Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 23 January, 2015|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up Chobi Mela opens in Bangladesh, two historic exhibitions in Melbourne, the winning entries in Getty #RePicture and Alexia Sinclair's new work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Festival:

Chobi Mela - Bangladesh

The 8th installation of Chobi Mela, Asia’s first and largest photography festival, opens today in Dhaka, Bangladesh and runs until 5th February. This year’s programme, with the theme of “Intimacy,” features more than 30 photographers from 22 countries.

(C) Denis Dailleux

(C) Jana Romanova

(C) Jannatul Mawa

(C) Malcolm Hutcheson

(C) Max Pinckers

(C) Nepal Picture Library

An initiative by Drik Picture Library and supported by the South Asian Media Institute, Chobi Mela combines “big name” artists with lesser known and emerging, presenting a comprehensive selection of exhibitions, talks and workshops.

A key feature of Chobi Mela is the exhibitions that are mounted on rickshaw vans, which travel around Dhaka City literally taking photography to the masses.

Festival Director, Shahidul Alam, who is also founder of Drik and a renowned photographer in his own right, says, “It is time Bangladesh began to take pride in itself. We are now a role model in the world of photography. The world is looking up at Bangladesh. The nation needs to respond”.

(C) Paolo Patrizi

(C) Yusuf Sevincli

(C) Abdollah Heidari

(C) Anwar Hossain

This year’s festival is curated by Munem Wasif, ASM Rezaur Rahman and Tanzim Wahab with guest curators Salauddin Ahmed and Mahbubur Rahman.

Until 5th February

Various venues and locations

For more information visit the Chobi Mela website

Exhibitions: Melbourne

Bohemian Melbourne

Liz Ham, Vali Myers in her studio in the Nicholas Building, 1997

Bohemian Melbourne shines a light on the city's cultural bohemians from 1860 to today, tracing individuals who have pushed against convention in their lives and art, from Marcus Clarke, Albert Tucker and Mirka Mora to Barry Humphries, Vali Myers and Nick Cave. The exhibition, which is currently on at the State Library of Victoria, features photographs, artworks, books including artists' journals and multimedia presentations. Well worth the visit.

Mirka Mora in her studio, 1978 © Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Nick Cave, 1973 (C) Ashley Mackevicius & National Portrait Gallery

(C) Albert Tucker, Self-portrait with Joy Hester, 1939

Bohemian Melbourne

State Library of Victoria

Swanston Street, Melbourne

Until 22 February

Dreams and Imagination:

Light in the Modern City

(C) Mark Strizic - 1967 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

In "Dreams and Imagination: Light in the Modern City" curator Melissa Miles has selected a diverse range of artists and images through which to explore what she terms “the myths that surround light in the history of Australian photography”.

Miles, who is an Associate Professor at Monash University, has come to this exhibition through her larger research project into Australian light and photography. In ‘Dreams and Imagination’ it is the urban space and how photographers have responded to the changing modernist city, which draws Miles’ focus. Artists include Max Dupain, Mark Strizic, Olive Cotton, Arthur Dickinson, David Moore and Harold Cazneaux with works dating from 1920s through to 1971. Many of these images are important documents in the visual history of Australia and it is rare to have the opportunity to inspect these treasures at leisure.

(C) Mark Strizic

(C) Max Dupain

(C) David Moore

Dreams and Imagination: Light in the Modern City

Monash Gallery of Art

860 Ferntree Gully Road

Wheelers Hill

Until 1 March

Competition Winners:

Getty #RePicture

Australian photographer Ben McRae has taken out second place in Getty Images inaugural #RePicture competition for his image #RePictureFamily. McRae was one of more than 2500 photographers from 85 countries who entered the global competition that is premised on "challenging how we look at the world and exploring how we can change the paradigm around stereotypical imagery currently used to describe people and communicate concepts". US photographer Braden Summers took out the top prize for his image "All Love is Equal" (see below).

(C) Ben McRae

(C) Braden Summers

To see more visit the #RePicture site here

New Work:

Alexia Sinclair - Art of Saving a Life

Australian photo-media artist Alexia Sinclair is known for her penchant for historical figures so it comes as no surprise that her latest artwork for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s project Art of Saving a Life, is situated in 1796. In this work Alexia celebrates the invention of the first smallpox vaccine discovered by Dr. Edward Jenner. You can see the behind-the-scenes video here and watch how Alexia painstakingly creates this image right down to growing the flowers she needed!

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.

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 12 June, 2015|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up - the third annual Portrait(s) Festival opens in Vichy, France, the Ballarat International Foto Biennale launches its annual fundraiser, and Yellow Korner's June Pop Up Galleries with Serge Ramelli.

Photos of the Week:

Road melts in New Delhi Heatwave May 2015

(C)Harish Tyagi/EPA

Migrants gather rain water, Myanmar June 2015

(C) Soe Zeya Tun/ Reuters

Festivals:

Portrait(s)

Vichy, France

12 June - 6 September

Bruce Wrighton - At Home

In 1988 American photographer Bruce Wrighton died at the age of 38 leaving behind an extraordinary series of portraits taken in the small town of Binghampton, in New York State, where he lived. These portraits capture ‘the disinherited of America,’ anonymous citizens who came across Wrighton's path. Around 30 of these portraits are on show at Vichy. Wrighton's work sits amongst some of my favourite street photography.

Kourtney Roy - Self-Portraits

Another favourite photographer is Canadian Kourtney Roy whose series of self-portraits tackle the issue of female stereotyping. In these highly stylised, almost cinematic images, Roy poses as the pin-up, air hostess and beauty queen amongst others, exposing the farcical notion of the perfect woman.

Alejandro Cartagena - Carpoolers

Dominican photographer Alejandro Cartagena’s series Car Poolers documents thousands of Mexican workers as they cross Mexico City on their daily commute. Using the same framing for each image, Cartegena’s series evokes the monotony of this daily grind.

There are also works by Mat Jacob, Elliott Erwitt, Ronan Guillou and Martin Schoeller on show amongst others.

(C) Ronan Guillou

(C) Mat Jacob

(C) Martin Schoeller

Ballarat International Foto Biennale

Annual Fundraiser

This year the Ballarat International Foto Biennale will be held from 22 August - 20 September in Ballarat, 90 minutes from Melbourne.

At the annual fundraising event for the Biennale, to be held Sunday 12 July, 150 prints from 150 photographers will be up for grabs. Buy a red dot for $125 and select your image. If you can’t attend on the day, you can select online. Photographs have been donated by Australian and international artists to help the Festival raise funds. Visit thewebsite for all the details.

Sunday 12 July

Gallery Eleven40

1140 Malvern Road

Malvern (Melbourne)

Yellow Korner POP Up Galleries

This month Serge Ramelli and his epic black and white works of Paris and New York are in focus at the Yellow Korner Pop Up Galleries - check out the website for details.