Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Photobook Club - goes viral



Since holding the first Photobook Club Meetup in London September 2011 there have been Photobook Clubs launching all over the place - Auckland, Bangalore, Barcelona, Barreiro, Belfast, Coventry, Galicia, Lisbon, Madrid, Melbourne, Murcia, New York, Porto, San Sebastian, Tokyo, Toledo. And more to come...

These regular meetups are where photobook enthusiasts, photographers, gallerists, curators and other passionate individuals can chew the fat over what's new and hot in the Photobook world or simply revisit some of the golden oldies.

Initiated in the UK by photographer Matt Johnston, the Photobook Club website gives an overview of the club and with regular posts detail places and dates of meetings.
To help strengthen global connections a 'Box of Books' has been assembled which will travel around the world stopping off at each of the Photobook Club branches. 

For those of you on facebook there is a Photobook Club page and a club newsletter which you can sign up to receive by going to the club's website HERE.


William Eggleston - At War with The Obvious at The Met, NYC


William Eggleston, Untitled, (Louisiana), 1980

NEW YORK, NY.- The American photographer William Eggleston (born 1939) emerged in the early 1960s as a pioneer of modern color photography. Now, 50 years later, he is arguably its greatest exemplar. At War with the Obvious: Photographs by William Eggleston at The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents the work of this idiosyncratic artist, whose influences are drawn from disparate if surprisingly complementary sources—from Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson in photography to Bach and late Baroque music. Many of Eggleston’s most recognized photographs are lush studies of the social and physical landscape found in the Mississippi delta region that is his home. From this base, the artist explores the awesome and, at times, the raw visual poetics of the American vernacular. The exhibition celebrates the fall 2012 acquisition of 36 dye transfer prints by Eggleston that dramatically expanded the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of this major American artist’s work. It added the entire suite of Eggleston’s remarkable first portfolio of color photographs, 14 Pictures (1974), 15 superb prints from his landmark book, William Eggleston’s Guide (1976), and seven other key photographs that span his career. Eggleston wrote that he was “at war with the obvious,” a statement well-represented in works such as Untitled [Peaches!] (1970)—a roadside snapshot of rocks and half-eaten fruit thrown atop a sunlit corrugated tin roof capped with a sign announcing “PEACHES!” The exhibition features a number of the artist’s signature images, including Untitled [Greenwood, Mississippi] (1980), a study that takes full advantage of the chromatic intensity of the dye-transfer color process that, until Eggleston appropriated it in the 1960s, had been used primarily by commercial photographers for advertising product photography; and Untitled [Memphis] (1970), an iconic study of a child’s tricycle seen from below. It was the cover image of the artist’s seminal book William Eggleston’s Guide, which accompanied his landmark show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1976. As much as Eggleston was influenced by various sources, he, too, has proved influential. His inventive photographs of commonplace subjects now endure as touchstones for generations of artists, musicians, and filmmakers from Nan Goldin to David Byrne, the Coen brothers, and David Lynch.

At War with the Obvious: Photographs by William Eggleston is organized by Jeff Rosenheim, Curator in Charge in the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exhibition runs,  February 26 - July 28, 2013

William Eggleston, Untitled, 1971
 

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The Photobook - Seven independant publishers worth a look


1. A-jump books
A-Jump Books is a small publishing house dedicated to producing photo-based books that challenge convention through understatement and artistic rigor. Using the “artist’s book” concept as a model, they publish projects that are conceived of and designed as self-contained works. Web site HERE.


2. Editions Bessard
For Pierre Bessard, each book is a unique experience where all stakeholders, authors, designers have carte blanche as long as they give the best of themselves. Publishing with Bessard, his intention is to produce the classics of tomorrow. Web site HERE.


3. Errata Editions
The Errata Editions Books on Books series is an on-going publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints nor facsimiles but comprehensive studies of rare books. Each in this series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or prohibitively expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page, enabling further study into the creation and meanings of these great works of art.  Web site HERE.


4. Gost Books
GOST Books is a photography and visual arts publishers founded by Gordon MacDonald and Stuart Smith, and based in London.Web site HERE.


5. oodee
oodee is an independent publishing house focusing on contemporary photography.
Based in London, England. Web site HERE.


6. Pierre von Kleist
An artist run publisher specialising in photography. Operating from Lisbon, Portugal, Pierre von Kleist Editions are committed to the production of fresh, innovative publications.
Reflective of their author's vision and directed at the world, each of their books aims to be an urgent, genuine challenge of photography's positioning in contemporary visual culture.
Web site HERE.


7. Super Labo
Super Labo is a Kamakura, Japan based independent publishing house focused on contemporary photograph. Founded in 2009 in Tokyo by Yasunori Hoki, Publisher and Editor. Web site HERE.


Helka Aleksdóttir on her blog PHOT(O)LIA has listed a whole lot more publishers, mostly independant,  you can go there HERE.

Monday, February 25, 2013

Photographs - a sheer endless stream...


Google image search - the photograph
Since Joerg Colberg's February 11 post on his blog Conscientous EXTENDED there has been a whole lot of internet buzz on the subject of photo overload.

Joerg's opening shot was this: Let’s face it, the tedium of seeing the sheer endless stream of photographs on Tumblr, images that might or might not be properly attributed, is just depressing. We might be all photographers now, but does that mean that we all have to be mindless consumers as well? Of course, our late-capitalist culture is based on just that, on people turning into consumers without questioning what is going on.
Joerg suggests we need a new strategy, a new approach to evaluating photographs. And he talked about what is at stake? What's at stake for the photographer, what is at stake for the viewer? And he suggests we ask, does the artist risk something with their work?

It's true, there is an endless stream of photographs, made possible by digital production and digital dissemination. And this flood is indeed filtered through our capitalist culture. Photo art (all art) has been commodified and so often evaluated against a yardstick of will it sell rather than is it good.  But we don't have to join this party. We don't have to be mindless consumers at all. Or mindless producers for that matter. Surely it's a question of discriminating and knowing where to go to see work that really matters. And adopting a discriminatory strategy of one's own when it comes to making our own work.

In workshops I like to talk a lot about authenticity. Doing work for the right reasons. Well what are they? Although I don't believe that art can change to world, it can change how we look at the world. It's a way of trying to reach some understanding. At least ask the hard questions. A strategy to confront prejudice, break down stereotypes, and challenge preconceptions. Approached authentically, that is from the heart and head, work of substance can result.
Second, an authentic photograph that works is one that's got the balance between form and content just right. Decorative rubbish is all form. Impenetrable, dull, boring conceptual work is all content.
We owe it to ourselves as producers and to the world as consumers to aim to make photographs of substance. Good if not great, certainly authentic and balanced. Not too difficult if you hold on the truth that one great photograph can out-distance a stream of mindless decorative crap.

Of course in reality there aren't many great photographs at all. There is the story of Henri Cartier-Bresson in a taxi with Bill Brandt. HCB asked Brandt, how many great pictures did you make last year? Brandt replied, twelve. HCB responded, you always did exaggerate. I hope I got this story right, please correct me if I'm wrong.

You can read all of Joerg Colberg's piece HERE

A Great Photograph - Meudon, 1928 by André Kertész 

Post script - Richard Dailey, Paris based, artist, film-maker, friend and colleague made this comment: I always like the comparison of digital cameras today with pencils in the 18th century - everyone had one, but not everyone could use it like Watteau. Nice!

And this quote from Lewis Baltz adds to the discussion: In becoming inutile – no longer content-driven – photography became self-reflexive, much as painting did from the time of Manet. Photographs no longer provoke a meditation upon external phenomena, but on the conditions of their own existence. Photography became Modernist at precisely the moment when Modernism faltered, and became commodified at the moment when the intellectual prestige of the commodity is at its lowest ebb. Poor photography. On the other hand, given the recent applications of technology photographs are now quite acceptable objects for the market.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Photographers whose work I like - No19/ Douglas Ljungkvist



Originally hailing from Sweden, Douglas Ljungkvist is a Brooklyn NY based photographer. Many of his personal projects explore vernacular beauty with subtexts of time, identity, and memory. His work process is intuitive and he describes his photographic voice as urban, colorful, graphic, and quiet.

Since 2009 Ljungkvist has been working on a study of the 1940's New Jersey beach resort, Ocean Beach. His focus is on the architectural landscape and cottage interiors.
Ljungkvist's surprisingly simple Ocean Beach photographs are in fact complex, layered with metaphor and meaning. They are well worth a look. Some are posted below. To see more you can go to his website HERE.





Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Book Dummy Press - another great thing from NYC



Founded by Victor Sira and Shiori Kawasaki in 2011, with a studio located in the West Village of New York City. Bookdummypress consists of two departments - bdp studio and an online book store.
The Studio is a place for the research, creation, documentation and distribution of artistically and educational-minded projects. Collaboration is its guiding principle, with an approach that brings together the aesthetic and communicative power of books, art, photography and video. The online bookstore specializes in photobooks, artist publications, periodicals, rare and out-of-print items and other in-print titles by noted publishers.

Victor Sira Is a Venezuela-born artist/photographer whose work has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, including the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He curated the show Photography Book Dummies at the School of International Center of Photography. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, including the Rencontres d’Arles 2005 and the show De l’Europe in Luxemburg 2007. Sira is on the faculty at the ICP-Bard MFA Advanced Photographic Studies Program in New York, where he teaches the course The Book: Imaginary Studio, A Non Stop Process. 
Victor's website is HERE and his blog The Book as a Studio as an Idea as an Object

Shiori Kawasaki was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. Moved to New York in 2006 to attend International Center of Photography and studied Documentary and Photojournalism. After graduating from ICP, she has been exhibited in several group shows both in NY and Japan include Sombra Project and 126 Polaroid, which held in Yokohama Museum of Art. Her work is shown in major Japanese magazines such as Coyote, BRUTUS, GQ Japan, LAST, Tokyo Calendar, UOMO and more.
Shiori's website is HERE and her blog Draft of Ideas

The Book Dummy Press newsletter has just arrived in my inbox... for an edgy up-to-the-minute perspective from an NYC POV these guys are well worth checking out.  


Auckland - some new photographs

Here are some photographs I've made here in Auckland in the last ten days or so. Mostly within twenty minutes walking distance from my house.









Thursday, February 14, 2013

LEWIS BALTZ at ALBERTINA, Vienna


Lewis Baltz - SE Corner, Semicoa, 333 McCormick, Costa Mesa, 1974
from the series The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California.
Opening February 28, Vienna's ALBERTINA presents a major survey exhibition of the work of Lewis Baltz - artist, writer, philosopher. A protagonist of the New Topographics movement, Lewis Baltz (born 1945) not only revived American landscape photography, but also revolutionized the photographic pictorial language of the 1970s.
His black-and-white images of industrial landscapes, dreary suburban neighborhoods and wastelands introduced radically new motifs, which were debuted in the now legendary 1975 exhibition The New Topographics alongside the work of Robert Adams, Stephen Shore and Henry Wessel, Jr.

ALBERTINA says this about the show: The landscape photographs by the US-American Lewis Baltz are characterized by deserted and frequently devastated peripheries. In 1970s, he revolutionized fine-art photography with motifs that had previously not been thought worth depicting, such as industrial buildings, suburban housing developments, and wasteland.
From March 2013, the Albertina will dedicate an exhibition comprising as many as several hundreds of photographs to this artist, who was born in Newport Beach, California, in 1945. On display will be, among other works, the famous series The Tract Houses (1971) and The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine (1973-75), through which Baltz fundamentally reformed the genre of landscape photography, thereby addressing the disastrous impact of technology on society in the twentieth century.
Baltz’s imagery reveals itself as thoroughly innovative: in formally rigid photographs, such as in the series The Prototype Works (1967-76), the artist has defamiliarized architectural motifs to such an extent that they turn into almost abstract forms and surfaces. This utterly precise language of form, by which Baltz focuses on the materiality and surface textures of the objects depicted, demonstrates the influence of Minimal Art on his work. With their allusions to further artistic movements, such as Conceptual Art and Land Art, Baltz’s photographs turn out to be a play with citations and references that is to be analyzed in this exhibition.
The show will highlight outstanding works by Lewis Baltz, which apart from the aforementioned examples will include the series San Quentin Point (1981) and the colour photographs of Sites of Technology (1989-91). The Albertina seizes this exhibition as an opportunity to display exceptional photographs from its own holdings in the form of the two series The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine and The Prototype Works. Further excellent works by such artists as Robert Smithson, Ed Ruscha, Bernd & Hilla Becher, and Donald Judd will visualize artistic influences that proved to be crucial for Lewis Baltz’s work. This contextualization is meant to present the complexity of Lewis Baltz’s œuvre on the one hand and pay tribute to one of the most important photographers of the second half of the twentieth century on the other. 

The exhibition runs until 2 June 2013.

Lewis Baltz - Cray supercomputer, CERN, Geneva, 1989-91
From the series 89/91 Sites of Technology

Accompanying the show is a superbly produced catalogue, which was made in close collaboration with Lewis Baltz. The book-work reproduces such series as The Tract Houses (1969-71), Maryland (1976), Nevada (1977), Park City (1978-80), San Quentin Point (1981-83), The Canadian Series (1985), Candlestick Point (1987-89), Sites of Technology (1989-91) and several others. Essays contextualize Baltz's work in the larger art and photography climate of the 1970s, and discuss his application of cinematic strategies to photography.
You can obtain a copy by going to Amazon HERE.

Lewis Baltz - Walther König, Köln, 216 pages

MoMA NYC - The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook


Man Ray, Rayograph, 1922
This exhibition, covering the period from 1910 to today, offers a critical reassessment of photography's role in the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde movements—with a special emphasis on the medium's relation to Dada, Bauhaus, Surrealism, Constructivism, New Objectivity, Conceptual, and Post-Conceptual art—and in the development of contemporary artistic practices.
The shaping of what came to be known as "New Vision" photography bore the obvious influence of "lens-based" and "time-based" works. El Lissitzky best summarized its ethos: "The new world will not need little pictures," he wrote in The Conquest of Art (1922). "If it needs a mirror, it has the photograph and the cinema."
Bringing together over 250 works from MoMA’s collection, the exhibition features major projects by Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Germaine Krull, Gerhard Rühm, Helen Levitt, Daido Moriyama, Robert Heinecken, Ed Ruscha, Martha Rosler, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, and Walid Raad, among others. Photographic history is presented as a multivalent history of distinct "new visions," rooted in unconventional and innovative exercises that range from photograms and photomontages to experimental films and photobooks.

The show closes April 21, 2013. You can go to the MoMA site HERE

Helen Levitt - Projects (detail) 1971 - 1974

Daido Moriyama - Shimizu, 1967

Philip-Lorca diCorcia - Marilyn, 28 years old, Las Vegas, Nevada, $30. 1990-92

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

TIMEMACHINE - Issue 8, Out now...



TIMEMACHINE is an Australian produced online magazine featuring contemporary photographic projects from both Australia and around the world. The theme for issue 8 is WILD. Read fragile, yet strong, untamed, native, frantic, crazy, violent, excited, lawless, unrestrained, extravagant and disorderly.

The photographers showcased in this issue are: Aechath Adam, Maja Daniels, Tamara Dean, Gregory Elms, Matthew Newton, Clementine Schneidermann, Bryan Schutmaat and Brodie Standen. These eight photographers take the reader on a journey exploring Wild's different faces and facades. Matthew Newton documents the fight between industry trying to tame Tasmania’s wilderness and the activists passionate about protecting it. Gregory Elms takes a nostalgic look at our wild fauna whilst Brodie Standen looks at young men’s rites of passage. Maja Daniels, Clementine Schneiderman and Bryan Schutmaat search for people living on the fringe of society and Tamara Dean and Aechath Adam explore unsettling fictional worlds.
You can check-out Issue 8 of TIMEMACHINE - HERE. Go for it....


Man Ray - the L Fritz Gruber Archive at Museum Ludwig, Cologne



Since 1911, Man Ray (1890 - 1976) had been working in New York as a painter and sculptor. He is known as one of the first abstract painters in the USA, who tried to establish contact with the European Avantgarde early on. In 1915, he turned towards photography, worked as a filmmaker and painter, and was a co-founder of the New York Dada section in 1917. In Paris, he joined the Surrealists, while also taking up commercial assignments for fashion- and portrait photography. At the outbreak of war, he moved back to the USA and didn't return to Paris until 1951. Fritz Gruber got in contact with Man Ray in the 1950s, and he and his wife Renate kept up a cordial friendship with the artist until his death. This friendship resulted in a wide-ranging collection of materials relating to him, including works of art, documents (correspondence etc.), objects, and signed exhibition catalogues.

The Museum Ludwig acquired the Man Ray collection of Renate and L. Fritz Gruber in September 2012. A special feature of the collection is a set of fifty contact prints of portraits of Lee Miller, Jean Cocteau, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, and many other important artistic figures of the twentieth century, each inscribed by Man Ray with numbers indicating his rating of the subject. The collection also features a series of thirty-seven contact prints of rayographs (as he referred to photograms) that are of considerable importance to students of Man Ray's work. This exceptional, highly personal collection of items relating to one of the twentieth century's greatest photographic artists is going on display in the Prints and Drawings gallery, along with portrait photographs by Man Ray from the Museum Ludwig's collection. The exhibition runs until May 5. You can go to the Museum Ludwig site HERE.

L. Fritz Gruber (Hg./editor), Man Ray: Portraits, Gütersloh 1963

Friday, February 8, 2013

Paris Photo - LA


Katy Grannan, Anonymous, Bakersfield, 2011
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Paris Photo Los Angeles has announced the first confirmed gallery participants, solo artist presentations and programming details for its inaugural Los Angeles, California edition. Sound and Vision Programming Series will include conversations with artists, screenings of artist films and videos, and after-hours talks. Speakers will include artists Doug Aitken, Gregory Crewdson, Sharon Lockhart, and Catherine Opie.

 Paris Photo, the world's most celebrated art fair for works created in the photographic medium, will take place at Paramount Pictures Studios offering Paris Photo Los Angeles the ideal setting to explore how artists have been and are using photography and moving images in their work in the 20th and 21st centuries. The unique creative environment of Los Angeles, where Hollywood and film inform contemporary art and culture, offers an extremely dynamic context for Paris Photo that is only enhanced by its close proximity to San Francisco, Latin America and Asian art markets. A majority of gallery exhibitors will present group shows, situated among three of Paramount Pictures' legendary soundstages, which will also house special sections: Moving Images, Young Galleries, and Complete Series.

The addition of the Moving Images section to Paris Photo Los Angeles pushes the boundaries between photography and moving images by showcasing film and video.These artworks will be selected by independent curator Douglas Fogle.The Young Galleries section welcomes presentations of photography and still images by galleries that have been open less than six years. As more prominent public and private institutions move to collect full sets of photographs, the Complete Series section offers a limited number of galleries the opportunity to present one exceptional series of photographs by a single artist. The Paris Photo Selection Committee will announce the galleries participating in these sections at the beginning of March. Beyond the soundstages, the New York Street Backlot section is dedicated to the presentation of approximately 20 cutting-edge solo shows exhibited in a one-of-a-kind setting on Paramount's backlot, a replica of New York City's streets. Each selected gallery will have an exclusive movie set within the section in which to create a solo exhibition.
A critical part of Paris Photo Los Angeles is the public programming, organized by Douglas Fogle, and titled Sound and Vision. Composed of a series of artist conversations, screenings of moving image works, and a raucous set of Pecha Kucha presentations (Japanese for 'chit chat'), this program offers visitors multiple intellectual perspectives on the use of images—both moving and still—in contemporary culture. Artist participants will include Doug Aitken, Gregory Crewdson, Sharon Lockhart, and Catherine Opie. Bringing together pairs of notable contemporary artists, the Conversations will allow for a free-wheeling discussion of the practice of image-making. The second aspect of Sound and Vision is the Screenings, a series of presentations of artist films and videos. All programs will take place in Paramount's Sherry Lansing Theater. Finally, attendees are invited for no holds barred rounds of Pecha Kucha presentations by a far ranging list of curators, critics, artists, filmmakers, writers, and thinkers from Los Angeles and beyond. This adaptation of Pecha Kucha will invite speakers to deliver a presentation of 20 images for 20 seconds on a topic of their choosing and will range from serious to playful.

What's on in Los Angeles during Paris Photo Many significant exhibitions reflecting strong themes within Paris Photo Los Angeles will be on view in the city during the fair: Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto and In Focus: Ed Ruscha, at the Getty Museum; Stanley Kubrick at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Urs Fischer at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), and Llyn Foulkes at the Hammer Museum. Also on view in San Francisco will be Garry Winogrand at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

The first edition of Paris Photo Los Angeles will take place from April 25th - 28th in the heart of the city at Paramount Pictures Studios. You can go to the Paris Photo LA website HERE


Thursday, February 7, 2013

Art lingo - enough already!


Interrogate - to ask questions aggressively

If I hear the word interrogate one more time in an art context I think I'll go and slit my wrists. Or perhaps the throat of the poor fool who wrote it. I'm fed up with this feckless gallerist nonsense, foisted on us in an attempt to shore up the gallerists' perceived position of superiority, effectively saying, hey, we've got the knowledge and therefore got the power. 
It's time they stopped using these noxious puff words!

This use of curatorial non-language has been going on for a while. Seems I'm not the only one who's over it. Writer Christina Patterson of The Independent (5 February 2013) is on to it and so is Andy Beckett at the guardian (27 January 2013). Robert Hughes would turn in his grave and Geoff Dyer must be laughing himself silly.

I particularly liked this comment from Christina Patterson: you might, for example, wonder why they seem to think it's better to use the word "notion" than "idea", or the word "narrative" than "story", or the word "interrogate" than "ask". You might wonder why every piece of art they write about seems to "subvert" something, or "disrupt" something, or "deconstruct" something, and why what it seems to "subvert" or "disrupt" often seems to be "traditional hierarchies". You might wonder what those "traditional hierarchies" were. You might, for example, want to ask if they were the "hierarchies" of a world where art is bought by hedge funders as an investment, and a brand. But if you looked at the art that was meant to be "subverting traditional hierarchies", or "interrogating capitalism", you might wonder why, if the artist hated capitalism so much, the work was so often for sale.

What's more, the definition of interrogate, which I tend to associate with former East German Stasi tactics, is to ask questions closely, aggressively, or formally, - in other words to beat the shit out of somebody. Interrogation implies that there is something of substance to be said or revealed. Sadly, the art in question, is so often shallow, boring, empty, and downright dull. With nothing worth saying.


You can read what The Independent has to say HERE and the guardian HERE



John Fields RIP


Helvi, Mt Eden Auckland, 1970

My friend and photographer John Fields died this Monday last at his home in Australia, Guyra NSW. I'd first met John here in Auckland sometime in the 60's. It was in the photobook crowded living room of PhotoForum founder John Turner where photo buzz flowed as easily as the wine. John Fields struck me as an affable, easy going sort of man, with a razor sharp refined eye, yet modest in talk of his achievements. I admired him as both a man and a photographer of depth. He opened my eyes to the limitless possibilities of photography.

John Fields  was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1938. He arrived here in Auckland in 1966 to take up a position at the University of Auckland’s medical school.
Undaunted by the cultural vacuum that prevailed at the time, John photographed prodigiously, working in both 35mm and 5x7 and 10x8 view camera formats.  Through his open-hearted generosity John did much to raise the standards of photography in New Zealand. In 1973 his collaboration with the architectural historian John Stacpoole, Victorian Auckland, was published and is a major achievement.
John moved to Sydney, New South Wales, where he taught workshops at the Australian Centre for Photography, then became Chief Photographer at the Australian Museum. In 1987, living in Armidale, NSW, he became Photographer-in-Charge at the Media Resources Unit of the University of New England.

John was a great traveler. Back and forth from Australia. Often back to Thames in the Coromandel, a place he loved where in the 60's and 70's he'd photographed the town and its gold mining past. More often than not John would end up at my place with a bottle or two of head ripping Aussie red and banter about our work and the photoworld.
John was a lively letter writer too. In his last letter to me dated January 3, he talked of his pleasant family Christmas, moments of madness and his plans for 2013.

His inscription to me in his Victorian Auckland book reads, To Harvey, One who knows and understands the sense of journey. In truth, it was John who understood the sense of journey more than most. John my friend, wherever you are, you will be missed.

Father and daughter, East Cape, 1969

Sawyer House, Brown Street, East Side, Thames, 1973

133 Dominion Road, Auckland, 1974

John Allen, Rangitoto, Auckland, 1974

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

HARVEY BENGE - Website update!

For years I griped about having a website that I didn't know how to change and update. Then I discovered the good people at VIRB who provided me with a site and simple template that was super easy to negotiate and change. Of course predictably this seldom happens. However, today I took the plunge and have added recent work. And that feels good! Below are four additions (of editions) ...you may wish to have a look...HERE.