Photojournalism Now

September 19, 2014

Friday Round Up - 19th September, 2014

This week on Friday Round Up the festivals continue - Pingyao International Photography Festival opens today in this ancient Chinese city with international and local exhibitions, symposiums, awards and one of the largest photography education programs. In Europe Noorderlicht Photofestival is in full swing in the northern town of Groningen, The Netherlands.

With more than 50 photos on today's blog there's a feast of imagery to enjoy this weekend no matter where you are in the world.

Festivals - China:

Pingyao International Photography Festival

Today the 14th edition of the Pingyao International Photography Festival opens in this UNESCO world heritage city in China’s Shanxi Province with 400 exhibitions featuring more than 2100 photographers and 20,000 images. Exhibitions are held throughout the ancient walled city, indoors and outdoors, bringing photography to an audience in excess of 100,000 and transforming unlikely spaces such as disused factories, into galleries.

This year there are several large international shows feature in the core program with two Australian group shows - The Wizards of Oz and Head On Portrait Prize (Australia) as well as exhibitions showcasing contemporary Baltic, Nordic and German Photography. Plus a group show from New Zealand and the Alexia Foundation grant winners from 2014.

The Wizards of Oz
Featuring ten Australian artists who have participated in the Core Program at the past three editions Ballarat International Foto Biennale held every second August in Australia (Ballarat is 90 minutes from Melbourne).

(C) Meredith O'Shea

Exhibiting artists - Colin Page, Jackie Ranken, John Gollings, Judith Crispin, Kara Rasmanis, Meredith O'Shea, Samantha Everton, Sonia Macak, Tony Hewitt and Vikk Shayen.

Head On Portrait Prize
Also waiving the Australian flag is the Head On Portrait Prize exhibition featuring 40 works, winners and finalists, from the 2014 prize, which is a central feature of the annual Head On Photo Festival held in Sydney.

Finalist - Aldona Kmiec

Winner - Joe Wigdahl

Viewfinders: Contemporary Baltic and Nordic photography
A group show featuring 15 artists from eight countries. Curated by Inga Brūvere.

Viewfinders:
Sweden – Lars Tunbjörk, Thobias Fäldt & Klara Källström
Norway – Marie Sjøvold and Sarah Gerats
Denmark – Astrid Kruse Jensen and Joachim Fleinert
Iceland – Pétur Thomsen
Finland – Sara Bjarland
Estonia – Marge Monko and Paul Kuimet
Lithuania – Indrė Šerpytytė and Mindaugas Ažušilis
Latvia – Ieva Epnere and Ivars Grāvlejs.

To Save a Forest – New Zealand
Curated by John B. Turner and featuring the work of Craig Potton, Ian MacDonald and Martin Hill

(C) Martin Hill

To Save a Forest, is both a celebration of the majesty of the natural world and a cautionary tale of what we may well lose to the rapacious nature of a consumerist society.

Contemporary German Photography
Curated by internationally renowned photo-artist Thomas Kellner and featuring ten German artists.

Daniel Schumann - International Orange
Dirk Hanus - Inner Space
Jutta Schmidt - Freischwimmer
Katharina Mouratidi - Backstage Heroes – Alternative Nobel Prize Laureates
Roger Eberhard - Shanty Town Deluxe
Anna Katharina Zeitler - No Shoes to Dance With
Frank Rothe - No More Angels
Frauke Thielking - Ready, Steady, Go

Gesche Wuerfel - Basement Sanctuaries
Mehmet Ferit Kuyas - Everything you didn’t want to know about me:A Quintology of Diaries Part 5

The Alexia Foundation
For the seventh consecutive year the Alexia Foundation will present an exhibition of the winners of its 2014 Professional and Student Grants - Winner Professional: Sebastian Liste “The New Culture of Violence in Latin America” and winner student, Mehran Hamrahi “Iranian People – Ordinary or Criminals?”

(C) Sebastian Liste “The New Culture of Violence in Latin America”
Salvador de Bahia, Brazil – January 22, 2011: Ana celebrating her sixth birthday. She was born and has grown up inside the abandoned chocolate factory. This impoverished community took up residence here on the coast in Salvador de Bahia. Despite the lack of socio-economic support from the government, they have managed to make a safe place for themselves to live, and form a community of their own, which his safer than the alternatives available to them. However, they are currently being evicted by the government due to being there illegally. Sebastian Liste/Reportage for Getty Images.

(C) Mehran Hamrahi “Iranian People – Ordinary or Criminals?” Sheida, 18, is smoking a cigarette in a cafe. She says "I feel safe in the cafe". Smoking a cigarette is not restricted legally in Iran, however, girls are afraid of smoking in public places. The radical Muslims and traditional people consider this as a abominable act for girls and they might annoy them. Ahvaz (Southern Iran), July 1st 2013

Pingyao International Photography Festival

19-25 September

International exhibitions open until 10 October

To find out more visit the Festival’s website.

Festivals - Europe:

Noorderlicht Photofestival

"An Ocean of Possibilities"

Last year I was fortunate to travel to the northern town of Groningen in The Netherlands to meet with Wim Melis the director of the Noorderlicht Photofestival, which is now in its 21st year. This is, in my opinion, one of the most important festivals in photography, consistently breaking new ground and questioning the relationship between the photograph and its audience.

In 2013 the theme was To Have and Have Not, an exposition on the “causes and agents behind the current global economic and political crisis. An Ocean of Possibilities moves beyond dissecting what went wrong, and looks at the decisive potential of those who go against the tide and plot their own course". 31 photographers are included in An Ocean of Possibilities.

In addition, Noorderlicht this year features six other exhibitions most of which feature multiple artists - Solitude (Danila Tkachenko and Marrigje de Maar), Subcultures, Call of the Wild, Rise, Sustainability (Douglas Gayeton) and Tribute.

Solitude

Danila Tkachenko - Escape

Marrigje de Maar - Rendezvous

Subcultures
Brooklyn hipsters, Beijing rockers, Mod couples and more

Matthew Niederhauser - Sound Kapital: Beijing's Music Underground

Vero Bielinski - Brooklyn Hipsters

Carlotta Cardana - Mod Couples (UK)

Denis Rouvre - Cosplay (dressing up as your favourite character from manga, fantasy or games)

Asa Sjõstrõm - Rockabilly Sweden

Call of the Wild

Laura Hynd - Lady into Hut

Dana Matthews - One Farm, One Decade

Rise

Photographs of protest and disconnection with representative power
Sasha Bezzubov - Occupy Wall Street

Withit Chanthamarit - Transplantation

Stefano De Luigi - Screamers

Giorgio Di Noto - Tunisi, 8.6.2013

Laura El-Tantawy - In the Shadow of the Pyramids

Nermine Hammam - Unfolding

Kirill Golovchenko - Maidan Under Construction

Vladyslav Krasnoshchok & Sergiy Lebedynskyy - Euromaidan

Frederick Lezmi - #Taksim Calling

Marcelo Enrique Londoño Alvarez - Rio Pro Copa

Ben Roberts - Occupied Spaces

Johann Rousselot - D-Days

Angelos Tzortzinis - Greece in Crisis

John Vink - Resisting Human Rights Erosion in Cambodia

Sustainability

Douglas Gayeton - The New Face of Food Farming in America

Tribute
Karen Knorr & Olivier Richon - Punks (UK 1976-1977)

Larry Fink - The Beats (US 1958-1959)

Nooderlicht Photofestival

Until 26 October

Various venues

Visit the website here for details

September 12, 2014

Friday Round Up - 12th September, 2014

This week on Friday Round Up the festival season continues with Unseen Amsterdam Photo Fair opening next Thursday. Read Alison Stieven-Taylor's interview with Fair General Manager Sasha Stone about the new developments for 2014. Also this week new exhibitions for Melbourne and Sydney and the first exhibition in Australia of Don McCullin's work opens soon.

Fair:
Unseen Amsterdam

Last year while I was in Amsterdam, I interviewed Sasha Stone the General Manager of Unseen Amsterdam Photo Fair (pictured below). Now in its third year, Unseen is dedicated to showcasing new and emerging photographers alongside more established artists. With the emphasis on new and “unseen” works, this year more than 60 photographic artists will show work never before shown anywhere, including online.

Photography is a space that is constantly evolving. As a photography commentator, and scholar, I believe Unseen is one of the industry events that acts as a barometer for contemporary photography and as such, it is as much an example of what’s happening now, as it is a prediction of what’s to come...(Read the full interview under Feature Articles at the top of the blog).

Exhibitions: Melbourne

Robert Ashton – Into the Hollow Mountains
A Portrait of Fitzroy 1974

I saw this exhibition last week. There is something nostalgic about this series of photographs that make them more than just a record of the time. Perhaps it is the familiarity of this suburb; Fitzroy is an iconic inner Melbourne enclave and its rich history maps the migration of Melbourne – here blue-collar workers, indigenous Australians, migrants and artists converged. Yet there was still a sense of community within such diversity. People said hello on the streets or nodded their head in greeting. There was time to stop for a chat at the Milk Bar. Neighbours knew each other by name and if they didn't "mate" or "luv" sufficed. Pubs like the Builders Arms and Champion Hotel were local watering holes and there were always stories to be told.

There is one photograph that epitomises, for me, what Fitzroy was like back then; the Greek women sitting outside a house on kitchen chairs surveying the street (above). This image took me back to the days when I rented a house in the area. Even though it was the mid-80s, every afternoon I would see my elderly migrant neighbours out on the footpath with their chairs and radios. It always gave me a sense of being part of a village, rather than living as an addendum to a big city. They were the neighbourhood watch; nothing got past them. And they were always happy to give the "girlie" a toothless grin and offer me a seat or a pickled onion!

The ability to induce personal reactions, to make us think of times gone by, to wander the streets of inner Melbourne before there were mobile phones, gridlocked traffic, and gentrified homes, this is the power of Ashton’s images. “Into the Hollow Mountains” is a really wonderful exhibition, one that will resonate with all, regardless of whether you have personal knowledge of Fitzroy or not. For it is in the spirit of humanity that this story is told.

All images (C) Robert Ashton

Until 27 September
Colour Factory
409-429 Gore St 

Fitzroy

Tom Evangelidis – Façade

In contrast to Ashton's black and white images are Sydney photographer Tom Evangelidis' dramatic exhibition of large format photographs that features iconic architecture from some of the world’s most visually stunning cities including Prague. Hanoi, St Petersburg, Sofia, Istanbul and Havana.

Havana

St. Petersburg

Moscow

Shot over a ten-year period, Evangelidis says his large format photographs “are not romantic, stylised commercial representations of architecture but rather community streetscapes complete with the aberrations and flaws travel photography would typically avoid”.

There is also a beautiful high-end photography book of the same name available.

Until 27 September
Edmund Pearce Gallery
Level 2, Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Melbourne

Exhibitions in Brief:

Melbourne: