Vale Ian Lobb (1948-2023), photographer

December 2023

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Ian Lobb, Station Street, Fairfield' 5 October 2022 

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Ian Lobb, Station Street, Fairfield
5 October 2022

 

The luminosity of Ian Lobb

These words are a celebration of the life of an extraordinary human, a heartfelt stream of consciousness text that touches on aspects of the life of Ian Lobb, photographer.

Ian Lobb was my friend. He was a poet, photographer, raconteur. He my first photographer lecturer at university who I could always rely on for advice on art, photography, writing and life. He was an audiophile and a lover of music, anything from classical to jazz to Nina Simone, Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan. He was a lover of women. He was dreamer and a philosopher. He adored the American artist Cy Twombly. He was a rabid Sydney Swans fan!

In the early 1990s monthly reviews of student photographic work at Phillip Institute of Technology (PIT, which later became part of RMIT University) with Ian and fellow lecturer Les Walkling were electric. Ideas and passion for the work abounded, discussions ran for hours on how to create work – with feeling and insight into the condition of image (and human) becoming. Here Ian introduced me to Tarkovsky, Eisenstein and Joseph Campbell, and the Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei, Kyoto, Japan. And of course he introduced me to the French photographer Eugène Atget – oh how we loved Atget, and Strand, Weston, Caponigro and Minor White. We could talk on any subject. Many years later, at our regular coffee catchups in Fairfield, I would take him new photography books that I had bought and recent object d’art purchases and, over lunch, the conversation would range far and wide about photography, art and life. He helped me sequence my work – have you thought about this pairing together, what about swapping this one over – and we drew inspiration from the sequences of Minor White and his use of “ice/fire”.

Ian was a storyteller. His photographs tell stories. From the teachings of Minor White (especially his “Three Canons”) there was an acknowledgement in his work of the spirit of the object he was photographing – a moment of revelation sought in the negative and subsequent print through a connection and circular transmission of energy between artist and object back through the camera and onto film (Zen)(for example see Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson 1975, below). A moment of revelation of spirit that was so important to Ian that this moment of “revelatio” can still be seen and felt in his recent mobile phone images.

Ian was aware, fully present. He was attuned to his surroundings like few people I have met for he was tremendously attentive, tremendously awake and sensitive to the environment and the vibrations of energy that emanated from the city, the land, the sky. Imagine travelling to a small patch of earth in the Black Ranges year after year to photograph in all seasons and in all weather something that he could see and feel in that land… something any other human would not even recognise, would walk past without a moments hesitation as though nothing was there, was of no import. But not Ian. He recognised and felt the energy of that place, space.

Talking to the wonderful Australian photographer David Tatnall who was also a friend of Ian’s we reminisced the other day. Ian had won an Australia Council grant and went to America on board a cargo ship teaching yoga on the way over, first going to South America and then on to America. There he visited Barbara, Wynn Bullock’s wife, and Ralph Gibson, Brett Weston, Harry Callahan and William Clift. He attended workshops with Ansel Adams and Paul Caponigro. He visited the Museum of Modern Art’s reading room and examined box after box of iconic prints by the masters, all jumbled together as he told me in folders with little order or care for their preservation. David told me he rocked up unannounced at Eliot Porter’s and said he was a visiting photographer from Australia, and while Eliot made a pot of tea he was left to go through boxes of dye transfer prints. Back then there was a camaraderie of photography very different from the present. Can you imagine doing that today!

He conversed with the masters. Like a pebble making ripples in a pond the energy of these photographers was transferred by osmosis through Ian to a wider network of artists. David and I remembered how Ian taught us to look at the print upside down in order to understand the balance of the print and develop an appreciation of its structure and the music inherent in it. Look at the image of Caponigro’s Reflecting Stream, Redding, CT (1968, below) – one of Ian’s favourites – and you just know that water has to be “wet” in that print, that the shadows of the trees on the water have to be (Ansel Adams) Zone 2, and that the Zone 7 patch of grey under the boulder in the centre of the image is critical to its music, its balance. Ian knew these things instinctively, intuitively. Ian also taught both of us how to make Ansel Adams’ “burning in” tool… three pieces of stiff black board (with the top two pieces secured by tape to make a hinges) with gradually larger holes in each board for use under the enlarger, so that you could easily flip the boards to a larger or smaller hole for “burning in” while making a print. We both still have these indispensable tools, passed down like an oral history from the master. On reflection, learning from Ian and Les during those early days printing black and white photographs in the basement darkroom at Phillip Institute of Technology (PIT) in Bundoora, Melbourne were some of the happiest days of my life.

With friend and fellow director William (Bill) Heimerman (1950-2017), The Photographers’ Gallery and Workshop, Melbourne brought to Australia some of the most respected master photographers from around the world: Wynn Bullock, Emmet Gowin, Eikoh Hosoe, William Clift, Harry Callahan, Paul Caponigro, William Eggleston, Ralph Gibson, Duane Michaels, Lisette Model, August Sander, Aaron Siskind among others … and promoted local Australian photographers such as John Cato, Carol Jerrems, Christopher Koller, Jeff Busby and more. I was privileged to have several solo exhibitions in the gallery space. For the opening of Carol Jerrems exhibition at the gallery, Ian asked her who she would most like to attend – and Carol said Ron Barassi, then the most popular sporting and cultural personality in Australia. And on the day of the opening who attended – the great man himself. I don’t know how Ian did it, but he did!

David Tatnall took Ian to Cape Paterson only a couple of weeks before his passing, the first time he had been there since his father’s death many years ago (see the photographs below). Ian took some photographs with camera on tripod and on the mobile phone and then sat down, sat down and just looked at things in that self deprecating way of his. He just looked at the rocks and the form and the light and soaked in the spirit of the place. The same with his favourite tree, his beloved lemon scented gum in the garden of his church in Fairfield. Much as the Black Range series many years earlier, he took thousands of photographs on his mobile phone of this tree in all weather conditions, at all times of the day and year. He saw and felt something there that he kept coming back too, searching for the answer to that one great question that he could never answer.

David said that he believed that he was only using the mobile phone as a visual notebook before he came back to the place to photograph with an SLR – but respectfully I must disagree. Increasingly in his later years Ian surrendered the use of his bigger digital cameras to the flexibility of his mobile phone camera, trading in their heft for the felt immediacy of the mobile phone image and his ability to study the results as he pleased. While many would dismiss these phones images as preludes to the finished work, Ian recognised (as do many artists) that these impressions, these deeply felt visual sketches, had become fully rendered works of art. He moved with the times. As he observed, “For the last 18 months I’ve been spending the first few hours of the day in the local church yard where I am photographing a lemon scented gum. I’m doing this with an iPhone as a way of exploring different ways of working that facilitates.” (Email for William Clift sent to Marcus Bunyan 22 January 2023)

Ian loved telling a story. And he was passionate about the Sydney Swans. He regaled me with the story of how he was so incensed by seeing photographers inside the circle of players celebrating in the rooms after a victory that he wrote to the club to explain that this space, this inner sanctum of celebration, should be a “sacred space” as he put it just for the players… and that photographers should not be allowed in to that space, but only be able to look in from the outside. He was special like that. He understood the significance of that circle and the energy that flowed across the space as players linked arms and belted out the club song. Nothing should disturb the sanctity of that space, much as nothing should disturb the energy of a rock face.

Ian was a (com)passionate man. He was a spiritual man. Throughout his life he had a deep abiding faith in Jesus and the benevolence and goodness of the Almighty. Now he is be gone but his energy still surrounds us. In his beloved lemon scented gum and in the many memorable ideas and images he shared with us.

Ian Lobb was my friend. I will miss his wise counsel.

God bless him xx

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

PS. A very interesting analysis by Gary Sauer-Thompson on Ian Lobb’s Black Range series and new concepts in contemporary landscape photography can be found in the article “Ian Lobb + contemporary landscape photography” on the Thought Factory website January 28, 2024. Recommended reading.


Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Many thankx to David Tatnall for allowing me to publish his images that are included in this posting.

 

 

“If you think of all the wonderful experiences of making images – and then sequencing them – really it is top of the world experience. If this then happens when society is particularly in flux – on spiritual and identity issues, and sequencing happens by someone who is sensitive to the time and the issues. And is sensitive to “image”. Then you really really hope that the book is well produced.”


Ian Lobb email to Marcus Bunyan, 29 May 2015

 

“In “LA Confidential” they give away their source by using the word “valediction”. A good name for a poem, maybe the best, but not an exhausted idea. Look out I have been inspired by genius. People say that they have to do something more difficult than they need. That’s ok. – there are angels to prevent that – but if you don’t want to go that way, most of them aren’t against us.”


Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Monday 11 September 2023

 

“Marcus – can we be told how to love ? The first thought is no – but I’m not going to rush into an answer. Can we be told how to love a photograph or which photographs to love? I do know that my walk this morning has been recalling which photographs I have loved – and stopping on those where I have not lately dwelt. I didn’t get past the Paul Strand of the white picket fence. Sitting now on Station st as the coffee shops carry out their tables and seeing it.”


Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Saturday, 16 September 2023

 

 

 

Ian Lobb speaking at a celebration of the life of William (Bill) Heimerman (1950-2017)

Windsor, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, October 21, 2017.
Thank you to Peter Leiss for allowing me to publish this video.

 

Paul Strand (American, 1890 - 1976) 'White Fence, Port Kent, New York' 1916 (negative); 1945 (print)

 

Paul Strand (American, 1890 – 1976)
White Fence, Port Kent, New York
1916 (negative); 1945 (print)
Gelatin silver print

 

Paul Caponigro (American, b. 1932) 'Reflecting Stream, Redding, CT' 1968

 

Paul Caponigro (American, b. 1932)
Reflecting Stream, Redding, CT
1968
Gelatin silver print

 

During this particular workshop Caponigro was sometimes in a room where he could display several prints at once – he would never take them all down after talking, but move the first images away and attach new images to the right as he talked. The workshop was with the senior students of an Oregon art school, it can be dated because it was during the impeachment of Nixon.

~ Ian Lobb email to Marcus Bunyan, 6 January 2015

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Point Lobos, California' 1948

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Point Lobos, California
1948
Gelatin silver print

 

Marcus, have you been to Point Lobos? I think you would find it a big experience if you were there at a quiet time. Imagine Minor White going to visit Weston on Wildcat Hill, and then the short drive down to Point Lobos – there would be some frisson in that car!! It’s not quite Nietzsche going to visit Wagner – but it’s not bad. For a lot of the year the day starts with fog and then the fog pulls back a little offshore and then comes back again. I think Weston’s Pelican would have been photographed in fog.

~ Ian Lobb email to Marcus Bunyan, 29 May 2015

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Merced River, Cliffs, Autumn' 1939

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Merced River, Cliffs, Autumn
1939
Gelatin silver print

 

When talking to him [Ansel Adams] you can imagine the number of mediocre questions. While I was listening all of his answers were quotes from his books. There had to be an extraordinary move to get him to break ranks with this rule.

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Sunday, 5 March 2023

 

Black Range series

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Untitled' 1989 from the 'Black Range' series 1986-1989

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled
1989
from the Black Range series 1986-1989
36.9 × 36.7cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Hallmark Cards Australia Pty Ltd, 1989
© Ian Lobb

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Untitled' 1989 from the 'Black Range' series 1986-1989

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled
1989
from the Black Range series 1986-1989
35.6 × 35.6cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Hallmark Cards Australia Pty Ltd, 1989
© Ian Lobb

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Untitled' 1986, printed 1989 from the 'Black Range' series 1986-1989

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled
1986, printed 1989
from the Black Range series 1986-1989
26.4 × 26.4cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Hallmark Cards Australia Pty Ltd, 1989
© Ian Lobb

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Untitled' 1989 from the 'Black Range' series 1986-1989

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled
1989
from the Black Range series 1986-1989
36.5 × 36.5cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Hallmark Cards Australia Pty Ltd, 1989
© Ian Lobb

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'No title (Soft focus landscape with branch detail in foreground)' 1989, printed 1998 from the 'Black Range' series 1986-1989

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
No title (Soft focus landscape with branch detail in foreground)
1989, printed 1998
from the Black Range series 1986-1989
38.2 × 38.4cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by the artist, Fellow, 2000
© Ian Lobb

 

The Photographers’ Gallery and Workshop

 

Peter Leiss (Australian, b. 1951) 'Untitled [Bill Heimerman and Ian Lobb at the rear of the Photographers' Gallery]' c. 1975-1980

 

Peter Leiss (Australian, b. 1951)
Untitled [Bill Heimerman and Ian Lobb at the rear of the Photographers’ Gallery]
c. 1975-1980
Gelatin silver print

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) 'Untitled [Atget's Work Room with Contact Printing Frames]' c. 1910

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Untitled [Atget’s Work Room with Contact Printing Frames]
c. 1910

 

 

I am very familiar with the old suitcases under the desk – I think that only one – if any – is a suitcase.

This is typically how an exhibition would arrive at the Photographers’ Gallery – it would hold about 40 matted prints. Undo the strap and open the box to typically find 2 or 3 brown paper parcels. Maybe some archival tissue on the next layer down = sometimes not = and then about 20 mounted and matted prints sometimes face to face. This is the way Caponigro for example sent his prints – I’m trying to remember William Clift – Maybe one box like that and a handmade bigger one – or maybe 2 wooden boxes = but at least half  the exhibitions arrived in boxes like that.

But have a look to the left of those boxes –what are they? They look like old fashioned  double-darks – maybe for a quarter plate camera. The distance from the emulsion to the edge of the case was different for these compared to the last generation 5×4 double darks. People sometimes tried to make a way of putting the old film carriers onto 5×4″ cameras – but they would be focussing on the wrong spot by not making adjustments for the different positions of the emulsion.

To return to the boxes – they would be waiting for us at the airport, and we would have to spin a  yarn to the customs agents telling them that the prints were for “educational purposes only”. It was a great educational experience to unwrap some of the prints  when they came with a piece of tissue paper between the print and  the mat – you could see something of the image and then get to imagine it before removing the tissue.

Re Robert Frank – also note the size of the Lupe next to his hand. Ralph Gibson had Robert Franks Leica enlarger – For some reason it was in his “living room” – I have seen it!!!

~ Ian Lobb email to Marcus Bunyan 1 December, 2015

 

Carol Jerrems. 'Untitled [Bill Heimerman and Ian Lobb at the Dog Rocks near Geelong]' c. 1975-1980

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Untitled [Bill Heimerman and Ian Lobb at the Dog Rocks near Geelong]
c. 1975-1980
Gelatin silver print

 

Cape Liptrap and Cape Paterson

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Ocean (Cape Liptrap)' 1979

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Ocean (Cape Liptrap)
1979
Gelatin silver photograph
17.3 × 22.5cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1980
© Ian Lobb

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'No title (Black sand and rocks)' 1989; printed 1992

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
No title (Black sand and rocks)
1989; printed 1992
Gelatin silver photograph
34.3 × 34.3cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by the artist, Fellow, 2000
© Ian Lobb

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson' 1975; printed 1979

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson
1975; printed 1979
Gelatin silver photograph
17.6 × 17.4cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1980
© Ian Lobb

 

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955) 'Ian at Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson' November 2023

 

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955)
Ian at Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson
November 2023

 

This was the first Ian time had returned to Cape Paterson since the death of his father many years ago.

 

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955) 'Ian at Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson' November 2023

 

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955)
Ian at Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson
November 2023

 

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955) 'Ian at Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson' November 2023

 

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955)
Ian at Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson
November 2023

 

Lemon scented gum, Fairfield

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Ian Lobb, Fairfield' December 2021

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Ian Lobb, Fairfield
December 2021

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Ian Lobb, Fairfield' December 2021

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Ian Lobb, Fairfield
December 2021

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Ian Lobb, Fairfield' December 2021

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Ian Lobb, Fairfield
December 2021

 

Maxwell Allara (American, born Italy, 1906-1981) 'Untitled (Minor White During a Workshop)' 1959

 

Maxwell Allara (American, born Italy, 1906-1981)
Untitled (Minor White During a Workshop)
1959
Gelatin silver print

 

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955) 'Ian in front of his favourite tree, Fairfield' November 2021

 

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955)
Ian in front of his favourite tree, Fairfield
November 2021

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Moencopi Strata, Capital Reef, Utah' 1962 

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Moencopi Strata, Capital Reef, Utah
1962
Gelatin silver print

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Lemon scented gum' 24 January 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Lemon scented gum
24 January 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Lemon scented gum' 14 February 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Lemon scented gum
14 February 2023

 

“The light comes down the tree. But for some days it twists right to left and makes an early morning shadow.

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Monday 11 September 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Lemon scented gum' 22 February 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Lemon scented gum
22 February 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Lemon scented' gum 8 March 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Lemon scented gum
8 March 2023

 

Marcus – thanks for the mystic particles. After I have apple and rhubarb I’ll be walking to check on the tree in the church-garden. I’m interested in this, rather than my own garden. Who knows why I can’t photograph my own. Do you have a garden close by that you can walk through easily? I can’t wait for the sun to move a bit further and the light to come back on church gum. A few weeks.

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Wednesday 12 July 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Lemon scented gum' 13 September 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Lemon scented gum
13 September 2023

 

Mobile phone photographs

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Untitled (Green woman)' 22 November 2022

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled (Green woman)
22 November 2022

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Alex' 21 December 2022

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Alex
21 December 2022

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Untitled (pink and black)' 31 January 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled (pink and black)
31 January 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'The path from the coffee shop' 4 February 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
The path from the coffee shop
Fairfield, 4 February 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'The path to the coffee shop' Fairfield 4 February 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
The path to the coffee shop
Fairfield, 4 February 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Building his ying, Ignoring his yang' 21 February 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Building his ying, Ignoring his yang
21 February 2023

 

The First One

First one through the forest
First one on the beach
First one through the shallows
First one in the deep
Yes, first in the water
To swim out of reach
First one to belong
And then to be gone
First one to be gone too soon.

First foot off the platform
First step off the map
First one to learn
With nothing to teach
First one in this life
To whisper my name.
First one through my shallows
First one in my deep
First one to be gone too soon.

First winter field night
When the fires are lit
First soul at midnight
Watching burning trees twist.
At your back is the darkness
That turns you to see …
First one to the shadows
First one to the deep
First one to be gone too soon.

There’s a sound that’s so big
We can’t even hear
Not a murmur, a pulse
A note, nor a song
After midnight it wakes you
To its echoes and trace
First one to be swallowed
First one in the deep
First one to be gone too soon.

You’re the first, yes its true
On the roll call of friends
Now there’s spaces, not names
And you: you’re the worst.
You’re a very faint glow
On a very faint path
You were first through the shallows
First one in the deep
First one to be gone too soon.

Ian Lobb 28 August 2018

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'A small moment with...' 25 February 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
A small moment with…
25 February 2023

 

“If only the lens didn’t have anti flare – it would have been an Atget moment.”

~ Ian Lobb

 

Eugène Atget. 'Saint-Cloud' 1926

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Saint-Cloud
1926
Albumen print

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Billiard' 2 March 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Billiard
2 March 2023

 

Ian: Please see full screen for pleasing puns

Marcus: Love how the graffiti imitates the shape of the wood in the trolley and how the triangle of white dots is a metaphor for the billiard triangle used to rack up the balls

Ian: Yes. And with the billiard signage I thought it was like a players gesture – towards the corner pocket

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Friday, 3 March 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Untitled (Mother)' 30 April 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled (Mother)
30 April 2023

 

Apart from the teenagers at church, the mention that you were talking to your mother, was one of the few mentions of that relationship since my mother had passed. One minute after that I took this on my way home.

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Sunday, 30 April 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'Untitled (black oblong)' Fairfield, 8 May 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled (black oblong)
Fairfield, 8 May 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) Untitled (My walk this morning)' Fairfield, 11 May 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled (My walk this morning)
Fairfield, 11 May 2023

 

On my second roll of HP4 were pictures of a young lady lying under clear sheets of curved 2mm plastic that I had sprayed with water (1968?). The attached is from my walk this morning. The similar mood is quite scary.

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Thursday, 11 May 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023) 'mmmm, Pasta Poetry' Fairfield, 21 June 2023

 

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
mmmm, Pasta Poetry
Fairfield, 21 June 2023

 

Thinking about John Cato this morning. If you can google “the world is too much with us” – Wordsworth – and give a toast to John. Proteus!!!

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Wednesday, 5 July 2023

 

The world is too much with us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;–
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
William Wordsworth 1802

 

Cy Twombly. 'Coronation of Sesostris (Part III)' 2000

 

Cy Twombly (American, 1928-2011)
Coronation of Sesostris (Part III)
2000

 

Affirmation: When you Sing

(An affirmation from Cy Twombly’s Coronation of Sesostris)

 

If you sing, don’t let them hesitate
When you sing, don’t let them make signs of regret
When you sing, let them bear the loss of silence
When you sing, the lost gods are found
When you sing, the birds and trees love their shadows
Lying quietly on the ground
When you sing, the mark of nature and the mark of the mark rejoice
When you sing we trace to the source of trace – the realm.

Sing to the ghosts, sing to those to come
Flow over – into – flow over
Let the trees rise from the earth because you sing:
New sunlight on new leaves cutting into space
Write your name
with their scintilla through the air as you sing
Then each letter narrows, fades   white
Still unending trace as sing and sing as a lost god.
One majesty fades to another
Sing Osiris , sing that god into Orpheus

scribes
Porous sparse voice, could have been scattered
Empty surface – instead open sky
Bell
Nothing to shatter
Sing for the old rivers,
Sailors sink into sails,
The opposite bank still opposite
Take this – sing – most important , to the next life.
Like tall trees, rising from …

Gods cannot depart while love, I mean song, remains
Gods have not departed: it would have been heeded,
Reported as a hoax,
No arc of departure divulged
song, weightless
Gods have not departed – it is a drunken hoax, rumour.

Ian Lobb 30 August 2018

 

Cy Twombly. 'Coronation of Sesostris (Part V)' 2000

 

Cy Twombly (American, 1928-2011)
Coronation of Sesostris (Part V)
2000

 

Cy Twombly. 'Coronation of Sesostris (Part VI)' 2000

 

Cy Twombly (American, 1928-2011)
Coronation of Sesostris (Part VI)
2000

 

Last house

Are you travelling to this very last house
On the very last street of this town?
That I built here for you,
Where I wait for you
If you go round the back you’ll find wild flowers
That you could almost touch
And you would watch the clouds come down from the hills

Long ago I promised this to you
It became my story that you’d come
To the last street
And to the last house
I watch all the doors to see you enter
So that we would almost touch
And you could watch the rain come down from the hills

Yes, it’s true, the house backs onto darkness
I swear there’s really nothing out there
Beyond this last street
Beyond this last house
Nothing you could be sure to name
Nothing we can almost touch
And at night you could keep watch, from here to the hills

You can smell salt in the air from all of the rooms
And hear the wind in the waves
But out the back you’ll only find wildflowers.
Not those grey choppy waves
That we can almost touch
On this last street
In this last house.

Ian Lobb 29 August 2018

 

 

Flickerd (Australian)
Zac Foot of Sydney during the 2019 NEAFL round 14 match between NT Thunder and Sydney at TIO Stadium on Saturday, 6 July 2019 in Darwin, Northern Territory
2019
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

 

 

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Photographs: ‘Women’ 1960s British / Australian 35mm colour slides Part 2

February 2021

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

 

This is the second part of my posting on 88 colour slides of nude women that I bought in Daylesford (an hour and a half from Melbourne) at an antique centre. I have spent hours digitally restoring these slides for they were in a poor state. Unfortunately the colour has gone but I felt the slides were so interesting, so beautiful, that they were worth preserving.

Compared to the women in Part 1 of the posting, the women in these photographs are more knowing of their sexuality and the part they are playing in their own representation, the acting for the camera. Even so, there is nothing prudish or smutty about these photographs. Despite the professional? amateur? photographer being almost certainly male (and all the appellations that the male gaze brings with it), the women are joyful when displaying their bodies, unafraid and uninhibited in the posing of their bodies before the camera. Here “the enshrining of Woman as a blank screen upon which the ideas and desires of both artist and viewer are projected” is balanced by the identity, presence and vitality of the women themselves. They take possession of their image, not simply as passive participants in the act of representation, but as active, engaged, powerful human beings who have a vital role in their own portrayal.

This selection features images that have a more British flavour including shots in a traditional back garden of an English house with lawn, crazy paving and roses (reminding me of my mother’s garden). Other photographs are shot in a flat – one in front of curtain, another using flash in a temporary studio made from rolls of paper hung down behind the model. Further photographs are shot in what looks like a rental bedsit using flash – against a door with the edge of the bed appearing at left, or in a small bedside mirror with overhead light, guest instructions for the room appearing at left. One can only surmise the arrangements made for the model and photographer to meet up in such a small, dingy space. Did they know each other beforehand, was money exchanged, did they have sex afterwards or part without ever seeing each other again, and what was going on in each of their lives, that they ended up in this space at this time for these photographs? What brought them to this place, and what happened to their lives afterwards? One can only surmise…

The setting of domestic suburbia is prevalent in many of these intimate images. Women lie on couches with cats; sit on a stool surrounded by chair, curtain and floral carpet; and are photographed as a pair using numerous props including a chair and a table covered with a bedspread, while on the ground a blanket is laid on the carpet for them to sit on. It’s all very amateur and experimental, using whatever surroundings and objects were available. My personal favourite is a magnificent woman, head titled down and away from the camera, strong dark shadow with the profile of a classical bust falling on the bed and wall behind, flattening the space of the image. Three Vincent van Gogh posters are tacked to the wall of the habitat behind: beauty and bed meets beauty and bed, that of van Gogh’s The Bedroom Arles 1888 (see below). I wonder what Vincent would have made of this Venus, how he would have painted her.

At the bottom of the posting you can see examples of naturist magazines, for the posing in these photographs has historical links to the history and photography of naturism (naturism is a lifestyle of non-sexual nudity, and the cultural movement which advocates for and defends that lifestyle). Of particular interest to me are the advertisements for the “Spielplatz” in St Albans, for my mother was a member for many years at this nudist retreat in the heart of Hertfordshire, owning a caravan and enjoying the summer months in England swimming and sunbathing nude. The Spielplatz (meaning playground)  – “the place to be when you have nothing on” – is the UK’s longest-operating naturist resort founded in 1929 by Charles Macaskie and his wife Dorothy, and still going strong. Other magazines, such as the Australian Figure and Vigour (A Controversial Periodical Devoted to Fearless Fact … SEXOLOGY – ART – THEATRE – BEAUTY) and Australasian Post concentrate on the more salacious side of sex and the portrayal of the female body (for the desires of men): ‘ARE WE SLAVES TO SEX?’ screams the headline, and ‘IS OUR SOCIETY SEX-SICK?’ or, ‘SPANKED WOMEN! * YOU’LL BE SHOCKED! Meekly, at the word of a cruel husband or parent, they submit themselves to pain and utter humiliation!’ Meekly – there is the key word (in a quiet, gentle, and submissive manner) – women become subservient to men, submitting themselves to pain and humiliation not just from a husband, but even a parent. This is so wrong on so many levels.

Titles such as “The Triumph of Naturism”, “Health and Efficiency” “Health and Sunshine” emphasise the link between nature, the body and the machine, how a healthy body promotes a healthy mind, all the while lurking in the background are half-remembered links to the discredited science of eugenics (a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population, historically by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior) and to the 1935 Nazi propaganda film directed, produced, edited, and co-written by Leni Riefenstahl titled Triumph of the Will, which chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. Meanwhile, portrayals of the male body in some of the very same magazines concentrate on the mightiest men of muscledom, bulging pinups and masters of muscle. A youthful Arnold Schwarzenegger (photographed by that wonderful artist Gregor Arax) poses in all his glory for these physical culture magazines, as does a very young Sean Connery – the muscular phallic body of the muscle gods transferring across to the desirability and availability of such a body in gay porn photographs from the 1970s. As they say in ‘Master of muscle’, “It begins with a picture…”

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. View Part 1 of the posting.

 

Addendum November 2021

On 30 October 2021 I received a wonderful email from Miss Ulrike Muehlbachler in Austria. She gave me some valuable information with regard to these colour slides as below:

“All of them should be digitalised at the highest possible resolution as soon as possible. 1960’s colour slides now tend to chemical reactions – which destroys the images more and more through the years (this has been done!)

1/ The blond model is Annette Johnson. For more information on Annette Johnson please see The Kamera Club website.

2/ The voluptuous woman is UK-model Ann Austin. For more information on Ann Austin please see The Kamera Club website.


Best regards from old Austria, Europe
Miss Ulrike Muehlbachler – painting artist, music producer & former stock photographer”

 

More valuable information came from Russ who runs The Kamera Club website:

The slides seem to be a mixture of models from different countries including the UK, as I can name a few. Also I’d say that although several of the models posed for Harrison Marks none of the shots are taken by him. They were originally published as sets under ‘Esquire Color Slides’ and were notorious for going red!

They were not taken at Ewhurst Manor [a legendary UK-filming location at 37 Furzehill Road, Borehamwood used for “glamour” photography, now sadly totally demolished], at least those I’ve seen taken in the gardens. I know the grounds of Ewhurst fairly well having studied numerous images of the place over the years. I can safely say there wasn’t a walled round pond there 🙂

I will need to look through the slides again, but I can see Sue Owen, Models named Robyn and Georgina and a few others I recognise.

These slides seem to turn up all over the place, so the distribution must have been pretty good even back in the 1960’s.

Russ”

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait (1)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait (Annette Johnson)' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait (Annette Johnson)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait (Annette Johnson and friend)' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait (Annette Johnson and friend)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait (Annette Johnson and friend)' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait (Annette Johnson and friend)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (British). 'Nude portrait (Annette Johnson and friend)' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait (Annette Johnson and friend)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890) ‘The Bedroom’ Arles, October 1888

 

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
The Bedroom
Arles, October 1888
Oil on canvas
72.4 cm x 91.3 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

 

While he was in Arles, Van Gogh made this painting of his bedroom in the Yellow House. He prepared the room himself with simple furniture and with his own work on the wall. The bright colours were meant to express absolute ‘repose’ or ‘sleep’. Research shows that the strongly contrasting colours we see in the work today are the result of discolouration over the years. The walls and doors, for instance, were originally purple rather than blue. The apparently odd angle of the rear wall, meanwhile, is not a mistake on Van Gogh’s part – the corner really was skewed. The rules of perspective seem not to have been accurately applied throughout the painting, but this was a deliberate choice. Vincent told Theo in a letter that he had deliberately ‘flattened’ the interior and left out the shadows so that his picture would resemble a Japanese print. Van Gogh was very pleased with the painting: ‘When I saw my canvases again after my illness, what seemed to me the best was the bedroom.’

Text from the Van Gogh Museum website [Online] Cited 21/02/2021

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Hanimex slide carousel and box

Hanimex slide carousel and box

 

Hanimex slide carousel and box

 

35mm colour slide

 

35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (British? Australian?)
Nude portrait
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Sun Bathing Review Summer 1949

Sun Bathing Review Summer 1949

 

Sun Bathing Review
Summer 1949

 

Eve in the Sun about 1956

 

Rosemary Andrée
My life story
1945

Eve in the Sun
about 1956

 

"Are We Slaves to Sex?" in 'Figure and Vigour' Vol. 1, No. 5 November 1952

 

“Are We Slaves to Sex?”
Figure and Vigour Vol. 1, No. 5
November 1952

 

Sun Bathing Review Autumn 1955

 

Sun Bathing Review
Autumn 1955

 

Australasian Post December 8 1955

 

“Spanked Women!”
Australasian Post
December 8 1955

 

Sunbathing For Health January 1956

 

Sunbathing For Health
January 1956

 

Health And Efficiency February 1956

 

Health And Efficiency
February 1956

 

Health And Efficiency February 1957

Health And Efficiency February 1957

 

Health And Efficiency
February 1957
Adverts for Photographic Art Albums

 

The Naturist Vol. XX, No. 7 June 1957

 

The Naturist Vol. XX, No. 7
June 1957

 

The Naturist Vol. XX, No. 10 September 1957

The Naturist Vol. XX, No. 10 September 1957

 

The Naturist Vol. XX, No. 10
September 1957

 

'Sun Bathing Review' Vol. 16, No. 61 Spring 1958

 

Sun Bathing Review Vol. 16, No. 61
Spring 1958

 

The Naturist Monthly Vol. XXII, No. 3 February 1959

The Naturist Monthly Vol. XXII, No. 3 February 1959

 

The Naturist Monthly Vol. XXII, No. 3
February 1959

 

The Naturist Monthly Vol. XXII, No. 3 February 1959

 

Advert for Nudist Life at Spielplatz by Charles Sennet.
The Naturist Monthly Vol. XXII, No. 3
February 1959

 

Spielplatz

1/ playground

2/playing field

 

Health and Sunshine 1 Jan. 1943

 

Herbert Rittlinger (German, 1909-1978)
“An Island Paradise”
Health and Sunshine
Special Edition XIV
1960s

 

Herbert Rittlinger was not only known for his writing. His photographic work is equally popular. He dealt with nude photography in the sense of naturism. He also published several photo textbooks and illustrated books. For years he was also the author of a monthly column on the subject of “nude photography” in the photo magazine. From 1963 until his death he was a member of the DGPh (German Society for Photography). Above all, he dealt with the subject of water sports in photography and writing.

In many of his books, he joined committed to nudism a (nude), even in the more prudish 1950s. Rittlinger wrote as early as 1950 about the then disreputable term “nudity culture”:

“But to apply this beautiful expression to the very simple, very natural and in the appropriate place quite often practiced nudism, or to the honest nudist groups (many of their members are not by chance canoeists!) With their […] free and sporty and clean atmosphere – is impolite and, at best, shows gross ignorance. Only – the obscenity of the philistine is by no means “impolite” anymore, but rather malicious! “Naturism” (FKK) is also not a happy word. But it has asserted and naturalised itself from the distance to all speculative machinations. From the proper sportswear to Petrarcaup to here the jump is not that big: Our shores of the sun also call for ultimate physical freedom. What the gift of nudity in the air and sun means for women in particular, who withdraw three quarters of their bodies from the vital demand “let air on their skin”, even when doing sport, will be best appreciated by them. Fortunately, under the thicket of narrow and conventional convention, most people have enough cleanliness of sensation to enjoy fresh naturalness. In the face of venerable, dreamy Moselle towns, or under the peering amused or even evil glances of the honest rural population, any unintended challenge is strictly forbidden, if only for reasons of [good …] taste. But if you are in a lonely area.” ~ The new school of canoeing. River-sea-whitewater-open-air life. p. 295.


Herbert Rittlinger’s text and images in the “Sun Friends” and “HELIOS” magazine described the ideal opportunities to combine canoeing with naturism. So also the special editions written and illustrated by Rittlinger: “Dalmatian Summer”, “We moved to Friuli” and “Sun trip to Provence” from these then leading nudist publishers.

Text translated from the German Wikipedia entry

 

Health and Sunshine Special Edition XIX

Health and Sunshine Special Edition XIX

 

Hans-Joachim Fritzsch
“Naked in the Sun”
Health and Sunshine
Special Edition XIX
1960s

 

Health and Sunshine 1960s

 

Health and Sunshine
1960s

 

Health and Efficiency April 1960

Health and Efficiency April 1960

Health and Efficiency April 1960

Health and Efficiency April 1960

Health and Efficiency April 1960

 

Health and Efficiency
April 1960

 

Australasian Post Jan 28 1965

 

Australasian Post
Jan 28 1965

 

Topless Girl Australasian Post Jan 28 1965

Topless Girl Australasian Post Jan 28 1965

 

“Topless Girl Tells”
Australasian Post
Jan 28 1965

 

"I am a nudist" from 'Australasian Post' November 18, 1965

 

“I am a nudist” from Australasian Post
November 18, 1965

 

'New Zealand Naturist Magazine' #39 June 1966 Naturism Nudism Adult Pamphlet

 

New Zealand Naturist Magazine #39
June 1966
Naturism Nudism Adult Pamphlet

 

Australasian Post July 27 1967 Arax

 

Australasian Post
July 27 1967
Photos by Arax (Krikor (Gregor) Djololian – Studio Arax)

 

Australasian Post November 9 1967

 

Australasian Post
November 9 1967

 

Australasian Post November 9 1967

 

Australasian Post
November 9 1967

 

Australasian Post Nov 27 1969

 

Australasian Post
November 27 1969

 

Australasian Post May 29 1969

 

Australasian Post
May 29 1969

 

Sun Seeker Magazine 1 Jan 1970

Sun Seeker 1 Jan 1970

 

Sun & Health Limited (Publisher)
Frank Stephens (Editor)
Sun Seeker No. 190
1 Jan 1970

 

Sun Lovers First Bumper Book Jan 1972

 

Sun Lovers First Bumper Book
Jan 1972

 

Health And Efficiency Number 851 March 1972

 

Health And Efficiency Number 851
March 1972

 

Gay male porn 1970s

Gay male porn 1970s

Gay male porn 1970s

Gay male porn 1970s

Gay male porn 1970s

 

Photographs from GAY magazine
mid-1970s
Barry Lowe papers
© Australian Queer Archives
With permission

 

 

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Photographs: ‘Women’ 1960s Australian 35mm colour slides Part 1

January 2021

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (1)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

 

Before lockdown struck Melbourne I travelled up to Daylesford (an hour and a half from the city) and purchased a Hanimex carousel containing approximately 88 colour slides of nude women, from an antique centre for $80. Mounted in Kodak Ready-mounts, the slide film itself has no markings – no number and no name, completely blank. These could therefore be dupe (duplicate) slides, where the film has no brand.

I have spent hours digitally restoring these slides for they were in a poor state. You can see a detail from an unrestored slide below. Unfortunately the colour has gone but I felt the slides were so interesting, so beautiful, that they were worth preserving. What makes them rare is that most of the slides are Australian, set on the beach and in the bush. I have never seen anything like them in Australian photography before. This posting features the most Australian of the slides with background of surf, sand and sea, Australian gums and fauna.

There is nothing prudish or smutty about these photographs. Despite the professional? amateur? photographer being almost certainly male (and all the appellations that the male gaze brings with it), the women are joyful when displaying their bodies, unafraid and uninhibited in the posing of their bodies before the camera. Here “the enshrining of Woman as a blank screen upon which the ideas and desires of both artist and viewer are projected” is balanced by the identity, presence and vitality of the women themselves. They take possession of their image, not simply as passive participants in the act of representation, but as active, engaged, powerful human beings who have a vital role in their own portrayal.

This posing has historical links to the history and photography of naturism (naturism is a lifestyle of non-sexual nudity, and the cultural movement which advocates for and defends that lifestyle. Both may also be referred to as nudism) and vitalist1, movements which sprung up around the world before and after the First World War.2 Examples of magazines and pamphlets from 1921-1949 can be seen at the bottom of the posting including an Australian publication, Physique Culture Art Album, c. 1936-1940. As with early male physique magazines, early naturist magazines link the beauty of the physical form to the classical ideal; and being natural, in the sun, outdoors to health and vitality (“A Magazine for all interested in Physical Fitness, Hygiene, Diet, Sunbathing, and a Healthy Natural Life”).

Whether these photographs were for personal use, or for publication, remains unknown. Either way, the photographer has access to numerous models. In this posting there seem to be 6 separate photo sessions featuring different models – 1-9, 10-14, 15-19, 20-22, 23-32, and 33-37. Numbers 1-9 and 10-14 may be the same model but I am unsure of this.

What I am sure of is this: the photographer is not some drongo who does not know how to use a camera. He is wonderfully proficient with a camera, an artist in every sense of the word. I just look at the line of the body in No. 4 and 5 and note the light, the placement of the figure against the background and the position of the horizon line, the elongation of the female form, the sensuous curve of the body… similarly, the beauty, suppleness, lighting and placement of the body in No’s 23-27 is a delight. How he fills the pictorial frame with the horizontal body in No. 25 with the knee touching the edge of the frame on the right hand side, the feet and hands touching the sand, the head thrown back and cropped, the upper line of the body following the line of the dam behind, the undulating curve of the upper and lower body mimicking the curve of the hand, low depth of field and beautiful light, is superlative.

I have never had the opportunity to photograph the female form but in finding these colour slides, rescuing them from oblivion, studying them, imbibing them, the process has given me a greater insight into the vitality and beauty of the female form, a deeper understanding of the anima (originally used to describe ideas such as breath, soul, spirit or vital force, Jung began using the term in the early 1920s to describe the inner feminine side of men),3 and of mother / earth.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. View Part 2 of the posting.

 

Addendum November 2021

On 30 October 2021 I received a wonderful email from Miss Ulrike Muehlbachler in Austria. She gave me some valuable information with regard to these colour slides as below:

“All of them should be digitalised at the highest possible resolution as soon as possible. 1960’s colour slides now tend to chemical reactions – which destroys the images more and more through the years (this has been done!)

1/ The blond model is Annette Johnson. For more information on Annette Johnson please see The Kamera Club website.

2/ The voluptuous woman is UK-model Ann Austin. For more information on Ann Austin please see The Kamera Club website.


Best regards from old Austria, Europe
Miss Ulrike Muehlbachler – painting artist, music producer & former stock photographer”

 

More valuable information came from Russ who runs The Kamera Club website:

The slides seem to be a mixture of models from different countries including the UK, as I can name a few. Also I’d say that although several of the models posed for Harrison Marks none of the shots are taken by him. They were originally published as sets under ‘Esquire Color Slides’ and were notorious for going red!

They were not taken at Ewhurst Manor [a legendary UK-filming location at 37 Furzehill Road, Borehamwood used for “glamour” photography, now sadly totally demolished], at least those I’ve seen taken in the gardens. I know the grounds of Ewhurst fairly well having studied numerous images of the place over the years. I can safely say there wasn’t a walled round pond there 🙂

I will need to look through the slides again, but I can see Sue Owen, Models named Robyn and Georgina and a few others I recognise.

These slides seem to turn up all over the place, so the distribution must have been pretty good even back in the 1960’s.

Russ”

 

Footnotes

1/ “Faced with ‘a queasy sickening feeling that all was not right’, by the fin-de-siècle many Modernists in America, Australia, Britain, Canada and Europe expanded the field of art into raw nature, ethnic communities and tribal cultures as vitalisers of energy that could be emotionally and creatively liberating. Following theories of Vitalism by Henri Bergson, Hans Driesch, Alois Riegl and Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘the vital state’ (‘l’élan vital’) became widely engaged for its conception of life as a constant process of metamorphosis, impelled by the free flow of energies able to generate what Bergson called ‘creative evolution’. Imbricated within Neo-Lamarckian ecological evolutionary theories, Vitalism was also embraced for being anti-rationalist and anti-mechanistic, particularly in its opposition to Thomas Huxley’s conception of plants and animals as machines, and its reconception of them as inspiring organisms within unspoiled nature, perpetually mutating into increasingly complex species and solidarist colonies following the Transformist concept of ‘life-force’.

Pitched against mechanistic productivity and repressive materialism, Vitalism spawned an expanding field of Modernist art in which artists embraced nature, intuition, instinct, spontaneity, chance, intense emotion, memory, unconscious states, uncanny vibrations, and a psychology of time. This pursuit was enhanced by the further expansion of art into Anthroposophy, Organicism, Supernaturalism, Magnetism, Eurhythmics, Freikorperkultur, Heliotherapy, Herbalism, Homeopathy, Naturopathy, Nudism, Theosophy and Vegetarianism, free dance plus regenerative new sports and physical cultures. The artists exploring this expanded field were doing so … within cultures as geopolitically widespread as Britain, China, France, Iceland, Oslo, Switzerland and the Soviet Union.”

Anonymous. “Vitalist Modernism,” on the Association for Art History website [Online] Cited 27/01/2021.

2/ Body culture

The terrible physical losses and psychological traumas of the First World War changed Australian society and prompted anxious concerns about the direction of the nation. For some this meant an inward-looking isolationism, a desire that Australian culture should develop independently and untouched by the ‘degenerate’ influences of Europe.

The search for rejuvenation frequently involved explorations of the capabilities and vulnerabilities of the human body. In the hands of artists, corporeal forms came to symbolise nationhood, most often expressed through references to the art of Classical Greece and mythological subjects. The evolution of a new Australian ‘type’ was also proposed in the 1930s – a white Australian drawn from British stock, but with an athletic and streamlined shape honed by time spent swimming and surfing on local beaches.

This art often has a distinctive quality to it, which in the light of history can sometimes make for disquieting viewing. With the terrible knowledge of how the Nazi Party in Germany subsequently used eugenics in its systematic slaughter of those with so-called ‘bad blood’, the Australian enthusiasm for ‘body culture’ can now seem problematic. Images of muscular nationalism soon lost their cache in Australia following the Second World War, tainted by undesirable fascistic overtones.

In the 1930s Max Dupain responded to Henri Bergson’s book Creative Evolution (1907) in which he considered creativity and intuition as central to the renewed development of society, and the artist as prime possessor of these powers. Vitalism, as this philosophy was termed, was believed to be expressed through polarised sexual energies. …

The invocation of the Classical body as a modern prototype was a powerful idea in the 1930s. The Graeco- Roman goddess Diana, the virgin patron goddess of the hunt, was popularly invoked as an ideal of female perfection, and represented with a slender and athletic physique.

Anonymous wall text from the exhibition Brave New World: Australia 1930s at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, July – October 2017

3/ Anima originated from Latin, and was originally used to describe ideas such as breath, soul, spirit or vital force. Jung began using the term in the early 1920s to describe the inner feminine side of men.

Anima: The inner self of an individual; the soul. In Jungian psychology, the unconscious or true inner self of an individual, as opposed to the persona, or outer aspect of the personality. In Jungian psychology, the feminine inner personality as present in the unconscious of the male.

 

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (2)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s? (detail unrestored)

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (2) (detail unrestored)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (3)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (4)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (5)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (6)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (7)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (8)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (9)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (10)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (11)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (12)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (13)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (14)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (15)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (16)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (17)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (18)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (19)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (20)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (21)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (22)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (23)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (24)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (25)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (26)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (27)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (28)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (29)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (30)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (31)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (32)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (33)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (34)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (35)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (36)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (36) (detail unrestored)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (37)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

Athletic Publications Ltd. (London) (Publisher). 'Through the Day. How workers can easily increase their health, efficiency, and happiness' 1921

 

Athletic Publications Ltd. (London) (Publisher)
Through the Day. How workers can easily increase their health, efficiency, and happiness
1921

 

Vivre Integralement #103 15th October 1931 French Naturist Magazine

 

Vivre Integralement #103
15th October 1931
French Naturist Magazine

 

Health & Physical Culture Publishing Co. Ltd. (Sydney Australia) (Publisher) 'Physique Culture Art Album' c. 1936-1940

 

Health & Physical Culture Publishing Co. Ltd. (Sydney Australia) (Publisher)
Physique Culture Art Album
c. 1936-1940

 

'Sun Bathing Review Summer' 1939

 

Sun Bathing Review
Vol. 7, No. 26
Summer 1939

 

'Health & Efficiency' April 1941

 

Health & Efficiency
Volume XI, No. 4
April 1941

 

'Health & Efficiency April' 1941

 

Health & Efficiency
Volume XI, No. 4
April 1941

 

'The Naturist' May 1943

 

The Naturist
May 1943

 

'The Naturist' May 1943

 

The Naturist
Vol. VI, No. 6
May 1943

 

'Sun Bathing Review' Autumn 1943

 

Sun Bathing Review
Vol. II, No. 43
Autumn 1943

 

Rosemary Andrée. 'My Life Story' 1945

 

Rosemary Andrée
My Life Story
1945

 

British performer, actress, dancer and physical culture expert Rosemary Andrée. Andrée became known as Britain’s “Pocket Venus” and toured internationally in stage shows, modelled for Britain’s finest photographers, made home exercise movies for women and enjoyed great public appeal during the 1930’s and 1940’s.

 

Douglas Stewart. 'Beauty and Naturism' April 1947

 

Douglas Stewart
Beauty and Naturism
Paperback
April 1947

 

'Health and Efficiency' May 1949

 

Health and Efficiency
May 1949

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?). 'Nude portrait' 1960s?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian?)
Nude portrait (38)
1960s?
35mm colour slide

 

 

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Photographs: Marcus Bunyan. ‘A day in the Tiergarten’ 2019-2020

June 2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled
2019-2020
From the series A day in the Tiergarten
Digital photograph

 

 

A day in the Tiergarten

I hope people like this series.

In late 2019, I took a photographic research trip through Europe by train, visiting nine countries and seeing many exhibitions and photographs by master photographers (Güler, Capa, Lartigue, Katz, Frank, Sudek, Sander, Brassaï, Abbott, Kertesz). I also took over 8,000 photographs on three digital cameras. This series, this stream of consciousness – the images shown in the exact order that I took them, no sequencing – reflects my state of mind during the trip. It was a kind of an ascetic experience for me, embedded as I was in the spaces and architectures of the cities and landscapes of Europe, hardly talking to anyone for the duration of the journey.

A day in the Tiergarten reflects this focus and clear seeing. Using camera and tripod the series, like a piece of music, moves from classical into surreal (the reflections of trees and water displacing the image plane), back to classical and on through Abstract Expressionism, ending in a peaceful coda of 4, 3, 2.

The series is an engagement with spirit – of wandering through a space of intimate desire and love. Love of trees, of being alone, of engaging with the self and nature. It was a magical day.

Please view the images on a larger screen. The whole series can be see with larger images on the A day in the Tiergarten web page or you can enlarge the images below by clicking on them.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


88 images in the series © Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Remember these are just straight digital photographs, all full frame, no cropping.

Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a digital colour 16″ x 20″ costs $1000 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my Store web page.

 

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Untitled' 2019-2020

 

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
A Day in the Tiergarten
2019-2020
Digital photographs

 

 

Marcus Bunyan website

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Exhibition: ‘Bill Henson’ as part of the NGV Festival of Photography, NGV International, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 10th March – 27th August 2017

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled #5' 2011/2012

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Installation view of Untitled #5
2011/2012
Archival inkjet pigment print
180 × 127cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled #5' 2011/2012 (detail)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Installation view of Untitled #5 (detail)
2011/2012
Archival inkjet pigment print
180 × 127cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

 

Masterclass

There is nothing that I need to add about the themes, re-sources and beauty of the photographs in this exhibition, than has not been commented on in Christopher Allen’s erudite piece of writing “Bill Henson images reflect the dark past at NGV” posted on The Australian website. It is all there for the reader:

“Figurative works like these, which invite an intense engagement because of our imaginative and affective response to beauty, are punctuated with landscapes that offer intervals of another kind of contemplation, a distant rather than close focus, an impersonal rather than a personal response, a meditation on time and space. …

Henson’s pictorial world is an intensely, almost hypnotically imaginative one, whose secret lies in a unique combination of closeness and distance. He draws on the deep affective power of physical beauty, and particularly the sexually ambiguous, often almost androgynous beauty of the young body, filled with a kind of potential energy, but not yet fully actualised. Yet these bodies are distanced and abstracted by their sculptural, nearly monochrome treatment, and transformed by a kind of alchemical synthesis with the ideal, poetic bodies of art. …

The figures are bewitching but withdraw like mirages, disembodied at the sensual level, only to be merged with the images of memory, the echoes of great works of the past, and to be reborn from the imagination as if some ancient sculpture were arising from darkness into the light of a new life.”


What I can add are some further observations. Henson is not so serious as to miss sharing a joke with his audience, as when the elbow of the classical statue in Untitled 2008/09 is mimicked in the background by the elbow of a figure. Henson is also a masterful storyteller, something that is rarely mentioned in comment upon his work. When you physically see this exhibition – the flow of the images, the juxtaposition of landscape and figurative works, the lighting of the work as the photographs emerge out of the darkness – all this produces such a sensation in the viewer that you are taken upon a journey into your soul. I was intensely moved by this work, by the bruised and battered bodies so much in love, that they almost took my breath away.

Another point of interest is the relationship between the philanthropist, the artist and the gallery. Due to the extraordinary generosity of Bill Bowness, whose gift of twenty-one photographs by Henson makes the NGV’s collection of his work the most significant of any public institution, the gallery was able to stage this exhibition. This is how art philanthropy should work: a private collector passionate about an artist’s work donating to an important institution to benefit both the artist, the institution and the art viewing public.

But then all this good work is undone in the promotion of the exhibition. I was supplied with the media images: five landscape images supplemented by five installation images of the same photographs. Despite requests for images of the figurative works they were not forthcoming. So I took my own.

We all know of the sensitivity around the work of Henson after his brush with the law in 2008, but if you are going to welcome 21 photographs into your collection, and stage a major exhibition of the donated work… then please have the courage of your convictions and provide media images of the ALL the work for people to see. For fear of offending the prurient right, the obsequiousness of the gallery belittles the whole enterprise.

If this artist was living in New York, London or Paris he would be having major retrospectives of his work, for I believe that Bill Henson is one of the greatest living photographers of his generation.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the images in the posting and supplying the media images (the images after the press release). All other images are © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria.

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria with at left, 'Untitled #35' 2009/2010 and at right, 'Untitled #8' 2008/2009

 

Installation view of the exhibition Bill Henson at the National Gallery of Victoria with at left, Untitled #35 2009/2010 and at right, Untitled #8 2008/2009
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled #35' 2009/2010 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled #35 (installation view)
2009/2010
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 × 180cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled #8' 2008/2009 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled #8 (installation view)
2008/2009
Archival inkjet pigment print
180 × 127cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation view of the exhibition Bill Henson at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled #1' 2010/2011 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled #1 (installation view)
2010/2011
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 × 180cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation views of the exhibition Bill Henson at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photos: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria © Dr Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria with at left, 'Untitled' 2010/2011 and at right, 'Untitled #9' 2008/2009

 

Installation view of the exhibition Bill Henson at the National Gallery of Victoria with at left, Untitled 2010/2011 and at right, Untitled #9 2008/2009
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled' 2010/2011 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled (installation view)
2010/2011
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 × 180cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled #9' 2008/2009 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled #9 (installation view)
2008/2009
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 × 180cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled' 2010/2011 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled (installation view)
2010/2011
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 × 180cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation view of the exhibition Bill Henson at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria © Dr Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria with at left, 'Untitled #2' 2010/2011 and at right, 'Untitled #10' 2011/2012

 

Installation view of the exhibition Bill Henson at the National Gallery of Victoria with at left, Untitled #2 2010/2011 and at right, Untitled #10 2011/2012
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled #2' 2010/2011 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled #2 (installation view)
2010/2011
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 × 180cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled #10' 2011/2012 (installation view detail)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled #10 (installation view detail)
2011/2012
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 × 180cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australia, b. 1955) 'Untitled #3' 2008/2009 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled #3 (installation view)
2008/2009
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 × 180cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation view of the exhibition Bill Henson at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria with at left, 'Untitled #16' 2009/10 and at right, 'Untitled #10' 2008/2009

 

Installation view of the exhibition Bill Henson at the National Gallery of Victoria with at left, Untitled #16 2009/10 and at right, Untitled #10 2008/2009
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled #10' 2008/2009 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled #10 (installation view)
2008/2009
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 × 180cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled #5' 2011/2012 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled #5 (installation view)
2011/2012
Archival inkjet pigment print
180 × 127cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b.1955) 'Untitled #15' 2008/2009 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled #15 (installation view)
2008/2009
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 × 180cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled' 2012/13 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled (installation view)
2012/13
Archival inkjet pigment print
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled' 2012/13 (installation view detail)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Installation view of Untitled (installation view detail)
2012/13
Archival inkjet pigment print
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled' 2012/13 (installation view detail)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Installation view of Untitled (installation view detail)
2012/13
Archival inkjet pigment print
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled #2' 2009/2010 (installation view detail)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled #2 (installation view detail)
2009/2010
Archival inkjet pigment print
127 × 180cm
Gift of William Donald Bowness through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2016
Photo: © Dr Marcus Bunyan, Bill Henson and the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Dr Marcus Bunyan in front of Bill Henson's 'Untitled' 2009/10 which features Rembrandt's 'The return of the prodigal son' c. 1662 which is in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg

 

Dr Marcus Bunyan in front of Bill Henson’s Untitled 2009/10 which features Rembrandt’s The return of the prodigal son c. 1662 which is in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Photo: Jeff Whitehead

 

 

The solo exhibition, Bill Henson, will showcase recent works by the Australian photographer, who is celebrated for his powerful images that sensitively explore the complexities of the human condition.

The exhibition brings together twenty-three photographs selected by the artist, traversing the key themes in the artist’s oeuvre, including sublime landscapes, portraiture, as well as classical sculpture captured in museum settings.

Inviting contemplation, Henson’s works present open-ended narratives and capture an intriguing sense of the transitory. Henson’s portraits show his subjects as introspective, focused on internal thoughts and dreams; his landscapes are photographed during the transitional moment of twilight; and the images shot on location inside museums juxtapose graceful marble statues against the transfixed visitors observing them.

Henson’s work is renowned for creating a powerful sense of mystery and ambiguity through the use of velvet-like blackness in the shadows. This is achieved through the striking use of chiaroscuro, an effect of contrasting light and shadow, which is used to selectively obscure and reveal the form of the human body, sculptures and the landscape itself.

“Henson’s photographs have a palpable sense of the cinematic and together they form a powerful and enigmatic visual statement,” said Tony Ellwood, Director, NGV. “The NGV mounted Bill Henson’s first solo exhibition in 1975 when Henson was only 19. Over forty years later, audiences to the NGV will be captivated by the beauty of Henson’s images once more,” said Ellwood.

On display at the National Gallery of Victoria as part of the inaugural NGV Festival of Photography, the exhibition has been made possible by the extraordinary generosity of Bill Bowness, whose gift of twenty-one photographs by Henson makes the NGV’s collection of his work the most significant of any public institution.

Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled 2008/09'

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled 2008/09
2008-2009
Inkjet print
127 x 180cm
© Bill Henson

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria. Presented as part of the NGV Festival of Photography Photo by Sean Fennessy

 

Installation view of the exhibition Bill Henson at the National Gallery of Victoria. Presented as part of the NGV Festival of Photography
Photo: Sean Fennessy

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled 2008/09'

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled 2008/09
2008-2009
Inkjet print
127 x 180cm
© Bill Henson

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untiled 2009/10'

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untiled 2009/10
2009-2010
Inkjet print
102.1 x 152.0cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australia Artist, 2012
© Bill Henson

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untiled 2009/10'

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untiled 2009/10
2009-2010
Inkjet print
102.1 x 152.0cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australia Artist, 2011
© Bill Henson

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untiled 2009/10' 2009-2010 (installation view)

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untiled 2009/10 (installation view)
2009-2010
Inkjet print
102.1 x 152.0cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australia Artist, 2011
© Bill Henson

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria. Presented as part of the NGV Festival of Photography

 

Installation view of the exhibition Bill Henson at the National Gallery of Victoria. Presented as part of the NGV Festival of Photography
Photo: Wayne Taylor

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) 'Untitled 2008/09'

 

Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled 2008/09
2008-2009
Inkjet print
127 x 180cm
© Bill Henson

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Bill Henson' at the National Gallery of Victoria. Presented as part of the NGV Festival of Photography

 

Installation view of the exhibition Bill Henson at the National Gallery of Victoria. Presented as part of the NGV Festival of Photography
Photo: Sean Fennessy

 

 

NGV International
180 St Kilda Road

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

National Gallery of Victoria website

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Exhibition: ‘View from the Window’ at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 2nd – 19th July 2014

Curated by: Vivian Cooper Smith and Jason McQuoid

Artists include: Sean Barrett, Danica Chappell, Kim Demuth, Jackson Eaton, Mike Gray, Megan Jenkinson, Benjamin Lichtenstein, Phuong Ngo, Izabela Pluta, Kate Robertson, Jo Scicluna, Vivian Cooper Smith, Melanie Jayne Taylor and Justine Varga

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'View from the Window' at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne, July 2014

 

Installation view of the exhibition View from the Window at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne, July 2014

 

 

Photography can be anything your heart desires (or so they say)…

Another stimulating exhibition at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne.

My personal favourites are the works of Jo Scicluna and the two large “sculptural” photographs by Kim Demuth, but every artist in the exhibition had something interesting to offer.

Marcus

.
Many thankx to Edmund Pearce Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Justine Varga. 'Morning' from the series 'Sounding Silence' 2014

 

Justine Varga (Australian, b. 1984)
Morning from the series Sounding Silence
2014
Type C print
77 x 61cm
Edition of 6 + 1AP
Images courtesy of the artist, Stills Gallery, Sydney and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

 

Justine Varga. 'Evening' from the series 'Sounding Silence' 2014

 

Justine Varga (Australian, b. 1984)
Evening
from the series Sounding Silence
2014
Type C print
47 x 38.5cm
Edition of 6 + 1AP
Images courtesy of the artist, Stills Gallery, Sydney and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

 

Izabela Pluta. Study for a sham ruin #7 and #8 2012

 

Izabela Pluta (Australian born Poland, b. 1979)
Left: Study for a sham ruin #7, pigment print, 50 x 50cm, 2012 (installation view)
Right: Study for a sham ruin #8, acrylic on pigment print, 50 x 50cm, 2012 (installation view)
Images courtesy of the artist, Dianne Tanzer Gallery + Projects, Melbourne and Galerie pompom, Sydney

 

Izabela Pluta. Study for a sham ruin #7 and #8 2012

 

Izabela Pluta (Australian born Poland, b. 1979)
Left: Study for a sham ruin #7, pigment print, 50 x 50cm, 2012
Right: Study for a sham ruin #8, acrylic on pigment print, 50 x 50cm, 2012
Images courtesy of the artist, Dianne Tanzer Gallery + Projects, Melbourne and Galerie pompom, Sydney

 

Megan Jenkinson. 'Promise - Morrell’s Islands' 2009

 

Megan Jenkinson (New Zealand, b. 1958)
Promise – Morrell’s Islands
2009
Type lenticular
22.6 x 38cm
Edition of 5
Image courtesy the artist and Stills Gallery, Sydney

 

Megan Jenkinson. 'Solace - Morrell's Islands' 2009

 

Megan Jenkinson (New Zealand, b. 1958)
Solace – Morrell’s Islands
2009
Type lenticular
21.7 x 38cm
Edition of 5
Image courtesy the artist and Stills Gallery, Sydney

 

 

View from the Window presents current thinking around photography (if we can even talk of something called photography any more).

The exhibition adapts its name from the oldest existing camera photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras by Nicéphore Niépce. Created with a cumbersome process using Bitumen of Judeah, it remains a trace of a day nearly two hundred years ago and a fragile, enigmatic object today. Since that time, photography has undergone continual seismic shifts in its short history. Given its technological foundations it was inevitable that as new processes and techniques were discovered they would influence current photographic practice. From daguerreotypes, cyanotypes through to Kodachrome, C-41, digital negatives and Photoshop just about everything has changed how we engage with the medium.

With the ubiquity of the modern photographic image View from the Window attempts to highlight the need for considered reflection upon the place and value of current photographic practices. The artists respond to this by considering what ‘photography’ is, and in doing so re-shape, re-imagine, expand and break it down. They explore new thinking with traditional techniques and invent new methods of image making. The work is digital and analogue, flat and sculptural, conceptual and experiential, whole and fragmented. Despite all this, the photographic ‘idea’ remains – reshaping the way we see the world.

Press release from the Edmund Pearce Gallery website

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'View from the Window' at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne, July 2014

 

Installation view of the exhibition View from the Window at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne, July 2014

 

Jo Scicluna. 'Where A Circle Meets A Line (#4)' 2014

 

Jo Scicluna (Australian, b. 1969)
Where A Circle Meets A Line (#4)
2014
Archival pigment ink on cotton rag, victorian ash timber, tinted acrylic
37.5 x 37.5cm
Edition of 5
Image courtesy of the artist

 

Jo Scicluna. 'Where I Have Always Been (An Island)' (detail) 2014

 

Jo Scicluna (Australian, b. 1969)
Where I Have Always Been (An Island) (detail)
2014
Archival pigment ink on cotton rag, Victorian Ash timber, acrylic
45 x 45cm
Edition of 5
Image courtesy of the artist

 

 

Extracts from the catalogue essay View from the Window

Over 180 years ago, the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce produced View from the Window at Le Gras. Depicting the view over a series of buildings and the countryside surrounding a French estate, this fragile work was produced in a camera obscura by focusing light onto a pewter plate coated with Bitumen of Judea. Its archaic form and production seem far removed from the digitally-augmented, large-scale work of many contemporary artists, yet it still haunts photography. As well as recalling the origins of photography, it indicates a number of enduring polarities: analogue and digital; image and object; physical darkroom practices and digital post-production; personal and institutional or collective experiences; and duration and snapshot…

As these artists’ works demonstrate, the field of contemporary photography is fundamentally multifarious, constantly eluding attempts to delimit and define it. Despite the diversity of these practices, they share a sense of critical inquiry. Whether working with analogue photographs in darkrooms or digital images in post-production, building physical objects or emphasising the immaterial, these artists all foreground the capacity for photography to interrogate our understanding of the world. Consequently these practices recall art historian Bernd Stiegler’s vision of photography as a ‘reflective medium’.5 By this term Stiegler refers to the inextricable link between photography and realism, but importantly not a form of realism understood as naïve mimesis. Rather, for Stiegler, photography reflects upon the structures and assumptions through which we perceive the world, it ‘plumbs the conditions and limits of our understanding of reality’.6 More than a veridical document or hollow simulacrum, photography thus exists as image, object and process, potentially all simultaneously.

The complexity of these works signals a second common element: the investment of time. All these artists expend considerable time and effort in producing their work, as do any dedicated artists. However, the relevance of this observation is that this temporal investment differentiates such work from the overwhelming glut of photographic images that circulate through the electronic networks of globalised society. Although it would be disingenuous and insensitive to claim that tourist snaps of well-travelled monuments are only meaningless ephemera or signs of globalised homogeneity,7 the near ubiquity of photographic images highlights the need for considered reflection upon the place and value of photographic practices. Committed to extended periods of observation and experimentation, these artists display the patience and persistence to interrogate the problems and possibilities of photography. At their gentle request we repay this dedication through our own extended viewing, for without the time to look we might lose the time to think.

Christopher Williams-Wynn
2014

Christopher Williams-Wynn is an art history honours graduate of The University of Melbourne, and co-founder and co-editor of Dissect Journal.

 

5. Bernd Stiegler, ‘Photography as the Medium of Reflection’ in Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson (eds), The Meaning of Photography. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2008, pp. 194-197.
6. Ibid., p. 197.
7. John Urry and Jonas Larsen, The Tourist Gaze 3.0, London: SAGE Publications, 2011, pp. 155-187.

 

Kim Demuth. '12.16am 18.02.2009' 2012

 

Kim Demuth (Australian born England)
12.16am 18.02.2009
2012
Sculptural photography
110 x 92 x 6.5cm
Edition of 3
Image courtesy of the artist

 

Kim Demuth. '9.55am 11.06.2008' 2012

 

Kim Demuth (Australian born England)
9.55am 11.06.2008
2012
Sculptural photography
110 x 88 x 6.5cm
Edition of 3
Image courtesy of the artist

 

Sean Barrett. 'Cool Aether' 2014

 

Sean Barrett
Cool Aether
2014
Duratrans on blackwood lightbox
80 x 60cm
Edition of 3
Image courtesy of the artist

 

Sean Barrett. 'Bright Swarm' 2014

 

Sean Barrett
Bright Swarm
2014
Duratrans on blackwood lightbox
80 x 60cm
Edition of 3
Image courtesy of the artist

 

Sean Barrett. 'Dual Aurora' 2014

 

Sean Barrett
Dual Aurora
2014
Duratrans on blackwood lightbox
80 x 60cm
Edition of 3
Image courtesy of the artist

 

 

Edmund Pearce Gallery

This gallery has now closed.

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Melbourne’s magnificent nine 2013

January 2014

 

Darron Davies. 'Encased' 2012

 

Darron Davies (Australian)
Encased 
2012
Archival Pigment Print on Photo Rag
80 x 80cm / edition of 6

 

 

Here’s my pick of the nine best local exhibitions which featured on the Art Blart blog in 2013 (plus a favourite of the year from Hobart). Enjoy!

Marcus

 

1/ Review: Terraria by Darron Davies at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

This is the first “magical” exhibition of photography that I have seen in Melbourne this year. Comprising just seven moderately large Archival Pigment Print on Photo Rag images mounted in white frames, this exhibition swept me off my feet. The photographs are beautiful, subtle, nuanced evocations to the fragility and enduring nature of life…

A sense of day / dreaming is possible when looking at these images. Interior / exterior, size / scale, ego / self are not fixed but fluid, like the condensation that runs down the inside of these environments (much like blood circulates our body). This allows the viewer’s mind to roam at will, to ponder the mysteries of our short, improbable, joyous life. The poetic titles add to this introspective reflection. I came away from viewing these magical, self sustaining vessels with an incredibly happy glow, more aware of my own body and its relationship to the world than before I had entered Darron Davies enveloping, terrarium world.

 

Darron Davies. 'The Red Shard' 2012

 

Darron Davies (Australian)
The Red Shard 
2012
Archival Pigment Print on Photo Rag
80 x 80cm / edition of 6

 

 

2/ Review: Confounding: Contemporary Photography at NGV International, Melbourne

Presently, contemporary photography is able to reveal intangible, constructed vistas that live outside the realm of the scientific. A photograph becomes a perspective on the world, an orientation to the world based on human agency. An image-maker takes resources for meaning (a visual language, how the image is made and what it is about), undertakes a design process (the process of image-making), and in so doing re-images the world in a way that it has never quite been seen before.

These ideas are what a fascinating exhibition titled Confounding: Contemporary Photography, at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne investigates. In the confounding of contemporary photography we are no longer witnessing a lived reality but a break down of binaries such as sacred and profane, public and private, natural and artificial, real and dreamed environments as artists present their subjective visions of imagined, created worlds. Each image presents the viewer with a conundrum that investigates the relationship between photographs and the “real” world they supposedly record. How do these photographs make you feel about this constructed, confounding world? These fields of existence?

 

Thomas Demand. 'Public housing' 2003

 

Thomas Demand (German b. 1964)
Public housing
2003
type C photograph
100.1 x 157cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by the Bowness Family Fund for Contemporary Photography, 2010
© Thomas Demand/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Licensed by VISCOPY, Sydney

 

Eliza Hutchison Australian born 1965 'The ancestors' 2004

 

Eliza Hutchison (Australian, b. 1965)
The ancestors
2004
Light-jet print
95.4 x 72.9cm (image), 105.4 x 82.9cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds arranged by Loti Smorgon for Contemporary Australian Photography, 2005
© Eliza Hutchison, courtesy Murray White Room

 

3/ Review: Louise Bourgeois: Late Works at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne

 

Louise Bourgeois: Late Works installation view Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Photograph: John Gollings 2012

 

Louise Bourgeois: Late Works installation view
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
Photograph: John Gollings 2012

 

Louise Bourgeois 'Untitled' 2002

 

Louise Bourgeois (French-American, 1911-2010)
Untitled
2002
Tapestry and aluminium
43.2 x 30.5 x 30.5cm
Courtesy Cheim & Read and Hauser & Wirth
Photo: Christopher Burke
© Louise Bourgeois Trust

 

 

This is a tough, stimulating exhibition of late works by Louise Bourgeois at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. All the main themes of the artist’s work explored over many years are represented in these late works: memory, emotion, anxiety, family, relationships, childhood, pain, desire and eroticism are all present as are female subjectivity and sexuality, expressed through the body…

Bourgeois’ work gives me an overall feeling of immersion in a world view, one that transcends the pain and speaks truth to power. Bourgeois confronted the emotion, memory or barrier to communication that generated her mood and the work. She observed, “My art is an exorcism. My sculpture allows me to re-experience fear, to give it a physicality, so that I am able to hack away at it.” By weaving, stitching and sewing Bourgeois threaded the past through the present and enacted, through artistic performance, a process of repair and reconstruction, giving meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. I have not been so lucky. My mother refuses to discuss the past, will not even come close to the subject for the pain is so great for her. I am left with a heaviness of heart, dealing with the demons of the past that constantly lurk in the memory of childhood, that insistently impinge on the man I am today. Louise Bourgeois’ sculptures brought it all flooding back as the work of only a great artist can, forcing me to become an ethical witness to her past, my past. A must see exhibition this summer in Melbourne.

 

4/ Exhibition: Petrina Hicks: Selected Photographs, 2013 at Helen Gory Galerie, Prahran, Melbourne

A stunning, eloquent and conceptually complex exhibition buy Petrina Hicks at Helen Gory Galerie…

I am just going to add that the photograph Venus (2013, below) is one of the most beautiful photographs that I have seen “in the flesh” (so to speak) for a long while. Hicks control over the ‘presence’ of the image, her control over the presence within the image is immaculate. To observe how she modulates the colour shift from blush of pink within the conch shell, to colour of skin, to colour of background is an absolute joy to behold. The pastel colours of skin and background only serve to illuminate the richness of the pink within the shell as a form of immaculate conception (an openness of the mind and of the body). I don’t really care who is looking at this photograph (not another sexualised male gaze!) the form is just beauty itself. I totally fell in love with this work.

Forget the neo-feminist readings, one string of text came to mind: The high fidelity of a fetishistic fecundity.

 

Petrina Hicks. 'Venus' 2013

 

Petrina Hicks (Australian, b. 1972)
Venus
2013
Pigment print, Edition of 8
100 x 100cm

 

Petrina Hicks. 'Enigma' 2013

 

Petrina Hicks (Australian, b. 1972)
Enigma
2013
Pigment print, Edition of 8
100 x 100cm

 

 

5/ Exhibition: Density by Andrew Follows at Anita Traverso Gallery, Richmond

I include this in my list of magnificent photographic exhibitions for the year not because I curated it, but because of the conceptualisation, the unique quality of the images and the tenacity of a visually impaired artist to produce such memorable work.

A wonderful exhibition by vision impaired photographer Andrew Follows at Anita Traverso Gallery, Richmond. It has been a real pleasure to mentor Andrew over the past year and to see the fruits of our labour is incredibly satisfying. The images are strong, elemental, atmospheric, immersive. Due to the nature of Andrew’s tunnel vision there are hardly any traditional vanishing points within the images, instead the ‘plane of existence’ envelops you and draws you in.

 

Density n.

The degree of optical opacity of a medium or material, as of a photographic negative;

Thickness of consistency;

Complexity of structure or content.

 

Andrew Follows. 'Number 31, Eltham' 2013

 

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Number 31, Eltham
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
130 cm x 86.5cm

 

Andrew Follows. 'Green, Montsalvat' 2013

 

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019
Green, Montsalvat
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
130 cm x 86.5 cm

 

Carol Jerrems. 'Mark and Flappers' 1975

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Mark and Flappers
1975
Gelatin silver photograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
© Ken Jerrems and the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

Carol Jerrems. 'Carol Jerrems, self-portrait with Esben Storm' c. 1975

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Carol Jerrems, self-portrait with Esben Storm
c. 1975
Gelatin silver photograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems 1981
© Ken Jerrems and the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

 

6/ Review: Carol Jerrems: photographic artist at the Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill, Melbourne

This is a fascinating National Gallery of Australia exhibition about the work of Australian photographer Carol Jerrems at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill – in part both memorable, intimate, informative, beautiful, uplifting and disappointing…

The pity is that she died so young for what this exhibition brought home to me was that here was an artist still defining, refining her subject matter. She never had to time to develop a mature style, a mature narrative as an artist (1975-1976 seems to be the high point as far as this exhibition goes). This is the great regret about the work of Carol Jerrems. Yes, there is some mediocre work in this exhibition, stuff that really doesn’t work at all (such as the brothel photographs), experimental work, individual and collective images that really don’t impinge on your consciousness. But there are also the miraculous photographs (and for a young photographer she had a lot of those), the ones that stay with you forever. The right up there, knock you out of the ball park photographs and those you cannot simply take away from the world. They live on in the world forever.

Does Jerrems deserve to be promoted as a legend, a ‘premier’ of Australian photography as some people are doing? Probably not on the evidence of this exhibition but my god, those top dozen or so images are something truly special to behold. Their ‘presence’ alone – their physicality in the world, their impact on you as you stand before them – guarantees that Jerrems will forever remain in the very top echelons of Australian photographers of all time not as a legend, but as a women of incredible strength, intelligence, passion, determination and vision.

 

7/ Exhibition: Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion at NGV International, Melbourne

What a gorgeous exhibition. It’s about time Melbourne had a bit of style put back into the National Gallery of Victoria, and this exhibition hits it out of the park. Not only are the photographs absolutely fabulous but the frocks are absolutely frocking as well. Well done to the NGV for teaming the photographs with the fashion and for a great install (makes a change to see 2D and 3D done so well together). Elegant, sophisticated and oozing quality, this is a sure fire winner….

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion' at NGV International

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion at NGV International

 

Edward Steichen. 'Marlene Dietrich' 1934

 

Edward Steichen (American 1879-1973, emigrated to United States 1881, worked in France 1906-23)
Marlene Dietrich
1934
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
© 1924 Condé Nast Publications

 

 

8/ Exhibition: Reinventing the Wheel: the Readymade Century at the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne

Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) is generating an enviable reputation for holding vibrant, intellectually stimulating group exhibitions on specific ideas, concepts and topics. This exhibition is no exception. It is one of the best exhibitions I have seen in Melbourne this year. Accompanied by a strong catalogue with three excellent essays by Thierry de Duve, Dr Rex Butler and Patrice Sharkey, this is a must see exhibition for any Melbourne art aficionado before it closes.

“This transition is a flash, a boundary where this becomes that, not then, not that – falling in love, jumping of a bridge. Alive : dead; presence : absence; purpose : play; mastery : exhaustion; logos : silence; worldly : transcendent. Not this, not that. It is an impossible presence, present – a moment of unalienated production that we know exists but we cannot define it, place it. How can we know love? We can speak of it in a before and after sense but it is always a past moment that we recognise.”

Dr Marcus Bunyan. Made Ready: A Philosophy of Moments. December 2013

 

Jeff Koons. 'Balloon dog (Red)' 1995 designed

 

Jeff Koons (American, b. 1955)
Balloon dog (Red)
1995 designed
Porcelain, ed. 1113/2300
11.3 x 26.3 cm diameter
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

 

Andrew Liversidge. 'IN MY MIND I KNOW WHAT I THINK BUT THAT’S ONLY BASED ON MY EXPERIENCE' 2009

 

Andrew Liversidge (Australian, b. 1979)
IN MY MIND I KNOW WHAT I THINK BUT THAT’S ONLY BASED ON MY EXPERIENCE
2009
10,000 $1 coins (AUD)
30 x 30 x 30cm
Courtesy of the artist and The Commercial Gallery, Sydney

 

 

9/ Review: Claudia Terstappen: In The Shadow Of Change at the Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill, Melbourne

 

Claudia Terstappen. 'Cabbage trees (Queensland, Australia)' 2002

 

Claudia Terstappen (Australian, born Germany 1959)
Cabbage trees (Queensland, Australia)
2002
from the series Our ancestors 1990-
Gelatin silver print
29 x 29cm
Courtesy  of the artist

 

Claudia Terstappen. 'Zion Park (USA)' 1996

 

Claudia Terstappen (Australian, born Germany 1959)
Zion Park (USA)
1996
from the series Sacred land of the Navajo Indians 1990-
Gelatin silver print
37 x 37cm
Courtesy  of the artist

 

 

Without doubt this is the best pure photography exhibition I have seen this year in Melbourne. The exhibition is stimulating and enervating, the image making of the highest order in its aesthetic beauty and visual complexity. The artist explores intangible spaces which define our physical and spiritual relationship with the un/known world…

In Terstappen’s work there is no fixed image and no single purpose, a single meaning, or one singular existence that the images propose. They transcend claims about the world arising from, for example, natural or scientific attitudes or theories of the ontological nature of the world. As the artist visualises, records the feeling of the facts, such complex and balanced images let the mind of the viewer wander in the landscape. In their fecundity the viewer is enveloped in that situation of not knowing. There is the feeling of the landscape, a sensitivity to being “lost” in the landscape, in the shadow of ‘Other’, enhanced through the modality of the printing. Dreamworld vs analytical / descriptive, there is the enigma of the landscape and its spiritual places. Yes, the sublime, but more an invocation, a plea to the gods for understanding. This phenomenological prayer allows the artist to envelop herself and the viewer in the profundity – the great depth, intensity and emotion – of the landscape. To be ‘present’ in the the untrammelled places of the world as (divine) experience…

I say to you that this is the most sophisticated reading of the landscape that I have seen in a long time – not just in Australia but from around the world. This is such a joy of an exhibition to see that you leave feeling engaged and uplifted. Being in the gallery on your own is a privilege that is hard to describe: to see (and feel!) landscape photography of the highest order and by an Australian artist as well.

 

10/ Exhibition: Joan Ross: Touching Other People’s Shopping at Bett Gallery, Hobart

The claiming of things
The touching of things
The digging of land
The tagging of place
The taking over of the world

Tag and capture.
Tag and capture.
Shop, dig, spray, destroy.

.
An ironic critique of the pastoral, neo/colonial world, tagged and captured in the 21st century.

Excellent work. The construction, sensibility and humour of the videos is outstanding. I also responded to the two works Tag and capture and Shopping for butterfly (both 2013, below).

 

Joan Ross. 'Tag and capture' 2013

 

Joan Ross (Australian, b. 1961)
Tag and capture
2013
hand painted pigment print on cotton rag paper
50 x 47cm (image size)
edition of 3

 

Joan Ross. 'Shopping for butterfly' 2013

 

Joan Ross (Australian, b. 1961)
Shopping for butterfly
2013
hand painted pigment print on cotton rag paper
51.5 x 50cm (image size)
edition of 3

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Guest Relations’ by Robyn Stacey at Stills Gallery, Sydney

Exhibition dates: 9th October – 9th November 2013

 

Robyn Stacey. 'Room 1306 Mercure Potts Point, Jodi' 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. 'Room 13 Cartwright, Michael and Katherine' 2013

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Room 13 Cartwright, Michael and Katherine
2013
From Guest Relations
Type C print
100 x 133cm

 

Robyn Stacey. 'Room 14 Cartwright, Ocean' 2013

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Room 14 Cartwright, Ocean
2013
From Guest Relations
Type C print

 

Robyn Stacey. 'Room 14 Cartwright, Harbour' 2013

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Room 14 Cartwright, Harbour
2013
from Guest Relations
Type C print
100 x 146cm

 

Robyn Stacey. 'Room 5126 Pullman Hyde Park, Brielle' 2013

 

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. 'Room 2016 Shangri-la, Courtney' 2013

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Room 2016 Shangri-la, Courtney
2013
From Guest Relations
Type C print

 

Robyn Stacey. 'Room 3907 Sofitel on Collins, Morgan' 2013

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Room 3907 Sofitel on Collins, Morgan
2013
From Guest Relations
Type C print

 

Robyn Stacey. 'Room 2515 Shangri-la, Isobel' 2013

 

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. 'Room 2015 Pullman Hyde Park, Chair Still Life' 2013

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Room 2015 Pullman Hyde Park, Chair Still Life
2013
From Guest Relations
Type C print

 

Robyn Stacey. 'Room 3601 Sofitel on Collins, Mr. Hoey' 2013

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Room 3601 Sofitel on Collins, Mr. Hoey
2013
From Guest Relations
Type C print
135 x 100cm

 

Robyn Stacey. 'Room 4821 Sofitel on Collins, Chris' 2013

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Room 4821 Sofitel on Collins, Chris
2013
From Guest Relations
Type C print
127 x 100cm

 

 

Stills Gallery

This gallery has now closed.

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Exhibition: ‘Party’ by Anne MacDonald at Bett Gallery, Hobart

Exhibition dates: 11th October – 1st November 2013

 

Anne MacDonald. 'Party no.1' 2012-13

 

Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960)
Party no.1
2012-2013
Fine art ink-jet print
110 x 160cm
edition of 5

 

 

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 an 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 affect.

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. 'Party no.2' 2012-13

 

Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960)
Party no.2
2012-2013
Fine art ink-jet print
110 x 160cm
edition of 5

 

Anne MacDonald. 'Party no.3' 2012-13

 

Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960)
Party no.3
2012-2013
Fine art ink-jet print
110 x 160cm
edition of 5

 

Anne MacDonald. 'Party no.4' 2012-13

 

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. 'Party no.5' 2012-13

 

Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960)
Party no.5
2012-2013
Fine art ink-jet print
110 x 160cm
edition of 5

 

Anne MacDonald. 'Party no.6' 2012-13

 

Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960)
Party no.6
2012-2013
Fine art ink-jet print
110 x 160cm
edition of 5

 

Anne MacDonald. 'Party no.7' 2012-13

 

Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960)
Party no.7
2012-2013
Fine art ink-jet print
110 x 160cm
edition of 5

 

Anne MacDonald. 'Party no.8' 2012-13

 

Anne MacDonald (Australian, b. 1960)
Party no.8
2012-2013
Fine art ink-jet print
110 x 160cm
edition of 5

 

Anne MacDonald. 'Party no.9' 2012-13

 

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

Opening hours:
Mon – Fri 10am – 5.30pm
Sat 10am – 4pm

Bett Gallery website

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Invitation to opening: ‘Density’ by Andrew Follows, curated by Dr Marcus Bunyan at Anita Traverso Gallery, Richmond, Melbourne

Date: Saturday 31st August 2013, 3.30 – 5pm

 

Andrew Follows. 'Density' invitation 2013

 

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Density invitation
2013

 

 

I welcome all friends to the opening of the first exhibition I have curated since the completion of my Master of Art Curatorship at the University of Melbourne.

 

density n.

the degree of optical opacity of a medium or material, as of a photographic negative; thickness of consistency; complexity of structure or content.

 

You are cordially invited to the opening of Density, a solo exhibition of photographs by Andrew Follows on Saturday 31st  August 3.30 – 5pm at The Anita Traverso Gallery, 7 Albert Street Richmond, Victoria.

The works premiered in this exhibition are the culmination of a mentorship between Dr Marcus Bunyan and Andrew Follows, supported by Arts Access Victoria as part of the Boost Pathways Program.

“Curated by Dr Marcus Bunyan, the concept of Density was envisaged as a point of departure to explore the manifold variations and subsequent ruminations on the term as it relates to Follows’ perspective. As a technical descriptive, density explains the degree of optical opacity within a photographic negative. Portions of film that have been exposed to greater amounts of light yield a greater deposit of reduced silver. This is referred to as having a higher density than areas of shadow. Density also denotes a thickness of consistency and many of Follows’ works exhibit a complexity of compositional structure and content that elucidates the nature of Follows’ perception.”

.
Anna Briers. “The Mind’s Eye: Density in the Work of Andrew Follows.” Catalogue essay 2013

 

Curator: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Guest Speaker: 4pm Dr Jondi Keane, Senior Lecturer Deakin University
Artists Floor Talk: 3pm Saturday 7 September
Preview from Tuesday 27 August
Exhibition until Saturday 21 September
Gallery Hours Wed-Sat 11-5 + by appointment

The Opening will be Auslan Interpreted and the exhibition will be Audio Described.

Please click on the images below for a larger version.

 

Andrew Follows. 'Density' invitation 2013

 

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Density invitation
2013

 

Andrew Follows. 'Density' catalogue cover 2013

 

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Density catalogue cover
2013

 

 

Anita Traverso Gallery

This gallery is now closed.

Anita Traverso Gallery website

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