The current exhibition at ANCA in Dickson presents two photographic artists whose works have direct links back to the 1970s American colour photography represented by a host of artists including William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Helen Levitt and Joel Meyerowitz.
a photo essay from early May – a foggy morning followed by a brilliant blue sky.
Paris Photo LA Preivew (click on the image)
There’s a new online review on the Art Gallery of NSW photography exhibition: The Photograph and Australia.
Kate Breakey at the Michener Art Museum
Click on images for more
Here’s a recommended exhibition for those with an interest in Australian hand coloured photography from the last couple of decades.
The Photograph and Australia, AGNSW till 8 June 2015
It is a good thing to read critical reviews of the visual arts. A variety of views is refreshing.
For anyone with an interest in photography, this exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) has to be seen, and then seen again.
The ACT Government is to implement the city’s first light rail system. Particular lobby groups have been hounding the government about this decision.
National Gallery of Australia (Canberra) Exhibition open till 30 August 2015
at the Art Gallery of NSW, 25 April – 2 July 2015 – click on the image for more
This is a must see exhibition.
ANU Australian Centre on China in the World till 3 April 2015 
This is a highly recommended photography exhibition. It closes 3 April 2015.
Art Gallery of NSW – 21 March – 2 June 2015. click on image for more
The fun things you see as you drive through middle Victoria. A town sign designed by Michael Leunig. (click on image to enlarge)
There’s a new documentary on black photography in the USA.
A sad story indeed about the woman in the famous Steve McCurry/National Geographic photograph. The original photograph was a 1984 cover for National Geographic.
Sharbat Gula, the subject of the original photograph, is in trouble because she remains a refugee from Afghanistan, but was carrying a Pakistan identify card.
Please click on the image to the right for the link to the story.
A Celebration by Galerie Kicken Berlin – 40 years of exhibitions and support of photography through an exhibition of 40 photographs.
Click here to go to Gael Newton’s blog posting.
The UK government has taken action to ban the export of seventy photographs by Swedish photography pioneer Oscar Gustave Rejlander.
Be Warned – be Afraid – be Very Afraid
Crace is a new suburb in Canberra. Click on the image for a short photo-essay.
A sign of activity by the revolutionary arm of the Dickson Residents Group
Walking through a side street in central Vienna late last year, we came across a group of people totally captured by something out of our view.
I noticed this report on how the San Francisco photography collection is on the move during renovations. It is always good to see such simple logic at work. Full marks to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
I have just read a copy of a wonderful catalogue of a significant photographic exhibition at the Monash Gallery of Art (MGA). Yet again the MGA lives up to their reputation as ‘The Home of Australian Photography‘.
Chances are that I will not get to Melbourne to see this exhibition. However, the catalogue is a real gem and should be sought after by anyone interested in the development of Australian photography during the early 20th Century. (click on the images to enlarge)
It was while visiting Singapore recently, that a local friend took us to dinner in a well-known food alley. I was here that I noticed the light coming from the window above us. I had to take a photo. (click on photo to enlarge)
With the recent growth interest in South Eastern Asian photography, prices of historic photographs have been rising significantly. Gael Newton, having departed from the National Gallery of Australia in late 2014, has continued her research and curatorial interests in South East Asian photography. She has recently written a post on her observations of a particular sale. click here.
This is my December 2014 overview on accessing Australia’s major visual art gallery exhibition programs though their websites. – and the status of photography.
This small barrier was erected in the foyer of a mall we passed through most days to get to our apartment hotel in Singapore. The sign says – Work In Progress.
During the whole week that the installation sat there nothing happened around, above or anywhere near it. To this day I wonder whether someone put it there as a joke and as it looked official, it remained in place and undisturbed. It was still there the day we left Singapore. Or was it in fact an artwork – an artistic installation?
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Paul Costigan
click any image to enlarge
over the period end of 2014 into 2015
The information below is about photography exhibitions in Sydney over the period from the end of 2014 into the early parts of 2015.
This is my selection and may be added to as I come across exhibitions I would like to recommend. If you know of others, let me know. But I will only upload stuff I am interested in and/or can recommend.
25 Sept – 11 Jan 2015, Barbican Art Gallery, London
click on any image to enlarge.
Rivington Place, London till 29 Nov 2014.
This a photography exhibition that has to be seen in the flesh to be appreciated. The basis for the exhibition is the unearthing of photographs that have not been seen for far too many years.
The researchers have done a great job of identifying most of the subjects. The main room has huge portraits printed from the original negatives. The people are from an African choir on tour in Britain between 1891-93.
These images are just so beautiful and majestic. They have been printed super large and each person is represented by two different portraits.
click on any image to enlarge
It was while roaming the gardens of a former Austrian Royal Palace, that I sat down for a rest and took a moment to take in the wide views in front of me.
click on any image to enlarge
I love wandering around city streets. In Sydney recently on a typical warm day, being about 28 degrees, it was very noticeable just how much of the city’s inner streets are devoid of trees and shade.
Exhibitions from the 2014 Singapore International Photography Festival
The Singapore International Photography Festival has definitely arrived. It has now being staged every two years and this year’s is the fourth.
Not all walks around Manly (Sydney) involve wandering along the beaches. There are many streets and lanes to seek out to see how the urban environment settles into the evening.
Flux Realities: A Showcase of Chinese Contemporary Photography
at Singapore Arts Science Museum till 2 Nov 2014
This is a photograph of the monument on the harbour side of Manly to honour the landing of Captain Arthur Phillip in Manly. One problem!
In Manly (Sydney), the harbourside pool is closed after heavy rain because of pollution. One wonders where is the pollution coming from.
At the end of an exhibition seminar in August at the Monash Gallery of Art, we witnessed the NGA Senior Curator of Photography, Gael Newton (finishing September) , handing on the baton and all the challenges to her replacement, the new NGA Senior Curator of Photography (from October), Shaune Lakin (previously The MGA Director).
love in a public place. (click on image to enlarge)
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Paul Costigan, 13 August 2014
The park celebrated its tenth anniversary last June. This first image is from their own website.
Here’s a small group of photographs from a recent visit to Goulburn on a very cold winter’s day. I managed to take a few moments from the business trip to snap a few photographs.
Click on any photograph to enlarge.
Here are a few photographs taken near the Roma Street Parklands in mid winter 2014. This time of the year makes for wonderful light. Please click on any of the images to enlarge them. I enjoyed this image because of the shadows and the light, the plants were being highlighted, and of course the texture and mass of the rock wall.
Near Roma Street Parkland entrance, July 2014
On Exhibit at Parliament House in Canberra are the commissioned photographs by Anna Zahalka (click here). The photographs are of the staff who are normally behind the scenes and whose work is vital to so many operations within the building.
I have stayed in many hotel rooms in many cities and towns. The experience of being in a hotel room, although now it is mostly apartments, is usually enjoyable but always with a tinge of weird. You enter this borrowed space and establish your presence while always being aware of the temporary nature of your stay.
At the seminar at the National Gallery of Australia, the Indonesian artist FX Harsono made a presentation as an Indonesian of Chinese decent who is now researching and making art about the treatment of the Chinese communities in the early days of the Indonesian republic.
There’s a fantastic video on exhibition in which FX Harsono deals with his Chinese name, in that he is writing it continuously while other forces are washing it away.
It was while visiting the Canberra Gallery for another exhibition that we spotted these six works by the artist/photographer Ian North. On exhibition were colour photographs from Ian’s suite of 24 images, the Canberra Suite Series (1981).
It was while visiting the Stills Gallery in Sydney to see the works by Mary Ellen Mark, that I was totally struck by the ambiance of a photograph titled: The Damm Family in Their Car, Los Angeles, California, USA, 1987. (it is reproduced larger below)
Besides the stand out nature of the total composition, the car, the children, the hands around the woman, it was the faces on the mother and the daughter that glued me for much more than the standard time one usually spends with any work in an exhibition. Then I could not help but return to it several times.
National Gallery of Australia
Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s
21 February – 22 June 2014, free entry to exhibition (note the exhibition is on two floors)
Continue reading Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia
Photographer, Fabrice Fouillet, has a series of images of Colosses that were created to dominate and dwarf the landscape and buildings around them.
Exhibition title: Australian vernacular photography
Once again, the Art Gallery of NSW has brought together an interesting exhibition of Australian photography – click here.
This is a must see for anyone with interests in photography. Judy Annear, the curator, has brought some gems from their vast collection.
University of Sydney, Macleay Museum
This exhibition is advertised as being of historic photographs from the Pacific spanning a century beginning from the late 1850s. With these words both in advertising and online, the expectations were for an extensive exhibition of photographs of the pacific islands.
NGA Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s
from the Canberra Times, March 8 2014, comes this review by Sacha Grishin. Click here for the review.
For more on the National Gallery of Australia exhibition – click here. Note that the exhibition is free and runs till 22 June 2014.
An article appeared in the Fairfax press on March 1st 2014 under the by-line: A long-lost print has rewritten the story behind one of Australia’s most famous photographs.
Alas, the story was not quite a full representation of the facts!
Would we all have wings to zoom around the globe to visit a few photography exhibitions. But wait, that’s called the internet. So here are a few of the current exhibitions presently with an online presence that we have looked into recently.
This is a fairly random selection and we are linking to those where there is an accessible online exhibition. If a gallery has used flash and therefore there are no direct links, unfortunately they are fairly useless for this exercise. Shame there are a few that miss out, such as one of my favourite Singapore galleries: Gallery 2902. Continue reading photography
Canberra is a garden City. We love to surround ourselves with trees, shrubs and gardens. There are heaps of birds in our suburbs. Take a short drive into the country and things change. Here’s a few images from one such drive yesterday.
An overview of accessing Australia’s major visual art gallery exhibition programs though their websites. Date: Christmas 2013.
This is an overview of what visual arts major art galleries are telling us is available around the country this Christmas. Our major art galleries endeavour to have their local audiences come through the doors. The challenge is to convince someone interested in all manner of visual arts, including photography, to spend some of our discretionary leisure time and dollars to travel (pay airfares and accommodation) to see the collections and special exhibitions.
On the western edge of Canberra’s CBD, next to the Australian National University, on the side of Black Mountain, sits one of the National Capital’s often overlooked treasures, the Australian National Botanic Gardens. Although it figures in tourist brochures, I am not aware of large numbers of visitors. I am also not convinced that local Canberrans visit this site very often or that they think to take their visitors there.
A collection of photographs gathered more or less locally.
there two more collections – here and here
We were traveling back from Sydney and made a stop over for dinner at Bowral. There’s a good take away noodle shop half way down the main street.
I took the time to observe the Christmas decoration in the local shops. (click on any image to enlarge them)
Here’s an image in the R M Williams window.
The story starts here: (allow 4 minutes)
and then..
An exhibition at the Getty in LA on the link between photography and architecture. Check it out and note the partly illustrated check list at the bottom of the page.
click on the image for the Getty site
Japan and food – an image
A photograph taken in 2006 of lunch time on a busy back street in Tokyo.
The food was great. Ordering in such places is always interesting as no-one there spoke English (and this is the usual off the tourist areas) and we spoke absolutely no Japanese. We managed through hand gestures and pointing and thanks to the politeness and very friendly nature of the owners. This experience was repeated often whereby the locals were both helpful and courteous to these foreigners who did not speak their language.
For travelers of urban space and cities, there is nothing more enjoyable as roaming streets and observing both the unusual and the ordinary. In reality most of time the ordinary and the unusual do tend to blend. Anyone who is an observer of street behaviour realises that there is not much that is ordinary about how people behave as they wander, rush or simply promenade about our urban thoroughfares. The streets of our cities are packed with these constantly changing tableaux. The realities are fun to observe as well as those things we conjure up in our imaginations about the buildings and the streets and the parks and the cosmopolitan mix of people.
The Search for Debt and Deficit Emergency: A Day with the Bowral Yacht Squadron
It’s early dawn and the famous Bowral Yacht Squadron sets out for a day’s adventure on the high seas. This is much anticipation about the task ahead!
