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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Flickr is AWESOME!

The second picture that I uploaded to flickr in 2004.

I have been a  flickr.com pro user since 2004.* I have invested heavily in its service for my own creative needs and to share with a larger community. Now with the NBN I also backup all my jpegs and  tiff files. I have unlimited storage and bandwidth for about $75.00 AU per year. It is worth every cent. If you care about your photographs and want to keep them safe and not be used as some kind of ad or artificial intelligence fodder then consider using flickr as a minimum to store your work, but consider getting involved as well. Smugmug as the new owners are doing a great job with flickr. I see no reason why SmugMug would allow this great service to fade! Don't just listen to me I am biased after all; 16 years of biased in fact, Read this article if you need some clarification.  Ferdy Christant says it in much more detail, more eloquently and logically than I ever could. Follow me s2art. Or not. Flickr is still the best place in the world to share and store your photographs!

* This is not a paid endorsement, although I have used flickr daily since 2004. I continue to enjoy it and use it creatively and socially and now as a secondary backup service.

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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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Meanwhile on Flickr...

Footscray, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. 2014-01-06 18:58:34

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The power of images?

Looking South along City Road Southbank from the NGV. 2017-08-01 13:18:11

An op-ed piece in todays Age, by Waleed Aly argues we are being desensitised by imagery, generally. In his argument he specifically mentions climate change.

As an artist this is one of my own biggest concerns. Yes images can move us from stasis to action. Pictures however are not always designed for this. Robert Adams talks about hope and how art can provide this in many of his essays. It is a driving factor in my own work and one that is difficult to articulate both in words and pictures.

Instagram gets a mention in his article. Another discusses its impact on young tweens and teens. Sadly the link is broken but he rightly claims I think that the sheer volume of images we are exposed to on a daily basis makes these kind of responses difficult. This could also be an argument for a bigger return to film. As these images are time consuming to make and difficult to propagate as analogue objects.

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