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Aug

Text: Marcus Bunyan. “Nothing emerges from nothing,” Foreword to ‘We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans’ 2019

Categories: artist website, Australian artist, Australian photography, beauty, black and white photography, documentary photography, exhibition, light, Melbourne, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: 2nd World Festival of Youth and Students, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans, Australia's land and its people, Australian activism, Australian art, Australian artist, Australian civil rights movement, Australian culture, Australian historical photographs, Australian identity, Australian peace movement, Australian photographer, Australian photography, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Australian social consciousness, Australian student activism, Budapest, Budapest crowd, Budapest Festival, Budapest Festival 1949, Dr Marcus Bunyan, Edward 'Woods Lloyd' Drummond, Faith Bandler, Farewell to Delegates, Flinders Street Melbourne, friendship, friendship and photography, Good on yer Bert, Helen Levitt, human existence, humanist photographs, image of humanity, inge morath, Iron Curtain, Jenny Lloyd and Clyde Holding, Jenny Zimmer, John O'Neil, Joyce Evans, Joyce Evans Budapest crowd, Joyce Evans Edward 'Woods Lloyd' Drummond, Joyce Evans Faith Bandler, Joyce Evans Farewell to Delegates, Joyce Evans Good on yer Bert, Joyce Evans Jenny Lloyd and Clyde Holding, Joyce Evans John O'Neil, Joyce Evans Joyce onboard ship, Joyce Evans Joyce with camera, Joyce Evans Joyce with lifeboat, Joyce Evans No Coal for War May Day March, Joyce Evans photographer, Joyce Evans Reduce Armaments Ban Atomic Bomb, Joyce Evans Richard 'Dicky' Woolcott, Joyce Evans Stalin banner Budapest, Joyce Evans University Labour Club banner, Joyce Evans Want Peace and Freedom, Joyce Evans We Had Such High Hopes, Joyce onboard ship, Joyce with lifeboat, life of human beings, love of photography, Marcus Bunyan, Marcus Bunyan Joyce Evans, Marcus Bunyan Nothing emerges from nothing, Max Dupain, May Day March, May Day March Melbourne 1951, mission of the photograph is to clarify the subject, National Union of Australian University Students, National Union of Australian University Students (NUAUS) Conference, No Coal for War, Nothing emerges from nothing, Nothing ever emerges from nothing, NUAUS, nuclear bomb protests, peace movement, peace movement in Australia, personal photographs, personal photography, photography and friendship, Reduce Armaments Ban Atomic Bomb, Richard 'Dicky' Woolcott, Second World Festival of Youth and Students, Second World War, social consciousness, social documentary photography, Stalin banner Budapest, student activism, Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, student activism in Australia, University Labour Club banner, Want Peace and Freedom, We Had Such High Hopes, We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, written memory, You trust your eye and you cannot help but bare your soul, Youth Unite!, Youth Unite! Forward for Lasting Peace

August 2019

Publisher: Australian Scholarly Publishing
ISBN: 9781925801859
Hardback
Purchase

Book cover to We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans. Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019.

The book We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans has now been published by Australian Scholarly Publishing and is available to purchase from their website.

I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who worked on the book, and an especially big thank you to the wonderful Jenner Zimmer who edited the book and without whose help it would not be the book it turned out to be. Her research in tracking down who the people were in the photographs, their correct names, the location of some of the photographs, and her layout of the book, was magnificent to say the least. Through her excellent work, we can now place these photographs not only in a personal context, but in an important historical context in relation to the development of the civil rights movement in Australia directly after the Second World War.

The book is a reflection of the times, an insight into the nascent civil rights movement of the late 1940s-1950s that reached full bloom in the 1960s. As I observe in the foreword below it also becomes a reflection on how photography and friendship go hand in hand… and how this transformative process leads us to reassess our relationship to the world through the act of taking photographs.

Marcus

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Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Foreword

Nothing emerges from nothing

“… every human being is a poet, a masker, a warrior, a dancer: and in his innocent artistry he projects, against the turmoil of the street, an image of human existence.”

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Helen Levitt. In the Street 1948.1

The gift of friendship between two people is a truly magical thing, a relationship built on the nurturing of respect between them, over time. The alchemical gift of a photograph does not arrive fully formed in a moment, for its magic is grounded in the context of its taking, informed by the wisdom, vision and creativity of the photographer. How Joyce Evans was touched by a connection between photography and friendship is another transformative process, one that leads her to reassess her relationship to the world through the act of taking photographs. Nothing ever emerges from nothing.

My friendship with Joyce Evans began when a joint acquaintance who knew of our love of photography introduced us. Over numerous years since – through trips to Sydney to see Joyce’s favourite photographer Julia Margaret Cameron; through visits to many exhibitions where we have discussed our reactions to the work (often with completely opposing views); through vigorous debate about the merits of different artists; through her promotion of Australian photography; and through her deep knowledge of the world, of life, and of art – I have come to know and love this vibrant and intelligent women. To begin to understand this complex human being and her approach to photography and life. The photographs, text and poetry in this book show evidence of the early maturing of this spirit of life.

Imagine being a nineteen year old who has been studying in America after the end of the Second World War, who has arrived in poverty-stricken England to meet friends who were mutually interested in the peace movement. Imagine travelling across Europe by car with those same friends, as mass migrations of people across Europe were still happening after the war, staying in youth hostels, to camp outside the city of Vienna. Then to cross the “Iron Curtain” and journey with thousands of other people from eight-two countries around the world to the city of Budapest for the Second World Festival of Youth and Students – a festival movement that grew out of the ashes of the war to proclaim, to shout, that youth would never again allow the horrors of fascism to terrorise the world. What a journey of discovery, love, friendship, excitement and danger that must have been!

Using her intelligence and the informed nature of her artistic being to define what interested her most, Joyce documented what she saw of the world around her.2 In so doing, these early photographs set the stage for concerns that have remained consistent in her work to this very day: peace, freedom, place, identity and humanity. While the photographs are a mirror of the times, portraying the improvisational vitality of everyday life, they also represent how the mind of the photographer can be embodied in the physical world, providing a glimpse into that most secret room of all – the core beliefs of a human being, their humanity, their soul.

The Australian photographer Max Dupain stated that the ‘mission of the photograph is to clarify the subject’.3 But perhaps the mission of the photograph is also to help clarify the identity of the artist. As the Austrian-born American photographer Inge Morath eloquently observes:

“Photography is a strange phenomenon. In spite of the use of that technical instrument, the camera, no two photographers, even if they were at the same place at the same time, come back with the same pictures. The personal vision is usually there from the beginning; result of a special chemistry of background and feelings, traditions and their rejection, of sensibility and voyeurism. You trust your eye and you cannot help but bare your soul. One’s vision finds of necessity the form suitable to express it.”4

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The form that Joyce found so early in her life was the music and poetry of humanist photographs, images that are subjective, lyrical, and reveal a state-of-mind. Here is passion and belief in the life of human beings, and the exquisiteness, beauty (and death) of the lived moment. You could label them “social documentary photography” if you were so inclined, but labels don’t capture the frisson of the creative process nor the joyous outcome of Joyce’s portraits. It’s as though Joyce, in a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, is making love to the world through her images: neither rational nor cerebral they evoke sensations and feelings, of being here and there, in that past space and time, now, all these years later. These were epic days of change and transformation – of nations, of continents, of cultures and of people. There was death and destruction but there was also such happiness, hope and joy.

Further, what her photographs also depict is the rise of an informed Australian social consciousness after the Second World War. Her important historical and personal photographs shine a light on forgotten people, times, places and actions, such as the broad based youth movements opposition to the atomic bomb, associations and friendships which eventually form the basis for the progressive social and political protest movements of the 1960s. The voices raised later in support of feminism, gay liberation, free love and Vietnam anti-war protests did not appear fully formed, for there was a history of activism… a slow build, a groundswell of public opinion that was the basis for such emerging actions. Nothing ever emerges from nothing.

As much as Joyce’s photographs engage the viewer in memory, they also engage in the moment, both past and present. Not only an engagement with the history and nostalgia of the images, but in their present day hope and joy. It is such a pleasure to see these strong images, of people now old, still young, a moving image of humanity. This is the heart of the matter: a moving image of humanity. The photographs represent an understanding of (a) life, well formed and well lived, of a courageous and visionary woman who told it her way, who still tells it her way to this day.

I have a deep sense of gratitude for both our friendship and for Joyce Evans’ prescient vision in recording these remarkable stories so that they can be shared today. At the time they had such high hopes, for their lives and for the future, energy that eventually morphed into something else (as is its want). This leaves these images, written memory, as both poem and testimonial to the uncertainty of human dreams and to the percipience of the artist who embodied and enabled them… in feeling, in love and in spirit. Nothing ever emerges from nothing. Good on ya Bert!

Dr Marcus Bunyan
Melbourne, February 2019

Endnotes

Helen Levitt (ed.,). In the Street. Directed by Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb and James Agee. Black and white film, 14 mins. 1948 (VHS) New York: Arthouse, Inc., 1996.
Joyce was ever attentive to the power of the historical for she had been studying the Baroque painters in Paris and on her travels through Italy, evidence of which can be seen in the grouping of human figures in her photographs.
Anonymous label. “Max Dupain, (Factory chimney stacks) 1940,” on the National Gallery of Australia website [Online] Cited 15/02/2019.
Inge Morath, Sabine Folie and Gerald Matt. Inge Morath, Life as a Photographer. Munich: Gina Kehayoff Verlag, 1999, p. 13.

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Good on yer Bert
1949
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Budapest crowd
1949
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Stalin banner, Budapest
1949
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Farewell to Delegates
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Joyce with camera
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Joyce onboard ship
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Joyce with lifeboat
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Faith Bandler
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Edward ‘Woods Lloyd’ Drummond
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Description

Some think it all happened in the 1960s but Joyce Evans, acclaimed photographer of Australia’s land and its people, goes back to her youth and memories of her many adventures as a student activist. In 1949, aged 19, she set sail for Soviet-occupied Budapest to join the post-war demonstrations at ‘The World Festival of Youth and Students for Peace’. It was a time when young Australians dreamed of change and travelled to war-torn Europe in the hope of peace becoming the new reality. Among them were many who would later become important figures in Australia’s government, legal profession, diplomatic corps and academia. People like Frank Hardy, John Bluthal, Faith Bandler, Clyde Holding, Irving Saulwick and Richard Woolcott appear in Joyce Evans’ photographs of these events.

This story, with its cast of endearing and passionate characters, records voyages across battle-scarred Europe, clashes with draconian authorities, daring escapes, betrayals, lost idealism and a wealth of unlikely friendships. It describes the adventures of a youthful cohort who felt empowered and believed it could fulfil its dream of world-wide peace. Joyce says: ‘If such a dream existed then, such high hopes can be reclaimed by the youth of today!’

Text from the Australian Scholarly Publishing website [Online] Cited 08/08/2019

World Federation of Democratic Youth

The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) is an international youth organisation, recognised by the United Nations as an international youth non-governmental organisation, and has historically characterised itself as anti-imperialist and left-wing. WFDY was founded in London in 1945 as a broad international youth movement, organised in the context of the end of World War II with the aim of uniting youth from the Allies behind an anti-fascist platform that was broadly pro-peace, anti-nuclear war, expressing friendship between youth of the capitalist and socialist nations. The WFDY Headquarters are in Budapest, Hungary. The main event of WFDY is the World Festival of Youth and Students. The last festival was held in Sochi, Russia, in October 2017. It was one of the first organisations granted general consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

History

On 10 November 1945, the World Youth Conference, organised in London, founded the World Federation of Democratic Youth. This historic conference was convened at the initiative of the World Youth Council which was formed during World War II to encourage the fight against fascism by the youth of the allied nations. The conference brought together, for the first time in the history of the international youth movement, representatives of more than 30,000,000 young people of diverse different political ideologies and religious beliefs from 63 nations. It adopted a pledge for peace.

Shortly after, with the onset of the Cold War and Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech, the organisation was accused by the US State Department of being a “Moscow front”. Many of the founding organisations quit, leaving mostly youth from socialist nations, national liberation movements, and communist youth. Like the International Union of Students (IUS) and other pro-Soviet organisations, the WFDY became a target and victim of CIA espionage as well as part of active measures conducted by the Soviet state security.

The WFYD’s first General Secretary, Alexander Shelepin, was a former leader of the Young Communist International which had been dissolved in 1943. Shelepin had been a guerilla fighter during World War II (after his work with the WFDY, he was appointed head of Soviet State Security). Both the WFDY and IUS vocally criticised the Marshall Plan, supported the Czechoslovak coup d’état of 1948 and the new People’s Democracies in Europe. They opposed the Korean War.

The main event of the WFDY became the World Festival of Youth and Students, a massive political and cultural celebration for peace and friendship between the youth of the world. Most, but not all, of the early festivals were held in socialist nations in Europe.

Text from the Wikipedia website

World Festival of Youth and Students

The World Festival of Youth and Students is an international event, organised by the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), a United Nations-recognised international youth non-governmental organisation, jointly with the International Union of Students since 1947. Initially pluralist, the event became an outlet for Soviet propaganda for foreign audiences during the Cold War.

The festival has been held regularly since 1947 as an event of global youth solidarity for democracy and against war and imperialism. The largest festival was the 6th, held in 1957 in Moscow, when 34,000 young people from 131 countries attended the event. This festival also marked the international debut of the song “Moscow Nights”, which subsequently went on to become perhaps the most widely recognised Russian song in the world. Until the 19th festival in Sochi, Russia in 2017 (with 185 countries participating), the largest festival by number of countries with participants was the 13th, held in 1989 in Pyongyang when 177 countries attended the event.

The World Federation of Democratic Youth was founded to bring together young people of both the socialist and capitalist countries to promote peaceful cooperation and mutual rejection of war. However, with the onset of the Cold War soon after, the organisation and the festivals became a matter of contention within the rivalry. Because of the enormous expenditure and coordination required to support a youth festival, most of the early festivals were held in cities in the socialist countries of Europe. However, many festivals, both then and more so since, have been held in non-socialist countries, affirming the commitment to peaceful coexistence between the peoples living under the different systems. The most recent festival took place in Sochi, Russia, from 13 to 22 October 2017.

Text from the Wikipedia website

2nd World Festival of Youth and Students

The Second World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) was held in 1949, in Budapest, a city still recuperating from World War II. The 2nd WFYS was one of three major youth events held in Hungary in 1949, along with the World University Summer Games and the World Youth Congress. It was organised by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the International Union of Students

On August 14, 1949, 20,000 young people from 82 countries, gathered in the Ujpest Stadium, inaugurating the festival. For two weeks, the participants took part in cultural, sport, and political activities. The festival expressed its solidarity for the “anti-colonialist struggle” of the peoples of Indonesia, Malaysia and French Indochina and also for the “anti-fascist struggle” of the Spanish and Greek peoples. It was the first time that a delegation from what would become East Germany took part.

It featured a sports programme, including an athletics competition.

The motto of the festival was: Youth Unite! Forward for Lasting Peace, Democracy, National Independence and a better future for the people!

Text from the Wikipedia website

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
No Coal for War, May Day March
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Reduce Armaments Ban Atomic Bomb, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Pictured image-right, Professor Bernard Rechter.

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
University Labour Club banner, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

In far-left, John Clendenin, philosopher and president of University of Melbourne SRC. Banner-bearer Jill Warwick, later a TV Producer, vice-president UniMelb SRC.

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Want Peace and Freedom, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Richard ‘Dicky’ Woolcott, delegate to conference, at NUAUS encampment
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
John O’Neil
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Jenny Lloyd and Clyde Holding
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans Photographer website

Australian Scholarly Publishing website

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Aug

Review: ‘Why Take Pictures?’ at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Fitzroy, Melbourne

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: Australian artist, Australian photography, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, light, Melbourne, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, quotation, reality, review, space, street photography, time and works on paper
Tags: Alan Constable camera, Alan Constable cameras, Australian art, Australian artist, Australian artists, Australian culture, Australian identity, Australian photographers, Australian photographs, Australian photography, Australian social documentary photography, Backstage before Parade of Champions, Broadway Reservoir, Brothel car park, Centre for Contemporary Photography, David Wadelton, David Wadelton Broadway Reservoir, David Wadelton Coburg, David Wadelton Glenferrie Road Hawthorn, David Wadelton Living Rooms, David Wadelton Milk Bars, David Wadelton Pascoe Vale South, David Wadelton Reservoir, David Wadelton Watsonia Road Watsonia, Glenferrie Road Hawthorn, Glenn Sloggett, Glenn Sloggett Brothel car park, Glenn Sloggett Dead cat, Glenn Sloggett Industrial dumping, Glenn Sloggett Pawn shop, Grooming Routine, Industrial dumping, Junior National Repecharge, Living Rooms, lounge rooms, Lyndal Irons, Lyndal Irons Backstage before Parade of Champions, Lyndal Irons Fans, Lyndal Irons Grooming Routine, Lyndal Irons Junior National Repecharge, Lyndal Irons Mermaid Beach, Lyndal Irons Physie, Madison Shauna, making images, Mermaid Beach, Michelle Tran, Michelle Tran Madison Shauna, Michelle Tran Sachi, Michelle Tran Sachi In Shadow, Milk Bars, Pascoe Vale South, Pawn shop, Physie, Sachi In Shadow, social documentary photography, taking photographs, Watsonia Road Watsonia, Why Make Pictures?

Exhibition dates: 15th June – 11th August 2019

Artists: Alan Constable, Lyndal Irons, Glenn Sloggett, Michelle Tran, David Wadelton
Curator: Madé Spencer-Castle

Lyndal Irons
Backstage before Parade of Champions
2015
From the series Physie
Courtesy of the artist

Picturing themselves

This is another strong exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, principally due to the integrity of the work and not the investigation of the theme for the exhibition, why take pictures?

I have always loved Alan Constable’s tactile cameras every since I first saw them. Constable is legally blind. He holds photographs of old cameras up to his eyes, a couple of inches away, and scans the images, committing them to memory. He then creates these most wonderful evocations of a seeing machine, almost as though he is transferring his in/sight into these in/operable, beautifully glazed structures. He twists two dimensional, photographic reality into these lumpy, misshapen sculptures, evocations of his memory and imagination. I have three of these cameras in my own collection. I treasure them.

Glen Sloggett’s works is, well… Glen Slogett’s work. What I mean by the statement is that you can always recognise his photographs through his signature as an artist. There is a delicious irony and dark humour present in his work… the cat / dead. The rose / a brothel. The scree of concrete / solidified. Slogett’s insightfulness into our existential condition is evidenced through his unique view of the world, pictured in thought provoking photographs. Nothing is quite as it seems. He has a fantastic eye and aesthetic. I remember the image Cheaper and Deeper (1996) from a book I saw many years ago and it so resonated with me. Just the sensibility of looking at these spaces and contexts. He pokes around in the strangeness of the world and reflects what he sees back to us: life hidden in plain sight, revealed in all its intricacies, in all its mundanity and glory. I really like his work.

Another artist I have a great affection for is David Wadelton. Again, the signature of his work is striking. You know it’s a Wadelton image. What I admire about his work is the persistence of his vision. His intellectual vision, his photographic vision. He sets out on a project and he puts his whole mind and soul into the work, documenting the shifting and changing spaces and places of Melbourne’s suburbs since 1975. What a great eye! The black and white objective newsagents, all Becher frontality, with this seeming emotional detachment when in fact each image is so emotionally charged – through the signage, and through the knowledge that these newsagents are disappearing from our city landscape. And then the colour, some might say kitsch, Suburban Baroque living rooms which picture “mid-century suburban interiors of the formerly working-class northern areas that were the destination of choice for many post-war immigrants from Europe.” Here a different technique, photographed at an angle, off to one side, from above, sometimes central, letting the spaces and colours speak for themselves. Now vanishing, these habitats redolent with pathos and longing for the motherland.

And then Lyndal Irons, an artist whose work I have never seen before. Again, beautifully composed images, the use of a limited colour palette and rouge highlights in Grooming Routine being particularly effective. There is something unnerving about the entire scenario – the fake tans, the too bright lipstick, the fervent admiration, the ecstatic posing… the winners having their photograph taken with their trophies while off to the side others watch (enviously?); the lines of young competitors and a photograph with the instructions: ‘Ideas For Photo Poses’ and ‘Make Sure The Photographer Can See your Number’. The whole charade reminds me of the hideous child beauty pageants in the good ol’ US of A. I would have liked to have seen more photographs from this body of work.

Where the exhibition fails is in its investigation into the theme, why take pictures? The exhibition does not interrogate with any rigour, in fact does not really scratch the surface of why we humans are so obsessed with taking photographs. Through the few lines of text that accompanies the exhibition (below), it offers a few titbits as way of remediation, a few possible ideas to cling to so as to answer the question: perhaps desire, perhaps obsession, curiosity, nostalgia and information. It then throws the photographic work of these artists at us as an answer, but what we are actually looking at is just representation, the outcome of the desire to picture, not an examination of the act itself. What the exhibition really needed was a thoroughly insightful text that examined our impulse to take pictures.

Here is a controversial statement. Every photograph is a self-portrait. What do I mean by this?

When we think back to the cave paintings of the Neolithic period, human beings picture the world around them by painting in colour on the rock that is earth. They picture themselves in that scene by painting what they know of the world around them. Through their imagination and creativity they place themselves in the scene – physically as hunters in the scene, and metaphorically through their relationship to the animals that they know and the objects that they carve, pictured on the cave walls. Theirs is a conscious decision to picture themselves as an infinite presence.

The same with photographs. Every time we press the shutter of a camera, it is a conscious decision to picture our relationship with the world. Through our will (to power), though our imagination and our desire, we place ourselves metaphorically (and physically when actually appear in the photograph) in every photograph. We stand behind the camera but imagine ourselves in that environment, have placed ourselves there to take the photograph. Every photograph is a self-portrait, one that establishes our relationship to the world, our identity, our values, who we are and how we react in each and every context.

These photographs are not memories at the time of their taking, although they make be taken under an impulse to memorialise. They will become memories, as when looking at old photo albums. They are not simply documents either, a recording of this time and place, because there is always the personal, the subjective relationship to the objective. Look at David Wadelton’s photographs of living rooms. Why was he present in all of these spaces? Just to observe, to document, to capture? No… he was their, to imagine, to create, to place himself at the scene, in the scene. Human beings make conscious choices to take photographs for all different kinds of reasons. But the one reason that is never mentioned is that, in reality, they are always picturing themselves.

Dr Marcus Bunyan for Art Blart

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Many thankx to the Centre for Contemporary Photography for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs to view a larger version of the image.

Installation views of the exhibition Why Make Pictures? at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne
Photographs: J. Forsyth

Why Take Pictures? returns to one of the fundamental questions in photography, to consider our desire-drive and obsession with taking photographs, the apparatus of the camera and diverse approaches of looking through, or at, the lens. Featuring work by Alan Constable (VIC), Michelle Tran (VIC), Lyndal Irons (NSW), Glenn Sloggett (VIC) and David Wadelton (VIC), Why Take Pictures? considers the divergent motivations and compulsions as to why we take images in the first place.

We all take pictures, leaving every one of us with an extensive collection of images, historically as physical artefacts, but now stored within our digital devices. These collections become vessels of information and nostalgia, desire and curiosity. Why Takes Pictures? interrogates how and why we build up these storehouses of images, as considered through the lens of five exceptional artists.

Traversing documentary, commercial, political and highly personal modes, Why Take Pictures? presents a broad cross-section of different approaches to making photographs. Whether documenting social environments in states of change, examining the discarded or overlooked, prying at the strange behaviour of humans; or through examining the obsession with the camera itself, the artists in Why Take Pictures? are driven to continue to take photographs, like an itch that can’t be scratched.

Press release from the Centre for Contemporary Photography 21/09/2019

Biographies

Alan Constable is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans drawing, painting and ceramics. His ceramic sculptures, which he began developing in 2007, reflects his life-long fascination with old cameras, which started at the age of eight when he would make replicas from cardboard cereal boxes. Constable’s finger impressions can be seen clearly on the clay surface, leaving the mark of the maker as a lasting imprint. Constable has been a regular studio artist at Arts Project Australia since 1991. Alongside selection in group exhibitions throughout Australia (including the Museum of Old and New Art in 2017), Constable has presented in a number of solo exhibitions including Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane; Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney; South Willard (curated by Ricky Swallow), Los Angeles; Stills Gallery, Sydney; and Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne. Alan Constable is represented by Arts Projects Australia, Melbourne; Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney; and DUTTON, New York.

Hand-built from slabs of clay, Alan Constable’s charing sculptural cameras and optical devices … evoke and absolute obsession with the photographic apparatus. Legally blind, Constable creates his work through appropriating photographs from old books and magazines, holding the images close to his face and committing them to memory. Through recall, Constable reinterprets these images, transforming them from high-precision consumer objects, to tactile sculptures imbued with vitality, personality and warmth. Elegantly clunky, anthropomorphic and on the edge of the surreal, Constable’s compelling works all have ‘fictional’ apertures or viewfinders that can be physically seen through. Asking us to consider the functionality of vision, Constable’s ceramics have a human touch and sensibility that connects us directly to the devices we often consider merely utilitarian.

Alan Constable
Not titled
2018
Earthenware and glaze
9 x 19 x 8 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Alan Constable is represented by Arts Project Australia, Melbourne; Darren Knight, Sydney; Dutton, New York. Image copyright the artist, courtesy Arts Projects Australia. Photo: Andrew Barcham

Alan Constable
Not titled
2019
Earthenware and glaze
Courtesy of the artist
Alan Constable is represented by Arts Project Australia, Melbourne; Darren Knight, Sydney; Dutton, New York. Image copyright the artist, courtesy Arts Projects Australia. Photo: Andrew Barcham

Alan Constable
Not titled
2018
Earthenware and glaze
Courtesy of the artist
Alan Constable is represented by Arts Project Australia, Melbourne; Darren Knight, Sydney; Dutton, New York. Image copyright the artist, courtesy Arts Projects Australia. Photo: Andrew Barcham

Lyndal Irons is a Sydney-based photographer and writer focused on local reportage, who is interested in seeking out parts of Australian society that are familiar and accessible, yet not often closely encountered. By recording social histories and building legacies using photographs and words, her work encourages curiosity and a deeper connection to daily life. Irons has presented solo exhibitions at the State Library of New South Wales (2015), the Australian Centre for Photography (2014), and Elizabeth Street Gallery (2014). Lyndal has been a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize (2017), the Bowness Prize (2015) and the Olive Cotton Award for Portraiture (2015). Lyndal Irons’ Physie series documents one of Australia’s oldest sporting institutions: physical culture (physie) and calisthenics.

Lyndal Irons
Mermaid Beach
2015
From the series Physie
Archival inkjet print
37 x 55 cm
Courtesy the artist

Lyndal Irons
Fans
2015
From the series Physie
Archival inkjet print
37 x 55 cm
Courtesy the artist

Lyndal Irons
Grooming Routine
2015
From the series Physie
Archival inkjet print
37 x 55 cm
Courtesy the artist

Lyndal Irons
Junior National Repecharge
2015
From the series Physie
Archival inkjet print
37 x 55 cm
Courtesy the artist

Lyndal Irons
Ideas for Photo Poses
2015
From the series Physie
Archival inkjet print
37 x 55 cm
Courtesy the artist

Glenn Sloggett has been exhibiting since the mid-90s. He won the prestigious Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award in 2008, and the inaugural John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship for an Emerging Artist in 2001. He has held numerous solo exhibitions, including Cheaper and Deeper, a national touring show organised by the Australian Centre for Photography (2007). Sloggett’s work was featured on the ABC program The Art Life, and has been included in significant survey exhibitions of Australian art, including Australian Vernacular Photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2014); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2013-2014); internationally touring Photographica Australis (2002–2004); and nationally touring New Australiana, Australian Centre for Photography (2001). His work is held in numerous private and public collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria and Monash Gallery of Art.

Interested in failure as a mechanism, Glenn Sloggett’s series of medium format photograph made with his twin-lens Rolleiflex could almost have been taken on a single walk around the neighbourhood on a strange, sunlit day. Wryly infused with dark humour and intermittent text punctuations such as “ICE IS A BAD THING” and “DO NOT LEAVE CHILDREN IN CARS”, Sloggett ask us to look beneath the surface of his documentary-style images. Why are people leaving their children in their cars? What precarious situation has driven someone to graffiti “is a bad thing” on this sign?

Sloggett’s work is at times bleak, and at others sublime. Looking closely, a cat that appears to be peacefully sunbaking has sunken eyes, an innocuous rose bush was taken in a brothel carpark. dumped concrete on the sidewalk looks like it has been churned up from a Friday night on the town.

Glenn Sloggett
Pawn shop
2018
C-type print
120 x 100 cm
Courtesy the artist

Glenn Sloggett
Industrial dumping
2019
C-type print
120 x 100 cm
Courtesy the artist

Glenn Sloggett
Dead cat
2019
C-type print
120 x 100 cm
Courtesy the artist

Glenn Sloggett
Brothel car park
2019
C-type print
120 x 100 cm
Courtesy the artist

Michelle Tran is a fashion and portrait photographer, born and raised in Melbourne by Vietnamese refugee parents. She began her photographic studies at the Victorian College of the Arts with an exploration into cultural identity through portraiture. Commercially, she has applied her interest in people to fashion, creating an approach that is both delicate and candid. Making a connection with her subjects, Michelle puts people at ease in front of the camera. Her portfolio includes portraits of celebrities such as Kendrick Lamar and Christian Louboutin, while her fashion and advertising work spans across brands including Adidas, MECCA, Amazon, Moroccan Oil, L’Oréal and Myer. Michelle lives in Melbourne with her partner, daughter and two rabbits. Michelle Tran is represented by Hart & Co., Melbourne.

Michelle Tran
Sachi
2019
Archival inkjet print
79 x 54 cm
Courtesy the artist and Hart & Co., Melbourne

Michelle Tran
Madison Shauna
2019
Archival inkjet print
79 x 54 cm
Courtesy the artist and Hart & Co., Melbourne

Michelle Tran
Sachi In Shadow
2019
Archival inkjet print
79 x 54 cm
Courtesy the artist and Hart & Co., Melbourne

David Wadelton is a Melbourne-based painter and photographer who has documented the changing face of Melbourne’s Northern suburbs since 1975. Wadelton has held over 20 solo exhibitions, including three career surveys: Pictorial Knowledge, Geelong Art Gallery (1998); Icons Of Suburbia, McClelland Gallery, Langwarrin (2011) and The Northcote Hysterical Society, Bundoora Homestead Gallery (2015). Wadelton’s work has been included in Vision In Disbelief, 4th Biennale of Sydney (1982); Australian Culture Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2004); Far-Famed City of Melbourne, Ian Potter Museum of Art (2013); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2014); Crossing paths with Vivian Maier, Centre for Contemporary Photography (2014); The Documentary Take, Centre for Contemporary Photography (2016); Romancing the Skull, Ballarat Art Gallery (2017) and Beyond boundaries – Discoveries in contemporary photography, Aperture Gallery, New York (2019).

Installation views of the exhibition Why Make Pictures? at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne showing the work of David Wadelton and his series Living Rooms (top), Milk Bars (middle) and Small business (bottom)

David Wadelton
Coburg
2018
From the series Living Rooms
Courtesy the artist

David Wadelton
Reservoir
2017-2019
From the series Living Rooms
Courtesy the artist

David Wadelton
Pascoe Vale South
2018
From the series Living Rooms
Courtesy the artist

David Wadelton
Reservoir
2017
From the series Living Rooms
Courtesy the artist

David Wadelton
Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn
2018
From the series Newsagents
Courtesy the artist

David Wadelton
Broadway, Reservoir
2019
From the series Newsagents
Courtesy the artist

David Wadelton
Watsonia Road, Watsonia
2016
From the series Newsagents
Courtesy the artist

Centre for Contemporary Photography
404 George St, Fitzroy
Victoria 3065, Australia
Phone: + 61 3 9417 1549

Opening Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm
Sunday, 1pm – 5pm

Centre for Contemporary Photography website

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Aug

Exhibition: ‘Shea Kirk: Vantages’ at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Fitzroy, Melbourne

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: Australian artist, Australian photography, beauty, black and white photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, light, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: Australian art, Australian artist, Australian black and white photography, Australian photographer, Australian photography, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Christiane D'Arc, Dale Robertson, gender, gender non-conforming, identity construction, Jacob Coppedge, Joao Quintao Marcolla, large format camera, large format photography, Mohini Hillyer, Paul Stillen, Shea Kirk, Shea Kirk Christiane D'Arc, Shea Kirk Dale Robertson, Shea Kirk Jacob Coppedge, Shea Kirk Joao Quintao Marcolla, Shea Kirk Mohini Hillyer, Shea Kirk Paul Stillen, Shea Kirk Vantages, Vantages

Exhibition dates: 15 June - 11 August 2019

Shea Kirk
Dale Robertson (left and right view)
2019
Courtesy the artist

Another impressive exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, this time by artist Shea Kirk in their first solo exhibition.

Photographed in a home-studio with plain backdrops (which remind me of photo-booth images and the white backgrounds of Richard Avedon) on dual large format cameras, I love the split screen vision of these stereoscopic portraits. The schism between left and right, as when you close and open your left and right eye to see something from a different point of view. I couldn’t get the stereoscopic viewer provided to work for me when looking through it… which is probably a good thing because I like the split between the images, those different vantage points, instead of the image being combined into a statuesque edifice.

(The definition of “vantage” is a point of view or position that is more superior or advantageous than another. Personally I don’t think any point of view, in terms of identity construction, should be superior to another.)

Where I think the exhibition is less successful is in the pose of some of the subjects. The press release states that the subjects “stare at us with a disarming self-awareness … presenting as though conscious of their own vulnerabilities – they are aware of what it means to represent themselves”, but all to often I get no sense of who these people really are, what their personality is, in their stillness and statuesqueness, in the time freeze snap of the camera shutter.

I am no great fan of dead pan photography, and here the subjects too often stare off into the distance, supposedly immersed in their own reverie, allowing the viewers eye to rove over their outer appearance, as though the edifice tells us all about who they are. This works well in the image of the nude women covered in tattoos, a magnificent image of strength and beauty but the technique falls flat in the image of Christiane D’Arc (2018, below) for example. I just don’t buy this vacant stare, or to put it another way, photography as mere representation.

The sitter might be aware of their own vulnerabilities and aware of what it means to represent themselves, but it’s not they who are engaged in deciphering the enigma. The best images give you more, for example the photographs of Dale Robertson (2019, above). Here, in the right hand side image, the subject stares straight at the camera engaging me directly, while the mystery of this human being is enhanced by the left hand portrait where he is staring away. What is he thinking, feeling? I get it, it works.

This is a fantastic exhibition for a first solo effort. What is going to be really interesting is to see how Kirk develops this work further. What direction will the work take, which pathways will the artist uncover on their journey of discovery. I would suggest reading the Robert Johnson books He, She and We if not already read. For any artist, these are exciting times!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to the Centre for Contemporary Photography for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs to view a larger version of the image.

Installation views of the exhibition Shea Kirk: Vantages at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne
Photographs: J. Forsyth

Vantages is an ongoing series of stereoscopic portraits by Melbourne-based artist Shea Kirk. Working with dual large-format cameras to simultaneously capture two images from different perspectives, Kirk invites subjects to be photographed in his humble home-studio. Each portrait is exposed onto black and white sheet film through a slow and methodical process, enabling an intimate exchange that highlights the agency between photographer and subject. When viewed through a stereoscope, these dual-portraits can be seen three-dimensionally, rendering the subject hauntingly statuesque.

Often in states of undress and portrayed standing or sitting in front of simple backdrops, the subjects in Vantages stare at us with a disarming self-awareness, perhaps only possible in the selfie-obsessed, smart-phone age. Subjects present as though conscious of their own vulnerabilities – they are aware of what it means to represent themselves – and through the very nature of this dual imaging process, they resist being reduced to a single vantage point.

Vantages references a rich history of photographic portraiture, with a freshness that is distinctly contemporary. Vantages considers the significance of portraiture now, through Kirk’s powerfully contemplative, and beautifully realised dual images.

Biography

Shea Kirk is a Melbourne-based visual artist working with traditional photographic methods and techniques. Shea Kirk has been a finalist in the Olive Cotton Award (2019); National Photographic Portrait Prize (2019) and the Head On Portrait Prize (2018), and has participated in a number of group exhibitions across Victoria.

Press release from the Centre for Contemporary Photography 21/09/2019

Shea Kirk
Mohini Hillyer (left and right view)
2017
Courtesy the artist

Shea Kirk
Christiane D’Arc (left and right view)
2018
Courtesy the artist

Shea Kirk
Jacob Coppedge (left and right view)
2019
Courtesy the artist

Shea Kirk
Paul Stillen (left and right view)
2019
Courtesy the artist

Shea Kirk
Joao Quintao Marcolla (left and right view)
2019
Courtesy the artist

Centre for Contemporary Photography
404 George St, Fitzroy
Victoria 3065, Australia
Phone: + 61 3 9417 1549

Opening Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm
Sunday, 1pm – 5pm

Centre for Contemporary Photography website

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Aug

Exhibition: ‘Sophie Gabrielle: Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat’ at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Fitzroy, Melbourne

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Exhibition dates: 15th June – 11th August 2019

Sophie Gabrielle
Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat #5
2017-2019

This is the first posting on three strong exhibitions at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne… and my pick of the bunch.

I admire an artist who can tell a moving personal story using historic images. An artist who has the imagination, does the research, and works on the process to fulfil the conceptualisation of an idea… to tell that personal story in strong, emotive images that really engage the viewer. Sophie Gabrielle is one such artist.

Gabrielle moves these historic images into the present, and into contemporary relevance, through clear insight into the condition of their becoming. What I mean by that is, she knows her subject matter and she knows where she wants to go with the work. So much contemporary photography is so full of concept that the images are crap. They have no feeling, they have no emotion. Will they engage me a week down the track, or a month, or a year? Will they speak to me, will they reveal themselves to me over and over again? Probably not.

In these photographs Gabrielle combines sci-fi, Village of the Dammed photographs and images of botanicals (which are either medicinal or poisonous, a reflection of the alternate medicinal methods attributed to fighting cancer) with “traces” of her DNA, then re-photographing the image many times, and then degrading the emulsion of the negative in polluted water. In doing so, she pictures worlds in which people think that they are doing the right thing, only to later find that their world has been corrupted and has lost its moral certainty. In this case, Soviet era children blasted with ultraviolet light to cure vitamin D deficiency, or to rid them of freckles, inevitably leading to cancer down the track. The process is called heliotherapy, an archaic treatment for tuberculosis that involved UV light so the kids would produce vitamin D that would fight the bacteria. But as we now know in Australia, solarium and tanning beds have been banned because they significantly increase your risk of cancer.

And why would you want to cure someone of having freckles? Or to extrapolate further, for being left handed, or being gay, or having autism. To make them wear a yellow star or a pink triangle? According to the dictionary, a cure is a method or course of remedial treatment, as for disease. A means of correcting or relieving anything that is troublesome or detrimental. Troublesome or detrimental… or different!

Gabrielle describes Worry for the Fruit the Birds Won’t Eat as “an exploration into the world of the unseen through optics, chemical interactions, and the investigative processes used to photograph something invisible to the naked eye.” Cancer. The Big C. Death. Chemotherapy. Radiation treatment. Leukemia. Melanoma. On and on. Invisible but ever. Present. Here. Now. And then she shows us photographs that seek to dissolve, to dis-solve what is present – freckles, DNA, emulsion, reality – into light. To find an answer to, explanation for, or means of effectively dealing with (a problem or mystery). I’ll let you guess what that mystery might be.

Dr Marcus Bunyan for Art Blart

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Many thankx to the Centre for Contemporary Photography for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs to view a larger version of the image.

Installation views of the exhibition Sophie Gabrielle: Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne
Photographs: J. Forsyth

Through channelling her interest in psychology, science and perception, Sophie Gabrielle creates poetically arresting images that reflect the fragility of the human body, psyche and experience. Combining archival imagery from MRI scans, brain synaptic structures and science experiments from the 1930s and 1940s, Gabrielle creates haunting narratives that interweave the personal and clinical.

Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat is a dreamy and deeply personal exploration of the artists’ experiences with cancer, presenting medicinal botanicals and photographic portraits, alongside archival images from obscure medical research catalogues. Photographed through plates of glass to catch minute particles of her own skin – images are overlaid with the artists’ own DNA – creating interwoven, abstract self-portraits.

“Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat is an exploration drawn from my experiences with cancer through optics and chemical interactions, and an investigative process to photograph that which is generally invisible to the naked eye.

This project started as a coping mechanism to address the impact cancer has had on my life over the past few years, after all the men in my family were diagnosed with stage four cancer. These works give a sense of the unsettled, fragile, daunting and overwhelming aspects that have culminated during this time in my life.”

~ Sophie Gabrielle, 2019

Biography

Sophie Gabrielle is a Melbourne based artist and curator working between analogue and digital photographic practices. Graduating from Photography Studies College in 2015, her work has been exhibited in Australia, Malaysia, New York, UK and Amsterdam. In 2018, Gabrielle was the first Australian chosen as a finalist for Foam Talent, Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam. In 2016, Gabrielle was a finalist for the Lensculture Emerging Talent Award.

Press release from the Centre for Contemporary Photography 21/09/2019

Sophie Gabrielle
Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat
2017-2019

Sophie Gabrielle
Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat #7
2017-2019

After discovering a number of her close family members were ill with the disease, she searched through physical and digital scientific archives connected to the various strains associated with each loved one. “I was interested in archives that were connected to my family’s own story of diagnosis, treatment, recovery and death,” she explains. The resulting images make up her body of work Worry for the Fruit the Birds Won’t Eat, which Gabrielle describes as “an exploration into the world of the unseen through optics, chemical interactions, and the investigative processes used to photograph something invisible to the naked eye.”

As Gabrielle worked through the archives, she also worked through her own personal trauma and confusion. “It was an all-consuming process, both physically and emotionally. The images I was most drawn to ran parallel to the events happening in the lives of my family members during that painful time.” Each archival discovery pointed Gabrielle in another direction, so that she eventually found major points of comparison across multiple sets of images from a variety of different sources. “My father’s diagnosis of stage four prostate cancer made me reflect on the surgical procedures in the images, and my grandfather’s diagnosis of lung cancer drew me to x-rays, especially after seeing the dark clustered patterns of abnormal cells in the imagery. Also, the collection of botanicals are either medicinal or poisonous – a reflection of the alternate medicinal methods attributed to fighting cancer.”

Upon selecting each archival image, Gabrielle used historical processes to involve her own photographic practice in the work. After leaving each image under a glass plate to collect floating particles of dust and hair, she re-photographed each piece multiple times, creating negatives that incorporate flecks of the environment’s natural disruptions. “There was something healing about getting lost within the process of creating these images, transforming their scientific purpose into something personal and poetic. I left them to collect dust in places that were significant to me and my family.”

After re-photographing the images, Gabrielle submerged her negatives in polluted water, allowing the emulsion’s degradation to further highlight the lyrical features of illness. “I actually did it while sitting on a jetty in Penang, Malaysia,” she explains. “I was thinking about the clear water that runs from taps, and how this re-enters nature to become ill and polluted. It was this unseen danger that intrigued me, and I wanted to incorporate that into the work. The microbes in the polluted water ate away at the film, leaving their own marks upon the negatives before I made the prints.”

This incorporation of intervention and decay into her photographic process soon became an integral part of Gabrielle’s own healing process, affording her a clear state of mind to work through a number of complex emotions.

Extract from Cat Lachowskyj. “Worry for the Fruit the Birds Won’t Eat,” on the Lens Culture website [Online] Cited 21/07/2019

Sophie Gabrielle
Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat #1
2017-2019

Sophie Gabrielle
Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat #13
2017-2019

Sophie Gabrielle
Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat
2017-2019

Centre for Contemporary Photography
404 George St, Fitzroy
Victoria 3065, Australia
Phone: + 61 3 9417 1549

Opening Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm
Sunday, 1pm – 5pm

Centre for Contemporary Photography website

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Jul

New work: ‘The Night Journey’ 2019 by Marcus Bunyan

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

July 2019

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from the series The Night Journey
2019
Digital photograph on cotton rag

The Night Journey

The only reason to make art is for yourself… but I hope you enjoy the images and the sequence as much as I enjoyed making it!

The images picture interstitial spaces, un/realities that hover at a median point, a tipping point between the real and the unreal. Which is which is open to question…

Please click on the photographs to see a larger version of the image. They are best viewed on a desktop computer to see the details of the image.

SEE THE FULL SERIES ON MY WEBSITE

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from the series The Night Journey
2019
Digital photograph on cotton rag

Marcus Bunyan website

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Jul

Vale Joyce Evans OAM photographer (1929-2019)

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: Australian artist, Australian photography, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, documentary photography, existence, Indigenous Australians, landscape, light, Melbourne, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, quotation, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: Australian art, Australian artist, Australian civil rights, Australian landscape photography, Australian photographer, Australian photography, Australian portrait photography, Australian protest photography, Ban on Communism Means Fascism, Dissipation at the pub, Guard Thine Honour, Jill Warwick, Joyce and the dragon, Joyce Evans, Joyce Evans Ban on Communism Means Fascism, Joyce Evans Dissipation at the pub, Joyce Evans Guard Thine Honour, Joyce Evans OAM, Joyce Evans photographer, Joyce Evans Rain Dreaming Yuendumu, Joyce Evans Reduce Armaments Ban Atomic Bomb, Joyce Evans standing in front of Max Dupain's Sunbaker 1937, Joyce with camera, Joyce Zerfas, Julia Margaret Cameron, Julia Margaret Cameron Beatrice, Marcus and Joyce, Marcus Bunyan Joyce and the dragon, Marcus Bunyan Joyce Evans standing in front of Max Dupain's Sunbaker 1937, May Day March Flinders Street Melbourne 1951, Michael Silver Joyce Evans, Professor Bernard Rechter, Rain Dreaming Yuendumu, Reduce Armaments Ban Atomic Bomb, students outside Largs Bay pub while attending N.U.A.U.S. conference, Val Groves, Vale Joyce Evans, Vale Joyce Evans OAM, William Yang, William Yang Marcus and Joyce

July 2019

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Untitled [Joyce with camera]
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

It’s taken me more than a moment of reflection to write this text. The events are almost too close to write about my surrogate mother in Australia, my friend and fellow artist, Joycie. I can only write about the person I knew, not the time before I knew her – and so this will be a very personal reflection on one of the most incredible human beings that I have ever met.

Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light

Vale Joyce Evans.

Human, female, lover, mother, grandmother, wife, poet, publisher, writer, romantic, creative, humanist, universalist, spiritualist, bohemian, pioneer, gallery director, teacher, lecturer, collector, philanthropist, activist, artist, feminist, supporter of artists, Indigenous rights, civil rights, and the disenfranchised, exhibitor… and working photographer.

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I met the force of nature that was Joyce Olga Evans (1929-2019) through a mutual friend, Alison Inglis, who knew of our love of photography. It was the start of an intense friendship that lasted just seven or eight years until Joycie, as I used to call her, passed away at Easter this year. Before she passed she knew that she had been awarded an OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia) for service to photography. This was a long overdue tribute to a pioneer and supporter of photography in Australia, one of the first women to be the director of an independent, commercial photography gallery in this country.

Joyce had an incredible passion for and knowledge about photography, whether it was historical Australian or world photographers and their prints from any era, or contemporary artists here and overseas. Her collection of both local and international photographs was almost unparalleled in private hands in this country. She had such a keen eye. When attending a local auction with her she purchased an original William Mortensen for next to nothing. Nobody else had recognised the power and presence of the image by this master artist.

This incisive vision translated into her work as an artist who was a working photographer. At heart, that’s what Joyce was – a working photographer and a storyteller. She believed in photography like photographers get photography… not like an academic or a theoretician, but like an avid fan, an enthusiast, a passionate collector, a teacher. Photography was an integral part of her life, her soul.

She said to me of being an artist, “If we can find out what we are… that is the artist. The core element of your being, and the core element of your enquiry as an artist remains the same. The concerns that you had when you started being an artist are with you until the end. If the core part of your life is the search for truth then that becomes a core part of your identity. It becomes embedded in your soul.”

In this sense, photography becomes something of you, more than just intention – it becomes your essence, your shape…. your physical shape, a tangible thing.

Photography and its spirit inhabited Joyce as Joyce lived in the world. To Joyce, photography was just as much about the world and creativity as it was about the image. The image was just a manifestation of spirit, something that you worked at, recognised, and captured for what it was and could be. As Minor White said, “There is always a dragon in the negative,” and a dragon, that symbol of power, strength, and good luck, lived inside Joyce (see my favourite photograph of her below) and in her work. Her photographs possessed a spiritual and psychological sensation of the place.

As she said, “Making photographs that are memorable requires more than just camera, light and a story. It requires a type of harmony, unity, and an indefinable something, which I can best explain as becoming emotionally attached to the subject so that the images almost make themselves.”

Joyce’s commitment to photography was legendary. She was in it for the long haul.

I was always amazed when we were out in public, going to the exhibitions that we loved to visit, that she would always be taking photographs. Whenever she saw something that interested her out would come her beloved iPhone or digital camera, and she would talk to strangers and their children and take their photos. She was a totally open spirit and had no fear about the path she took. People embraced her, talked to her, responded to her energy and spirit. I remember travelling up to Sydney with her to see an exhibition of her favourite photographer, “Our Julia”, Julia Margaret Cameron at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and just observing that sparkle in her eyes, that unparalleled love that transcends all our pasts and futures in the simple moment of being and looking at these photographs.

Joyce was uncompromising. If she thought you were being a fuckwit she told you so in no uncertain terms. But she was a rock on which I came to depend. As someone said of her, “Joyce wasn’t into niceties and didn’t take any shit from anyone! I hope I grow up to be as tough as her. She was a visionary.” She really did not stand fools gladly (thank god), and had little truck for fine art photographers who didn’t understand the medium, its history or their small place within the grand scheme of things. As the playwright Edward Albee commented at the American painter Lee Krasner’s memorial at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in both her life and her work, ‘…she looked you straight in the eye, and you dared not flinch’. It was the same with Joycie. She could see deep inside you to the core of your being.

Joyce loved helping people. She was so generous of her time and energy, of her wisdom and knowledge. Some of the best times of my life were spent in her kitchen talking about art, love and life. People were drawn to her. As Julie Moss has observed, she was “such a strong, creative and vibrant role model for so many female photographers” in a sea of male prejudice and ambivalence. What Joyce did not do is live on her memories… she was ever active, ever inquiring. She stood up for what she believed. A couple of weeks before she passed she said to me, “I don’t want to go yet, I still have so much that I want to do.” She was still raging against the dying of the light, not going gently into that good night.

But what she achieved in her truly remarkable life is a testament to her unquenchable spirit. In a journey full of determination, intelligence, exploration and love she achieved so much and touched so many. I miss her terribly.

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I am the (sublime) space where I am, that surrounds me with countless presences.

Dr Marcus Bunyan July 2019

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Dissipation at the pub: students outside Largs Bay pub while attending N.U.A.U.S. conference, South Australia 1951 – Joyce Zerfas, Jill Warwick, Val Groves
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

This photograph, showing students smoking and drinking outside the pub at Largs Bay, was published in an Adelaide newspaper. At the time this was considered to be immoral behaviour. Note the man in the background with his fingers up in a derogatory manner.

The names of the three women who have been identified are from left to right: Joyce Evans (nee Zerfas) photographer, Jill Warwick, deceased, (producer of TV programme “It Could Be You”) Val Groves, psychologist. I have been unable to identify the men. ~ Joyce Evans

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Guard Thine Honour, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Ban on Communism Means Fascism, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Reduce Armaments Ban Atomic Bomb, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne [pictured image-right, Professor Bernard Rechter]
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

“Making photographs that are memorable requires more than just camera, light and a story. It requires a type of harmony, unity, and an indefinable something, which I can best explain as becoming emotionally attached to the subject so that the images almost make themselves.”

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Joyce Evans

“Photography for me is a type of communion with my subject. Like everybody else I take photographs which have little meaning. But sometimes I sense an underlying value in the land, a group of people, a location, and then I make photograph, which is satisfying to myself. I think I would like to call that the way in which the quintessential spirit of what I am seeing has stirred me to need to make a photograph of it.

To me, I am alive, and my life and the life of everything in the world is connected. For me it is that universality that is the basis of my idea of the spiritual. I feel uncomfortable about formal organised religion and am perhaps more than a humanist, a universalist.”

.
Joyce Evans

“Aesthetically, I enjoy the camera’s capacity to record relationships and detail, which my subconscious may perceive, but I may not fully see.

My appreciation of aesthetics goes back to when I studied painting with John Olsen at the Bakery Art School, Sydney in 1967-68. Olsen made me aware of the power of the edge of the image to relate to what was not shown in the image. My formal education was further enhanced when I did a degree in fine arts at Sydney University 1969-71. There, Dr Anton Wilhelm taught me how to read an image. My understanding of the limits and potentials of two-dimensional imagery was expounded by Professor Bernard Smith.

Informally, my knowledge of photography and my practice was refined through formative conversations with a wide range of great photographers such as Andre Kertesz, Max Dupain, Ansel Adams and Bill Henson, Julie Millowick and Linda Connor.

Each of these relationships helped me to clarify my photographic position, which is based on a search for the essence of a subject.”

.
Joyce Evans

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Rain Dreaming, Yuendumu, NT
2005

Joyce Evans short biography

Joyce Olga Evans is well known in Australian photography. In 1976 Joyce opened Church Street Photographic Centre, a pioneer Australian commercial gallery devoted to Photography. It showcased the best of Australian and International photographers. Joyce exhibited works by Frank Hurley, Imogen Cunningham, Bill Henson, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Julia MargretCameron, Max Dupain and many other renowned photographers – she says that they were her teachers.

Passionately dedicated to photography, she has had many solo exhibitions of both her landscapes (she photographed in the Dandenongs and Mt Martha regions in the outer Melbourne; along the Hume Highway; in the Central Desert and outback Australia, most notably Oodnadatta, Oodlawirra, Menindee, and Lake Mungo; vineyards and rural villages in the South of France; the old Jewish cemetery in the centre of Prague; and numerous others) and her portraits (she photographed Australian intelligentsia and personalities, including Marianne Baillieu; Barbara Blackman; Baron Avid von Blumenthal; Tim Burstall; Dur-e Dara; Robert Dessaix; Germaine Greer; Elena Kats-Chernin; Joan Kerr; Ellen Koshland; David Malouf; Dame Elisabeth Murdoch; Lin Onus; Jill Reichstein; Chris Wallace-Crabbe; and innumerable others) throughout Australia and Europe.

Joyce has spent two decades documenting Australia for the National Library of Australia, who are acquiring her life’s work for their permanent collection. When this acquisition is complete the Library will hold over 30,000 analogue images and 80,000 digital files. Also included are diaries and other relevant documents and files. Much of this work is destined for display on Trove, the library’s online viewing resource. She has exhibited extensively in Australia and in France and her photographs are held in many major collections. Joyce has been published widely. Her monograph Only One Kilometre was published in 2003 by Lothian Press. It detailed her many years of studying the unique qualities of the Balcombe Estuary Reserve, at Mount Martha as well as poems and articles by distinguished writers. Her work is held in many collections both locally and internationally.

Joyce Evans also plays an important educational role in Australian photography. She taught history of photography at Melbourne’s RMIT University; appointed inaugural assistant director of Waverley City Gallery (now Monash Gallery of Art), 1990-91, the first municipal public collection in Melbourne to specialise in photography; established and inaugurated a course on the History of Photography and appointed Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, 1997-2010.”

Evans worked as an honorary photographer for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in Central Australia and for over ten years documented Australian country towns and events for the National Library of Australia. Important publications on Joyce Evans include a monograph Only One Kilometre (Melbourne: Lothian Press, 2003), and exhibition catalogues with essays by Alison Inglis, Eugene Barilo von Reisberg, Tim Page, Victoria Hammond, and many others.

Text from the Joyce Evans Photographer website [Online] Cited 16 June 2019

William Yang (Australian, b. 1943)
Marcus and Joyce
2018

Being two photographers, the only photograph of Joyce and Marcus together, taken by another photographer William Yang.

Michael Silver (Australian)
Joyce Evans
2013

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Joyce Evans standing in front of Max Dupain’s ‘Sunbaker’ 1937
2018

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Joyce and the dragon
2016

Joyce standing in front of the fireplace at Jacques Reymond’s restaurant for the birthday of her friend Marcus Bunyan. In Chinese mythology the dragon traditionally symbolises potent and auspicious powers and also is a symbol of power, strength, and good luck for people who are worthy of it.

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)
Beatrice
1866
Albumen silver print

Joyce Evans Photographer website

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May

Joyce Evans celebration

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

May 2019

Where: Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill
When: Monday 20 May 6-9pm

Joyce Evans photographer celebration… I hope many of you can attend.

A truly remarkable human being.

Marcus

If we can find out what we are… that is the artist. This goes to the core element of your being, and the core element of your enquiry remains the same.

If the core part of your life is the search for the truth then that becomes a core part of your identity for the rest of your life. It becomes embedded in your soul.

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Joyce Evans

Michael Silver (Australian)
Joyce Evans
Nd

A Celebration of Joyce and her contribution to art, photography, women’s status, mentorship and philanthropy. At least 30 of her prints will be displayed. Celebrants will talk and recall in their own words experiences with Joyce and her passions. The event will be recorded and made available for non-attendees. Snacks and drinks will be available.

Please email Alfred Zerfas Facebook (to azerfas@gmail.com – her brother) about other friends of Joyce you have notified and whether you will come.

Monash Gallery of Art
860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill
Victoria 3150 Australia
Phone: + 61 3 8544 0500

Opening hours:
Tue – Fri: 10am – 5pm
Sat – Sun: 12pm – 5pm
Mon/public holidays: closed

Monash Gallery of Art website

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Dr Marcus Bunyan

Dr Marcus Bunyan is an Australian artist and writer. His art work explores the boundaries of identity and place. He writes Art Blart, a photographic archive and form of cultural memory, which posts mainly photography exhibitions from around the world. He holds a Dr of Philosophy from RMIT University, Melbourne, a Master of Arts (Fine Art Photography) from RMIT University, and a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne.

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Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: ‘Mask’ 1994

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Posts Tagged ‘Australian photography

Exhibition: ‘Shea Kirk: Vantages’ at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Fitzroy, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 15 June - 11 August 2019

Biography

Exhibition: ‘Sophie Gabrielle: Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat’ at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Fitzroy, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 15th June – 11th August 2019

Biography

New work: ‘The Night Journey’ 2019 by Marcus Bunyan

July 2019

The Night Journey

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Vale Joyce Evans OAM photographer (1929-2019)

July 2019

Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light

Joyce Evans short biography

Joyce Evans celebration

May 2019

Where: Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill
When: Monday 20 May 6-9pm

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: ‘Mask’ 1994

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Posts Tagged ‘Australian photography

August 2019

Foreword

Nothing emerges from nothing

Description

World Federation of Democratic Youth

World Festival of Youth and Students

2nd World Festival of Youth and Students

Exhibition dates: 15th June – 11th August 2019

Picturing themselves

Biographies

Exhibition dates: 15 June - 11 August 2019

Biography

Exhibition dates: 15th June – 11th August 2019

Biography

July 2019

The Night Journey

July 2019

Do not go gentle into that good night Rage, rage, against the dying of the light

Joyce Evans short biography

May 2019

Where: Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill When: Monday 20 May 6-9pm

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: ‘Mask’ 1994

Art Blart RSS feed

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Recent Posts

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Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light

Where: Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill
When: Monday 20 May 6-9pm