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Monday, July 20, 2020

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 28th November, 2014|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up a moving photo essay from Andrew George, Series 5 calls for photojournalists to get involved, exhibitions in Paris and Sydney, workshops in Melbourne and Berlin and Vlad Sokhin's Crying Meri launches in Australia at Parliament House.

Photo Essay:

Andrew George - Right Before I Die

Nelly

Death is the only certainty, but how we face the end is rarely spoken about in western society. I watched one of my dearest friends die too soon from Lou Gehrig's Disease (Motor Neurone) earlier this year. Over the months I visited her I saw my beautiful friend change from the party girl I'd always known her to be, vivacious, wickedly funny and intelligent, to a woman who walked with crutches, then a frame and finally a wheelchair before she was even too frail to sit in that. Even when her body failed she never lost her spirit, the essence of who she was. She fought bravely and as the end approached she became fearful of letting go - even though she could no longer move any of her limbs, or speak or even open her eyes, she still wanted to hold onto life. But on the day she died she finally let go of her terror, accepted her fate and tranquilly passed from this life.

Hospital rooms can be soulless and medical routines deny individuality often stripping people of their dignity. Once you are admitted you become a “patient,” that strange being that was always someone else. Los Angeles based photographer Andrew George's poignant and dignified portraits of palliative care individuals who are facing imminent death is a reminder that patients are people who have had a life beyond the sickness that is hastening their end. These portraits are beautiful, poetic, sad and uplifting all at the same time because on a very human level these images connect us to these strangers and their stories.

Philosopher Alain de Botton says of Right Before I Die, “We need to spend time with those who are about to die. Thank goodness for Andrew George, who took his camera into the hospices and hospitals we otherwise never dare to visit”.

“It’s a particular advantage that these are very unremarkable people, it reduces the barriers between them and us. We feel the continuity between our situation and theirs. Their story will be ours, an idea that remains almost impossible to admit to ourselves and hold in consciousness through the rounds of ordinary distractions and commitments.”

“These are the people you don’t particularly notice: the woman who works in the shop you rarely go into. The guy who works in the next office block. The woman who does the stationery. But with death close, they have something to say to all of us. Their words become like those of the prophets; they have gone ahead of us and have momentous things to report. These people, none of whom has more than a few days left to live, speak with the clarity and lack of all pretensions of the damned.”

Abel

Chuck

Diana

Donald

Ediccia

Irene

Jack

Joe

Sara

George says, “I believe it takes real courage to accept that everything we see as so vital and integral to our lives will vanish. Some of us will have the fortitude to go beyond the fear of our mortality and confront this unknown journey bravely. These portraits convey my admiration of 20 men and women who face an impending death and do so with acceptance and peace”.

He continues. “I spent the last two years taking these photographs. Accompanying them are excerpts from interviews and handwritten letters where I asked everyone to express what they were feeling. Some were more comfortable speaking, others in writing. There are passages of distilled insights and others with a more descriptive narrative - I value one way as much as I do the other”.

“The men and women who so generously shared with me their stories and personal beliefs are profoundly different and yet very much the same. From their diverse backgrounds and situations, among the least relevant facts were their former professions and the condition or disease to which they were succumbing, so I chose not to include that. These testimonies of uniquely forged strength in facing death – and making sense of life with such brutal honesty – are something from which I believe we can all take inspiration, hopefully using it to enrich our own lives. Most of these wonderful people have passed, but I hope you will now remember them with me and treasure their perspective and wisdom.”

Right, Before I Die will be on exhibition at Musea Brugge in Belgium from late January to June 2015.

Visit Andrew George’s website here for more information. All photos (C) Andrew George.

Get Involved:

Series 5 – Taking Photojournalism to the People

Series 5 is a global photography movement that liberates the photograph from the confines of the media and the art world. The brainchild of Australian photography curator Amelia Twiss, Series 5 invites photojournalists to host impromptu exhibitions of five images wherever they can find a space.

“We're taking it to the people, and encouraging photojournalists to exhibit their work anywhere - online, in a pop up gallery, your kitchen, the bus stop, your local park, roof tops, apartment windows, your garden – anywhere," says Twiss. “Series 5 has been created to bring people together through creativity and storytelling and to raise awareness of the work that photojournalists around the world do in witnessing our lives and creating visual history.”

Photographers everywhere are invited to create their Series 5 exhibition and send the evidence, which will be published online. "Photographers can also publish their Series 5 exhibition via our Facebook page too,” says Twiss.

The first photojournalist to participate in Series 5 is UN photographer Martine Perret, with her new series From Above shot in the Margaret River region of Western Australia.

Book launch:

Vlad Sokhin - Crying Meri

On Tuesday 2nd December at Parliament House in Canberra Crying Meri:Violence Against Women in Papua New Guinea will be officially launched at an event hosted by ChildFund Australia. You can read the review of Crying Meri published by FotoEvidence by clicking on the Book Reviews tab at the top of this blog.

Exhibition: Paris

Paris Magnum

Bruno Barbey Paris 1968

Magnum photographers have photographed Paris for more than 80 years. Now in the exhibition Paris Magnum, 150 photographs from the likes of Cartier-Bresson, Capa, Riboud, Parr and Depardon capture the metamorphosis of Paris and its inhabitants over the decades. On show at the exquisite l’Hôtel de Ville from 12 December until 28 March, 2015.

Simone de Beauvoir 1949Paris (C) Elliott Erwitt

Paris Magnum

l’Hôtel de Ville

Salle Saint-Jean

5, rue Lobau, Paris 4e

Exhibition: Sydney

Group Show - Stills 14

This year the Stills Gallery annual December exhibition – Stills 14 - addresses the theme Continuity & Divergence and features 12 of the gallery’s artists - Narelle Autio, Ian Dodd, Megan Jenkinson, Michael Light, Steven Lojewski, Deb Mansfield, Polixeni Papapetrou, Trent Parke , Garry Trinh, Justine Varga. Kawita Vatanajyankur, and Beverley Veasey.

3 December - 20 December, 2014

Stills Gallery

36 Gosbell Street

Paddington

Workshops:

Melbourne

Introduction to Darkroom - Strange Neighbour

Fitzroy's Strange Neighbour Gallery is running a series of short workshops on darkroom techniques for black and white printing. Email for more information info@strangeneighbour.com

Workshop Dates:

December 6 & 7, 2014

January 10 & 11, 2015

January 31 & February 1, 2015

Berlin

“A Photographer’s Guide to the Age of Post-Photojournalism”

Run by picture editor Corinna Koch this 3-day workshop is on this weekend, and next, in Berlin at Neue Schule für Fotografie.

Koch says, “Coming from the hypothesis that in our digital age, where smartphone photographs taken by amateurs and uploaded to the web represent truth, photojournalism is heading back to towards its beginnings. This workshop will analyze the historical and current significance of candid camera photography”.

To find out more visit the registration link here

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 3 April, 2015|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up it's all about books. Book Review Part One features an in depth interview with Ken Schles (Invisible City & Night Walk), DDR: Remembering East Germany, Photo Compendium Australia II, The Best of Doisneau: Paris, and Architecture, Photography and the Contemporary Past.

Interview:

Ken Schles – Invisible City & Night Walk

American photographer Ken Schles’ seminal work, Invisible City, was re-released in 2014 by Steidl, 26 years after its first edition. There is also a new companion book, Night Walk.

The work in both books was shot in the eighties when Schles was living in the East Village in New York City. At that time New York City was in a state of decay and facing bankruptcy. On the Lower East Side. crime rates were out of control and law enforcement had abandoned the streets. In the late seventies Schles, then a student, moved into a rundown tenement on 12th Street in the heart of the East Village.

During his tenure the East Village was alive with musicians, artists, designers, writers and poets. The underground music scene was exploding and clubs were pulsating to the new wave punk sound, the most famous CBGB’s, a proving ground for acts like Patti Smith, The Ramones and Blondie.

Here rent was cheap, but life even cheaper and frequently the air rang with gunshots. Heroin was the drug of choice and dealers claimed the neighbourhood. Junkies took their last hit in putrid alleyways and apartments became extemporized shooting galleries. Buildings reeked of detritus, reefer, vomit and alcohol. Getting mugged was commonplace.

Living the life of a struggling artist only carries cachet for those who haven’t walked the walk says Schles. “It was not fun, it was scary and dangerous. You felt like you were taking your life in your hands walking down the streets. It was a pretty nasty place....” (to read the full interview and see more images please click on the Feature Articles tab at the top of the blog)

DDR: Remembering East Germany

Augusto Bordato

Publisher: Contrasto

For 28 years the Berlin Wall divided a city, a country and its people. On 9th November, 1989 the Wall ‘came down’. In the days that ensued tens of thousands of Berliners from both sides celebrated. Some climbed on top of the Wall, others clamboured through new openings. Less than three months later, on 10th March, 1990 Berlin celebrated its first day of unification.

Italian photographer Augusto Bordato worked in East Berlin for ten years as an interpreter at the Italian Embassy. In the years leading up to the fall of the wall, Bordato walked the streets with his Leica capturing moments of everyday life, amassing a collection that has become a unique contribution to this moment in history.

Bordato’s black and white images speak to the times, the deprivation, the oppression, the surveillance, the protests, the celebration of freedom and reunification – visual symbols we are familiar with. If his images stopped there then this book would be little more than a collection of news photographs. But in DDR: Remembering East Germany Bordato allows an insight into the lives of the East German people that gives a new perspective.

Here East Germans, young and old alike, those who have never known life outside the Wall, and those who lost their liberty, come together in simple acts that are quotidian - nude sunbathing on windswept beaches, art gallery gatherings, young punks out on the town, parades, fireworks, couples walking in the summer heat, friends drinking coffee at a street cafe. Bordato also takes us to the country with his hauntingly beautiful images of fishing villages and rural vistas where mist cloaks the landscape.

Yet there is no romanticising of the subject matter. These photographs depict a country that is stuck in time. With the majority of images shot in the late 1980s it is evident in the fashions, décor and cityscapes that are still marred by bullet holes and crumbling structures, that modernisation has not been a focus of the Regime. This is also apparent in the patina of resignation, or exhaustion from the struggle to survive, seen on the faces of many East Germans, particularly those who knew a life before the Wall. But there is also beauty, joy and hope and Bordato has captured these symbols that signify the strength of the human spirit with dignity and compassion.

Photo Compendium, Australia II

Bob Kersey & Mary Meyer

Publisher: Black Mountain

I reviewed the first compendium of Australian Photography in 2011, which was a mix of artist portfolios and gallery listings. The new Photo Compendium II bypasses the galleries to focus on the artists with more than 50 featured and is a much more satisfying publication.

It is important to note that this book is not purporting to be an encyclopaedia, or an exhaustive collection. If it were then the pages would number in the thousands rather than hundreds. The artists featured are dedicated to their craft, many are established, others emerging. This is not a genre specific collection either. Here you will find representation across a number of disciplines from abstract and nudes, to documentary, portraiture, landscape and manipulated imagery. Black and white photographs sit side by side with colour – muted, vibrant, garish. There is work from those who consider themselves film purists. Others explore with equal devotion the depths of digital artistry.

Ultimately what this compendium showcases is the great diversity, and talent, that exists in Australian photography. As editor Bob Kersey says, artists need promotion, and audiences need to find new artists. If this book is used as intended then galleries, festivals and scribes like myself have a valuable resource through which to discover artists that are new to us. And the artists themselves have a wonderful opportunity to see what others are creating and to perhaps begin a dialogue that leads to exciting collaborations.

A final word: This book is beautifully produced. The image reproduction is superb, the stock befitting a fine art book and it is gratifying to see an Australian publisher actually printing in Australia. Bravo to all concerned on a really wonderful contribution to Australian photography.

The Best of Doisneau: Paris

Publisher: Flammarion

Born in 1912, photographer Robert Doisneau photographed the city of his birth throughout his life. This compact publication features his black and white photographs taken when he was in his early twenties right up until 1991, three years before his death at the age of 81.

Along with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau is considered a father of street photography and photojournalism. This book is filled with wonderful images taken on the streets of Paris and in its classrooms, parlours, theatres and cafes.

Doisneau wrote: “A glance in the rear-view mirror tells me that I’ve covered a lot of ground – first on the sidewalks, then on the road. There was nothing systematic in my wanderings: I would move along vacantly, banking on a stroke of luck, using equipment so cheap there was no risk of virtuosity. Thus drifting along, I discovered features of the city that are not to be found in guidebooks”.

This is a glorious collection for those who love Paris, black and white photography, and the eye of a master.

Architecture, Photography and the Contemporary Past

Edited by Claes Caldenby, Julia Tedroff, Andrej Slávik and Martin Farran-Lee

Publisher: Art and Theory

The modern city and photography have evolved together, the latter documenting our material culture, but also contributing to it through visual artefacts that give rise to the opportunity for insights into what has gone before, what exists now, and to theorise on what may come.

The publication of Architecture, Photography and the Contemporary Past was inspired by the workshop of the same name held in 2013 at the Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg, in Sweden. This book approaches the topic of cultural heritage ‘at the intersection between research in humanities and the fine arts’ and features essays by both scholars and artists.

The premise of this book is to discuss ‘what contribution can architecture and photography make to the exploration…of what scholars call…the contemporary past – that is, to modernity considered as an open problem rather than a closed historical period…This anthology can be read as an answer to that question’.

Art and Theory is a new publishing house based in Sweden, dedicated to contemporary art, photography and aesthetics. This is an erudite volume that adds to the conversation of the photograph as evidence, its cultural significance and is a valuable addition to material cultures literature.