What is a photograph?

"...For me, the essence of any photograph is the way in which it touches, whether that be physical, emotional, spiritual or otherwise. Nicholas Muellner, in his wonderful new book Lacuna Park, writes: A photograph is a surface for feeling. I think about that phrase a lot.
A photograph is also a question, a prompt, and an interface. A point where we the viewer meet and interact with the thing itself and its shadow. A transaction between body, imagination, environment. I think every photograph also has the capacity to exist as an afterimage, some more vivid and intense than others..."
source

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Sketchbooks?

Reading this article today got me thinking.

Sketchbooks formed a formative part of my early career as a visual artist. Over the years technology and work kind of got in the way. I feel it’s time to reverse that trend. Now with cheap colour printers and a 200000 plus digital archive some interesting things may eventuate.

Watch this space.

I already have digitised some of my early visual diaries over on tumblr, but may not have finished?

A spread from a visual diary from about 1988

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Melbourne Art Book Fair 2020

As usual, the Melbourne Photobook Collective has a stand at the NGV’s Art Book Fair. The fair is an annual event, this year running from 12th of March to the 15th of March. This year I added one new publication, and a series of postcards. The new ‘publication is entitled ‘Body Bags & Other Misdemeanours’. It is a a 41 page stapled book with 27 photos printed on 100gsm stock. The postcards were abstracted fragments of torn advertising posters. Below are a selection of images from the book.

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FIRST BOOK AWARD 2020 SHORTLIST Mack Publlishing

The winner will be announced at Photo London in May alongside an exhibition of the shortlisted books. The jury this year was comprised of Jörg Colberg, Ellis Jones, Joanna Piotrowska, Polly Fleury and Michael Mack.
More info on Mack's website

The shortlist is:- Andrea Alessandrini, Piccola Russia, Marta Bogdańska SHIFTERS, Maria Dabrowski Odsłonić , Deanna Dikeman Leaving and Waving: 90 Good-byes, Jonas Feige Stadt, Land, Fluss , Damian Heinisch 45, Miro Kuzmanovic Signs by the Roadside, Yura Kolomiets What is the corner looking at? , Nina Perlman
[Architects, Pigeons], Sara Vighi
Handbook of a Town

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New Publications in 2020?

The annual Melbourne Art Book Fair at the National Gallery of Australia in St.Kilda road, is only a month away. I share a stand with the other members of the Melbourne Photobook Collective.

This year I am publishing a new book. A self published booklet entitled ‘Body Bags & Other Misdemeanours” It is a 42 page book printed on 100 gsm inkjet paper with 27 colour pictures, stapled in an edition of 5.

The book examines ways is which the human form is represented, or even misrepresented. It will be available on sale all weekend at the gallery.

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Two Books and a Long Walk — Craig Mod — Config 2020

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Books I'd like to buy.

 Day Sleeper Dorothea Lange – Sam Contis.

"A collection of pictures so contemporary in feel, it's difficult to reconcile them with the Lange we know" – Wall Street Journal Magazine
"Untethered from the heavy responsibility of telling the stories of people in dire situations, [these photographs] delight in the texture of cotton shirts and weathered hands, more ambivalent and playful than [Lange's] state-sponsored work. – The Independent

In this book Sam Contis presents a new window onto the work of the iconic American photographer Dorothea Lange. Drawing from Lange’s extensive archive, Contis constructs a fragmented, unfamiliar world centred around the figure of the day sleeper – at once a symbol of respite and oblivion. The book shows us one artist through the eyes of another, with Contis responding to resonances between her and Lange’s ways of seeing. It reveals a largely unknown side of Lange, and includes previously unseen photographs of her family, portraiture from her studio, and pictures made in the streets of San Francisco and the East Bay. Day Sleeper will be featured alongside other works of Contis’ in the exhibition Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures at the Museum of Modern Art, February–May 2020.
Day Sleeper Dorothea Lange – Sam Contis – MACK


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The Booksellers | Official Trailer

I love a good photobook and have a long list of must haves.


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Some early year ruminations.

West Sunshine, 2020-01-09 17:05:05

I am no fan of best of lists or end of year lists at all.

I will never write about gear. I envy after several pieces of kit. But they are all mostly on the 2nd hand market these days.

I write here for two reasons, to practice my writing skills, both generally and as I consider my PHD application at some point in the future. Oh and to showcase some of the work I am working on. This image to the right is from my ongoing Sunshine Project, on tumblr
Here’s a list of projects I am working on as they're called these days:-

• Sunshine, postcode 3020 and its changes using both film and digital, the film idea is titled  'Sunshine in Silver Stanza 1 though X', the digital work lives online on tumblr [pc3020.tumlr.com]. For now.
• Several photobooks in various stages of pre-prodcution and a handful completed listed on my main website a link will be added once my technological issues are resolved.
• Collage and montage projects, these have just this year begun. After many years of gestation. The plan is for them to be small cheap 6x 4 postcards.
• A small group of pictures currently titled ‘A Winter Mornings Walk’, inspired by Robert Adams’ work Summer nights. [silver gelatin a work in progress final size to be determined]
• A series of silver gelatin prints I have printed and exhibited twice called Maps.
• A series of silver gelatin prints about bridges all shot on 5x4 film and more than 20 years unfinished.
• A series of silver gelatin prints on the urban landscape from both 5x4 film and 120 film black and white.
• A small type C print series of pictures near on and around the Ring road M8 freeway, in progress.
• Two  of tumblrs that explore time and place one at work  the other at home as well as a tumblr of pictures uploaded on the the fly that are loosely curated in any order that suits, the only connection being visual from picture to picture
• A large box of polaroids that needs editing down to a book.
• One tentative exhibition has been proposed but is still in the verbal discussion phase.
• Working on the South Eastern fringes of the Mallee, and the rural towns in-between
• C Roads and other Adventures a digital psychogeographic exploration of Victoria, or anywhere else I wander with "purpose" 
• Pictures of nothing or as I like to call it Neo-Documentary

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An accidental thesis on waste and pollution – British Journal of Photography

Another interesting photobook?

David Brandon Geeting’s latest book, Neighbourhood Stroll,  is an object of contradictions. The photographs are alluring, but they depict junk and debris; the design is colourful and bright, but the book itself is weighty; and although the project began as a casual afternoon activity, it developed into an “accidental thesis” on the critical issue of pollution and the climate crisis. 

An accidental thesis on waste and pollution – British Journal of Photography

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Before and After Photographs of Industrial Towns | PDN Photo of the Day

Creatively life has hit a bit of a quiet place right now.
For a brand range of reasons I have moved away from mainstream social media and am using an RSS new reader to engage with the wider world of photography and blogs.
This link turned up in my feed this morning and is the kind of work that really resonates with me. It is by John Davies and is a book of work about the changing urban  landscape spanning over a decade of work by him.

Before and After Photographs of Industrial Towns | PDN Photo of the Day

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Vale Harvey Benge [27 July 1944 – 7 October 2019]

Mr. Benge's blog screen grabbed on 14th of October 2019

Although I only knew of Mr Benge via the internet, his presence was warm acknowledged by all who spoke of him. I have added his blog to my links in the sidebar. He was a prolific photobook maker one of which I had the good fortune to purchase over the weekend. I have begun searching his other books too. Lensculture.com has an extensive listing of his projects. [edit 2019-11-11] MomentoPro also have an obituary for Harvey. Doug Spowart also has an obituary on Harvey.

A selection of Harvey Benge's books
as listed by lens culture.

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Martin Parr on selfies!

I welcome all these trends. I love things that are ephemeral, things that are changing. As a documentary photographer my job is to understand the way the world is changing and to document that. So how could you not include this in such work? It’s such an integral part of who we are now. And it’s all new! Ten years ago this didn’t exist, and I can’t see their demise.

source 

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Photobooks

All 16 books I purchased

Photobooks form a large part of my creative practice. This has been the case since the late 1980s. I was first introduced to photobooks at University by my lecturers there. Photobooks have continued to be a driving force and inspiration in much of my work. They of course also allow me to access photographer’s monographs and bodies of work even before the internet expanded that access. On a recent trip to New York City I took the opportunity to access the vast supply of books available to me at both galleries and bookshops. I came home with about 16 books. Some new, some second hand and one book that I had never thought I would see again after lending my copy to a former student.

The books are:-

• The Secret Paris of the 30's [Brassai]
• The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston…
• Ralph Eugene Meatyard: Stages for Being
• Cindy Sherman: The Complete Untitled Film Stills
• Robert Mapplethorpe: Polaroids
• Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs
• Joel Sternfeld: iDubai
• Color Photography: A Working Manual by Henry Horenstein
• Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960
• Martin Parr: Life's a Beach
• Richard Ross: Architecture of Authority
• Robert Frank: Hold Still, Keep Going
• Down to Earth: Boyle Family in New Zealand
• Bill Wood's Business: Text by Diane Keaton, Marvin Heiferman
•  Ed Ruscha: Los Angeles Apartments

Once I have time to digest their contents I may share some thoughts here.

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TYAT [Hong Kong]

Hong Kong 2009-06-05 08:10:16

This image made ten years ago reminds me of the mental state I was in at the time. Not yet at the bottom but sinking fast. It also formed part of my book, The Ericsson Files [A mobile phone camera journal 2007~2009]. It was the last image in the book. Its title:- "You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down... Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. The title is a quote from one of my favourite movies, Bladerunner. A movie which questions the definition of humanity. A question most of my work attempts to address.

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Devastation?

https://theanthropocene.org

Edward Burtynsky and filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier in The Anthropocene Project, an ambitious multimedia endeavor that includes a photo book, a documentary (it will debut at the Toronto Film Festival in September), and a series of virtual reality experiences.

More on wired.com

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Counting down the days

24 handmade exhibition catalogues

With my upcoming solo exhibition less than 10 days away from opening I’m feeling both nervous and excited. The last time I exhibited a solo show of silver gelatin prints was 1996. I was still learning HTML then.  Scanning any files to upload to the internet and had no unique uri or domain. My early experiments in mobile phone photography had their own blog This however still seemed somewhat seperate and different to exhibiting silver gelatin prints in a gallery space and had only operated since 2006. The print themselves I still have, but I have never digitised them, and all I have is a digitised version of the essay by Margot Rosser. I also barely knew how to use Microsoft word. It would be some years before I could use a program like Quark, and now of course I’m fairly fluent in Indesign. This means I can make my own mini exhibition catalogues. I made 24 catalogues for this show. As a process I enjoy it immensely. Logistically it means less work in the space.

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