Friday Round Up - 29th August, 2014

This week Friday Round Up celebrates the 26th Visa pour l'image International Festival for Photojournalism which starts in Perpignan, France on Monday 1st September. In Part One of our coverage we preview the exhibitions on show this year. Part Two will be published next Friday and features interviews with Vlad Sokhin about his book Crying Meri, which launches at Visa, and also with photo-media specialist Samuel Bollendorf. Plus the winners of the Visa awards and Getty Grants.

Also, for those who are in Sydney this weekend, three exhibitions open at the Australian Centre for Photography. Presented in association with Reportage Projects 2014 are Jodi Bieber's Between Darkness & Light; Ashley Gilbertson's Bedrooms of the Fallen; and Poppy - Trails of Afghan Heroin by Robert Knoth and Antoinette de Jong. For more information visit the Reportage site. 

Festival:
Visa pour l’Image – Part One
Alison Stieven-Taylor

This time last year I was winging my way to Perpignan from Melbourne via Doha and Paris, for the 25th instalment of Visa pour l’image, the international photojournalism festival. This year unfortunately I won’t be attending, but with all the photographers who have kindly offered to “have a drink, or several, for me at La Poste” I’ll be facing a very big ‘virtual’ hangover! Thanks everyone :-)

Perpignan (C) Alison Stieven-Taylor 2013

The professional week of Visa kicks off on Monday 1st September and once again hundreds of photojournalists, along with photo editors, agencies and other industry professionals will descend on Perpignan, in the south of France. This picturesque town gets behind the Festival each year showing extraordinary support for the event and visitors could be forgiven for thinking its name is Visa not Perpignan.

Evening screenings draw large crowds (C) Mazen Saggar

Once again festival director, and creator, Jean-François Leroy and his team have put together a comprehensive program of exhibitions, evening screenings and talks that capture the breadth of work photojournalists are undertaking around the world. Admission to the exhibitions is free throughout the two weeks of the Festival, but exhibitions stay up for a further fortnight allowing school groups to also visit and learn about the important role of photography in bearing witness. Last year more than 8000 students from France and Spain attended.

(C) Alison Stieven-Taylor 2013

The Palais des Congres (above) is the business hub of Visa. It is where seminars and talks are held, where the busy festival and press offices are and where major sponsor Canon is housed. Many of the major agencies are here also including Getty Images. Each day of the professional week, on the top floor of Palais des Congres, agencies and editors meet with photojournalists who have an unprecedented opportunity to show their work and gain critical feedback. Over copious cups of espresso deals are done, old acquaintances renewed and new friends made. Once the doors are closed at the Palais des Congres everyone adjourns to La Poste where conversations last well into the early hours.

Exhibitions:
While there continues to be discussion around the future of photojournalism in its traditional context, the exhibitions presented at Visa remind us that without the work of these courageous, insightful and ultimately talented photojournalists, many of these stories would not be told. And those without means to communicate to the rest of the world will remain silent.

The Photographers in the North
This exhibition, the brainchild of photojournalist Patrick Chauvel, showcases the work of the Vietnamese soldiers who became photographers during the Vietnam War and presents images rarely seen. 

Chu Chi

Chu Chi

Doan Cong

Doan Cong

Hua Kiem

Hua Kiem

Mai Nam

Mai Nam

Typhoon in the Philippines: 

AFP, Leading in the Wake of Haiyan 

© Philippe Lopez

© Noel Celis
Football as seen through the eyes of children 

in Cidade de deus Favela
Christophe Simon AFP chief photographer, Brazil 

Amateurs Make the Front Page
30 Pictures that have not changed photojournalism
Curated by photographer Samuel Bollendorff in partnership with sociologist André Gunthert, this exhibition looks at the amateur pictures, from 2001 to now, that made the front pages. My interview with Samuel will be published on Photojournalism Now next week. 

Bruno Amsellem (Signatures) 

Rohingyas, A Silenced Minority (Burma) 

Mary F. Calvert (Zuma Press)
The Battle Within: Sexual Assault in America’s Military 

William Daniels (Panos Pictures)
Train for the Forgotten - Russia (for National Geographic) 

This train travels through Russia providing medical services for those who live in the most remote parts of the country.

Guillaume Herbaut (Institute)
Ukraine, From Independence Square to the Donbas 

Yunghi Kim (Contact Press Images)
Africa, The Long Road Home: 

From Famine to Reconciliation
1992-1996 

Olivier Laban-Mattei (The Mongolian Project/MYOP)
Mongolia – There is no El Dorado 

Sebastián Liste (NOOR)  
On the Inside of a Venezuelan Prison Controlled by Inmates 

For Time Magazine & Fotopres 

Klaus Nigge (National Geographic)
The Bald Eagle in the Aleutian Islands 

Ian Parry Scholarship
Exhibition of works by scholarship winners 
and patron Don McCullin 

Adrian Fussell Winner 2012 

Rasel Chowdury Winner 2011

Anne Rearick (Agence VU’)
South Africa – Chronicles of a Township 

Jorge Silva (Reuters)
The Skyscraper Slum Caracas

Sean Sutton (MAG/Panos Pictures)
The Eye of the Storm (Philippines) 

Pierre Terdjman
Central African Republic 

Gaël Turine (Agence VU’)
The Wall of Fear (Bangladesh) 

Alvaro Ybarra Zavala (Reportage by Getty Images)
Stories of a Wounded Land 

(The effects of agribusiness in Latin America) 

Michaël Zumstein (Agence VU’)  
Terror and Tears in The Central African Republic

For Le Monde

Tributes to fallen photojournalists:

Chris Hondros (Getty Images)
Testament

Anja Niedringhaus (AP)
A Tribute 

Transmission Series 
Apart from the amazing breadth of exhibitions, one of the highlights of Visa is the Transmission Series, which this year will be run by photographer Christopher Morris. Transmission is designed to share the collective wisdom of experienced photojournalists and photo editors with emerging photojournalists. Morris will be joined by MaryAnne Golon, director of photography at The Washington Post, Jérôme Delay Associated Press’ chief photographer in Africa, photographers Yuri Kozyrev and Sebastián Liste from NOOR and Peter Bouckaert, director of Human Rights Watch. What a fantastic line up.

To find out more about Visa pour l'Image visit the website here. 

Friday Round Up - 22nd August, 2014

This week on Friday Round Up the world’s first PhotoBook Museum, "the road" in Australian photography, the Ballarat International Foto Biennale 2014 collection now online, this year's Arkley Award winner, Photography Today review and more.

Picture(s) of the Week:
After seeing this photograph of Vitaliy Raskalov, taken recently by his climbing partner and fellow photographer Vadim Makhorov in Hong Kong, we wanted to show another "daredevil" - pioneering photographer Margaret Bourke-White who was photographed back in 1934 atop the Chrysler building in New York with a much bigger piece of kit!

Fundraiser:

Ballarat International Foto Biennale 

If you’re in Melbourne come along on Sunday 31st August 12-4pm at Eleven40 Gallery to support the fundraising efforts of Ballarat International Foto Biennale and to add one of these fantastic pictures to your collection for only $125.00. If you can’t make it you can still buy a photograph online and support this event. Visit the website here for all the details. 

Award:
Hari Ho wins Arkley Prize

Established in 2010 in memory of Australian artist Howard Arkely this award is given annually to an emerging, or unrepresented artist exhibiting in Melbourne’s NotFair art fair. The 2014 Arkley, which carries a prize of $10,000 was awarded to Hari Ho, who exhibited works from his Monument and Ruins series, which Photojournalism Now featured recently. Congratulations to Hari who is pictured second from left. 

(C) Hari Ho 

Opening:
PhotoBookMuseum - Germany

Photos from the opening of the PhotoBookMuseum project this week at Carlswerk.

The first museum in the world dedicated to the photobook is scheduled to open its permanent home in Cologne, Germany in 2016. This week the PhotoBookMuseum joined with Photoszene Festival to launch a program of more than 24 exhibitions, workshops, lectures, book signings and other activities, which will run until 3rd October at Carlswerk, Cologne-Mülheim.

Founded by Markus Schaden (pictured below), the PhotoBookMuseum is an exciting initiative designed to celebrate and promote the photobook as an “independent artistic medium”. With the explosion of photobooks, made possible largely by digital technology, there have reportedly been more photobooks published in the last decade than in the history of photography. 

(C) Damian Zimmermann

The PhotoBookMuseum at Carlswerk
Schanzenstraße 6-20
51063 Cologne-Mülheim

Book Review:
Photography Today

In the week that photography celebrates its 175th anniversary it seems appropriate to post a review on a new book from Phaidon, “Photography Today,” which looks at the genre from the 1960s to now.

Putting together a book of this nature is an ambitious project. There will always be contention around who is included and excluded, but there are obvious omissions in this book that are concerning...(to read the full review and see more pictures please click on the Book Reviews tab at the top of this blog).

Free Talk:
The Road and Australian Photography

(C) John Gollings

As part of the current exhibition at the Monash Gallery of Art - The Road - on Saturday 23rd August (tomorrow) Monash Gallery of Art will host a panel discussion on the significance of "the road" to Australian photography in the 1970s and 1980s. Gael Newton, Senior Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia, will chair the discussion with exhibiting photographers Virginia Coventry, John Gollings and Ian North.

2-4pm
Monash Gallery of Art
860 Ferntree Gully Road
Wheelers Hill

Your Daily Photograph

Final Week

Alison Stieven-Taylor’s curation for "Your Daily Photograph," an initiative of the Duncan Miller Gallery in Los Angeles,  ends on 31st August. If you haven't signed up yet, there's still time and it's free. Click here. 

Friday Round Up - 15 August, 2014

This week on Friday Round Up the 25th Melbourne Art Fair, Daniel Berehulak, Ballarat International Foto Biennale fundraiser, exhibitions and more.

Picture of the Week:

By the light of the supermoon - Madrid 

(C) Andres Kudacki

Fair:
Melbourne Art Fair

(C) Marty Williams

The 25th Melbourne Art Fair opens today at the majestic Royal Exhibitions Building. More than 20,000 people are expected to view the 70 galleries that feature in this year’s Fair with solid representation from local curators as well as international galleries from Asia, Europe and South America. The Fair also features a bookshop and art making spaces. 

With a philosophy of public engagement, this year’s Art Fair is also spilling into the streets of Melbourne with day and night events and pop-up shows in the city’s major art spaces such as the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) as well as other arts hubs including the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Bulleen and the Linden Centre for Contemporary Art in St. Kilda.

(C) Marty Williams

“Good art needs to be seen in the flesh to be appreciated, ” says Barry Keldoulis the Fair's director, who believes the Art Fair is the “physical manifestation” of the Internet – a twist on thoughts that tend to see the Internet as the interloper as opposed to the catalyst for driving people into galleries.

This year a number of galleries feature photo-media art as well as documentary photography including Galeria AFA from Santiago, Chile with an exhibition of black and white portraiture from renowned photographer Paz Errazuriz (below). (Photojournalism Now's interview with Galeria AFA director Camila Opazo will feature on next week’s Friday Round Up).

(C) Marty Williams

Keldoulis says that with the emergence of video art, collectors had initially “leap frogged” over photography, but he believes that photography is now most definitely on the radar of art collectors. However he doesn’t see “any merit or honesty in creating a distinction between photography as art and other visual art forms”.

 (C) Marty Williams

Fair Director Barry Keldoulis

(C) Marty Williams

To that end Keldoulis doesn’t see the need for photo curators either claiming that art curators who understand image making can curate photography also. Nor can he see the point of galleries specialising in the medium. His comments definitely provide food for thought and will hopefully spark some enlightened debate on the topic of photography as art.

15-17 August
Melbourne Art Fair
Royal Exhibition Buildings
Carlton

Stills Gallery at Melbourne Art Fair

(C) Trent Parke*

Sydney’s Stills Gallery, arguably Australia’s most respected photography-dedicated gallery, will feature a number of its artists works at the Fair including a selection from Trent Parke's The Camera is God series, Narelle Autio, Pat Brassington and Glen Sloggett. View the Stills Gallery catalogue here. 

*The above image is not in the catalogue, but representative of the work in The Camera is God.

Feature Article:
Daniel Berehulak

The latest issue of NZ Pro Photographer magazine features Alison Stieven-Taylor’s interview with award-winning Australian photographer, and really nice guy, Daniel Berehulak. Download the iPad App for the magazine to read the story, or lash out and subscribe to the print version - it's a sexy, full colour glossy magazine that does justice to the amazing photographers it features.

Fundraiser:
Ballarat International Foto Biennale

On Sunday 31st August the Ballarat International Foto Biennale (BIFB) will host a fundraising event at Eleven40 Gallery in Malvern where photography lovers will be able to view and purchase photographs donated by some of Australia’s leading photographers and photo-media artists.

More than 200 photographers were invited to submit an image for consideration in the BIFB 2015 Collection, which is curated by Festival Director Jeff Moorfoot. The final selection of around 125 photographs, including one of Alison Stieven-Taylor's photographs, will feature in the BIFB 2015 Collection book also and the “first edition” will be auctioned at the fundraiser around 3pm.

Photographs are displayed anonymously with collectors purchasing a red dot for $125. On the Sunday those holding red dots will be able to select the image of their choice in a “first drawn” basis in the Print Selection Lucky Dip.

Moorfoot says the event provides “a fantastic chance to purchase a one-off archival print for a price perhaps well under the value of what an artist might normally sell his or her work for.” All works are offered “anonymously” so purchasers won’t know whose work they have bought until the provenance on the back is revealed. 

Come along, enjoy the art, food and wine and help support BIFB.

Sponsors: Eleven40 Gallery, Kayell, Epson and Blurb.

Sunday 31 August
from 12noon
Eleven40 Gallery
1140 Malvern Road
Malvern

Check out the website for more information 

Round Up of Exhibitions closing soon:

Melbourne:

Until 23 August
Shara Henderson – London Edit
Edmund Pearce

Sydney:

Ends Sunday 17 August
Paul Blackmore – ONE
Blackeye Gallery

Your Daily Photograph

If you haven’t signed up already, check out Your Daily Photograph to see Alison’s curated selection of 30 photographers, which runs through until the end of August. Already a number of photographs have been sold, and it's fantastic to see Australian photographers getting some well deserved attention on the international photography market.  Today’s photograph is from Alexia Sinclair (above). Follow the link here to see more images.

Friday Round Up - 8 August, 2014

This week on Friday Round Up new exhibitions for Melbourne and Launceston, John G. Morris’ Get the Picture documentary, American photographer Michael Ast’s new book, and Your Daily Photograph. Plus this week’s Picture of the Week.

Picture of the Week:

(C) Mahmud Hams - Gaza August 5, 2014

Documentary Film:
Get the Picture  - John G. Morris 

(C) Peter Turnley 2014

If you haven’t seen this fantastic documentary on John G. Morris by Cathy Pearson check it out via the link below. Morris is such an entertaining and erudite man and his thoughts on photojournalism really should be required “hearing” for anyone interested in the medium. He’s also a really nice guy, and I was lucky enough to meet him last year at Visa pour l’Image.

For those of you who don’t know Morris, he was picture editor for Life and for the New York Times, amongst other titles, and a close friend of Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Eugene Smith. He was also the picture editor who was first to run with Eddie Adams now iconic image from the Vietnam War (see below), on the front page of the New York Times, which he talks about in the film. He’s also worked with a great many contemporary photographers including Peter Turnley who took this intimate portrait of Morris in Paris this year, Morris’ favourite city. Turnley also features in the film along with Paolo Pellegrin and Don McCullin amongst others. This is one of the best documentaries I've seen. Period. 

(C) Eddie Adams

To view Get the Picture click here

Exhibition: Tasmania
Another Country 

(C) Matthew Newton 

On Friday night the exhibition “Another Country” by photographers Matthew Newton and Sarah Rhodes opens at Sawtooth Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania. It’s not often that we hear from the Apple Isle and it is thanks to Newton’s marketing savvy that Photojournalism Now received the information. That might sound trite, but you would be surprised how many photographers don’t promote their work.

“Another Country” explores the remote communities of Tasmania in large format photographic portraits, landscapes, and still life compositions. Many people still live in pockets of Tasmania that are quite isolated and in some ways have been forgotten by the modern world. These hidden folds are captured by Newton and Rhodes in very different, yet complementary styles. 

(C) Sarah Rhodes 

“Inspired by historical accounts and contemporary political dialogue we aim to hint at narratives and relay the experiences of strangers met in settings that spur our own emotions. Ultimately, this body of work is a meditation on small town life and the landscape,” says Newton.

Newton is a seasoned photographer and cinematographer, and notably has been awarded for his work documenting the vulnerability of Tasmania’s forest for the past decade. For this work he’s been a finalist in the Australian of the Year awards and the Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism. Newton has also been a finalist in the National Portrait Prize, the Moran Prize for Contemporary Photography and the Bowness Photographic Prize on a number of occasions. 

Above images (C) Matthew Newton

Rhodes is an emerging contemporary photographic artist. She uses portraiture as a means of exploring themes around identity. Rhodes has exhibited at Photoville in New York, and she is also a finalist in this year’s Bowness Award. Her work is held in public and private collections including the National Library of Australia and the Charles Blackman Trust. 

Above images (C) Sarah Rhodes

Guerilla Event
Inspired by the Elizabeth Street Gallery in Sydney, the pair will also undertake a “guerilla event” adorning an abandoned building in Launceston’s CBD with a series of A0 sized prints from the exhibition.

Until 30 August
Sawtooth Gallery
2/160 Cimitiere St

Launceston 

To view more of Newton's work please click here

To view more of Rhodes work please click here

Exhibition: Melbourne
NotFair Art Fair

NotFair, Australia's independent art fair opens in the inner Melbourne suburb of Collingwood next week. NotFair began in response to the lack of opportunities for artists without gallery representation, to show their work. NotFair's "principal role is to conduct a biennial art exhibition to launch the careers of emerging, undervalued and lesser-known mid-generational artists". This year Melbourne-based photographer Hari Ho is the only photographer included in the selection. Ho is showing three images from his series "Monuments and Ruins". 

All images (C) Hari Ho

NotFair Art Fair
12 Peel Street
Collingwood

Opening 14 August 6-8pm
NotFair exhibition
15-17 August

Book Review:

Michael Ast - Trying to Find the Ocean

(C) Michael Ast

The first thing I noticed about American photographer Michael Ast’s debut book is how these images carry the tempo of a city, in this case Baltimore, Maryland. It is almost as if Ast’s camera is a barometer for the mood of this town seen in its human and animal inhabitants, its concrete structures, cracked roads, dilapidated buildings and steaming vents.

In “Trying to Find the Ocean” Ast creates a seamless narrative that gains momentum as the pages unfold and there is definitely a sense that as you move through this book you are part of a journey that is both physical and allegorical...(to read the review in full and see more photographs please click on the Book Reviews tab at the top of this blog).

Your Daily Photograph
August Guest Curator – Alison Stieven-Taylor 

(C) Brian Cassey - one of Alison's selections

For the month of August Alison Stieven-Taylor is guest curator for Your Daily Photograph, which is an initiative of the Duncan Miller Gallery in Los Angeles. Each day subscribers receive an email – Your Daily Photograph – that features curated photographs that are available for sale (click here to view). This daily email is sent to the Gallery's subscriber-base of around 3800 dedicated photographic art collectors. “In the recent past images from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andreas Gursky, Richard Misrach, Andre Kertesz, Edward Burtynsky and other photography legends have appeared in Your Daily Photograph”.

Gallery director Daniel Miller says the idea began in 2012 when a collector who wanted to sell a large and diverse collection of photographs approached the gallery. “We started emailing one picture everyday to a small list of our collectors, and the "Daily" was born,” says Miller. “The list grew by word of mouth among collectors, and we began to accept subscribers. After some time, we added a few categories to each email, to present more kinds of photographs to our subscribers, which now stand at around 3800”.

As the subscriber list has grown so have sales, but there’s no formula to what sells and Miller says, “different collectors have very different tastes and each one has unique interests that is influenced by a range of things such as age, education, habits and even geographic regions. We are constantly surprised by which images have the highest demand”.

In the digital world where we are inundated with images Miller says the average collector can be overwhelmed. As a result Your Daily Photograph’s curated selections have found a niche for “serious collectors”. And it has also helped photographers to find new markets as well as representation and exhibitions. Check out the website to see comments from photographers who have participated in Your Daily Photograph.

If you haven’t signed up yet, you can subscribe here. Alison’s curated collection continues until the end of August.