NOWHERE MAN: Australian Photography

Showing posts with label Australian Photography. Show all posts

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

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

How ‘NOW’ Brown Cows.

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!

Uncovering The Shadowy Art Agenda

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

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 …