The Developing Tank

Vivian Maier

2012-02-20T08:00:00.000+13:00

By now, everyone in photographic circles has heard of the reclusive Chicago nanny who died in 2009 at the age of 83 and who, from the '50s to the '90s, photographed street scenes, sharing the images with no one.

She had an uncanny knack (which can only be gained from years of experience) of capturing those subjects which would best serve as time capsules of her environment.

Her subject matter was that everyday ephemera which we mostly ignore, because it is ... everyday. But it is largely those things which we take for granted, that best sum up an era.

A Vivian Maier website is now online.

Today, DP Review posted a review of Vivian Maier Street Photographer.

The New Zealand online store, Fishpond, does not yet have stock, but does have a page for the book.

Ben Cauchi at Lopdell House Gallery

2012-02-16T04:29:00.002+13:00

From Jan Young at Photoforum NZ: Ben Cauchi, the 16th artist in residence at the McCahon House studio has spent the summer months creating a new series of work capturing the bush and surroundings at French Bay – but in no ordinary way. Using the 160 year old wet collodion photographic process, a technique developed just after the daguerreotype, Cauchi presents haunting glass plate images that transport you back in time. [Read more ...]

Lopdel House Gallery Website

A Fine Line Gallery: 'Do Something II'

2012-02-08T10:53:00.001+13:00

The opening of Mark Lewington’s solo exhibition for 2012, Do Something II, takes place this Friday 10^th February at 7.00-9.30pm. The Exhibition runs from Saturday 11^th February to Sunday.

A Fine Line Gallery

17 Sharp Rd, Matakana,

RD2, Warkworth 0982

09 422 7942 / 021 1508820

Hans Engels: The Seven Wonders

2012-01-25T07:29:00.008+13:00

From Conscientious: German photographer Hans Engels has photographed The Seven Wonders of The Ancient World ... as they are today. See: The Seven Wonders. How could I not quote Shelley?

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Photo: Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus © Hans Engels

Young French Photographer's 2011 TED Prize-Winning Speech

2012-01-18T09:31:00.009+13:00

A young French photographer, working under the name JR (because his public-space exhibitions have often been illegal), won the TED 2011 Prize.

His project consists of posting huge billboard-sized portraits of people in public spaces. By doing so, he has sought to break down stereotypes and enmities.

Most effectively, he posted dyptich portraits of Israelis and Palestinians from the same occupations, on either side of the Israel-Palestine wall. People had to look closely to see the captions, which stated which portrait was of a Palestinian and which was of an Israeli. Once he had left the location, the portraits continued to stimulate a lot of discussion.

Watch full-screen pop-out video

There are images and an audio interview on the Lens Culture website.

Check out JR's website, too.

Robert Adams and Robert Frank

2012-01-10T13:37:00.002+13:00

Returning to Robert Adams: The PhotoEphemera Blog has a page on his book The New West, containing what is, in retrospect, a hilarious review from Popular Photography Magazine, which didn't get it at all, and an excellent interview with Adams, below that.

You have to scroll down a long way to get past the shots of the book.

Fishpond has the best price anywhere online that I've found, for The New West.

There's also an interesting Time Magazine discussion of The New West and Robert Frank's The Americans, which were republished around the same time, entitled Two Reissued Photography Books Reconsidered.

A Fine Line Gallery: 9 Degrees of Happiness

2012-01-08T12:12:00.002+13:00

From A Fine Line Gallery: We are delighted to have the Auckland Studio Potters return this season after a highly successful show last year.

Exhibition opening is on Saturday 14th January at 2.00pm and the show runs through to Sunday 5th February.

Rafal Milach: Black Sea of Concrete

2012-01-06T14:22:00.003+13:00

Rafal Milach is a documentary photographer based in Warsaw, Poland. His Black Sea of Concrete essay hosted by the FlakPhoto website, examines the relationship between humankind and the sea of the Ukraine Black Sea coast.

From Rafal Milach's statement:
'The first thing you notice by the sea is the concrete. Kilometers of grey blocks sometimes painted with blue and yellow, the national colors of Ukraine. You can feel the soviet past at once. It looks surreal and it doesn’t match the beautiful landscape that surrounds you. Industrial zones and the iron waste by the sea don’t remind harmonic idyll between nature and man. People have changed the landscape in a very brutal way here. But the sea fights back for its natural shape and territory.' [Read more ...]

The video, which is part slide show and part interviews, very effectively conveys the atmosphere of a place half a world away, which few of us will visit, and is well worth watching. [Watch video]

The Art of Seven, 101 Pulham Rd, Warkworth

2012-01-05T23:22:00.002+13:00

Justin James Reed: The Real Unknown

2012-01-03T06:31:00.002+13:00

The Great Leap Sideways is hosting a portfolio by Justin James Reed. From the introduction:

I was struck instantaneously on seeing the landscapes in Justin James Reed's ongoing project "The Real Unknown", by their deeply psychological air, by the forceful and poetic abstractions he was constructing, and by a sense of vibrant, interconnected, overlapping, countervailing ideas being somehow at work both within the compositions and the wider body of work. They are only generically, I think, landscape photographs in the conventional sense of the term. What makes them unconventional beyond the tight and oblique composition of the images, is, I think, their unrelenting search for and reverence of the unknowable mysteries at work in the land, in the woods, between the trees. They are not possessive in the way that a good descriptive landscape photograph will invariably be, but instead seek somehow to devolve the power to name, to reject an insistence upon the strict measurement of proportion and provenance.

All of this is, I would argue, in a very real sense inscribed onto the surface of these pictures. Underneath and outside of the frame however, is one of those countervailing factors. Each of the photographs has been made at a property lot set to be developed for sale. [Read more ...]

A lengthy interview with the photographer follows the introduction.

Fraction Magazine: Robert Adams

2012-01-01T11:34:00.001+13:00

Fraction Magazine features a portfolio of important photographer Robert Adams.

From the website:

For over four decades Robert Adams has photographed the geography of the American West, finding there a fragile beauty that endures despite our troubled relationship with the natural world.

Adams’s photographs are distinguished not only by their economy and lucidity, but also by their mixture of grief and hope. On the one hand, his pictures acknowledge an impoverishing loss of space and silence, and the opportunity they provided for focus; they also record the inhumanity of much that has been built, and the ferocity of our attack on the environment. On the other hand, they remain alert to the startling eloquence of trees, the signs of caring and joy in people, and the redemptive power that sunlight continues to have even as it falls across suburbs. [Read more ... ]

See also: Masters of Photography: Robert Adams

Luminous Landscape Video Tutorials

2011-12-16T15:10:00.012+13:00

The Luminous Landscape make a popular series of instruction tutorials. At present some are discounted.

A free episode of the Camera to Print and Screen video tutorial, which discusses a black and white Lightroom workflow, is available to give us an idea of the style and content of the videos.

A promotional video for The Luminous Landscape Guide to Lightroom 3 tutorial series is also available.

A Fine Line Gallery: Matakana Valley Artists' Exhibition 2011

2011-12-06T10:39:00.002+13:00

The annual Matakana Valley Road Artists' exhibition runs from 9th December to 7th January 2012, opening on Friday 9th, from 5:30pm.

Artist exhibiting are: Mark Lewington, Gary Horton, Di Halstead, Mike de Hahn, Vicki Fanning, Louise McRae, Tabea Salewski and Virginia Leonard.

A Fine Line Gallery is situated at 17 Sharp Rd, Matakana.

Ph: 09 422 7942.
Email: charlie@afineline.co.nz

Photography at Two Rooms Gallery: "Still Life"

2011-11-29T08:36:00.007+13:00

Mark Adams, Joyce Campbell, Fiona Pardington, Haruhiko Sameshima and Frank Schwere feature in the exhibition Still Life at the prestigous Two Rooms Gallery in central Auckland, running from 2-23 December 2011.

Anyone who is interested in seeing the best of New Zealand photography will want to keep an eye on this gallery and attend every one of their exhibitions.

Two Rooms Gallery

16 Putiki St

Newton

Auckland 1021

Hours: Tues–Fri 11am–6pm; Sat 11am–3pm
Ph: 09 360 5900

Driving along New North Rd away from the CBD, turn left before MacDonalds and then right into Putiki St; Two Rooms is at about 100m on the left. If you are heading away from the CBD along New North Rd and see the Photo Warehouse, you've just passed Putiki St.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - Price Reduction

2011-11-09T10:54:00.001+13:00

In my email this morning was this very good price for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 - $178.78 at Ascent, which is a huge price drop. I've seen retail prices of over $600, so it's worth snapping this up (as I will be doing in about five minutes).

The Online Photographer Print Sale

2011-11-08T10:19:00.001+13:00

If we want to advance and finance our work, we have to take the plunge and seize every reasonable opportunity. If you have work that you know is remarkable, there is no time like now to do it.

The Online Photographer is running a print sale. It will be competitive, but there's nothing to be lost by going for it.

The Kowhai Journals IV

2011-10-07T07:19:00.001+13:00

Shirley Vivian and Karen Williamson are exhibiting images from the 2010 Kowhai Festival at Tahi Bar, Warkworth. Showing Oct 5th-31st.

2011 World Press Photo Exhibition Auckland City

2011-09-20T17:27:00.003+12:00

15 SEPT - 9 OCT
'The World Press Photo Exhibition is the world’s most prestigious exhibition of international current affairs photography. It is a public showcase of photojournalism featuring award-winning images.

'Through gripping images, stories from the year's biggest and most memorable world events evoke the full breadth of raw emotion.

'It is the only international event of this stature, not simply bringing together pictures from all parts of the globe but also reflecting trends and developments in photojournalism, and revealing how the press gives us the news.' [Read more]

Tickets $5
15th Sept - 9th Oct 2011
The Nathan Club, 40 Customs St East, Britomart

NZ Geographic Photographer of the Year Competition Criteria

2011-09-12T13:44:00.019+12:00

Richard Smallfield: Climbing Pakiri Hill

As a photographer whose work involves a documentary approach to landscape, I thought that the NZ Geographic Photographer of the Year Competition would be right up my alley.

I prepared six photos for the photo-story category. Then I reread the competition rules:

Entries ... must not have been manipulated in any way other than global colour and exposure adjustments considered standard in RAW processing. Focus and exposure stacking, HDR, and stitched panoramas are allowed, but discretion is expected.

Since when have local adjustments, in particular in landscape photography, been unacceptable? Dodging and Burning in the darkroom, or Layer Masks in Photoshop, have always been part of doing a professional job.

I have never exhibited a print that has not had local adjustments, so am excluded from the competition: images such as Climbing Pakiri HIll would not be allowed, because each part of the image was subtly, but separately, adjusted.

Under the 'Landscape' heading, NZ Geographic states: 'The judges will be looking for attention to light and drama.'

If they want drama, then they are looking for an idealised image, not an authentic one. So why do they rule out local adjustments – when all the photographer is aiming for is to get the best out of the image?

In my prints I try to present an authentic account of the mood of the location. Local adjustments are generally subtle enough that even a trained eye might struggle to notice them. So even though I aim for an authentic result, I'm disqualified.

HDR (that mother of a million abominations) is allowed. In effect, it could be considered akin to local adjustment, as bracketed exposures are merged into the various parts of the dynamic (brightness) range of the final image.

I wouldn't mind betting that whoever wins will have made local adjustments, but kept quiet about it.

Surely what matters is authenticity, regardless of how it is achieved.

I hope that the organisers read this and consider amending the criteria next year.

Gallery 36: a Kiwi arts e-zine

2011-09-12T13:07:00.002+12:00

From Gallery 36: 'Gallery36 is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to showcasing emerging artists and photographers from around New Zealand and now also Kiwi emerging artists and photographers working internationally.

'The quarterly e-zine offers an opportunity for exposure for those still finding their feet in their career who are passionate about art and photography and the role it plays in our society and culture. Gallery36 is dedicated to providing like-minded people with profiles of emerging artists and photographers they will love to read about, packaged up in an easily accessible format that supports our planet by saving trees.

'Here at Gallery36 we want YOU to be profiled. Say what your work is about, what your passion is, and/or what influence you want to leave behind. This is your opportunity to be showcased and put yourself out there!' [Read more]

Currently Showing in Auckland ...

2011-09-10T07:40:00.011+12:00

There are some great photography exhibitions on in Auckland at present, that make it well worth a trip down the motorway. From the Photoforum Blog:

Jin Jiangbo: Dialogue with Nature, 20 August-17 September 2011. Starkwhite Gallery, 510 Karangahape Road, Auckland, New Zealand. Ph 09 307 0703.

From Prague to Auckland: the photographs of Frank Hofmann (1916-89), Gus Fisher Gallery, 26 August-29 October 2011.
Liyen Chong: Of Positions and half Positions having several marks at once, Gus Fisher Gallery, 26 August-29 October 2011.
Gus Fisher Gallery, Kenneth Myers Centre, 74 Shortland Street, Auckland,
Tuesday - Friday 10am - 5pm Saturday 12pm-4pm. Closed Public Holidays. Phone: 09 923 6646.

Peter Gibson-Smith: Wasteland, Bath Street Gallery, to 10 September 2011, 43 Bath Street, Parnell, Auckland. Gallery hours: Tues/Fri 10.00am-5.30pm, Sat 11.am-3.00pm. ph 09 377 5171.

Roberta Thornley: Anthem, 6 September to 1 October 2011. Tim Melville Gallery, 11 McColl Street, Newmarket, Auckland. Phone: 09 520-5891. Tuesday - Friday 11am-6pm, Saturday 11am - 3pm, or by appointment.

Alfred Gregory: From Everest To Blackpool, Webb's, 18 Manukau Road, Newmarket, Auckland. 2 Sept-Sun 11 September 2011. Hours 9:00am to 5:30pm Mon to Fri, and Sat and Sun - as advertised for viewings. Ph: 09 524 6804.

Jin Jiangbo: Dialogue with Nature, Starkwhite Gallery

2011-09-08T16:09:00.008+12:00

From Starkwhite Gallery: Jin Jiangbo: Dialogue with Nature; 20 August–17 September 2011.

'Previous to the new body of work featured in Dialogue with Nature, Jin Jiangbo became known to international contemporary art audiences through a practice that sought to not only chart China's growing global influence but also explore the impact of change upon both the urban landscape and its people. At a time of immense economic, social and cultural shift, Jin Jiangbo's photography, installation and multimedia works capture this momentous transition while also highlighting the incongruities hidden behind the rise of a burgeoning superpower. Panoramic photos of abandoned factories, unfinished residences or the debris left by rapid and often overnight factory closures bear witness to China's economic miracle, but also the withdrawal and decay that too-hasty development can inflict. In his photographs the urban landscape becomes a social imprint of the powerful and spectacular transformation wrought by and upon contemporary China. It is not just scenery but social landscape the artist is delivering – vivid, telling and richly symbolic.

'New Zealand audiences were introduced to Jin Jiangbo's work at New Plymouth's Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in 2009 in China in Four Seasons, a year-long suite of exhibitions and residencies by Chinese artists curated by Rhana Devenport. His exhibition featured large-scale photographic panoramas from series titled Prospects of the Chinese Market, The Great Economic Retreat: The Dongguan Scene, and Shanghai, Shanghai Engine Plan, all setting China's socialist economic landscape against a backdrop of economic, social and cultural upheaval.' [Read more]

Jin Jiangbo's Photoforum portfolio

Starkwhite
510 Karangahape Road
Auckland
New Zealand
Tel. +64 9 3070703
starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz

Dinh Q. Le: Erasure, 2011

2011-09-07T14:58:00.004+12:00

From Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney: Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) presents Erasure, a newly commissioned work by Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Lè – an interactive sculptural and video installation that draws on recent debates in Australia concerning refugees and asylum seekers.

The darkened gallery space will be dominated by a
floor-to-ceiling moving image of an 18th century tall ship beached on an isolated coastline slowly being consumed by flames. The gallery floor will be strewn with small islands of debris – discarded clothing and wooden fragments. Amid the destruction will be thousands of small black and white photographs self-portraits, family and passport photos – which Dinh spent years buying in second-hand stores in the hope of finding his own family's pictures. [Read more]

A Fine Line Gallery Exhibition: mindmirrormap

2011-09-07T14:07:00.003+12:00

From A Fine Line Gallery: As our first exhibition of the season we are proud to have a show that has been booked in to the gallery space for two years. This is an exciting exhibition from three new talented artists: Phillip Ball, Carlie Blanchett-Burton, and Elke Finkenauer. And you are invited to the opening this Saturday 10th September 5.30-7.30pm. Look forward to seeing you then or any time that the exhibition is on – it runs until Sunday 2nd October. Cheers, Heather and Charlie

Charlie's Gelato Garden
A Fine Line Gallery
17 Sharp Rd, Matakana,
RD2, Warkworth 0982
09 422 7942 / 021 1508820

Fiona Pardington: The Pressure of Sunlight Falling

2011-09-06T10:28:00.011+12:00

From Otago University Press: 'European explorers of the Pacific in the 18th and early 19th centuries faced a problem – how to describe the people they met and report what they had seen and found. From Cook onwards, any serious expedition included artists and scientists in its ship's company.

'An ambitious journey of the 19th century was the third voyage of the French explorer Dumont d'Urville, from 1837 to 1840. It was just before the invention of photography, when phrenology, the study of people's skulls, was the latest thing. D'Urville chose to take on the voyage an eminent phrenologist, Pierre-Marie Dumoutier, to preserve likenesses of people by making life casts. When the expedition returned to France, the casts were displayed, and later stored in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, to be joined eventually by other casts from Dumoutier's collection, including those of the d'Urville and Dumoutier families. All were overtaken by photography and history.

'Fiona Pardington first learnt of the life casts in 2007, when a chance conversation initiated a four-year project. It took her from Auckland to the Musée de l'Homme, as she researched and photographed some of more than fifty casts of Maori, Pacific and European heads, including casts of her Ngai Tahu ancestors. This book publishes these photographs and coincides with the opening of a major travelling exhibition.' [Read more]

Available at Fishpond.

Cultural Icons: Conversations with People

2011-09-02T11:44:00.010+12:00

From the Cultural Icons website: 'The Depot's Cultural Icons project celebrates people who have contributed significantly to New Zealand's creative landscape. It is a series of recorded interviews and programmes whose aim is to share the histories, stories and experiences of some of our most significant visual artists, architects, publishers, entrepreneurs, writers, musicians, arts commentators and philanthropists.' [Read more]

There is a directory page of recorded interviews.

Photographer John Miller is a recent interviewee. He started in documentary photography with the 1967 anti-Vietnam War protests and has continued to photograph protest since then. He has won the Media Peace Price Lifetime Award and the Marti Friedlander Photographic Award.

The Arts Foundation has a biographical page on John Miller and there is a lengthy autobiographical piece on the photoforum nz website.

reGeneration²

2011-08-30T13:32:00.005+12:00

From the Flak website: reGeneration² is '... a book + group exhibition that examines how the new generation of image-makers operates, showcasing the inspiring creativity and ingenuity of emerging photography .... Curators William A. Ewing and Nathalie Herschdorfer selected the most promising candidates from 120 of the world's top photography schools.'

The exhibition can be seen online at the Aperture Foundation website.

New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year Competition

2011-08-30T10:58:00.007+12:00

From the NZ Geographic Website: 'The four main categories of the 2011 New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year are intended to celebrate the time-honoured art of editorial photography and showcase the extraordinary natural and cultural riches of New Zealand.

'The New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year, sponsored by Nikon, will be picked from these entrants, as will the Young Photographer award, sponsored by Getty Images (for entrants under the age of 21 on Sept 30, 2011). All photos must have been shot after Sept 30, 2008, and within New Zealand territory – including New Zealand-administered Pacific and Antarctic dependencies. Read full Terms and Conditions here. Entries close September 14th. New Zealand Geographic invites professionals and amateurs alike, to submit their work in the following categories: Wildlife, Landscape, Society and Culture, Photostory.'

Simon Roberts

2011-08-29T08:22:00.011+12:00

A photographer who deserves attention is the award winning British photographer Simon Roberts.

His first book, Motherland, was shot on a year-long journey with his wife, in over 200 locations around Russia. His second book, We English, was the product of a trip around England in a motorhome with his pregnant wife and two-year-old, in which he again explored the sense of 'belonging, of memory, identity and place' - but this time in his homeland.

This has been followed by the limited edition newspaper photo essay and touring exhibition, The Election Project, resulting from his being commissioned by the UK parliament Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art, to document campaigning activity prior to the 2010 election.

Photo: From the book We English - The Haxey Hood, Haxey, North Lincolnshire, 5th January 2008, Simon Roberts

Black Asterisk Gallery, Ponsonby

2011-08-26T19:06:00.002+12:00

Black Asterisk, a new exhibition space in Ponsonby, opens on 1 Sept 2011.

Details are on the Photoforum blog, which is the most important photography blog in New Zealand to keep tabs on.

Exhibition now showing: Garry Currin, 'Smoke and Dreaming'

2011-08-26T06:32:00.009+12:00

WHITESPACE CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY, AUCKLAND
23 Aug - 11 Sept 2011

Renowned Mahurangi painter Garry Currin's latest show is now on at Whitespace Contemporary Art Gallery, 12 Crummer Rd, Ponsonby.

From the Whitespace website: Currin's landscapes are not allegories conveying meaning through symbolic representation, nor do they seek to imitate reality. Rather they employ, in the fashion of lyrical abstraction, the emotive and expressive qualities of colour, shape and brushwork to capture first the artist's feelings, and subsequently the viewer's. [Read more]

Metonymy 2011

2011-08-25T09:31:00.006+12:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS AND WRITERS
9 Sept – 9 Oct | Opens Thursday 8 Sept, 6pm

From Corban Estate website: Metonymy is an annual Auckland-wide collaboration project, now in its fourth year. It is creative blind dating (with the idea that people often spark creatively when they are exposed to new ideas and methods of working) in which artists from different disciplines – visual, literary, film, dance, theatre – are matched and given eight weeks to create a work: object, written, performance or somewhere in between. The best of these works will be showcased in September 2011 at Corban Estate Arts Centre. The artworks for exhibition will be selected by a panel of senior artists, curators and writers.

Further information: NZ 2011 listing ; Metonymy Website ; Going West Books and Writers' Festival

Exhibition now showing: 'on the wing', The Community Arts Centre, Whangarei

2011-08-18T07:10:00.003+12:00

Book Review: 'Parr by Parr - Quentin Bajac meets Martin Parr - Discussions with a promiscuous photographer'

2011-08-12T08:15:00.005+12:00

A must for any fan of social documentary photography, Parr by Parr - Quentin Bajac meets Martin Parr - Discussions with a promiscuous photographer; Schilt, 2010, is an extended interview in book form.

Able to be read in a sitting or two, this book explores Martin Parr's beginnings, his motivations, methods, the evolution of his subject matter and means of presentation, as well as delving into his involvement with the Magnum photo agency and the possibilities this has facilitated.

The book contains a cross-section of his images, from early black and white work in 1975, to celebrations of colour as recent as 2009. The Parr humour and juxtaposition of subjects within the frame were there right from the early monochrome images; but it was the addition of colour and flash in the eighties which defined his instantly recognisable aesthetic.

The greatest area of interest for me was the discussion of Parr's probing and evolving exploration of his subject matter - English middle class culture, through global consumerism - which is discussed in a down-to-earth and accessible way.

(For an overview of his work, further recommended reading is Sandra S. Phillips' Martin Parr; Phaidon, 2007.)