Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 30 January, 2015|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up Australia's largest photography festival Head On calls for entries for the 2015 awards, exhibitions in London, New York and Melbourne, and links to some interesting articles on photography.

Head On 2015

Entries open for the Head On photo awards on 1st February and close 1st March. In addition to the Head On Portrait, Landscape, Mobile and Multi-Media Awards, this year there will be a fifth award category, but just what that might encompass is currently under wraps. Visit the website here for more information and updates. Head On runs 1-31 May in Sydney.

Exhibitions:

London:

Drawn by Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection

More than 200 photographs, some dating back to the 1820’s, feature in this exhibition which, if nothing else, shows little change in human nature and the subjects photographers are drawn to. The exhibition is cleverly hung to depict images taken decades apart that evoke similar sentiments. Many of these photographs are taken by doctors, soldiers and other non-professionals - nothing's changed there either. The Guardian has published a series of articles on the exhibition (oh for a newspaper in Australia that finds photography that important!). Start here and work your way through each posting. It’s definitely worthwhile especially if you can’t get to the physical show.

Portrait of Christina, c1913 by Lieutenant Colonel Mervyn O’Gorman

Photograph: Royal Photographic Society © National Media Museum, Bradford

Daguerreotype St. Paul’s Cathedral, c. 1840s

Hippopotamus at Zoo, 1852, Juan Carlos Maria Isidro

Nude c.1855

The Gate of Goodbye c.1916 Francis James Mortimer

Movement Study, 1926 Rudolf Koppitz

Refugees from East Pakistan on the Indian Border, 1971 Don McCullin

Until 1 March

Science Museum London

New York:

Ken Schles - Invisible City/Night Walk 1983-1989

Invisible City

Forty black and white images from Ken Schles will be on show in celebration of the republication by Steidl of Invisible City and the newly released companion Night Walk. My interview with Ken will be published in the coming weeks, but to whet your appetite, check out these images.

Invisible City

Invisible City

Night Walk

Night Walk

Night Walk

Night Walk

Until 14 March

Howard Greenberg Gallery

41 East 57th Street, suite 1406

New York

Melbourne:

Wouter van de Voorde

(Hume) sunrise

This exhibition is part of the inaugural Photobook Melbourne festival which opens on 12 February. Look out for next week’s festival feature.

Of this body of work, Wouter van de Voorde says: “Early morning fog is one of the features of the Canberran winter rendering non-places into mystical wastelands. Wandering through these paddocks while shooting this series I imagined soldiers running through the fog, bombs, grenades, WWI… The photographer as a lone soldier wandering zig zag across the front-line in a brief instant of cease-fire. Until the sun breaks through the fog”.

5-28 February

Colour Factory

409/429 Gore Street, Fitzroy

Opening night: 12 February 6pm

Interesting Articles:

What can a pregnant photojournalist do? Everything

Lynsey Addario

Lynsey's book "It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War" will be released next week (5 February). To get a glimpse of what this book has in store read Lynsey's article in the New York Times here.

The costa del concrete: the Mediterranean coastline then and now in pictures by photographer Pedro Armestre for Greenpeace - The Guardian

Award-winning Dutch advertisement shows how guide dogs are being used to help those suffering from the nightmares of war - Daily Mail

How photography’s ‘decisive moment’ often depicts an incomplete view of reality by Fred Ritchin

The death of Fabienne Cherisma, from the series Haiti, 2010, © Nathan Weber/NBW Photo

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 10 April, 2015|Photography Art Definition

Photos of the Week:

Lynsey Addario -  India's Insurgency

National Geographic

Coal worker Ajay Marijan carries a load from an open-pit mine to a waiting

truck in Bokapahari, Jharkhand state (C) Lynsey Addario

At an ad hoc restaurant, men prepare breakfast for workers clocking in for the

morning shift at the coal-based Jindal Tamnar thermal power plant, in the

Raigarh district, Chhattisgarh (C) Lynsey Addario

Exhibitions:

Melbourne

Polaroid Resurrection

by FilmNeverDie

(C) Luigi Sposa Berbera

This group show at Melbourne’s Photonet is part of the global ExPolaroid Exhibition Festival being held in 40 cites around the world. ExPolaroid began in France and is held annually in April. This year there are 57 events. Melbourne’s FilmNeverDie is run by a group of film enthusiasts who sell a range of photographic film types and hosts forums for those who are keen to know more about the medium. Polaroid Resurrection is the first exhibition by FilmNeverDie.

(C) Amanda Mason

(C) Francis Danesi

(C) Gary Wong

(C) Pei Wen

(C) Rachael Baez

Photonet Gallery

15a Railway Place

Fairfield

Until 22 April

Rob Love - Timeless

Melbourne based Rob Love uses extended shutter speeds to capture these painterly images of water. Made in camera without the aid of computer manipulation, Love’s images are both abstract and documentary in their capacity to at once demonstrate the power of nature and its ethereal beauty. Love produces single prints rather than limited editions and his work is held in collections in Australia and the USA.

(C) All images Rob Love

Colour Factory

409-429 Gore Street

Fitzroy

Until 2 May

Artist Talk; Saturday 18 April, 2pm

Sydney:

Jane Brown - Black Ships

(C) Jane Brown, Reception Centre, Kyoto, 2015, Silver gelatin FB print

hand print,17 x 21cm courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery, Sydney

Australian photographic artist Jane Brown’s latest series, Black Ships, is named after the term used by the Japanese in reference to Western water crafts approaching Japan’s shores and dates back to the 16th Century when Portugese fleets painted the hulls of their ships with pitch. Black Ships became symbolic of the opening of borders.

Black Ships is Brown's first exhibition at Stills Gallery and draws on this symbolism through the use of various visual tropes – “pathways and bridges to reflect the idea of a journey, bandaging and wrapping symbolic of past wounds, walls and fences figurative of boundaries and cultural isolation, nature and decay referencing the Japanese concept of mono no aware (mortality and a pathos for the transience of things)”.

“Ultimately, Black Ships is a travelogue that looks to the strange machinations of history, and at the same time, a reflection on contemporary Japan...More broadly it is an articulation of curiosity, seeking out points of difference from home – the peculiar, the beautiful and the unfamiliar.”

(C) Jane Brown, Wisteria, Miyajima, 2015. Silver gelatin FB print

hand printed, 17 x 21cm courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery, Sydney

(C) Jane Brown, Silver Pavilion, Kyoto, 2015. Silver gelatin FB print

hand printed, 17 x 21cm courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery, Sydney

(C) Jane Brown, Hiroshima, 2015, silver gelatin FB print

hand print, 17 x 21cm courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery, Sydney

Stills Gallery

36 Gosbell Street

Paddington

Until 2 May

Grants:

Getty Grants for Editorial Photography

(C) William Daniels

In 2015 there are five Getty Grants for Editorial Photography on offer valued at $10,000 each. The Grants are designed to celebrate and support independent photojournalism. Applications are open until 13 May and winners will be announced in September, 2015.

Judges for this year are photojournalist Lynsey Addario, Jon Jones Director of Photography Sunday Times Magazine, Matthias Krug, International Director of Photography Der Spiegel, Romain Lacroix, Director of Photography Paris Match and Jean Francois Leroy, Director General Visa pour l’Image.

 (C) Jordi Busqué

(C) Giulio di Sturco

Last year’s winners were Giulio di Sturco for his body of work titled Ganges: Death of a River; Juan Arredondo for Born in Conflict; Jordi Busqué for his award-winning portfolio, The Mennonites of Bolivia; Krisanne Johnson, for South Africa's Post-Apartheid Youth and; French photojournalist, William Daniels for his CAR in Chaos body of work.

(C) Juan Arredondo

(C)Krisanne Johnson

In Brief:

Defending Gallipoli: A Turkish Standpoint

Until 3 May

Monash Gallery of Art

860 Ferntree Gully Road

Wheelers Hill

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 31 July 2015|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up - one month to go before the 27th Visa pour l'image, Juno Gemes' Spirit Maps to open in Canberra, the winner of this year's Ian Parry Scholarship, @everydayafrica and Andrew Quilty wins Walkley Best Freelance Journalist of the Year.

Festival:

Dinosaurs and Nostalgia

Visa pour l'Image 2015

Visa pour l'image's venerable director Jean-François Leroy, writes about this year's festival, the 27th instalment of the world's longest running, and most significant, festival of photojournalism held annually in Perpignan, France. If you haven't made the trek, it's incredibly worthwhile. Online accreditation is now open.

"Our recent statements defending ethical practices in photojournalism triggered some lively reactions, and we must have heard every argument possible. The world is on the move, so it’s time for photojournalism to move too. We are allegedly the protectors of an old-fashioned, narrow-minded vision of photojournalism. That’s quite a charge!

"Such scathing criticism neither concerns us nor upsets us. Au contraire! We see these comments as expressions of encouragement, bolstering our belief in a vision of photojournalism which we have been advocating, in no uncertain terms, over the last 27 festivals.

"How and why should photojournalism change? Is the goal to take staged pictures in studio conditions? Do we want “still life” images to conjure up scenes of war? “You know, all those pictures of war and famine look the same in the end.” What sort of cynical, mindless argument is that? Do we hear that kind of nonsense about sports photos? Well, too bad for us!

"When you look at the wealth of photography we have for the 2015 festival, when you look at what’s coming onto the market (which, as we’ve said so often in so many debates, is getting smaller every year), when you look at the new names appearing, with new talent and more energy, when you wander around Perpignan in September, then you realize that photojournalism is certainly not going to disappear. And that’s good news.

"So, long live nostalgia! Long live the dinosaurs! And welcome to the real world." Jean-François Leroy 2015.

This year's program features a diverse range of exhibitions that demonstrate the incredible breadth of photojournalism stories being told. Look out for the preview on Photojournalism Now - 28th August. Until then, here are a few images to give you a sense of what's in store.

Somali refugees whose makeshift shelters were amongst the dozens of houses and shops destroyed by soldiers acting on orders from the Somali government. Sarkusta refugee camp, southern Mogadishu, March 4, 2015. © Mohamed Abdiwahab / AFP

Laurel did not know that this would be her last meal: her famous eggplant parmigianino recipe, made specially for her by her son Matthew. Chappaqua, NY, December 2014. © Nancy Borowick

Laurine (17) and her son Thiméo (4 months). They live with Laurine’s father in Fourmies. January 2015. © Viviane Dalles

Winner of the 2014 Canon Female Photojournalist Award, supported by Elle Magazine

Nepal, May 1, 2015. © Omar Havana / Getty Images

Kumari Dangol with special festive make-up. It is not just outside appearances that change for festivals; former Kumaris say they felt bigger and stronger, and could feel heat radiating from their foreheads. © Stephanie Sinclair for National Geographic Magazine

Bong County Ebola Treatment Unit, Suakoko, Liberia, October 2014. 
Health workers entering the high-risk zone to do their morning rounds, removing waste from the previous night. Then a second team enters, with medical staff and health workers bringing food and water, doing blood tests, checking patients and providing medical care.
© Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images Reportage / The New York Times

Exhibition: Canberra

Juno Gemes - Spirit Maps

Visual advocacy for Justice for Indigenous Australians has been the hallmark of Juno Gemes’ artistic practice. Born in Budapest, Hungary Juno settled in Australia in 1949 has spent more than four decades using creative media to agitate for shared knowledge and cultural understanding. Her practice has resulted in a body of photographs, film and ephemera that, although superficially disparate, are bound through the common threads of critique and compassion. Gemes is an observer and a listener. Her images arise from careful conversation, from intuitive felt connections with her subjects and their stories.

A recent collaboration with master photogravure printer Lothar Osterburg at his 3rd St Studio in Brooklyn, New York, produced this group of images that reinterrogate the surfaces and resonances of the photographs into a timelessness and variation of tonal modalities which accords with emotional resonances of these two iconic images. Here the images confirm a sense of immortality of spirit and the continuity of people and culture in this remote island community.

"To me Juno Gemes photos capture the world of Australia’s Aborigines in not so as much a documentary mode, as on an emotional level...Working with Juno in my studio was a joy. She was excited to be able to work in the traditional dustgrain copperplate photogravure process as developed by Fox Talbot and refined Carl Kliç in the 19th century. She approached the proofing and printing with an open mind I rarely have experienced with photographers," says Lothar Osterburg.

Juno's works are held in collections including The National Gallery of Australia, The National Portrait Gallery, Macquarie University Art Gallery Collection and in the Collection Klugue Rhue Museum at The University of Virginia USA.

(Above text adapted from the introduction by Charleyene Olgivie in the catalogue for Juno Gemes - Spirit Maps).

Juno Gemes - Spirit Maps

Opens 9th August - Juno will be giving a talk at the opening.

On until 30 August

Manning Clark House Canberra

In Brief:

Winner Ian Parry Scholarship

Yuyang Liu has been awarded this year’s Ian Parry scholarship for his work documenting the lives of the severely mentally ill and their families in China. He told the New York Times Lens Blog that he was drawn to the story, which was shot in the Guangdong Province, because the mentally ill and their families are often overlooked, if not completely ignored. “This is a group of people who are invisible in normal society. We can’t see them in schools or workplaces, and we don’t see their families.” His photographs depict the families as they struggle to care for their loved ones. Read the full interview and see more images on Lens Blog

Everyday Africa Education

@everydayafrica - Austin Merrill and Peter DiCampo have expanded into education. Find out more about what these Pulitzer Center grantee journalists are up to, and how you can participate, here.

Photo: Jana Ašenbrennerová

Andrew Quilty

Walkley Best Freelance Journalist of the Year

Multi-award winning Australian photojournalist Andrew Quilty talks with Kyla Woods about his journey on Blink.com.

Gul Ahmad, an infant boy suffering from acute malnutrition, is covered by his mother’s scarf while being treated in the therapeutic feeding centre ward at the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) administered Boost Hospital in Lashkar Gah, the capial of Helamnd Province in southern Afghanistan. ©Andrew Quilty/ OCULI