david hanson

more here

Catherine Wagner

website

Shout out to Emma B. Anne referenced this photographer during my individual critique and upon seeing her work, I thought Emma would share the same interest I did. The quietness of the images combined with the overwhelming amount of information you obtain of these people through their belongings is what caught my attention the most.

Aussie Up: Anne Zahalka

The other day I was in Cellar Stories (great bookshop - nice one Providence!) and found an issue of the New York-based Big Magazine from 2002 devoted to Australian art, mostly photography. Included were several bodies of work by photographers with whom I wasn't familiar. I wondered: were these great series one-hit wonders? Have the artists moved into other media? Are they too underground for me? Not exactly. I did a bit of Googling, and a lot of them have, it seems, since given up or de-emphasised art practice and are now working in the commercial world, either in Australia or the US or the UK.

I often struggle to find photographers working in Australia whose work I enjoy. This may have something to do with the tendency to leave the country and pursue other options overseas, or the extent to which commercial work ends up attracting and holding talented young photographers, or the fact that most galleries in Sydney and Melbourne are relatively unenthusiastic about representing artists working only with photography. In any case, given the quality of art education and photographic education in Australia, and the vibrancy of the emerging arts scene in our big cities, we produce a surprisingly small number of accomplished photographic artists.

This week, one last time, I thought I would show you the work of some contemporary Australian photographers.

Firstly, Anne Zahalka (b. 1957), who has been prolific since the 1980s. These are from her series Leisureland (1998-2001), which show on a grand scale the Australian tendency to recreate.

Anne Zahalka, Cole Classic, 1998

Anne Zahalka, Wood Chopping Stadium, 1999

Anne Zahalka, Star City Casino (after Breugel), 1999

Anne Zahalka, Model Railway Club, 1998

For what it's worth I think this body of work is far stronger than the British photographer Simon Roberts' recent book We English, which explores similar themes.

Check out more of Anne Zahalka's work on her website.

Sub(urbia): Howard Arkley

This week (well, let's pretend it's last week), I thought I would mention the work of some Australian painters who have dealt with suburban and urban space. While America may have invented the freakish thing we know to be the suburb, it spread quickly. Tim Davis, writing about his series 'The New Antiquity', writes:

Many of my pictures did not look particular to Rome, but might have been taken outside of Phoenix or Cairo or Jakarta. The suburbs turn out to be a globalized space, with building materials and construction styles and rubbish (and maybe hopes and dreams) flooding across national borders.

This is true, but some things can be more specifically placed. Howard Arkley (1951-1999) drew on Australian suburban vernacular, often painting from real estate newspaper clippings and photographs of houses in outer Melbourne suburbs:






Arkley died of a heroin overdose in 1999 while what was to be his final exhibition, at the Venice Biennale, was underway. His work has since gained a large audience within Australia, and is widely known and admired among the general population.

For those who like the recording artist Nick Cave (I'm looking at you, Dan Kwon), one of Arkley's last paintings was a terrific portrait of Cave commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.

Weird Worlds: Lars Tunbjörk

I like it when photographs show us places that seem weird to us, or make places seem even weirder than they usually do.

Lars Tunbjörk's Office series is a great example:

Lars Tunbjörk, from Office

Lars Tunbjörk, from Office

Lars Tunbjörk, from Office

Lars Tunbjörk, from Office

What a scary and wonderful place. I'm happy just to look at these pictures, though - I'm not tempted to visit.

See more of Tunbjörk's work here.

Paul Graham

website

Margaret Stratton

website

Tim Davis

I mentioned this work in class on Wednesday. A great early series from Tim Davis, which deals directly with the question of light. In his lucid introduction to the series, he writes:

In photographic language, light is read as grammar; as an aesthetic tool, helping the artist describe an apprehended visual world. I am pursuing a visual world where light is syntactic; light veering close to content. In all my work light is cultural and political. It is put there by someone, for a purpose: to invite citizens to share their money with corporations, to keep workers working, to describe democracy, to allow paintings in museums to be seen in one particular way.

Bradford Pear

Car Accident

Sconce

The Strand

I'm a big fan of the way in which Davis investigates larger political issues through vernacular, often banal, subject matter. And there is a great deal of humor in the work, which always makes it fun to look at.

More work from the series can be found here.

martin parr

from multiple publications

website

elinor carucci

images from series "closer"

website

Vincent Cianni

Brandenburg Gate, Day of Unification
Berlin, Oct. 3rd 1990

Skinheads Waving Nazi War Ensign at Unification
Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Oct. 3rd 1990

Children rummaging through Discarded GDR Library books
Wilhelm-Pieck Strasse, Berlin, 1990

Cianni's documentary photos from Berlin. for more click here!

Andrew Bush

Andrew Bush - Vector Portraits 1989-1997

See more here.

As a reference point the envelope work is at the MET right now as well as at Robert Klein Gallery in Boston.