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