Still Life: Nostalgia and Domesticity

Had the pleasure of having coffee with Marion Drew today thanks to Anne O’Hehir. It was brief – I stole away for half an hour from work to meet them – but great. Interesting to talk to Marion about her still life series particularly as I’ve been obsessing over this genre in the last few weeks. I’m chuffed to say that we exhibited together in the Josephine Ulrick Award up at the Gold Coast Art Gallery. Marion showed this work:

Rainbow Lorikeet on Queensland Needlework (courtesy Marion Drew)

She told us that the needlework had been made by her mother many years ago which I thought was a really lovely connection. Which then made me think more about some of my own intentions with the still-life genre, namely to use the trinkets and objects I’d inherited from my grandmother as a way to stay connected to her. My Gran, Judaline, was quite a formidable presence in our lives – we spent most of our summers in the one-horse town where she lived in Northern NSW. It was without fail, hot, dusty and often (to a precocious suburban kid) boring, but we always managed to occupy ourselves; exploring the farm (when she lived out of town) and imagining ourselves as wild cowgirls (I was Calamity Jane!) taming the wild beasts of the bush… and when she moved into town, spending all hours of the day (and sometimes night) at the local pool across the road. When trips to the local milkbar wore us down we always had her fabulously retro TV to watch all those fantastically wrong American 80s shows. Ah, it was the good life. My fondest memory though was always the kitchen and the dining table setting. Vintage tablecloths with a variety of crockery (the blue Willow china only coming out for Sunday lunch) and a mish-mash of bone-handled cutlery as well as the ubiquitous salt and pepper shakers cast in a variety of animal shapes! The picture of that table is still clear in my mind and I know for my own still-life work, that I want to recreate the memory of that, to somehow hold on to that distinctly Australian vernacular aesthetic. Distracted by other things in life, I wasn’t really photographing at the time my Gran died, a regret I still feel deeply. She was always very houseproud and her home was very much a reflection of her consummate collection of things. I suppose I would have liked to have some kind of tangible memory of that domestic space in which I spent a large part of my childhood, photographs then as momento mori. Instead I find myself recreating that nostalgia though images like this one, using inherited and thus precious objects:

…still-life from a work-in-progress

Light Journeys presents Tamara Dean

Light Journeys is proud to present Sydney based artist Tamara Dean as our featured artist for July:

from the series Ritualism

(courtesy of Tamara Dean)

Hijacked: Volume 2 (Australia and Germany)

Oh and I’ve been shortlised for Hijacked Volume 2 (Australia and Germany)…. Quite an honour. Checkout the Big City Press blog for more info and other shortlisted artists.

Teah, Toyah, Sarina, Remy and Kristen (Belco Pride series)

Go Mark, your energy is fantastic! Curators, galleries and other industry people, take note… People like Mark and projects like Hijacked represent the future of Australian photography! Collaborative, online and coming to a gallery near you.

Some cool photographs

Another looking exercise which Helen Ennis had me do a year or two ago (see my post, 12 Portraits by 11 Photographers). This time some images with a cool colour palette.

Johan Simen, Evidence of Things Unseen

Trent Parke, The Christmas Tree Bucket

Found this one online but no attribution, so sorry if this is yours and I haven’t credited you. If anyone knows who belongs to this image please let me know and I shall amend accordingly.

Todd Hido, Landscapes

Tamara Dean, Ritualism

Lea Golda Holterman, Orthodox Eros

Kai-Uwe Schulte-Bunert, Vaterland

40 Years of Rencontres, 40 Years of Ruptures…

Wish I was there….

Tanpis pour moi…… la prochaine fois peut-etre?

Godforsaken: Photography, prisons and incarceration

After  recently photographing the now empty Belconnen Remand Centre as part of my Belco Pride series, I came across a rather interesting blog called Prison Photography: the practice of photography in sites of incarceration when doing some further research into the culture of incarceration.  I’ve been wanting to photograph in Belco Remand for a while now but never had any luck. Now that they’ve shut down and moved their tenants to the new Alexander Maconochie Centre, I was able to get a pretty good tour of the place thanks to an open day… billed, believe it or not, as a family event. And the families were out in force – kinda weird and I dare say a bit of a joke for the parents showing their kids where home could be if they were naughty (my kids intuitively refused to come!). Seemed a strange PR excercise – if indeed that’s what it was – as it really reinforced how appalling conditions can be in such a place. Perhaps the popularity of the occasion simply boiled down to a case of schadenfreude, wanting to see how law-breakers can live alongside our shopping malls, schools and suburban homes. In any case, I was suitably dismayed and (I admit) aesthetically delighted with the original interiors and fittings.

Somewhat disturbingly, visitors were greeted with the following German quote “Arbeit Macht Frei” (which is a slogan known for being placed at the entrances of a number of Nazi concentration camps during WWII. It translates roughly as “Work makes one free”).  “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” was also scrawled in English below it. Overall quite a surreal, confronting and sad experience.

Anyway, here are just a few pics from the sojourn:

Belco Remand Centre, 2009 (Belco Pride Series)

Of course there is a long tradition of photographers telling stories about prisons and exploring the culture and brutality of incarceration. How they gain access is a mystery to me. Here are some images from just a few photographers who have made some jaw-dropping images in prisons. For more insightful ruminations on prison photography go check out Prison Photography:

James Nachtwey, Prisoner on the chain gang, Alabama 1994 (Crime and Punishment series)

Mikhael Subotsky (Beaufort West series)

Yana Payusova Eye of Faith, 2005 (Russian Prison series)

Winning streaks and little freaks

Well, it’s been a little while since my last proper post. Life is pretty hectic and with the freeze about to set in, seems to be getting harder. Or at least I’m slower, can’t bear the cold. Plus add to that, end of semester at uni, end of contracts at work, looming thesis deadlines and the global panic about swine flu, and it ain’t all that pretty to contemplate either! However having complained thus far, I do have some good news too. This year I’d decided, was going to be my year where I’d persistently enter all the worthwhile competitions for photography. And so far, so good. Have managed to be a finalist in a few comps (Head On and Josephine Ulrick), managed to exhibit in a group show at the ACP (no mean feat) and have just come back from a cyclonic week in Melbourne and Sydney for the Sony/ACMP Projections, another competition in which I managed to edge in as a finalist. A step up however, has seen me not only win my section (which was the art category – there was also commercial and editorial categories) but also the whole competition!

Pretty groovy really. The only thing I’ve ever won…. well, except for a ridiculous Dolly competition I entered when I was 13. A pull-out poster of a pretty girl with no makeup, our job was to give her a makeover. I figured being the precocious teenager that I was, that she was perfectly lovely without the makeup and wrote a long manifesto along these lines…. my prize you ask??? $150 worth of cheap and crappy makeup you wouldn’t see your daughter dead in! Ironic wouldn’t you say! Suffice to say that 20 odd years later, I’m pretty pleased with my prize of a new Sony a900 DSLR and lens (much more appropriate!), a few vouchers for book-making, studio hire in Sydney, ACMP membership and a few other odds and sods. Not bad methinks since it was only $10 to enter! Plus it was a foray for my Belco Pride series. Good to test the waters and obviously it must have hit a nerve as most people seemed to like it. So all in all, a busy but quite productive few weeks. I think the trick from this point on, is to keep producing (not difficult) but also to keep up the contacts – old and new – as well as to keep entering all those competitions. If you have any doubts about this process (which I admit I did once upon a time), all I can say is DON’T. It can really pay off.

I also wanted to share some images from a German photographer called Anna Skladmann whose series Little Adults (about young Russian aristocrats) are both disturbing and beguiling (thanks Vikky for the link):

all images from the series Little Adults (courtesy Anna Skladmann)

Light Journeys presents Vikky Wilkes

Light Journeys is proud to present Canberra based artist Vikky Wilkes as our featured artist for June:

from the series Last Light

(courtesy of Vikky Wilkes)

FLASH is back

The CCP magazine, Flash is back as an online e-zine, hooray! Shame there isn’t funding for  a hardcopy version…. is there anybody out there with a bucketful of cash?

I’m always interested in hearing about Australian and NZ e-zines, you know the quiet ones who plug away on their laptops at home to create some pretty cool stuff. If you know of any let me know. Have a groovy weekend!

Cyber-travelling and the booty you find…

Here’s a funny photo of a punter enjoying (I think!?) my image of Ken the bodybuilder in the Head On exhibition at the ACP:

Courtesy Australian Centre for Photography

Anyway I thought it was a bit of a laugh. Not sure who the photographer was so apologies for not citing you.

I’ve been cruising around the internet checking out various links that have come up with some real gems. Whilst this is probably not the best use of my time (especially given I have a thesis review next week!) I find these explorations always reveal treasures and this week has been spectacular. For the doubters and nay-sayers, diss not and do give it a go cos as they say…. there really is something for everyone!

First treasure up is an all American chap called Marc McAndrews. His work at first glance is brash and loud, but I couldn’t resist a closer look at the brilliantly titled Nevada Rose. The American state of Nevada is the only state where brothels are legal and McAndrews took it upon himself to photograph every single one of them…. really. The result of this massive task is a poignant look at the brothels, resident sex-workers, their patrons and other workers, such as cleaners, in the brothel industry, which will soon be released as a book.

I find these images really fascinating (I have a terrible soft-spot for American kitsch and it looks like the Nevada brothels are the place to find it!) yet I am almost more interested in the dynamics of how this project was undertaken, particularly given the “objective and anthropological” investigation of the photographer. Worth reading the interview on Humble Arts as it is an interesting insight into the artist’s motivation for the subject, as well as the issues that arise from such a choice.

It would also be interesting to compare McAndrews’ forthcoming book with that of Alexa Albert whose journey into:

…Nevada’s infamous cathouses began as a public-health study into the safe-sex practices of these legal working girls and the effectiveness of condom requirements in preventing sexually transmitted diseases. It took her three years to gain access to the brothels, and when her project was eventually approved by the head of the Nevada Brothel Association, she was surprised to be invited to stay at Mustang Ranch, among the women of the brothel, for the duration of her research. She learned that despite the legalization of prostitution in several counties of Nevada, the working girls still faced restrictive local ordinances and work regulations that kept them virtual prisoners inside the brothel compound. Outside, they encountered the same social stigma that has always haunted sex workers.

In 2003, the year following the publication of her book  Brothel: Mustang ranch and its Women which was based on her years of research, Albert and (architectural) photographer Timothy Hursley returned to Nevada to photograph the brothels, the result of which is the book Brothels of Nevada. Not having seen the contents of this book (other than the sneak-preview on Amazon), I wonder how the two might sit alongside each other? Perhaps it’s time to move my Amazon list to the checkout and find out!?

My second and last treasure find for tonight is some work by another Dutch wunderkind Desiree Dolron, who is very well known for the following picture, from her series Xteriors:

Courtesy Desiree Dolron

But it’s her earlier series from Cuba titled Te Di Todos Mi Suenos (”I gave you all my dreams”) that really grabbed my attention. The images are simple yet exquisite and quiet yet so full of longing. I feel as if I could fall into these pictures, into the dirty yet earthy home of a fairytale and into a mythic Cuba that never really was:

Cerca San Rafael (Courtesy Desiree Dolron)

Cerca san Fernandia (Courtesy Desiree Dolron)

Cerca Industria (Courtesy Desiree Dolron)