Recently Exhibited - Dead Colour, 2013

Dead Colour

 

 Lea Schlatter ©

Running the history of being a once proud patriarch,

the lust for power is shifted by the primitive drive for control through representation. 

Preserved to fill an empty space, is it a trophy for the hunter or an act of admiration for the object. 

Last Days Exhibition

- at Pearce gallery

   

Other works by: 

Emma Anderton
Allison Johnston

Victoria Cullington

Recently Exhibited - Unspectacular, 2013

Unspectacular

Lea Schlatter ©

Lea Schlatter ©




These images hold relevance when re-experienced with a sensory familiarity. My gesture attempts to provide a description of what happened. While the props exist within the space, they are there incidentally and dictate the story.

Is it the way it is draped
and the way it sits there
Is it the shyness and the fear that reflects the memory
disembodied from the actual event

Midyear exhibition 

- at Pearce Gallery

 

  

 

 

Other works by:

Libby Cavenett 

Cecilia Morales-Flores

Chloe Kay

Vera ShaoYing Lin

Lottie Hedley and Ingvar Kenne

Lottie spoke this weekend at ImageNation and I was very fortunate to have been there. She is a fantastic young NZ documentary photographer. As a student trying to make my own way, I found her talk explaining her Journey resonated with me the most.

Above image - Lottie Hedley ©

It's not just her beautiful and meaningful photographs but the way she spoke about her past that was really inspiring to everyone in the room.
Her photographs come across as an honest representation of reality whilst resembling her presence in the space at the same time. There is a warmth and honesty to her documentations of the real world.

You can visit her blog here
http://lottiehedleyphotography.wordpress.com/

There was a lot of talk this weekend about community where Lottie introduced that idea of 'finding community'.  

I also felt there was a similar thing going on when listening to Ingvar Kenne and hearing his Journey.

 

With both photographers I appreciated being able to hear their story from the beginning up to now.

 Above Image - Vincent Young ©       Ingvar speaking at ImageNation

 Above Image - Ingvar Kenne ©    ingvarkenne.com


I think this ImageNation conference was successful as each speaker seemed to have the ability to shift your thinking into another world from the previous speakers situation, whether they were documentary photographers or advertising photographers that heavily construct and manipulate.


My mind switched between thinking images as a result from large sets with big production budgets were awesome (Like those of Alexia Sinclair and Tony Drayton) to believing that a simple snapshot of a place of significance can explain everything. Of course neither of these approaches are simple and none are overly complicated. Both approaches tell an important story. It is the feeling of being in a room where these two styles can co-exist that is so exciting to me. Being a good photographer, I think is about story telling and learning the ability to do it well. Or perhaps it is the ability to interpret the images you make. Maybe that is the difference between 'a photographer' and 'someone with a camera'. In photography, we no longer just make images but we share them and talk about them.
 

 Above Image - Vincent Young ©      Alexia speaking at ImageNation

We shouldn't categorize ourselves into different genres such as an advertising photographer and a documentary photographer because interesting things start to happen when these overlap, or at least when you make an effort to consider the other. 

 

IMAGENATION

Professional Photography Conference

This weekend I had the chance to meet many amazing people with this years conference being even better than last years.

I'm going to tell you about some of the things that I learned ..

 

SAMPLER

Group Exhibition containing some of my work 

- In Whitecliffe's Pearce Gallery

Photographers:

Chloe Kay
Lea Schlatter
Victoria Cullington
Cecilia Morales-Flores 
Allison Johnston
Libby Cavenett 
James Black

Emotion within images - Rineke Deijkstra

I am very intrigued by the possibility of emotion being transferred between people through photographs. But what effects this language? 

I found it interesting and began to think about the implications within the image making process. 


'Emotional Contamination'.
As a photographer, even with objects it is important to not infuse too much of your own emotional baggage on the situation. How much of your own personality or information should you leave in your images?

Guggenheim Symposium - Empathy, Affect, and the Photographic Image

 

 

Circulation of images - Boris Dornbusch

The concept of the end of the photographic medium and the crisis of photography today has been circulating for quite some time. I don't consider the sharing of images through the internet and the wide accessibility to photography a downfall, but an interesting new turn in the ideology of image making.

I recently listened to a talk between Boris Dornbusch and Caterina Riva.

http://www.artspace.org.nz/programmes/internationalvisitorsprogramme/

"Dornbusch’s practice investigates systems of knowledge and challenges perception through images and objects that cast a sculptural presence in the world as well as unleashing their imaginative power. The viewer acts as the catalyst to the artistic process where materials become concepts and their materiality is constantly disembodied through technology and semantic recontextualisations."

The talk covered the growing dispersal of images through the internet. With sites like Facebook and tumblr  circulating images around to viewers. Does the viewing of images in this context cause a loss of meaning. Boris's images circulate on tumblr as part of his creative practice. He embraces this new and unavoidable connection between people and photographs as a way of communicating his ideas to his audience and I think this is how the situation should be viewed. 

"Facebook was launched in February 2004. By November 2011, an estimated 100 billion photographs had been shared via the social network. By April 2012, Facebook users were posting photographs at the rate of 300 million per day."

- The Guardian

The existence and mass replication of images on the internet is clearly something that is there and we cannot change it. So what do we do about it?
Dornbusch is viewing this as a way to enhance his practice where sharing becomes, and already has become a large part of the future of photography.