NOWHERE MAN

Wise Words Indeed #4 - George Bernard Shaw

2011-05-11T18:14:00.000+10:00

11th May, 2011

Many photographers are as equally eloquent of thought as they are in capturing the most mesmerizing of street images. One who's witty written word insight somewhat dwarfed his efforts with camera in hand (or more likely on tripod) was master Irish playwright,
George Bernard Shaw.

Shaw was an enthusiastic amateur photographer during the earliest years of the twentieth century and counted master lensmen Alvin Coburn and Frederick Evans as close friends.

In a letter to the photographer and historian Helmet Gernsheim, Shaw explained how he'd come to photography -

"I always wanted to draw and paint. I had no literary ambition: I aspired to be a Michael Angelo, not a Shakespeare. But I could not draw well enough to satisfy myself; and the instruction I could get was worse than useless. So when dry plates and push buttons came into the market I bought a box camera and began pushing the button ..."

Shaw collected over 16000 photographs in his lifetime and wrote extensively on the medium, unfurling the following
Wise Words Indeed…

"A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic"
- George Bernard Shaw

Self Portrait - George Bernard Shaw

"The photographer is like the cod, which lays a million eggs in order that one may be hatched" - George Bernard Shaw.

Sidney and Beatrice Webb - by George Bernard Shaw

"....there is still far too much of the sort of work that can be seen for nothing in the shop-window, not to mention one or two examples of "retouching" which can only be compared to the pipes and moustaches with which portraits of the sovereigns of England get decorated in school histories.... Retouching claims to be an art within an art; and doubtless it is so in much the same way that conjuring as applied to table-turning is an art within an art. All the more reason for it to be artistically done. It ought, however, to be excluded from a photographic exhibition, on the simple grounds that it is not photography..." - George Bernard Shaw


Self Portrait - George Bernard Shaw

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will"
- George Bernard Shaw

Photograph by George Bernard Shaw

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education." - George Bernard Shaw


Arabic Child - by George Bernard Shaw

"I would trade all the paintings of Jesus for one photograph" - George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw in Rotorua, New Zealand.

Photography & Place

2011-05-03T13:21:00.000+10:00

3rd May, 2011

Photography & Place ... Australian Landscape Photography, 1970s Until Now

Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW) until 24th May, 2011.

Truth be known I shuffled around this display like a plain clothes Taoist Monk craving spiritual succour at the power tools end of Balgowlah Bunnings

For without wishing to sound aggressively unkind, Photography & Place is uninspiring; weighed down by the usual AGNSW millstones of politics and the incongruous brief.

The exhibit blurb opens boldly, stating that “The work of the 18 artists included in the exhibition represents a shift from more than a century’s thinking about the depiction of landscape in Australian photography.” And so you can just imagine, poor poor me bounds in like a labrapup sniffing out a fruity sandshoe – I guess I was expecting a kind of Ken Duncan meets the revolution vibe – you know red dirt under well chewed toe nails dragging across the wide brown linoleum to a clicking of shears and the dulcet tones of warbling Wowness.


The punters peruse Photography & Place ... Photo - Andrew Stark

A visual experience set to pick me up and fill my heaving chest cavity with the physical vista of a deeply insightful Australianess. But nah … didn’t happen. This is after all the AGNSW. Instead I got Maralinga, post modernism, indigenous self indulgence and of course, Bill Henson.

…has there been a group exhibition of photography at the Art Gallery of NSW post 1979 that hasn’t featured Bill Henson? Think not. You know, I even have a vague recollection of this institution including Mr H, along with Tracey Moffatt in a street themed exhibit back in the 1990s.

Wesley Stacey's series was a highlight

This sandstone encased doyen of all things conceptual has treated the pointy end of realist photography with an intolerable contempt for well over a quarter of a century now. Remembering, this is the public gallery that represents the home state of Trent Parke – an internationally fated artist for whom (at time of writing) has had but the single work collected for inclusion in the AGNSW permanent collection (a pic of a backyard swing set taken in Queensland during 2003).

The late Ingeborg Tyssen was a wonderful street photographer and her images of the undergrowth included in this show are kind of pretty, yet the sparse highlights of Photography & Place are Wesley Stacey’s long line of pharmacy processed road pic’s and Ian North’s Canberra burb-scapes. Both these contributions strip away the call for overt pretence – they are subtle yet fresh … sprigs of wattle in a paddock brim full of bleating show ponies (or should that be neighing billy goats?).

Rosemary Laing's "after Heysen"

Rosemary Laing’s “after Heysen” was so traditional it brought into direct play the nepotistic Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome that so haunts worthwhile appraisal. A large take on the work of German/Australian landscape painter Hans Heysen; this image is included seemingly for no other reason than it is a work by Rosemary Laing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s quite lovely and yes pictorially presents like a 19^th century watercolour yet there is certainly no “shift away from more than a century’s thinking about the depiction of landscape” here, in fact if anything it offers an old school embrace. This photograph could be seamlessly coupled alongside works by postcard darlings Steve Parish and the afore mentioned Ken Duncan without jolting anyone’s stylistic rhythm. And yet Parish or Duncan with their capitalistic sensibilities shall never be permitted to wander across the Domain toward the rarefied ambience of this castle of whispered wisdom – no matter how relevant to the topic their snaps may become.

Ken Duncan

Steven Parish

The front wall blurb goes on to say that, “In the 1970s a more politically and conceptually informed approach emerged” … aint that the truth I grumbled, as I horseshoed my way down the staircase toward fresh air and home. Perhaps however someone should acknowledge that within the AGNSW this same approach has hog tied their photographic perspective to a kind of narrow, Marrickville Greens branch meeting predictability; left wing jingoism that recycles to a grooved mantra of fleshy, upper middle class self flagellation … or something !

Why no Narelle Autio ?

Photography & Place is a theme that should have ignited the richest tapestry of Australian art. And whilst pyromaniacal vandalism is to be universally frowned upon, I ask - where was the curatorial spark of ingenuity that might have included …

Peter Dombrovskis' Tasmanian wilderness series, or Trent Parkes epic Minutes to Midnight. How about Marco Bok's Bondi Beach grabs or Narrelle Autio’s birds eye view from Sydney’s iconic grey arch. Tim Hixson’s Holga view of the northern beaches, Rob McFarlanes Seven Up style jetty pic’s from Brighton or even LM Hemsworths much acclaimed, Lonely Thoroughfare series would have livened this presentation markedly (these are not all landscapes I here you scream - well I'm just trying to shift from more than a century’s thinking about the depiction of landscape in Australian photography. .

Sadly this display is tired and uninspiring.

It has a thrown together from the downstairs vault feel.

Disappointing?

Yes, I think that’s a fair summation.

Kathy on Brighton Pier 1964 & 1973
Why no Robert McFarlane ?

Old Man's Valley

2011-04-28T13:12:00.000+10:00

Photo - Andrew Stark

28th April, 2011

…and then I happened upon Old Man’s Valley.

Who’d have known it was tucked away in suburban West Hornsby, you know just down from the Chinese takeaway on Dural Street.

Down, down, down … I staggered, soon arthritic knees grinding toward dust; in search I guess, of the much heralded Old Man River… which one might assume would be found flowing through the Old Man’s Valley.

Ol' man river,
Dat ol' man river
He mus'know sumpin'
But don't say nuthin',
He jes'keeps rollin'
He keeps on rollin' along.

And yet, like the fly sitting on the tongue of the Venus – I realized too late. It was the eleventh hour of all belated cognisance and this was a strictly ‘No Return’ trail. The rutted spiral thoroughfare grooved into Mother Earth like a shiny black stallion, nostrils flaring, earning his keep at that wet n wild thoroughbred stud up near Stroud. Remnants of grumpiness lined the corkscrewed track as hirsute ear canals flourished within the otherwise decaying corpses of baby boomers who’d never quite made it out.

Luckily my bush skills align a natural flair for well perforated philately*, and I’d soon mulched myself up a small compote of myrtaceous genus gum leaves inside the pouch of an unsuspecting rock wallaby. Whistling ‘Breakfast at Sweethearts’ in an unfamiliar key to keep the marsupial from bounding, I equally bided my time encouraging the marauding North West Sydney bull ants to nibble my temporarily earth bound knees in an attempt to both heighten my level of Myrmecia toxin levels and also to sharpen concentration. Once the Eucalypt concoction had fully festered I buried my face deep into the hirsutely hallucinogenic mix … and before the blowies had any chance to settle upon the conjunctive corners of a madly spinning middle eye, I was up and away, flying off out of that dark and sinister valley like a Ken Done plumed lorikeet atop the chiaroscuro’d chasm of a pallidly mortal chill.

Twas a close call; an experience many trumpet as ‘near death’. And it has awoken in me a realization that time is of the essence, you know in a fleeting kind of, can’t rely on tomorrow vibe. So yes, I must stop pontificating; find myself a new camera … and work.

*For years I went under the misapprehension that stamp collecting was called philanthropy and not philately. And you know back in the autumn of 1992 it got to ridiculous levels when I actually joined a local philanthropic organization; craving a bit of first day cover action. I quickly became frustrated however when despite my best efforts at sparking up a bit of Penny Black, 1840s revelry my fellow members only ever wanted to chat about poor people and who to make the cheque out to …

Aussie Street - Heroes Just For One Day

2011-04-21T17:58:00.000+10:00

21st April, 2011

"I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, for ever and ever
Oh we can be heroes, just for one day"
- Bowie

Street Reverb Magazine has a curious little feature about Australian Street Photography and the Dolphin Effect.

Thanks to Phill Hunt, Bryan F and some dude called Stark.

Konica Heads For Shady Pines

2011-04-16T20:32:00.004+10:00

16th April, 2011

One of Konica's most popular efforts
Photo -Andrew Stark (and Konica)

Me and Konica, well, we've been a street duo now for close on 30 years. Everything I've seen out there on the crumbling bitumen she's seen too and occasionally, just every now and then you understand, we've combined to nab a half decent image or two. Now Konica, or TC as she's colloquially known has no fancy airs and graces, you know there's no motor wind, the light metering consists of a moistened finger held up to the breeze, a whole bunch of electrical tape has sutured up a cracked base for neigh on a decade now - yeah, it's fair to say we've faced our challenges ... but lately good readers it saddens me to report that things have deteriorated markedly. TC has got so gunged up she now struggles to see the light. And lets face it, an SLR who don't suck up light is gunna have to have a hell of a personality to survive. In recent months I've had to uprate TRI X to 2 stops just to get a bright sunny day response and yeah, we're talking about Aussie light here, the harshest most melanomic sunshine anywhere on the globe.
Show some compassion man and use a flash I hear you shout, well yes, despite hating flash photography almost as much as I despise State Rail Transit Officers, I would gladly countenance that option if it were not for the busted hot shoe and the dead as Dickens side socket.

TC looking sprightly in her youth

This is a most difficult time and yet I need to glance, perhaps a little selfishly toward the future.
I'm going to need a ----, oh, this is hard to write.
I'm going to need a replacement.

Having no real finances and even less idea, I'm asking you knowledgeable folk out there, what do you suggest ? It needs be a film camera and if I do decide to go with the flow and steal a Leica - which model would you suggest ? Or perhaps a Contax is preferable, I don't know ... but at this difficult time, I do know with all my heart, that you're feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Street Photography - Trailer Style

2011-04-07T13:39:00.000+10:00

John Chiara

7th April, 2011

Whilst leaping Lee Friedlander shoots famously from the well cushioned drivers seat of his car, there's this Californian chapee called Chiara who does it from just in behind his own cumbersome conveyance (take photo's that is).

Using a camera big enough to house a family of four, John Chiara exposes directly onto mural sized Cibachrome positive paper, dodges and burns during the picture taking process and develops in an old sewage pipe. The end result is purely aesthetic in nature - you know, big, limited edition of one, moody vistas fit for the discerning inner city feature wall.

I would probably love JC's work however haven't had a drink now in 53 hours and the head, well it's just a tad too unfuddled to swoon. See I reckon work like this needs accoutrement - and without, well it's like spag bowl without Parmesan - the magic I think lies in the coupling. So the next time I tumble from the wagon I'll head straight for Chiaras monoliths and experience the holistic hubris in it's heightened hentirety.

And the big trailer camera thing did have a definite Crocodile Dundee correlation...

Pondering Chiara quite favorably, my train of thought, despite being on a bus was abruptly truncated. Two adolescent females boarded with full metal trinkets jangling and a collective swagger brazen enough to undo any baggy panted Italian Prime Minister. Sprawling themselves just in behind Nowhere like some public performance piece for the latest Lolita lounge pose, I instantaneously lost control and felt my 'big camera' thought bubble pop ... arrgghh teenage girls - the scourge of the mild mannered, middle aged contemporary male. You see I was traveling south from Manly on the 143 last Sunday morning when the pair of semi naked 'like' parrots began leaning aggressively into my curious head space. A tinny noise maker up on high began cranking it's aural outrage - spitting the usual misogynistic, African American bling rant from it's shameless cathodes, you know the stuff ...

"Bout my giiirlll and the dark streets of her inner boottee,
Huh huh, hee hee, yaaarrr,
Haven't smiled since grade skool,
Huh huh, hee hee, yaaarrr,
My momma was a user my dad a real tool,
Huh huh, hee hee, yaaarrr,
I'm cut like a God aint nobodies fool,
Huh huh ... etc"

And as the bus crawled through the rapacious avenues of Neutral Bay, the hood looked kinda shiny, a mean 150K the word on the tree lined streets. The musical interlude was accompanied by continual convo's shouted into the non crooning phone ... "Yeah so like f**kin get to like Chatswood ya mole - you like banned from Chatswood ? Well like f**kin get there ya bitch !"

Nowhere Man gritted his splintered incisors knowing far better than to take issue. Gripping the arm rest I stared out towards an imaginary mogadon dispenser, my mind drifting to mass murder, Victor Meldrew and ultimately Dostoevsky's Idiot,

"He was in a state of nervous excitement and perturbation; he noticed nothing and no one; and he felt a craving for solitude, to be alone with his thoughts and his emotions, and to give himself up to them passively. He loathed the idea of trying to answer the questions that would rise up in his heart and mind, 'I am not to blame for all this', he thought to himself, half unconsciously."

Hopping off up beyond the Crows Nest, the ordeal had finally pushed into the annals of the past tense. Naturally I headed straight for Facebook to vent my kidneys and the lower half of a somewhat addled pancreas, reasoning soundly, 'why should ones spleen be the only organ fully aerated ?'. Before sundown I'd joined the worthy Facebook groups -

"I can't stand teens who play music (no wait) noise at the back of the bus"
&
"The I can't stand teenagers playing music on mobile phones on the bus group!"

The latter of these included an insightful quote from Lidja Peel of Dorset who noted, "this week there were two chav girls playing the new Rhianna song over and over and over and over ... as well as talking really really loudly ... I wanted to slap them !"

Photo - Andrew Stark

Des & Molly Jones Vote Conservative

2011-03-30T19:34:00.000+11:00

30 March 2011

Ar-achna-dee, ar-achna-daa, life goes on, brah !...

Lala how the life goes on …

Well, to a certain extent I guess it does …

I haven’t found the enthusiasm nor the desire in recent weeks. Pulling Konica from the darkest reaches of the back pack seems about as nonsensical just at the moment as does being excited by the outcome of last Saturday’s democratic brouhaha, stoush, political mugging … you know, the weekend of the little red pencil and that bland chorus line of pleading boxes held about every four years to determine control of Australia’s most populous state… OK, for anyone out of the loop, here’s the latest breakdown

2011 NSW State Election Results –

*Blue blooded right wingers who live in mansions with long crunchy sounding driveways - 69 seats

*Power hungry right wingers who’ve been in control for 16 years yet didn’t bother returning from their 2006 summer hol’s – 20 seats

*Left wingers – a few crumbs

*Lunatics - tba

Photo - Andrew Stark

… I think the local schoolkids had it right – stick em all with funny eyes and pour BBQ sauce down their chins… yeah, I’ll vote for dat.

Another Day in the Sun

2011-03-24T12:17:00.001+11:00

24th March, 2011.

Photo - Andrew Stark

Now you see … this tall, bark n handsome arborists fancy fainted and fell forlornly across Sydney’s main northern rail line this morning killing no one in particular whilst creating only minimal disruption to the unkempt sod sitting in the sun up on the temporarily undernourished platform 2. Said sod was of course I, topping up on vitamin-D whilst pondering hard my decaying degrees of flailing domesticity. I wondered woefully, an overriding heaviness pulling at my karmic aura like lead lined spiritual gravity, for the home front just refuses to chill. Hooked at the foot of my dishevelled crib hangs the recurring rap sheet, a stern document proclaiming boldly that one …

*Doesn’t earn enough money

*Doesn’t do enough around the house

*Is not affectionate enough

*Is a terrible role model for the children

*And has an annoying habit of withdrawing when under siege… etc

etc.

A whimsical little asteric sitting at the toe of the page, signalling a droll counter to the effect of –

“* Apart from all that you’re Mr Right adorned in chivalrously shiny armour, clutching a tasteful bouquet of pinkish posies whilst sporting a super sturdy lance of multiple intent (yeah, I wish)”

And as I drifted sentimentally toward a contemplation of the ye olde phallic jousts of yesteryear, my train of thought was broken brusquely by a one legged seabird with what appeared to be a cleft beak. He was giving me one of those, “What the hell are you looking so glum about” looks, before hopping away with attitude toward Old Toongabbie and the hope of a golden, Cheezel dust afternoon.

I was left yet again with nothing but broad spectrum existentialism and the eternally unanswerable question -

Does any of it really warrant effort?

I furrowed, “Bro, why not just sit in the sun and drink”; my imaginary friend of clichéd street culture tedium, smiling inanely whilst sticking an arthritic middle thumb in the general direction of GOD.

Photo - Andrew Stark

And I’m here to tell you that street photography is the same. In fact street photography is more than the same. It’s a tedious repetition, a form of OCD - a habit to fill the waking hours; mental illness guaranteed by sundown. I mean will you look at that Bruce Gilden clip where the beanie clad highwayman does his New York thing in Derby. Geez, Gilden in Derby – sounds about as mad as Chris Killip in Egypt, or Max Dupain in

Mexico

or how about Boris Mihailov down the main drag of Dubbo…

Bruce Gilden: 'Head On' - Trailer from Olivier Laurent on Vimeo.

Now as we all know, Gilden is like a Leica rock star, a big name with a big reputation – and yet the guy just continues to chuck the same net out every day before hauling it in the very same way every day - year after year – nothing creative – he pans for gold and every so often finds a speck of glittery pay-dirt.

Photo - Andrew Stark

Bail em up from close range with a full on flash and a slightly uptilted perspective … yeah I’ll do that for forty f**king years! That’s a life well spent. It’s all the same and there’s no point to any of it. It has no intrinsic worth … why I ask myself doesn’t he just rip that dopey beanie off and sit in the sun and drink?

Now I’m not singling the wiry, bearded one out for a singular f2.8 rollicking. No, Bruce is being used merely as an example of a malaise most rife. For the tiresomeness remains bullet sharp with no discernible grain structure, all the way from here to the horizon – nothing under the fiery yellow ball is new, and if it were – would it matter anyway?

Digging in the garden this afternoon I uncovered a nest of deadly funnel web spiders. At time of writing, the well swung shovel had performed with verve and the front porch scoreboard reads,

Nowhere Man 4

Funnel Web Spiders 0.

Using the halftime break to research the logistics of my battle half won, I’m alarmed to read an on-line story from just up the coast near Newcastle telling of an elderly lady who uncovered 30 of the black beasts living in the one nest between her beloved hydrangeas and the rusting Hills Hoist (which is probably full of the equally deadly Redback). 30 minus 4 leaves an army, an angry army who all witnessed my flashing blade as it butchered their loved ones in a frenzy of violence not usually seen outside the prime time slots on free to air TV. 30 minus 4, and these black, hairy, eight legged killing machines know exactly where I live … and what time the lights go out each and every night …

Photo - Andrew Stark

By my calculation,
the sun will be out for another hour or two –
think I’ll just put the shovel down, peel off the shirt and have a drink …
you know,
kind of make out like I’m enjoying the remains of the day...

A Sporting Lament...

2011-03-21T10:11:00.000+11:00

21st March, 2011

Upon the bold, burgundy hued blog banner to be found immediately north north east of this very sentence sits the all-embracing addendum… “and stuff”.

Please be made fully aware that this post falls squarely, with a hefty phallic thrust into the freshly dug “and stuff” ditch of higher street photography irrelevance. This wad of text is a sporting lament, for a fact little known beyond the foul and paltry shores of Hen & Chicken Bay is that Nowhere Man also photographs a game called rugby…

Once upon a time a medieval historian said of the exceedingly gothic Chartres Cathedral in the well rivered French hinterland, that it is best appreciated as a spiritual rather than a religious building… and as present day rugby stutters through the haze of a mulish half-light it is a cross purpose sentiment both starkly relevant and achingly required.

For the game they attempt to play on the well gossamered playing fields of Greater Heaven has lost its way with a completeness not comparatively witnessed since the 17^th century medieval Christmas game of Roi de la Fe’ve found its pudding bean fatally usurped by the shimmering promise of a well baked gold sovereign.

In a recent independent study undertaken by the Jasmine Institute of Upper Stroud it was found that the average period of game time afforded players between the plethora of well whistled punctuations occurring on the paddocks of contemporary schoolboy and/or club colts level rugby is remarkably down to a paltry 11.26 seconds. Ruckus Interruptus is threatening to re-categorize rugby; taking it from the once proud sport played joyously by fun loving native children in and around the Buddhist Temples of Laos, and depositing it despondently toward the dry and furrowed brows of beigely humourless high disciplinaria.

“Your entry into that ruck young man was both recklessly obtuse to the perpendicular and a good nano second post any reasonable interpretative summation of an initial contestial ground grapple having been formed”

The shrill of overt pedantry is squeezing the life force from each and every mid winters Saturday afternoon (that an the price of pies). Our contemporary game having evolved into a cacophonously bittersweet symphony, verve being consigned to the haemoglobic blood bin of a clot less carnage. Rugby has become a verdantly staged production of liniment flavoured calculus. The literal interpretation is killing our code, and in the very process it is making rugby league look cultured, Aussie Rules appear skillful and the option of staying home with a good book quite comparatively aerobic.

“Flanker, that’s a yellow card. Please take the allotted down-time to brush up on the eight man scrum teachings of Schopenhauer with particular focus on the relentless willing and doomed failure of wheeling for personal advantage … oh, and get a hair cut!”

Surely the rules and regulations governing any worthwhile sport are set down in an earnest effort to best serve the core objectives of that pastime. They should not define from on high, nor constrict the efforts of those well tapered lads blessed with an ability to tuck the Gilbert and shimmy with panache, forcing them conversely into some gaffer taped world of Orwellian bleakness. Put simply, if the rules get in the way you’ve got a problem. And yes, Rugby has a problem.

One must ask how on earth we have progressed (ironic use of the word) from the glorious anarchy of a UK schoolboy named Ellis scooping up the pill and free-styling at will toward a state of unfettered gay abandonment. For when did we loose that unbridled joi de vie? When did discipline smother the athletic exploit? And when are the rule book rationalists going to appreciate the game for the collective stream of consciousness that it truly is. For rugby in its purest form is a tapestry of high expression, a Buddhist journey … a poem.

So just why has this ideal been left lying dormant, smothered below layer upon layer of crusty inconsequence?

To be found at the coalface of our outrage are those learned gents parading buffed and natty in canary yellow (with a touch of robin red and a sliver of wren blue) who have become so manfully proficient at blowing, pointing and then looking quite stern. The modern day rugby union referee has pushed beyond the categorization of mere vocation; he has leap frogged the hedge of celestial calling. No, the prototype rugby ref has become a self contained Jungian personality type. Starchy, white collared, outcome driven pillars to whom ambiguity presents as some foreign form of Arts Council myth. They are Plato’s Guardians in a Republic of recycled phase envy. Purveyors of statutory verbosity who force the hemlocked chalice of 3.15 tedium upon the withered lips of anyone foolhardy enough to gaze game-wards from the tiered seating of a vacant sporting curiosity.

“If we keep blowing to the letter of the law – they will eventually learn”.

Whilst it is undeniable that most rugby fans do love a good logarithm or two before bedtime, few memorize the volumes entirety before lights out, and even fewer feel the need to double check the accuracy of the author’s handiwork using a set square and a pair of Cartesian callipers.

“We mean our guardians to be true saviours and not destroyers of the State”.

- Socrates to Adeimantus (Plato’s Republic)

Rugby referees are clearly a different breed. And yet blame must push past the apparent to rest more accurately at the feet of the feeders of these curious creatures … for yes, as unbelievable as it may seem … someone up in the well carpeted crows nest of Rugby House is nourishing and cajoling this linearly, anti-game behaviour. It is almost as if a directive has been issued to make the sport so visually inaccessible as to guarantee a shedding of everyday followers. A spite your face snobbery so extreme as to burn and pillage wannabe devotees; exclusivity set up with a secret handshake and a Pythagorean captains run across twickers@twilight.org. Legendary All Blacks half Justin Marshall renounced the game a bore back in 2004 and little has changed for anyone honest enough to open up and vent deep seated, oval shaped personal truths.

“As entertainment some of the matches were about as pleasant to experience as a root canal procedure – something has to be done”

- Spiro Zavos (Rugby Heaven. Feb, 2010).

And yet peering into the sugary world of the dummy half scooter and the mock scrimmage (i.e. rugby league) we find the exulted ‘Book of Harriganism’ with its paradoxical belief in an” Authority Unannounced”. The scriptures (published by News Ltd with a forward by Phil Rothfield) tell of marquee contests played out before feverish crowds in which but a handful of noted infringements befell each and every contest. Legend has it that King Bill orchestrated theatre of a pure athletic magnificence, providing maximum flow using but the vaguest raising of a well trained right eyebrow. The pace was frenetic; the entertainment supreme. And whilst this is a markedly different culture, it is undeniably a game whose origins grew and were moulded directly from that of our own.

The bean counters would argue with paradoxical fervour that they are penalizing in an effort to speed the game up - especially in relation to the breakdown. Yet the IRB Law Book to be found on The Laws of Rugby Union website is a document weighing in at a whopping 4.5MBs. And in the name of thorough research I did attempt to open this puffy file on the high powered Dell down at Woy Woy’s Spike Milligan Memorial Library but was alas timed out; the reasonable expectation of a modern world succumbing darkly to yet another rugger stoppage.

“The law makers have been drinking too much South African white wine”

- Eddie Jones. 2009 (former Wallaby coach)

Rugby is not a mathematical equation. Neither should it be seen as a relentless historical homage to July 1893. The game in its current form is floundering hopelessly, in dire need of much right brained: Aquarian, existentialist thought … it needs find relevance, a point, a purpose … perhaps even an enjoyment factor … a soul.

For rugby circa 2011 has been reduced to little more than the tired cheese soufflé of angular frustration, unable to rise due to the continual opening and closing of the oven door by men with mitts, perfect teeth and chronic OCD. Fussing, continually fussing they ferret with spatula’s half empty until all that is served up to the spiritually crushed troupe of loyal lunchtime aficionados, a motley mound of sods known popularly as “fans”, is but a small china dish awash with cheddary free range swill and the profuse aroma of a hopelessly concentrated uncertainty.

“That’s me in the corner. That’s me in the spotlight losing my religion…”

- REM

“Advantage Over!”

Snaps from Sydney on E Bay

2011-03-09T17:52:00.002+11:00

10th March 2011

My somewhat surly and wholly unkempt alter ego Andrew Stark informed me during a recent late night bout of schiziod verbosity that he has hoisted a rare copy of his 2003 book, Snaps from Sydney up on e bay to be auctioned to absolutely anyone that cares. Now despite this clearly being the photographers best work I greeted this somewhat self indulgent filament of news with a shrug of sinewy scapulas before pulling one of those 'whatever' grimaces made internationally famous by the 1943 game show ace Colonel Klink. Said book is apparently signed (I presume by the author) and the following Photofile Magazine review may enlighten the unsuspecting potential buyer (and just to the left there's an equally informative blurb on one of Bill Henson's publications).

The electronic marketplace awaits good readers, and do be sure to bring along your well swung little hessian sack, brimming to the pull-string with clinking currency - Maltese Lira, Kuwaiti Dinars, Cyprian Piastres, French Polynesian Centimes ... hell, they'll even take luke warm Aussie currency on e bay (absolutely no standards).

So for anyone with a cacophonous clinking of loose change in the side pouches of their lower covering - here's the link to visual gratification

iN-STore Book Review #3 ... Bill Stott - "The Crazy World of Photography".

2011-03-08T19:49:00.000+11:00

8th March, 2011

As the biblio-behemoths Borders and Angus & Robertsons stumble and crash like a Subbies tight head at the call of 'Last Drinks', Nowhere Man figured it might very well be a good time to attempt the third in his sneeky series of in store book reviews. The reasoning being that those pesky store detectives with their Dirty Harry ways may just be internally consumed, distracted perhaps with whether or not they're going to be corporately diddled out of their severance pay.. I mean why, at this time, would they be bothered with a disheveled, middle aged guy just trying to shield his person from the dark ceiling bubble of Orwellian intrusion... and possibly attempting to write a little note or two on the sly... beats me, but what can I tell you, I was wrong, I was very wrong - the estimated review time narrowed to a skinny 67 seconds and the resultant interrogation period was both willing and aerobic. Dancing with the A to Z pressed hard up against my kidneys, yellowy tom toms to an alpha dude jam session in which the guest (that's me) got to howl the blues with tremendous conviction, whilst a little wire bound notebook tucked surreptiously into the withered elastic of a slightly soiled left sock housed the hurriedly scrawled notes on the selected book ... 

"The Crazy World of Photography"

This A5 sized book of witty pen & ink observation opens to a beautifully purplesque inside cover before you are lead gently by the funny bone through 80 or 90 photography themed cartoons by the *droll* Englishman Bill Stott. First published in 1987 and printed and bound in Budapest, many of these works initially graced the pages of the photographic magazine, “Camera Weekly” where readers must have guffawed and thigh slapped fulsomely between bikini clad Minolta XG-1 advertisements and sound advice on the perils of reciprocity failure, drying marks, dodgy extension rings or the like…

The collection begins hopefully with the depiction of a baby in it’s high chair receiving a gift of a brand new camera from his dad – and concludes a whole bunch of pages later with appropriate pathos and metaphorical grist as we share the abject frustration of a frazzled (dare I say defeated) photographer and his wife, confronted tragically by the trauma of an exploding SLR (something of course we can all identify with – an acquaintance of mine actually lost an arm back in the risky Ricoh period of 1991).

I must admit that I found these concisely drawn little slices of the photographic life to be as amusing as Slocumesque reruns of “Are You Being Served”, however unlike Mr Humphries, this book is not ‘free’. If you hunt around on e bay - $4.50 + shipping seems a fair sort of price, although I've been alerted to the fact that it's going for as cheap as $2.99 from Awesome Books USA .

This volume is a must for all serious collectors of the photographic book (as it may just help alleviate some of that pesky seriousness). The “Crazy World of Photography” contains not a single photograph and yet manages to impart all the wisdom & light hearted entertainment of a Leonard Cohen/Nick Cave duet. I recommend you purchase this book, settle back into the brightly coloured bean bag and relive the carefree and gloriously nonsensical days of the pre digital age.

* Whilst using the word 'droll' in this review, Nowhere Man would like to acknowledge the assistance of legendary Australian documentary photographer Robert McFarlane.

Robert kindly incorporated the word ‘droll’ into a recent e mail – awakening me to the possibilities of this five lettered gem which in recent years, I must admit, in a purely vocab’ sense, I’ve shamefully overlooked. Droll deficiency (like Droll dependence and all things Droll really) is no laughing matter. Rest assured however, supplements and/or boosters shall be immediately employed to remedy this descriptive imbalance. And you know I really do enjoy all facets of the word, from its literal definition, right through to the audio sensory tone of its somewhat sardonic deliverance. I think a case could almost be mounted for borderline onomatopoeic categorization. And furthermore …if I were to ever follow in the mono monikered footsteps of high profiled single taggers such as Weegee, Pink, Basquiat etc, I’d more than likely secure the name, ‘Droll’ all for myself. Hell, it might even be worth looking into setting up a philosophical grouping of fellow – faintly amusing, quietly strange people – and calling it The Drollness Society. I mean can you just imagine an army of understated volunteers rattling on the nation’s front door knocker throughout the annually designated ‘Droll Toll Day’, exclaiming hopefully from behind somewhat wry expressions, “Hi, I’m from the Drollness Society … could you possibly spare any loose change … or barring that, a mildly amusing personal anecdote?”

… Yeah, probably not.

The S.A.D. Tale of the Homogeneous Hiccup

2011-03-02T15:10:00.091+11:00

2nd March, 2011.


Mardi Gras. Early 1990s ... Photograph - Andrew Stark

From Museum corner, along the edge of Hyde Park and up past Gilligans Island ... Sydney's annual Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras 'doofs' its way along Oxford Street again this Saturday night.

Now the last time I partook, alas only as a well clothed photographic observor, I had chunks kicked out of my chinny chin shins by a couple of 'fun loving' butch gals...

Yes, too be sure, alas, it is true, and whilst it is hard for me to talk about ... I concede I am but another faceless victim, a statistic amongst many of this wanton trend of unprovoked drifter bashing ... Strange Aussie Drifters (S.A.D.) are being routinely persecuted throughout this 'modern society' of ours, heinous hate crimes perpetrated daily in the Times New Roman name of mainstream boorishness, bigotry and banal boofiness.

Mardi Gras. Early 1990s ... Photograph - Andrew Stark

When this incident is coupled a year or ten hence with the occurrence of my 'then' betrothed deciding to skip off down 'our' seemingly well sealed front path, tip toeing to a rosy tulip upon tulip arrangement ... well, as you can imagine, it was enough to send Nowhere into a bout of deep 'mancession'. The black dog of crudiness gnawing ravenously at shapely yet quite spindly ankles.

Thyme as they say however is the great healer, and I've cooked with the minty herb around the clock for many a long and subsequent year.

The old haemotomas have healed and the shattered relationship stuff is by now so deeply repressed it'd take a team of psychoanalysts in a grief seeking bathysphere to retrieve the full vastness of that icky morass.

Mardi Gras - the whole shimmering flesh fest of ultra exhibitionism is kind of fun - even for the middle aged, none too pretty, hetro observor. And you know, if I can find a pair of heavy duty shin pads before Saturday ... I might just venture out.

Mardi Gras. Early 1990s ... Photograph - Andrew Stark

The New Abstraction of Testicular Wonderment.

2011-02-23T14:05:00.001+11:00

23rd February, 2011.

Unbeknownst to the relative reason of a sunny summers day, I found myself queuing at the Mitchell Library request desk yesterday. And when ultimately it did become my turn to request, I payed special attention not to rush the pronounciation of my desired journal. "Kunstforum Please", I stammered like a nervous guy asking for a magazine with an almost suggestive sounding name. For you see I had once before blurted and tripped over this German art handle: ending up red faced in the gynecologists chat room of an abstract, security guard grilling. The prim library assistant had taken none too kindly, and the dishevelled look of my person only served to intensify the perception most seedy.

You may well ask what a footy loving ludite like myself would want with the latest edition of "Kunstforum" for it is surely filled to brimming with Germanic words and installations most illogical, however I do so love to gaze at the pictures and often chuckle to the point of moistening. Art is a funny caper in the "Kunstforum" sphere, and I do so appreciate a funny caper. Is it not true that the great Mel Brooks could not conceive of such a cutting edge spoof ?

Coming away from my bi-annual "Kuntsforum" experience, I wiped the perspiration from that corrigated sheet of flesh known in Gray's as 'me forhead', and could not help but be reminded of the words of bespectacled artist and sometime collage photographer David Hockney. Many years ago "The Hock" was given the chance to paint the portrait of the great British poet WH Auden who suffered from the exotic Touraine-Solente-Gole Syndrome, a condition that manifests itself in craggy features, short stumpy fingers ... and stuff. Upon completing the portrait the artist is alleged to have poured himself a nice cup of Earl Gray, snapped a Scotch Finger and said,

WH Auden

"I kept thinking, if his face looks like this, what must his balls look like ?"
- David Hockney

Recent Offerings #4

2011-02-17T18:05:00.002+11:00

17th February, 2011.

As the giant, Romanesque dial high up on the Woy Woy clock tower strikes its traditionally slurred and cacophonous eleven minutes past wine o clock, I plunge my free hand deep into the kit bag of hopeful endeavour. Gnarled digits scavenge hungrily in amongst the naïve batch of ‘recent offerings’: sweat forming a picket line of nervous shimmer just above my reddish pouty bits as the futility of everything begins its stark mantra that echoes oh so familiar… “surely there was something just a little bit interesting housed in amongst these neg sleeves of not all that long ago !” …

Photograph - Andrew Stark

Enormous Chaos: Love… the Jacques & Bibi Story.

2011-02-14T09:46:00.001+11:00

14th February, 2011.

Bibi in Marseille, 1928.
Photo - Jacques Henri Lartigue

As I endure my own form of faltering suburban domesticity, sliding with high ache from frosty to who knows where, I couldn’t help but be remarkably moved when recently I read the heartfelt diary of Jacques Henri Lartigue. And given that today is Valentines Day, a special poignancy is attached to the entries of the1920s and specifically the photographer’s vast disparity of emotion found at either end of his marriage to first wife, Bibi.

For anyone who has endured a failed coupling could not help but empathise; feeling tremendous sympathy in the face of Jacques’ eloquently laid words. Unbridled joy and a carefree euphoria, stalled cruelly by life itself; the union smashed upon the rocks of betrayal and loss as the lively decade played out to a most sombre personal conclusion.

Jacques & Bibi on their wedding day

The boy wonder, Lartigue had been photographing at a genius level since receiving the gift of a camera from his father at the age of 7. He first met Madeleine Messager during the penultimate year of the Great War and quickly coined for his new love, the nickname, ‘Bibi’(as you do). Madeleine was the daughter of the much respected composer and Director of the Paris Opera, Andre Messager. And on the 17^th of December, 1919, Jacques and Bibi commenced married life together…with tremendous hope in their hearts and an unreserved commitment

Jacques Henri Lartigue - Diary entries …

January 1920 –

“What am I ? And what am I doing here ? I am a married man – on my honeymoon. I think it must be the funniest thing in the world, me, a married man, on his honeymoon.

Bibi and I go everywhere together … arm in arm. We look at everything; we discover everything”.

“On her loving days Bibi is intelligent, charming and terribly funny. I will cherish forever the first photograph I took of her on our honeymoon.”

Bibi on her honeymoon.
Photo - Jacques Henri Lartigue

“We have a good life …”

“To keep in good shape Bibi exercises every morning with her teacher. I sometimes exercise with her, but that apparently, is disastrous for her concentration. We laugh too much. I don’t understand why Bibi is so concerned about her figure. She tells me she does it for me and that I ought to be flattered. Life is full of excitement, surprises … and best of all, Bibi.”

1921 –

“I have a son ! He was born on August 23. His name is Dani, and he cries, he screams, he howls … and when Dani finally consents to give his public a vague, resigned smile of concession, everyone is ecstatic: he smiles like an angel”

“Yvonne (Printemps) is one month younger than I, Bibi two years. They are both flowers on the point of opening up to their moment of greatest beauty … so why do I still look like a bunch of green raisins ?”

1924 –

“Bibi in the last month of her pregnancy evokes an enormous tenderness in me. We are very close … in all senses. It seems to me, strangely enough, that I am waiting with more nervous expectation for this second child than I waited for our first. Bibi is not nervous. Quietly she prepares the room for the baby, irons the curtains, plays with Dani. She is tired … but happy.”

Tragically the Lartigues second child Veronique, died shortly after birth.

Jacques attempted to forge a career as a painter throughout the mid nineteen twenties, adding, “Painting is my great passion”. And despite at one stage exhibiting his oils in the foyer of Gallery George Petit whilst Monet's work was on show inside, he was never to realize great success -

Then in early 1929 Bibi’s father, Andre Messager also passed away.

Bibi and Dani, Nice. 1928.
Photo - Jacques Henri Lartigue

February 1929 -

“Bibi is near to fainting in my arms.”

“To die on a Sunday. Messager, the always active man. I think about that. I think about a lot of things. My eyes are dry. Don’t I feel any grief ? Bibi weeps over her father … isn’t that enough to make my heart melt ?”

June 1929 -

“I am alone in the studio, my cluttered garret, high up in our house in Neuilly. It’s four o clock in the morning. Through the skylight I can see the whole city (Paris) bathed in the first glow of sunrise. I wonder how many unhappy people there are living in all the thousands of houses ? Am I one of those unhappy people ?

In a little while, I will go downstairs and lie beside Bibi. But first I must clarify my thoughts. I haven’t been very successful so far. It has been said so many, many times that a betrayed husband is the last person to know and to understand. A betrayed husband ? Me ?

Bibi in Nice. 1920 (autochrome)
Photo - Jacques Henri Lartigue

Bibi ! My little Bibi ! Bibi of our happy years ! Would she really betray me ? I realize, of course, that anything, absolutely anything, can happen in a lifetime; that the most improbable crises are always plausible. But this ? Bibi and that poseur ! Bibi, with her lack of patience, her knife-sharp judgments ! Bibi, the daughter of Messager ! But I shouldn’t have forgotten that Bibi is also the daughter of that Louis XV mother with her lace furbelows ! Does Bibi really love this man ? He loves her. Yes ! To him she is the Rolls-Royce he always wanted to have, when all the idiot can afford is a Renault ! I talk, I write, I think. But inside me the chaos continues ! I tell myself lies, and then I try to convince myself that what I just told to myself is the truth. I think: I love Bibi, she is mine. I don’t want to be concerned about anything else. There is a certain kind of suffering you can refuse. I am very sleepy, and I realize that I don’t know anything more than I did a few hours ago.”

Bibi. 1923.
Photo - Jacques Henri Lartigue

July 1929 -

“When I talk feverishly about the need to produce and to create, it really means that I’m in the midst of a crisis. Again I’ve become a spectator, an outsider, which, apparently is the only way I can live through these dramas. I have learned one thing: I should never have trusted our silences. I shouldn’t even have trusted the affectionate conversations we have had, Bibi and I. Our happiness has been assassinated ! We remain friends, we talk without anger, but the words – my words – are artificial. My second self, that cold, phlegmatic creature – my self-appointed referee – chuckles in a corner about my performance in real life.”

1930 -

“I live alone with my fantasies. Perhaps they are the best company a man can have?”

“Paris is almost deserted. The smell of the hot asphalt evokes memories of other summers. And all those memories together form one great big, enormous chaos: love. There are old, marvellous, tender, indescribable memories that I never did, and never could, invite Bibi to share.”

Jacques and Bibi were divorced during 1931.

Jacques remarried in 1934 to Coco Paulucci however this union dissolved a few years later. In 1942 Jacques met 20 year old Florette Ormea. They bought a house by the sea and were married in 1945, remaining together until the master photographer’s death during September 1986, aged 92.

Little is known of Bibi’s life beyond this period.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This post is
dedicated to
Missa –
with love.

The Brave New World in Art Direction

2011-02-10T19:04:00.001+11:00

10th February, 2011.

Beat Streuli -
a Willy Wonka Scholarship winner

Beat Streuli isn’t street really! And yet this darling of the contemporary art movement includes amongst his body of work, pictures taken candidly in the public domain, pictures not terribly dissimilar to yours: mine, Barry Pascoe’s, or the stuff by that other person hovering just over there. Perhaps it’s the black skivvy, Allen Ginsberg kind of Christian name or maybe he scored one of those gold Wonka passes in his 10am carob fix, a shimmering code revealing the secret, contemporary art handshake … I’m really not too sure … more likely it’s the fact that he prints em up bigger than South Australia – contemporary art is after all the ‘footy mole’ of all art movements, i.e. uncontrollably hot for anything with rippling size, brash arrogance and a vacuous late night loudness.

Whilst remaining clueless to the Beat, I stumble and bloody my nose at what makes contemporary art contemporary whilst other current creativity is mysteriously deemed not contemporary. This conundrum has bounced about the Nowhere Man cranium for many a long age - naivety first giving way to hazy befuddledness, before a more current, snarling kind of animosity took hold, an atmosphere of pro activity setting beyond my left clavicle like an umbrella-less Molotov cocktail fusing in a particularly dirty glass.

Obviously something you find
at a natural history museum.

Turning toward academia I notice that Art dude Terry Smith has written a fairly current book entitled “What is Contemporary Art ?”, and whilst I haven’t read it (big words- ughh), I did browse a review of it in “Art&Australia” by Charles Green. Now apparently contemporary art began in the 70s with Green/Smith adding, “Post modernism was an intermediate phase blurring the death of modern art in the late 60s, all of which has now subsumed within the capacious, globalised rubric of the contemporary”. This flickered the barest glint of an idea and yet I temporarily suppressed my ‘Eureka’ moment, continuing on with the review in the outside hope of receiving an answer to the book titles all encompassing question – much masturbatory meringue followed and yet predictably, no satisfaction was forthcoming.

Upon reaching the ultimate dot of this wordy inconsequence I experienced an explosion of pent up frustration, an obstruction suddenly blurting free as I threw the magazine across the Borders sandpit in disgust. With fire in my gaze I eyeballed the fast moving security frenzy to my immediate right, before bounding into the open air like a somewhat arthritic wallaby with a middle ear infection. And just at the very instant I thought I’d made good my escape I garnished the moment by shouting back, “Youse Can All Get Rooted – I’ll Start Me Own Movement – You’ll See!”. The mad smile which accompanied such bravado was impressive, however quickly wiped from my face, as in my next stride I caught a rogue shoe lace in the crack between escalator step and oblivion and was forced to battle manfully over the proceeding ten minutes to ensure I did not end up as shopping mall sausage meat deep within the unrelenting workings of the sleepless staircase.

And that ladies and gentleman are the revolutionary origins of Art Vo-Veau, the latest, most all encompassing movement in the history of doing creative stuff. And just to keep those studious, steel rimmed bi focalites happy, I’ll proffer that the movements family tree has trunked, barked and branched from the Dadaists through Breton’s Surrealists and on and upward through the cheeky twigs of the Childish Stuckists. This is an art movement that questions reality, relinquishes structure whilst fully embracing the rapid demise of all that luvee luvee pretentious contemporary art drool. The Vo-Veauists will fight for the removal from galleries and art musuems of the ‘Novelty Meccano Installation’ (you know the flashing light bulb, technology based, oh ain’t that f**king clever kind of boys toys exhibit) as well as the ‘Marginalized Shock Tactic Piece’ (the used tampon on an unmade bed juxtaposing the sheep’s head set in a bath tub of verdantly fluoro jelly – sort of stuff). Basically it’s about a fair go for all non scientists (Einstein was not an Impressionist - although I have heard he was very good at charades).

Breton Girls Dancing -
Paul Gauguin was clearly a Vo-Veauist ahead of his time.

The movements name is derived from the coupling of the French term for ‘meat of the calf’, with an earthy mimic, the famous Australian morning tea biscuit, the Iced Vo Vo. This pink fondant, coconuty strawberry jam staple is seen as a symbol of understated quality and is held up as a bold and contrasting metaphor to the ‘crass obviousness’ of current art practice - for when served on a plate alongside the chocolaty Tim Tams or Mint Slices the Vo Vo is invariably pushed to the side, ignored, even ridiculed – and yet unlike these flashy brown treats, the ‘symphony in pink’ can be consumed by the half packet without regret. In short Art Vo-Veau embraces a fresh and honest view. New and yet substantive – mains and desert – well rounded – profound. Flashiness and superficiality need not apply for the latest chapter in art direction is hell bent on wresting back just a smidgen of credibility. Art Vo-Veauists embrace a charter of inclusiveness with an aim to relating emotionally (even spiritually) to as wide a range of socio economic and cultural clusters as individual taste permits. This is not lowest common denominator popularism, it is however an open front door and a welcoming pair of woolly lined slippers. Please let your rest be assured for Art Vo-Veau is the only art movement claiming to be 100% botox free.

Contemporary Art is really just waiting to be put out of its own misery.

So there you have it – The Vo-Veauists have arrived – and all that is left to do is to spread the word, to grow our numbers and to use our universal inclusiveness (excepting of course, scientists, wowsers and anyone prone to use the word ‘narrative’ when clearly ‘story’ would do) to see off the final, convulsing death throws of those obnoxious and trite decades, an era art historians will remember shame facedly as the great contemporary morass.

PLEASE GROW A SMILE & EMBRACE THE LOVE…

WALK TOWARD THE LIGHT GOOD FOLK &

THROW YOUR LOT IN WITH THE VO-VEAUISTS.

We need a plethora of talented artists to put their names behind our cause – already the list includes a trinity of dedication -The Nowhere Man, L.M.Hemsworth and Andrew Stark – impressive? I agree. So let’s grow that list and shake the very foundations of this disgraceful art world deceit.

Please feel free to voice your support for Vo-Veauism in the comments section below and please also visit the organization’s official Facebook page at Art Vo-Veau

How ‘NOW’ Brown Cows.

2011-02-07T18:49:00.001+11:00

7th February, 2011

Back in those heady days of 1985 ‘The Smiths’ posed the somewhat existential question, “How Soon Is Now?”. And having scanned the book shelves of greater knowledge during the recent Jan’ heat wave season I’ve concluded that the book publishing fraternity answered Messrs Morrissey & Marr with a forceful reply of , “Never Bloody Soon Enough”.

For the printed plethora of NOWness has come to dominate recent front cover sensibilities; the three lettered present seen in the contemporary marketplace to be about as commonplace as rotting Warholian bananas at the base of a snotty infants school day rucksack.

…. and here’s just a few to be getting on with -

Baby Photography Now!
David Nightingale
2007.

Photography Now
Mark Haworth-Booth
1989

Pet Photography Now!
Paul Walker
2008

Sydney Now
Inara Walden & Robert McFarlane
2007

Street Photography Now
Sophie Howarth & Stephen McLaren
2010

Marvin K Mooney Will You Please Go Now!
Dr Seuss
2006

Wedding Photography Now!
Michelle Turner
2008

Up Till Now
David Fisher
2008

Iranian Photography Now
Rose Issa
2008

The Naked Now
Richard Rohr
2009

10 Ways To Improve Your Boudoir Photography Now
Edward Verosky
2010

Farm Together Now
Amy Franceschini & Daniel Tucker
2010

Apocalypse Now
Karl French

Art Photography Now
Susan Bright
2005

Stark Now
Tran Veganbauer & Andrew Stark
2010

Where's Wally Now?
Martin Handford
1997

And you know, whilst all these unimaginatively titled page turners present here as a curious stack of who knows what - the whole post was really just an excuse to play a Morrissey clip... and here it is - NOW!

Wise Words Indeed #3 – Charles Harbutt

2011-02-03T21:37:00.000+11:00

3rd February, 2011

Many photographers are as equally eloquent of thought as they are in capturing the most mesmerizing of street images. One such sidewalk snapper is the former President of Magnum Photo’s, Charles Harbutt. During a splendid 1972 piece the brilliant American photographer contemplated ‘reality’, unfurling the following Wise Words Indeed…

“Reality comes without adjectives, it just is. The photographer’s problem is to come to see the real world as it really is, like the boy hero of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’. In some ways, all photographers must become cavemen. Or aliens. Or children.” - Charles Harbutt

Photograph by Charles Harbutt

“The significant point is that if we are as open to reality as a camera is, that is as totally as a blank film to light, we in fact perceive meaning or feel emotion through reality’s own form.” - Charles Harbutt

Photograph by Charles Harbutt

“Photography is the only medium that originates in and is caused by the real, historical, time-space event of a collision between a man, a camera and reality.” - Charles Harbutt

Photograph by Charles Harbutt

“Writing about a visual medium tends to make the simple complex. If you want to make photographs, all you do is point the camera at whatever you wish, click the shutter whenever you want. If you want to judge a good photograph, ask yourself: Is life like that? The answer must be yes and no, but mostly yes.” - Charles Harbutt

Photograph by Charles Harbutt

“Photography is a reality high” - Charles Harbutt

Photograph by Charles Harbutt

Uncovering The Shadowy Art Agenda

2011-01-31T17:30:00.000+11:00

31st January, 2011.

"Please Walk All Over The Art"
Photograph by Andrew Stark

Now there’s this question that has gnawed away at my comprehension like a famished gnome at the Short Stool Steakhouse – it’s hovered just out and above my psyche like a menacing shadow projecting down upon my hapless aura - Specifically, and to be precise,

“Who the hell decides what photographic style is hot and what style is rot at any given point in history?”

I mean who imparts the yeah or the nay on this, our creative, camera pointing caper?

Louvre, Paris 1975
Photograph by John F Williams

Down here in the ochre dirt and fly colony, a land known in early19^th century atlases as Terra Australis, the Nowhere Man grew up in total awe of local street photographers: Roger Scott, John F Williams, Phil Quirk and Ingeborg Tyssen. Throughout the 1970s these traditional HCB style streeties were the darlings of the gallery set; they sat at the cutting edge of art photography, their work purchased voraciously by all the public collections. And then in the blinking of a conjunctive pupil, it was as if a grand piano had slid catastrophically from the rear of a speeding removalists van. Inexplicably and without reason it would seem that ‘The Shadowy Figure Who Decides’ (TSFWD) grew restless and smashed street style cred into jagged fragments of splintered firewood, mid intersection carnage interspersed by twisted wire and a forlorn past tense tune. During the early hours of August 17^th, 1983 the decree was executed and Aussies awoke to the hushed, sub textual whisper that, “the conceptual feminists were now ‘it’”. The street photographers of course hadn’t seen any of this coming and reacted initially as one would imagine, with a chuckle and that cocky elevated eyebrow of bushy disbelief that all sidewalk loiterers so ably employ whenever the big bad world places them under any semblance of threat. Sadly however, despite the ‘she’ll be right’ bravado unfurled by our D76 splashers, the Jatz and Cheddar cubed bubble of altered reality had been universally briefed and the streeties quickly found that all the locks had been changed and their head office files had been crudely branded with a dismissive “So Yesterday”, scrawled in the fluoro highlighter ink of a most mockingly verdant hue.

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs ... you'll be a Man, my son"
Photograph by Andrew Stark

Art & left wing politics had suddenly morphed into one, coupling like a bio degradable Allen-key thrust into a chiaroscuro style hexagonal hole on the head float of the famous Dulwich Hill May Day March. And before the revisionists could settle the choppy swell, buffeting pale and spindly limbs atop their King sized, burgundy tinted watery beds, this IKEA like ideal had very much claimed the decade and extraordinarily, much of the next. Australian history had been hit by two ‘ckkkkk’ sounding days of explosive alliteration and high drama, all inside eight curiously long haired and exceedingly humourless years…

Kerr’s Cur – the sacking of the Whitlam Government, an outrage to democracy on the 11^th November, 1975 was joined in the annals of incredulity by, The Contemporary Coup – the dismissal of street photography on the 17^th August, 1983.

And to fully appreciate the stark ramifications of this overstepped popping crease of change, we need look no further than the public gallery that oversees this countries largest city, Sydney. For the Art Gallery of NSW has not found the need to collect a single street photograph since “The Change”, claiming dismissively that the genre has already been well represented in its vast and diverse collection. A clearly gentrified way of saying that the bloodied and cold body of street photography was found curled up at the end of a no through road on the morning of August 17^th, 1983. (Perhaps someone needs let the AGNSW crew know that Elvis: Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong and Michael Jackson all released chart topping hits - post death).

Cahill Expressway
Painting by Jeffrey Smart

Heading into the new millennia it didn’t get a whole lot better. We found a further shift as politics became passé and it suddenly fell to sterility and the pristine, almost people-less city scape. Imperfection was eliminated in a Boys from Brazil type pimple purge, and this, the latest TSFWD anointed style mimicked a kind of digitally enhanced Jeffrey Smart retrospective. Size overpowered substance and the photographic experience aped a banal Hollywood flick – awash with monosyllabic scripts and a cursory non-story; all propped up by the endless stream of special effects and blitzkrieg marketing.

Where we head next is clearly not up to the Nowhere Man, however I do feel a certain ‘Woodward and that other bloke’ kind of vibe taking hold and will strive to saunter wildside to suss the shimmering late night cobblestoned word of my snitches and fences and bootlegging beauties, out there on the extreme edge of those dark avenues, deep in the bowels of East Killara, Pymble Heights, Turrramurra Mews and beyond … and I guess if they don’t know anything, I’ll Google some stuff and get back to you.

So just who is The Shadowy Figure Who Decides (TSFWD)? Is he or she an all encompassing autocrat or conversely perhaps nothing more than a figure-headed lackey masking a backroom of megalo-mincers and fattish financiers? But then if he is a mere mannequin, who is he and from whence does this curious entities counsel derive? (i.e. who’s feeding the bugger?). Is it all fostered by the reviewers & critics, or perhaps the art colleges, the academics, or is it driven solely by the auction houses and their exclusive chateau of clinking clientele?

Rest assured good readers - The Nowhere Man will dig. For we, the royal we are hell bent on uncovering this silhouetted puppet master – TSFWD, as our cryptically clever code has labelled him; he on whose flippant whim we all fulminate and furrow like obedient little moped perchers pottering along the hideously expensive tollway to Gore Hill. He, must be exposed. And if by some stroke of very impressive investigative journalism we actually do manage to uncover him or her … I fully expect a Pulitzer or two, a complimentary case of full strength beer, and the rebel yell kind of notoriety Julian Assange is now being afforded internationally – well, OK, maybe not that last thing!

Stay tuned fellow snappers …

and by way of an early list of possible suspects, here is a quintet of individuals the Nowhere Man feels may be able to help with our most immediate inquiries.

Parties of Interest

Charles Saatchi -
he may know a thing or two.

Oprah Winfrey -
word on the street is that "Girlfriend runs the World".

Stephen Fry -
probably not involved, but he is both highly cultured and nauseatingly connected.

Andy Warhol -
Mortality goes POP! Is Andy really dead???

Arthur Daley -
overheard during the winter of 87, describing art as
"a nice little earner"

Any information regarding this matter should be sent to Nowhere Man at n.man@gmx.com
Rest assured all corespondence will be treated with the utmost confidentiality (unless of course it's funny and/or pertinent, in which case it'll probably end up in a future post with your name plastered all over it)

For We Are Young And Free

2011-01-26T06:07:00.000+11:00

26th January, 2011.

From as faraway as Kalgoorlie, to as nearby as Coogee, January 26^th is the annual day known to all dinky di Trevor’s and Sharon’s as ‘Good Ole Australia Day’. It’s the day when lots of little blue flags are waved by zinc cream embellished kiddies, much high powered beverage is consumed and the magical words, ‘Public Holiday’ are stamped across Aussie desk calendars like a glittering green and gold winners sash on Oaks Day.

Andrew Stark

Nowhere Man will spend the momentous occasion nibbling cream filled lamington before venturing in and around Sydney to wave his camera about and no doubt give the impression to all discerning onlookers that, ‘yes, this is a purposeful photographer’...Of course we all know better.

And so, as this nationalistic, ‘down under’ fervour sweeps the immediate neighbourhood, I thought I might take the opportunity to post a bunch of special Aussie images, taken by a bunch of special Aussie photographers …

Harold Cazneau

Max Dupain

Olive Cotton

David Moore

David Potts

John F Williams

Jeff Carter

Robert McFarlane

Ingeborg Tyssen

Phillip Quirk

Rennie Ellis

Carol Jerrems

Roger Scott

Gerrit Fokkema

Max Pam

Trent Parke

Narelle Autio

Katrin Koenning

Garry Trinh

Jesse Marlow

Under the southern cross I stand

a little camera in my hand,

the streets they lie before me - strewth,

this wide n sepia land uncouth,

from Caz to Jess

via Max n Ms Cotton,

Australians real busy

on the planet's bottom !

With apologies to Henry Lawson, Rod Marsh and the other thousand Aussie photographers who should have been included but weren't (this time) ...

White Wall Fever...Carter & Leibovitz

2011-01-24T06:31:00.002+11:00

24th January, 2011.

Jeff Carter - State Library of NSW

In between prowling those rutted inner city back lanes in search of emotive imagery (or something) I took time out on Saturday afternoon to squiz at a couple of Sydney exhibitions. And I must conclude that the contrast between the two was both meaty and quite noticeable. For let’s face it, Jeff Carter and Annie Leibovitz have very little in common …

Annie Leibovitz - MCA

Jeff passed away recently; Annie didn’t.

Jeff was a bloke; Annie isn’t.

Jeff has never hung in the Museum of Contemporary Art; Annie currently is.

Annie’s somewhat of an international celebrity; Jeff isn’t & wasn’t.

Jeff’s images are earthy and soulful and I enjoyed his State Library of NSW exhibition immensely; Annie’s exhibition is showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art and last Saturday the powerful air conditioning in the adjoining bookshop was faultlessly sublime.

State Library of NSW
Photo - Andrew Stark

Footnote – Got hassled by security at the State Library for taking photo’s – and as the walkie talkie dude unfurled his best ‘this is really serious sir’ kind of look I could feel the spirit of Jeff Carter slapping his thigh and dancing to the ludicrous irony of banning photography at a photographic celebration.

Further Footnote – Little note to the MCA … Nowhere Man would need to be wined, dined and granted a one on one chat with Ms Leibovitz herself before forking out $15 – Anyhow, I got a fair handle on the show by thumbing the catalogue in the browsy bookshop (where I was curiously asked to wear my backpack on my front – presumably because suicide bombers don’t’ like to see it coming ???).

Jeff Carter -
"Beach Bush + Battlers" - State Library of NSW until February 20th... entry free

Annie Leibovitz -
"A Photographers Life 1990-2005" - MCA (Sydney) until March 27th ... $15 entry fee

Discourse and Cheap Patisserie with L.M. Hemsworth

2011-01-20T22:07:00.001+11:00

20th January, 2011

L.M.Hemsworth - from the Daybreak series

Last Tuesday morning, Nowhere Man caught up with acclaimed street photographer Lucas Hemsworth for a quick chat and a pineapple donut down at the Pennant Hills shopping mall. The young photographer’s star is very much on the rise having wowed all comers at the Revesby Biennale last June and has been described in Australian art dispatches most favourably as, “the literal street photographer” – this seemed an appropriate place to start…

N.M …

So Lucas, what do you make of the ‘literal street photographer’ tag ?

LMH …

Mate I quite like it. I’m a true street photographer and feel a distinction needs be made between the purity of straight forwardly photographing the streets as opposed to all these photographers flying under the street photography banner who aren’t actually shooting the streets at all, they’re shooting the sidewalks, the parks, the beaches, and more often than not – they’re shooting the people.

N.M…

So tell us just how a humble road digger suddenly becomes a celebrated street photographer?

LMH…

There was nothing sudden about it mate. I’d left school at 14 and was lucky enough to receive a traineeship with the DMR (Dept of Main Roads) – and for a young kid who knew nothing about anything, hell all that blue stone, bitumen and double yellow lines … I tell you, it was bloody intoxicating.

Anyway after a few years working solely on the shovel I earned the extra responsibility of taking the project photo’s for the gang. And on one particularly wet and windy Wednesday up the

Bobbin Head Road from Asquith, Tran Veganbauer driving a Nissan Bluebird ran right into me. It was my own fault as I’d set the tripod up in the centre of a hairpin bend and Tran actually did brilliantly not to kill me. Anyway, after that we became mates and Tran liked some of my images and suggested I should show them.

N.M…

Yes, for anyone not au fait – Tran Veganbauer’s contribution to Australian photography has been immense. A huge early supporter of the likes of Bill Henson, Tracy Moffatt, Barry Pascoe and now LM Hemsworth, just to name a few. Tran’s Padstow Gallery is pivotal in the twitching fulcrum of Aussie image making.

LMH…
Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.

L.M.Hemsworth - from the Daybreak series

N.M …

Just think, you might have been run over by Russell Crowe and today your thing could be thespianism.

LMH …

Russell Crowe doesn’t drive a Nissan Bluebird.

N.M…

Fair point.

Now Lucas, would it be overstating the truth if I were to suggest that you had a genuine passion for the streets?

LMH…

The streets don’t lie man: they don’t cheat, they don’t run off with your best mates brother – Nah, the streets stand up. They are totally solid; I respect the streets immensely.

L.M.Hemsworth - from the Daybreak series

N.M…

I read recently where “Review” described you as one of the great non artists of contemporary art. And let me quote, “Hemsworth’s street photographs strip bare the previously held dictum that art need be arty”.

LMH…

Geez this donuts good: texture, stickiness, full flavour – perfect. Did we invent the pineapple donut? Seems like a really Aussie concept to me. I’m sure we invented it.

N.M…

No I think that was the Hills Hoist.

LMH …

As well as mate… we’re allowed to have invented two things yeah ?

N.M …

I suppose. But tell me what you think of art, and why your photographs aren’t … art I mean.

L.M.Hemsworth - from the Daybreak series

LMH…

I’m a realist. I photograph the streets for the streets alone. I’m not out there to be some flowery bloody smart assed aesthetic junky …

If I see even the barest hint of artiness through my view finder I pull back, you know recoil – I just won’t release that shutter.

N.M…

That’s interesting, and I imagine very difficult to achieve – a little like calling misere during a hand of whist. It cuts against the natural instinct.

LMH…

Mmm. Not mine.

N.M…

You were embroiled in some light hearted controversy back in 2009 when it was pointed out that a number of your “literal street photographs” may not have actually been shots of streets, but instead roads. What is your position on all this ?

LMH…

Nothing f**king light hearted about it mate, I got very upset about all that nonsense. All, and I repeat ALL my photographs are street photographs … no roads, avenues, places, ways or any of the other minor thoroughfare descriptors. This whole beat up came about because of far off cross roads. I mean shit, there is a pigeon in the background of one of Atget’s Paris pictures does that suddenly make him a wildlife photographer?

L.M.Hemsworth - from the Daybreak series

N.M…

No, of course not. I totally agree. Pedantry is a curse and tragically, light hearted tom foolery can sometimes take an eye out …

OK, well, my bus to Hornsby is due shortly so can I just finish up by asking why you’re Web presence is so scant, almost non existent – I mean what’s the big secret why can’t people find your photographs?

LMH…

Ha Ha! - No secret mate. I’m just a bit of a luddite when it comes to that stuff and I wouldn’t be truthful if I didn’t mention that I don’t really trust it that much either. I just feel once an image has been stuck up to float around in them computers memory’s it’s lost much of its soul. And funnily enough that’s exactly why I’ve only given you some of my totally average photo’s to use with this interview.

N.M…

LM Hemsworth – thanks for your time.

LMH …

Nowhere Man - thanks for the pineapple donut.

End Game #1

2011-01-17T18:41:00.000+11:00

17th January, 2011.

Here’s a little something one never encounters in that pristine world of pixelated RAW files …

Photograph - Andrew Stark

Welcome to the dreaded, and paradoxically quite often glorious, chopped off final frame.

Tis a phenomena born out of, ‘no more’: signalled post-fact by the unease of the half wind, greeted with an ad hoc wall of blank … and if you’re really blessed, spool fastening sticky tape blotches rain down your runt exposure like fat tyred burn out marks upon a sweltering Carramar cul de sac.

Join with me and rejoice the gnawing imperfection – of the end game.

Here are a few recent examples -

Photograph - Andrew Stark

“They were always going to be the best frame on the roll; sadly, some still are.” - Andrew Stark.

iN-STore Book Review #2 - Sergio Larrain – London 1958-59.

2011-01-13T20:55:00.003+11:00

13th January, 2011

Like most serious minded thoroughfare trundlers -
I do so love a good monograph.

Sadly however my perilous fiscal foreshortedness forces me to fondle such visually lush trinkets on a purely temporary basis, and always from well within the three walls and big glass window of some austere, clinically air conditioned inner city bookshop… under the watchful gaze of CCTV and his ever vigilant, knuckle cracking soldiers on foot … Welcome to the Nowhere Man’s ongoing series of badgered and quite a bit harassed Book Reviews… Book Reviews done in store in which the period of time estimated between first choosing a book off the shelves, and whence my notepad and biro are ultimately kicked violently from my person is on average … a hard boiled 90 seconds. This week I had a rushed look at … "London 1958-59" by Sergio Larrain

London - Sergio Larrain

Now before I begin this short course review I must fess up to the fact that Sergio Larrain has been a personal favourite of mine, ever since I first laid eyes on his mesmeric image, “Valparaiso, Chile, 1957” back in the heady days of sometime last century. And so you see, when I spotted this little book shadowed, dwarfed and generally hidden between pylons of hard covered coffee table pap, down there on the bottom shelf of an unnamed and yet nicely air conditioned Sydney bookstore – I just couldn’t resist. And yet a further admission must shamefacedly be unfurled, an owning up that does make somewhat of a mockery of this segments main premise …ie. that I review a book cold, in a book store from just a cursory glance.

Valparaiso, Chile. 1957 - Sergio Larrain

For in this instance I must admit that I have a copy of this publication at home in the Woy Woy shack having picked it up in 2006 for just a few dollars from a shaggy simpleton dealing monographs in the back bar of the Great Southern Hotel down near China Town. He needed his bus fare home and I was desperate to score – orky orky heat the spoon n grip me hard around the bicep for hell, what a rush … I drooled and nodded big time. For this is a slim, stylish volume chockers full of blur, grain and just this absolutely magical feel. It was first published in 1998 by Dewi Lewis, with some sources claiming the work to have been shot during the winter of 1958, whilst others offer 1959 – either way, you get the gist of the era we’re looking at … of course London is in the northern hemisphere, so yeah, winter goes through Christmas … guess he started in late 58 and finished in 59 … hence the title… OK, you can come back now, Nowhere Man has caught up.

London - Sergio Larrain

Sergio Larrain was a Chilean, and probably still is. He received a British Council Grant; spending 8 months shooting the English capital before 1959 heralded an invitation to join the Magnum Photo Agency by none other than Henri Cartier-Bresson. And interestingly British master David Hurn talks of first meeting Larrain in

Trafalgar Square

during this period after the South American wandered over unannounced to say ‘hi’. A young Hurn had never heard of the friendly stranger, adding, “Sergio had this theory that he could tell good photographers by watching them work”, and it was Larrain who was responsible for first suggesting David Hurn to Magnum.

In his introduction to the book, the urban landscaper Mike Seaborne alludes to Larrain’s capturing of London during the transition from old to new, before offering, “It is not only the subject matter of Larrain’s photographs which make them so compelling, but also their candid nature and their strong sense of what an earlier documentary photographer of London, Bill Brandt, once referred to as ‘atmosphere’”. And yes, much as with Robert Frank’s London pictures of 1951-53: top hats and tails weave in and out of the mist, the embryonic zest and vibrancy of an approaching Carnaby Street swinging subtly into the books latter pages by way of clairvoyantly tipping us all to an impending future.

Adding further to the mystique of the work comes the man’s subsequent life story. For Sergio Larrain walked away from it all during the 1970s, off to study Zen Buddhism, living as somewhat of a recluse, in a Chilean village high up in the Andes Mountains. His incongruous ability to fly under the radar during a brilliant two decades of image making, perfectly illustrated by his staggering omission from the 1983 publication, "Macmillan Biographical Encyclopaedia of Photographic Artists and Innovators”, a meaty tome that includes over 7000 photographers from right across the mediums history...and yet no Sergio Larrain. Not so surprising however is his ‘no-show’ in amongst the pages of Viv Farnsworth’s, “A to Z of Rugby League Legends”, for whilst possessing a neat shimmy and left foot step with the ball in hand, the diminutive Larrain is said to have been an absolute revolving door in defence.

London - Sergio Larrain

A further interesting tit bit for photo aficionados is that one of the two editors of London 1958-59 is the brilliant English and Magnum snapper Martin Parr.

Needless to say, I absolutely adore this moody meander and must concede to being all a gush as I tap furtively upon slightly moistened keys …Photographers like Sergio Larrain are rarer than poise at a Kingswood fat farm (that’s with or without sauce). They exist on an all together higher plain (that’s with or without clothing), and I for one bow to the man’s tremendously poetic contribution.

Street Photography – Why Don’t They Like Me ?

2011-01-10T16:02:00.000+11:00

10th January, 2011

The very youngest of my trio of spirited step children suffers from a condition known medically as, “Pervasive Development Disorder” (PDD). It’s a condition which falls into the broad autistic spectrum of disorders and most notably brings about developmental delays in both socialization and communication skills. There is very little grey in her black to white scale and as a result, a recurring motif in and around the Nowhere Man shack resonates to the reasoning …
“Sweetheart, you can’t MAKE people play with you”.

And so it was just the other day, when reading through Nick Turpin’s interesting blog post, “Photography, Commerce and Success”, I found the piece eliciting an almost identical PDD response ... using a sing songy tone and a tired inflection I engaged my computer monitor with … “Street Photography, you can’t MAKE people like you”.

In a detailed and thought provoking essay, the 779 head man laments the general lack of interest shown toward street photography via the ‘art world’. Before proceeding forth to offer a kind of benign Berlin Wall solution of, stuff em, we’re all right mate; cos we’ve got each other … and Flickr.

Sorry, that’s flickr not flipper !

“ The opinion of my peers, dedicated Street Photographers internationally for whom I have enormous respect, mean’t far more than that of the photography director of Tate Modern or Moma ever could because these people are image makers in my field who are making some of the most exciting images of our era, they are the true ‘experts’ and their judgement is totally unsullied by whether or not my image will sell copiously in numbered editions” - Nick Turpin

& also

“I am delighted if Jen Beckman or Robert Kock like my work but will it be because they like my work or because they think they could shift it in editions” – Nick Turpin

Nowhere Man wholeheartedly embraces the altruistic, rank and file vibe here, however would point out that ‘I like your stuff man!’ can be tarnished in many more ways than simply the commercial… most notably I would suggest is the sickly pursuance of personal politics. Let me use Nick Turpin as an example – for Nick’s a proactive, and talented chap who has kicked off both In-Public and Publication and is also a fine photographer in his own right – now this is a guy a streetie with ambition could do well to get in tight with… ie. “Love that pic Nick”, or “Couldn’t agree more Nick”. This phenomena of disingenuousness is most evident on the various street photography discussion threads where the ‘democracy’ of the net bobs vibrantly, awash with varying degrees of cow towing, gushing and sycophancy, often in direct proportion to a posters perceived position in the big picture pecking order. So I guess one needs to sift and nurture (and use less ‘p’ words so close together). Nick waxes lyrical about the private in-public forum, an exclusive sounding board open to a select band … so there you have it, the filtering has been done. However surely the Englishman’s piece is aimed at the whole street photography community and so here we are seeing beautifully polished pink lady apples sitting at odds with the Valencia oranges, deep down in the frosty crisper of tiered experience.

Secondly I would point out that people aren’t their jobs. I mean what if the photography director of the Tate spent his weekends walking the streets with much hope in his heart, nabbing the passing throng with a Leica … and yet the acquisitions policy he oversees from 9 to 5 can genuinely find no place for our genre - this stark differentiation between the professional and the personal is as paradoxically commonplace as is red dirt in the outback. For example, do you remember the happily married, right Reverend Jimmy Swagget – man of the slightly soiled cloth who picked up his pay cheque preaching absolute monogamy, whilst in complete contrast, during his out of office time, was off shagging street corner tail like some randy 22 year old south island sheep crutcher.

Jimmy Swaggert

So I think it’s fairly pointless and intellectually quite rank to build an ‘us v them’ scenario. You can’t make people like you, and if an art institution doesn’t like a certain set of images – hey, that’s their prerogative. It’s silly to then push out the bottom lip and infer that because they’re not in the game, what would they know about it anyway. Driving a wedge, by way of delivering the emotive counter punch smacks of setting ones estuary crossings alight atop Bath, sans bathwater, recent offspring and a dog eared copy of Jane Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’. For if this argument were followed through … can we assume that men have no hope of knowing anything about child birth, woman nothing about State of Origin rugby league, any of us diddly squat on the subject of dying… opinion is opinion and diversity in such things is immeasurably invaluable (i.e. it’s a good thing).

“I suspect they are not even aware of it but street photographers have already created a new model for defining success as a photographer, a model that is completely free from commercial concerns and a model that relies not on ‘experts’ who have never lifted a camera but on the real experts, their peers. The new model is, of course, Peer Review.” – Nick Turpin.

Let’s face it, attempting to measure success is about as pointless as scratching a mozzie bite. How could anyone seriously consider a gaggle of thumbs up mouse clicks to be any more legitimate a yard stick in determining the success of one’s work than the free market or even the ruddy verbosity of your friendly bus driver who loves to qualify all his visual arts appraisals with, “I dunno much about art mate; but your stuff’s f**kin good!” For keeping it all in-house never really works (look at North Korea). A parochial generosity of spirit masks any hint of reality and the only true marker is to be found within.

If I take a photo and I grow to like it … then that is success.

I truly admire Nick Turpin’s drive. And yet in reading his piece, my mind became fixated on thoughts of disposal store Buddhism …and for some reason – chocolate Bavarian pie. Nobody loves a street photographer, excepting for another street photographer – so hop aboard the SS Internet and let’s all sail off the edge of the world together. Dr Nowhere Man’s advice would be to just relax, enjoy the journey, take ya 5 decent street pic’s each and every year, show them to everyone and no one alike – for it’ll ultimately lead where it’ll lead … and if you truly enjoy doing it – who the f**k cares where it leads anyway. Remember your destination is dust. It’s the love in the room that matters, not the hum of the adulation meter nor the tinny tone of the cash register ... but then I think I’m about 87% in agreement with Nick on that point, mmmm, probably timefor another tumbler of grape...

Click here for Nick Turpins, "Photography, Commerce and Success"

SP on SP … sexual perversion and street photography.

2011-01-06T06:53:00.002+11:00

6th January, 2011.

Succumbing ever so often to the suggestive city-scape
Photograph - Andrew Stark

“The possession of a camera can inspire something akin to lust” - Susan Sontag.

I guess you could describe me as having being a tad hot and bothered the other evening when in an act of abject idleness I flicked through Andrew Stark’s largely unreadable tome … Escaping Into Life: a psycho study of the contemporary street photographer (yeah I know, this is getting ridiculously schizoid). I’d never actually gotten past the opening chapters of the book before this particularly barren, latish hour and had kind of assumed that the guy’s research was both flimsy and benignly dry. I was spot on with the former, however became quite outraged as I read the following scandalous slight on all clean living: happily monogamous, church going, Little House on the Prairie following sidewalk enthusiasts. – And I quote …

“So maybe, just perhaps street photographers are not as humbly humanitarian as we so regularly make out. Rather, chasing the unsuspecting; partaking in a covert form of grubby pseudo stalking, feverishly driven toward a shutter released, voyeuristic climax. Images taken free of authority: a clearly outrageous violation of foreign physicality. We thrust relentlessly the cold, clinical, calibrated lens: that rock hard metaphorical extension of longing into the personal space of our randomly selected prey. The pursuit is endless. A tenuous conduit to genuine connection: a longing which can never be fully quenched…

And let’s face it; everything in life ultimately leads back to sex.

So why not street photography?

Our planetary path is littered by the hedonistic refuse of ‘the act’, both real and simulated. Those not having sex are certainly thinking about it … and those not thinking about it are either fibbing through jagged incisors, or are stuck home watching Oprah as she lays it on with a widelux trowel. So given the premise that,

“Everything in life, ultimately leads back to sex”. - Andrew Stark (3 sentences ago)

Then yes, street photography may well be a subtle, slightly perverted form of self abuse. Freudian analysis would suggest a submissive sexual role is being assumed. A small, non threatening tool used in a wholly non controlling, almost benign manner. Are we not simply waiting to be beaten by a dominatrixian public? For in much the same way as neighborhood joggers have been shown to huff and puff on the semi orgasmic endorphin high; street photographers are wandering big city streets raising the Leica to the eye whenever they feel the highly charged urge to be caught; to be shamed, and ultimately to be punished. And to further intensify this self flagellatory performance, a small 35mm souvenir is garnered from each encounter, held up as the sole purpose of a lascivious and highly camouflaged craft. “

What was the true motivation of this image ?
Photograph - Andrew Stark

Stalkers yeah!

He’s dead set calling us a bunch of randy bunny boilers.

I was cranky.
I mean as if street photographers aren’t already having a hard enough time in the perception stakes, we certainly don’t need scurrilous claptrap leaking from within our own traditionally meek and mild ranks.

And with perspiration dripping profusely from a painfully enlarged Indignant Gland, I jumped swiftly onto the electro mail super highway and fired off a terse – Please Explain … using the very latest in Truly Toxic Font Types, the clipped bluey, Pauline Hansen Extra Bold.

Within hours of my spleen venting, a cryptic response was forthcoming, it read –

“Ha ha, Nowhere Man please keep your pants on and stop being so obviously overt. Let me answer your concerns by highlighting the work of the philosopher and writer Nigel Warburton, who on his excellent blog “Art & Allusion” refers to Freuds “The Interpretation of Dreams” At one point in his treatise, the master psychologist (Freud) describes a young agoraphobic woman who dreams of walking in the street wearing a straw hat. This young lass feels that the buffed and tanned local tri-athlete she passes in the street cannot possibly harm her despite the fulsome quiver and aggressive leer radiating his most manly persona. Now this basic, plot based recount is the manifest context of her dream. However Freud explains that a sub text or latent content flows like hot lava below - a dream within a dream if you will - that screams of sexual temptation; her straw hat a phallicly symbolic accoutrement that protects her magically from herself. Freud concludes their session amusingly by informing the woman that if she had in fact a husband or a casual suitor with such splendid genitals she need fear nothing from heavily perspiring tri-athletes … adding with a wink, "would you perhaps care to discuss the matter further over coffee and cake".

Now Mr Nowhere Man, all I’m suggesting in drawing your attention to this somewhat convoluted analogy is that by swapping a straw hat for a rangefinder, factoring in the Cartesian difficulty with differentiating dreams from reality and walla-whoooska … triathletes, genitals, reciprocity failure – it’s all there buddy”

OK, I'm not even touching this one.
Photograph - Andrew Stark

Lounging back into the wonky Jason Recliner I found my anger had dissipated somewhat, oozing down to a cool, sandy point somewhere off and beyond Terrigal Beach. It was 2AM and all the sane people were asleep. My girlfriend’s cerise coloured slipperettes warmed my oft cramped arches as I sipped on herbal and nibbled the neediest corner of an Iced Vovovian treat. Staring wistfully up at mosaically fashioned walls within my cramped and secret subterranean shelter, their endless patchwork of glossy 6x4s revealing darkly – the ongoing and clandestine series, “Schoolgirls Who Sit in the Park - Shot Surreptitiously from the Hip”.

A straightened elbow and a cocked wrist are all that
seperate shooting from the hip and all out 'upskirting'.
Photograph - Andrew Stark

I contemplated earnestly.
For as unsavoury as the tone had become,
I reasoned ...
perhaps the guy had a point.

“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls, and whispered in the sound of silence”

- Paul Simon

Recent Offerings #3

2011-01-03T06:12:00.000+11:00

3rd January 2011

I guess I should really set the record straight on these “recent offerings” claims.

The Nowhere Man wanders aimlessly atop the crumbling bitumen streets. He takes just the occasional, often curious photograph – and for what reason he forces down when he does, that little silver button, is a mystery resigned totally to the fulsome inbox of www.Theo.com – the Greek e-God of all stuff unexplainable
(...and also a great place to buy affordable on-line fruit & veg).

The process is a slow and cumbersome morass of repetitive catchupism (word invented – patent pending).
Please let me expand…
Once home from my day’s sidewalk shuffle I toss any resultant exposed film into the specially tailored lead lined draw I picked up for a song back in the mid nineties at one of Pete Garrett’s garage sale’s over on Wedding Cake Island (I’d really hate to lose work to nuclear fallout or something…). Anyway, inside the sheltered draw are a queue of grey canisters awaiting succor like a short n cylindrical gaggle of expectant pensioners, hunched, mouths agape, awaiting the lime flavoured wobble of jelly and ice cream at the Gwen Plumb Memorial Nursing Home’s traditional Sunday lunchtime buffet. Eager little soldiers of tightly coiled TRI-X for whom one by one, an introduction to twenty degree dev’ awaits.

… many many months later I scan the neg’s – a back log approaching 12 months flashes gaily upon the Nowhere Man scoreboard at my most recent glance.

So when I open boldly with the heading “recent offerings” – please factor in the lag.

These pictures are new – however the subjects of the photo’s have well and truly moved on …(no, I don’t mean they’re dead – I just mean they’re not standing where they were when the photo that features them was actually taken – which of course is bleeding obvious but is used here as a gross exaggeration for some sort of effect – something I’m told I do quite often).

So here’s a further 8 “recent offerings”, from which I’m trying to work out whether any are OK … and that’ll take another 6- 12 months to determine !

Photo- Andrew Stark

Photo - Andrew Stark

Urn-believable!

2010-12-30T10:34:00.001+11:00

30th December, 2010

Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust -
our slightly dodgy cricket team's been well and truly sussed.

19 year old Ricky Ponting - back when life was a bit more fun.
Photograph by Andrew Stark

With apologies to anyone outside Australia, England, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, or the Caribbean (have I forgotten anyone ???) ... rest assured normal transmission will resume shortly.

By the way, in this photo taken at Bankstown Oval during 1993 Ricky was standing in front of the pavilion, and behind the pavilion is a road - ie street photography, yeah ?

Just Who is Top of the SP Heap?

2010-12-28T20:57:00.002+11:00

28th December, 2010

The Director of the London Street Photography Festival, Brett Jefferson Stott has brought to my attention the powerful British bloc’s unfurling of an inaugural International Street Photography Award (which I’ve nicknamed ‘The Frank’) – an extravagant endeavour to find “the world’s best street photographer”.

It's also the surname of a guy who headed west from Switzerland many years ago.

A glitzy ceremony is planned, somewhere down in the hazy shadows of Big Ben, right round the corner from a tube station or perhaps a red double decker bus route (you know, in London) … A gala occasion where penguin suits and bling shall intermingle much chilled chardy and that natural street wise swagger.

Now before I progress, please be aware that ‘The Franks’ do contain a light tinge of exclusivity about them as they are only open to street photographers with 30 quid to spare (works out at about the equivalent cost of a hundred foot or 600 frames of TRI-X) however by way of a softener, a 28.95 pound Blurb book voucher is promised by the organizers to all entrants. A thousand big ones to the winner and no doubting there’ll also be a shiny little trophy to set off even the drabbest of suburban mantles.

'The Franks' promise to be even bigger than the Logies

Interestingly my local Woy Woy SP bookie, Bruce ‘the garfish’ Feggans has tabled a surprisingly informed market, twiddling the knobs of his odds board to within a sprocket hole of common sense. Matt Stuart has been installed as his early favourite at 5-2 which is probably bad news for the sharp eyed Englishman given that ‘the garfish’ has lost a motza recently laying both the Poms in the Ashes and the third Fockers flick at the box office … Trent Parke appears to be great value at 7-1 however a recent conversation with the insightful Adelaide streetie Phill Hunt (who likes to bend the elbow alongside Trent at their local, City of Churches watering hole) shed an eerie safelight glow upon the betting confusion that surrounds Trent whose work tends to hopscotch these days in and out of the parameters of absolute street photography … whether or not the judges see it this way is really anybodies guess, and at this succulent price he could well be worth a little flutter.

The odds of all who featured in Street Photography Now are shorter than a grommet’s left shoe lace whilst the entire iN-PUBLiC site is shorter again at elevenses or tighter, excepting for Nick Turpin who has assumed a judging role

“I’m certainly not the Simon Cowell of iN-PUBLiC”
– Nick Turpin … HCSP November 2010.

Without wishing to appear in anyway misogynistic (I struggle to spell it, let alone live it): Narelle, Melanie, Nitsa & Shazza from Toongabbie have been mentioned earnestly in recent dispatches on the Hard Core Punters Forum (Shazza has been mentioned in a wholly discordant context).

Dougie Wallace shapes as a good roughie at 25-1, whilst Aussie Trent’s Magnum stablemate, Bruce Gilden is firming by the day after drawing the extreme inside barrier …

So go to it people. Raid your piggy banks an either thrown your lens cap into the ring, or bet London to a brick on one or two of your thoroughfare trundling faves …

And to anyone who is seriously in the frame to win this, the first ever ‘Frank Award’ – here’s a brilliant example of just how informative and philosophically enriching a well constructed acceptance speech can be -

                                 and the winner is …

                                 For more information on the Award - check here

The Wynyard Grizzle…..Merry Christmas to All

2010-12-23T06:43:00.001+11:00

23rd December,2010.

Tis the season to be jolly and jovial and …

Well anyway, I was out photographing in the city yesterday, just up from the Wynyard ramp when the following exchange took place between –

Me –
the fun loving,
ever smiling Nowhere Man (NM)

He –
the podgy thirtysomething
with the fulsome monobrow (PM).

Picture if you will - a modern day cave man standing near a curved wall, in front of which a steady stream of seemingly placid Sydneysiders flow back and forth like the frothy and usually quite wet, Bondi tide.

PM … (using a joltingly aggressive tone)

Why ya takin pitchers of me ???

NM… (squinting toward the annoyance before using a condescending tone)

I’m not mate. I’m taking photo’s of the city…

Now being in the city as you are, who knows you may

well feature in the odd picture or two …

PM … Stop takin me pitcher!

NM… You’re not listening pal – I’m not. I don’t even know you.

PM… (momentarily glancing behind)

What’s so f**kin interestin bout that wall anyhow???

NM…Mate. Who the hell are you? I ain’t discussing my

wall fetish with you – why should I?

PM…Stop takin pitchers of me, freak… or I’ll f**kin bash ya!

NM…Why so paranoid pal? You some sort of fugitive or something?

Hey, maybe I should be takin your pitcher

(pitcher pronounced as if by a freckle faced eight year old with dodgy front teeth)

PM… (striding forth he brushes past the photographer, delivering a half hearted shoulder check, mumbling)

F**kwit!

(before continuing on down George St, toward Wynyard)

An earlier shot in front of the Wynyard wall.
Photograph by Andrew Stark

Tis the season to be jolly and jovial: the season of earnest reflection; good will to all men, women, children and of course - furry marsupials.

May I take this opportunity to wish all my fellow street photographers and those who stumble upon this blog - a very Merry Christmas…and let me share a pertinent little ditty by the brilliant Aussie singer songwriter Tim Minchin by way of magically crystallizing the occasion

Mr Anon Shoots Good Ole Sydney

2010-12-20T19:46:00.000+11:00

21st December, 2010

A bloke with a snazzy hat, two wooden posts and a well pouched mate

With distant parallels to Vivian Maier and John Maloof all the way over in Chicago, comes the story of a car boot sale and its unexpected windfall from Narrabeen High School on Sydney’s northern beaches.

Just another Saturday arvo in the burbs

Local photo journalist John Grainger was out doing a wee bit of bric-a-brac shopping when he stumbled upon a tatty box housing 14 rustic rolls of processed negatives – over 200 images revealing Australian life from the 1940s & 50s taken by an anonymous snapper … the only clue to his identity, a single, slightly off focus self portrait taken into a distant mirror.

Mr Anon

Being a photographer himself and with an old school ability to hold negs up to the light, Grainger immediately grasped the nostalgic worth of the booty.

The famous Sydney amphibious tram - seen here in two minds

And equally, being a photographer himself, Grainger haggled like a hard working foot soldier on a basic wage. The boot salesman crumbled, settling for a fiver and the chuffed pressy rushed home to scan Mr Anon’s entire historically pertinent portfolio – acknowledging later that, “it would be good to find the family who owns them”.

Bronzed Aussies in antique sluggers.

A News Limited led search has been unfurled in the week before Christmas …

Wise Words Indeed #2 – Raymond Moore

2010-12-17T20:04:00.000+11:00

17th December, 2010.

Many photographers are as equally eloquent of thought as they are in capturing the most mesmerizing of street images. One such sidewalk snapper, or perhaps he might more accurately have been described as a country lane capturer - was the late Raymond Moore. During a splendid 1968 interview with Creative Camera the brilliant British photographer unfurled the following Wise Words Indeed…

“Light, from the gentle and persuasive to the harsh and strident, is the magical communicating agent, without it, all in life and the photographic print is black.” -Raymond Moore

Raymond Moore

“Cartier-Bresson, Boubat, Eugene Smith among many others still seem to me to have used photography to create essentially photo-images, yet devoid of the gimmickry, technical and otherwise fashionable - this month’s model – approach. One feels a basic honesty and integrity that is missing from a great deal of today’s work.” - Raymond Moore

Raymond Moore

“Technical matters are relatively unimportant. I use the camera I am happiest with, and that can produce the type of print I visualise; superb definition and ultra fine grain may be far less convincing than a grainy blur” - Raymond Moore

Raymond Moore

“The meaning and message lie in the photographs, it’s a visual matter and it cannot be translated into words. To me, they sing and celebrate life, or should do, and life is the extension of the person taking them. It’s the photographer’s uninhibited reaction to the moment that counts, not premeditated images culled from the stale air of the past. One of the greatest dangers is self-conscious originality; to try and be original is a sure way of not being. An empty self, childlike and uninhibited, is far more likely to make a truly original statement.” - Raymond Moore

Raymond Moore

Recent Offerings #2 – half a dozen moments from domesticity.

2010-12-14T19:07:00.001+11:00

14th December, 2010.

She is an emotional and physical whirr: a storyteller, a songbird and a lounge room gymnast.

Lexie.T. turned eight just recently.

Photograph by Andrew Stark

Happy Birthday sweetheart,

from the annoying Mr Poo Poo Head with the camera.

Let Them Eat Cake

2010-12-09T09:54:00.001+11:00

December 11th, 2010

Today marks an exciting milestone in the life and times of Blog Nowhere Man … for it was on this very day during the very preceding month that our wordy electronic bulletin first kicked off its curious existence. Sepia toned good times filled with tremendously vibrant memories of that morning we hot wired the net before charging from the Vulture Street end with spangly spinnaker fully a flutter, heading with vim and a damp cloth toward the mixed metaphor horizon of just up beyond Darlinghurst.

Our first 30 days have captivated the discerning sidewalk enthusiast
Photo - Andrew Stark

And so without any further a do, in an act of due reverence, please let us all be upstanding whilst I crank up the phonograph for a bit of a low key, celebratory derriere wiggle … a one, a two, and a one two three - chicka boom, chicka boom, chicka boom – boom…

Now with the jiggy nonsense out of the way …may I suggest before I proceed that you resume your seats and just let me open by way of clarifying an odd discrepancy regards the archives tab. For if you gaze attentively towards your right you will notice a September reference for the initial post: please be rest assured this is some sort of blog furphy and the initial utterance of the Nowhere Man was hurled clumsily out into the stratosphere on Remembrance Day, November 11th, 2010.

Golly gosh! And haven’t we experienced the full gamut of peaks and troughs in an emotion charged 30 days … or was it 31? And as the future greets us like a mid Feb heat haze dancing thickly atop the spinifexed tundra of the Minto Mall car park, we pay tribute to all who have sampled our fare (lookout punters – delusion has taken hold as the royal ‘we’ kicks in). With an extra special ‘hooray’ for our exclusive brace of followers … the two ‘M’s’ – Mel & Mike; for living as we do in an era where genuine blog followers are harder to snare than Conger Eels when using week old damper and a rusty hook. Borrowing from the Jonestown experience, I ascertain that one must look after the ones one is lucky enough to have won over…and with this in mind I gave our original follower a rather sensual back rub this morning: a wholly spontaneous act that can’t of course be assumed or assured in subsequent Nowhere Man/Follower contracts (sorry Mike).

It’s been fun, and who knows what the future holds … for the streets, they are littered with photographers; the net, well it’s absolutely chockers with blogs – and so it’s onward and upward I say … hell, just one more month and we’ll have done two!

The iN-SToRE Book Review #1 ... Istanbul by Andreas Herzau

2010-12-07T08:05:00.003+11:00

7th December, 2010

Like most serious minded thoroughfare trundlers -

I do so love a good monograph.

Istanbul by Andreas Herzau.

Now without any shadow of ambiguity this is a truly beautiful looking publication of almost 100 images – most of them are in colour and yet with just a smattering of greyscale mono’s the representation manages to keep a stylistic dinosaur such as myself quite perky.

Having never been to Turkey I can safely surmise that in this fine collection of photographs Andreas has totally nailed it – nothing has ever said Istanbul more boldly to me than did this impressive book throughout the minute and fourteen seconds I had allotted me to check it out (very vigilant store detective at this particular store on this particular afternoon).

Istanbul - Andreas Herzau ...
made me think of Lartigue

I did pick up that Andreas has a street style leaning more toward documentary than it does ad hockery. Although I might add that I’m not terribly sure you can staple 80+ images of one place together and not claim to be documenting in some shape or form. Nowhere Man remains fittingly no-where on this point… as of course he does on so many facets of contemporary existence.

Istanbul - Andreas Herzau ...
no, not the pigeon shot but this is a cracker

Well beyond my assisted eviction – two of the books images stay fresh in my mind …there’s this picture featuring an out of a focus young woman’s face, a face which quite possibly is the most beautiful facade God ever grew eye brows upon and the feel of the pic reminded me instantly of Lartigue (this isn’t terribly unusual however as I often think of the great French boy wonder – you know at bus stops, washing up the dishes, checking the mail box etc …). The second sticker for me was this high class pigeon shot, which if you kind of squint your eyes a bit and view it with a head tilt can almost be deemed fit to rival Matt Stuart and all the great pigeon photographers throughout the ages: fanciers who have specialized with tenderness in imagery of the great flying rat, a true urban staple of all cities throughout time.

I enjoyed this publication immensely and despite our fleeting one night stand kind of relationship would recommend it heartily to all-comers.

Recent Offerings #1 … a fresh photo or 7 from ‘Down Under’

2010-12-04T08:22:00.003+11:00

4th December, 2010.

Just as it is with the Ugandan King Baboon Tarantula who survives on a low carb diet of one hefty insect a month, The Nowhere Man snaps his nutritional fare quite sparsely. Worthwhile ocular interpretation has always been a personal challenge (as has seeing stuff), even more so as the years have tumbled by and that unremitting clutter of life has fuzzed significant intent.

Sadly, despite the addition and attention of copious rolls of black electrical tape I must also report that Konica has begun haemorrhaging internally and every sixth or seventh frame is now being lined by unwanted stalactites of light…

That being said – the streets continue to be free to enter and both the Aussie weather and my state of mind remain clemently balmy with only the barest hint of a pre dusk low pressure change.

Photo - Andrew Stark

Woy Woy Shed Update – She’s Alive !

2010-12-03T06:39:00.000+11:00

3rd December, 2010.

Fantastic news just in from the Woy Woy dig.

A survivor has been pulled alive (as opposed to the rarer form, the non alive survivor) from the twisted rubble of the asbestos riddled shed.

Jeanette. P., the family matriarch of the previously assumed “deceased family” has been located safe and well, living in the sprawling western suburbs of outer Sydney. And whilst the sheds traditional owners – The Gunnasiouxya People have decided to re-enter the fray, usurping the Nowhere Man’s right to contact said survivor – it is believed a legal letter has been drawn (personally, I’d have typed it but a little charcoal sketch is always nice), enunciating to the general effect – and in laymans speak – “Howdy Jeanette, we’ve got yer family albums. Would you like em back?”

Now I was greatly comforted by the news. And a certain sense of satisfaction washed over me as the disappointment of Wednesday’s local court appearance momentarily pushed up the beach toward the surf club car park of my potholed mind. My charge of breaking into the ramshackle shed had been fast tracked to appear so as not to clutter the Court roster leading into the Woy Woy Spring Carnival.

It had been a horror week, as I’d been forced to fight like a marzipan sausage in a fat farm to preserve my freedom and just to top it all off, the Aussie cricket team in battle with the old enemy looked about as potent as low fat icing sugar- England 1- 4000 in their second dig! And so, with sweet toothed similes spinning wildly atop the dessert tray like an amphetamine addled Doogle, gyrating the roundabout most magical… let me recount both the closing statement for the defence and the crushing judgement handed down by Koolewong’s Local District Court circa just the other day …

Nowhere Man …

“And in closing your honour…

I do concede that I have flaunted the law and yet only your honour, for the higher moral principle.

For that, yes I am guilty.

Reuniting loved ones in the stern face of bureaucratic bloody mindedness.

For that, yes your honour, I am guilty.

Break and enter; balderdash your honour … I put it to this court that if I were to kick in the flaming door of a burning bungalow and pull to safety: women, children and men folk alike… that I would in fact be hailed a considerable hero. Would I not be fated with ticker tape and free produce all the way from the

Blackwall Road roundabout right down towards Ettalong Surf Dive & Ski ?

Of course yes I would.

I put it to your honour that a lit match illuminates much statutory inconsistency; ‘Break n Enter’, drinking bevvies and smoking Cubans with an appreciative throng at the charmingly quaint Null and Void Arms whenever a higher humanitarian cause aligns motive.

I implore this court your honour to embrace a larger, more encompassing, spiritually lush picture in determining this spurious case … thank you.”

Ruddy Faced Magistrate…

“Mr Nowhere Man, you watch a lot of television.

Would I be right ? (chuckles from the court)

Yes, well… you claim to have broken into said shed upon hearing screams for help radiate from behind the padlocked door – and yet the family you claim to have rescued transpires to being little more than old photographs haphazardly aligned in each of two albums.

This court views self righteous acts undertaken by lone wolf street photographers in a very dim, uprate your TRI X three and a half stops kind of light.

I must conclude that you are somewhat of a buffoon Mr Nowhere Man and I hereby impose a 12 month suspended sentence. In addition you shall be required to recompense The Gunnasiouxya People all costs pertaining to a suitable lock and a brand spanking new shed door.

… Next !”

Wise Words Indeed – Mike Peters

2010-11-30T07:18:00.004+11:00

30th November 2010

Some photographers are equally as

eloquent of thought as they are in

capturing the most mesmerizing of

street images. One such sidewalk

snapper is Mike Peters.

In a splendid and detailed interview

by Alex Wichman on Cinemafia, the

New York photographer has included the following

Wise Words Indeed…

“You have to make your own way and learn to make images that only you can make, and once you do that, you may have something worth caring about.” - Mike Peters.

Mike Peters - from The Dream series

“A lot of what I see on Flickr, though popular, is not really well informed or particularly interesting. Far too many of the people posting on Flickr have no idea of any of the work that was done long before they were born, or started shooting, they seem to have no point of reference, so it’s hard for them to know what they’re doing in any context …” - Mike Peters

Mike Peters - from The Dream series

“As far as the future of street photography, the media lost interest a long time ago for a variety of reasons too long to go into and the art world is off on a different tangent. The big issue as I see it is that photographs of real people are not so easy to hang on your wall. Taking one of my photo’s and putting it over the couch takes a real act of bravery on the part of the buyer, it’s like inviting a stranger into your home and having him or her stare at you all day long.” - Mike Peters

Mike Peters -
from the Coney Island series

“I believe that in order for ones work to persist, one has to work with diligence and consistency over a long period of time, and then hope that when you die your kids don’t just put it all in a dumpster.” - Mike Peters