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Posts Tagged 'Luc Delahaye
Review: 'An unorthodox flow of images' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Melbourne Part 2
Categories: Australian artist, Australian cabinet cards and cartes de visite, Australian photography, Australian writing, beauty, black and white photography, book, colour photography, curator, Daido Moriyama, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, Indigenous Australians, Japanese artist, landscape, light, Melbourne, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, postcards, psychological, quotation, reality, space, Susan Sontag, time, video, Walker Evans, William Eggleston and works on paper
Tags: 'Pompey' a well known resident of Marree, A sudden gust of wind, Aboriginal Chief, act of looking, Alter Ego, An unorthodox flow of images, Anne Noble, Anne Noble Ruby's Room 10, art photography, ASIO surveillance images, At times there is not too much to do except just sit in the sun, Australian art, Australian artist, Australian landscape, Australian photographers, Australian photography, Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation, Author Frank Hardy shelters under an awning, Backyard Forster New South Wales, Beechworth Victoria, Benalla, Benalla Gaol, Bernd and Hilla Becher Gravel Plants, Bernd and Hilla Becher Kies-und Schotterwerke, Bill Culbert, Bill Culbert Small glass pouring Light, Brassaï, Brassaï Young couple wearing a two-in-one suit at Bal De La Montagne, Bray Charred remains from Kelly gang siege, Bray Kelly Gang Armour, Bray McDonnell's Tavern opposite Railway Station, Bray The Glenrowan Inn after the Kelly Siege, Brook Andrew, Brook Andrew I split your gaze, Brook Andrew Sexy and Dangerous, Budapest Festival, Building Workers Industrial Union, Burman Joe Byrne's Body Benalla Gaol, CCP, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Charles Kerry, Charles Kerry Aboriginal Chief, Charred remains from Kelly gang siege, contemporary art, Contemporary Photography, contemporary photography and video, contemporary video, Daido Moriyama, Daido Moriyama DOCUMENTARY '78, David Bowie, David Bowie - Heroes, David Moore, David Moore Migrants arriving in Sydney, David Moore Sisters of Charity, democratic experience of the public gallery space, DOCUMENTARY '78, drawing connections, Dreaming in the sun at Marree, first press photograph in Australia, Fitzroy Square, Flagellation of Christ, Francis Alÿs, Francis Alÿs Fitzroy Square, Frank Hardy under awning, Georgie Mattingly, Georgie Mattingly Portrait IV (After Arthroplasty), Glenrowan, Glenrowan Inn, Gravel Plants, Harold Cazneaux, Harold Cazneaux Spirit of endurance, Heroes, Hokusai, I made a camera, I Split Your Gaze, In a Bind, In the far reaches of the familiar, J W Lindt Body of Joe Byrne, J W Lindt Body of Joe Byrne member of the Kelly Gang, J. E. Bray, J. E. Bray Charred remains from Kelly gang siege, J. E. Bray Kelly Gang Armour, J. E. Bray McDonnell's Tavern opposite Railway Station, J. E. Bray The Glenrowan Inn after the Kelly Siege, J. W. Lindt, Janina Green, Janina Green Self Portrait, Jeff Carter, Jeff Carter 'Pompey' a well known resident of Marree, Jeff Carter At times there is not too much to do except just sit in the sun, Jeff Carter Dreaming in the sun at Marree, Jeff Carter Morning Break, Jeff Carter The Eunuch Marree South Australia, Jeff Wall, Jeff Wall A sudden gust of wind, Jeff Wall A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai), Joe Byrne's Body, Joe Byrne's Body Benalla Gaol, Joe Rosenthal, Joe Rosenthal Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, Joosep Martinson, Joosep Martinson Police Hostage Situation Developing at the Lindt Café in Sydney, Joyce Evans, Joyce Evans Budapest Festival, Julian Ashton, Kelly Gang, Kelly Gang Armour, Kelly Siege, Kies-und Schotterwerke, L'Autre, Leah King-Smith, Leah King-Smith Untitled #3, Lisa Hilli, Lisa Hilli In a Bind, Luc Delahaye, Luc Delahaye L'Autre, Lyn and Carol, Maryborough District, Masayoshi Sukita, Masayoshi Sukita David Bowie - Heroes, materiality of real photographs, Max Dupain, Max Dupain Backyard, McDonnell's Railway Tavern with remains of Kelly Gang in Coffins, McDonnell's Tavern opposite Railway Station, Melbourne, member of the Kelly Gang, Migrants arriving in Sydney, Ned Kelly, Olive Cotton, Olive Cotton Teacup Ballet, one of five trackers who helped track Ned Kelly, Pat Brassington, Pat Brassington Vedette, personal encounters with photography and video, Persons Of Interest, Persons Of Interest - ASIO surveillance images, Photographer unknown Joe Byrne's Body Benalla Gaol, photographic representation, photographic reproductions, photography now, Piero della Francesca, Piero della Francesca Flagellation of Christ, Place where rails were taken up by Kelly gang, plein air explorers, Police Hostage Situation Developing at the Lindt Café in Sydney, Portrait IV (After Arthroplasty), Portrait of Tracker Johnny, Portrait of Tracker Johnny from Maryborough District, post-mortem photographs, public gallery space, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, Rapid Transit, Regarding the Pain of Others, remains of Dan Kelly and Hart in coffins, repositories of images, reproducibility, reproductions, returning the dispossessed to country, Robyn Stacey, Robyn Stacey Wendy and Brett Whiteley's Library, Ruby's Room 10, Sexy and Dangerous, shared democratic experience, siege at Glenrowan, siri hayes, Siri Hayes In the far reaches of the familiar, Siri Hayes Plein air explorers, Sisters of Charity, Small glass pouring Light, Spirit of endurance, Steve Hart, Sue Ford, Sue Ford Lyn and Carol, Sue Ford St Kilda, Susan Sontag, Susan Sontag Regarding the Pain of Others, Teacup Ballet, the act of looking, The Eunuch Marree South Australia, The Glenrowan Inn, The Glenrowan Inn after the Kelly Siege, the spatio-temporality of photographs, the spatio-temporality of photography, Tracey Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt I made a camera, Tracker Johnny, Untitled #3, Untitled (glass on plane), Vedette, violence and photographic representation, violence of photographic representation, violence physically enacted on the body, W. E. Barnes Steve Hart, Walker Evans, Walker Evans Rapid Transit, Wendy and Brett Whiteley's Library, William Eggleston, William Eggleston Untitled (glass on plane), William J. Burman, William J. Burman Joe Byrne's Body, William J. Burman Joe Byrne's Body Benalla Gaol, William Yang, William Yang Alter Ego, Young couple wearing a two-in-one suit at Bal De La Montagne
Exhibition dates: 30th September – 12th November 2017
Curators: Naomi Cass and Pippa Milne
Living artists include: Laurence Aberhart, Brook Andrew, Rushdi Anwar, Warwick Baker, Paul Batt, Robert Billington, Christian Boltanski, Pat Brassington, Jane Brown, Daniel Bushaway, Sophie Calle, Murray Cammick, Christian Capurro, Steve Carr, Mohini Chandra, Miriam Charlie, Maree Clarke, Michael Cook, Bill Culbert, Christopher Day, Luc Delahaye, Ian Dodd, William Eggleston, Joyce Evans, Cherine Fahd, Fiona Foley, Juno Gemes, Simryn Gill, John Gollings, Helen Grace, Janina Green, Andy Guérif, Siri Hayes, Andrew Hazewinkel, Lisa Hilli, Eliza Hutchison, Therese Keogh, Leah King-Smith, Katrin Koenning, O Philip Korczynski, Mac Lawrence, Kirsten Lyttle, Jack Mannix, Jesse Marlow, Georgie Mattingley, Tracey Moffatt, Daido Moriyama, Harry Nankin, Jan Nelson, Phuong Ngo.
Historic photographers: Hippolyte Bayard (180-1887), Charles Bayliss (1850-1897), Bernd and Hilla Becher (Bernd Becher 1931-2007, Hilla Becher 1934-2015), Lisa Bellear (1962-2006), James E. Bray (1832-1891), Jeff Carter (1928-2010), Harold Cazneaux (1878-1953), Olive Cotton (1911-2003), Peter Dombrovskis (1995-1996), Max Dupain (1911-1992), Walker Evans (1903-1975), Sue Ford (1943-2009), Marti Friedlander (1928-2016), Kate Gollings (1943-2017), André Kertész (1894-1985), J. W. Lindt (1845-1926), W. H. Moffitt (1888-1948), David Moore (1927-2003), Michael Riley (1960-2004), Robert Rooney (1937-2017), Joe Rosenthal (1911-2006), Mark Strizic (1928 -2012), Ingeborg Tyssen (1945-2002), Aby Warburg (1866-1929), Charles Woolley (1834-1922).
(1) J W Lindt (1845-1926)
Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly Gang, hung up for photography, Benalla
Courtesy State Library Victoria, Pictures Collection
Thought to be the first press photograph in Australia, this shows Joe Byrne, a member of the Kelly Gang, strung up for documentation days after his death, which followed the siege at Glenrowan. Byrne is displayed for an unknown photographer and the painter Julian Ashton who is standing to the left with possibly a sketchbook under his arm. Lindt's photograph captures not only the spectacle of Byrne's body but the contingent of documentarians who arrived from Melbourne to record and widely disseminate the event for public edification.
I was a curatorial interlocutor for this exhibition so it was very interesting to see this exhibition in the flesh.
An unorthodox flow of images is a strong exhibition, splendidly brought to fruition by curators Naomi Cass and Pippa Milne at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Melbourne. To be able to bring so many themes, images, ideas and people together through a network of enabling, and a network of images, is an impressive achievement.
The exhibition explores the notion of connectivity between images in our media saturated world – across context, time and space. "With a nod to networked image viewing behaviour and image sharing – in one long line – the flow also impersonates the form of a sentence." While the viewer makes their own flows through the works on view, they must interpret the interpolation of images (much like a remark interjected in a conversation) in order to understand their underlying patterns of connection. Like Deleuze and Guattari's horizontal rhizome theory1 – where the viewer is offered a new way of seeing: that of infinite plateaus, nomadic thought and multiple choices – here the relationship between the photograph and its beholder as a confrontation between self and other, and the dynamic relation between time, subjectivity, memory and loss is investigated … with the viewer becoming an intermediary in an endless flow of non-hierarchical images/consciousness.
In this throng of dialects, the exhibition meanders through different "sections" which are undefined in terms of their beginning and end. The starting point for this flow is the public demonstration of trauma for the edification of society (the photographs of the aftermath of the siege of Ned Kelly and his gang at Glenrowan), notably what is thought to be the first press photograph in Australia, J W Lindt's Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly Gang, hung up for photography, Benalla (1880, above), and the flow then gathers its associations through concepts such as studio work, the gaze, disruption, truth, performance and traces, to name just a few. The exhibition ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organisations of power and contextual circumstances, moving forward and backwards in time and space, jumping across the gallery walls, linking any point to any point if the beholder so desires. In this sense (that of an expanded way of thinking laterally to create a democracy of sight and understanding), the exhibition succeeds in fostering connections, offering multiple entryways into the flow of images that proposes a new cultural norm.
For Deleuze and Guattari these assemblages (of images in this case), "… are the processes by which various configurations of linked components function in an intersection with each other, a process that can be both productive and disruptive. Any such process involves a territorialization; there is a double movement where something accumulates meanings (re-territorialization), but does so co-extensively with a de-territorialization where the same thing is disinvested of meanings."2 Now here's the rub (or the trade-off if you like) of this exhibition, for everything in life is a trade-off: the accumulation of new meaning that such a flow of images creates is balanced by what has been lost. Both an accumulation and disinvestment of meaning.
I have a feeling that in such a flow of images the emotion and presence of the subject has been lost, subsumed into a networked, hypermedia flow where, "images become more and more layered until they are architectural in design, until their relationship to the context from which they have grown cannot be talked about through the simple models offered by referentiality, or by attributions of cause and effect."3 The linear perspective developed during the Renaissance and its attendant evidence of truth/objective reality (the logic of immediacy) is disrupted. It is no longer about being there, about the desire for presence, but about a logic of hypermediacy that privileges fragmentation, process, and performance. Of course, immediacy / hypermediacy are part of a whole and are not exclusionary to each other. But here contemporary art, and in particular contemporary photography, keeps coming back to the surface, redefining conceptual and aesthetic spaces.
This is where I was plainly unmoved by the whole exhibition. Conceptually and intellectually the exhibition is very strong but sequentially and, more importantly, emotionally – the flow of images failed to engage me. The dissociative association proposed – like a dissociative identity disorder – ultimately becomes a form of ill/literation, in which the images seem drained of their passion, a degenerative illness in which all images loose their presence and power. In a media saturated world what does it mean to pluck these images from a variable spatio-temporal dimensionality and sequence them together and hope they give meaning to each other? Ultimately, it's a mental exercise of identity organisation that is pure construct.
Further, this (re)iteration is a repetition that is supposed to bring you successively closer to the solution of a problem: what is the relevance of the stream of image consciousness in contemporary society? What happens to the referentiality and presence of the individual image?
With this in mind, let us return to the first image in the flow of images, J W Lindt's Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly Gang, hung up for photography, Benalla (1880, above). Here Byrne is displayed for an unknown photographer and the painter Julian Ashton who is standing to the left with possibly a sketchbook under his arm. Amongst other things, the image is by a photographer taking a photograph of another photographer taking a photograph of the body of Joe Byrne. Immediately, the triangular relationship of camera / subject / viewer (cause and effect) is disrupted with the addition of the second photographer. There is a doubling of space and time within this one image, as we imagine the image the photographer in the photograph would have taken. And then we can see two variations of that internal photograph: Photographer unknown Joe Byrne's Body, Benalla Gaol, 29 June 1880 (below) and William J. Burman's Joe Byrne's Body, Benalla Gaol, 29 June 1880 (1880, below) which 1/ appears to solve who the "photographer unknown" is (unless Burman purchase the rights to use another's photographers' negatives); and 2/ is a more tightly framed image than the first iteration. If you look at the top of the head in the second image the hair goes over the metal hinge of the door behind… so the photographer (the same one) has moved closer and dropped the height of the camera, so that the camera looks up more, at the body.
Other details fascinate. The ring on the left finger of Joe Byrne; his stripped shirt; the rope under his arms used to help support his weight; the rope disappearing out of picture to help string him up; and questions such as, how did they get his left hand to stay in that position? This is also, "an image of an audience as much as a portrait of the deceased … Members of the public are also documented; children, men – trackers perhaps, bearing witness to the public display of retribution that was intended to restore social order." To the left we have what is presumably the photographers' coat hung on a tree; a man wiping his nose with his thumb; and Aboriginal man; and a boy looking at the camera. Through his silhouette the Aboriginal man can probably be identified as Tracker Johnny, one of five trackers who helped track Ned Kelly, and we can see a portrait of him in an albumen photograph held by the Queensland Police Museum (1880, below). A picture of the 'Other', both outsiders, the outlaw and the Aboriginal, detailing the social order. The blurred image of the boy looking at the camera shows the length of the time exposure for the glass plate, but it is his "Janus-faced" visage that I am fascinated with… as he both looks forwards and backwards in time. Whilst most images within An unorthodox flow of images are conceptually grounded, they also evidence only one direct meaning in relationship to themselves within that network, "each one connected to those on either side," – from point to point to point. Conversely, in this image the interpretation is open-ended, WITHIN THE ONE IMAGE. It is a network all of its own. I also remember, emotionally, the other images of the burnt out Glenrowan Inn, the place where the rails were taken up (I was there!), the bodies in the coffins, the preparation for the photograph of the Kelly Gang Armour laid out in a muddy field for documentation, and the burnt to a cinder, charred remains rescued from the ashes of the Glenrowan Inn laid out on a piece of wood. There is a physicality to these photographs, and an emotional charge, that no other photograph in this exhibition matches. I think, then, not of Joe Bryne's lifeless body and its/the photographs morbidity, but of him as a younger man – standing legs crossed, one hand on hip, the other resting on the surface of a table, imagining his touch on that table in reality – a son, an outlaw, a living being.
I wish the curators had been braver. I wish that they had given these images more chance to breathe. I wish they had cut the number of images and sequenced them so that the space between them (what Minor White calls ice/fire, that frisson of space between two images that adds to their juxtaposed meaning) provided opportunity for a more emotional engagement with what was being presented. Yes, this is a strong exhibition but it could have been so much more powerful if the flow had not just meandered through the sentence, but cried out, and declaimed, and was quiet. Where was the punctum? Where was the life blood of the party, if only disappearing in a contiguous flow of images.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press, 1987
Wood, Aylish. "Fresh Kill: Information technologies as sites of resistance," in Munt, Sally (ed.,). Technospaces: Inside the New Media. London: Continuum, 2001, p. 166
Burnett, Ron. Cultures of Vision: Images, Media, & the Imaginary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 137-138.
Many thankx to the CCP for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. The numbers in brackets refer to the number of the image in the field guide. The text is also taken from the field guide to the exhibition.
An unorthodox flow of images commences with what is known as the first press photograph in Australia and unfurls through historic, press, portraiture, popular and art photography, some in their intended material form and others as reproductions. An unbroken thread connects this line of still and moving images, each tied to those on either side through visual, conceptual, temporal, material or circumstantial links.
This is a proposition about photography now. Relationships between images are sometimes real, and sometimes promiscuous. Unorthodox brings new contexts to existing artworks whilst celebrating the materiality of real photographs, in real time and critically, honouring the shared democratic experience of the public gallery space. (Text from the CCP website)
J W Lindt (1845-1926)
Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly Gang, hung up for photography, Benalla (details)
(2) Photographer unknown
Joe Byrne's Body, Benalla Gaol, 29 June
Photographic print from glass plate
© Collection of Joyce Evans
This image appears to the one of the images taken by the photographer in J. W. Lindt's Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly Gang, hung up for photography, Benalla 1880 (above)
William J. Burman (1814-1890)
Joe Byrne's Body, Benalla Gaol, 29 June 1880
At 209 Bourke Street, East Melbourne 1878 – 1888
Albumen carte de visite
6.5 × 10.5 cm
This image appears to the one of the images taken by the photographer in J. W. Lindt's Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly Gang, hung up for photography, Benalla 1880.
Untitled [Portrait of Tracker Johnny from Maryborough District one of five trackers who helped track Ned Kelly] (detail, not in exhibition)
Queensland Police Museum
Non-commercial – Share Alike (cc)
(3) J. E. Bray (1832-1891)
Kelly Gang Armour
Albumen cabinet portrait
"As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible." ~ Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)
(4) Unknown photographer
Place where rails were taken up by Kelly gang
The Glenrowan Inn after the Kelly Siege
Charred remains from Kelly gang siege
In her comments on a related photograph by Bray, Helen Ennis writes, "What you see pictured, presumably as part of the official documentation are the thoroughly blackened remains of either Dan Kelly or Steve Hart… Relatives raked what remained of the bodies… from the ashes of the Glenrowan Inn. These were then photographed before family members took them home on horseback and buried them. … [These photographs] also underscore the brutality and barbarism of the post-mortem photographs – the violence physically enacted on the body in the first instance and then visually in terms of the photographic representation."
Helen Ennis. "Portraiture in extremis" in Photogenic Essays/Photography/CCP 2000-2004, Daniel Palmer (ed.), 2005, CCP, pp. 23-39, p 34.
Untitled ["McDonnell's Tavern opposite Railway Station, remains of Dan Kelly and Hart in coffins"]
W. E. (William Edward) Barnes (1841-1916)
Steve Hart (1859-1880) (front and verso, not in exhibition)
Steve Hart (1859-1880) (not in exhibition)
(9) Piero della Francesca (1415-1492)
Flagellation of Christ
Oil and tempera on wood, reproduced as digital print on wallpaper
58.4 × 81.5 cm, reproduced at 20 × 30 cm
The meaning of della Francesca's Flagellation and exact identity of the three foreground figures in fifteenth century dress, is widely contested. In the context of this flow of images, the painting represents the pubic display of suffering as punishment, for the edification of society. In both J.W. Lindt's documentary photograph and the possibly allegorical Flagellation, the broken body of Joe Byrne and that of Christ are isolated from other figures and subject of conversation and debate by gathered figures. Other formal similarities include framing of the tableau into shallow and deep space the organising role of architecture in signifying the key subject.
(10) Joosep Martinson
Police Hostage Situation Developing at the Lindt Café in Sydney
Digital print on wallpaper
The scene outside the Lindt Cafe siege, caught by the photojournalist in a moment of public trauma. This bears formal resemblance to J.W. Lindt's photograph of Joe Byrne, and even further back to Piero della Francesca.
(13) Tracey Moffatt
I made a camera
photolithograph
38 × 43 cm, edition 201 of 750
Returning to J.W. Lindt's photograph – in particular the hooded central figure photographing Joe Byrne – Tracey Moffatt's picturing of children role-playing calls to mind the colonial photographer's anthropological gesture.
(14) Siri Hayes
In the far reaches of the familiar
C-type print
88 × 70 cm, exhibition print
Courtesy the artist
The photographer's hood is the photographer.
(15) Janina Green
Digital version of a hand-coloured work in early Photoshop
Courtesy the artist and M.33, Melbourne
(16) Georgie Mattingly
Portrait IV (After Arthroplasty)
Hand-tinted silver gelatin print
Unique hand print
The photographer's hood has become a meat-worker's protective gear, tenderly hand-coloured. [And spattered with blood ~ Marcus]
(17) Lisa Hilli (Makurategete Vunatarai (clan) Gunantuna / Tolai People, Papua New Guinea)
In a Bind
'The woven material that hoods the artist's identity is a reference to collected Pacific artefacts, which are usually of a practical nature. Magimagi is a plaited coconut fibre used for reinforcing architectural structures and body adornment within the Pacific. Here it emphasises the artist's feeling of being bound by derogatory Western and anthropological labels used by museums and the erasure of Pacific bodies and narratives within public displays of Pacific materiality.' ~ Lisa Hilli 2017, in an email to the curator
In an era of 'tumbling' images, An unorthodox flow of images presents visual culture in a novel way: commencing with Australia's first press photograph, 150 images unfurl in flowing, a-historical sequences throughout the gallery. Each work is connected to the one before through formal, conceptual or material links.
An unorthodox flow of images draws upon the photographic image in its many forms, from significant historical photographs by major Australian artists, such as J.W. Lindt, Olive Cotton and Max Dupain, through to contemporary international and Australian artists, such as Tracey Moffatt, Michael Parekowhai, Christian Boltanski and Daido Moriyama. This exhibition brings early career artists into the flow, including Georgie Mattingley, Jack Mannix and James Tylor.
Celebrating the breadth of photographic technologies from analogue through to digital, including hand made prints, a hand-held stereoscope, early use of Photoshop, iPhone videos and holography, An unorthodox flow of images propels the viewer through a novel encounter with technology, art, and the act of looking. Rather than a definitive narrative, this exhibition is a proposition about relationships between images: sometimes real and sometimes promiscuous, and is inevitably open to alternative readings. Contemporary culture necessitates quick, networked visual literacy. So viewers are invited to make their own readings of this unorthodox flow.
Akin to how images are experienced in our personal lives and perhaps to how artists are influenced by the multiverse of photography, this extraordinary gathering also includes spirited incursions from other kinds of images – rare prints of grizzly 19th century photojournalism abuts contemporary video first shared on Instagram, and surrealist French cinema nestles in with Australian image-makers.
This exhibition aims to bring new contexts to existing artworks to highlight networked image-viewing behaviour, whilst honouring the materiality of real photographs, in real time and critically, honouring the shared democratic experience of the public gallery space. An unorthodox flow of images is presented as part of the 2017 Melbourne Festival.
Press release from the CCP
Plein air explorers
108 × 135 cm, edition 4 of 6
Collection of Jason Smith
An artist's studio in the landscape.
(31) Robyn Stacey
Wendy and Brett Whiteley's Library
From the series Dark Wonder
110 × 159 cm, edition of 5 + 3 artist proofs
Courtesy the artist and Jan Manton Gallery, Brisbane
The landscape brought into the studio by a camera obscura. Robyn Stacey captures the perfect moment of light and clarity, in this instance, also turning the egg-object into an orb of light.
(37) Pat Brassington
75 × 60 cm, edition of 8,
Courtesy the artist and ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne and Bett Gallery, Hobart
Two orbs, a positive and a negative space.
(38) Anne Noble
Ruby's Room 10
Courtesy the artist and Two Rooms Gallery Auckland
(42) Daido Moriyama
(43) Leah King-Smith
Untitled #3
From the series Patterns of connection
102 × 102 cm, edition 6 of 25
'I was seeing the old photographs as both sacred family documents on one hand, and testaments of the early brutal days of white settlement on the other. I was thus wrestling with anger, resentment, powerlessness and guilt while at the same time encountering a sense of deep connectedness, of belonging and power in working with images of my fellow Indigenous human beings.' ~ L King-Smith, White apron, black hands, Brisbane City Hall Gallery, 1994, p. 7. In this series, the artist superimposes the colonial portrait onto images of the subject's own landscape, returning the dispossessed to country.
Unorthodox: a field guide
We could have started anywhere. Perhaps every image ever made connects with another image in some way. But, we have begun with what is known as the first press photograph in Australia – a grisly depiction of Kelly Gang member Joe Byrne, strung up some days after his execution, for a group of onlookers, including a group of documentarians who came in by train to record the event: a painter and several photographers. This is an image of an audience as much as a portrait of the deceased. A hooded photographer bends to his tripod, and a
painter waits in line. Perhaps a seminal moment between competing technologies of record, magnificently captured by colonial photographer, J. W. Lindt (1845-1926): this is as decisive a moment as current technology permitted. Members of the public are also documented; children, men – trackers perhaps, bearing witness to the public display of retribution that was intended to restore social order.
From here, Unorthodox draws a thread of images together, each one connected to those on either side, whether through visual, conceptual, temporal, material or circumstantial ties, or by something even more diffuse and smoky – some images just conjure others, without a concrete reason for their bond. Spanning the entire gallery space, nearly 150 images unfurl with links that move through historic, press, portraiture, popular and art photography.
You are invited to wander through CCPs nautilus galleries, and make what you will of this flow because unlike a chain of custody, there is no singular narrative or forensic link: you are invited to explore not just connections between works but to see individual works in a new light.
At the core of this exhibition is an attempt to lay bare the way that images inform and seep into everyday life, underpinning the way that we see, interpret and understand the world. With a nod to networked image viewing behaviour and image sharing – in one long line – the flow also impersonates the form of a sentence.
The act of looking. Looking is a process, informed by context – where and when we see something, and what surrounds it. Here, images are unbuckled from their original context, indeed there are no museum labels on the wall. But this is often the way when viewing images on the internet, or reproduced in books, referenced in ads, reenacted in fashion shoots, or reinterpreted by artists. The notion of reproductions within photography is slippery, made more so by the rapid circulation of images whereby we sometimes only know certain originals through their reproductions. In this exhibition, sometimes we have the original images, at others we proffer 'reproductions', setting out a swathe of contemporary and historical approaches to the craft of photography and video, unhampered by traditional constraints of what we can or cannot show within a non-collecting contemporary art space.
This exhibition moves through a number of notional chapters, for example visual connections can be made between orbs made by soap bubbles (no. 32, 34) and moons (no. 33); eyes (no. 40, 41, 42), gaping mouths (no. 37), the balletic body in space (no. 45); and light from orbs (no. 44, 46) and then moonlight on the ocean (no. 47), which tumbles into salty connections, with photographs exposed by the light of the moon through seawater (no. 48) connecting to an image of salt mines (no. 50), and on to salt prints (no. 51).
We have been influenced by observing how audiences view exhibitions, traversing the space, seemingly drawing connections, making their own flows through works on view. In spite of its indexicality to the world, photography is particularly open to multiple readings due to its reproducibility and its vulnerability to manipulation. A key to this permeability is the intention of the photographer, which can become opaque over time. For example, installation artist Christian Boltanski's found photograph (no. 137) has been taken out of its time and context
so as to mean something quite different from what the photographer intended.
Importantly, due to their multiple readings, many works could be equally effective if placed in other sections of the exhibition. For example, of the many places to position Leah King-Smith's Untitled #3 (no. 43), we have elected to locate it amongst compositions that include orbs. However, it is also a staged work; a constructed or collaged photograph; it embodies an Indigenous artist returning the colonial gaze and, due to the age of her source photograph, it represents a deceased person. And, in her own words King-Smith is responding to the trauma of settlement. 'I was thus wrestling with anger, resentment, powerlessness… while at the same time encountering a sense of deep connectedness, of belonging and power in working with images of my fellow Indigenous human beings.'
A curious process indeed, we have been open to many repositories of images while gathering this flow – from our work with artists at CCP; to childhood memories of images and personal encounters with photography and video; to our trawling of the Internet and books; as well as conversations with writers, artists and collectors. From these stores, we have also considered which works were available in their material form, as opposed to reproductions on wallpaper, postcards and record covers. While we exhibit a broad timespan and multiple technologies, our primary desire as a contemporary art space is to create new contexts for the exhibition of contemporary photography and video.
Unorthodox is a proposition about relationships between images: sometimes real and sometimes promiscuous, and is inevitably open to alternative readings. It brings new contexts to existing artworks whilst celebrating the materiality of real photographs, in real time and critically, honouring the shared democratic experience of the public gallery space.
(62) Brook Andrew
I Split Your Gaze
Courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris and Brussels
(63) Brassaï
Young couple wearing a two-in-one suit at Bal De La Montagne Saint-Genevieve
Reproduced as digital print on wallpaper
23.2 × 15.9 cm, reproduced at 24.5 × 19 cm
(64) William Yang
from the series Self Portraits
Inkjet print, edition 2 of 30
(65) Sue Ford (1943-2009)
Lyn and Carol
Silver gelatin print, edition 3 of 5
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive
(76) Harold Cazneaux (1878-1953)
Spirit of Endurance
In the following two works, a critical change of title by the artist reveals what, alone, the eye cannot see. This photograph had already achieved iconic status as a symbol of the noble Australian landscape when, following the loss of his son who died aged 21 at Tobruk in 1941, Cazneaux flipped the negative and presented the image under the new title Spirit of Endurance. The tree is now classified on the National Trust of South Australia's Register of Significant Trees.
(77) Jeff Carter (1928-2010)
The Eunuch, Marree, South Australia
Changing a title can dramatically alter the meaning of an image. This work has had several titles:
Morning Break 1964;
Dreaming in the sun at Marree, outside the towns single store 1966;
At times there is not too much to do except just sit in the sun… 1968;
'Pompey' a well known resident of Marree;
and finally The Eunuch, Marree, South Australia 2000
Under early titles, the photograph appeared to be a simple portrait of "Pompey", a local Aboriginal man in Marree who worked at the town's bakery. The final title draws viewers' attention away from what might have seemed to be the man's relaxed approach to life, and towards the violence enacted on Aboriginal communities in castrating young boys.
(82) Photographer undisclosed
Persons Of Interest – ASIO surveillance images
'Frank Hardy under awning Caption: Author Frank Hardy shelters under an awning, in the doorway of the Building Workers Industrial Union, 535 George St, Sydney, August 1955'
22 × 29 cm each
The Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) employed photographers to spy on Australian citizens. The photographs which were annotated to indicate persons of interest, were retained by ASIO along with other forms of material gathered through espionage.
(85) Luc Delahaye
L'Autre (detail)
Book published by Phaidon Press, London
In the footsteps of Walker Evans' classic candid series, Rapid Transit 1956
(94) David Moore (1927-2003)
Migrants arriving in Sydney
In 2015, Judy Annear said of this famous photograph: "It's great to consider that it's not actually what it seems." Years after the photo was published, it emerged that four of the passengers in it were not migrants but Sydneysiders returning home from holiday.
(95) Joe Rosenthal (1911-2006)
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
Digital print on wallpaper, reproduced at 20 × 25 cm
While not present at the the raising of the first flag over Iwo Jima, Rosenthal witnessed the raising of the replacement flag. Some maintain that this Pulitzer Prize winning photograph was staged, while others hold that it depicts the replacement of the first flag with a larger one.
(103) Charles Kerry (1857-1928)
Aboriginal Chief
No name or details are recorded of this sitter from Barron River, QLD. He was a member of the touring Wild West Aboriginal troupe, which staged corroborees, weapon skills and tableaux of notorious encounters between armed Native Police and unarmed local communities.
(104) Brook Andrew
Sexy and Dangerous
Computer-generated colour transparency on transparent synthetic polymer resin, included here as postcard of artwork
original 146.0 × 95.6 cm, included here at 15.3 × 10.5 cm
The artist is represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris and Brussels
(116) William Eggleston
Untitled (glass on plane)
(117) Bill Culbert
Small glass pouring Light, France
Silver gelatin print, edition of 25
Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and Hopkinson Mossman Gallery, Auckland
(118) Olive Cotton
Teacup Ballet
Courtesy Tony Lee
(119) David Moore (1927-2003)
Sisters of Charity
(120) Bernd and Hilla Becher (Bernd Becher 1931-2007, Hilla Becher 1934-2015)
Kies-und Schotterwerke (Gravel Plants)
(123) Max Dupain (Australian, 1911-1992)
Backyard, Forster, New South Wales
(138) Joyce Evans
Budapest Festival
(145) Jeff Wall
A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai)
Transparency on lightbox, included here as postcard of artwork
250 × 397 × 34 cm, included here at 15.3 × 10.5 cm
Artist is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery; Gagosian; and White Cube Gallery
(147) Masayoshi Sukita
David Bowie – Heroes
Record cover
Sukita: In gesture and gaze, Sukita's photograph for David Bowie's 1977 cover harks back 60 years to Weimar Republic artist, Erich Heckel's 1917 painting, Roquairol, which is in Bowie's art collection.
(148) Francis Alÿs
Railings (Fitzroy square)
4.03 min.
Francis Alÿs website
We posit Fitzroy Square at this point; in honour of your journey through this unorthodox flow of images.
Centre for Contemporary Photography
404 George St, Fitzroy
Wednesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm
Sunday, 1pm – 5pm
Centre for Contemporary Photography website
Exhibition: 'An unorthodox flow of images' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Melbourne Part 1
Categories: American, American Indians, american photographers, Australian artist, Australian cabinet cards and cartes de visite, Australian photography, Australian writing, beauty, black and white photography, book, colour photography, curator, digital photography, documentary photography, English artist, exhibition, existence, gallery website, Indigenous Australians, intimacy, landscape, light, Melbourne, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, postcards, psychological, quotation, reality, space, street photography, surrealism, Susan Sontag, time, video, Walker Evans and works on paper
Tags: A lunar disc as seen from the Apollo 15 spacecraft, Aboriginal Chief, Aboriginal man with Snake, aboriginal photography, Aborigine of Tasmania, affection, Alter Ego, An unorthodox flow of images, André Malraux, Andre Malraux poses in his house of the Boulogne near Paris, Andrew Hazewinkel, Andrew Hazewinkel Staring together at the stars, Anne Noble, Anne Noble Antarctic diorama, Antarctic diorama, Apollo 15 spacecraft, Arsenal vs Fenerbahce, Art History, ASIO surveillance images, Australian art, Australian artists, Australian photographer, Australian photography, Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation, Backyard Forster, Benalla, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Bernd and Hilla Becher Gravel Plants, Bernd and Hilla Becher Kies-und Schotterwerke, Bill Culbert, Bill Culbert Small glass pouring Light, Bob Marley p owhiri, Body of Joe Byrne member of the Kelly Gang, Brook Andrew, Brook Andrew I split your gaze, Brook Andrew Sexy and Dangerous, Budapest Festival, Budapest Festival 1949, camera obscura, CCP, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Charles Bayliss, Charles Bayliss Ngarrindjeri people, Charles Kerry, Charles Kerry Aboriginal Chief, Charles Woolley, Charles Woolley Truccanini, Chowilla Station, Christian Boltanski, Christian Boltanski L'ecole de la Große Hamburger Straße, Christian Thompson, Christian Thompson Emotional Striptease, Christian Thompson self portrait, Clare Rae, Clare Rae Law Library, colonial photographer's gaze, colonialism, contemporary Aboriginal identity, contemporary Aboriginal photography, contemporary Indigenous artists, contemporary Indigenous photography, Courret Hermanos Fotografía, Dan Kelly and Hart in coffins, Dark Wonder, David Moore, David Moore Migrants arriving in Sydney, David Moore Sisters of Charity, David Rosetzky, David Rosetzky Milo, decorated baskets, diorama, Djon Mundine, Emotional Striptease, Eugenio Courret, eurocentric conception of art history, Family Snapshots on Farmhouse Wall, Farm Security Administration, Fiona Foley, Fiona Foley Wild Times Call 2, Fiona Foley: River of Corn, Fitzroy Square, Five raised fingers, Francis Alÿs, Francis Alÿs Fitzroy Square, Garments 3 December - 19 March 1973, Georgie Mattingley, Gravel Plants, Harold Cazneaux, Harold Cazneaux Spirit of endurance, Harry Burrell, Harry Burrell Thylacine, Helen Grace, Helen Grace Time and motion study #1, Helen Grace Women seem to adapt to repetitive-type tasks, Hippolyte Bayard, Hippolyte Bayard Self-portrait as a Drowned Man, Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR, Hunters of Ned Kelly, I made a camera, I Split Your Gaze, Ian Dodd, Ian Dodd Wet Hair, Imaginary Museum, In a Bind, In memoriam album, In the far reaches of the familiar, Indigenous artists, indigenous people, J W Lindt Body of Joe Byrne member of the Kelly Gang, J. E. Bray, J. E. Bray Kelly Gang Armour, J. E. Bray McDonnell's Tavern opposite Railway Station, J. W. Lind Aboriginal man with Snake, J. W. Lindt, J. W. Lindt Seated Aboriginal man holding Boomerangs, Janina Green, Janina Green Self Portrait, Jeff Carter, Jeff Carter The Eunuch Marree South Australia, Jesse Marlow, Jesse Marlow Santa, Jewish School in Berlin 1938, Joe Byrne, Joyce Evans, Joyce Evans Budapest Festival, Juno Gemes, Juno Gemes One with the Land, Kate Gollings, Kate Gollings Lee family portrait, Kelly Gang Armour, kete whakario, Kies-und Schotterwerke, Kilburn Brothers, Kilburn Brothers Affection, Kirsten Lyttle, Kirsten Lyttle Twilled Work, L'Autre, L'ecole de la Große Hamburger Straße, last female Aborigine of Tasmania, last female Aborigine of Tasmania with shell necklace, Law Library, Le Musee Imaginaire, Lee family portrait, Lee family portrait before the funeral, Lee family portrait with portrait of dead father added, light and clarity, Lima Tapadas, Lisa Bellear, Lisa Bellear The Black GST Protest at Camp Sovereignty, Lisa Hilli, Lisa Hilli In a Bind, Luc Delahaye, Luc Delahaye L'Autre, Lyn and Carol, Mac Lawrence, Mac Lawrence Five raised fingers, Maori raranga technique, Maree Clarke, Maree Clarke Nan's House, Marie Shannon Pussy, Max Dupain, Max Dupain Backyard Forster, McDonnell's Tavern opposite Railway Station, Michael Riley, Michael Riley Maria, Migrants arriving in Sydney, Murray Cammick, Murray Cammick Bob Marley p owhiri, museum diorama, Nan's House, Narrabeen Baths, narrative structure, NASA Images, National Geographic, National Geographic Vol. 174, native fishing scene, Ned Kelly, Ngarrindjeri people Chowilla Station, Ngati Pikiao, Nina Dumbadze, O. Philip Korczynski, O. Philip Korczynski Unwanted Witness and Run, Olive Cotton, Olive Cotton Teacup Ballet, One with the Land, photographic diorama, plein air explorers, Portrait IV (After Arthroplasty), Raranga Whakairo, Regarding the Pain of Others, River of Corn, Robert Billington, Robert Billington Narrabeen Baths, Robert Rooney, Robert Rooney Garments, Robyn Stacey, Robyn Stacey Dark Wonder, Robyn Stacey Wendy and Brett Whiteley's Library, Sarah Brown, Sarah Brown Quietly, Seated Aboriginal man holding Boomerangs, Self-portrait as a Drowned Man, sequencing images, sequencing photographs, sequencing photography, Sexy and Dangerous, Simon Terrill, Simon Terrill Arsenal vs Fenerbahce, siri hayes, Siri Hayes In the far reaches of the familiar, Siri Hayes Plein air explorers, Sisters of Charity, Small glass pouring Light, Smoke Bubble No. 30, Spirit of endurance, Staring together at the stars, Steve Carr, Steve Carr Smoke Bubble No. 30, Sue Ford, Sue Ford Lyn and Carol, Surveillance Image, Susan Fereday, Susan Fereday Köln, Susan Sontag, Susan Sontag Regarding the Pain of Others, Tasmanian Tiger, Te Hikapuhi, Teacup Ballet, The Australian Magazine 1958, The Black GST Protest at Camp Sovereignty, The Eunuch Marree South Australia, the Great Depression, The imaginary museum, the museum without walls, Thylacine, Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger, Time and motion study #1, traces, Tracey Lamb, Tracey Lamb Surveillance Image, Tracey Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt I made a camera, Trent Parke, Trent Parke Untitled #92, Truccanini, Twilled Work, Unwanted Witness and Run, W. H. Moffitt, W. H. Moffitt Beach Scene, Walker Evans, Walker Evans Family Snapshots on Farmhouse Wall, Wendy and Brett Whiteley's Library, Wet Hair, Wild Times Call 2, Wild West Aboriginal troupe, William Yang, William Yang Alter Ego, Women of the Soviet Georgia, Women seem to adapt to repetitive-type tasks
Installation photographs of the exhibition
The installation photographs (some of the 148 images in the exhibition) proceed in spatial order, in the flow that they appear in the gallery spaces. The numbers in brackets refer to the number of the image in the field guide. The text is also taken from the field guide to the exhibition. Review to follow in the next posting.
Many thankx to the CCP for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All installation photographs © Dr Marcus Bunyan, the artists and the CCP.
Anunorthodoxflowofimages
#unorthodoxflow
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne with at right, wallpaper of J. W. Lindt's Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly Gang, hung up for photography, Benalla 1880, to open the exhibition
J W Lindt: Thought to be the first press photograph in Australia, this shows Joe Byrne, a member of the Kelly Gang, strung up for documentation days after his death, which followed the siege at Glenrowan. Byrne is displayed for an unknown photographer and the painter Julian Ashton who is standing to the left with possibly a sketchbook under his arm. Lindt's photograph captures not only the spectacle of Byrne's body but the contingent of documentarians who arrived from Melbourne to record and widely disseminate the event for public edification.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (3) J. E. Bray's Kelly Gang Armour 1880 cabinet card © Collection of Joyce Evans
J. E. Bray: "As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible." ~ Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (7) J. E. Bray's Untitled ["McDonnell's Tavern opposite Railway Station, remains of Dan Kelly and Hart in coffins"] 1880 cabinet card (right) and (8) a photograph by an unknown photographer Hunters of Ned Kelly 1880 (left)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (13) Tracey Moffatt's I Made a Camera 2003
Moffatt: Returning to J.W. Lindt's photograph – in particular the hooded central figure photographing Joe Byrne – Tracey Moffatt's picturing of children role-playing calls to mind the colonial photographer's anthropological gesture.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (14) Siri Hayes' In the far reaches of the familiar 2011 (right) and (15) Janina Green's Self Portrait 1996 (left)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (15) Janina Green's Self Portrait 1996
Green: Although celebrated for her hand coloured prints, this is in fact made with the second version of Photoshop.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (16) Georgie Mattingley's Portrait IV (After Arthroplasty) 2016 (right) and (17) Lisa Hilli's In a Bind 2015 (middle)
Mattingley: The photographer's hood has become a meat-worker's protective gear, tenderly hand-coloured.
Hilli: 'The woven material that hoods the artist's identity is a reference to collected Pacific artefacts, which are usually of a practical nature. Magimagi is a plaited coconut fibre used for reinforcing architectural structures and body adornment within the Pacific. Here it emphasises the artist's feeling of being bound by derogatory Western and anthropological labels used by museums and the erasure of Pacific bodies and narratives within public displays of Pacific materiality.' ~ Lisa Hilli 2017, in an email to the curator
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (18) Fiona Pardington's Saul 1986 (right), (19) Fiona MacDonald's 12 Artists 1987 (postcard, middle), and (20) Jack Mannix's Still Life, Footscray 2013 (left)
Pardington: A portrait of Joe Makea in his beekeeper's helmet.
MacDonald: A vintage Victorian Centre for Photography (VCP) postcard, prior to its change of name to CCP.
Mannix: A vanitas is a still life artwork which includes various symbolic objects designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (27) Wolfgang Sievers' The writer Jean Campbell, in her flat in East Melbourne 1950 (right); (26) André Kertész's Chez Mondrian, Paris 1926 (middle top); (28) Gisèle Freund's Vita Sackville-West 1938 (middle bottom); and (29) Anne Zahalka's Home #3 (mirror) 1998 (left)
Sievers: Wolfgang's inscription on the back of this particular print reads: The writer Jean Campbell in her near-eastern flat with her portrait by Lina Bryans.
Kertész: A studio is site for the artist's gathering of images.
Freund: Vita Sackville-West's writing studio was in an Elizabethan tower at Sissinghurst in Kent, overlooking her famous white garden. It remains, exactly as she left it.
Zahalka: The boundary between home and studio is often blurred when an artist has a small child.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (30) Siri Hayes' Plein air explorers 2008
Hayes: An artist's studio in the landscape.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (31) Robyn Stacey's Wendy and Brett Whiteley's Library from the series Dark Wonder 2016
Stacey: The landscape brought into the studio by a camera obscura. Robyn Stacey captures the perfect moment of light and clarity, in this instance, also turning the egg-object into an orb of light.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (33) NASA Images' A lunar disc as seen from the Apollo 15 spacecraft 1971 (top); (34) Steve Carr's Smoke Bubble No. 30 2010 (right); and (35) National Geographic Vol. 174, No.6, December 1988 (left)
Carr: Smoke filled soap orb, reminiscent of a planet.
National Geographic: The subtitle to this special 1988 issue of National Geographic, which has a holographic front and back cover is: "As We Begin Our Second Century, the Geographic Asks: Can Man Save this Fragile Earth?"
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (39) Jesse Marlow's Santa 2002
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (44) Susan Fereday's Köln 2016
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (49) W. H. Moffitt's Beach Scene, Collard #3 c. 1944
W. H. Moffitt: The bromoil process was invented in 1907 by Englishman C. Wellbourne Piper. A bromoil print is simply a black and white photograph printed on a suitable photographic paper from which the silver image is removed and lithography inks applied.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (51) Sarah Brown's Quietly 2017 (right); (52) Robert Billington's Narrabeen Baths 1994 (middle bottom); and (53) Trent Parke's Untitled #92 1999-2000 (middle top)
Brown: The salted paper technique was created in the mid-1830s by Henry Fox Talbot. He made what he called "sensitive paper for "photogenic drawing" by wetting a sheet of writing paper with a weak solution of ordinary table salt, blotting and drying it, then brushing one side with a strong solution of silver nitrate.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (55) Charles Bayliss' Ngarrindjeri people, Chowilla Station, Lower Murray River, South Australia 1886 (right) and (56) Anne Noble's Antarctic diorama, Polaria Centre, Tromso, Norway 2005 (left)
Bayliss: Water looks like glass in this colonial photograph where the subjects perform for Bayliss. "Bayliss here re-creates a 'native fishing scene' tableau, reminiscent of a museum diorama."
Noble: Water is glass in this diorama; photographed as if it were from nature.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (55) Charles Bayliss' Ngarrindjeri people, Chowilla Station, Lower Murray River, South Australia 1886
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (58) Andrew Hazewinkel's Staring together at the stars, #1 2013 (right); (59) Ian Dodd's Wet Hair 1974 (second right); (60) Juno Gemes' One with the Land 1978 (middle); (61) David Rosetzky's Milo 2017 (upper left); and (62) Brook Andrew's I Split Your Gaze 1997 (left)
Gemes: The subtitle to this photograph in some collections reads: 'waiting for the sacred fish the Dunya and Wanra to come in, Mornington Island, Queensland'.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (64) William Yang's Alter Ego 2000 (centre right)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (65) Sue Ford's Lyn and Carol 1961 (right)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (67) a stereoscope by an unknown photographer titled Affection c. 1882
Kilburn Brothers, Littleton, N. H. (publisher): In the stereoscope, the double image combines to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. Compelled to make meaning from disrupted information, the brain merges two slightly different images into a seemingly single three-dimensional image.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (68) a photograph by an unknown photographer (Courret Hermanos Fotografía – Eugenio Courret 1841 – c. 1900) titled Lima Tapadas c. 1887
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (76) Harold Cazneaux's Spirit of Endurance 1937
Cazneaux: In the following two works, a critical change of title by the artist reveals what, alone, the eye cannot see. This photograph had already achieved iconic status as a symbol of the noble Australian landscape when, following the loss of his son who died aged 21 at Tobruk in 1941, Cazneaux flipped the negative and presented the image under the new title Spirit of Endurance. The tree is now classified on the National Trust of South Australia's Register of Significant Trees.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (77) Jeff Carter's The Eunuch, Marree, South Australia 1964 (NB. note reflections in the image from the gallery)
Carter: Changing a title can dramatically alter the meaning of an image. This work has had several titles:
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (78) Lisa Bellear's The Black GST Protest at Camp Sovereignty 2006
Bellear (Minjungbul/Goernpil/Noonuccal/Kanak): Is the demonstrator leading the policeman? Is the policeman arresting this demonstrator? Or is this tenderness between two men? This is a photograph of a photograph. As was her practice, Lisa Bellear always gave the original to her subject.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (82) photographer undisclosed ASIO surveillance images 1949-1980
ASIO: The Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) employed photographers to spy on Australian citizens. The photographs which were annotated to indicate persons of interest, were retained by ASIO along with other forms of material gathered through espionage.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (83) O. Philip Korczynski's Unwanted Witness and Run 1980s
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (85) pages from Luc Delahaye's book L'Autre 1999
Delahaye: In the footsteps of Walker Evans' classic candid series, Rapid Transit 1956.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (88) Tracey Lamb's Surveillance Image #3 2015
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (89) Walker Evans' Family Snapshots on Farmhouse Wall 1936 (right) with (91) Photographer unknown Lee family portrait before the funeral c. 1920 (top left); and (92) Photographer unknown Lee family portrait with portrait of dead father added c. 1920 (bottom left)
Evans: During his celebrated work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression, Walker Evans secretly removed these photographs from the home of his subject, and seemingly hurriedly pinned them to the exterior wall of the house, and photographed them without permission.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (90) photographer unknown In memoriam album 1991
Memoriam: Double exposure enables the impossible in this personal memorial album.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (91) Photographer unknown Lee family portrait before the funeral c. 1920 (top) and (92) photographer unknown Lee family portrait with portrait of dead father added c. 1920 (bottom)
Funeral: When the family photographer arrived at the Lee home – the day of grandfather's funeral – he asked them to pose with smiles so that, in the absence of a family portrait, he could create a composite portrait, which was given to the family some days later.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (93) Kate Gollings' Lee family portrait 1986 (right) and (94) David Moore's Migrants arriving in Sydney 1966 (left)
Gollings: A studio portrait of the Lee family, some 60 years following the previous two photographs. The young man is now grandfather. Still the photographer continues to craft the family, in this case through positioning the subjects, in ways which may or may not reflect actual family relationships.
Moore: In 2015, Judy Annear said of this famous photograph: "It's great to consider that it's not actually what it seems." Years after the photo was published, it emerged that four of the passengers in it were not migrants but Sydneysiders returning home from holiday.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (98) Hippolyte Bayard's Self-portrait as a Drowned Man 1840 (right); (99) J. W. Lindt's Untitled (Seated Aboriginal man holding Boomerangs) c. 1874 (top middle); (100) J. W. Lindt's Untitled (Aboriginal man with Snake) c. 1875 (bottom middle); and (101) Charles Woolley's Truccanini, last female Aborigine of Tasmania with shell necklace 1886 (left)
Bayard: With its telling title, this staged image is the first instance of intentional photographic fakery, made in protest by Bayard because he felt aggrieved that his role in the invention of photography was unrecognised.
Lindt: For white colonialists, photography became "a vehicle for recording new and exotic lands and informing the 'unexotic' Europe of the strange landscape, flora, fauna, and people. In the case of the postcard print fashion from around 1900; to entice tourists to cruise to [exotic] places … Ultimately and blatantly however, photography became another tool of colonialism, to label, control, dehumanise and disempower their subjects who could only reply in defiant gaze at the lens controlled by someone else." ~ Djon Mundine from Fiona Foley: River of Corn, exh. cat. University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, USA, 2001
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (101) Charles Woolley's Truccanini, last female Aborigine of Tasmania with shell necklace 1886 (right); (102) Christian Thompson's (Bidjara) Untitled (self portrait) Image No 1 from Emotional Striptease 2003 (middle); (103) Charles Kerry's Aboriginal Chief c. 1901-1907 (top left); and (104) Brook Andrew's Sexy and Dangerous 1996 (bottom left)
Thompson: Contemporary Indigenous artists return the colonial photographer's gaze. "For Indigenous people the camera's central role has been in transforming but really stereotyping our cultures." In more recent times, "Indigenous people have moved behind the camera, firstly replacing the documenter, then creatively reinterpreting their photographic history." ~ Djon Mundine from Fiona Foley: River of Corn, exh. cat. University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, USA, 2001
Kerry: No name or details are recorded of this sitter from Barron River, QLD. He was a member of the touring Wild West Aboriginal troupe, which staged corroborees, weapon skills and tableaux of notorious encounters between armed Native Police and unarmed local communities.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (105) Fiona Foley's (Badtjala) Wild Times Call 2 2001 (right); (106) Murray Cammick's Bob Marley p owhiri, White Heron Hotel, April 1979 1979 (second right); and (107) Kirsten Lyttle's (Waikato, Tainui A Whiro, Ngāti Tahinga) Twilled Work 2013 (middle left)
Foley: Referencing Hollywood's representation of the Wild West, Fiona Foley stands with Seminole Indians.
Lyttle: This is woven using the Maori raranga (plaiting) technique for making kete whakario (decorated baskets). According to Mick Pendergrast, the pattern is not named, but attributed to Te Hikapuhi, (Ngati Pikiao), late 19th Century. ~ Pendergrast, M (1984), Raranga Whakairo, Coromandel Press, NZ, pattern 19.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (107) Kirsten Lyttle's (Waikato, Tainui A Whiro, Ngāti Tahinga) Twilled Work 2013 (right) and (108) Michael Riley's (Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi) Maria 1985 (left)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (109) Maree Clarke's (Mutti Mutti, Yorta Yorta, BoonWurrung) Nan's House (detail of installation) 2017 (right); (110) photographer unknown Writer, Andre Malraux poses in his house of the Boulogne near Paris working at his book Le Musee Imaginaire or Imaginary Museum 2nd volume 1953 (middle top); and (111) Clare Rae's Law Library 2016 (bottom left)
Clarke: This work is currently on display at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, as a hologram of the artist's grandmother's house, as remembered by the artist.
Unknown: 'The imaginary museum' or 'the museum without walls' (as it is often translated) is a collection reflecting Andre Malraux's eurocentric conception of art history.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (117) Bill Culbert's Small glass pouring Light, France 1997 (right) and (119) David Moore's Sisters of Charity 1956 (left)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (119) David Moore's Sisters of Charity 1956 (bottom right); (118) Olive Cotton's Teacup Ballet c. 1935 (top right); and (120) Bernd and Hilla Becher's Kies-und Schotterwerke (Gravel Plants) 2006 (left)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (120) Bernd and Hilla Becher's Kies-und Schotterwerke (Gravel Plants) 2006
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (120) Bernd and Hilla Becher's Kies-und Schotterwerke (Gravel Plants) 2006 (right) and (121) Robert Rooney's Garments: 3 December – 19 March 1973 1973 (left)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (122) Helen Grace's Time and motion study #1 'Women seem to adapt to repetitive-type tasks…' 1980, printed 2011 (detail)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (122) Helen Grace's Time and motion study #1 'Women seem to adapt to repetitive-type tasks…' 1980, printed 2011 (detail, right) and (123) Max Dupain's Backyard Forster 1940 (left)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (123) Max Dupain's Backyard Forster 1940 (right) and (124) Marie Shannon's Pussy 2016 (left)
Shannon: Also a trace of the cat.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (127) Mac Lawrence's Five raised fingers 2016
Lawrence: Watery trace.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (136) Simon Terrill's Arsenal vs Fenerbahce 2009
Terrill: The long exposure leaves only a trace of the football crowd, that has disappeared for the day.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (137) Christian Boltanski's L'ecole de la Große Hamburger Straße, Berlin 1938 1993
Boltanski: Photography records the passing or death of a particular moment. This is a photograph of a Jewish School in Berlin in 1938.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (138) Joyce Evans' Budapest Festival 1949 (top) and (139) photographer unknown Nina Dumbadze, Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR, world champion in discus throwing from the series Women of the Soviet Georgia c. 1953 (bottom)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (139) photographer unknown Nina Dumbadze, Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR, world champion in discus throwing from the series Women of the Soviet Georgia c. 1953
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (141) Harry Burrell's Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger, cover image for The Australian Magazine 1958, September, Vol 12, No 11 1958
Burrell: Published in this museum journal, there is now some contention as to whether Burrell's series of photographs of the extinct thylacine were made from life, or staged using a taxidermied animal.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (148) Francis Alÿs' Fitzroy Square 2004 (video stills)
Exhibition: 'Conflict, Time, Photography' at Tate Modern, London
Categories: American, american photographers, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, English artist, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, memory, photographic series, photography, photojournalism, portrait, psychological, quotation, reality, space, street photography, time and works on paper
Tags: Afghanistan Chronotopia, An-My Lê, An-My Lê Untitled Hanoi, Architecture of a Nuclear Test Site Kazakhstan, As Terras do fim do Mundo, Atomic Bomb Damage, Atomic Bomb Damage Wristwatch Stopped at 11-02, Atomic Bomb Dome, bombing of Dresden, Bullet-scarred apartment building, Catch-22, Chloe Dewe Mathews, Chloe Dewe Mathews Former Abattoir Mazingarbe, Chloe Dewe Mathews Shot at Dawn, Chloe Dewe Mathews Six Farm Loker, Chloe Dewe Mathews Vebranden-Molen West-Vlaanderen, Conflict Time Photography, Don McCullin, Don McCullin Shell Shocked US Marine, Dresden, Dresden After Allied Raids Germany, Dresden air raids, Empire of the Sun, Former Abattoir Mazingarbe, Hinomaru Japanese National Flag, Hiroshima, Jane and Louise Wilson, Jane and Louise Wilson Azeville, Jane and Louise Wilson Urville, JG Ballard, JG Ballard Empire of the Sun, Jo Ractliffe, Jo Ractliffe As Terras do fim do Mundo, Jo Ractliffe The Lands of the End of the World, Joseph Heller, Joseph Heller Catch-22, Kikuji Kawada Hinomaru Japanese National Flag, Kikuji Kawada Lucky Strike, Kikuji Kawada The Map, Kurchatov - Architecture of a Nuclear Test Site Kazakhstan, Kurt Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five, Luc Delahaye, Luc Delahaye US Bombing on Taliban Positions, Melted bottle, Nick Waplington, Nick Waplington We Live as We Dream Alone, photo-book, photobook, Pierre Anthony-Thouret, Pierre Anthony-Thouret Reims after the war, Points of memory, Points of memory Kikuji Kawada, Reims after the war, Richard Peter Dresden After Allied Raids Germany, Roger Fenton, Roger Fenton The Valley of the Shadow of Death, Shell Shocked US Marine, Shomei Tomatsu, Shomei Tomatsu Atomic Bomb Damage, Shomei Tomatsu Melted bottle, Shomei Tomatsu Steel Helmet with Skull Bone, Shot at Dawn, Simon Norfolk, Simon Norfolk Afghanistan Chronotopia, Simon Norfolk
Bullet-scarred apartment building, Slaughterhouse-Five, Sophie Ristelhueber, Sophie Ristelhueber Fait, Steel Helmet with Skull Bone, Steel Helmet with Skull Bone Fused by Atomic Bomb, stephen shore, Stephen Shore Tzylia Bederman, The Lands of the End of the World, The Mushroom Cloud, The Valley of the Shadow of Death, Toshio Fukada, Toshio Fukada The Mushroom Cloud, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg Kurchatov - Architecture of a Nuclear Test Site Kazakhstan, US Bombing on Taliban Positions, Vebranden-Molen West-Vlaanderen, war photography, War photography: what happens after the conflict?, We Live as We Dream Alone, Wristwatch Stopped at 11-02
The Eyal Ofer Galleries
Artists: Jules Andrieu, Pierre Antony-Thouret, Nobuyoshi Araki, George Barnard, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Luc Delahaye, Ken Domon, Roger Fenton, Ernst Friedrich, Jim Goldberg, Toshio Fukada, Kenji Ishiguro, Kikuji Kawada, An-My Lê, Jerzy Lewczyński, Emeric Lhuisset, Agata Madejska, Diana Matar, Eiichi Matsumoto, Chloe Dewe Mathews, Don McCullin, Susan Meiselas, Kenzo Nakajima, Simon Norfolk, João Penalva, Richard Peter, Walid Raad, Jo Ratcliffe, Sophie Ristelhueber, Julian Rosefeldt, Hrair Sarkissian, Michael Schmidt, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Indre Šerpytyte, Stephen Shore, Harry Shunk and János Kender, Taryn Simon, Shomei Tomatsu, Hiromi Tsuchida, Marc Vaux, Paul Virilio, Nick Waplington, Jane and Louise Wilson, and Sasaki Yuichiro.
Curators: Simon Baker, Curator Photography and International Art, Shoair Mavlian, Assistant Curator, and Professor David Alan Mellor, University of Sussex
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
The Valley of the Shadow of Death
Another fascinating exhibition. The concept, that of vanishing time, a vanquishing of time – inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five and the Japanese photographer Kikuji Kawada's 1965 photobook The Map – is simply inspired. Although the images are not war photography per se, they are about the lasting psychological effects of war imaged on a variable time scale.
While the images allow increasing passages of time between events and the photographs that reflect on them – "made moments after the events they depict, then those made days after, then months, years and so on" – there settles in the pit of the stomach some unremitting melancholy, some unholy dread as to the brutal facticity and inhumanness of war. The work which "pictures" the memory of the events that took place, like a visual ode of remembrance, are made all the more powerful for their transcendence – of time, of death and the immediate detritus of war.
Many thankx to the Tate Modern for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
"… taking its cue from Vonnegut, 'Conflict, Time, Photography' is arranged differently, following instead the increasing passages of time between events and the photographs that reflect on them. There are groups of works made moments after the events they depict, then those made days after, then months, years and so on – 10, 20, 50, right up to 100 years later."
Shomei Tomatsu (Japanese, 1930-2012)
Atomic Bomb Damage – Wristwatch Stopped at 11.02, August 9, 1945, Nagasaki, 1961
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
Steel Helmet with Skull Bone Fused by Atomic Bomb, Nagasaki, 1963
Melted bottle
Nagasaki, 1961
from the series Nagasaki 11:02
© Shomei Tomatsu
"From the seconds after a bomb is detonated to a former scene of battle years after a war has ended, this moving exhibition focuses on the passing of time, tracing a diverse and poignant journey through over 150 years of conflict around the world, since the invention of photography.
In an innovative move, the works are ordered according to how long after the event they were created from moments, days and weeks to decades later. Photographs taken seven months after the fire bombing of Dresden are shown alongside those taken seven months after the end of the First Gulf War. Images made in Vietnam 25 years after the fall of Saigon are shown alongside those made in Nakasaki 25 years after the atomic bomb. The result is the chance to make never-before-made connections while viewing the legacy of war as artists and photographers have captured it in retrospect…
The exhibition is staged to coincide with the 2014 centenary and concludes with new and recent projects by British, German, Polish and Syrian photographers which reflect on the First World War a century after it began."
Text from the Tate Modern website
"The original idea for the Tate Modern exhibition Conflict, Time, Photography came from a coincidence between two books that have captivated and inspired me for many years: Kurt Vonnegut's classic 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five and the Japanese photographer Kikuji Kawada's 1965 photobook The Map. Both look back to hugely significant and controversial incidents from the Second World War from similar distances.
Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden when what he called 'possibly the world's most beautiful city' was destroyed by incendiary bombs, and struggled to write his war book for almost 25 years. Kawada was a young photographer working in post-war Hiroshima when he began to take the strange photographs of the scarred, stained ceiling of the A-bomb Dome – the only building to survive the explosion – that he would eventually publish on August 6 1965, 20 years to the day since the atomic bomb was dropped on the city.
It may seem odd that these great works of art and literature took so long to emerge from the aftermath of the events they concern. But many of the most complex and considered accounts of conflict have taken their time. To Vonnegut's painfully slow response to the war, for example, we might add Joseph Heller's brilliantly satirical Catch-22, published in 1961, and, even more significantly, JG Ballard's memorial masterpiece Empire of the Sun, which did not see the light of day until 1984.
And today, in 2014, 100 years since the start of the First World War, it seems more important than ever not only to understand the nature and long-term effects of conflict, but also the process of looking back at the past…"
Extract from Simon Baker. "War photography: what happens after the conflict?" on The Telegraph website, 7th November 2014 [Online] Cited 09/02/2015
An-My Lê (Vietnamese-American, b. 1960)
Untitled, Hanoi
Courtesy the artist and Murray Guy, New York
Jane Wilson (British, born 1967)
Louise Wilson (British, born 1967)
Gelatin silver print, mounted onto aluminium
Azeville
Jo Ractliffe (South African, b. 1961)
As Terras do fim do Mundo (The Lands of the End of the World)
Courtesy Mark McCain collection
"At first glance, Jo Ractliffe's black-and-white shots of sun-baked African landscapes look random and bland: rocks, dirt, scrubby trees; some handwritten signs but no people. Only when reading the titles – "Mass Grave at Cassinga," "Minefield Near Mupa" – do you learn where the people are, or once were, and the pictures snap into expressive focus.
Ms. Ractliffe, who lives in Johannesburg, took the photographs in 2009 and 2010 in Angola on visits to now-deserted places that were important to that country's protracted civil war and to the intertwined struggle of neighbouring Namibia to gain independence from South Africa's apartheid rule. South Africa played an active role in both conflicts, giving military support to insurgents who resisted Angola's leftist government, and hunting down Namibian rebels who sought safety within Angola's borders.
It's through this historical lens that Ms. Ractliffe views landscape: as morally neutral terrain rendered uninhabitable by terrible facts from the past – the grave of hundreds of Namibia refugees, most of them children, killed in an air raid; the unknown numbers of land mines buried in Angola's soil. Some are now decades old but can still detonate, so the killing goes on."
Holland Cotter. "Jo Ratcliffe: 'As Terras do Fim do Mundo (The Lands of the End of the World)'," on The New York Times website May 26, 2011 [Online] Cited 12/07/2021
Kikuji Kawada (Japanese, b. 1933)
Hinomaru, Japanese National Flag
From the series The Map
© Kikuji Kawada, courtesy the artist and Photo Gallery International, Tokyo
The A-Bomb Memorial Dome and Ohta River from the series The Map
Hiroshima 1960-65
© Kikuji Kawada
Points of memory: Kikuji Kawada
My first published photo book, The Map, took me five years to complete, beginning in 1960. In late 1961 a solo show with work from the series was held at Fuji Photo Salon in Tokyo, organised in three parts.
The first featured a ruined castle that was blown up intentionally by the Japanese army during the Second World War. The second comprised photographs taken a decade after the atomic bomb exploded in Hiroshima. They showed the stains and flaking ceilings of the Atomic Bomb Dome, the only structure left standing at the heart of the detonation zone. The third part concerned Tokyo during the period of economic recovery: images of advertising, scrap iron, the trampled national flag and emblems of the American Forces such as Lucky Strike and Coca-Cola, all twisted together, their order shuffled again and again. Some appeared as a montage to be presented as a metaphor. I dare not say the meaning of it.
These works led me to attempt to create this photographic book, using the notion of the map as a clue to the future and to question the whereabouts of my spirit. Discarded memorial photographs, a farewell note, kamikaze pilots – the illusions of various maps that emerge are to me like a discussion with the devil. The stains are situated as a key image of the series by drawing a future stratum and sealing the history, the nationality, the fear and anxiety of destruction and prosperity. It was almost a metaphor for the growth and the fall.
On the back of the black cover box are written rhyming words that are almost impossible to read. The front cover shows that the words are about to burn out. Inside, the pages are laid out as hinged double fold-out spreads. The repetition of the act of opening and closing makes the images appear and disappear. I wanted to have a book design as a new object and something that goes beyond the contents. With the rich and chaotic nature of monochrome, it might be that I tried to find my early style within the illusion of reality by abstracting the phenomenon. As an observer, I would like to keep forcing myself into the future, never losing the sense of danger which emerges in the conflicts of daily life. I wish to harmonise my old distorted maps with the heartbeat of this exhibition at Tate Modern, twisting across the bridges of the centuries through conflicting space and time.
Kikuji Kawada is a photographer based in Tokyo.
"Points of memory: Kikuji Kawada: Conflict, Time, Photography," on the Tate Modern website 3 December 2014 [Online] Cited 12/07/2021
Richard Peter (German, 1895-1977)
Dresden After Allied Raids Germany
© SLUB Dresden / Deutsche Fotothek / Richard Peter, sen.
Toshio Fukada (Japanese, b. 1928)
The Mushroom Cloud – Less than twenty minutes after the explosion (4)
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
© The estate of Toshio Fukada, courtesy Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
Jerzy Lewczyński (Polish, 1924-2014)
Wolf's Lair / Adolf Hitler's War Headquarters
© Jerzy Lewczyński
Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Shell Shocked US Marine, Vietnam, The Battle of Hue
© Don McCullin
Ursula Schulz-Dornburg (German, b. 1938)
Kurchatov – Architecture of a Nuclear Test Site Kazakhstan. Opytnoe Pole
Courtesy of the artist's studio
© Ursula Schultz-Domburg
Conflict, Time, Photography brings together photographers who have looked back at moments of conflict, from the seconds after a bomb is detonated to 100 years after a war has ended. Staged to coincide with the centenary of the First World War, this major group exhibition offers an alternative to familiar notions of war reportage and photojournalism, instead focusing on the passing of time and the unique ways that artists have used the camera to reflect on past events.
Conflicts from around the world and across the modern era are depicted, revealing the impact of war days, weeks, months and years after the fact. The works are ordered according to how long after the event they were created: images taken weeks after the end of the American Civil War are hung alongside those taken weeks after the atomic bombs fell on Japan in 1945. Photographs from Nicaragua taken 25 years after the revolution are grouped with those taken in Vietnam 25 years after the fall of Saigon. The exhibition concludes with new and recent projects by British, German, Polish and Syrian photographers which reflect on the First World War a century after it began.
The broad range of work reflects the many different ways in which conflict impacts on people's lives. The immediate trauma of war can be seen in the eyes of Don McCullin's Shell-shocked US Marine 1968, while the destruction of buildings and landscapes is documented by Pierre Antony-Thouret's Reims After the War (published in 1927) and Simon Norfolk's Afghanistan: Chronotopia 2001-2002. Other photographers explore the human cost of conflict, from Stephen Shore's account of displaced Jewish survivors of the Second World War in the Ukraine, to Taryn Simon's meticulously researched portraits of those descended from victims of the Srebrenica massacre.
Different conflicts also reappear from multiple points in time throughout the exhibition, whether as rarely-seen historical images or recent photographic installations. The Second World War for example is addressed in Jerzy Lewczyński's 1960 photographs of the Wolf's Lair / Adolf Hitler's War Headquarters, Shomei Tomatsu's images of objects found in Nagasaki, Kikuji Kawada's epic project The Map made in Hiroshima in the 1960s, Michael Schmidt's Berlin streetscapes from 1980, and Nick Waplington's 1993 close-ups of cell walls from a Prisoner of War camp in Wales.
As part of Conflict, Time, Photography, a special room within the exhibition has been guest-curated by the Archive of Modern Conflict. Drawing on their unique and fascinating private collection, the Archive presents a range of photographs, documents and other material to provide an alternative view of war and memory.
Conflict, Time, Photography is curated at Tate Modern by Simon Baker, Curator of Photography and International Art, with Shoair Mavlian, Assistant Curator, and Professor David Mellor, University of Sussex. It is organised by Tate Modern in association with the Museum Folkwang, Essen and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, where it will tour in spring and summer 2015 respectively. The exhibition is also accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue from Tate Publishing and a programme of talks, events and film screenings at Tate Modern.
Press release from the Tate Modern website
Simon Norfolk
(British, born Nigeria 1963)
Bullet-scarred apartment building and shops in the Karte Char district of Kabul. This area saw fighting between Hikmetyar and Rabbani and then between Rabbani and the Hazaras
© Simon Norfolk
Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Managua, July 2004
From the series Reframing History
"Cuesto del Plomo," hillside outside Managua, a well-known site of many assassinations carried out by the National Guard. People searched here daily for missing persons. July 1978, from the series, "Reframing History," Managua, July 2004
In July 2004, for the 25th anniversary of the overthrow of Somoza, Susan returned to Nicaragua with nineteen mural-sized images of her photographs from 1978-1979, collaborating with local communities to create sites for collective memory. The project, "Reframing History," placed murals on public walls and in open spaces in the towns, at the sites where the photographs were originally made.
Nick Waplington (British, b. 1965)
From the series We Live as We Dream, Alone
Nick Waplington's deeply moving and once controversial photographs of the cells of Barry Island prison, where Nazi SS Officers were held prisoner before the Nuremburg trials, were taken in 1993, almost 50 years after the prisoners had embellished the cell walls with Germanic slogans and drawings of pin-up girls and Bavarian landscapes will be displayed. The half-century that elapsed between the photographs and the creation of their subject is grim testament to the enduring legacy of conflict…
"In 1992 I was commissioned to make work by the Neue galerie in Graz, Austria and the theme was war or "krieg" as it is in German. Graz is on the border with Yugoslavia and there was war in Yugoslavia at the time. I think they were hoping that I would make something to do with the war that was taking place between Croatia and Serbia and Bosnia. I did go to the war; you went to Zagreb and got a UN pass and went in to the warzone. It was very interesting to be taken into the warzone but ultimately I got back to England and I decided – to the annoyance of the gallery – that I was thinking about Austria instead. At the time, the president of Austria, Kurt Waldheim, had been exposed as a member of the SS and had been informing Yugoslavia during the war [World War Two] and the Austrians were very unconcerned about this. I thought I'd much prefer to make work that had the Austrians confronting their Nazi past rather than about the current conflict. I knew about the prison in Barry Island in South Wales where the SS were held before they were sent to Nuremburg for the trial and I started taking a series of photographs in the prison. It was lucky that I did because it was demolished the following year by the MOD. It's gone now. When I got there, I saw the prisoners had been drawing on the walls. They're mossy and crumbling but you can see Germanic lettering and Bavarian landscapes and women with 1940s haircuts. They are evocative and powerful given the emotive history. "
Extract from Elliot Watson. "Nick Waplington: Conflict, Rim, Photography," on the Hunger TV website, 26th November 2014 [Online] Cited 09/02/2015. No longer available online
Sophie Ristelhueber (French, born 1949)
Fait #25
71 photographs, gelatin silver prints mounted on aluminium
Object, each: 1000 x 1240 x 50mm
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 2013
Luc Delahaye (French, b. 1962)
US Bombing on Taliban Positions
Courtesy Luc Delahaye and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Bruxelles
Chloe Dewe Mathews (British, b. 1982)
Vebranden-Molen, West-Vlaanderen
Soldat Ahmed ben Mohammed el Yadjizy
Soldat Ali ben Ahmed ben Frej ben Khelil
Soldat Hassen ben Ali ben Guerra el Amolani
Soldat Mohammed Ould Mohammed ben Ahmed
From the series Shot at Dawn
© Chloe Dewe Mathews
Former Abattoir, Mazingarbe, Nord-Pas-de-Calais
Eleven British soldiers were executed here between 1915-18
Seeing what can't be seen
"This is a challenge still faced by photographers today. Two years ago, the British documentary photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews set about creating a series of her own responding to the World War One. Called Shot at Dawn, it expresses her shock upon discovering that during the conflict around a thousand British, French and Belgian troops were condemned for cowardice or desertion before being executed the following morning by firing squads consisting of comrades from their own battalions. "I never knew this happened," she tells me. "Until quite recently, no one really talked about it, because the subject was so contentious and taboo."
Researching her series, Dewe Mathews worked closely with academics to locate the forgotten places along the western front where these unfortunate combatants had been shot. She then travelled to each spot and set up her camera there at dawn, recording whatever could be seen a century after the executions had taken place.
The results are eerie and elegiac – otherwise unremarkable, empty landscapes infused with a powerful sense of mourning, outrage and loss."
Extract from Alastair Sooke. "Beyond boots and guns: A new look at the horrors of war," on BBC Culture website, 11 November 2014 [Online] Cited 09/02/2015
For more information please see the excellent article by Sean O'Hagan. "Chloe Dewe Mathews's Shot at Dawn: a moving photographic memorial" on The Guardian website [Online] Cited 09/02/2015
Six Farm, Loker, West-Vlaanderen
Private Joseph Byers
Private Andrew Evans
Time unknown / 6.2.1915
Private George E. Collins
07:30 / 15.2.1915
Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Tzylia Bederman, Bucha, Ukraine, July 18, 2012
Courtesy of Stephen Shore
Pierre Anthony-Thouret (French, 1861-1926)
Plate I
from Reims after the war. The mutilated cathedral. The devastated city.
Private collection, London
The limits of realism
"So how can photographers respond to conflict if not by employing strategies commonly found in photojournalism about war? One alternative approach is to focus less on documenting the heat of battle and more on remembrance – something that feels relevant this year, which marks the centenary of the start of the World War One.
Some of the most moving evocations of the Great War were captured by commercial photographers who arrived in northeast France in the wake of the conflict, when people began travelling to the region in order to see for themselves the extent of the devastation of local villages, towns, and cities. There was enormous appetite for images recording the destruction, available in the form of cheap guidebooks and postcards.
"This is one of the first episodes of mass tourism in the history of the world," explains [curator Simon] Baker. "There were 300 million postcards sent from the western front, for instance by people visiting the places where their relatives had died. And the photographers had to make these incredible compromises: making photographs of places that weren't there anymore."
In the case of Craonne, which was entirely obliterated by artillery, the village had to be rebuilt on a nearby site, while the ruins of the original settlement were abandoned to nature. As a result, the only way for photographers to identify Craonne was by providing a caption.
"The idea of photographing absence became really important," says Baker. "War is about destruction, removing things, disappearance. A really interesting photographic language about disappearance in conflict emerged and it is extremely powerful. How does one record something that is gone?""
Plate XXXVIII
Essay / review: 'In camera and in public' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne
By Dr Marcus Bunyan 3 Comments
Categories: American, Australian artist, Australian photography, Australian writing, black and white photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, Japanese artist, light, Marcus Bunyan, Melbourne, memory, Paris, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, review, space, street photography and time
Tags: A topographical amnesia, Amelia Groom, Aoyama park, Artlink: Art and Surveillance, ASIO, ASIO surveillance 1949 -1980, Australian art, Australian artist, Australian composer, Australian photographer, Australian photography, Australian surveillance photography, Bill Henson, Bill Henson Crowd series, Bill Henson Untitled 1980/82, blair french, Body Image and the Gay Male, Building Workers Industrial Union, butterbox, Caroline Blinder, CCP, CCTV, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Cherine Fahd, Cherine Fahd The Sleepers, Cherine Fahd Untitled, civil inattention, Communist Party of Australia, Daniel Palmer, Denis Beaubois, Denis Beaubois In the event of Amnesia the city will recall…, Diane Arbus, disciplinary systems, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Eddie Mabo, enframing, erotic ukiyo-e prints, Erving Goffman civil inattention, Erving Goffmann, Erving Goffmann facework, facework, flagellantism, Frank Hardy, french artist, gaze of the spectator, Gaze without Subjectivity, George Platt Lynes, Hall Foster Vision and Visuality, Haydn Keenan, Helen McDonald, history, in camera, In camera and in public, in public, In the event of Amnesia the city will recall…, It's Rude to Stare, Japanese art, Jeremy Bentham Panopticon prison, John Berger, John Berger and Jean Mohr, Keenan Haydn, Kohei Yoshiyuki, Kohei Yoshiyuki The Park, Kohei Yoshiyuki Untitled, L'Autre, Lacan the Gaze, Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Looking at photographs, Luc Delahaye, Luc Delahaye L'Autre, Luc Delahaye Untitled, Lust Branch, lust branch photographs, Maggie Finch, Maggie Finch Looking at Looking, male body image, Marcus Bunyan Pressing the Flesh, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish, mini DV camera, minor white, Naomi Cass, nineteenth century erotic ukiyo-e prints, No credible photographic interest, panopticon, Panopticon prison, Past-Horde-House, Paul Virilio, Paul Virilio the phatic image, pepping Toms, Percy Grainger, Percy Grainger Lust Branch, Percy Grainger Photo-skills Guide, Percy Grainger Private Matters: Do not open until 10 (ten) years after my death, Persons Of Interest, Persons Of Interest - ASIO surveillance 1949 -1980, phatic image, Photography as Crime, Photography as Crime symposium, physiognomy, Presing the Flesh: Sex, Princeton University, privacy, private, Private Matters: Do not open until 10 (ten) years after my death, private space, public, public space, public/private, recipro/city, recipro/city failure, recording eye, refentiality of the image, referentiality, repose, resistance, S/M, sadomasochistic practices, scopophilia, secret camera, seeing in the field of the other, self beating, self-reflexivity, sexual practices, Shihoko Lida, Shinjuku park, Shukan Shincho, Sir Francis Galton, sousveillance, Specimens of Composite Portraiture, stolen images, stolen photographs, surveillance, surveillance photography, Susan Sontag, Susan Sontag On Photography, Sydney, taboo, The Art of Describing, the camera, the gaze, the image and reality, The Kinsey Institute, The Park, The Photobook: A History: Volume 2, the photographic gaze, the public city, the seer and the seen, the self the subject and the city, The Sleepers, the spectacle, the spectator, the thing itself, the visible, tokyo, transforming the gaze, transgression, ukiyo-e prints, Un/aware and in re/pose, Un/aware and in re/pose: the self the subject and the city, unaware, unfocused interaction, Victor Burgin, Victor Burgin Looking at photographs, virtual reality, vision, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, voyeurism, Walker Evans, Walker Evans subway photographs, Yoyogi park
Exhibition dates: 16th September – 23rd October 2011
Curator: Naomi Cass
Artists: ASIO de-classified photos and footage, Denis Beaubois (France/Australia), Luc Delahaye (France), Cherine Fahd (Australia), Percy Grainger (Australia/USA), Bill Henson (Australia), Sonia Leber and David Chesworth (Australia), Walid Raad (Lebanon/USA), Kohei Yoshiyuki (Japan)
Persons Of Interest – ASIO surveillance 1949-1980
Author Frank Hardy in the doorway of the Building Workers Industrial Union, 535 George St, Sydney, August 1955
NAA A9626, 212
Un/aware and in re/pose: the self, the subject and the city
Keywords of essay: surveillance, surveillance photography, the gaze, the camera, photography, stolen images, voyeurism, scopophilia, public/private, disciplinary systems, facework, civil inattention, portrait, social history, persons of interest, the city, the self, subject, awareness, repose, reciprocity, the spectacle, the spectator.
"The paradox is the more we seek to fix our vision of the world and to control it the less sure we are as to who we are and what our place is in the world."
Marcus Bunyan 2011
"Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long."
"Texts that testify do not simply report facts but, in different ways, encounter – and make us encounter – strangeness."
Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub 1
Curated by Naomi Cass as part of the Melbourne Festival, this is a brilliant exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne. The exhibition explores, "the fraught relationship between the camera and the subject: where the image is stolen, candid or where the unspoken contract between photographer and subject is broken in some way – sometimes to make art, sometimes to do something malevolent."2 It examines the promiscuity of gazes in public/private space specifically looking at surveillance, voyeurism, desire, scopophilia, secret photography and self-reflexivity. It investigates the camera and its moral and physical relationship to the unsuspecting subject. Does the camera see something different if the subject is unaware? Is the viewer complicit in the process as they (repeatedly) stare at the photographs? Are we all implicated in a kind of "mass social surveillance" based on Foucault's concept of the self-regulating disciplinary society, a society that is watched from a single, panoptic vantage point (that of the omnipresent camera lens) and through the agency of the watchers watching each other?3 More on this later in the writing.
To the left
A selection of photographs from the series The Sleepers by Cherine Fahd, A4 sized black and white photographs of homeless people, asleep on the grass in a park, taken in secret from a sixth floor apartment in Kings Cross, Sydney. Fahd "went to great pains to make sure her subjects were anonymous, unidentifiable, their faces turned away"4 resulting in photographs of corpse-like bodies on contextless backgrounds – wrapped, isolated, entwined, covered in shadow, the bodies disorientated in space and consequently disorientating the gaze of the viewer.
To the right
A selection of photographs from the Crowd Series (1980-82) by Bill Henson. Snapped in secret these black and white journalistic surveillance photographs ('taken' in an around Flinders Street railway station in Melbourne) have a brooding intensity and melancholic beauty. Henson uses a flattened perspective that is opposed to the principles of linear perspective in these photographs. Known as The Art of Describing5 and much used in Dutch still life painting of the 17th century to give equal weight to objects within the image plane, here Henson uses the technique to emphasise the mass and jostle of the crowd with their "waiting, solemn and compliant" people.
"When exhibiting the full series, Henson arranges the works into small groupings that create an overall effect of aberrant movement and fragmentation. From within these bustling clusters of images, individual faces emerge like spectres of humanity that will once again dissolve into the crowd … all apparently adrift in the flow of urban life. The people in these images have an anonymity that allows them to represent universal human experiences of alienation, mortality and fatigue."6
Henson states, "The great beauty in the subject comes, for me, from the haunted space, that unbridgeable gap – which separates the profound intimacy and solitude of our interior world from the 'other'… The business of how a child's small hand appearing between two adults at a street crossing can suggest both a vulnerability, great tenderness, and yet also contain within it all of the power that beauty commands, is endlessly fascinating to me."7 His observation is astute but for me it is the un/awareness of the people in these photographs that are their beauty, their insertion into the crowd but their isolation from the crowd and from themselves. As Maggie Finch observes, it is "that feeling of being both alone and private in a crowd, thus free but also exposed."8
In the sociologist Erving Goffman's terms the photographs can be seen as examples of what he calls "civil inattention"9 which is a carefully monitored demonstration of what might be called polite estrangement, the "facework" as we glance at people in the crowd, holding the gaze of the other only briefly, then looking ahead as each passes the other.
"Civil inattention is the most basic type of facework commitment involved in encounters with strangers in circumstances of modernity. It involves not just the use of the face itself, but the subtle employment of bodily posture and positioning which gives off the message "you may trust me to be without hostile intent" – in the street, public buildings, trains or buses, or at ceremonial gatherings, parties, or other assemblies. Civil inattention is TRUST as 'background noise' – not as a random collection of sounds, but as carefully restrained and controlled social rhythms. It is characteristic of what Goffman calls "unfocused interaction.""10
This is what I believe Henson's photographs are about. Not so much the tenderness of the child's hand but a fear of engagement with the 'other'. As such they can be seen as image precursors to the absence/presence of contemporary communication and music technologies. How many times do people talk on their mobile phone or listen to iPods in crowds, on trams and trains, physically present but absenting themselves from interaction with other people. Here but not here; here and there. The body is immersed in absent presence, present and not present, conscious and not conscious, aware and yet not aware of the narratives of a 'recipro/city failure'. A failure to engage with the light of place, the time of exposure and an attentiveness to the city.
As Susan Stewart insightfully observes,
"To walk in the city is to experience the disjuncture of partial vision/partial consciousness … The walkers of the city travel at different speeds, their steps like handwriting of a personal mobility. In the milling of the crowd is the choking of class relations, the interruption of speed, and the machine."11
On a pedestal
Travelling in the city, in a machine (in this case a subway train) is the subject of the next body of work in the exhibition, represented by the book L'Autre (The Other) by French artist Luc Delahaye.12 Using a hidden camera Delahaye photographs the commuters faces in repose.
"I stole these photographs between '95 and '97 in the Paris metro. 'Stole' because it is against the law to take them, it's forbidden. The law states that everyone owns their own image. But our image, this worthless alias of ourselves, is everywhere without us knowing it. How and why can it be said to belong to us? But more importantly, there's another rule, that non-aggression pact we all subscribe to: the prohibition against looking at others. Apart from the odd illicit glance, you keep staring at the wall. We are very much alone in these public places and there's violence in this calm acceptance of a closed world."13
This is another example of Goffman's civil inattention as Delahaye stares into the distance and feigns absence long enough to get his stolen photograph (much like Walker Evans earlier photographs of people on the New York subway photographed with Evans's camera concealed inside his overcoat).14 Here the photographs are much closer cropped than Evans', allowing the viewer no escape from staring at the stolen faces. The faces seen in repose remind me of the composite portraits of criminals and the diseased, Specimens of Composite Portraiture c. 1883 by Sir Francis Galton, remembering that one of the earliest scientific functions of the camera was to document the likenesses of criminals, degenerates and other aberrant beings. We must also remember that, as Geoffrey Batchen suggests, "we are so used to the idea that we are always being watched that we might have turned our whole lives into "a grand, impenetrable pose" because we assume the camera eye is always present."15
In the physiognomy of these faces the viewer is asked to assess a person's character or personality from their outer appearance. While the viewer may be complicit in this task we must also remember that the photographer who stole these photographs has also re/posed these faces, choosing which people to secretly photograph and culling images that did not meet his conceptual project. We find no smiling or laughing faces in the book, no context is given (the photographs being tightly cropped on the body and face) and the phatic image, the one that grabs us has been manipulated, reposed and restaged for our edification. While the subject may be unaware of being photographed and their face may be in repose, this repose is as much a cultural construct as if they had known their photograph was being taken.
As John Berger and Jean Mohr write,
"The photographer choses the events he photographs. This choice can be thought of as a cultural construction. The space for this construction is, as it were, cleared by his rejection of what he did not choose to photograph."16
On the wall in front
Series of images from Persons of Interest: ASIO surveillance photographs 1949-1980 taken in secret to record the state's purported enemies (ASIO is the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Australia's national security service, which is responsible for the protection of the country and its citizens from espionage, sabotage, acts of foreign interference, politically-motivated violence, attacks on the Australian defence system, and terrorism). The photographs were not taken as art and served a purely utilitarian purpose, that of recording and documenting the conversations and movements of persons of interest to the powers that be. "The camera can't change the world, but there's an idea that it can protect us – hence surveillance, which promises to watch over us, and watch out for us, rather than merely watch."17
According to Haydn Keenan, director of the documentary Persons of Interest "Surveillance secretly records an image of someone so that the recorder so that the recorder can have advantage over the subject. Sometimes it's political, sometimes social, but the very essence of surveillance is the secret theft of the image."18 Keenan goes on to identify four types of photographic surveillance:
Photographs taken by ASIO agents who are known to the person of interest. These are particularly disconcerting because they are the kind of intimate photographs that you would see in a family album
ASIO photographer taking photographs in public, at demos and public meetings, always happening to get the person of interest "in the frame" so to speak.
Long lens photographs taken by setting up an observation post and then sitting down and waiting.
Photographs taken by what was called a 'butterbox' – a camera concealed in another object like a briefcase.19
There are thousands of these images, photographs of people in the wrong place at the wrong time. The closely cropped black and white photographs have an intimacy and anonymity to them. They build up a mental image of the changing face of what the State saw as threat: Aboriginal land rights, gay rights, women's liberation, anti-Vietnam demonstrations, youth culture, Communism – and now terrorism. These photographs evince an inherent suspicion about social issues and they had the power to dramatically alter lives (through the loss of work or home, through imprisonment). "Yet what ASIO didn't realise is that they were constructing an invaluable social history of Australian dissent as they gradually confused subversion with dissent."20 The eye of the beholder cast a dark shadow but one that would not remain private forever.
The largest series of the exhibition, The Park by Japanese photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki (1971-1979), features twenty-five luscious A3 sized black and white photographs with deep blacks, framed in thin white, wood frames. The photographs were taken in Japanese parks at night where fornicating couples use public space as private space. In most cases the couples were not aware they were being observed by voyeurs and if they were, "with exhibitionist complicity, they fornicate to an audience of peeping Toms."21 What they were definitely not aware of was that they were being photographed. As Amelia Groom observes, "The levels of complicity, performativity and victimisation of the subjects remains ambiguous."22
These informal, grainy, infra-red flash photographs, "were first published in 1972 in the popular 'secret camera' genre magazine Shukan Shincho and were not initially considered as art photography … however they also sit within a broad tradition of voyeurism in Japanese art."23 Starting in mid-distance the photographs eventually close right in on the subject matter, tightly composed on the mass of hands going everywhere, the flash over exposing various elements of the infra-red composition. The photographs are most effective when the viewer does not see the object of desire, but is positioned behind the voyeur who is hidden behind the hedge, looking. The viewpoint of the erotic act is denied, is out of shot/sight. We are literally "lined up right behind Yoshiyuki in the chain of voyeurism"24 imbibing the camera's active, desiring masculine gaze. "Looking at Yoshiyuki's images induces an uneasiness that has something to do with seeing the seer looking while seeing ourselves being seen looking."25 The photographs are multiply voyeuristic, implicating the watchers, the photographer and us.26 But they implicate us only as part of a larger cultural signification.
Penny Modra in The Sunday Age M magazine observes of these photographs that, "you are a peeping Tom peeping at peeping Toms peeping at people."27 I believe it is more than that. The definition of "peeping" is that of stealing a quick glance; to peer through a small aperture or from behind something (peering through a small aperture number is quite an appropriate metaphor since we are dealing with the photographic lens). While this may be true of the act of photography itself it is not true of the process of photography that took place to get the photographer to the point of exposure. Yoshiyuki himself "assembled the story of his association with the park voyeurs and details how the series was shot after spending six months getting to know those observers in the shrubbery."28 Much as Diane Arbus befriended the subjects in her photographs, Yoshiyuki, rather than having a furtive glance of desire, planned his series using the all seeing narrative eye trained on its target over several months. He positions his subject squarely in his line of sight. And while a voyeur "can be defined as a person who observes without participation, a powerless or passive spectator … a photographer, contemplating a nude or any sexual subject is also a voyeur, but someone with a camera, or the means to distribute a photograph, is not entirely passive or powerless."29 This power can be seen in the fame that the series has bought the photographer, his infamous series now heralded around the world.
Black and white 'snapshot' photographs from the series Lust Branch by Percy Grainger, printed between 1933 and 1942, that document his sadomasochistic sexual practices including 'self beating' which he believed were intrinsic to his creativity. The envelope containing some of the photographs was marked "Private Matters: Do Not Open Until 10 (ten) Years After My Death." The archive has the quality of forensic records as it documents, in a quasi-scientific Victorian tradition, evidence of his proclivities, his normalcy. The dark 4″ x 5″ brown-toned photographs show Grainger posing in a domestic setting (in Kansas) with a chair and also show the use of a suspended mirror to document his fustigations. Robert Nelson states that the shock of these images isn't the flagellantism itself but that we're looking at it. "The transgression isn't the perversity but the breach of privacy the composer orchestrated: he lashed himself not only with a whip but a camera."30 Personally I don't register this shock as S/M practices have regularly been part of my life. What I find more disquieting is people who try to define what is normal and what should be recorded or not and by whom and who gets to see them.
I vividly remember going to the Minor White archive at Princeton University and seeing photographs of erect penises taken by White (who was gay) and thinking why I hadn't seen these photographs before. The shock was not of seeing them but the fact that they were still hidden and had never been reproduced. Similarly, at The Kinsey Institute there are colour photographs of 1950s physique magazine body builders having full on sex, never to be seen in public. Also at the Kinsey are erotic photographs by the gay George Platt Lynes, taken for his own pleasure but never exhibited in public.31 Lynes had to resort to sending his erotic work to an early German pornographic magazine to get the photographs published. Taking these photographs is not a breach of privacy but an expression of normalcy, freedom and creativity.
"The idea of a photographic 'gaze' relates to a specific way of looking, and being looked at through the camera, and implies a certain psychological relationship of power and control."32 Foucault's analysis of the gaze as a means of surveillance, which is predatory and controlling, used to classify and discipline, allows the camera and mirror to be equated as tools of self-reflection and surveillance, where the double (created through self-reflection and surveillance) can be alienated from the self, taken away (like a photograph) for closer examination.33 Victor Burgin in his seminal 1977 essay Looking at photographs "argues that the 'recording eye' of the camera sets it apart from the subject at which it looks. The camera creates an ordering device which 'depicts a scene and the gaze of the spectator, an object and a viewing subject.'"34 The camera's gaze is not passive, it is active; it imparts its own subjectivity forming a triangular relationship between the object being photographed, camera and photographer. It has its own reality.
In a society where we are living in the age of ubiquitous networked photography35 the borders between public and private are collapsing. The idea that the gazer is able to see but not be seen; in essence, that the looking is anonymous36 is becoming a fallacy. Everything, even the watcher, becomes visible (after an ever shorter time). The separation that takes place between the looker and the looked-at is disappearing; we all know we are being watched even as we watch (and post) ourselves. "The act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle … are [becoming] one."37
I would suggest that there is no fixed definition of private and public. For example even after people sign out from Facebook the sites they visit are still tracked.38 Anything that you post on Facebook, the music you like – if you just listen to it, Facebook takes it to mean that you approve of it and distributes it too your friends. Similarly with CCTV, ASIO images, mobile phone images, what is thought of as an invasion of privacy is eventually made public through FOI, leaking, teenage girls posting online (Ricky Nixon) etc … As noted earlier someone with a camera, or the means to distribute a photograph, is not entirely passive or powerless.
Even as the photographer "lifts" the object of his attention with his machine, the camera, he "takes" a picture, "and in so doing he makes a claim for that object or that composition, and a claim for his act of seeing in the first place … transposing a particular and emphatically personal point of view"39 and making a claim for the very act of seeing itself. The thing itself (the object photographed) and the way the photographer looks at it cannot be separated. In other words, in constant oscillation, we stand behind but also in front of the metaphorical camera: "I am nothing; I see all."40
We know that we are being monitored and so we conform; even if no one is there, even if we cannot see the guard (as in Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon prison) we suspect we are being watched and so self regulate our behaviour. "And yet, our contemporary society … has ironically embraced surveillance … This is most apparent in social media where millions of people regularly upload their most intimate moments via webcam … we happily embrace the mechanisms devised to control us and turn them into a kind of freefall celebration."41
"It is though the millions of people, artists or not, who produce and publish images of themselves, their friends, surroundings and ideas in a sort of mass social surveillance (while often being tracked by the devices they are using) are implicated … in surveillance as a source of entertainment and personal gratification."42
Surveillance, sousveillance as the sight of (perverse) resistance.
These contradictory, constantly shifting contemporary information and image flows tends to erode the moral authority of any social order, patriarchal or otherwise, opening up an expanded and abstracted terrain of becoming. Images exceed, incorporate or reverse the values that are presumed to reside within them.43 These phatic images, for that is what they are – targeted images that force you to look and hold your attention – "produce a 'message-intensification' within the visual image that accentuates pictorial detail while simultaneously forcing image context and location to recede or disappear. The phatic image is at once technically-mediated, manipulable, intensified and perhaps most importantly for [Paul] Virilio de-localized."44 This can be observed in bodies of work in this exhibition: most have no image context or defined location while intensifying their message through close-up details. All have been circulated around the world for consumption. Vision is everywhere and nowhere at one and the same time.
The person who gazes is not unfamiliar with the world upon which he looks; he understands the image as seen from without as another would see it, in the midst of the visible.45 No longer is the image seen or considered from a certain spot. That vision is decentred by the networks of signifiers that come to me from the social milieu …
"The viewing subject does not stand at the center of the perceptual horizon, and cannot command the chains and series of signifiers passing across the visual domain. Vision unfolds to the side of, in tangent to, the field of the other. And to that form of seeing Lacan gives a name: seeing on the field of the other, seeing under the Gaze."46
While the self and environment are under constant surveillance in an attempt to resemble the truth, to re-assemble the referentiality of the image, it is not the breakdown of an already existing web of visuality (the disciplinary gaze of surveillance) but the wilful amending of its intent that opens up new terrains of becoming. In the public city it is the publicity of the image that will continue to thwart the controlling eye. We are all actors in a performative space, transforming the gaze and collapsing its vision into the tactile worlds of virtual reality (Ron Burnett), "engaging with ideas of pose, of masquerade, of performance, of witness and record as they transact across increasingly contingent boundaries of private and public, fact and artifice,"47 to question who we become in the necessarily public register of the photographic – the public register of memory and history.48
Each enframing of reality opens up the possibility of new discourses. The paradox is the more we seek to fix our vision of the world and to control it the less sure we are as to who we are and what our place is in the world. Does the painting emerge from the figure or the figure from the painting?
Does the image/reality emerge from the image …
Many thank to the CCP and Naomi Cass for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Text © Centre for Contemporary Photography 2011.
Felman, Shoshana and Laub, Dori. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. London: Routledge, 1992, p. 5 quoted in Fisher, Jean. "Witness for the Prosecution: The Writings of Coco Fusco," in Fusco, Coco. The Bodies That Were Not Ours. London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 227-228
Stephens, Andrew. "Who's watching you?" in The Saturday Age. 23rd September 2011 [Online] Cited 14/10/2011
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977 cited in McDonald, Helen. "It's Rude to Stare," Footnote 9 in Radok, Stephanie (ed.,). Artlink: Art & Surveillance. South Australia: Artlink, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2011, p. 25
Stephens, Op. cit.,
See Alpers, Svetlana. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. University Of Chicago Press, 1984
Anon. BILL HENSON: early work from the MGA collection. Education Resource. A Monash Gallery of Art Travelling Exhibition [Online] Cited 14/10/2011. No longer available online
Henson, Bill quoted in the exhibition catalogue. First published as a pdf for the exhibition In camera and in public. Curated by Naomi Cass. Centre for Contemporary Photography, 16 September – 23 October 2011
See Goffman, E. Behaviour in Public Places. New York: Free Press, 1963
Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991, pp. 82-83
Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993, p. 2. Prologue
Delahaye, Luc. L'Autre. Phaidon Press, 1999
Delahaye, Luc quoted in the exhibition catalogue. First published as a pdf for the exhibition In camera and in public. Curated by Naomi Cass. Centre for Contemporary Photography, 16 September – 23 October 2011
Morrison, Blake. "Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera," on the The Guardian website 22nd May 2011 [Online] Cited 14/10/2011
Berger, John and Mohr, Jean. Another Way of Telling. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982, pp. 92-93
Morrison, Op. cit.,
Keenan, Haydn. "A Job for the Dogs," in Radok, Stephanie (ed.,). Artlink: Art & Surveillance. South Australia: Artlink, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2011, p. 18
Ibid.,
Keenan, Haydn quoted in the exhibition catalogue. First published as a pdf for the exhibition In camera and in public. Curated by Naomi Cass. Centre for Contemporary Photography, 16 September – 23 October 2011
Nelson, Robert. "Snapped in the moment – forever," in The Age newspaper. Wednesday, October 5th 2011, p. 19
Groom, Amelia. "Seeing Darkness," in Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park. Institute of Modern Art pamphlet for the exhibition
Cass, Naomi quoted in the exhibition catalogue. First published as a pdf for the exhibition In camera and in public. Curated by Naomi Cass. Centre for Contemporary Photography, 16 September – 23 October 2011
Groom, Op. cit.,
Goldberg, Vicky. "Voyeurism Exposed," on Artnet magazine website. 2010 [Online] Cited 14/10/2011
Modra, Penny. The Sunday Age M magazine. September 25th, 2011
Gefter, Philip. "Sex in the Park, and its Sneaky Spectators," in The New York Times, 23rd September 2007 cited in Lida, Shihoko. "Gaze without Subjectivity: Kohei Yoshiyuki and Yoko Asakai," Footnote 4 in Radok, Stephanie (ed.,). Artlink: Art & Surveillance. South Australia: Artlink, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2011, p. 28
Goldberg, Op. cit.,
Nelson, Op cit.,
See Bunyan, Marcus, "Thesis Notes II – Research Notes and Papers: Research Notes on the Photographs from the Collection at The Minor White Archive and The Kinsey Insitute," in Pressing the Flesh: Sex, Body Image and the Gay Male. 2001 [Online] Cited 14/10/2011. Click on the menu on the left hand side
Finch, Maggie. Looking at Looking. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2011, p. 2
Burgin, Victor, "Looking at photographs," in Burgin, Victor (ed.,). Thinking Photography. London: Macmillan Education, 1987, p. 146 quoted in Finch, Maggie. Looking at Looking. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2011, p. 3
Palmer, Daniel and Whyte, Jessica. "'No credible photographic interest': photographic restrictions and surveillance in a time of terror," in Philosophy of Photography Vol. 1, No. 2, 2010, p. 182
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings in Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall (eds.,). New York: Oxford UP, 1999, pp. 833-44 cited in Boen, Ashley. "The Male Pornographic Gaze," on Boen, Ashley. Cultures of the Camera: The Male Gaze website [Online] Cited 15/10/2011. No longer available online
Parrington, Vernon Louis. Main Currents in American Thought 1927-1930. New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1930 quoted in Blinder, Caroline. ""The Transparent Eyeball": On Emerson and Walker Evans," Footnote 11 in Mosaic: a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. Winnipeg: Dec 2004. Vol. 37, Iss. 4; pg. 149, 15 pgs
Bloomberg. "Facebook in tracking suit," in The Age newspaper. Monday, October 3rd 2011, p. 3
Blinder, Caroline. ""The Transparent Eyeball": On Emerson and Walker Evans," Footnote 11 in Mosaic : a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. Winnipeg: Dec 2004. Vol. 37, Iss. 4; pg. 149, 15 pgs
Marsh, Anne. "Surveillance Art: Genre and Political Action," in Radok, Stephanie (ed.,). Artlink: Art & Surveillance. South Australia: Artlink, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2011, p. 57
King, Natalie and Fraser, Virginia. "People Who Love To Watch," in Radok, Stephanie (ed.,). Artlink: Art & Surveillance. South Australia: Artlink, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2011, p. 15
Lumby, Catharine. "Nothing Personal: Sex, Gender and Identity in The Media Age," in Matthews, Jill (ed.,). Sex in Public: Australian Sexual Cultures. St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1997, pp. 14-15
Virilio, Paul. "A topographical amnesia," in The Vision Machine. London: British Film Institute, 1994 cited in Thumlert, Kurt. Intervisuality, Visual Culture, and Education. [Online] Cited 10/10/2011. No longer available online
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Le Visible et l'invisible. Paris: 1964, p. 177 (trans. by Alphonso Lingis, Evanston, 1968, p. 134) quoted in Damisch, Hubert. The Origin of Perspective. (trans. John Goodman). Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1994, pp. 34-35
Foster, Hal (ed.,). Vision and Visuality. Bay Press, Seattle: Dia Art Foundation Discussions in Contemporary Culture, Number 2, 1988, p. 94
French, Blair. "The Things That Bill Sees," catalogue essay from the exhibition Perfect Strangers. Canberra: Canberra Contemporary Art Space, 2000, np.
Cherine Fahd (Australian, b. 1974)
From the series The Sleepers
Lightjet print
In 2003 I began photographing people I didn't know in the streets of Paris, working in a conventional street photography style. I became a prowler searching for photographic opportunities in the faces and gestures of total strangers, fascinated with capturing private moments within the public realm.
In 2005 I was living on the sixth floor of an apartment in Kings Cross, Sydney, below was a park unadorned by play equipment or even a bench. From my window I could see homeless people asleep on the grass in the middle of the day. What struck me most were their bodies resting in dappled light and gesturing in ways usually saved for private moments. The drape of their clothes and the quality of light reminded me of so many paintings I had seen.
So The Sleepers began. I photographed people asleep in the park with my mini DV camera, which allowed me to zoom in and capture detail but also allowed for a grainy image reminiscent of surveillance footage. In the sleeping posture – curled up or lying flat – people generally covered their faces, ensuring their anonymity. I liked this aspect of the work. Although I was photographing them unawares, I wasn't really intruding if I couldn't see their faces. Oddly, I have stopped working in this candid way. I wasn't sure why at the time. In retrospect I understand that it became too difficult because audiences became obsessed with whether I had permission to photograph people. I never considered asking anyone if I could take their photo. It would have defeated the whole point. People change when they know there is a camera present, better to let them be.
The moral dilemmas engulfing candid photography are not something I am interested in addressing in my work. I would much rather ponder whether their faces, or their bodies, or their gestures are cues to something more mysterious, spiritual and human.
Cherine Fahd 2011 text from the exhibition catalogue
Kohei Yoshiyuki (Japanese, b. 1946)
From the series The Park
© Kohei Yoshiyuki, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
Yosi Milo Gallery Kohei Yoshiyuki artist
Untitled 1971, 1972, 1973, 1979 from the series The Park
Edition various of 10
25 gelatin silver prints
40.64 – 50.8 cm
Courtesy the artist and Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park is presented in association with the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
Kohei Yoshiyuki's now infamous documentation of voyeurism features confronting photographs of public space clandestinely used as private space at night: Japanese parks where, in the absence of privacy, young people perform intimate acts while being watched by onlookers.
During the 1970s, young commercial photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki (a pseudonym; his real name remains unknown) frequented Tokyo's Shinjuku, Yoyogi and Aoyama parks at night with a 35mm camera, infrared film and a flash. Photographed over a decade, the series was exhibited at the Komai Gallery in Tokyo in 1979 where the images were printed life-size and exhibited in the dark while visitors used hand held torches to view the photographs. These prints were subsequently destroyed.1
Images from The Park were first published in 1972 in the popular 'secret camera' genre magazine Shukan Shincho and were not initially considered as art photography.2 However, Yoshiyuki's series also sits within a broad tradition of voyeurism in Japanese art, including eighteenth and nineteenth century erotic ukiyo-e prints and in cinema.
In 1980 Yoshiyuki published a further selection and, in 1989, he wrote about the process of getting to know the park voyeurs. In 2006 Yoshiyuki was included in Martin Parr's publication The Photobook: A History: Volume 2 as an unknown innovator, prompting Yossi Milo Gallery to track down the reclusive artist and convince him to reprint the remaining negatives for what became a highly successful exhibition in 2007.
Of the relationship between couples and voyeur Yoshiyuki wrote: 'The couples were not aware of the voyeurs in most cases. The voyeurs try to look at the couple from a distance … then slowly approach toward the couple behind the bushes, and from the blind spots of the couple they try to come as close as possible, and finally peep from a very close distance. But sometimes there are the voyeurs who try to touch … and gradually escalating – then trouble would happen.'3
Naomi Cass text from the exhibition catalogue
Amelia Groom. 'Seeing Darkness', in Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park exhibition catalogue, IMA, Brisbane, July 2011
Shihoko Iida, 'Gaze without subjectivity', Artlink: Art and Surveillance, 31: 3, 2011, p. 28
Philip Gefter, 'Sex in the Park, and its Sneaky Spectators', The New York Times, 23 Sept 2007
From the series L'Autre
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia
I stole these photographs between '95 and '97 in the Paris metro. 'Stole' because it is against the law to take them, it's forbidden. The law states that everyone owns their own image. But our image, this worthless alias of ourselves, is everywhere without us knowing it. How and why can it be said to belong to us? But more importantly, there's another rule, that non-aggression pact we all subscribe to: the prohibition against looking at others. Apart from the odd illicit glance, you keep staring at the wall. We are very much alone in these public places and there's violence in this calm acceptance of a closed world.
I am sitting in front of someone to record his image, the form of evidence, but just like him I too stare into the distance and feign absence. I try to be like him. It's all a sham, a necessary lie lasting long enough to take a picture. If to look is to be free, the same holds true for photographing: I hold my breath and let the shutter go.
Luc Delahaye, from L'Autre, Phaidon Press, London, 1999 text from the exhibition catalogue
To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder – a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.
Susan Sontag On Photography 1977
In camera and in pubic is about the relationship between camera and subject when this is fraught in some way, in particular, where the subject is not aware of being photographed, where the contract between photographer and subject has been broken.
Candid photography has been critical in the development of art and evidential photography, in revealing aspects of our history and society which have been hidden, ignored, lied about or simply abandoned. Candid photography has delivered some of the most widely regarded, potent and treasured images.
However, the camera is merely a technical device and some would even say a dumb device, which can be, and is used for contradictory and malicious ends. Candid photography has also hurt, harmed and destroyed people. There are more images in the world than ever before, and image sharing technologies in the hands of those with subversive, destructive or immature desires. Paradoxically, on one hand there is greater access to unmediated information of all genres through the internet but also a counter move of public disquiet about candid photography. Many well-regarded, indeed renowned photographers will no longer photograph at the beach, by a pubic pool, at a junior sports match, on the street. The context for photography has changed.
This exhibition looks at the physical and moral proximity of camera to subject in both historical and contemporary work by Cherine Fahd, Bill Henson, Luc Delahaye, Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, Kohei Yoshiyuki, Denis Beaubois, Percy Grainger, Walid Raad and declassified ASIO images from the late 1940s to the 1980s.
In viewing In camera… it is sobering to consider where the photographer is positioned, to viscerally experience the proximity of camera to unsuspecting subject because, importantly, the exhibition moves from candid photography taken with the sole intention of making art (Henson, Fahd, Delahaye, Leber and Chesworth, Raad and Yoshiyuki) through to the intention of surveillance. Not surprisingly, on first view, even the declassified ASIO images are compelling and beautiful.
Of the artists, the viewer might well ask, have you obtained permission to photograph? But as we all know the unprepared body and face reveals quite a different story than the figure composed for the camera. It is the non-composed figure which is the lifeblood of much art and photography.
Surveillance is in part the subject of work by Denis Beaubois, Walid Raad and to some extent in Leber and Chesworth's multi-media work. Certainly Beaubois, Leber and Chesworth consider the role of architectural space and the all-seeing eye of the state and in the latter, the eye of god within the panopticon of the domed cathedral. Walid Raad puts the tedium of surveillance in perspective when his fictional operative repeatedly forgoes his designated work to relish the setting sun.
In camera and in public exploits the form of CCP's nautilus galleries and reflects the progress of the camera turned towards an unsuspecting subject until Gallery 4 where, in the hand of Percy Grainger, the camera is turned towards himself, in an astonishing series of vintage photographs, possibly created for display in the Grainger Museum. 'In camera' and in public, indeed. In 1941 Grainger wrote, "Most museums, most cultural endeavours, suffer from being subjected to too much taste, too much elimination, too much selection, too much specialisation! What we want (in museums and cultural records) is all-sidedness, side lights, crossreferences."
We all love to stare, to linger, to see what we might have missed, and with advancing technologies, to see what is unavailable to the naked human eye, and here lies the problem. In looking at these images, are we implicated in an act of transgression?"
Text Naomi Cass September 2011 from the exhibition catalogue
Denis Beaubois (Mauritius, b. 1970)
In the event of Amnesia the city will recall…
9 mins 30 secs
This work explores the relationship between the individual and the metropolis. Twelve sites were selected around the city of Sydney where surveillance cameras are prominently placed, the locations were mapped out and the stage for this work was created. A daily pilgrimage was made to the sites for a period of three days. No permission was sought for the use of these sites. The performer arrived unannounced and carried out his actions. Upon arrival the performer attempted to engage with the electronic eye. The performer's actions were directed to the camera, which adopted the role of audience.
The primary audience was the surveillance camera (or those who monitor them). Their willingness to observe is not based upon the longing for entertainment. It stems from a necessity to assess and monitor designated terrain. Imbued with a watchdog consciousness, the primary audience scans the field for suspects, clues and leads. Like many audiences, it assesses the scene and attempts to pre-empt the plot. However this audience is extremely discerning and, ultimately, by assessing and reacting to the event it also adopts the role of performer.
Within this metropolis the walls do not have ears but are equipped with eyes. The city must understand the movements of those who dwell within its domain. To successfully achieve this it must be capable of reading its inhabitants. What can be read can be controlled in theory. Yet the city's eyes are not content following the narrative provided by its inhabitants. The city weaves its own text within the surface narrative. A paranoid fiction based on foresight.
Denis Beaubois 1997 text from the exhibition catalogue
In camera and in public represents a very different approach to this year's Festival theme of protest and revolution. Taking a look at society through the lens of the state, the street photographer, the artist and the eye of the voyeur, this exhibition curated by Naomi Cass examines the abandonment of the contract between photographer and subject.
Ranging from candid street photography through to surveillance photography, In camera explores the camera and its relationship to the subject, unaware of being photographed. From images taken in public spaces, including a series of striking faces taken on the Paris metro, the exhibition proceeds to the grainy anxiety of declassified ASIO photos from the 1960s.
Kohei Yoshiyuki's now infamous documentation of voyeurism, The Park (1970-1979), features confronting photographs of public space clandestinely used as private space at night: Japanese parks where, in the absence of privacy, young people perform intimate acts while being watched by onlookers.
At the heart of CCP galleries are Percy Grainger's extraordinary naked self-portraits from his so-called 'lust branch' collection, hand printed by Grainger between 1933 and 1942. Here the camera is turned on himself, in camera.
Cherine Fahd offers frank photographs of daytime sleeping bodies in a Kings Cross park taken from her 6th floor apartment, while Bill Henson captures hauntingly beautiful crowd scenes during the 1980s. Sonia Leber and David Chesworth secretly film from the dome of St Pauls Cathedral, London and Walid Raad impersonates a fictional operative who failing in his surveillance task, repeatedly films the sunset.
Finally, Denis Beaubois, with a playful and performative video, seeks a kind of revenge of the subject, through his attempts to engage with a number of surveillance cameras, inviting the camera to respond to pleas earnestly delivered on cue cards."
Press release from the CCP website
Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955)
Untitled 1980/82
Gelatin silver chlorobromide print
From a series of 220
Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
The great beauty in the subject comes, for me, from the haunted space, that unbridgeable gap – which separates the profound intimacy and solitude of our interior world from the 'other' and in trying to show, in this case through envisioning the crowd, how an awesome, unassailable, even monumental, beauty and grace might attend the undulating, fluid mass of a wall of people as they move toward you.
It is the contradictory nature of life and the way in which this can be suggested in art which first drew me to photograph crowds – much as this underpins my interest in any art form…
The business of how a child's small hand appearing between two adults at a street crossing can suggest both a vulnerability, great tenderness, and yet also contain within it all of the power that beauty commands, is endlessly fascinating to me.
Bill Henson 2011 text from the exhibition catalogue
Writer Frank Hardy, St Kilda, July 1964
NAA 9626, 212
Eddie Mabo, CPA district conference, Townsville, September 1965
Curated by Haydn Keenan
Selected surveillance images from a forthcoming documentary series from Smart Street Films
I discovered these images as part of my research for our documentary series Persons Of Interest which will be screened on SBS early next year. They are part of a massive archive of pictures secretly recorded by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) from 1949 onwards.
These images are not art. Unlike art these pictures have the power to alter lives dramatically. Be photographed at the wrong place and you'll find it hard to get a job, when you do you'll get the sack soon after. Appear in these images and your career will go nowhere without explanation. The eye of the beholder will cast a shadow you will not see until thirty years later when you get access to your file.
The photos create a strange world of frozen youth, high hopes and issues that were seen as subversive then but are now so integrated into the mainstream that they need explanation for Gen Y. ASIO was created to hunt down and eliminate a Soviet spy ring operating in Canberra in the late 1940s. Most of the members of the spy ring were connected with or were members of the Communist Party of Australia. For the next forty years ASIO followed everything the Party did.
The purpose of photographic surveillance is to identify Persons Of Interest in a definitive manner and to record their associations and contacts thereby building a network. Surveillance would occur during demonstrations, May Day marches and at political meetings. It would also occur at specific locations and everyone entering or leaving the location would be recorded. Each person in a photograph with an ASIO file would have an identifying number marked on the image next to them.
I have thousands of these images and what I have noticed is that one builds up a mental image of the changing face of what the State saw as a threat. What starts as the hunt for Communist spies gradually evolves into suspicion about social issues like Aboriginal land rights, youth culture, Women's Liberation, anti Vietnam, Apartheid – even amateur actors at New Theatre were thoroughly photographed. There's even a file on the Mother's Club at Gardenvale Primary School. The absurdity is evident in hindsight. Yet what ASIO didn't realise is that they were constructing an invaluable social history of Australian dissent as they gradually confused subversion with dissent.
They recorded many people, especially in the 1960s filled with youthful exuberance, high in hope and action. These people were questioning the central values of a society their parents had created. Here they are frozen in the malevolent eye of the security services. Whilst it's invasive, seedy and incompetent, even they can't diminish sunlit youth.
Haydn Keenan 2011 text from the exhibition catalogue
Percy Grainger (Australian, 1882-1961)
Private Matters: Do not open until 10 (ten) years after my death
Courtesy the Grainger Museum, The University of Melbourne
Internationally renowned Australian pianist and composer Percy Grainger (1882-1961) built new sounds by modifying old instruments. He built electronic instruments from recycled materials; he built new words, new types of garments and previously unforged links between folk and classical music. He also built the Past-Horde-House, his term for museum, in which he curated his life.
In these photographs, hand printed between 1933 and 1942, Percy Grainer turns the camera on himself (and to a lesser degree his wife Ella) to document his sexual practices, which he believed were intrinsic to his being and his creativity. These works form part of what Grainer called the 'lust branch' of his Museum.
Grainger was a sadomasochist and wrote to his partners and friends quite openly about his thoughts on sex, including what he called 'self beating'. However when in 1956 Sir Eugene Goossens, British composer and Sydney Symphony Orchestra conductor was detained for bringing pornography into the country, and was subsequently destroyed by the scandal, Grainger, like a number of prominent Australian artists, either left the country or outwardly restrained their behaviour. Consequently, Grainger sealed his 'lust branch' of the Museum, a selection of books, whips and photographs related to sadomasochistic behaviour in a travelling trunk, and left the instruction: Not to be opened until 10 (ten) years after my death (exhibited). Contained within the accompanying envelope is a kind of manifesto in the form of a letter, the pages of which are carefully bound together by hand, in which he writes, 'The photographs of myself whipped by myself in Kansas City and the various photographs of my wife whipped by me show that my flagellantism was not make-believe or puerility, but had the element of drasticness in it. Nevertheless my flagellantism was never inhuman or uncontrolled.'
While Grainger was the subject of intense, international media scrutiny, marketing and photography, to document their sadomasochistic practices Grainger had to teach himself photography. The archive he left has the quality of forensic records, consistent with the quasi scientific method he practiced in other aspects of his life. Exhibited is Grainger's self-printed, hand-made album, Photo-skills Guide in which he makes technical observations, similarly evident in and on other 'lust branch' photographs.
Grainger considered his sexual expression integral to all aspects of his life, indeed for Grainger sexuality was inseparable from his renowned life as a pianist and composer. It is probable that the 'lust branch' images were designed for display in the Museum, in a more enlightened period. In 1941 Grainger wrote, 'I have a bottomless hunger for truth … life is innocent, yet full of meaning. Destroy nothing, forget nothing … say all. Trust life, trust mankind. As long as the picture of truth is placed in the right frame (art, science, history) it will offend none.'
Naomi Cass 2011 text from the exhibition catalogue
Wednesday – Friday, 11am – 5pm
Saturday – Sunday, 12pm – 5pm
Exhibition: 'In Lady Barclay's Salon – Art and Photography around 1900' at Moderna Museet, Stockholm