Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 24th April, 2015|Photography Art Definition

This week Friday Round Up focuses on the 6th edition of Sydney’s Head On Photo Festival, which is Australia’s largest photographic event. Head On opens next Friday 1st May. Today's preview features some of the international shows included in the Featured program. Next week it’s the Aussies turn.

Feature:

Head On Photo Festival

John Malkovich as Andy Warhol from Sandro Miller's exhibition

Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich: Homage to Photography Masters

exclusive to Head On Photo Festival

The Head On Festival Hub

The biggest innovation this year is the introduction of the Head On Festival Hub, a central location in the heart of Sydney where photographers can mingle, and everyone can participate in exhibitions, screenings, talks and workshops over the first ten days of the festival. This is a fantastic idea and will make it much easier for visitors to see a host of diverse exhibitions in the one venue. I'm looking forward to checking it out, along with other exhibitions I've earmarked as must sees - check out my selection below.

Festival Director Moshe Rosenzveig says, “The Hub is where you can drop in, talk about photography, and see photography. It provides the opportunity to have a social interaction with a whole lot of people”.

Located in Sydney Lower Town Hall the Hub will host nine of the Featured Exhibitions for the festival as well as screenings, artist talks, and workshops. Talks will be held during the day at lunchtimes to encourage city workers to drop in. Screenings will run constantly throughout the day.

The Hub is also the venue for the opening of the Festival on 1st May where the winners of the Head On Photo Awards, which are the flagship of the Festival, will be announced next Friday. This year there are five categories - the coveted Head On Portrait Prize plus Landscape, Moving Image, Mobile, and the new category for 2015, Student.

There’s also a program of talks, workshops and masterclasses including:

Italian photographer Alessandro Penso masterclass - Using Photography for Social Change: From Concept to Completion – click here for details

Ben Lowy, Marvi Lacar and Michael Robinson Chavez – Creating and Packaging Your Visual Story – click here for details

Sandro Miller (Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich) will present on how to shoot portraiture - click link for details

Panel discussion at the Hub on Sunday 3 May 4.30-6.30pm – Staying Relevant as a Photography Professional. Panelists are Jim Dooley, from Alexia Foundation, photographers Sandro Miller, Matt Willis, Alessandro Penso, Daniel Schuman, portfolio expert Sally Brownbill and Alison Stieven-Taylor.

The International Exhibitions - My Pick

Between Heaven and Earth - Shunzan Fan

Chinese photographer Shunzan Fan seeks to capture the importance of the dreamscape. In this series Between Heaven and Earth he features staged pictures of everyday people who pose in front of 'their dream'. Shot in black and white and then manually coloured, these images cross cultural boundaries to show that all of us have hopes and dreams no matter our circumstance or nationality.

Until 16 May

Stanley Street Gallery

1/52-54 Stanley St

Darlinghurst

Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich: Homage to Photographic Masters - Sandro Miller

Diane Arbus Twins

American photographer Sandro Miller has created an amazing collections of photographs paying homage to some of the great photographers of the past century. Enlisting the help of his friend, actor John Malkovich, Miller has painstakingly recreated iconic images such as Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Meryl Streep. This is an extraordinary collection. Don't miss it.

Richard Avedon Beekeeper

Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother

Annie Liebovitz John and Yoko

Annie Liebovitz Meryl Streep

Herb Ritts Jack Nicholson

Bert Stern Marilyn Roses

28 April to 17 May

Black Eye Gallery

3/138 Darlinghurst Rd

Darlinghurst

You can read my interview with Sandro Miller in today's Australian Financial Review

Iraq Perspectives Windows - Benjamin Lowy

Shot between 2003 and 2008 through the window of a Humvee in Iraq, Lowy's images capture fragments of daily life giving an insight into a world where war and violence is not the only story.

1- 17 May

aMBUSH Gallery

Level 3, Central Park,

28 Broadway,

Chippendale

1in20 - curated by Marvi Lacar

1in20 is a project US photographer Marvi Lacar began last year with her husband photojournalist Ben Lowy; a mental health initiative born of her own journey with acute clinical depression.

1in20 is aimed at educating and destigmatising mental illness through creative storytelling and the exhibition consist of a series of Instagram posts, complete with captions and reader comments. Contributions are from those who have dealt with the gamut of human experiences from depression and suicide to sexual abuse, PTSD and the loss of a child. Adding an interactive element, visitors to the exhibition are invited to add their own comments to the prints.

Cara Anna

Echosight

Erin Mencher

Maurice Decaul

Kerry Payne

1-10 May

Sydney Lower Town Hall

Head On Festival Hub

483 George Street

Sydney

The Driest Seasons: California's Dust Bowl

- Michael Robinson Chavez

California is in the grip of crippling drought. In the Central Valley, which is home to an agriculture industry worth billions towns have run out of water and farms have been abandoned as fields lay parched. Chavez’ series, shot over 12 months, examines the effect that this historic drought is having on the people who work the fields and run the farms.

Until 31 May

Customs House (level 2)

31 Alfred St

Circular Quay

In Brief:

Alessandro Penso - Lost Generation at Istituto Italiano di Cultura

Naoto Ijichi

Tokyo Gardens

at The Japan Foundation Gallery

Sebastian Liste - The New Culture of Violence in Latin America presented by the Alexia Foundation at The Hub

VII Photo – Smile

at The Hub

(C) Alexandra Boulat

(C) Ashley Gilbertson

(C) Franco Pagetti

(C) Gary Knight

Jonathan May - Desert Ink

at GAFFA

Gohaf Dashti – Iran

at ACP

Head On Featured Exhibitions - to find our more see the website here

Head On Photo Festival

1-31 May

Sydney - various venues

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

This week on Friday Round Up - FotoEvidence Book Award 2016, Photo Kathmandu makes its debut, two Australians take home Lucie Awards, Stephen Shores Complete Works, images from the photography competition run by  the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor raise questions about the aesthetic of documentary photography and Canada's Boreal Collective hits the streets.

News:

2016 FotoEvidence Book Award Open for Submissions

The 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award is now open for submissions from photographers whose projects demonstrate courage and commitment in the pursuit of human rights and social justice. The winning project will be published in a high quality, hardbound book and exhibited at the Bronx Documentary Center in New York City during the fall of 2016.

Entries are judged by an international jury of five. The 2016 jury members are international journalist Alison Stieven-Taylor, Visa Pour L’Image director Jean-François Leroy, photojournalist Robert Nickelsberg, Yahoo! News photo editor Kelli Grant and FotoEvidence publisher Svetlana Bachevanova.

“FotoEvidence Press was founded to support documentary photographers working on long-term projects that focus on human rights and social justice and to bring to light work that might otherwise not find publication,” says Svetlana.

The Book Award winner and up to four other selected finalists will be exhibited on the FotoEvidence web site and in the exhibition at the Bronx Documentary Center. FotoEvidence will also offer to collaborate with one of the finalists to crowdfund the publication of their work.

Past FotoEvidence Book Award recipients are Marcus Bleasdale (2015), Majid Saeedi (2014), Robin Hammond (2013), Alex Massi (2012) and Javier Arcenillas (2011).

Festival:

PHOTO KATHMANDU

Organised by photo.circle, a Nepali platform for photography, this is the first photography festival for Nepal. With the theme TIME the festival features 18 exhibitions, artist talks and workshops as well as projections.

“Despite and because we have had an extremely challenging year in Nepal this year (with the earthquake and political unrest), we are pushing forward with this festival because we truly believe that rebuilding a sense of identity can only be done through dialogue and the arts and culture is a powerful medium to facilitate these conversations.” says festival co-director NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati.

Australian photojournalist Philip Blenkinsop has documented Nepal’s political transitions for the past 15 years. A selection of this work will be on show in the old Court House at Mangal Bazar, Patan. He says the timing of the festival “means that there is much hard work to be done, but it amounts to lighting a candle in the darkness. The importance of Photo Kathmandu at this time cannot be overlooked. It is a time for consolidation, for sharing, for rebuilding, for sowing the seeds of inspiration.”

It’s great to see Photo Kathmandu go ahead with such enthusiasm and support. More than 500 photographers submitted bodies of work for consideration in the projections with 80 chosen representing 31 countries.

(C) Amy Friend

(C) Frederic Lecloux

(C) Kevin Bubriski

(C) Mariya Kozhanova

(C) Matjaz Tancic

(C) Philip Blenkinsop

(C) Rajan Shrestha

(C) Sumitra Manandhar Gurung

Exhibitions will take place in a variety of public spaces in and around Patan including the alleyways, squares and courtyards of the historic city. The idea of exhibiting in public spaces is born from the desire to make Photo Kathmandu a festival for the people and to take photography to new audiences.

To find out more visit the website

3-9 November

Various venues

Patan, Lalitpur, Nepal

Winners:

The Lucie Awards

Two Australians were winners at this week's Lucie Awards in New York, the premiere annual event honouring the greatest achievements in photography. Kerry Payne Stailey took out the award for Moving Image Photographer of the Year and Ceiba was named publisher of the year for Sam Harris' book Middle of Somewhere. I've written about both Kerry and Sam in recent times. In fact I wrote about another winner, Sandro Miller who won Photographer of the Year for the second year in a row, earlier this year too! Congratulations to all the winners.

My cover story on Kerry Payne Stailey in Pro Photo

From Sam Harris' Middle of Somewhere

My feature interview with Sandro Miller in NZ Pro Photographer

Book Review:

Stephen Shore - Uncommon Places

The Complete Works

‘His work is Nabokovian for me: exposing so much, and yet leaving so much room for your imagination to roam and do what it will’ - Tennessee Williams

Stephen Shore is a master at photographing the ordinary in such a way as to make it extraordinary, capturing moments that are invisible to many until illuminated through Shore’s eyes. His love for the vernacular and his ability to frame seemingly banal scenes and tease out their idiosyncrasies has made him one of the most lauded American photographic artists living today.

In Uncommon Places Shore takes us along for a ride across America, a trip he made several times in the 1970s on what he calls “journeys of exploration: exploring the changing culture of America and exploring how a photograph renders the segment of time and space in its scope. I chose a view... (to read the full review and see more images please click on Book Reviews at the top of the blog).

Uncommon Places

The Complete Works

Stephen Shore

Thames & Hudson

Opinion:

The Documentary Aesthetic in Question

Bangladesh

Faisal Azim

This year’s photography competition run by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, a World Bank initiative, attracted thousands of entries from more than 77 countries, yet the aesthetic of most of the winning images showcased on The Atlantic this week shows a concerning trend. Looking at these images I feel there is little differentiation in style, or voice.

The premise for this competition is to document those business owners who are marginalised and who work outside of the world's banking systems. These photographs present an homogenised, glossy, richly coloured, and stylistically composed view of that world. Documentary photography, in my opinion, should not be so slick as to be mistaken for a scene from a movie or an advertisement. What do you think?

China

Liming Cao

India

Sujan Sarkar

Varanasi

Tatiana Sharapova

Vietnam

Loc Mai

Vietnam

Tran Van Tuy

Vietnam

Lê Minh Quốc

Activism:

Taking it to the Streets in Canada

François Pesant's image of Officers using excessive force arrested 1,118 people during the G20 Summit held in Toronto in 2010. This is the biggest mass arrest in Canadian history. (C) Ian Willms, The Boreal Collective

In the lead to the federal election in Canada earlier this month a group of Canada’s foremost photojournalists, members of the Boreal Collective, took their images to the street in a bid to show the public what they believe has happened to their country. Canvassing topics of elderly care, environmental vandalism, violence against indigenous women and the excessive force of authorities, the Collective wheat-pasted large format black and white prints in public spaces in the hope to generate discussion. #dysturb, a French group, also uses large posters of works by leading photojournalists to draw attention to important global issues and have pasted their work in major cities around the world.

Boreal Collective member Laurence Butet-Roch says, “It's our hope that upon seeing these pictures, passersby will feel the need to get more details, do more research, and get the information they need to cast their vote”.

Ian Willms aerial photograph of the Tar Sands in Alberta pasted at Queen’s Park, Toronto.

(C) Ian Willms, The Boreal Collective

Eighteen indigenous women have been killed while hitchhiking along Highway 16 and many more are reported missing. Investigation is slow and despite the gravity of the situation there has not been any public inquiry. In Toronto Rafal Gerszak pastes her photo of the Highway of Tears sign in British Columbia. (C) Ian Willms, The Boreal Collective

Marta Iwanek’s portrait of an elderly man caring for his wife with dementia in Toronto.

(C) Ian Willms, The Boreal Collective