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.

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

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.

 
(C) Alexia Sinclair

Panel Discussion

Colour My World

(C) Robyn Stacey

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). 

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.