musings from the photographic memepool [the shallow end]

So I spent the morning here reading the online issue of the New York Times, with particular attention to the arts section. Very disappointed I was, so I flipped over to one of my favourite archives of modernist theory American Suburb X. Some great articles, and worth a read, even if you feel modernism is dead. My one complaint, well two really, the formatting of the pages is broken in places making reading off and difficult at times, and the line height of the text a little tight for my liking in Safari, anyway. The pages can be awfully slow too. A small price however for the sheer volume of information provided. A must for all those interested in photography's reach in the late modernist period of art history.

I just wonder how the publishers of American suburb X are getting their hands on such material, while articles 6 to 10 years old may not be cutting edge, they certainly are still informative and when it comes to getting up to speed on post modernist theory,and a worthy leaping off point.

For anyone who cares, I'm reading some great books on Art photography, and creativity, at the moment.

• Source: Nature's Healing Role in Art and Writing, by Janine Burke, with a hat tip to one of my undergrad Lecturers Ian Lobb.
• The Reconfigured Eye - Visual truth in the Post-Photographic Era, by William J Mitchell, after seeing it referred to in, After Photography, by Fred Ritchin.

Source has allowed me to draw some possibly dangerous parallels between my life and several of history's well known artists, such as Hemingway and O'Keefe. I have learnt some interesting things too about early digital images from the reconfigured eye.

An essay from, AMERICANSUBURB X

[From "Perfect Uncertainty - Robert Adams and the American West (2002)"]

My admiration of Mr. Adams is well known by those who know me well enough, this essay I stumbled upon on AMERICANSUBURB X is yet another glimpse at Mr Adams creative output adding to the already impressive body of written work about him that exists. It is just a pity it took me 8 years to find this one. Something that I've now come to take for granted is the speed and frequency of readily available information out there on my favourite subject Art Photography. Obviously this wasn't the case in 2002.

I was disappointed, that I missed, buying the Canon G10 in 2008, I hunted high and low for it in late 2009, to no avail. I purchased the G11 early this year and, I'm much happier anyway. Noise levels are reduced in this model, according to the specs and the banter on forums like dpreview.com

[From Canon Camera Museum | Camera Hall - Digital Compact Cameras]

Unfortunately due to the awful lighting conditions this time of year, I've not been able to shoot a great deal, to really get some results from it.

Interesting too, note that Canon, list it in the “Museum;” already?

This article describes a 'show' that has a direct lineage to the original exhibition from 1975, not only that but GPS as tool forms some of the show's exhibits.

The Gallery that showed the work. Sam Lee Gallery, has a small online exhibition for the show that was entitled 'Locating Landscape'.

I recently bemoaned the lack of portraiture in the altfotonet.org pool on flickr. And during a discussion with one of my co-editors, came across a link to the Saatchi online site, in the top right corner is a video of the evolution of portraits, a series of well known portraits from the history of art that morp together seamlessly giving the impression of a timeless person drawn and painting from the beginning of time.

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While Rupert Murdoch whines about google giving away his news stories the New York Times has been one of the most poractive newspaper around in terms of the net and the paperless newspaper.

Today I have discovered they have their own dedicated news reading app, it looks not unlike a news aggregator/reader such as newsfire or google news

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Will this impact on how news is read and consumed outside America? I'd like to see the The ABC, SBS ,Melbourne's Age and Herald Sun try this, I think it would make life much easier for those who chose to consume their news this way.

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This is a screen grab from iView Media Pro, it shows I have 108 images from 2009, queued up for upload,to flickr. My 2008 file has 34 also awaiting upload to flickr. Making a total of 142 images. Based on a loose regime of 3 images uploaded a week I have 47 weeks worth of images to upload. This is only counting my phone-camera, there are a few from my Nikon Coolpix 3700 and my Vistaquest to upload as well.

As I head into my 5th year of using flickr, looking back things have changed, changed dramatically. When I first started using flickr, I would upload almost daily, and spend innumerable hours connecting with all the other great people I'd 'meet'. Now, I have to remember to upload and some weeks it takes me so long to pick, which images to add, to keep the flow happening in my stream, I give up and leave it for a few days. Fortunately the altfotonet group still has some outstanding stuff, as does several others, where some cross posting occurs. Other changes to my online activity come from external sources like twitter and facebook. Now if I could just find a way to get paid for all my online activity?

Some Great news for the festival created by Jeff Moorfoot

The Ballarat International Foto Biennale [BIFB] has just been accepted for membership into the Festival de la Luz or Festival of Light [FOL], a grouping of 32 festivals of photography worldwide, including some of the biggest and most important similar events on 5 continents. The announcement was made in Buenos Aires by FOL Director and Director General of the Argentina Festival ‘Enceuntros Abiertos’ Ms Elda Harrington.
Ballarat is the first Australian photography festival to be accepted as a member festival, following the hugely successful BIFB’09 in September, and membership gives recognition to the impact that such a young festival has already made on the international photography stage. The application for Ballarat to join was proposed by BIFB board member Senga Peckham at the FOL directors meeting in Paris in November, and was considered along with applications by festivals from Luxembourg and Turin by the directors of 15 festivals which make up the FOL executive. The BIFB received a unanimous 15 votes for admission while Luxembourg was also accepted as a new member with 13 votes.

[From BALLARAT PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL JOINS WORLD GROUP @ free radical]

Read more

Issue 3 of alfotonet.org's publication is now online and ready to read.

This issue looks at how the impact of the New Topographics exhibition is still impacting on photography and photographers from around the world.

The issue also, has a yarn to the creators of COD, a blog that has multiple contributors and a very minimal look and feel

Larry Sultan, California Photographer, Dies at 63
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: December 14, 2009
Larry Sultan, a highly influential California photographer whose 1977 collaboration, “Evidence” — a book made up solely of pictures culled from vast industrial and government archives — became a watershed in the history of art photography, died on Sunday at his home in Greenbrae, Calif. He was 63.

[read on Larry Sultan, California Photographer, Dies at 63 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com]

I have to admit, I've not seen much of Mr. Sultan's work, but the little I had has stuck in my mind, another book to add to my collection I guess.

Thanks to Nettsu a contact on twitter, I was pointed to this article about the benefits of film. It is a good read and given my own background in film photography, made plenty of sense.

Way back in 2003 I wrote an article on the issue of film versus digital. Back then cameras, where prohibitively expensive, and digital storage was far more expensive than it is today. Photoshop of course, was the, mostly widely used application used to open and edit photographs on a computer, in some cases the only application. RAW files were yet to be part of the mainstream.

Raw files and new applications for sorting and editing photographs aside things haven't changed that much. Making a good image still requires a modicum of understanding about, lenses, light, at the minimum, making a print either digitally or via analogue requires it's own skill set, making a body of work, requires another skill-set, that has no bearing on technique or the ability to understand how your camera works. Making prints and using cameras are skills with a plethora of manuals [10,723 Results on Amazon today alone] available to anyone with enough interest in the medium to buy a handful of books and get access to the machinery to do this. Creating a body of work can often be done in isolation, or done in a more formal manner through training in a fine art degree program. Learning to 'pre-visualise in photography can be both learnt and taught, but is I feel the most difficult part of the process to really master.

Many of the points alluded to in the article above by Ken Rockwell, assume you have mastered the craft of photography, something that can be quite expensive to learn as a beginner in photography, and this is where digital shines over film, I feel. Making mistakes is the quickest and easiest way to learn the basics of exposure and composition. Making mistakes with film, on the other hand can cost a lot of time and wasted effort, if you haven't already mastered your camera craft. Finally the biggest issue I had with Mr Rockwell's article, was he seemed to sometimes refer to colour neg and other times colour slide, or positive film, two films with vastly different exposure latitudes, and some of his points were invalid if you used negative film as reading a colour neg over a light box, requires considerably more skill and knowledge than a slide film, which is simply a positive of the scene as taken.

So, here's a new table of the pros and cons of digital over film, based on my own experience of teaching camera craft, and using a variety of film cameras since the early 1980's, and digital cameras since the mid to late 1990's.

I do however agree that digitial has it's place in industries like catalogue photography fashion, and photo-journalism.

It seems I'm not the only person concerned about what will happen to photo-book publishing in the future? The good folks over at, Resolve, LIVE BOOKS BLOG, have started an online collaboration that looks at the future of the photobook.

Pop in add your 2¢

From where I sit, there will be online publications such as cod magazine, who most likely will exist as pure online entities. Publicationss like, RMIT's second nature, will offer both online and hardcopy, as I will with several of my own future projects, I already have two e-books available for download.

Polapremium, sends out a weekly e-mail. This week's really caught my eye. In particular, this line;

In order to shorten the waiting period until the premiere of our new Impossible film,

The impossible film project has been burbling along now quite nicely for some time, in an attempt to resurrect film for vintage Polaroid cameras, now we finally have a a timeframe to look forward to. Hurry up please Polaroid project , I know many many folks here in Oz, who are very keen to buy some film.

Recently found this site via a e-mail, and noticed it was geared towards, the US, the UK and Europe only? Is there no interest in the Australian or Asian art market?

Is there not enough entrepernurail interest to try and set up something similar, and yes I'm aware of Red Bubble, but this site focuses on fine art prints, Red Bubble covers all manner of visual arts.

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Chatting with a peer in Darwin who has just completed their Honours Year, made me dig up my own Masters project, which I completed in 2002. At the end of the project is a series of notes I added post production, here's one I'd like to share.

“A fine print is the culmination of a complex sequence which begins with the recognition of the visual event. To produce such a print, the photographer must make a negative that is properly exposed in relation to the pre-visualised image...This sense of fine, almost unseen, detail and clarity allows the viewer to experience subtle differences in reality. Each viewer brings to the photograph their own personal sensitivities and the “fine print” allows the viewer to more easily intuit the connections existing between the viewer, the photographer and the photograph”
Gordon Hutchins
pg 7
“The Book of Pyro “
Bitter Dog Press
1992

Publication - Produced by street photographers for street photographers

[Produced in London, UK by Nick Turpin Publishing

• Aims to publish the best Street Photography we can find
• Consists of an illustrated color booklet of essays and articles accompanied by twenty-two unbound prints
• Has a different theme for each edition
• Is open to suggestions and submissions
• Is self financing and contains no advertising, your purchase contributes directly to the next edition

Publication - Produced by street photographers for street photographers]

It will be interesting to see how this pans out, I like the idea of financing the publication through the photographers buying the mag themselves.

16 October 2009 – 4 April 2010
Photography Gallery, Level 3
Free entry

[In 1967, the NGV established the first separate curatorial Department of Photography in an Australian art gallery and since that time we have delivered a continuous program of exhibitions and publications featuring the rich history of photography. The heart of our activities is based on the permanent collection which now numbers over 15,000 photographs, of which 3,000 works are by international artists. This year marks the 40th anniversary of our first acquisitions to the collection and, as such, it is timely to ‘re-view’ what has been achieved. National Gallery of Victoria]

read on...

I will be visiting this exhibition over the coming months I hope to use it for some inspiration in at least blogging, we shall see.

Orientation

At this time of year , I spend my days at work interviewing, prospective new students, for my day job, teaching photography at PIC photographic imaging college. Over and over again I see the same problems with folios and folio presentation.

One of the easiest avoided mistakes is the orientation of your prints. So so many people mix their verticals and horizontals in a way that makes the viewer/interviewer rotate the book 90° my first tip on presenting a folio or body of photographic or any 2d art works for that matter is to insert the images in your folio/book in a consistent manner.

This poorly drawn diagram shows how to present correctly, as opposed to the image beneath it.

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This is the simplest and cheapest way to present yourself professional, regardless of the cost or type of method you choose to present your work.

Finish

The actual container for your work be it leather bound portfolio or cheap plastic K-Mart equivalent, would be best chosen carefully according to your budget and the audience who is viewing the work. The more you spend however, the more polished and finished a body of work can look, after spending all that time and effort making the images and getting them printed, a poorly presented book or portfolio can bring everything to crashing halt. Ultimately, your choice will driven by budget followed by audience, unless you can afford to spend a lot of cash on a presentation book or method.

Layout & Sequencing

A real professional will see the connections between images beyond putting all your studio portraits in order followed by all your favourite location shoots or Landscapes. Think carefully about the order and sequence you use in your folio. Are there for example a series of colours that relate, perhaps complimentary or contrasting? Are they ideas within the images that repeat, or shapes even? Treat the body of work as a visual journey with highs and lows, surprises and delights. Use spreads or blank pages to add pauses in that journey, or like punctuation in a sentence.

Clean 'n tidy

At the very minimum, use as many precautions as possible to keep the work unblemished and free of dirt pet hair and other unwanted imperfections. These things give huge clues, to who you are as a person, and your attention to detail, all key factors in gaining entry into either a college or getting a job, especially getting a job.

Backup Work

While this approach is foisted upon, younger students, VCE students for example, it is only really necessary if, 'process' forms part of the idea you are exploring. Again, be fastidious in your work methods, unless the methods are about NOT being fastidious, how you organise this kind of work, and present it gives huge insights into you and your approach to making images.

Revisiting a favourite bookshop, in Daylesford, I recently returned with several gems of books. Jo Spence's Autobiographical treatise on herself and her photography [Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal and Photographic Autobiography], and 1999 exhibition catalogue of William Wegman's work.

While I have yet to pick up the Jo Spence book, my last reading would have been whilst at University, I did have a read of the Wegman catalogue. I was very surprised to read that he began his creative career as a painter sculptor and conceptual/experimental artist. Wegman picked up photography out of convenience, to document his art work, while also experimenting with video. His art works, in the early days were fleeting and ephemeral, thus photography proved the work existed.

Slowly his attention shifted to the way images could be made that questioned the nature of the document created, till eventually all his work became photographic while still proudly displaying his surreal and conceptual roots. The work featured in the catalogue is at times funny, and others deadly serious. His dogs feature only briefly towards the end of the catalogue. The time this work was being made? In the 1970's.

It's fortuitous or perhaps, disastrous that the 2 books surfaced AFTER I submitted some work for publication in 2nd Nature, published by RMIT. As being able to refer back to these early pioneers of 'documentary photography' would have helped bolster my argument about the my use of photography, with my mobile phone, in this day and age of wireless networks and mobile computing.

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A just and worthy cause, go donate now, or sponsor somebody to grow a mo' this month.

We sure as hell need as much research as possible into male depression and prostate cancer.

Trust me I know.

"Man is the actual medium of expression not the tool he elects to use as a means. Results alone should be appraised; the way in which these are achieved is of importance only to the maker. To the extent that the completed work realizes depth of understanding, uniqueness of viewpoint and vitality of presentation, will the spectator respond and participate in the original experience. This premise, restricting too personal and therefore prejudiced interpretation, leads to revolution---the fusion of an inner and outer reality derived from the wholeness of life sublimating things seen into things known."

From "A Contemporary Means to Creative Expression, by Edward Weston,"
The Art of Edward Weston (1932, p.7)

Taken from; the Frederick Sommer Website

I am currently putting together a selection of work for the online publication 'Second Nature', published by RMIT. Part of the process requires I write an artist's statement, which I am in the process of writing. Part of my statement, refers to a time in Melbourne, if not Australia, somewhere in the 80's, where Artists, were beginning to question the nature of the photographic 'document'. Given that this is pre-web, I'm not having a great deal of luck finding much online. I do know the CCP published several postcards, one in particular, by Janina Green. The image's title from memory was something like, 'Northcote Baths, Melbourne [with a date]. I putting it out there does anyone from my readership, if your still hanging around here, have one of these postcards? If they do and know my contact details, could they contact me or, leave a comment. Thanks in advance.

His style and approach has been a major influence on my work and methods.

I guess I'm not the only one who has an interest in arcane imagery such as this one post of on this is not cod by Annene

Check List

Frederick Sommer often used found articles and books in his work, and they are as intriguing and beautiful as any art object could hope to be. Perhaps while in Ballarat this weekend, I'll find something worth buying and using in an appropriation ideas, who knows?

Flickr has introduced a new feature, allowing each person to take another's work and "curate' it into a cyber-show all on it's own. The implications are far reaching, I for one am excited, _barb_ has an example of a great series of street photography.

Almost back in one piece, been processing some of the digital images I made whilst away in July.

The film shots too will surface soon, when; I'm not sure, I am sure however that I plan on trying to have another solo show, in the next 2 years. Firstly I need to make hard copy proof sheets to see what I've got, this set on flickr has some beginnings I think, then, after I've edited the body of work, I'll choose between Type C or ink-jet prints.

Watch this space. In the interim, I'll have to write another series of proposals.

Is Flickr taking a nose-dive? Have we seen the end of flickr?

These last few weeks there's been plenty of "trouble ut mill", to quote the Monty Python crew. The hold your clicks message is appearing a little to often for my liking.

There has also been lot's of tweets about deletion of accounts and barring from certain pools. Now today this:-

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Personally it's been an interesting experiment, and perhaps it's time to move on, trouble is because of the commitment I have to altfotonet.org I am really torn.

Not to mention it's been 2 years since my last solo show, and finally after all these years I am feeling comfortable with my colour work, ah well I guess I can commit when my registration is due for renewal?

Just launched this month; COD, the death of cool, a new e-zine that uses text and photography in a blog format, as an open ended; narrative; that like all good art photography is open to interpretation.

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My first flip through it's virtual pages, was indeed interesting and engaging. It also seems to be an experiment in collaborative publishing, I plan on interviewing the main contributor and publisher Annene von Durchgerockt, over on the altfotonet.org blog shortly.