Photojournalism Now

July 17, 2015

This week on Friday Round Up Foam Magazine announces 2015 Talents, Katie Orlinsky's Alaska, James Hosking's Beautiful by Night, Alexia Sinclair's masterclass series, Colour My World panel discussion at the National Gallery, Rosemary Laing at AGNSW and a Q&A with LA Times photojournalist Michael Robinson Chavez.

FOAM Talents 2015
Annually Foam Magazine seeks to identify talented photo media artists under the age of 35. Watch the video to see this year's selected photographers.

Katie Orlinsky - Alaska

I’ve written about American photographer Katie Orlinsky a few times as her work continues to engage me. In a recent series she shot in Alaska the impact of climate change on the environment is dramatic - she was on assignment to photograph the seal hunting season, but the seals had already migrated because the water had become too warm and the ice had melted weeks earlier than usual. In these diptychs that feature on National Geographic's Proof blog you can see how the environment has changed in the space of 6 weeks.

Read the story and see more images on National Geographic Proof

Photo Essay:
James Hosking - Beautiful by Night

Gustavo/Donna

Beautiful by Night is both a documentary film and a series of stills that capture three of San Francisco’s veteran drag queens as they make ready for their performances including intimate at home moments rarely seen. It's a poignant story, told with compassion and honesty. Worth taking a look at the documentary here.

Frank/Olivia

Frank/Olivia - I’m a man in a dress and I’m not afraid to show that

Masterclass - Alexia Sinclair
Discover how Alexia Sinclair digitally mastered the final artwork for Into the Gloaming. Alexia has produced an online masterclass comprising 7 downloadable videos giving you a chance to learn from one of the most exciting, and exacting, photo media artists in the world.

Colour My World

The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra is hosting a panel discussion with Micky Allan, Janina Green, Ruth Maddison and Robyn Stacey as part of the Colour My World exhibition. Moderated by the show’s curators Shaune Lakin and Anne O’Hehir this is a great opportunity to talk with these artists on the ways that ‘art photography’, feminism and photography’s materiality converged during the 1970s and ‘80s.

25th July, 10.30-11.30am FREE

Exhibition: Sydney

Rosemary Laing - transportation

Continuing this year’s focus on photography at the Art Gallery of NSW is Rosemary Laing’s exhibition ‘transportation’ featuring works from her brownwork (above) and greenwork (below) series.

All images (C) Rosemary Laing

Until 20 September
Photography Gallery
AGNSW
Art Gallery Road
The Domain Sydney

Q&A with Michael Robinson Chavez

Michael Robinson Chavez is a photojournalist with the Los Angeles Times. He was recently awarded the Robert F Kennedy Award for Journalism for his series on the California drought. He was in Australia for Head On Photo Festival in May with his exhibition The Driest Seasons: California’s Dust Bowl. He spoke with Alison Stieven-Taylor about the evolution of this story into a five-part series, which ran on the front page of the LA Times...(click on the Q&A tab at the top of the blog to read the interview and see more pictures).

July 10, 2015

Friday Round Up - 10 July, 2015

This week on Friday Round Up - Generation '74 at Arles, Eastern Europe under the Lens at ACP, the launch of Maggie Diaz Photography Prize for Women and #Dysturb holds workshop in Sydney.

Photos of the Week:
Child Labour 1908 and 2015

Lewis Hine 1908

Reuters 2015

Exhibition: Sydney
Ex & Post - Eastern Europe Under the Lens
Group Show

Andrej Balco, Pezinok from the series Suburbs 2005-2006

Curated by Sári Stenczer and Krisztina Erdei this group exhibition features works from Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Georgia, Germany and Slovakia. The exhibition explores the aftermath of the collapse of socialist systems in Eastern Europe, the impact on individuals and communities and how those nations are seeking to define cultural identity.

Rafal Milach, Baranovichi Sasha, the best welder of the Republic of Belarus

Until 16 August
Australian Centre for Photography
257 Oxford Street
Paddington

Book:

Generation ‘74

I really love everything about this book – the concept, the photographs, the text, the production. I saw Generation ’74 when I was at the Auckland Festival of Photography in May and soon it will be on my shelf, after making the journey to Australia all the way from Lithuania.

Generation ’74 features 11 photographers born in 1974. But it’s so much more than a collection of images from a bunch of 40 year olds. Each chapter features a single photographer and begins with a photograph from their childhood followed by 10-12 pages of their work. At the end of the book there is an insightful Q&A also.

Here’s an excerpt from the book’s introduction by one of the photographers and the book’s publisher, Mindaugas Kavaliauskas who is also the director of KAUNAS PHOTO festival.

What do these 11 photographers have in common apart from the year they were born in? Well, quite a lot actually. Today, every one of them is well known in their respective countries and beyond. Some are globally renowned and celebrated figures of photography, but before they became what they are now, they too experienced some historical milestones. They were turning 15 in the year when the Berlin wall came down; the guys from the ‘Eastern Bloc’ were between 16 and 18 years old when their countries regained their independences; and they experienced the expansion of the European Union in 2004 when they were in their thirties. “Generation ‘74” accommodated the Internet and digital photography at a mature age, without having discarded the fundamental ideas about life and photography. They all have created long-term projects based on the notion that the world has been transitioning from analogically unique to uniformly global. Their attitude towards taking pictures is imprinted by a sense of civic, social, and individual duty to make honest statements about their countries of origin, residence and those they visit on project trips. Their photographic works do not pretend to be fashionable, flashy, and are by no means superficial or glossy. Instead, they are humane, thoughtful, bitter, ironic, humorous, critical, and they are resonating with what people feel deep down, rather than say out loud.

Photographers in Generation ‘74: Simon Roberts (UK), Nick Hannes (Belgium), Kirill Golovchenko (Ukraine/Germany), Przemyslaw Pokrycki (Poland), Tomáš Pospěch (Czech Republic), Mindaugas Kavaliauskas (Lithuania), Vitus Saloshanka (Belarus/Germany), Gintaras Česonis (Lithuania), Borut Peterlin (Slovenia), Pekka Niittyvirta (Finland), Davide Monteleone (Italy).

To find out more or to order Generation ’74 click here

If you're in Arles at the moment, you can get your copy at Cosmos Books.

New Prize:
Maggie Diaz Photography Prize for Women
$5000 Photography Prize
$1000 People’s Choice Award

Migrants working on railway 1960s

This newly instituted prize celebrates Maggie Diaz, an American photographer who arrived in Melbourne in 1961 with a one-way ticket, five dollars in her pocket and more chutzpah than the photographic community had seen. Undeterred by the male dominated industry, she successfully established herself as a commercial photographer and went on to shoot for some of the major advertising agencies.

But her passion was photographing Melbourne’s artists, actors and those she came across on the street. Often she’d roam the city after dark with her Rollie capturing a visage of Melbourne that few saw. Her signature is found in the use of available light and her ability to find that evocative moment in everyday happenings.

Beach Boys

Radio 3AW mobile studio 1960s

Maggie is now 90, and it is only in the past decade that her vast oeuvre has come to light through the work of her long-time friend and her curator, Gwen de Lacy. I was fortunate to interview Maggie a few years back and it was a privilege to hear her stories. She’s a sassy dame, a straight shooter and we had a lot of laughs.

The Maggie Diaz Photography Prize for Women, which is sponsored by Guilty Films, is designed to encourage female photographers to keep pursuing their passion. The winner will be announced on 3 September at Brightspace Gallery in St. Kilda when the Maggie Diaz Projects exhibition opens. Judges for the inaugural prize are Naomi Cass, Director Centre for Contemporary Photography, noted photographer Ponch Hawkes and Ballarat International Foto Biennale Director Jeff Moorfoot.

To find out more about the prize click here

Workshop:
#Dysturb at ACP

Benjamin Petit © 2014#Dysturb continues its association with the Australian Centre for Photography (ACP) after taking over its Instagram feed recently. On Saturday 18th July photographers Madelena Rehorek and Tamara Voninsky will run a one day workshop at ACP focusing on reportage skills and social engagement. Visit ACP for more information on its Photocise program and details on how to register for #Dysturb's workshop.

July 03, 2015

Friday Round Up - 3 July, 2015

This week on Friday Round Up - photo essays by David Guttenfelder and Charles Ommanney, exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney and Photography Visionaries in review.

Photo Essays:

Both the New York Times and Washington Post are investing in original photojournalism and creating dynamic, interactive online stories. Check out two recent stories featuring the work of National Geographic's David Guttenfelder and Reportage by Getty Images' Charles Ommanney.

Illuminating North Korea
New York Times

Photographs and Video by David Guttenfelder

One family’s journey from Aleppo to Austria
Washington Post

Photographs by Charles Ommanney

Book Review:
Photography Visionaries
Mary Warner Marien

“The enemy of photography is convention, the fixed rules of ‘how it’s done’ - László Moholy-Nagy 1895-1946

This is one of the many quotes in this wonderful edition that has fast become one of the most important reference books on my shelf. Beginning with Eugéne Atget and ending with Liu Zheng, Photography Visionaries features 75 of the most influential photographers throughout the medium’s history.

Photography Visionaries is a book of revelations, as one cannot know all the works, even of the masters. That’s what’s so exciting about this book, the fact that you learn something new, even if it is a small detail, like Berenice Abbott took Atget’s portrait in 1927. Or that Imogen Cunningham's pregnant nude, which evokes feminist values was taken in 1946. Or that Margaret Bourke-White’s photographs of the Louisville Flood of 1937 speak of racial issues as much as economic and environmental. The book encompasses the breadth of photographic genres from documentary, street photography, and photojournalism to fine art.

Ernest Cole

Frances Benjamin Johnston

Geraldine Krull

Gordon Parks

European and American photographers dominate, but there is also representation from Japan, China, India, Russia, Latin America and Mexico as well as South Africa. Each chapter features an individual photographer, with a short overview, career timeline and a handful of pictures. My only wish is that there could have been more photographs from each, but then the book would have taken on encyclopaedic proportions.

The production values of the publication are first class and photographs in both colour and black and white have been exquisitely reproduced. The design layout makes it easy to navigate. There is also a valuable ‘further reading’ section at the rear.

Graciela Iturbide

Josef Koudelka

Mario Giacomelli

Peter Magubane

Standouts include Alexander Rodchenko (Russia), Lisette Model (Austria), Walker Evans (US), Nacho López (Mexico), Mario Giacomelli (Italy), Daidõ Moriyama (Japan), Frances Benjamin Johnston (US), Carrie Mae Weems (US), Santu Mofokeng, Ernest Cole (South Africa) and Lui Zheng (China). But in all honesty every photographer included has produced some truly brilliant work and getting to know a little of their story is enlightening.

“All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.” Richard Avedon (1923-2004)

Photography Visionaries
Laurence King Publishing

Exhibitions in Brief:

Melbourne

Buddha's Robes
Tobi Wilkinson

2 July - 1 August
Colour Factory Gallery
409-429 Gore St

Fitzroy

Sydney
Aquaticus - Group Show
Photographic artists Annabelle Gaspar, Graham Shearer, Toby Burrows and Michaela Skovranova come together in this group exhibition through a shared interest in water.