ACP Photofile

The Body & Space

ACP — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 14:00:56 +1100

Editor: Ashley Crawford

The Body & Space. Sites where the battle between aspirations for perfection and the battle against decay are ever present. Inevitably, over time, only one prevails.

In the works of collaborators Robert Doble and Simon Strong the bodies that underlay their process are indeed what may be described as 'perfect'. But the sense of transformation they portray is decidedly unwholesome. The results are 'like moving slides under a microscope', says Doble in this issue of Photofile. 'Like watching a disease take over the cellular structure'.

Note from publisher - PHOTOFILE TO BE RE-LAUNCHED

It was announced in 2011 that Body & Space, Edition 91 of Photofile, was to be the last hard cover magazine published.

ACP is pleased to announce that Photofile will again be published in hard cover in 2012 and launched digitally later in the year.

Photofile has always moved with the times. From a photo-community newspaper, to an A4 periodical and ultimately a journal in the Eighties. In the Nineties Photofile began to develop into a more mainstream magazine which, in the last decade, has increased in scale and moved to newsstands.

The Australian Centre for Photography has published Photofile in one form or another for nearly three decades and during this time it has developed responsively to meet the changing needs and expectations of its ever-evolving audience. Photofile is committed to critical writing that is historically and theoretically informed, presented in a stimulating and accessible way.

We look forward to sharing the new Photofile experience with you in the coming years and reaching out nationally and internationally to a much wider community.

IMAGE © Doble & Strong Untitled Study 2010

SOLD OUT

Inside the Zombie Birdhouse

ACP — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:05:47 +1000

Editor: Ashley Crawford

Almost everyone has had a time when a photograph of a rock star has graced their bedroom wall. How many thousands of David Bowie’s or Deborah Harry’s have been thumb-nailed and blue-tacked to suburban walls. And then there are the magazines, a gazillion photographs of everyone from Billy Idol to The Fall. It's an industry in and of itself, the pure idolization of the rock legend – and it all comes down to photography.

IMAGE © The Artist

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Dennis Hopper

ACP — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 20:34:09 +1000

Industry & Myth

Editor: Ashley Crawford

In his recently published screed, you are not a gadget: a manifesto, the American internet visionary Jaron Lanier concludes that the latest wave of new technology, rather than being a realm of innovation, interactivity and radical creativity – is in fact becoming the opposite. Web 2.0 has become a world of anonymous mob behaviour and indeed, if anything, the refutation of individual accomplishment.

Lanier convincingly argues that Web 2.0 designs value the information content of the web over that of individuals. “It became fashionable to aggregate the expressions of people into de-humanised data,” he says. It is difficult to fault him on this and to make matters worse, when the average expression on Twitter or Facebook amounts to “Wow, I just blew my nose,” one wonders just how low human expression can go.

This is, in part, investigated by Larissa Hjorth in her essay – Photoshifting: Art Practice, Camera Phones and Social Media: The ramifications of new media. “It is important to be critical of social media and new technologies as a repository for transformations around intimacy and privacy,” Hjorth notes.

But it is, of course, all too easy to blame new technology on the new mediocrity. Technologies, most especially in the photomedia world, are ever-shifting. Take the technology of Miroslav Tichy, reviewed by Ingrid Periz in this issue – “His cameras were cobbled together from found materials – shoe boxes, tin cans, elastic, toilet roll cores, cigarette boxes, as well as recycled camera parts. He cut his lenses from Plexiglass, polished them with sandpaper, and finished them with toothpaste and cigarette ash.” Now that’s technology. Then there is Mark Dery’s investigation into the earliest postcards, what American writer Luc Sante has dubbed “Folk Photography”. “These sepia-toned images were the early 20th Century’s answer to the uploaded cell-phone photo,” Dery claims.

But then there is Andrew Browne’s brilliant utilisation of the wonderfully archaic technique of photogravure – a photomechanical process invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in the 1850s. Or, also in this issue, Paul Marc Joffe, who prefers the old analogue SLRs and TLRs to digital cameras. Then there is the work of Dennis Hopper, most of which was created before the advent of digital media. But even when a new technology is utilised it can have disarming results. The works featured in this issue by Patrick Pound and Stu Spence were created via mobile phones, but the results could be reminiscent of something created the century before last.

What this range suggests is the wonderful inevitability of creative process via multiple processes – from toilet rolls to photogravure through to crude Nokias and high-end Photoshopping. Despite Lanier’s concerns, quality eventually rises to the top of the ridge regardless of the manipulative process from whence it is born.

The Final Shot for this issue is an image of one of the cameras created and utilised by Miroslav Tichy, ample proof that the human drive to capture and create an image will find the right tools, with or without a hard-drive.

IMAGE © Unknown photographer Dennis Hopper

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Post-Feminism?

ACP — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:08:00 +1100

Editor: Ashley Crawford

In 1975, the date of the United Nations International Women's Year, American arch feminist guru, Lucy Lippard visited Australia, and helped galvanise artists such as Bonita Ely, Elizabeth Gower and the Women's Art Movement, which had been founded the year before. Now, in the new millennium, with the plethora of female figures working as artists, curators, critics and dealers, it's hard to imagine women having to battle to be heard. But such were the times.

Those times have, without doubt, changed. The almost militant necessity of a feminist stance in the visual arts world in the '70s was felt globally and, at least in a number of Western countries, to considerable success. That is not to say that in broader societal terms there are not major issues still to be addressed. But today, at least within the boundaries of the Australian art world, it seems the issue is not so much one of being 'feminist' in its strictest terms, as one of what it means to be 'feminine.'

These are, of course, thorny terms. The Encarta World English Dictionary definition of 'feminist' remains perfectly apt for any age: "belief in women's rights: belief in the need to secure rights and opportunities for women equal to those of men, or a commitment to securing these." However the definition of 'feminine' makes one cringe: "conventionally associated with women: conventionally thought to be appropriate for a woman or girl." Indeed, 'conventional' and 'appropriate' are two classic terms that refute what many would consider to be the core of feminist ideology.

Featuring such artists as Belle Bassin, Jane Burton, Pat Brassington, Tacita Dean, Chantal Faust, Mimi Kelly, Justine Khamara, Hannah Raisin and Kellie Wells, this issue of Photofile explores the extremes of the female as both subject and practitioner, and touches upon both the psychology and physiology of the feminine. To be sure, clich'es of the dictionary definition of 'feminine' run through many of these artists' works - lipstick, underwear, the pretty dress - but the 'feminine' in this context often takes a decidedly 'inappropriate' and 'unconventional' twist.

Kellie Wells' initially seductive video work portraying a meticulously coifed model - the artist herself - is at first beguiling. The sense that there is something wrong about the image is bluntly explained by the title: Trying to look beautiful while my hand is burning. Wells shares with Raisin and Kelly the notion of artist as (tortured) protagonist - as Phip Murray notes they have achieved the self-empowerment of taking over the maxim of 19th Century French playwright, Victorien Sardou, who was famous for advising aspiring writers to "Torture the women!"

And indeed it is difficult to look at some of the 'self-portraiture' of Mimi Kelly who at times looks overtly corpse-like, her perfect body clearly having succumbed to forms of abuse only barely concealed. Similarly Pat Brassington's strange morphings of the figure in her recent series, A Perfect Day, distend and deconstruct the body in extremis.

At their extremes, artists such as Jane Burton and Chantal Faust are no less kind to their subjects. There are times in Jane Burton's oeuvre when the body is bruised and engulfed in fetid, strangling growth and Faust's abstracted (self) portraits are entombed beneath the glass of the flat-bed scanner. This is very much the prerogative of the artist and this in itself is testimony to the potent effects of the feminist movement of the 1970s. Women have long been the muse of the male artist, but in recent decades, and most especially in the new millennium, it is women who have taken the reigns.

That is not to say the battle is over. Statistic presented on the website http://countesses.blogspot.com/ suggest that statistically women remain seriously under-presented in both editorial coverage and curatorial representation. Indeed, when Photofile recently established an editorial board, the initial list of advisors were all male - clearly the result of complacency and a matter that is being addressed as of this issue.

Whether it is the hand or the heart burning, or at times the licentious burn of the libido, the artists featured in this edition of Photofile are, amongst other things, exploring what femininity means in what might be dubbed a post-feminist (art)world.

IMAGE © Jane Burton Ivy #10 2009

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The Portrait Issue

ACP — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:21:52 +1000

Editor: Ashley Crawford

And the winner is... A funny thing happened on the way to the deadline of this issue of Photofile; three writers; almost simultaneously, wanted to write about the plethora of photographic awards that seem to have swamped the genre of late. Both Anne Marsh and Maurice O'Riordan took The National Photographic Portraiture Prize as a springboard for highly incisive discussions on the stature of photography today; the blurring lines between high and low art, between popular and elitist culture and the simple fact that photography in our national institutions is by now well and truly entrenched.

Andrew Quilty as the judge of the 2009 Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize took a more personal position, delving into the process of that most arduous of tasks - being The Judge. What is striking is the sheer multitude of artists taking up the camera to capture a person's likeness, and the seemingly never fading desire to pin the portrait. The Moran Prize of course is not exclusively portraiture, but it is intriguing that Quilty cites the landscape image of the Murray-Darling Basin, Dean Sewell's A Dry Argument as one of the more powerful images in the prize show. He quotes the famous landscape photographer, Ansel Adams, who stated: "a great photograph" is "a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety."

In this A Dry Argument becomes a portrait of the inner thoughts of any environmentally conscious Australian. Quilty sums this image up by saying it: "reveals life as it is in reality, in its purest form, unfettered by extraneous influence, manipulation or concept." Eschewing computer trickery, Sewell's is a powerful portrait of a dying land.

The environment is also the core concern of Ash Keating's work. One of the key images of his oeuvre reveals the artist dressed in rubbish on the streets of Korea; an unlikely and disturbing sight indeed and one that hammers home his commentary that excessive waste comes with considerable power. At heart Keating's photographs are documentary archives of live performances.

Bernhard Sachs' work also at times strays into documentary approach, but the bulk of his recent work - a melding of photographs taken by his father and his own - seems to border on almost fetishistic self examination. Physically Sachs is rarely the subject (occasional dinner-performances being the exception) but psychologically these works are clearly self-portraiture.

The contrast between approaches - from strict portraiture to documentary to self-exploration is given another twist in the works of Daniel Crooks, a multi-media artist extraordinaire who seems determined to manipulate time itself. Here Kirsten Rann places Crooks on a firmly modernist trajectory. This issue also introduces a new national editorial advisory board in order to ensure broader Australia-wide coverage. Accordingly I would like to welcome on board David Broker, Robert Cook, Michael Edwards, Steve Eland, Ross Wolfe and Nick Mitzevich to help us steer Photofile into broader waters.

Regulars:

Editorial
Contributors
Debut: Wiebke Brix
Previews: Dennis Hopper, Albert Tucker and Vanity Fair
Rant: Personal Space by Steve Eland

Features:

The Judge: The Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize by Andrew Quilty
Wonders in Portraitland: The National Portrait Gallery by Maurice O’Riodan
Photography Now: The National Portrait Prize 2009 by Anne Marsh
Imaginary Homelands from Singapore: by Lesley Chow

Portfolios:

Between Bacchanalia and Melancholia: Bernard Sachs by Ashley Crawford
All That Is Solid Melts: Daniel Crooks by Kirsten Rann
Trans-Garbage Aesthetics: Ash Keating by Melissa Amore

Exhibition Reviews:

Bernadette Keys' Odalisque by Ruth Learner
And the Difference Is by Leon Goh
Anne Ferran by Anne Kirker
Corin Hewitt, Seed Stage by Ingrid Periz
Narelle Autio, The Summer of Us by Virginia Baxter
The Pictures Generation by Ingrid Periz
Jill Orr by Kirsten Rann

Book Reviews:

Rhys Lee by Tom Fantl
Love Faith Death by Tom Fantl
Photography Between Poetry and Politics by Tom Fantl

IMAGE © Sam Ruttyn Brian Ebersole - Cage Fighter (detail) 2008

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Innocence UNCuT:

ACP — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 02:41:08 +1100

Editor: Ashley Crawford

When colonial-era scientists sent a platypus to England it was considered a cleverly devised practical joke. What kind of mammal lived in the water and had a duck’s beak? In many ways Australia, both in its very nature and in its culture can be looked at the same way; a bizarre melting pot of desert and forest, of cultures from here and afar.

Australia, in this issue of Photofile, is portrayed in numerous ways. Brendon Lee’s ‘remaking’ of aspects of Australian culture suggests just how malleable our own self-perception can be. As Veronica Tello notes of Lee’s imagery: “There is a distinct ethnographical quality in Lee’s work: an ability to excavate and sieve through difficult yet essential aspects of the Australian character, facets of which, Lee believes, have long been discarded.”

While Paul Batt’s work is in essence a commentary on surveillance in contemporary society his imagery also acts as an illustration of the palimpsest of cultural backgrounds that Australia carries. The genesis of the works in this issue has a somewhat mundane birth – as Batt says, the simple “observation of the constant parade of people stopping at the service station opposite my apartment.” But the results say multitudes about our racial perceptions and suspicions.

One place that will never see a parade of people is Lake Eyre. From Batt’s somewhat claustrophobic inner-city aspect, we travel to the great salt lake as captured by Murray Fredericks. Here both sky and surface meld in delirious aquamarine slashed by a bright and vibrant crimson as the sun sets over the perfect horizontal divide of heaven and earth. At other times the heat haze eradicates the horizon line entirely, creating a other-worldly cloud-like minimalist planet seemingly disconnected from any earthly environment. Almost terrifying in their minimalism, Fredericks captures the extremes of Australia’s natural environment.

Terence Hogan also uses nature as a springboard, in essence the gradual drying out of his inner-suburban garden during Victoria’s ongoing year of heat. He documents, with intimate detail, the mesmerising shifts of one small patch of garden detritus.

And as we know all too well, this dry detritus is the stuff of fire, one of Australia’s most potent weapons against human settlement. Fire and its aftermath are at the core of Samantha Small’s chilling works, what Damian Smith describes as “Gothic capitulation.”

“...in choosing a subject, which in essence is one of darkest domestic horror, indeed there is nothing to compare with death by immolation, Small has created artworks both horrific and poetic,” Smith writes.

“Horrific and poetic” could also apply to the works by our cover artist, Van Sowerwine. As Darren Tofts writes in this issue: Sowerwine’s work “synaesthetically shortcircuits our comfortable, cathartic distance from the character as our gaze becomes something far more intimate, invoking the physical, consoling caress of touch. We have gone beyond the valley of the dolls.”

The tendency of Australian artists to dwell in dark places of the imagination is perhaps unsurprising when one considers where we live – a land of desert and fire. A vision, perhaps, of hell: Samantha Small’s burnt-out home, Murray Fredericks’ barren, featureless void. And yet in these harsh and rugged environs we can carve out images of beauty and poetry.

Ashley Crawford

Regulars:

Editorial
Debut: Sonia Payes by Melissa Amore
Previews: Lou Hubbard by Amy Marjoram
Previews: John Bodin by Ashley Crawford
Rant: The B Factor by Ashley Crawford

Features:

Smoke Gets in My Eyes: Gothic Capitulation in the Work of Samantha Small, Pat Foster & Jen Berean by Damian Smith
Everything You've Got: The Body in Recent Japanese Photography by Lesley Chow
Body Trouble: Interview with Michiko Kasahara by Lesley Chow
Meaning in the Void: Murray Fredericks' Mission by Ashley Crawford

Portfolios:

Hoon Bricolage: Brendan Lee by Veronica Tello
Innocence Uncut: Van Sowerwine by Darren Tofts
Everyone Is a Suspect: Paul Batt by Ashley Crawford
(out the back): Terence Hogan by Kirsten Rann

Exhibition Reviews:

Dark Dreams + Fluorescent Flesh, SASA Gallery, South Australian School of Art
Visual Reminiscence: Anne Wilson, Arc1 Gallery, Melbourne

Book Reviews:

Facades by Tom Fantl
Harold Cazneaux by Tom Fantl
Half Light by Anne Kirker
Portraits From a Land Without People by Maurice O'Riordon
Maslen and Mehra by Maurice O'Riordan

IMAGE © Van Sowerwine Sophie 2005

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Post Punk

ACP — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:24:29 +1100

Editor: Ashley Crawford

I must say that I have had an interesting few months since the last Photofile appeared. First off there was a long lunch with the infamous performance artist Stelarc, whose latest endeavour has seen a third ear grow on his left arm. It was a warm day in a moderately crowded restaurant and when Stelarc removed his jacket a gradual hush filled the room. It's not every day that you dine with a man with three ears.

That led to talking with Stelarc's partner, photographer Nina Sellars who had been on hand to document the operation. The somewhat gory results are featured in this issue and seem strangely in tune with our CSI culture at the current moment.

Then it was off to Tokyo for eight days courtesy of Asialink to see two curated exhibitions of Japanese and Australian artists. Trace Elements at the Tokyo Opera City Gallery was co-curated by Bec Dean from Sydney's Performance Space and Shihoko Iida from Tokyo Opera City while Diorama of the City: between site and space at the Tokyo Wonder Site was co-curated by Reuben Keehan from Artspace, Sydney, and Hisako Hara of Wonder Site. Trace Elements will tour to Performance Space while Diorama will tour to Artspace in Sydney in 2009. In this issue we speak to four of the Australian artists involved - Jane Burton, Philip Brophy, Sophie Kahn and Tim Silver about their experiences.

The Asian focus continued as Maurice O'Riordan travelled through the various concurrent art events, taking in the Singapore, Taipei, Kwangju and Shanghai Biennales, finding particularly striking photographic work in Singapore with its aptly titled theme, Wonder.

Back in Australia the Melbourne Festival was in full flight and gave us an opportunity to talk to two international stars about their photographic and mixed media work - the poet laureate of punk, Patti Smith and the high-tech hip-hop maestro Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky. In many respects they could not be more extreme - Smith's work is essentially romantic in the 19th Century amateur style while Miller embraces new technologies with technofeverishness. Miller's Terra Nova Sinfonia Antarctica highlights the perils facing the icy continent while Smith's work, at heart, is a homage to her former lover and long-term collaborator Robert Mapplethorpe.

Meanwhile intrepid reporter Darren Tofts donned an Elvis Presley hair-piece and attended a debauched bacchanalia on Photofile's behalf. Hand to Mouth was a one-off art-event-happening conceived by Melbourne based artists Boo Chapple and Adele Varcoe ñ the only thing missing was Stelarc and Nina Sellars in attendance.

Regulars:

Editorial
Debut: Let it slide: Mia Salsjo by Phip Murray
Previews: Upcoming shows
Rant: Pseudo Zeitgeist by Philip Brophy

Features:

Visiting the Infirmary: Patti Smith pays homage to Robert Mapplethorpe by Ashley Crawford
Digital Debauch by Darren Tofts
Found In Translation: Australian art in Tokyo by Ashley Crawford
Why a kiss is an X? An Asian round-up by Maurice O’Riordan
The Sound of Ice: DJ Spooky in the Antarctic by Ashley Crawford

Portfolios:

Oblique Strategies: Nina Sellars by Ashley Crawford
Faustian Fantasies: Chantal Faust by Melissa Amore
Muscular Memories: Simon Terrill by Kirsten Rann

Exhibition Reviews:

Picture Paradise
Huang Xu
Victor Erice & Abbas Kiarostami: Correspondences
Derek Hart: fro and to
Chris Fortescue: naturalism08

Book Reviews:

Heide Smith: Portrait of a people: the Tiwi of Northern Australia
David Campany: The Cinematic

IMAGE © Carla Gottgens Patti Smith 2008

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Distortions

ACP — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:45:21 +1000

Editor: Ashley Crawford

Domesticity can be a strange thing indeed. As filmmaker David Lynch illustrated so wonderfully in his film Blue Velvet, there are many oddities that lie beneath the surface. Three artists in this issue of Photofile certainly seem to back this up.

In Maree Alexander's world, everyday objects take on a mysteriously erotic frisson. A jug pushes a glass into a corner with clearly erogenous intent, fruit squeezers prepare to copulate - the everyday becomes a sensual orgy. Cold, utilitarian glass and plastic are caught out in the heat of the moment, leaving one wondering what happens on the kitchen bench when we are away. "It is the animation of the inanimate that gives rise to an uncanny quality in these works," Joan Cameron-Smith notes in her essay on Alexander. "... we fulfil the moments that may follow within our minds."

Many aspects of this issue could be summarised by the Comte de Lautr'eamont in his classic surrealist novel, Les chants de Maldoror: "Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissection table."

The strangeness continues when a painter encounters two everyday objects - an old mirror and a mobile phone. While he has dabbled in other media, most especially Super 8 film during the 1980s, Peter Walsh is known foremost for his paintings. In his latest body of work he has shifted gear dramatically: the body distorted via a chance encounter in imagery reminiscent of an old circus carnie.

The carnie continues in yet another chance encounter and another weird semblance of domesticity when Lisa Roet discovered a retired circus clown and his chimpanzee, Mugsy. Roet's work - photography, video, drawing and sculpture - has long focused on the simian as subject. "Are these as they seem, images of domestic normality, of family members in their habitual repose?" William Wright asks in his essay on Roet, Primal Pursuits.

Elements of what Sigmund Freud discussed in his 1919 essay, The Uncanny abound in this issue. In essence Freud describes the Uncanny as something we do not recognise, that is frightening almost purely because we cannot easily classify the object or situation around us. Freud uses the German word unheimlich, which is clearly the opposite of heimlich (homely): "the opposite of what is familiar; and we are tempted to conclude that what is 'uncanny' is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar."

That we live in strangely conservative times is beyond dispute and, perhaps surprisingly, visual art still has enough punch to make the nightly news and the front pages of newspapers around the country. In early 2008 the painter Sam Leach gained notoriety for his self-portrait in Nazi uniform, which was entered into the Archibald prize. That was rapidly followed by the Bill Henson saga. That in turn was followed by the controversy over the cover of the July issue of Art Monthly, which featured an image by Polixeni Papapetrou of her naked daughter. The eminent art critic, Kevin Rudd, made sure to wade in on both the Henson and the Papapetrou affairs. In keeping with the times, this issue of Photofile has earned an M Rating for the imagery of Paul Quinn. Like Sam Leach's work, Quinn's is a clear warning of the inevitable atrocities of war. Only the tiniest percentage of those in uniform would be guilty of any atrocities whatsoever, but as images that have seeped out of locations such as Abu Ghraib testify, atrocities do occur during war-time.

One of the masters of the Uncanny was Goya. For most of the readers of Photofile war remains uncanny, unfamiliar except via the sterilised imagery of the television set. Goya's depictions of war are chilling and gruesome indeed, but the harsh realities of a remarkably barbaric present are depicted in ghastly mis-en-scenes by Paul Quinn. These images are not for the faint-hearted and will no doubt shock and horrify many. As Editor I do not apologise for that - one of the realities of war is rape or, at the very least, excessive abuse perpetrated on the victim and Quinn has the guts to reveal that horror in his carefully staged and truly horrible tableaux. Like the United Kingdom's Chapman Brothers, Quinn takes his que from Goya. These works should be a wake-up call to everyone.

Regulars:

Editorial
Third Degree: Anne Marsh
Previews: a critical appraisal of some of the upcoming events nationally and internationally
Debut: Andre Liew
Profile: Criterion Gallery
Interview: Through a glass darkly: Interview with Peter Walsh
Points of View: Polly Borland:Bunny
Rant: Draft Manifesto for a Panphotographic culture

Features:

Double Exposure: Post - photographic Practice by Stephen Haley

Portfolios:

Maree Alexander by Joan Cameron-Smith
Primal Pursuits: Lisa Roet by William Wright
Don't Scream Stupid: Paul Quinn by Phillipa Murray
Apocalypse Noir: Brie Trenerry by

Exhibition Reviews:

Eliza Hutchison: The Ghillie
Paul Ferman: Surface (and recent text based works
Penelope Davis: Fiction-Non-Fiction
Body Language: Contemporary Chinese photography
David Rosetzky: One in Five
A Century in Focus: South Australian Photography, 1840s–1940s
Pete Volich: 2012: E9E10

Book Reviews:

John Conomos: Mutant Media
Nathan Miller: Going Down South
Julia Schauenburg and Ben Grace: Good Old World
Australian Photojournalist

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The Erotic Imagination

ACP — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:53:25 +1000

Editor: Ashley Crawford

The body haunts this issue of Photofile. At times, as in the works of Helen Pynor, Peta Clancy, Ben Cauchi, Jacqui Stockdale and Kristian Burford, it is there in all its visceral, and sometimes gory, glory. At times it is morphing into a strange technological presence in Second Life as seen in the works of BABELSWARM. Elsewhere it is hauntingly absent; in a place where the body, and all too often bodies, are an ever-present factor - the realm of war.

There was an eerie co-incidence in the collation of articles in this issue - that of Babel - both the place and the meaning. Babylon was, in the times of the Bible, referred to as Babel and was located at a place we now call Iraq. Indeed the Tower of Babel looms large in the following pages; there is the babel in the language of war and the babel of technology. It is literally one of the key inspirations for Justin Clemens, Chris Dodds and Adam Nash, known in Second Life by their avatar names S1 Gausman, Mashup Islander and Adam Ramona respectively. It is also literally the subject of the work of Australian war artists Charles Green and Lyndell Brown. Given their options in Iraq, they chose the camera as their weapon of choice. The results highlight the extraordinary waste that all wars create, while they also capture the fascinating contrast between an ancient ziggurat and contemporary military technology.

Regulars:

Third Degree: The new director of the Monash Gallery of Art Jason Smith is brought in for questioning.
Previews: a critical appraisal of some of the upcoming events nationally and internationally
Debut: discover Joan Cameron-Smith's Houses of Thought
Profile: The adventurous approach of the Queensland Centre for Photography
Interview: Charles Green & Lyndell Brown in the war zone.
Points of View: Four perspectives on Hari Ho's White Cross Black Land
Rant: Darren Tofts gets cranky with the digerati

Features:

BABELSWARM: Kirsten Rann goes into Second Life
Prizes, prizes, prizes: Martin Jolly investigates the plethora of photography prizes across Australia

Portfolios:

Lips & Lashes: Peta Clancy by Ashley Crawford
The Presence of Absence: Ben Cauchi by Erika Wolf
Visceral Voyeur: Helen Pynor by Ashley Crawford
The Erotic Imagination: Kristian Burford by Jan Tumlir
Behind the Masks: Jacqui Stockdale by Lesley Chow

Exhibition Reviews:

A Century in Focus: South Australian Photography 1840s-1940s at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Motion Pictures at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth
Christian Marclay at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Paris Photo at the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris
Salvatore Panatteri; Untitled (to Dan Flavin) at H29, Brussels
Generation C at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney
Brisbane Sound at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane

Book Reviews:

Helen Ennis: Photography and Australia
Craig Golding Surf Club
Laurence Aberhart: Aberhart
Matt Hoyle: Encounters with the strange and unexplained

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Guilty Secrets

ACP — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:40:41 +1100

Editor: Alasdair Foster

Reality and fiction. Truth and falsehood. The authorisation of meaning. Photography seems forever caught up in the vortex that swirls between these concepts. This issue of Photofile has no formal theme, but these concerns with reality, fiction and authorisation are all here. The traditions of documentary witness are to be found in the work of the artist-run photo agency Oculi and in the harsh realties made evident in Stephen Dupont's ongoing project in Afghanistan. However, Lewis Morley is dismayed that some of the classic photojournalistic shots of the 20th century were in fact staged set-ups.

On the other hand, the imaginative fictions published here cut to the heart of very real situations. Elaine Campaner's tiny tableaux make a biting comment on Australia's detention centres and Graham Miller's dramatised portraits evoke the melancholy of middle Australia. Meanwhile, the serious business of game playing and fantasy is at the heart of Polixeni Papapetrou's practice - she discusses her approach in the main interview. And Li Guangxin's ironic saccharine portraits take a satirical look at the ambivalent mix of vanity and vulnerability felt by China's new consumer generation.

In an incisive and critical article, artist Scott Redford takes on the world’s leading curators. He argues that they have turned their back on the important cultural issues of our age in favour of cosy nostalgia. He makes a powerful argument for greater democracy in the arts and more serious attention to be paid by the art world to phenomena such as YouTube, Facebook and Second Life.

Regulars:

Editorial
The Third Degree: Mr Artlife, Andrew Frost, is brought in for questioning
Previews: a critical appraisal of some of the upcoming events nationally and internationally
Debut: discover the enchanted world of Magdalena Bors
Profile: the rise and rise of FotoFreo
Interview: Polixeni Papapetrou gets serious about dress-ups, art and her critics
Points of View: four perspectives on Tracey Moffatt's sunny new portrait of Eubena Nampitjin
Rant: Lewis Morley demands more honesty in photography

Features:

You Are the Content: Scott Redford calls the über-curators to account
Culture Warriors: David Broker gets to grips with the National Indigenous Art Triennial
The Eyes Have It: Sandy Edwards looks into the work and workings of the artist-run Oculi photo agency

Portfolios:

Lonely Ain't No Eyesore: Robert Cook embraces the deep melancholy in Graham Miller's evocation of dystopian suburbia
Narcostan: images from Stephen Dupont's award-winning documentary project in Afghanistan
Infatuation: Huang Du introduces a rising star of Chinese photomedia, Li Guangxin
Model Society: Maggie Finch finds the harsh realities of Australian politics in Elaine Campaner's tiny tableaux
First Cut: Pat Hoffie considers Martin Smith's incisive synthesis of image and text

Exhibition Reviews:

Christl Berg: Intimate Encounters at Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Inveresk
Living Elvis at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne
Daylesford Photo Biennale
Role Play at National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Selina Ou at Grant Pirrie Gallery, Sydney
New Blood: Magnum Photos 60th Anniversary Exhibition at Stills Gallery, Sydney
Transmission at South Australian School of Art Gallery, Adelaide
Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles

Book Reviews:

Photography: Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection
Matthew Sleeth: Ten Series / 106 Photographs
Christopher Day: Surprise Hard Times
Gary Carsley: Draguerrotypes

AUD $12.50

Subject to Availability
Includes GST.