March 04, 2016

Friday Round Up - 4th March, 2016

This week on Friday Round Up - POYi Awards, exhibitions in Melbourne, Brisbane and New York, an article on Why We Need Professional Photojournalists by Alison Stieven-Taylor and another article on the need for diversity in visual storytelling by Anastasia Taylor-Lind.

Awards:
POYi 2015


This week features photographs from the winners of three categories - Photographer of the Year Reportage, Feature Picture Story and World Understanding Award.

Photographer of the Year - Reportage
Paolo Marchetti for The Price of Vanity 











This story was featured on Photojournalism Now in February last year when Italian photographer Paolo Marchetti was named Professional Winner 2015 in the Alexia Foundation Awards for this extraordinary body of work that exposes the reality of breeding animals for the fashion industry.

Feature Picture Story
Newsha Tavakolian
Freelance and Magnum nominee for Iran Coming Out of the Shadows 











World Understanding Award
Hossein Fatemi
Freelance for An Iranian Journey










View the full winners list at POYi.

Exhibitions: Melbourne 

NO LILIES
Is the 6th annual exhibition by women photographers for International Women’s Day and a fundraiser for UN WOMEN.

Artists featured: Wendy Currie, Judith Crispin, Maggie Diaz, Pam Davison, Joyce Evans, Jill Frawley, Amy Feldtmann, Carole Hampshire, Susan Henderson, Sue Jackson, Cheryl Lucy, Helga Leunig, Ilana Rose, Carmel Riordan and Margot Sharman.


(C) Judith Crispin


(C) Cheryl Lucy

(C) Pam Davison

Until 2 April
Magnet Galleries
2/640 Bourke Street
Melbourne 

Exhibitions: Brisbane

In Situ: New photodocumentary work 
This new exhibition at Brisbane’s Maud Gallery features the work of graduates from the Queensland College of Art Documentary stream. Curator Doug Spowart says, “The documentary photographs in this exhibition are made by photographers working not as the casual iPhone snapshot ‘photographer’ of today, but rather individuals who embed themselves in human and natural environments to witness, to empathise and to document with a camera so a story can be shared. The documentary photographers in this exhibition present their work as evidence of what they have seen, felt and been touched by. This work represents new photodocumentary practice and will place viewers in situ – surrounded by issues of contemporary life”. 

(C) Elise Searson

(C) Marc Pricop

(C)Thomas Oliver

(C) David Mines

(C) Cale Searston

(C) Richard Fraser

The contributing photographers are: Chris Bowes, Richard Fraser, Gillian Jones, Louis Lim, David Mines, Thomas Oliver, Marc Pricop, Elise Searson and Cale Searston.

9-20 March
Maud Gallery
6 Maud Street
Newstead (Brisbane)

Exhibitions: New York

Meryl Meisler


Currently showing at Steven Kasher Gallery in New York is an exhibition featuring early work by Meryl Meisler who is considered one of the great visual diarists of Americana. This show spans photographs from the 1970s from the “kitsch-filled” rooms of her hometown of Long Island and portraits of her family to New York’s disco-era. This idiosyncratic collection features portraits taken in suburban settings as well as more notorious New York clubs such as CBGB, Studio 54 and The Magic Carpet.  


Man in a 3 Piece Suit Dancing Within the Circle at a Wedding
Rockville Centre, NY, March 1976 
(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

Mom( Sylvia ""Sunny"" Schulman Meisler) 
Reading A Scholarly View of the Jewish Mother, 
Thanksgiving, North Massapequa, NY, November 1978
(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

The Meisler, Forkash & Cash Clan Welcoming a 
Sweet New Year, North Massapequa, NY, 
Rosh Hashanah , September 1974 
(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

Butterfly Bedroom Telephone, East Meadow, NY , June 1975 
(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

My 2nd cousins Milton and Betty Schwartz's grandson 
Todd jumping off their couch in the den, Florida, 1978
(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

Mom Getting her hair Teased at Besame Beauty Salon, 
North Massapequa, NY June 1979, 1979
(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

Kissing in Black Leather Jackets During last 
Dead Boys Concert CBGB, New York, NY April 1977
(C) Meryl Meisler, Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

Until 9th April
515 West 26th Street
New York

Articles: 

Why We Need Professional Photojournalists
© Robin Hammond/Witness Change

One of the tenets of photojournalism is to give voice to those who are unable to speak for themselves, but what does this mean for our digital world where the photograph has never been more potent or more accessible? Are photojournalists still needed to tell stories when everyone supposedly has a camera-enabled smart phone and can tell their own stories?

The truth is that more than 2 billion people are still disadvantaged when it comes to digital communications and many of these people are those whose stories need to be told. The notion that everyone has a smart phone is a privileged thought and the digital divide that exists across the globe is widening despite advances in technology…(you read the full story published on L'Oeil de la Photographie here)

Why Photojournalism Needs Diverse Storytelling Approaches
© Daniel Ochoa de Olza

Photojournalist and artist Anastasia Taylor-Lind has written an article on why photojournalism needs diversity in storytelling. This article discusses the issue through 'Victims of Paris', a photo project by Daniel Ochoa de Olza that was awarded third prize in the World Press Photo People Story category only to be withdrawn by the Associated Press.  Read the TIME article here.

Her article feeds into the growing debate on defining photojournalism in the new media environment. It's an exciting time. Approaches like that of Daniel Ochoa de Olza and this year's FotoEvidence Book Award winner Daniella Zalcman's Signs of Your Identity are fine examples of how important stories can be told in creative, engaging ways without losing their integrity or message.

© Daniella Zalcman

See last week's post for more images from Daniella's project. 

February 26, 2016

Friday Round Up - 26th February, 2016

This week on Friday Round Up - Daniella Zalcman wins the 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award, Stephen Dupont wins the POYi Best Photography Book Award and the Australian Photobook of the Year (Trade Category) for Generation AK: The Afghanistan Wars and Jordan Madge wins Australian Photobook of the Year in the self-publishing category. Plus the first solo show in US for Brian Griffin opens at Steven Kasher Gallery in New York and some interesting weekend reading on what's happening in the media.


Stephen Dupont Generation AK: The Afghanistan Wars wins 
POYi Best Photography Book Award and Australian Photobook of the Year (Trade)

Brian Griffin exhibition opens at Steven Kasher Gallery New York

Daniella Zalcman wins 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award for Signs of Your Identity

Book Awards:
It's been a busy few months judging book awards - first was the task of reviewing the entries for the 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award and earlier this month I was a judge for the Australian Photobook of the Year Awards, which were announced last night at the new gallery space for Photobook Melbourne.

FotoEvidence Book Award

It was an honour to be part of the jury for this important social justice photography award and I am delighted to share some of the images from the winner Daniella Zalcman's Signs of Your Identity project. 

Zalcman took a different visual approach for this narrative creating double exposure portraits, which I found highly engaging and accessible. In telling difficult, often complex stories, it is critical to draw the audience in and make them want to know more, to understand what is going on. I believe Zalcman achieved this with her project, which documents stories of indigenous Canadians who were placed in boarding schools run by the Anglican Church in order to force their assimilation into the dominant culture. 

In Signs of Your Identity Zalcman juxtaposes portraits of survivors who are still fighting to overcome the memories of their residential school experiences, with the sites where those schools once stood. In these portraits she also incorporates government documents that enforced strategic assimilation and points out that even today First Nations people struggle to access services that should be available to all Canadians.







The jury also selected four finalists who will be exhibited with Daniella Zalcman's project at the 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award Exhibit in New York in November when Signs of Your Identity will be released as book.

The finalists are:

Narciso Contreras for “Yemen: the Forgotten War”
Mario Cruz for “Talibes, Modern Day Slaves”
Hossein Fatemi for “An Iranian Journey”
Ingetje Tadros for “This is My Country”

Australian Photobook of the Year - Trade & Self-Publishing

Judging these awards involved reviewing physical copies of books that were printed as well as those that were hand constructed. There were a lot of different forms, styles, textures and concepts, which sparked lively debate as to what a photobook actually is. A conversation that continues. 

This year there were two categories for the Australian Photobook Awards presented by Momento Pro Sydney and Photobook Melbourne - trade and self-publishing. 

Winner - Trade Category
Stephen Dupont


Award-winning photojournalist Stephen Dupont was named as this year's winner in the Trade Category for his epic work, Generation AK: The Afghanistan Wars 1993-2012 published by Steidl. This heavy tome pays testament to Dupont's unfailing dedication and commitment to long form photojournalism. I'm looking forward to reviewing this book in the next Photojournalism Now: Book Review feature. Generation AK: The Afghanistan Wars 1993-2012 also won POYi Best Photography Book Award. 











Winner - Self-Publishing
Jordan Madge
A former Photography Studies College student, Jordan Madge won for his book Red Herring, which was a semi-fictional narrative centred on the disappearance of a young girl in Central Victoria (Australia) in 2009. The narrative in Red Herring is cleverly woven to build suspense and lead the reader on a journey that is at once a product of their imagination and also forensic. Visit Jordan's website here.








Exhibition: New York
Brian Griffin: Capitalist Realism 

Brian Griffin, Bureaucracy, London, 1987
Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York


Brian Griffin, Businessman, London, 1990 
Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Brian Griffin, London By Night #29, London, 1987 

Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

This is the first solo exhibition in the USA of renowned British photographer Brian Griffin who is most well known for his work in the 1970s that focused on the worldwide disruption of globalisation.

To capture the heroes and victims of Thatcherism and globalisation, Griffin invented a new photographic style, Capitalist Realism, parodying Socialist Realism. In this style Griffin’s photographs embody the essence of the decade, modish white-collars, rock bands suited up in business-casual and tin lunch-pail toting masons. Inspired by the bureaucratic and claustrophobic world of Kafka, by the French filmmaker Jacques Tati and by German Expressionist cinema, Griffin turned the workplaces in which he photographed into stages and his subjects into actors.

Griffin was recognised early on as one of the key British photographers of the 70s and 80s with The Guardian claiming in 1989 that Griffin was “the photographer of the decade", a sentiment echoed by the British Journal of Photography in 2005 who said Griffin was “the most influential British portrait photographer of the last decades.” Ten years later the World Photography Organisation labelled Griffin one of Britain’s “most influential photographers".


Brian Griffin, Eric Foster, Steel Erector, Broadgate, City of London, 1987
Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York


Brian Griffin, Construction Time Again, Switzerland , 1983
Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Brian Griffin, A Broken Frame, England, 1982
Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

In 1975, along with Martin Parr, Paul Graham, Graham Smith, Jo Spence and Victor Burgin, Griffin was included in the most important exhibition devoted to contemporary British photography: Young British Photographers at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. Since that time he’s had numerous exhibitions and won multiple awards including the Freedom of the City of Arles award during the photo festival Les Rencontres d’Arles in 1987.

This exhibition features over 75 photographs, black and white and colour. If you’re in New York this is a must-see.

Until 9 April
Steven Kasher Gallery
515 W. 26th St., New York, NY 10001 

Weekend Reading:

Here are a few links to some interesting stories I've come across recently.