Friday Round Up - 26 June, 2015

This week a look at three incredibly powerful photo essays including Arnau Bach’s seminal work, Suburbia, plus Bruce Gilden hits the Paris Metro, Australians on show at PhotoIreland and Auckland Festival of Photography’s inaugural charity auction.

Photo Essays:
Japanese American Internment Survivors
Paul Kitagaki Jr

During WWII more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned in camps in the USA. Dorothea Lange, amongst others, photographed many of those detained in California. Photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr’s family was amongst them. 70 years later he has revisited those original photographs, tracking down others pictured and where possible shooting them in the same location as the original images. Kitagaki also interviewed his subjects about their experiences. It’s an emotional series that reminds us the human toll of war extends far beyond the battlefields to impact those who through their ethnicity are fated to be called enemies. To see more images and read the full story visit Mother Jones

Dorothea Lange also photographed Kitagaki’s family. Above, his grandparents Suyematsu Kitagaki and Juki Kitagaki are with their children, Kimiko (11yo) and his father Kiyoshi (14yo) in Oakland, California. They were interned in the Topaz Internment Camp in Utah in 1942.Below: In this photo Paul Kitagaki Jr. (far right) is pictured with his father (centre) and aunt Kimiko (second from left) at the same location as the original photograph.

Above: This iconic image by Dorothea Lange features 70-year-old Sakutaro Aso and his grandsons Shigeo Jerry Aso and Sadao Bill Aso. They were deported from California in 1942. Bill (below right) told Kitagaki, "When I look at the picture, I can see my grandfather realized that something terrible was happening and his life was never going to be the same again. That was the end of the line for him”.

Shigeo Jerry Aso and Sadao Bill Aso (C) Paul Kitagaki Jr

Above: Helene Nakamoto Mihara (left) and Mary Ann Yahiro (center) taken by Dorothea Lange in San Francisco 1942. Both girls ended up in Topaz Internment Camp in Utah. Mary Ann, pictured on the right below with Helene, and her mother were separated and never saw each other again.  

(C) Paul Kitagaki Jr

Girls in Justice
Richard Ross

“Been here two months for a violation. They make me take out all the studs they can. But the one in my throat and in my cheeks are implants. I ran away from placement. It was a group home with 65 kids in Critinton, Orange County.” 15 year old.

American photographer and academic Richard Ross has been working on his long term project to document the juvenile justice system in that country for the best part of a decade. After photographing detention centres in more than 30 states Ross has no doubt the system is failing these kids. He hopes his photographs can shine a light on the plight that a growing number of American teens face. 

“I should be a sophomore but I have no credits for school. The last grade I completed was eighth. My mom visits. She isn’t a parent; she’s a teenager in a parent body.” 16 year old.

Girls make up the largest number of juvenile detainees in the system and some are as young as ten. Ross, who is a professor at the University of California, has published a second book on the project - Girls in Justice - that specifically focuses on this group. Many are in detention for minor offences, and carry the scars of emotional and physical abuse often at the hands of their families. Others have nowhere else to go.

Ross photographs the girls to obscure their faces. “If you see a face, you can say, ‘well, I’m glad that’s not my kid. But if the face is obscured, it could stand in for anybody’s kid,” he says. 

“I was four months when I first came in the system. My mom didn’t have a house; she lost it. I’m here with my sister, but my sister’s now with a foster family. If it works out, she gets to stay. But she told me it’s not gonna work out and she’ll be back to see me.” 11 year old. 

“They took me from my mom at age 12 because she’s had drug problems. She was beating me, and I was molested by her friends. I think I was born in Asheville, North Carolina, but at this point I don’t really live anywhere.” 15 year old.

“My mom is deceased. Drug overdose. I stayed with my auntie until I was 11 in Compton. She was abusive, verbally and physically. I went to maybe 15–20 foster homes.” 16 year old.

You can see more of Richard Ross’s work on juveniles in justice on the website Juvenile in Justice
Read the full interview with Ross at Slate.com

Suburbia
Arnau Bach


(C) Arnau Bach


(C) Arnau Bach


(C) Arnau Bach


(C) Arnau Bach


(C) Arnau Bach


(C) Arnau Bach

Spanish photographer Arnau Bach spent four years photographing the inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the most populated, and poverty stricken areas of Paris. Here 1.5 million people live in close quarters. Unemployment and crime are high and hope for a better tomorrow faint. On his website Arnau says, “This work seeks to reflect on the lifestyle of youth in these ghettos: their gregarious existence and their love for hip-hop culture, the lack of opportunity and the absence of social services and recreational facilities which leads them to stay idle in the streets. Beyond the harshness of their social codes, youth culture rebels as an act of resistance against of a present where they don’t have much to gain and even less to lose.”

To see more of his work click here

Bruce Gilden
Paris Metro

Through October, RATP, the world's fifth largest public transport company will feature photographs by Magnum Photos' Bruce Gilden in 16 of its subway stations. The theme of the exhibition is urban mobility in the five cities where the RATP group operates: Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Manchester, New York and Paris. Gilden’s 41 photographs will be on display in multiple locations totaling nearly 300 images. 

All Photos: (C) Bruno Marguerite RATP

PhotoIreland
Dublin

(C) Katrin Koenning

Australians have a strong presence at this year’s Photoireland which kicks off on 1st July in Dublin for a month. Melbourne’s Katrin Koenning continues her European tour with an exhibition of new works; the Australian Centre for Photography presents Island - Australia a group show curated by Claire Monneraye that features a range of genres from street photography to documentary and fine art with works by Markus Andersen, Katelyn Jane-Dunn, Charles Kasprzak, Kristian Laemmle-Ruff, Jesse Marlow, Raphaela Rosella, Chris Round, David Maurice Smith, Juliet Taylor and Wouter Van De Voorde and; the Asia Pacific Photobook Archive will also present a selection of books from its collection. To find out more visit the Festival here  

Auckland Festival of Photography

Charity Auction

On Tuesday 30th June, the inaugural Auckland Festival of Photography Charity Auction will be held at 6.30pm at Webb’s at 23-25 Falcon St Parnell. You can bid on photographic works by emerging and established New Zealand photographers. There’s 55 photographic works up for grabs. Check out the catalogue here.  

Friday Round Up - 20 March, 2015

This week on Friday Round Up an interview with Russian photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva, Asher Milgate's Survivors, the Photograph and Australia (AGNSW), Earthmatters (MGA), Inspiration by Design (SLV) and Derryn Tal at Stanley Street.

Interview:
Evgenia Arbugaeva 

(C) Evgenia Arbugaeva - Weather Man

The remote reaches of our planet hold fascination for many. From the comfort of our heated homes we harbour romanticised views of explorers and scientists working in fantastical locations like the Arctic. With the Northern Lights dancing across the sky, endless plains of snow and ice and darkness descending for half the year, nature paints a thrilling canvas that allows the imagination to soar.


(C) Evgenia Arbugaeva - Weather Man



(C) Evgenia Arbugaeva - Weather Man

Photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva knows this canvas well. She grew up in Tiksi in the Republic of Yakutia, a northern Russian seaport located on the coast of the Laptev Sea. Her father, a breeder of rare Eastern Siberian Huskies, invested in his children a love of nature and adventure, a spirit that today informs her choices on what to photograph...(to read the full interview and see more pictures please click on the Feature Articles link at the top of the blog).

Evgenia Arbugaeva's Weather Man is currently showing in Paris at In Camera Gallery until 14 April, 2015 and will also feature in this year's Photo de Mer Festival in France 3 April to 3 May. 

Exhibitions:

Dubbo:

Asher Milgate - SURVIVORS

Aunty Joyce
This exhibition of recorded oral histories and black and white portraits features the Elders and Elders-in-waiting who grew up on the Nanima Mission in Wellington, 350km west from Sydney at the junction of the Macquarie and Bell Rivers.

Photographer Asher Milgate, who was born in Wellington,  says he returned to his home town after living in Sydney with a new perspective on his local community. Turning his focus to the importance of documenting the history of the area's Indigenous people, Milgate has created an invaluable resource that will serve generations to come. 

Milgate says, “This project has humbled me a lot. I am a white Australian and I grew up amongst these people and in this place. I couldn’t see things clearly as a child, but now as an adult I have more perspective. I went to school and played football with many of the grandsons and sons of the people I interviewed. They are my friends. This gave me some confidence to contact the people I interviewed for this project. I wanted to record and share their stories”.

“Being a local non-Indigenous person and being granted the permission and acceptance to work so closely with the community to produce a work of this kind, I believe is the start of reconciliation in our community. A grass roots development that I hope will bring together our whole community by creating understanding, respect and acceptance.”

Denise Kelly

Neville Brown

Paul West

Uncle Billy Lou

Wayne Carr

Milgate hopes Survivors will “help retain Indigenous oral history…My work seeks to preserve the beliefs of these great people, their legends and traditions”.

Until 10 May 2015

Western Plains Cultural Centre

Dubbo, NSW (393km west of Sydney)
(C) All images Asher Milgate

Sydney:

The Photograph and Australia

Olive Cotton, Only to taste the warmth, the light, the wind c1939

At a time when photography is ubiquitous, a new exhibition The Photograph and Australia at the Art Gallery of NSW, gives us an opportunity to look at the medium’s evolution in this country and how photography has shaped our historical narrative. Images date from 1840s to now, with 400 photographs, and more than 120 artists including Morton Allport, Richard Daintree, Paul Foelsche, Samuel Sweet, JJ Dwyer, Charles Bayliss, Frank Hurley, Harold Cazneaux, Olive Cotton, Max Dupain, Sue Ford, Carol Jerrems, Tracey Moffatt, Robyn Stacey, Ricky Maynard, Anne Ferran and Patrick Pound.

David Moore, Migrants arriving in Sydney 1966

Nicholas Claire, Fairy Scene at the Landslip Black's Spur, c1878

Mervyn Bishop, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pours soil into the  

hands of traditional land owner Vincent Lingiari, Northern Territory 1975

Anne Zahalka, artist #13 (Rosemary Laing) 1990 from the series Artists

The Photograph and Australia
21 March - 8 June, 2015
Art Gallery of NSW

Melbourne:

Earthmatters

(C) Tony Hewitt

Part of Art+Climate=Change 2015, Earth matters: contemporary photographers in the landscape is an exhibition that features landscape photography by the likes of Anne Ferran, Silvi Glattauer, Siri Hayes, Harry Nankin, David Tatnall and Christian Thompson. There is also a new installation by Ninety Degrees Five, a collective of five Australian artists including Tony Hewitt, Peter Eastway and Les Walking.

(C) Les Walkling

(C) Peter Eastway

(C) Chris Laing

(C) ChristianThompson

Art+Climate=Change 2015 is a Melbourne-wide Festival comprising various art exhibitions, forums, and talks designed to engage the public in action on climate change. www.artclimatechange.org

On until 3 May, 2015
Monash Gallery of Art

Inspiration by Design: Word and Image

French photograph of Quant models 

This exhibition from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London celebrates five centuries of artistry in print and includes a selection of photography, graphic design, fashion, magazines and rare illustrated books. For the first time in Australia.

Fentons Hardships in the Camp

Yohji Yamamoto

China Pictorial magazine 1971

20 Mach to 15 June, 2015
State Library of Victoria

Sydney:

Derryn Tal - Reactions

Chemical Cocktail

Sydney abstract contemporary artist Derryn Tal’s latest exhibition Reactions is on at Stanley Street Gallery. Featuring mixed media works with photography and video, Tal says her focus is on the “discovery and orchestration of reactions between mediums”.


Orchestra of Alchemy 

Molecular Magic

Melting Moment

Until 11th April
Stanley Street Gallery
1/52-54 Stanley Street
Darlinghurst