Spring is in the air and the days are staying brighter for
longer. Now is the time to be hitting the streets or the
countryside with your camera. The Melbourne Camera
Club offer a wide range of services for its members.
MCC run workshops and seminars on a range of topics
including black and white analogue photography, digital
photography, portrait and a camera techniques. Members
come from diverse backgrounds and skill levels so the
MCC tries to cater for beginners as well as more advanced
photographers.
The 117th Annual General Meeting is coming up on the
6th September at 8:00pm. If you are interested in attending
the meeting or joining the club visit the website:
www.melbournephoto.org.au or telephone: 03 9696 5445.
August 31, 2007
Melbourne Camera Club
August 30, 2007
Focus On: AIPP Photography Awards 30th Anniversary Compilation
images by Urs Buhlman 2006 Photographer of the Year
Canon Australian Professional Photography Awards # 30
Featuring images from the Canon Australian Professional Photography
Awards held last year in Sydney, this edition celebrates the 30th ‘birthday’
of the awards. The collaboration between the A.I.P.P. and Canon to produce
these compilations of award winning images has been instrumental in
setting bench marks for Australian photographers. The books not only act as
handy reference guides for those seeking inspiration or like-minded
photographers, they can also be used as style guides that can strengthen
communication with clients by clarifying expectations.
This edition is a superb collection of the best of Australian professional
photography for the year 2006, from a wide cross-section of disciplines,including
portraiture, landscape, weddings, advertising and fashion, editorial and
illustrative and student work. It also includes addresses for all its members.
August 24, 2007
Lost Boys on the Loose
Slava Mogutin’s first monograph Lost Boys is similar in style to the work of Ed Templeton and Terry Richardson. All three photographers produce work that can be described as ‘grotesque’ or ‘dirty’ realism. Richardson is so monumentally successful that his recent work verges on parody. Templeton’s photography has a raw edge. It almost reeks of blood shed on the streets by the young men and women he photographs in various stages of distress and undress.
Mogutin’s work is equally class based but is further politicised by the depiction of young male homosexuals. As the liner notes point out, he “was the last political dissident from the former Soviet Union”, exiled for “malicious hooliganism with exceptional cynicism and extreme insolence”.
TPI is willing to place a bet on Mogutin becoming a worthy successor to Robert Mapplethorpe. Although very different stylistically, Lost Boys shares Mapplethorpe’s unflinching celebration of the sexual underbelly of a strand of gay culture. The value of this kind of work is especially pertinent now not to desexualise representations as gay and lesbian struggles for equality gain ground globally.
Lost Boys is a compelling collection of portraits and landscapes taken over the ten years since Magutin was exiled from Russia. Provocative and iconoclastic, his work transcends the conventions of male nude photography, confronting the viewer with a raw, in your face style. It contains full frontal male nudity and many sexually explicit images.
August 23, 2007
Join the Glocalisation Revolution & Shop Local…
Retailers discuss daily trading in much the same way that strangers on the train discuss the weather. The word on the street is that despite the strength of Australia’s economy, retail turnover for many traders in Melbourne is down– in some cases way down. Over last few years, opinions about the underlying causes for the current state of play have been uncannily similar to those of the weather watchers – global change is to blame.
Retailers though are a hardy lot and do not tend to make fickle changes in the focus and nature of their businesses quickly. This makes general book selling chain Angus and Robertson’s recent decision to narrow their list of suppliers (thereby narrowing their list of available book titles) a rather strange one. Also remarkable was there decision to implement a “What’s In It For Me?” commission sales system for their retail sales assistants in order to push specific units on an unsuspecting public. The story caused quite a scandal in the book world for a minute or two.
If a major chain store is making rash decisions in order to try and improve their bottom line, where does this leave single shop front, specialist independent booksellers like TPI? In an increasingly competitive global marketplace we rely on our ability to source and sell as many classic, eclectic or unusual photographic titles as we can. Likewise, we encourage our staff to cultivate and develop an interest not just in books but in all things photographic as this is a crucial way of providing the best quality service to our customers that we can.
We hope that our customers understand that the costs involved in operating a retail shopfront are built in to the recommended retail price of the books. It seems silly to make a statement like that however many customers are now accustomed to the prices offered by discount outlets, ebay and amazon. TPI can not compete with the bulk buying power of larger chains, with warehouse traders selling online or with individuals getting rid of gifts they have no use for!What we can do is continue to offer the best range of photographic books in Australia – and we will offer them with the best service and the best prices that we can. If we do this, then we will continue to attract the best range of customers – those people as passionate about books and photography as we are.
August 17, 2007
Focus on Fandomania: Characters & Cosplay
Elena Dorfman’s latest offering continues her exploration of fantasy and reality as dual aspects of identity formation. Fandomania: Characters & Cosplay examines the pop culture phenomenon of ‘cosplay’, in which participants dress up in costumes – and live part of their lives – as characters from video games, animated films, and Japanese graphic novels.
Her previous book, Still Lives, documented the integration of silicone sex dolls into the daily lives of their owners. It was a remarkably sensitive portrayal of a growing sexual subculture and hints at the part played by projection in all of our relationships. For TPI the strength of Fandomania: Characters & Cosplay lies in the transformative power of role play for Dorfman’s subjects. Dorfman’s portrait sitters exude a sense of beauty that elevates the work beyond a collection of shots of people playing dress-ups.
Yet another of TPI’s not-so-secret-crushes Alec Soth has a marvellous post in his blog archives that discusses Fandomania and lists links to online photographs of humans as furry animals and avatars.For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the venerable Mr Soth, he recently became a member of Magnum (along with Aussie photographer Trent Parke who is always the source of much fandomania here at TPI).
August 10, 2007
Focus On : Rare Books
60 fascinating photographs by Cecil Beaton. Here he tries to capture the essence of the personality of his subjects rather than their physical appearance at the fleeting moment when his camera shutter clicked. Includes portraits of T.S.Elliot, Truman Capote, Francis Bacon amongst others. Rare book, copy available has fair dust jacket, 5cm tear to bottom and 2cm tear to top, inside pages in good condition, binding is loose, may have 2 missing pages.
David Hamilton : Sisters
Collection of softly-focussed colour and sepia photographs of reflective, sensual young female nudes, photographed indoors and outdoors. Once considered soft-porn or erotica this style is now associated with fashion photography. Copy available has tears on dust jacket, loose binding but inside pages in very good condition.
August 8, 2007
What’s Cookin’ Good Lookin’?
What: What’s Cookin’ Good Lookin’?
Who: Natasha Beattie
Where: First Site Gallery Two, 344 Swanston Street Melbourne Vic
When: Opening Night: 28 August 2007 5:30 – 7:30pm only. Exhibition runs from 29 August – 8 September 2007.
What’s Cookin’ Good Lookin’? is a series of portraits that explore notions of domesticity and question the possibility of absolute authenticity in documentary photography. The images elegantly combine technical formalism with a wilful naivety that emphasises the intrinsic beauty of the everyday. Beattie utilises common experiences and practises to examine the changing role of the kitchen as a site for the socio-cultural cultivation and contestation of femininity. Far from being chained to the stove, these contemporary domestic goddesses inhabit their territory with aplomb. Each portrait is accompanied by an image of photographs on display in each home that offers additional insight into the lives of each woman. What’s Cookin’ Good Lookin’? is a joyful celebration of the lives of contemporary urban women and a succinct tribute to the ways in which we use photography to tell stories about our selves.
August 3, 2007
Focus on The Art of Lee Miller
The Art of Lee Miller
Lee Miller (1907–1977) was one of the most remarkable photographic artists of the 20th century. She created Surrealist-inspired photographs of haunting originality, portraits of genius, and daring war photographs. This unprecedented book brings together all of Miller’s major vintage prints for the first time, including sensational works never before published, rare and revealing drawings, selections from Miller’s writings as a war correspondent for Vogue magazine, and an extraordinary collage from 1937.
