Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled (family) 2005 From the series Photos my mother sent me, 2005
The Book of Memory. Book Four.
Several blank pages. To be followed by profuse illustrations. Old family photographs, for each person his own family, going back as many generations as possible. To look at these with utmost care.
Afterwards, several sequences of reproductions, beginning with the portraits Rembrandt painted of his son, Titus. To include all of them: from the view of the little boy in 1650 (golden hair, red feathered cap) to the 1655 portrait of Titus ‘puzzling over his lessons’ (pensive, at his desk, compass dangling from his left hand, right thumb pressed against his chin) to Titus in 1658 (seventeen years old, the extraordinary red hat, and, as one commentator has written, ‘The artist has painted his son with the same sense of penetration usually reserved for his own features’) to the last surviving canvas of Titus, from the early 1660s: ‘the face seems that of a weak old man ravaged with disease. Of course, we look at it with hindsight – we know that Titus will predecease his father…’
To be followed by the 1602 portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh and his eight-year-old-son Wat (artist unknown) that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. To note: the uncanny similarity of their poses. Both father and son facing forward, left hands on hips, right feet pointing forward, and the somber determination on the boy’s face to imitate the self-confident, imperious stare of the father. To remember: that when Raleigh was released after a thirteen-year incarceration in the Tower of London (1618) and launched out on a doomed voyage to Guiana to clear his name, Wat was with him. To remember that Wat, leading a reckless military charge against the Spanish, lost his life in the jungle. Raleigh to his wife: ‘I have never known what sorrow meant until now.’ And so went he went back to England, and allowed the King to chop of his head.
To be followed by more photographs, perhaps several dozen: Mallarmé’s son, Anatole; Anne Frank (‘This is a photo that shows me as I should always like to look. Then I would surely have a chance to go to Hollywood. but now, unfortunately, I usually look different’); Mur; the children of Cambodia; the children of Atlanta. The dead children. The children who will vanish, the children who are dead. Himmler: ‘I have made the decision to annihilate every Jewish child from the face of the earth.’ Nothing but pictures. Because, at a certain point, the words lead one to conclude that it is no longer possible to speak. Because these pictures are the unspeakable.
Paul Auster. “The Book of Memory,” from The Invention of Solitude. Faber and Faber, 1982, pp. 102-103.
Please click on the images for a larger version.
Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1641-1668) Portrait of a Boy in Fancy Dress (Titus) c. 1655 Oil on canvas
Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1641-1668) Portrait of Titus 1655 Oil on canvas
Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1641-1668) The Artists Son Titus 1657 Oil on canvas
Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1641-1668) Portrait of Titus 1663 Oil on canvas
Unknown artist Sir Walter Ralegh and son 1602 Oil on canvas 78 1/2 in. x 50 1/8 in. (1994 mm x 1273mm) Given by Lennard family, 1954 National Portrait Gallery, London
Anonymous photographer Portrait of Anatole Mallarmé c. 1874 Photograph
Unknown photographer Anne Frank 10th October 1942 Hand written note from The Diary of a Young Girl
Photos of child victims on display at the Toul Sleng Genocide museum in Cambodia
Unknown photographer Executions of Kiev Jews by German army mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) near Ivangorod Ukraine. A woman protects a child with her body as Einsatzgruppen soldiers aim their rifles 1942
Executions of Kiev Jews by German army mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) near Ivangorod Ukraine. The photo was mailed from the Eastern Front to Germany and intercepted at a Warsaw post office by a member of the Polish resistance collecting documentation on Nazi war crimes. The original print was owned by Tadeusz Mazur and Jerzy Tomaszewski and now resides in Historical Archives in Warsaw. The original German inscription on the back of the photograph reads, “Ukraine 1942, Jewish Action [operation], Ivangorod.”
“I’m not trying to do something to you, I’m trying to do something with you.”
American pianist and composer Keith Jarrett at a concert in Melbourne, 1970s
The eye of Lee Friedlander is incredible. His complex, classical photographs in books such as Letters from the People (1993),Flowers and Trees (1981),The American Monument (1976) and America by Car (2010) have redefined the (photographic) landscape. The artist is constantly reinventing himself, reinventing pictorial space – cutting, distorting, reflecting it back onto itself – to create layered images (after Eugène Atget and Walker Evans). These self-reflective spaces are as much about the artist and his nature as they are about the world in which he lives. They have become the basis of Friedlander’s visual language. Here is a love of the medium and of the world that is a reflection of Self.
I don’t see these cars (or photographs) as illusion factories. For me, this series of work is akin to a tri-view self-portrait. Instead of the artist painting the sitter (as in the triple portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, 1627 below), a vision, an energy of Self emanates outwards from behind the bulwark of the car steering wheel and dash. It is a Self and its relationship to the world split into multifaceted angles and views. He looks out the left window, the front window, the side window – and then he splits his views between side and front windows using the A pillar of the car as a dividing, framing tool. Sometimes he throws in the reflections of him / self with camera in the rear view mirror for good measure. There is wit, humour and irony in these photographs. There is cinematic panorama and moments of intimacy. There is greatness in these images.
Friedlander is not trying to do something to you, but something with you, for he is showing you something that you inherently know but may not be aware of. Like a Zen master, he asks you questions but also shows you the way. If you understand the path of life and the energy of the cosmos, you understand what a journey this is.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Foam for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Philippe de Champaigne (French, 1602-1674) Triple portrait of Cardinal Richelieu c. 1640 Oil on canvas 58cm (22.8 in) x 72cm (28.3 in) The National Gallery, London This reproduction is in the public domain
The automobile has come to symbolise the American dream and the associated urge for freedom. It is therefore no surprise that cars play a central role in the series America by Car and The New Cars 1964 by renowned American photographer Lee Friedlander (1934, US), now receiving their first showing in the Netherlands.
Road Trip
America by Car documents Friedlander’s countless wanderings around the United States over the past decade. In this he follows a trail laid down by numerous photographers, film makers and writers like Robert Frank, Stephen Shore and Jack Kerouac. Friedlander nevertheless succeeds in giving the theme of the American road trip his own very original twist, using the cars’ windscreens and dashboards to frame the familiar American landscape, as well as exploiting the reflections found in their wing and rear view mirrors. It is a simple starting point which results in complex and layered images that are typical for Friedlander’s visual language. He also has a sharp eye for the ironic detail. He makes free use of text on billboards and symbols on store signs to add further meaning to his work. His images are so layered that new information continues to surface with every glance, making America by Car a unique evocation of contemporary America.
Car portraits
The New Cars 1964 is a much older series. Friedlander had been commissioned by Harper’s Bazaar to photograph all the new models of automobile introduced in 1964. Rather than placing them centrally and showing them to best advantage, Friedlander decided to set the cars in the most banal of locations, in front of a furniture store or in a scrap yard for instance. Exploiting reflections, available light and unusual perspectives, his cars are almost completely absorbed into the street scene. Although they were rejected at the time by the magazine’s editorial board on the grounds that the images were not attractive enough, the pictures were put away in a drawer and since forgotten. Friedlander however recently rediscovered this series. The New Cars 1964 has since become a special historical and social document and has in its own right become part of Friedlander’s impressive oeuvre.
Fifty-year career
Lee Friedlander was born in the US in 1934. In a career extending across 5 decades Friedlander has maintained an obsessive focus on the portrayal of the American social landscape. His breakthrough in the eyes of the wider public came with the New Documents exhibition at the MoMA in 1967, where his work was presented alongside that of Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand. Friedlander accumulated numerous awards during his career, including the MacArthur Foundation Award and three Guggenheim Fellowships. He also published more than twenty books. His work has been shown at many venues around the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the MoMA in New York, San Francisco’s SFMOMA, the MAMM in Moscow and the National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen.
Mr. Friedlander took his black-and-white, square-format photographs entirely from the interior of standard rental cars – late-model Toyotas and Chevys, by the looks of them – on various road trips over the past 15 years. In these pictures our vast, diverse country is buffered by molded plastic dashboards and miniaturized in side-view mirrors…
Mr. Friedlander groups images by subject, not geography: monuments, churches, houses, factories, ice cream shops, plastic Santas, roadside memorials.
So “America by Car,”… is more of an exercise in typology, along the lines of Ed Ruscha’s “Twentysix Gasoline Stations.” But there’s nothing deadpan or straightforward about the way Mr. Friedlander composes his pictures. He knows that cars are essentially illusion factories – to wit: “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.”
Some of the illusions on view here exploit the technology of the camera Mr. Friedlander has been using since the 1990s, the square-format Hasselblad Superwide (so named for its extra-wide-angle lens). The Superwide produces crisp and detail-packed images that are slightly exaggerated in perspective, giving the foreground – the car – a heightened immediacy…
Some of the photographs are dizzyingly complex, like one taken in Pennsylvania in 2007. The camera looks out through the passenger-side window, at a man whose feet appear to be perched on the door frame. He is standing in front of a trompe l’oeil mural of a train, which seems to be heading right at the car. In the side-view mirror you can see a woman approaching. It’s a bizarre pileup of early cinematic trickery (as in the Lumière Brothers), amateur photography and surveillance technology.
Mr. Friedlander’s love of such layering can be traced to Walker Evans and Eugène Atget. He also shares, in this series, Evans’s wry eye for signs of all kinds: the matter-of-fact “Bar” advertising a Montana watering hole, or the slightly more cryptic “ME RY RISTMAS” outside a service station in Texas [see image below]. He strikes semiotic gold at Mop’s Reaching the Hurting Ministry in Mississippi: “LIVE IN RELATIONSHIP ARE LIKE RENTAL CARS NO COMMITMENT.”
Cars distance people from one another, this series reminds us over and over. When Mr. Friedlander photographs people he knows – the photographer Richard Benson, or the legendary MoMA curator John Szarkowski (to whom the book is dedicated) – he remains in his seat, shooting through an open window. In just a few instances the subjects poke their heads inside, a gesture that seems transgressive in its intimacy…
Did he ever get out of the vehicle? Just once in this series, for a self-portrait. It’s the last picture, and it shows him leaning into the driver’s-side window, elbow propped on the door, left hand reaching for the steering wheel.
Maybe he was thinking of the last image in “The Americans” – a shot of Mr. Frank’s used Ford taken from the roadside, showing his wife and son huddled in the back seat. In Mr. Frank’s photograph the car is a protective cocoon. Mr. Friedlander seems to see it that way too, but from the inside out.
Excerpts of an excellent review by Karen Rosenberg. “America by Car,” on The New York Times website, September 2, 2010 [Online] Cited 05/11/2013. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Exhibition dates: 9th October – 9th November, 2013
Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) Room 1306 Mercure Potts Point, Jodi 2013 From Guest Relations Type C print 100 x 133cm
X marks the spot
Somehow these photographs just don’t work for me.
Intellectually, I appreciate the Inception-esque concept but visually and emotionally I am ambivalent towards the images. They feel more like caricatures than engaging works of art. Human beings stare blankly off into the distance, as though there was some meaningful relationship between this “dead pan” look and the upside down camera obscura image; thought bubbles appearing above the head (as in a cartoon), emanate from stilted, frozen, blank-faced human beings. Dead pan, introverted looks do not make for engaging associations – between elements in the image or between the image and the viewer.
The tableau vivants evidence little life, to wit, the oh so correctly crossed legs in Room 3907 Sofitel on Collins, Morgan; the impeccably placed photographs in Room 2515 Shangri-la, Isobel (who would ever put photographs on a bed like that?); and the artfully placed dumbells in Room 4821 Sofitel on Collins, Chris (all 2013, below). X certainly does mark the constrained, constructed spot.
Paradoxically, the images that work best are the ones where the human beings are absent, because the viewer can imagine the visage (and visualised thoughts) of the occupants, without seeing them. Then, and only then, do these images work as dreamlike scenarios and fulfil the artist’s desire to produce surreal and psychological spaces which seem to materialise their inhabitants’ distant thoughts.
However, as they are presented, each element of the image feels quite divisible, and all the elements of the image never feel fully integrated with each other. Hence the images feel less than fully resolved. What this body of work needed was a bit more panache and savour faire. Perhaps more distortion of the camera obscura image and more life from the protagonists would have brought the symbiotic relationships to life. You only have to think of the murder of Ann Lively in the film Minority Report to understand how these head cloud “visualisations” have incredible psychological power. I get none of that here.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Stills Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All images are copyright of the artist.
Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) Room 13 Cartwright, Michael and Katherine 2013 From Guest Relations Type C print 100 x 133cm
Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) Room 14 Cartwright, Ocean 2013 From Guest Relations Type C print
Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) Room 14 Cartwright, Harbour 2013 From Guest Relations Type C print 100 x 146cm
Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) Room 5126 Pullman Hyde Park, Brielle 2013 From Guest Relations Type C print
“Hotel rooms are waiting spaces: waiting in rooms for people to arrive, for events to start, or just waiting to go home. They are also private spaces.”
Robyn Stacey, 2013
This striking new series by leading contemporary art photographer, Robyn Stacey, combines the simplest form of the camera, the “camera obscura”, with high-end digital photography to explore a specific context: the hotel room. The project explores the fleeting and ephemeral experience and how this is captured as a moment out of time, by the photographic still.
Through Robyn Stacey’s photography we imagine other people’s private worlds. For the past 5 years her spectacular compositions have breathed new life into the old families of Sydney, reviving their personal objects from historic collections to evoke scenes as if they’ve just exited the room, leaving only a sprinkling of crumbs. Now, for Guest Relations she has turned from high fidelity studio photography to the non-digital process of camera obscura, Stacey brings our gaze to contemporary life and the transitory meetings of private and public worlds within the modern hotel room. Like pinhole photography, the camera obscura allows light in through a tiny hole in order to project a scene from outside onto an inside surface. Stacey recreates this process with ambitious scale and in unexpected settings, transforming the interiors of high-rise city chains and quiet coastline holiday destinations, into darkrooms for dramatically projected landscape vistas.
Turning from high fidelity studio photography to the non-digital process of camera obscura, Stacey brings our gaze to contemporary life and the transitory meetings of private and public worlds within the modern hotel room. Like pinhole photography, the “camera obscura” allows light in through a tiny hole in order to project a scene from outside onto an inside surface. Stacey recreates this process with ambitious scale and in unexpected settings, transforming the interiors of high-rise city Hotel chains and quiet coastline holiday destinations, into darkrooms for dramatically projected landscape vistas.
This historical form of image making, which Caravaggio and Vermeer are said to have used to create their impressive Baroque paintings, elaborately decorates the otherwise hermetic hotels rooms by wallpapering them with the world outside their windows. Normally characterised by modern minimalism and standardised comforts, these interiors are covered with the colonnades of buildings, the cityscapes of roads, rivers and parks (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane), and the turquoise shores of a sunbather’s paradise, such as the Gold Coast in Qld. Businessmen, young couples, and solo travellers are actors in these dreamlike scenarios; the upside-down, reversed and distorted visual effects of camera obscura, produce surreal and psychological spaces which seem to materialise their inhabitants’ distant thoughts.
Like stills from the sets of movies, Stacey’s images offer us fragments of untold narratives. Intimate and enigmatic moments glimpse the plethora of stories we can only imagine might play out within a hotel rooms’ four walls: the melodramas of domestics, the passionate professions of love, and the time-slowing boredom and loneliness that might accompany a life spent in endless waiting. Through the theatrical and distorted view of camera obscura is revealed a roving, fragmented and homogenised portrait of contemporary life. But by imbuing the transitory with the timeless, Stacey suggests that behind these closed, generic doors, we may all be looking outwards, seeking moments of beauty, clarity and meaningful connection.
Press release from the Stills Gallery website
Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) Room 2016 Shangri-la, Courtney 2013 From Guest Relations Type C print
Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) Room 3907 Sofitel on Collins, Morgan 2013 From Guest Relations Type C print
Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) Room 2515 Shangri-la, Isobel 2013 From Guest Relations Type C print
Artist statement
“The project, Guest Relations, was developed for an Artist in Residency earlier this year, at the Sofitel on Collins in Melbourne, renowned for its uninterrupted panoramic views over Melbourne city. The aim of the residency was to explore the hermetic, but transient nature of the hotel room.
As the view is a significant part of the hotel experience I wanted to incorporate the external cityscape into the interior. By making the room into a camera obscura (the simplest and earliest form of pin-hole camera) the external view is then naturally projected back into the room, upside down and in reverse, allowing me to photograph the view and the room together in one image.
This visual combination creates a unique and powerful dreamlike setting that serves as the backdrop and creates an environment for the guests to be photographed in. There are no tricks – just utilising the earliest and simplest form of photography to produce spectacular cinematic results. The people in the photographs are not models and they bring their personality to the rooms, in a sense creating their own narratives. The project has since been extended to Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.”
Robyn Stacey, 2013
Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) Room 2015 Pullman Hyde Park, Chair Still Life 2013 From Guest Relations Type C print
Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) Room 3601 Sofitel on Collins, Mr. Hoey 2013 From Guest Relations Type C print 135 x 100cm
Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) Room 4821 Sofitel on Collins, Chris 2013 From Guest Relations Type C print 127 x 100cm
“In these bittersweet longings for innocence (of person, of situation), small vibrations of energy carry great import…” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 11th October – 1st November, 2013
Curator: Unknown
Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960) Party no.1 2012-2013 Fine art ink-jet print 110 x 160cm Edition of 5
In her artist statement, Anne MacDonald observes that children’s birthday parties as symbols of loss and impermanence.
In these wonderful photographs there is a sense of sadness and perhaps even nostalgia. There is a certain wistfulness at play, a longing / yearning / pining for the past: a past that never happened (in my case). There is a delicacy and spareness here – in the colours and placement of objects in the mise-en-scène – which enhances the poetic telling of the story, the restrained aesthetic emphasising the choreographed movements within the scene. This, in turn, emphasises a sense of loss.
In these bittersweet longings for innocence (of person, of situation), small vibrations of energy carry great import. The suspended stars of Party No. 1, the abandoned heart of Party No. 5 with the single red ball perched precariously on the edge of the table – a masterstroke! If that little red ball was not there, the image simply would not work. To realise what the image needed, and to place that single ball there in the most knowing (yet spiritual) of positions, shows that this artist really knows what she is doing in this body of work. The fun / longing continues in Party No. 7, with its delicious monochromatic colours counterbalanced with the effusive staining of the spilt slurpee. Balance, restraint and intimacy are the key to these works, and MacDonald has achieved this to marvellous effect.
The only mis-step is the size of these images. I saw Party No. 2 at the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize 2013 at the Monash Gallery of Art recently at the largest size (110 x 160cm, the other sizes being 76 x 110cm and 33 x 38cm) and it simply didn’t work. No ifs and buts, it simply did not work at the size it was displayed. Why artists persist is printing their work at a huge scale when the image simply cannot sustain such a size, both conceptually and visually, is beyond me. Is it because they think it will be lost in the crowd (of a prize) if they don’t print it that big, or because it’s fashionable to print so large and the clientele want it that size as a statement piece for their home? The ONLY size out of the three that these images will work is at 33 x 38cm because of the intimacy of the subject matter. They photographs need to be jewel-like to radiate their energy. At the larger sizes this energy is totally lost.
So if you like this work buy three or four at the smaller size and let the images draw you into an intimate embrace with an impermanent, and perhaps fond remembered, past.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Bett Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960) Party no.2 2012-2013 Fine art ink-jet print 110 x 160cm Edition of 5
Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960) Party no.3 2012-2013 Fine art ink-jet print 110 x 160cm Edition of 5
Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960) Party no.4 2012-2013 Fine art ink-jet print 110 x 160cm Edition of 5
As a parent, observing my child growing up fills me with wonder, but also a sense of loss.
Children’s birthday parties are important social rituals, and on the surface of things, joyous and festive celebrations of life. However, on another level, they are compelling indicators of time’s inexorable passing. Children’s party decorations, food, gifts, games, toys and costumes alter each year with the age of the child. Their role extends beyond pure ornament and artifice to become symbolic of a transitory childhood world.
Looking at children’s birthday parties as symbols of loss and impermanence, Party continues my exploration into the relationship between the photographic still life, transience and mortality. In this series I have recreated ephemeral banquet scenes of party cakes and decorations. The images record the aftermath of the party, when all the fun is over, the presents have been opened, the cake eaten and the guests have left.
Artist statement
Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960) Party no.5 2012-2013 Fine art ink-jet print 110 x 160cm Edition of 5
Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960) Party no.6 2012-2013 Fine art ink-jet print 110 x 160cm Edition of 5
Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960) Party no.7 2012-2013 Fine art ink-jet print 110 x 160cm Edition of 5
Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960) Party no.8 2012-2013 Fine art ink-jet print 110 x 160cm Edition of 5
Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960) Party no.9 2012-2013 Fine art ink-jet print 110 x 160cm Edition of 5
Bett Galllery 369 Elizabeth Street North Hobart Tasmania 7000 Australia Phone: +61 (0) 3 6231 6511
This exhibition at the Monash Gallery of Art features the series Edge of the road by Melbourne photographer Joyce Evans. It is an intense, if less than fully successful, presentation of a body of work completed between 1988 and 1996. The photographs were made with a Widelux F7 35mm panoramic camera, a camera that has a rotating fixed focus lens (see images of the camera below). Rather than the normal horizontal panoramic orientation, Evans has mostly used the camera in a vertical orientation to shoot these images. At the same time she has twisted the camera along unfamiliar axes, sometimes on a diagonal line, which has produced unexpected distortion within the final images.
Evans professed aim in her artist statement (below) is to let go of control of what is captured by the camera, to let go of some previsualisation (what the photographer imagines that they want the photograph to be in their mind’s eye before they press the shutter) and rely on a certain amount of planning and chance. She cites the example of the American photographer Minor White (1908-1976) who popularised the idea of previsualisation as a means of aesthetically controlling the outcome of what the camera captures. Evans wants little of this and sees her photographs as using the camera’s inherent capabilities to image the minutiae of the world, using “the camera’s capacity to see detail, which in the 60th of a second of the firing of the shutter my subconscious may perceive, but may not fully know.” In this sense, the artist is appealing to Walter Benjamin’s idea of film serving as an optical unconscious, a medium that captures everyday objects of ordinary experience which are revealed as strange and unsettling, a “different” nature presenting itself to the camera than to the naked eye.1 As Richard Prouty has noted, “Film changed how we view the least significant minutiae of reality just as surely as Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life changed how we look at incidental phenomenon like slips of the tongue.”2
This enrichment of human perception by a scientific technology, the camera, happens at a level below human recognition, for although the retina frequently receives these aspects, they are not transformed into information by the perceptive system.3 “These new technical images helped discover hitherto unknown – ie. unacknowledged and analysed by perception and therefore restricted to the space of the unconscious or, as he [Benjamin] called it, of an “optical unconscious” – movements and dimensions of reality.”4 In other words, these new technical images may include information that was not retained, processed or even intended by the operator (hence the hoped for serendipity of the images). These images then surprise with the unexpected. As François Arago has observed, “When observers apply a new instrument to the study of nature, what they had hoped for is always but little compared with the successions of discoveries of which the instrument becomes the source – in such matters it is on the unexpected that one can especially count.”5 This is evidenced in Evans photographs through the POTENTIAL of chance. Not chance itself, but the potential of chance of the optical unconscious (of film) to capture something unexpected.
I must disagree with Evans, however, about the photographic process of Minor White and the process of “letting go” that she proposes to adhere to in this body of work. In fact, I would go so far as to invert her rationalisation. Having studied the work of Minor White and visited his archive at Princeton University Museum of Art I understand that previsualisation was strong in White’s photographs, but there was an ultimate letting go of control when he opened the shutter to his camera. In meditation, he sought a connection from himself to the object, from the object back through the camera to form a Zen circle of connection which can be seen in one of his famous Canons: “Let the Subject generate its own Composition.” Then something (spirit?) might take over. This is the ultimate in paradoxical letting go of control for a photographer – to previsualise something, to see it on the ground glass, to capture it on film, to then print it out to find that there is something amorphous in the negative and in the print that you cannot quite put your finger on. Some indefinable element that is not chance, not the unexpected, but spirit itself. Evans photographs are not of this order.
What these photographs are about is an intimate view of the land and our relationship to it, an examination of something that is very close to the artist, but evidenced through the subjectivity of the artist’s control and the objectivity of the cameras optical unconscious. They are shot “at close range,” the picture being taken very close (both physically and psychologically) to the person who is taking the photograph. In their multifaceted perspectives – some images, such as Flood on Murray River on Wodonga side, Victoria (1996) have double horizon lines – the viewer is immersed in the disorientating sweep of the landscape. The photographs become almost William Robinson-esque in their panoramic distortion of both time and space. For example, the descent from the light of the trees, to ferns, to the mulch of paleontological existence in Mount Bulla Ferns, Victoria (1996, below) is particularly effective, as is the booted front prints of Anzses Trip, Talaringa Springs, Great Victorian Desert, South Australia (1993, below). The transition of time is further emphasised by the inclusion of the film sprocket holes in some of the works, such as Pine Barbed Wire Fence and Orchard, Tyabb, Mornington Peninsula (1992, below). However, out of the thirteen photographs presented from the series some photographs, such as Bin, Toorak, Victoria (1990, below) simply do not work, for the image is too didactic in its political and aesthetic definition.
At their best these photographs capture an intensity that is at the boundary of some threshold of understanding (edge of the road, no man’s land, call it whatever you will or the artist wills) of our European place in this land, Australia. There are no bare feet on the ground, only booted footprints, barbed wire, gravel roads, dustbins, tyre tracks and hub caps. The reproductions do not do the work justice. One has to stand in front of these complex images to appreciate their scale and impact on the viewer. They resist verbal description, for only when standing in front of the best of these images does one observe in oneself a sense of disorientation, as though you are about to step off the edge of the world. They do not so much attempt to capture the energy of the landscape but our fragmented and possessive relation to it.
Ultimately, Evans photographs are highly conceptual photographs. Despite protestations to the contrary her photographs are about the control of the photographer with the potential of chance (through the recognition of the process of the optical unconscious of the camera) used knowingly by the artist to achieve the results that she wants. They are about the control of humans over landscape. Evans knows her medium, she knows the propensities of her camera, she plans each shot and despite not knowing exactly what she will get, she roughly knows what they results will be when she tilts the lens of her camera along different axes. These are not emotionally evocative landscapes but, because of the optical unconscious embedded in their construction, they are intimate, political statements about our relationship to the land.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Marcus was a friend of Joyce Evans OAM (1929-2019). Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Footnotes
1/ Prouty, Richard. “The Optical Unconscious,” on the One-Way Street blog, October 16th 2009 [Online] Cited 20th October 2013. No longer available online
2/ Ibid.,
3/ Flores, Victor. “Optical unconscious,” on the Fundação Côa Parque website [Online] Cited 20th October 2013. No longer available online
4/ Ibid.,
5/ Arago, Francois. “Rapport sur le daguerréotype,” in AA.VV. Du Bon Usage de la Photographie: une anthologie de textes. Paris: Centre National de la Photographie, 1987, p. 14 quoted in Flores, op. cit.,
Many thankx to Joyce Evans and Monash Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Evidenced in these photographs is one of the things that attracted me to photography – namely, its ability to capture the millisecond. While there are many schools of photography, the one popularised by the American photographer Minor White (1908-1976) suggests that the photographer pre-visualises the image prior to pressing the shutter. In other words, the photographer is in control and is the controller of what is captured by the camera. In terms of the resolution of the final image this is technically an important concept. However aesthetically, I enjoy the camera’s capacity to see detail, which in the 60th of a second of the firing of the shutter my subconscious may perceive, but may not fully know.
This appreciation of aesthetics goes back to my university days in 1969-1971 when I did a degree in fine arts at Sydney University. Here the ability to deconstruct imagery was passed on to us by Dr Anton Wilhelm and the understanding of the limits and potentials of two-dimensional imagery (with constant reference to the picture plane), was demonstrated by Professor Bernard Smith. This understanding was further enhanced when I painted at the Bakery Art School in Sydney, 1977-1978. Studying under the inspiring tutelage of John Olsen (b.1928) he made me aware of the power of the edge of the image to relate to what was not shown in the image.
This awareness is reflected in the exhibition through my fascination with, and imaging of, the Edge of the Road, that no man’s land which has a rarely noticed life of its own. I use the 180 degree vista of the Widelux camera, with its ability to capture elongated elements of the landscape, to conceptually explore the lack of control that is offered by the camera. The results are serendipitous: the cigarette butts, the spiders home, the intruding foot, the fecund compost under snow laden ferns. All of these elements combine with the time freeze of the camera to image places of survival and change.
While the images may not be fully visualised they rely on both planning and chance. I choose to point the camera at the subject and let the ‘snap’ of the shutter do the rest. The images that emerge from the flow of time are images that I have imagined in my mind but which the camera has interpreted through an (ir)rational act: the fixity of the image frame challenged by the very act of taking the photograph at the edge of consciousness. As such they ask the question of the viewer: what exactly is being imaged and did it really exist in the first place?”
Joyce Evans with Dr Marcus Bunyan
Joyce Evans Edge of the road installation photographs and artist talk at Monash Gallery of Art showing in the bottom image, Shaune Lakin, Director of the Monash Gallery of Art, speaking to the assembled Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Two views of the Widelux F7 camera
Shaune Lakin, Director of the Monash Gallery of Art, speaking to the photographer Joyce Evans OAM (Australian, 1929-2019) Photo: Jason Blake
Joyce Evans [OAM, Australian, 1929-2019] has been a key figure in Australian photography for many decades. As a gallerist, Evans introduced audiences to the work of many young and established photographers, and as a photographer she has assiduously documented the Australian landscape and the Australian cultural scene.
Evans’s initial contribution to photography in Australia was largely as an advocate for the medium. She established Church Street Photographic Centre in 1976, which became one of Australia’s most significant commercial photographic galleries. Church Street encourage a broad interest in photography and assisted the careers of many of Australia’s most important photographers. At Church Street. Evans also introduced Melbourne audiences to the work of many of the key figures in international photography, including Julia Margaret Cameron, Eugène Atget, Alfred Steiglitz, Berenice Abbott, Paul Strand, Brett Weston, Henri Cartier-Bresson and André Kertész.
Evans devised to become a photographer well before she opened Church Street. But it was in the early 1980s that she began to focus more productively on her own practice. This exhibition includes a selection of colour photographs drawn from the MGA Collection, each of which demonstrates Evans’s quite formal interest in landscape. The exhibition mainly features the series Edge of the road, large panoramic prints that have only rarely been exhibited and which reflect a decidedly different photographic relationship to landscape.
Evans’s landscapes are often political. They reflect her keen interest in the way that we relate to land, and engage with the politics of Indigenous land ownership. Evans is also interested in the way that landscape has featured in Australian art history, and often draws on the work and lessons of the legendary painter of abstract landscapes John Olsen, who taught her during the 1960s.
A fine example is Edge of the road, a series of landscapes made between 1988 and 1996 with a Widelux F7 35mm camera. The Widelux is a swing-lens panoramic camera which provides only basic functionality. Its rotating lens is fixed focus at 3.3 metres. Evans embraced these limitations, and in fact played with them by introducing chance to the photographic process. During exposure Evans twisted her camera, sometimes on a diagonal line which produced unexpected distortion. Rather than the straight vertical or horizontal axis usually associated with panoramic photographs, the axis of some of these landscapes chops and changes. In doing so, Evans is attempting to capture the energy of the landscape. These large panoramas were printed by the artist and her assistant Christian Alexander in her darkroom.
“These are epic canvases of colour, light and form.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
October 2013
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) P-51 “Mustang” fighter plane in construction, at North American Aviation, Inc., in Los Angeles, California
c. 1942
4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI/LOC
Kodachrome sheets 1941-1943
This is the first of a two-part posting on the large format Kodachrome colour transparency photographs of the American photographer Alfred Palmer taken during 1941-1943. I absolutely adore these photographs. While today they might seem overly posed and almost surreal in their depiction of men and women at work in the factories of the home front during the Second World War, these are epic canvases of colour, light and form. While Eugène Atget’s photographs may well have been “Documents for artists”, I believe that Alfred Palmer’s photographs can be seen as “Documents for photographers.” They teach later generations the value of craft, of an understanding of the technical aspects of the medium (both camera and film) coupled with the imaginative use and capture of light, colour and pose. Look at the photograph Noontime rest for an assembly worker at the Long Beach (October 1942, below) – have you ever seen such use of colour in the 1940s: red socks, blue slacks, beige shirt, green lunch box and silver background. Like one of those old films in Technicolor, just so beautiful!
While these photographs are masterpieces of formalism, lighting, tone, texture and control, they also transcend their subject matter. Observe the image P-51 “Mustang” fighter plane in construction, at North American Aviation, Inc., in Los Angeles, California (c. 1942, above) for example, to comprehend how this master photographer saw this image, how he understood the potential of the subject matter to shine (on so many levels) and then was able to capture it and let it speak for itself. Considering the conditions under which he would have been working (in cramped factories) and the fact that he would have had to light everything himself, Palmer has recorded a remarkable body of work. All captured on the wonderful Kodachrome film in large format 4″ x 5″ sheets. What a loss to photography this film is.
These photographs deserve to be more widely known and appreciated than they are at present. Love em, love em, love them!
Many thankx to the Library of Congress for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. No known copyright restrictions on any of the photographs.
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) A view of the B-25 final assembly line at North American Aviation’s Inglewood, California, plant Photo published in 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI/LOC
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) B-25 bomber plane at North American Aviation being hauled along an outdoor assembly line. Kansas City, Kansas October 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Servicing an A-20 bomber, Langley Field, Va. July 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) P-51 “Mustang” fighter in flight, Inglewood, California, The Mustang, built by North American Aviation, Incorporated, is the only American-built fighter used by the Royal Air Force of Great Britain October, 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI/LOC
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Sunset silhouette of a flying fortress, at Langley Field, Virginia, in July, 1942 July 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI/LOC
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Light tank going through water obstacle. Fort Knox, June 1942 June 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Tank crew standing in front of M-4 tank, Ft. Knox, Kentucky, June, 1942 June, 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI/LOC
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Army tank driver at Fort Knox, Kentucky June 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Lieutenant “Mike” Hunter, Army pilot assigned to Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, Calif. October 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/LOC
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Lieutenant ‘Mike’ Hunter, Army test pilot assigned to Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, California October 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred T. Palmer 1906-1993
Born in San Jose, California, Palmer was an avid photographer from an early age, meeting the young Ansel Adams in Yosemite in 1916. He was hired on as a cadet on the Dollar Lines President Monroe. He was 19 years old. This would be the first of his 23 trips around the world in the next 32 years. Palmer became the official photographer and worked aboard Dollar Line, Matson and Moore-McCormack Lines ships around the world shooting 100s of images with his Graflex camera. He would trade with other crew members for daytime shifts so he could go ashore and photograph everything he saw.
In 1938, he packed cameras and darkroom equipment into his car and set out across America documenting everything that captured his interest from cows and pigs and corn to towns, cities, people and industry. He would develop the film in the bathrooms of the tourist homes and auto courts every night. He sold the negatives for a dollar each for use in educational books. He made contact prints of each one which are included in his vast portfolio of work.
In 1939 when Hitler attacked Poland the United States ranked twentieth as a world military power. In June of 1940 President Roosevelt and Congress passed a bill for the building of a major two ocean navy. At that time Roosevelt formed the National Defense Advisory Commission of the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and Palmer was chosen to head the photography department. To rally and inform citizens about the use of their tax dollars and resources, Palmer was sent out to photograph Americans building what Roosevelt termed the Arsenal of Democracy. Aware of the power of mass media, the OEM wanted to provide images which would vividly convey their story in high contrast photos for magazines and newspapers. At the OEM, Palmer’s boss, Robert Horton, would brainstorm assignments, sending him into restricted industrial and military facilities. Once in the field, Palmer worked independently. He developed a style of quickly seeing the picture and catching the essence. Through this style he was able to convey the gritty texture and geometry of industrial form combined with the strong emotion of men and women attentive to their work. His dramatic tonal ranges and sharp focus approach reflect the early influence of his mentor, Ansel Adams.
In 1941, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Palmer became official photographer for the newly formed Office of War Information (OWI). He also served as technical expert with final say on photographic equipment and processes. Now his images had to illustrate all aspects of the war effort, from industrial workers to conservation of resources and citizen participation. Palmer’s emphasis was on the typical American hard at work on the home front. His photographs were also an integral part of the “women power” campaign to change the public attitude toward women joining the work force. He showed women as patriotic, glamorous and capable, working on fighter planes as well as assembly lines. Palmer also focused on the dedication and dignity of the black labor force and worked with the chief of the News Bureau Negro Press.
In 1942, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) was added as a joint agency with the OWI. Palmer and Roy Stryker shared creativity and conflict during those years in the dissident approaches to portraying America to herself. While Stryker’s unit showed a national self scrutiny of post depression America, Palmer sought to emphasise a moral building role through his photography. Palmer’s deep belief in promoting the spiritual strength of people permeates his entire career as photographer and filmmaker.
During his years with OWI Palmer worked with a number of significant photographers such as Esther Bubbly, Howard Leiberman, Gordon Parks, Dorothea Lang and Edward Steichen. Palmer’s artistic style was recognised by Steichen, who featured his photographs in the historic traveling exhibit “Road to Victory”, which opened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1942. Alfred Palmer generated thousands of photographs that were widely published in the major magazines and newspapers in the United States and abroad. His works were praised for their exceptional symbolic power and striking use of intense contrasts conveying the courage and determination that Roosevelt sought to arouse in the nation. Much of the vast collection of Palmer’s photographs (including rare colour transparencies) is housed in the National Archives and the Library of Congress.
Alfred Palmer passed away in 1993, leaving a legacy of life work that is unique in its very essence. This extensive collection of photographs and 16mm colour film encompassing five decades of world cultures, World War II history and America’s maritime heritage becomes increasingly significant as a testimony to our humanity.
Text from the Alfred T. Palmer website [Online] Cited 13/10/2013. No longer available online. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
A Kodachrome sheet film box that held 2 x half a dozen sheets of film in 2 sheet packages, from around the time Alfred Palmer would have been using the same film. Notice the ISO/ASA rating of 10. Expiry date of October 1944.
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) American mothers and sisters, like these women at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant in Long Beach, California, give important help in producing dependable planes for their men at the front October 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Assembling switchboxes on the firewalls of B-25 bombers at North American Aviation’s Inglewood, California, factory October 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Workers installing fixtures and assemblies in the tail section of a B-17F bomber at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant in Long Beach, California October 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Engine inspector for North American Aviation at Long Beach, California June 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Punching rivet holes in a frame member for a B-25 bomber at North American Aviation. Inglewood, California June 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Inglewood, California. Riveting team working on the cockpit shell of a C-47 heavy transport at North American Aviation. “The versatile C-47 performs many important tasks for the Army. It ferries men and cargo across the oceans and mountains, tows gliders and brings paratroopers and their equipment to scenes of action.” 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Noontime rest for an assembly worker at the Long Beach, Calif., plant of Douglas Aircraft Company. Nacelle parts for a heavy bomber form the background October 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency Alfred Palmer/OWI
Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993) Two assembly line workers at the Long Beach, Calif., plant of Douglas Aircraft Company enjoy a well-earned lunch period, Long Beach, Calif. Nacelle parts of a heavy bomber form the background October 1942 4 x 5 Kodachrome transparency LOC
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled (bandsaw) 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
“What A. feels he is doing, however, as he writes the pages of his own book, is something that does not belong to either one of these two types of memory. A. has both a good memory and a bad memory. He has lost much, but he has also retained much. As he writes, he feels the he is moving inward (through himself) and at the same time moving outward (towards the world). What he experienced, perhaps, during those few moments on Christmas Eve, 1979, as he sat alone in his room on Varick Street, was this: the sudden knowledge that came over him that even alone, in the deepest solitude of his room, he was not alone, or, more precisely, that the moment he began to try to speak of that solitude, he had become more than just himself. Memory, therefore, not simply as the resurrection of one’s private past, but an immersion in the past of others, which is to say: history – which one both participates in and is a witness to, is a part of and apart from. Everything, therefore, is present in his mind at once, as if each element were reflecting the light of all the others, and at the same time emitting its own unique and unquenchable radiance. If there is any reason for him to be in this room now, it is because there is something inside him hungering to see it all at once, to savor the chaos of it in all its raw and urgent simultaneity. And yet, the telling of it is necessarily slow, a delicate business of trying to remember what has already been remembered. The pen will never be able to move fast enough to write down every word discovered in the space of memory. Some things have been lost forever, other things will perhaps be remembered again, and still others have been lost and found and lost again. There is no way to be sure of any of this.”
Paul Auster. “The Book of Memory,” in The Invention of Solitude, 1982, pp. 148-49
I am scanning my negatives made during the years 1991-1997 to preserve them in the form of an online archive as a process of active memory, so that the images are not lost forever. These photographs were images of my life and imagination at the time of their making, the ideas I was thinking about and the people and things that surrounded me.
Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a vintage 8″ x 10″ silver gelatin print costs $700 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my store web page.
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Inversion 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Growth 2 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Starry Night (Burke and Wills memorial) 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled (bandsaw) 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Four ears 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Such is death 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) The wash house 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled (bandsaw) 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) The place where many men have stood 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled (bandsaw) 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Singer 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Ecce homo 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Cluster 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Theoria 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
The Greek theoria (θεωρία), from which the English word “theory” is derived, meant “contemplation, speculation, a looking at, things looked at”, from theorein (θεωρεῖν) “to consider, speculate, look at”, from theoros (θεωρός) “spectator”, from thea (θέα) “a view” + horan (ὁρᾶν) “to see”. It expressed the state of being a spectator. Both Greek θεωρία and Latin contemplatio primarily meant looking at things, whether with the eyes or with the mind.
Taking philosophical and theological traditions into consideration, the term was used by the ancient Greeks to refer to the act of experiencing or observing and then comprehending through consciousness, which is called the nous or “eye of the soul” (Matthew 6:22-34). Insight into being and becoming (called noesis) through the intuitive truth called faith, in God (action through faith and love for God), leads to truth through our contemplative faculties. This theory, or speculation, as action in faith and love for God, is then expressed famously as “Beauty shall Save the World”. This expression comes from a mystical or gnosiological perspective, rather than a scientific, philosophical or cultural one.
Text from Wikipedia website
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Parsnips and potatoes 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Burke and water 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Growth 1 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled (comet) 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) A(r)mour 1994 Silver gelatin photograph
Exhibition dates: 11th September – 11th October 2013
Curator: Unknown
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) Lady’s Day c. 1967 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 12 x 20cm (5 x 8 inches)
What a loss to the world when this photographer died aged just thirty. His eye was magnificent. He seems to have instinctively known how to capture the quintessential British at work, rest and play in all that societies class-ridden glory – the fag hanging out of the mouth in Lady’s Day (c. 1967) combining beautifully with the aura of the patterned dresses; the isolation of the figures and their stop-frame movement in Day at the Races (c. 1967), a wonderfully balanced composition caught in the moment; and the orchestral ensemble that is the cast of Bacup, Lancashire, 1968 (1968), each figure playing its part in the overall tension of the picture plane: the brothers at right in matching duffle coats, the boy walking forward down the incline with head thrown sideways balanced at rear by another boy with hands in pockets tossing his head into the wind. Magical.
Just to see this image, to visualise it and have the camera ready to capture its “nature”, its undeniable presence for that one split second, then to develop and find this image on a proof sheet, what joy this would have been for the artist. Equally illustrious is the feeling of Bournemouth, 1969 (1969) with the nuanced use of shadow and light, the occlusion of the figure behind the screen with the turn of the head, and the placement of the two white tea cups at right. Ray-Jones wasn’t afraid to place figures in the foreground of his compositions either as can be seen in Brighton Beach, 1967 (1967) to great effect, framing the mise en scène behind.
These photographs take me way back to my childhood in the 1960s in England, going to Butlin’s Clacton-on-Sea and Bournemouth for our family holidays. Even the name says it all: Clacton “on sea” as though they have to remind people visiting that they are actually at the sea. The photographs perfectly capture the mood of the country in this utilitarian era where holidays at a seaside resort were often dour affairs, punctuated by stony beaches, bad weather and regulated activities. The freedom of the 1970s had yet to arrive and us kids went whether we liked it or not: Mablethorpe, 1967 (1967) perfectly epitomises such an environment, with the long days of pleasure / torture stretching off into the distance much as the sea wall in Ray-Jones’ photo.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to James Hyman for allowing me to publish these magnificent photographs. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) Day at the Races c. 1967 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 13 x 20cm (5 x 8 inches)
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) A Day at Richmond Park c. 1967 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 17.5 x 25.6cm (7 x 10 inches)
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) Chatham May Queen, 1968 1968 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 17.5 x 26.2cm (7 x 10 inches)
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) Bacup, Lancashire, 1968 1968 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 17.5 x 26.5cm (7 x 10 inches)
James Hyman is delighted to stage an exhibition of rare, vintage photographs by Tony Ray-Jones to coincide with the opening exhibition of the Science Museum Media Space, Only in England, Photographs by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr, in September 2013.
Tony Ray-Jones had a short life. He died in 1972 aged just thirty. But the pictures that he left behind are some of the most powerful British photographs of the twentieth century. His work of the late 1960s and early 1970s documents English culture and identity and brilliantly captures this period in English public life. Inspired by what he learnt in America in the mid-1960s, from photographers such as Lee Friedlander and Joel Meyerowitz, Ray-Jones was keen to make ‘new’ photographs of English life, which did not read simply as documentary, but also as art objects. As he explained in Creative Camera in 1968: “the spirit and the mentality of the English, their habits, and the way they do things, partly through tradition and the nature of their environment and mentality.”
The acclaim that Ray-Jones received after his death, especially from other photographers, testifies to the respect of his elders and his contemporaries. Bill Brandt praised the “very pronounced style all of his own” and lamented that “his death, at such a young age, is a terrible loss to British photography.” Jacques Henri-Lartigue praised Tony Ray-Jones as a “fantaisiste”: “young, free and whimsical with, in addition, a very sound technique and a vision of fire that was full of humour, truth and a sense of poetry” and Paul Strand praised his “remarkable formal organisation” and declared: “I found the photographs of Tony Ray-Jones very outstanding. In them I find that rather rare concurrence when an artist clearly attaining mastery of his medium, also develops a remarkable way of looking at the life around him, with warmth and understanding.”
These tributes are to be found in the most important book of Tony Ray-Jones work, A Day Off. An English Journal, published in 1974. They are included in a beautiful essay in which Ainslie Ellis, one of the photographer’s earliest champions, addresses not only the photographs but also Ray-Jones’s photographic process. Ellis stresses that what mattered to Ray-Jones was not just taking the picture, but also the creative process of deciding which pictures on a contact strip to print, and then making a master-print, from which all subsequent prints would be matched. We are, therefore, delighted that this exhibition should include many of the pictures reproduced in this celebrated book and that it present exclusively vintage prints, which, in a number of identifiable cases, are the actual photographs that Tony Ray-Jones exhibited in his lifetime.
Often playful and sometimes despondent, what Ray-Jones produced was unlike anything which came before, and was the catalyst for a generation of New British Photographers.
Press release from the James Hyman website
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) Bournemouth, 1969 1969 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 16 x 25cm (6 x 10 inches)
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) Brighton Beach, 1967 1967 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 17.5 x 26.5cm (7 x 10 inches)
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) Mablethorpe, 1967 1967 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 14 x 21cm (6 x 8 inches)
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) Waxworks, Eastbourne, 1968 1968 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 14 x 21cm (6 x 8 inches)
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) Durham Miners’ Gala 1969 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 14 x 22.5cm (6 x 9 inches)
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) Sunday Best c. 1967 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 30.5 x 20cm (12 x 8 inches)
Tony Ray-Jones (British, 1941-1972) Blackpool, 1968 1968 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print 21 x 14.5cm (8.25 x 5.70 ins)
James Hyman Gallery 16 Savile Row London W1S 3PL Phone: 020 7494 3857
Exhibition dates: 9th June 9 2013 – 17th May, 2015
Curator: Tamar Garb
Sammy Baloji (Congolese, b. 1978) Untitled 7 2006 From Mémoires
This is the last in my trilogy of postings on exhibitions titled Distance and Desire which have featured African art from The Walther Collection, this time focusing on contemporary art.
It is quite instructive to compare this posting with the last, the exhibition My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia at The Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane. I feel (a critical word) that there is a completely different atmosphere to most of this contemporary art when compared to the Australian iteration. Despite both groups surviving horrendous experiences and the ongoing memories of those acts, there is a lightness of spirit to most of the contemporary African art, a delightful irony, self deprecating humour, less backward looking sadness than evidenced in the Australian work.
Of course there are intense moments when contemporary artists mine (and that is an appropriate word, for many Africans worked in servitude in the mines during the Apartheid period) the colonial archive, such as Carrie Mae Weems blood red tondos, You Became a Scientific Profile / An Anthropological Debate / A Negroid Type / A Photographic Subject (1995-1996, below) but what is more in evidence here is a dramatic sense of fashion and the performative and playful manner in which contemporary African identities are explored coupled with a strength in the representation of these identities. These are strong, forthright individuals not hidden off camera or dressed up in European dreamings imagin(in)g utopian “what ifs”; not the obvious crosses on black chests or deleted, delineated faces made of gum blossoms – but vital, alive, present human beings.
While both groups of artists use traditional symbology to explore issues of identity and representation, the Australian version often seems dragged down by the portrayed dichotomy between past and present, traditional and contemporary / subversive, as though there must always be a reckoning, a longing, a sadness constantly reiterated in / with the past.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to The Walther Collection for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All images Courtesy of The Walther Collection.
Part II: Contemporary Reconfigurations
Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976) Nandipha Mntambo, Cape Town 2012 From There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends
Pieter Hugo’s There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends is a series of close-up portraits of the artist and his friends, all of whom call South Africa home. Through a digital process of converting colour images to black and white while manipulating the colour channels, Hugo emphasises the pigment (melanin) in his sitters’ skins so they appear heavily marked by blemishes and sun damage. The resulting portraits are the antithesis of the airbrushed images that determine the canons of beauty in popular culture, and expose the contradictions of racial distinctions based on skin colour. As the critic Aaron Schuman writes, “although at first glance we may look ‘black’ or ‘white’, the components that remain ‘active’ beneath the surface consist of a much broader spectrum. What superficially appears to divide us is in fact something that we all share, and like these photographs, we are not merely black and white – we are red, yellow, brown, and so on; we are all, in fact, coloured.
Text from the Stevenson Gallery website [Online] Cited 01/10/2013. No longer available online. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Sabelo Mlangeni (South African, b. 1980) Outside King Mswati’s palace 2011 From Iimbali
Sabelo Mlangeni (South African, b. 1980) Imbali 2011 From Iimbali
David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) Mineworkers in their hostel, Western Deep Levels, Carletonville 1970
Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976) Yasser Booley, Cape Town 2011 From There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends
Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976) Pieter Hugo, Cape Town 2011 From There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends
Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976) Themba Tshabalala, Cape Town 2011 From There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends
Guy Tillim (South African, b. 1962) Mai Mai militia in training near Beni, eastern DRC, for immediate deployment with the APC (Armée Populaire du Congo), the army of the RCD-KIS-ML – Portraits I and II December 2002
Sabelo Mlangeni (South African, b. 1980) Lwazi Mtshali, “Bigboy” 2009 From Country Girls
Sabelo Mlangeni (South African, b. 1980) Xolani Ngayi, eStanela 2009 From Country Girls
Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972) Amogelang Senokwane, District Six, Cape Town 2009 From Faces and Phases
Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972) Sishipo Ndzuzo, Embekweni, Paarl 2009 From Faces and Phases
The Walther Collection is pleased to announce Part II of Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, a three-part exhibition series curated by Tamar Garb. “Contemporary Reconfigurations” offers new perspectives on the African photographic archive, reimagining its diverse histories and changing meanings. The exhibition centres on photography and video by African and African American artists who engage critically with the archive through parody, appropriation, and reenactment.
Carrie Mae Weems introduces the themes of “Contemporary Reconfigurations” with her powerful series From Here I Saw What Happened And I Cried, a revision of nineteenth and twentieth-century anthropometric photographs of African Americans, overlaid with texts by the artist. Sammy Baloji, Candice Breitz, Zwelethu Mthethwa, and Zanele Muholi rethink the ethnographic archive in large-scale colour prints, while Samuel Fosso and Philip Kwame Apagya create exuberant studio portraiture.
Sabelo Mlangeni’s black and white photo-essay, Imbali, documents the reed dances of KwaZulu-Natal, showing the display of virgins vying to be chosen as brides. Pieter Hugo’s series There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends examines ethnicity and skin tonalities through anthropological mug shots. Working in video, Berni Searle performs as a statuesque deity engaged in domestic labor in “Snow White,” and Andrew Putter gives an indigenous voice to the effigy of Marie van Riebeeck, wife of the first Dutch settler in the area known today as Cape Town, in “Secretly I Will Love You More.”
For this group of artists, a stereotype or ethnographic vision in one era may provide material for quotation, irreverent reworking, or satirical performance in another. Illustrating how the African archive – broadly understood as an accumulation of representations, images, and objects – figures in selected contemporary lens-based practices, the exhibition stages a dialogue between the distance of the past and the desiring gaze of the present.
Press release from The Walther Collection website
Zwelethu Mthethwa (South African, b. 1960) Untitled 2010 From The Brave Ones Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Samuel Fosso (Cameroonian, b. 1962) La femme américaine libérée des années 70 1997
Samuel Fosso (Cameroonian, b. 1962) Le Chef qui a vendu l’Afrique aux colons 1997
Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972) Miss D’vine I 2007
Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972) Miss D’vine II 2007
Candice Breitz (South African, b. 1972) Ghost Series #9 1994-1996
Candice Breitz (South African, b. 1972) Ghost Series #4 1994-1996
Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953) You Became a Scientific Profile / An Anthropological Debate / A Negroid Type / A Photographic Subject 1995-1996 From From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Andrew Putter (South African, b. 1965) Secretly I Will Love You More (video still) 2007 Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg
Sue Williamson (South African, b. 1941) Helen Joseph 1983 From A Few South Africans
Helen Joseph (South African, 1905-1992)
Helen Beatrice Joseph (née Fennell) (8 April 1905 – 25 December 1992) was a South African anti-apartheid activist.
Helen Joseph was born in Eastbourne near Midhurst West Sussex, England and graduated from King’s College London, in 1927. After working as a teacher in India for three years, Helen came to South Africa in 1931, where she met and married a dentist, Billie Joseph. In 1951 Helen took a job with the Garment Workers Union, led by Solly Sachs. She was a founder member of the Congress of Democrats, and one of the leaders who read out clauses of the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1955. Appalled by the plight of black women, she was pivotal in the formation of the Federation of South African Women and with the organisation’s leadership, spearheaded a march of 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against pass laws on August 9, 1956. This day is still celebrated as South Africa’s Women’s Day.
She was a defendant at the 1956 Treason Trial. She was arrested on a charge of high treason in December 1956, then banned in 1957. The treason trial dragged on for four years but she was acquitted in 1961. In spite of her acquittal, in 13 October 1962, Helen became the first person to be placed under house arrest under the Sabotage Act that had just been introduced by the apartheid government. She narrowly escaped death more than once, surviving bullets shot through her bedroom and a bomb wired to her front gate. Her last banning order was lifted when she was 80 years old. Helen had no children of her own, but frequently stood in loco parentis for the children of comrades in prison or in exile. Among the children who spent time in her care were Winnie and Nelson Mandela’s daughters Zinzi and Zenani and Bram Fischer’s daughter Ilsa. Helen Joseph died on the 25 December 1992 at the age of 87.
Sue Williamson (South African, b. 1941) Miriam Makeba 1987 From A Few South Africans
Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 – 9 November 2008), nicknamed Mama Africa, was a Grammy Award-winning South African singer and civil rights activist.
In the 1960s, she was the first artist from Africa to popularise African music around the world. She is best known for the song “Pata Pata”, first recorded in 1957 and released in the U.S. in 1967. She recorded and toured with many popular artists, such as Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, and her former husband Hugh Masekela. Makeba campaigned against the South African system of apartheid. The South African government responded by revoking her passport in 1960 and her citizenship and right of return in 1963. As the apartheid system crumbled she returned home for the first time in 1990. Makeba died of a heart attack on 9 November 2008 after performing in a concert in Italy organised to support writer Roberto Saviano in his stand against the Camorra, a mafia-like organisation local to the region of Campania.
Curator: Bruce Johnson McLean, Curator of Indigenous Australian Art at QAGOMA
Tony Albert (Australia, Queensland b. 1981) Girramay people Sorry 2008 Found kitsch objects applied to vinyl letters The James C Sourris, AM, Collection. Purchased 2008 with funds from James C Sourris through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
R U SORRY?
Do you feel FORGIVEN?
What do I have to feel sorry for
I only arrived here yesterday
I FORGIVE you for all the SADNESS and SORROW that COLONISATION has CAUSED
You gutless wonder
GUILT, GUILTY, GUILTLESS, GUILELESS, GUTLESS
The persistence of memory – how the past lingers and subverts
MEMORY – inflicting more DAMAGE on the already DAMAGED
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the The Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Arthur Koo-ekka Pambegan Jr (Australian, Queensland 1936-2010) Wik-Mungkan people Flying Fox Story Place 2002-2003 Carved milkwood (Alstonia muellerana) with synthetic polymer paint and natural pigments Commissioned 2002 with funds from the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Ron Yunkaporta (Australian, Queensland b. 1956) Wik-Ngathan people Thuuth thaa’ munth (Law poles) 2002-2003 Cottontree wood (Hibiscus tiliaceus), ibis feathers, bush string with natural pigments Commissioned 2002 with funds from the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Jennifer Mye Jr. (Australian, Queensland b. 1984) Meriam Mir people Basket with short handles 2011 Woven polypropylene tape (blue with Australian flag motif) Purchased 2011 with funds from Thomas Bradley through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Ken Thaiday Sr (Australian, Queensland b. 1950) Meriam Mir people Symbol of the Torres Strait 2003 Plywood, synthetic polymer paint, feathers, black bamboo, plastic tubing, fishing line Purchased 2004 with funds from Corrs Chambers Westgarth through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Dinny McDinny (Australian, Northern Territory c. 1927-2003) Marnbaliya people, Balyarrinji skin group Kalajangu – Rainbow Dreaming came through Marnbaliya Country 2003 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas Purchased 2004 Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Gabori created a body of work, which expressed sensations of life and cultural memory in diaspora, and differed from other known forms of Aboriginal painting, which focused on story-telling. Most of Gabori’s works represent places on Bentinck Island of deep personal significance to the artist: her husband’s place, Dibirdibi Country, her father’s place, Thundi, her own Country, Mirdidingki, and the first outstation, Nyinyilki.
Gabori lived on Bentinck Island in accordance with custom, developing knowledge of Kaiadilt cartography and cosmology, until the entire population was removed to Mornington Island mission by European settlers in 1948.
“When I paint, I think about my country and where I have been travelling across that couontry. I paint from here (points to head-thinking about country) and here (points to breasts, collarbone and shoulder blades which is reference to body painting). I think abut my people the old people and what they told me, I think about jumangkarni (Dreamtime). Nobody taught me how to paint, I put down my own ideas, I saw these palces for my self, I went there with the old people. I paint jiji (sand hills), jumu (soak water), jila (spring), jiwari (rock hole), pamarr (hills and rock country), I think about mangarri (vegetable food) and kuyu (game) from my country and when I was there. Whe I paint I am thinking about law from a long time ago, I am thinking about the country, my country. When I first painted we didn’t get money, nothing. I like painting, its good, I get pamarr (word for rock, stone money) for it, I can buy my food, tyres, fix my car, I give some money to family and I keep some for me.”
~ Wakartu Cory Surprise
Ruby Tjangawa Williamson (Australian, South Australia b. 1940) Pitjantjatjara people Nita Williamson (Australian, South Australia b. 1963) Suzanne Armstrong (Australian, South Australia b. 1980) Pitjantjatjara people (Collaborating artists) Ngayuku ngura (My country) Puli murpu (Mountain range) 2012 Synthetic polymer paint on linen Purchased 2012 with funds from Margaret Mittelheuser, AM, and Cathryn Mittelheuser, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Ruby Tjangawa Williamson is a senior law woman committed to fostering traditional culture. She began painting in 2000. Her distinctive works are acclaimed and she is regarded as one of Amata’s most significant artists. Williamson also weaves tjanpi (desert grass) baskets and makes punu (wood carvings) with pokerwork designs.
My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia is the Gallery’s largest exhibition of contemporary art by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists to date. The exhibition examines the strengths of the Gallery’s holdings and explores three central themes – presenting Indigenous views of history (My history), responding to contemporary politics and experiences (My life), and illustrating connections to place (My country).
From paintings and sculptures about ancestral epicentres to photographs and moving-image works that interrogate and challenge the established history of Australia, to installations responding to political and social situations affecting all Australians, the thread that binds these artists is their collective desire to share their experiences and tell their stories.
“Drawing on three decades of research, collaboration and Collection development, My Country, I Still Call Australia Home highlights the connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists have with country as both ‘land’ and ‘nation’, and features over 300 works by 116 artists from every state and territory,” Mr Saines said.
“Curated by Bruce McLean, a Wirri / Birri-Gubba man with heritage from the central coast of Qoeensland and the Gallery’s Curator of Indigenous Australian Art, the exhibition gives voice to artists who investigate historical and contemporary political and social issues. Many of these issues and works are confronting and controversial, and we are proud of the role our Gallery plays as a forum for discussion, debate and education.”
Mr Saines said the exhibition was divided in to three broad thematic strands that explore how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists depict the stories of their communities and highlight contemporary Indigenous experiences in Australia.
Press release from the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) website
Michael Cook’s works depict an ethereal dreamworld, a timeless place that traverses both the colonial and contemporary worlds and is sustained on ‘what ifs’ and hypotheticals. It is a place of Cook’s own modern Dreaming. His central question is quite simple: what if the British, instead of dismissing Aboriginal society, had taken a more open approach to their culture and knowledge systems? This all-Aboriginal world is a sort of utopia where questions can be posed and answered without the complication of race – there is no black and white, no right or wrong. The figures within them are both conquerors and conquered. Through the use of images of Aboriginal people, often in roles opposite to the stereotypical, Cook ensures that an Aboriginal voice is ever-present.
Fiona Foley (Australian, Queensland/New South Wales b. 1964) Badtjala people, Wondunna clan, Fraser Island The Oyster Fishermen #1 2011 Inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper Purchased 2012 Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Vernon Ah Kee (Australian, Queensland b. 1967) Kuku Yalanji/Waanyi/Yidinyji/GuuguYimithirr people Tall Man (still) 2010 Four-channel digital video installation from DVD Purchased 2012 Queensland Art Gallery Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Gordon Hookey (Australian, Queensland/New South Wales b. 1961) Waanyi people Blood on the wattle, blood on the palm 2009 Oil on linen The James C Sourris, AM, Collection Gift of James C Sourris, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2012 Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Michael Riley (Australian, New South Wales 1960-2004) Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri people Sacrifice (portfolio) (detail) 1993 Colour cibachrome photograph Purchased 2002 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Christian Thompson (Australian, Queensland/New South Wales/Victoria b. 1978) Bidjarra/Kunja people Black Gum 2 (from Australian Graffiti series) 2008 Type C photograph Purchased 2008 The Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
The Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) and Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) are located 150 metres from each other, on the south bank of the Brisbane River. Entrance to both buildings is possible from Stanley Place, and the river front entrance to the Queensland Art Gallery is on Melbourne Street. The Galleries are within easy walking distance to the city centre and South Bank Parklands.
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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