Ladies First - BSG

On Friday night my art teacher from high school was apart of an exhibition at the Brunswick St Gallery. The exhibition featured several female artists, revealing an array of styles and approaches. My house mate and I were asked to create a short film that documented the set up and opening night. I also took this opportunity to take a few snaps. I approached photographing this event in the same vein as my previous market photos, focusing on human interaction.I encountered a few technical challenges, due to the nature of the lighting in galleries and the set up of the gallery with a diagonal dividing false wall. The combination of both of these things created scattered and bright lighting that made it difficult to generate a completely sharp focused image. However I did manage to produce a few images that I particularly like due to the artists artwork interaction which features.

'I'm A Photographer - Not A Terrorist!'

Street photography has had particular prevalence in contemporary art circles, capturing a universally familiar pulse of city life. The central origin of street photography arose in New York during the 1960's, with founding practitioners Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand and Joel Meyenowitz forging a distinctive genre. These key figures continue to influence current productions and methodology associated with street photography. While street photography can be linked to such pioneers as Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, it wasn't until the 1960's that a notable attitude and distinguishable genre was forming.

Sean O'Hagen's article on this genre in the Guardian, brought to my attention the similarity of intention and methodology of my market photographs as this genre. As I have stated in a previous blog entry, my intention as a photographer is to observe rather than control my world. The images I captured a the markets were not focused on perfect camera settings and contrived compositions, but rather to quote Winogrand:
"When I am photographing I see life. That's what I deal with. I don't have pictures in my head...I don't worry about how the pictures are going to look. I let that take care of itself. It's not about taking nice pictures. That anyone can do."

Unfortunately street photography, especially the more aggressive forms, is under threat, caused largely by an era the article describes as 'an age of anxieties, both big and small, real and imagined'. Terrorism, paedophilia, intrusion, surveillance and the insistent right to privacy all endanger the future of this distinctive genre of street photography!

Photographic Observations At Camberwell Markets

After the previous success of capturing everyday events and the interaction of people at the Queen Victoria Markets, I began considering other kinds of markets for photographic exploration. I decided on the Sunday Camberwell Markets, as the goods for sale and type of people which attend provide an interesting contrast to the Queen Vic Markets. The Camberwell Market essentially thrive off the philosophy that 'one man's trash is another man's treasure'! There was an element of scavenging and competitive rummaging that was not present at the Queen Vic Markets. The essence of my photography is to make myself invisible so as to capture peoples uninhibited interaction with products and people. The third image below is of me capturing a woman trying on a helmet, I have pressed the button to take the photo at the precise moment she recognises that I am indeed photographing her. I think adds a humorous aspect to the image in relation to my intention of being invisible!

Below are some of my more successful images from the Camberwell Markets:

Trent Parke - An Observer Of Our World!

I examined Australian contemporary photographer Trent Parke for my presentation due to his highly distinctive and vivid visual signature. While researching his approach and and style, I came to recognise that I share some similarities in relation to intention and approach. From my recent experience and observation of photography, as a medium of mass production and consumption, I have recognised two distinctive approaches:

*Photographers who construct and attempt to control their world, and then seek to represent and capture it visually

OR

*Photographers who wish to observe their world, with no intervention

I find myself to be increasingly in the latter category, gaining the greatest interest and inspiration from simply observing the world around me.

Trent Parke's series of work, 'Minutes to Midnight', observes and reveals an aspect of Australia that many of us are unfamiliar with, bringing us particularly dense and alluring images. The images captured in this series were a product of a two year long 90,000 km journey across Australia, capturing a psychological portrait of this nation. The aspect of Parke's work which makes it distinctive is his revelation and capacity to capture the transformative power of Australian light. This is a detail which I think would advance the artistic quality and observational capacity of my photographic works.

Below are images from this series 'Minutes to Midnight':

An Oasis Within Sydney

After my trip to the country, I spent a few days in Sydney which was a completely different change of pace, until we visited the warf and park area in North Sydney. It was quite early in the morning so not a lot of people were around so it felt like we had stumbled across an undiscovered oasis. The focus of my muse was again this contrast between the organic and inorganic. These are some of the better shots I took:

Food For Thought In The Country Air!

Whilst this blog is somewhat delayed in it's being written, my trip to the NSW countryside over Easter was quite influential in the progression of my portfolio of photographs. I stayed at my Aunt and Uncles farm just outside of Bathurst in NSW, and was reminded of the distinct contrast in the visual environment from the country to the city. This change in scenery encouraged me to examine more closely the visual components of my world and infact got me thinking more laterally, which is quite in keeping with the Romantic Poet's belief in the country air to do so!

A site of particular interest for me on the farm was the old shed, which once was productive in shearing mobs of sheep on mass, however is now a storage home to a random collection of unused furniture, Gum Boots, old electrical appliances. This contrast between old and new, previous function and current function all mashed in together provided some really visually interesting shots. In addition, the physical structure of the shed as hand constructed in the late 1800's from local logged trees, provided interesting organic lines and shapes which contrasted well against the inorganic shapes and colours of modern technology. I found some technical difficulty as the shed was very dark and as such needed to have the ISO up quite high to allow enough light into the camera, however in doing so the images became a little grainy. However I still feel the images capture well my intention and are really quite visually interesting. Below is a short list of some of the better shots I took: