Friday Round Up - 11 September, 2015

This week on Friday Round Up Melbourne celebrates the opening of a new gallery space - Magnet Galleries - with an exhibition by renowned Australian photojournalist Michael Coyne; two other award-winning Australian photojournalists, Stephen Dupont and Jack Picone head to Cuba for their next workshop; Getty Images announces the winners of the inaugural Getty Images Instagram Grant and Patricia Casey's new work goes on show in Sydney. 

This Week:

I had the great pleasure to interview American entertainment photographer Frank Ockenfels for an upcoming feature article. Frank's all about pushing the boundaries and as far as he's concerned, there are no rules! Here's a peek at some of his photographs. More information on the feature and his Sydney exhibition coming soon.

 Shirley Manson, Garbage

 David Bowie

Adrian Brody

New Photography Gallery: Melbourne
It's exciting to announce the opening of a new gallery dedicated to photography in Melbourne. Magnet Galleries, the brainchild of photographer Michael Silver and curator Suzanne Silver opens this Sunday 6th September in the heart of the city. The Silvers successfully ran PhotoNet Gallery before outgrowing the space and relocating to Bourke Street. Billed as ‘a new social enterprise living centre of photography’ Magnet Galleries Melbourne is intended as a hub of photography where exhibitions, workshops and gatherings will be held throughout the year. 

2/640 Bourke Street
Melbourne City

Exhibition: Melbourne
Michael Coyne - The Weather is Different a Few Miles Away
Yi People, China 

13 September to 3 October
Magnet Galleries Melbourne

Workshop: Reportage
Havana, Cuba with Stephen Dupont and Jack Picone 

L-R:Jack Picone and Stephen Dupont

In this intimate, intensive workshop, participants have the unique opportunity to work with world-renowned photojournalists Stephen Dupont and Jack Picone and guest writer Jacques Menasche to hone their photographic storytelling skills. 

(C) Stephen Dupont


(C) Jack Picone


(C) Jack Picone

(C) Stephen Dupont

This dawn-to-dusk 6-day workshop involves challenging fieldwork, formal and informal critiques, editing sessions, evening projections and open discussion. In a stunning Cuban setting, participants fully engage with the local culture and environment, and learn how to create photographic reportage to the highest standard.

Places are limited. Register here

Awards:
Getty Images Instagram Grant

Getty Images, in collaboration with Instagram, announces the winners of the inaugural Getty Images Instagram Grant, a program founded to reward photographers documenting stories from underrepresented communities around the world using Instagram.

More than 1200 entries were received from 109 countries. The three recipients were chosen based on their respective bodies of work on Instagram. Their work was judged by an esteemed panel of photographic experts, including National Geographic Photography Fellow David Guttenfelder, Director of Photography & Visual Enterprise for TIME Kira Pollack, documentary photographer Maggie Steber, documentary photographer Malin Fezehai, and co-founder of @EverydayIran and documentary photographer Ramin Talaie who focused on the quality of imagery, photographic technique, as well as storytelling ability. Each recipient will receive a grant of US $10,000 and mentorship from one of Getty Images' award-winning photojournalists.

And the winners are:

Ismail Ferdous (@afterranaplaza), a Bangladeshi documentary photographer using Instagram to cover social humanitarian issues, receives a grant for his project titled After Rana Plaza, which centers around the surviving relatives of those killed in the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory.

(C) Ismail Ferdous 


(C) Ismail Ferdous 

(C) Ismail Ferdous 

Adriana Zehbrauskas (@adrianazehbrauskas), a Brazilian-born photographer currently residing in Mexico City, has been awarded for her Instagram portfolio of work which covers topics such as climate change and the documentation of the everyday lives of Latin Americans. Adriana intends to use the grant to fund her project “Next of Kin: Family Matters”, shooting portraits of the families of 43 missing students who went missing from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers School last year. Adriana is also a contributor to the Instagram collective @everydayclimatechange.

(C) Adriana Zehbrauskas

(C) Adriana Zehbrauskas

(C) Adriana Zehbrauskas

Dmitry Markov (@dcim.ru), resides in Pskov, Russia, and volunteers for multiple children’s charities. By sharing his work on Instagram, Dmitry hopes to spotlight the plight of orphaned children and encourage society to “look at the problems of such children in a humane way.”

(C) Dmitry Markov


(C) Dmitry Markov


(C) Dmitry Markov

Exhibition: Sydney
Patricia Casey - Murmur 

In this series Patricia has intricately woven landscape and portrait photography with detailed embroidery to create images that are not only physically multi-layered, but also allegorically. Within each frame Casey invokes a world where memory, nature and fantasy reside in a harmonious coming together that invites the viewer to drift into the realm of imagination.

The images in “Murmur” are printed on fabric and then embroidered making each a unique piece of art. “There are a lot of meditative qualities with working with your hands. When you work with photography your hand is quite removed from your art practice, particularly with the switch to digital. I wanted the self to be more inserted into the work and stitching does that. It slows you down,” she says. 

Patricia will also be exhibiting at PhotoVisa 2015 in Krasnodar, Russia later in the year as part of a curated show by Alasdair Foster.

13 - 27 September
Janet Clayton Gallery
406 Oxford Street
Paddington

Friday Round Up - 7 August, 2015

This week on Friday Round Up - Robin Hammond's Where Love is Illegal, Instagram fake dupes world's media, and exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney and Hobart.

Photo Essay:
Robin Hammond - Where Love is Illegal

Above: Simon, 22. He was arrested while having sex with his boyfriend in Uganda. They were beaten, dragged naked through the village, and thrown in jail with no medical treatment. They later escaped from a hospital when a doctor, who was Simon’s ex-boyfriend, took pity on them. Simon fled to the Ugandan capital of Kampala. He has not seen his boyfriend since. (C) Robin Hammond/PANOS for Witness Change

Robin Hammond is one of the most erudite, and hardest working, photojournalists I've ever had the pleasure to interview. He's also a really lovely person whose deep concern for others has led him on his life's pursuit to give voice to those who are marginalised and persecuted. Last time I spoke to Robin it was about his book Condemned: Mental Health in African Countries in Crisis, which won the FotoEvidence Book Award (2013).

His current series Where Love is Illegal is a Witness Change project that exposes the prejudices and horrific abuse that LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex) people suffer in countries such as Russia, Lebanon and Uganda. Robin travelled to seven countries in all to help these people tell their stories.

To borrow from Ernest Hemingway, Robin's work is brave and honest and true. When I read the story of the young man pictured above I felt compelled to share it. This is taken from a larger story which you can read in full on National Geographic's Proof including an interview with Robin and extended narratives on each of those pictured.

Robin says, "Bigotry thrives where those discriminated against are silenced. The objective is to have the people in this project seen and their voices heard, and to raise money for grassroots LGBT organizations working in countries where being LGBT is illegal or subject to massive discrimination. So we ask everyone to share these stories and to donate to these organizations however they can."

To be loved and to love are fundamental to our humanity. As the Dalai Lama says, we should cherish all sentient beings without qualification.

Lesbian couple “O,” 27 (right), and “D,” 23 (left). They were attacked on the way home from a concert after kissing at their subway stop. “The real fear I experienced was not for myself, it was for the one I love,” said O. St. Petersburg, Russia. November 2014. 

 
Jessie, 24, is a transgender Palestinian woman born in a refugee camp in Lebanon. She was born male, but knew she was female from a young age. Her uncle repeatedly raped her, and her father and brother have attacked and tried to kill her multiple times. Unable to complete her training as a nurse due to discrimination, she has resorted to doing sex work.

Malawi. In 2009 Tiwonge Chimbalanga and her husband Steven were arrested and charged with buggery and indecent practices between males. They were sentenced to 14 years in prison. The case caused an international outcry and both were later pardoned on the condition that they never see each other again. Fearing for her safety, Tiwonge fled to South Africa. All photographs by Robin Hammond/PANOS for Witness Change

Opinion:
Instagram Fake Migrant Story


Last week the Huffington Post led the media's race to publish the amazing story of the Senegalese migrant who was documenting his own journey on Instagram…only the story turned out to be a publicity stunt by a Spanish photography festival. You can read Oliver Laurent’s exposé of the fake story on Time Lightbox here.

This is not the first time that the international media has been duped by digital images, and it shows a complete lack of fact-checking. Editing and correcting after a story has gone to “print” is one of the aspects of digital journalism that corroborates the perception that journalism in the digital age has devolved. This story went viral, was shared amongst other digital media outlets and countless thousands of individuals who posted the story on their social networks. As a long-standing journalist it drives me crazy that the so-called gatekeepers keep turning their backs on the very principles that journalism was founded upon. Pathetic just doesn’t cut it. 

As for using fake photographs to tell a story that is highly political and the cause of debate in many countries is, in my opinion, insensitive and devalues the genuine work being done by photojournalists who often take extraordinary risks to bring the truth to light. This is especially concerning in a year when the credibility of photojournalism is under scrutiny once again after the fallout from the World Press Photo awards and the staggering number of entries that featured manipulated images.

Exhibitions: Melbourne

Robert Ashton - Thin Air

Melbourne photographer Robert Ashton explores the mountainous plateau of Ladakh situated India's far north in his new series of photographic work -Thin Air.

“At an altitude of 3500 metres above the sea on the borders of Pakistan, India, China and Tibet the air is thin and clear and the barren landscape is slowly absorbing the mementos of war,” says Ashton. "Since the petition of India it has become a very sensitive region politically for both India and Pakistan and the landscape bears the marks of war. I was drawn to the barren beauty and the exquisite light of the landscape and the way it absorbed the scattered mementos of war.”

(C) All images Robert Ashton

Until 29 August
CF (Colour Factory) Gallery
409-429 Gore Street
Fitzroy

Future Reference - Group Show

Nova Paul This Is Not Dying 2010

single channel digital video transferred from 16mm film
20 mins 0 secs, dimensions variable courtesy the artist

Curated by Pippa Milne this group show draws on photography’s propensity to trigger, hold and play with memory and features works by Sophie Calle (FR), Rodney Glick and David Solomon (AUS), Siri Hayes (AUS), Nova Paul (NZ), Julian Aubrey Smith (AUS) and Justine Varga (AUS).

Until 6 September
Centre for Contemporary Photography
404 George Street
Fitzroy

Sydney:

Julia Margaret Cameron - Victoria & Albert Museum

Julia Margaret Cameron Mrs Herbert Duckworth 1872. 

Victoria and Albert Museum, London ©  

This exhibition, drawn from the extensive collection of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum features over 100 photographs that trace Julia Margaret Cameron’s early ambition and mastery of the medium. A series of letters is also on display, along with select photographs sourced from Australian institutions.

Julia Margaret Cameron Whisper of the Muse 1865

Victoria and Albert Museum, London ©  

Victoria and Albert Museum, London ©  

Until 25 October

Art Gallery of NSW

Art Gallery Road

The Domain, Sydney

Sydney and Hobart:

Vedat Acikalin - Gallipoli Then & Now: Bonds Forged by War

Adil Sahin (l) and Len Hall (r) meet as friends in 1990 on the Gallipoli Peninsula, the 1915 battlefield they once fought on as enemies. Adil was 17yrs old when he enlisted and Len only 16. They are here together 75 years on.

In this exhibition that commemorates the Australian and Turkish soldiers who served and sacrificed their lives at Gallipoli in 1915, Turkish-Australian photojournalist Vedat Acikalin captures the bonds and friendships forged by those pitted against each other in battle so long ago. Many of these “enemies” went on to have lasting relationships, which have carried over to their families also.

(C) All photos Vedat Acikalin

Gallipoli Then & Now: Bonds Forged by War

Hobart - Allport Library & Museum of Fine Arts Until 22 August
Sydney - Customs House Library, Circular Quay Until 30 September 

Friday Round Up - 24 July, 2015

This week on Friday Round Up - Cuba, exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney, and call for entries - KAUNAS PHOTO festival portfolio reviews and GUATE PHOTO 15 exhibitions. And a great article by Magnum Photo's Larry Towell.

Photo Essay:
Greg Kahn - Cuba

American documentary fine art photographer Greg Kahn gives us a view of today’s Cuba where the gulf between the have’s and have nots widens as the country is pushed into the ‘modern’ world leaving many behind. 

(C) All images Greg Kahn

Exhibitions: Melbourne

Impressions of Melbourne

Charles Kerry 1884

This exhibition is in response to the photographs by Eugène Atget (1857–1927) which feature in NGA’s touring exhibition, Impressions of Paris where Atget is the only photographer. His works appear with those of Degas, Daumier and Lautrec.

Impressions of Melbourne canvases early images of the city taken in the late 1800s by the likes of Charles Kerry through to more contemporary artists. Works are drawn from MGA’s collection. One of my favourite photographers, Mark Strizic, features along with other notable Australian photographers including Max Dupain. 

Mark Strizic Collins Street 1967

Mark Strizic Princes Bridge 1956

Both shows are on until 20 September
Monash Gallery of Art
860 Ferntree Gully Road
Wheelers Hill

Exhibitions: Sydney

Extracts
Mclean Stephenson

(C) All images Mclean Stephenson

This exhibition features an eclectic mix of work from Sydney photographer Mclean Stephenson. Shot over six years on a variety of film formats, his intention with this series is to show the imperfection of the medium as well as the freedom that comes with being open to possibilities and taking a chance.

28 July to 16 August
Blackeye Gallery
3/138 Darlinghurst Road
Darlinghurst 

2020 (I)
Merilyn Fairskye 

At a time when there is renewed debate over nuclear energy, this series by Sydney visual artist and filmmaker Merilyn Fairskye takes a future view of the impact of nuclear energy on humans and the environment. Shot around the Dungeness Power Station B, Kent UK and Degelen Mountain, Soviet underground nuclear test site, The Polygon, Kazakhstan, Fairskye’s images convey a bleak outlook to a potentially real scenario. 

(C) All images Merilyn Fairskye

Until 29 August
Stills Gallery
36 Gosbell Street
Paddington

Call for Entries:

KAUNAS PHOTO 2015 Portfolio Reviews
Registration Open

Established in 2004 KAUNAS PHOTO festival is held annually in Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania. This year portfolio reviews will be held during the festival on 4 September. There are no geographic boundaries to entry and photographers from around the world are invited to register. KAUNAS PHOTO festival portfolio reviews also feature awards including a cash prize, and artistic residencies. It’s a great opportunity to have your work viewed by curators from across Europe. Visit the site for more information. 

GUATE PHOTO 15 

Exhibition Open Call

This is the third outing for this festival, which is held in Guatemala and Antigua Guatemala. GUATE PHOTO is calling for submissions from photographers to participate in the main exhibition program during this year’s festival, which opens on 12 November and runs till the end of the month. A total of 15 artists and 30 photo books will be chosen. Apply here. Program details are yet to be announced, but the festival confirms its lead exhibition is by Martin Parr. 

Article:

Larry Towell's advise to young photojournalists 

In an article on Vice.com Magnum Photo's Larry Towell shares his thoughts. It's definitely worth a read. 

USA. NYC. 9/11/2001. A dazed man picks up a paper that was blown out of the 

towers after the attack of the World Trade Center, and begins to read it. 

Photo by Larry Towell / Magnum Photos.

EL SALVADOR. San Salvador. 1991. A daughter comforts her mother who 

passed out while grieving at the grave of her son who was killed by government 

death squads. Some 70,000 persons died in the 12-year civil war. 

Photo by Larry Towell / Magnum Photos.