Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up

October 31, 2014

Friday Round Up - 31st October, 2014

On Friday Round Up this week it’s all about exhibitions. In London, New York, Berlin, and Sydney there’s a host of fantastic photographic exhibitions currently on and about to open. Plus check out the photo essay on the changing face of Harlem. More than 30 photos feature on this week's blog.

Exhibitions:

London

Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age

This comprehensive exhibition at London's brilliant Barbican showcases the works of 18 photographers spanning the 1930s to today. With images from New York's soaring skyline to post-war California, contemporary Venezuela and the colonial era of the Congo, Constructing Worlds gives an extraordinary insight into the architectural designs that have shaped our cities.

Dutch photographer Iwan Baan's images (below) are among my favourites, but there are so many amazing images, and structures, in this exhibition. If you are in London this is a must-see exhibition, as the stories these images tell go far beyond the physical to make comment on the changes to our communities in the wake of progress.

Until 11 January, 2015
Barbican
Silk Street
London

New York to Chattanooga

The New York Times Magazine Photographs
Curated by the magazine’s longtime photo editor Kathy Ryan and Aperture Foundation’s Lesley A. Martin

Gregory Crewdson, Julianne Moore, from “Dream House,” 2002

This traveling exhibition showcases photographic projects that have appeared in the New York Times Magazine spanning the past 15 years. The show closes this weekend in New York and its next stop is the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee 24 November to 29 March 2015.

Lars Tunbjörk, 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, published May 18, 1997

Ryan McGinley, Emily Cook, 2010 Olympic freestyle skier (aerials). From “Up!,” published February 7, 2010 (cover image)

Roger Ballen, Actress Selma Blair. From “The Selma Blair Witch Project: Fall’s Dark Silhouettes Have a Way of Creeping Up on You,” published October 30, 2005

Malick Sidibé, Assitan Sidibé in Marni and Christian Lacroix. From “Prints and the
Revolution,” published April 5, 2009

Berlin

Cordelia Beresford - Night Watchman

Cordelia Beresford, the daughter of Australian film director Bruce Beresford, has carved a reputation for herself as an accomplished director and award-winning cinematographer, and she is also a highly collectible photo-artist. This exhibition features her still photography, recent works that echo cinematic qualities and also draw on her work with leading choreographers. It's a curious collection, but shows her diversity as an artist.

Until 21 November
Michael Reid Berlin
Ackerstraße 163
D-10115 Berlin

Sydney

Steve Greenaway - A City Unpolarised

In this series, Sydney photographer Steve Greenaway layers images of mannequins and shopfronts over urban streetscapes to create a multidimensional look at iconic cities including London, New York and Sydney. By choosing to portray these photographs in black and white, Greenaway has managed to slow down what are busy, complex images and allow the eye to be drawn in.

November 11-30
Blackeye Gallery
3/138 Darlinghurst Road
Darlinghurst

Anne Ferran – Shadow Land

This 30-year retrospective features the largest collection of works by Australian photo-media artist Anne Ferran to be shown in Sydney. Ferran also currently has two works on show at Monash Gallery of Art as part of the Photography Meets Feminism group exhibition.

Opens 7 November
Australian Centre for Photography

257 Oxford Street

Paddington

Photo essay:
125th: Time in Harlem

Capturing the changing face of Harlem in New York, photographers Edward Hillel and Isaac Diggs walked the length of 125th Street from the Hudson to the Harlem River in 2009 to document the neighbourhood. Here are some of their images, which the pair hope to publish in a book in the near future.

This is important work. Our cities and suburbs are changing rapidly, not just physically, but socially as well. The gentrification of suburbs that were once deemed unfashionable, or unsavoury, has resulted in the homogenisation of the urban landscape. Photo essays like this will become visual time capsules, our only link to the past. Once the wrecking balls have done their work, and the multi-national brands have visually cloned our cities, these photographs will take on historical import and allow future generations to see what was lost. This may be a romantic view, but I firmly believe that in the rush for progress and the rapid evolution of technology, communities are losing their individuality and vibrancy to the hollow promises of the corporate dollar.