnancy. This Award is part of Photobook Melbourne and sponsored by Momento Pro.

Photo Essay:

Paul Zizka - Frozen Bubbles

Canadian photographer Paul Zizka has captured this natural phenomenon of methane gas bubbles in frozen lakes in Canada. Nature is truly remarkable.

(C) All images Paul Zizka. See more of his work here.

Reminder:

Call for Entries

Head On Photo Festival

Closing Date: 1st March, 2015

One of the world’s most prestigious photo festivals, Head On is calling for photographers to compete for prizes across five categories: Portrait, Landscape, Mobile, Moving Image and Students. Professional and emerging photographers, photo journalists and artists are encouraged to submit to the Head On Photo Awards.

Across 5 categories, 16 judges, 160 finalists and $50 000 in prizes, the Head On Awards represent a global selection of the best emerging and established photography. Our anonymous judging ensures each work is selected solely on its merit rather than the celebrity of the photographer. Visit the website here for details.

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 20th February, 2015|Photography Art Definition

This week Alison Stieven-Taylor's interview with #Dysturb's Pierre Terdjman and Benjamin Girette, Alexia Sinclair's Rococo opens in Sydney and 2015 FotoEvidence Book Award winner is announced today.

Feature Article:

Creating a Dysturbance

Pierre Terdjman and Benjamin Girette in interview

L-R: Benjamin Girette, Alison Stieven-Taylor and Pierre Terdjman

(C) Marty Williams

In the main, photojournalists are a resourceful bunch and many are undeterred by the so-called ‘crisis’ in journalism. This is especially true of freelancers who by the very nature of their work are adept at finding ways to tell the stories that are important to them, and to seek new ways to engage the public.

(C) Alison Stieven-Taylor

One of the most exciting examples of this ingenuity is #dysturb, an initiative that sees large black and white posters featuring a single image with caption and credit pasted on walls around some of the world’s largest cities including Paris and New York. Now it's Melbourne's turn.... (to read the full article and see more images please click on the Feature Articles tab at the top of the blog).

2015 FotoEvidence Book Award

And the winner is...

Marcus Bleasdale

Inferno: Central African Republic

Marcus Bleasdale is the fifth recipient of the FotoEvidence Book Award. FotoEvidence publisher Svetlana Bachevanova said Bleasdale’s “personal commitment and courage in documenting the humanitarian crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR)…embody exactly the values that FotoEvidence has sought to recognize and support during the last five years”.

(C) Marcus Bleasdale

(C) Marcus Bleasdale

Bleasdale, who is with VII Photo agency, shot this particular story over 18 months, but he has trained his camera on the long term crisis in CAR for more than 15 years. For his winning story he worked closely with Human Rights Watch travelling to areas that had not seen journalists or photographers for some months. His photographs provide evidence of atrocities that few outside the country had any knowledge and as such have become important factual documents. The FotoEvidence Book Award adds to a raft of international accolades Bleasdale has garnered in recent years. Inferno: Central African Republic gives light to an ongoing conflict that has caused and continues to cause, countless trauma for those living in its shadow.

Finalists:

Fabio Bucciarelli: On the Brink of an Abyss

Matt Black: The Geography of Poverty

Jan Garup: Somalia in Transition

Daniele Volpe: Guatemala - Ixil Genocide

For more information visit the FotoEvidence website.

Exhibition:

Alexia Sinclair - Rococo

One of the most exciting fine art photographers at work today, Australian Alexia Sinclair's new show 'Rococo' opened in Sydney this week at Blackeye Gallery. For those living in Oz, check out my feature article on Alexia in the Australian Financial Review Weekend, tomorrow, Saturday 21st February. Alexia will be giving artist talks this Saturday and Saturday 28th February at 3pm.

Blackeye Gallery

3/138 Darlinghurst Road

Darlinghurst

Until 8 March

Links: www.blackeyegallery.com.au

www.alexiasinclair.com

Watch the Rococo video here.

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 5 June, 2015|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up - farewell to Mary Ellen Mark, new exhibitions for Melbourne, Konrad Winkler launches new book and #dysturb in Pro Photo magazine.

Photos of the week:

Australian Adam Ferguson - Nepal Earthquake

(C) Adam Ferguson for TIME

(C) Adam Ferguson for TIME

Farewell to Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark at an exhibition of her work at the Leica Gallery Los Angeles

(C) Todd Williamson/AP 2013

I was fortunate to interview Mary Ellen Mark in 2014 and was greatly saddened to hear of her passing last week. You can read my interview with her on L'Oeil de la Photographie. One of the highlights of my journalistic career.

Here's an excerpt: Like other notable photographers Mark studied painting and art history before photography came into her life. “When I went to university I wanted to be either an architect or painter, a fine artist; I found being a painter very isolating. As for being an architect, that’s very academic, very difficult and I am not a good engineer,” she laughs.

At graduate school Mark took a major in photojournalism; it was a light bulb moment. “Photography became an immediate love for me. I had always read books about photography and was always fascinated with great photography. But it hadn’t occurred to me that it was something I could do myself until I got to graduate school and picked up a camera in my very early twenties”....

(C) Mary Ellen Mark

(C) Mary Ellen Mark

Exhibitions: Melbourne

Julie Millowick - Before: Photographs from the 1970s

(C) Julie Millowick Love is the Drug on the Jukebox, Kookaburra Cafe, Frankston

A Day in the Life of Australia, 1981

Melbourne photographer Julie Millowick was a student at Prahran Arts College in its heyday. In this exhibition she showcases images captured during the 1970’s, using a Nikon F film camera and one lens - a 50 mm standard.

"With that camera hanging over my shoulder, I walked around St Kilda, where I lived, and Fitzroy, where I did pro bono work for the Brotherhood of St Laurence. And.....I talked to people. Sometimes I made a photograph of them, sometimes I didn’t.

There seems to be a quietness, for want of a better word, about the photographs that reflects the long ago decade of the 1970’s. A time that was definitely pre-digital. A time that was definitely prior to the daily saturation in our lives of the photographic image."

(C) Julie Millowick Alone on the Lawn, Anzac Day, 1975, The Shrine, Melbourne

(C) Julie Millowick Photographer Athol Shmith photographed with his ever-present

LunaSix Light Meter around his neck. A Llegendary Fashion and Advertising

Photographer, Athol had a studio at the Paris End of Collins Street for decades.

He retired from commercial photograhy in the1970's to take up Head of Photography

Department at Prahran College of Advanced Education. Julie Millowick was one of his students.

(C) Julie Millowick Limurru, Fitzroy, 1975

Millowick is now a teacher of the online photojournalism course at Latrobe University and is sharing the gallery space with one of her graduates, Christine Sayer who is exhibiting her work, Deconstructing Dementia.

(C) Christine Sayer You have Visitors, 2014

Until 14 June

69 Smith Street Gallery

Collingwood

Group Show - Melbourne Is…

(C) Mike Reed

Three year old collective Image Chasers, comprises a group of “passionate” Victorian photographers. In the exhibition Melbourne Is… they present their unique views of Melbourne taking the audience beyond the “tourist brochure view of Melbourne to capture a side of the city that perhaps we do not always see”.

(C) Chris May

(C) Helga Leunig

(C) Roger Arnall

"Melbourne Is…not the place you might think it is. Many stereotype descriptives have been written about Melbourne. ‘The world’s most liveable city’…’Four seasons in one day’…’The garden state’… But underneath all these flowery statements, lies an urban subtext – A city of counter cultures and contradictions. Graceful buildings from our colonial past stand defiant against brave new futuristic visions.

"Melbourne is light and dark and all shades in between. It’s home to a migrant’s tale or a cabinetmaker’s workshop. A stage for lovers’ trysts, lost souls, found treasures and sleeping rough.

Melbourne. A city that is so many things to so many people. A place that is as diverse as its 4 million plus inhabitants."

Until 4 July

Quadrant Gallery

72 Barkers Road

Hawthorn

Book Launch:

Konrad Winkler - Moments of My Life

Specialist photography book publisher M.33 will launch Konrad Winkler’s new book Moments of My Life on Sunday June 14 in St. Kilda. The book contains a number of classic photographs from Winkler’s 45 year career. Interspersed throughout the book are Winkler’s writings making Moments of My Life more an artist’s diary giving insight into the image beyond mere description of time and place. I’m looking forward to reviewing this one.

4.30pm Sunday June 14

Linden New Art

26 Acland Street

St Kilda

To be launched by Wendy Garden, Curator at the Morning Peninsula Regional Gallery.

New Pro Photo - #dysturb

My feature on #dysturb is in the latest issue of Pro Photo magazine out now.