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Photography: Real And Imagined At The NGV A Huge And Dazzling Exhibition That Reexamines Our Thinking

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(MENAFN- The Conversation) Photography is almost 200 years old and Photography: Real and Imagined at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) can be interpreted as an attempt to make sense of its history.

A huge and dazzling exhibition containing 311 photographs, the basic thesis of this exhibition is that some photographs record an actuality, others are purely a product of the photographer’s imagination, while many are a mixture of the two.

The parameters of the exhibition are determined, in part, by the holdings of the NGV collection and, in part, by the perspective adopted by the curator, the erudite and long-serving senior curator of photography at the NGV, Susan Van Wyk.

Mercifully, the curator has not opted for a linear chronological approach from daguerreotypes to digital, although both are included in the exhibition, but has devised 21 diverse thematic categories, for example light, environment, death, conflict, work, play and consumption.

Australian artists, international context

The categories have porous boundaries. Even with the assistance of the 420-page book catalogue, it is difficult to determine why Michael Riley’s profoundly moving photograph of a dead galah shown against the cracked earth belongs to the environment theme instead of death; why Rosemary Laing’s Welcome to Australia image of a detention camp belongs to movement, instead of being in community, conflict or narrative.

Installation view of Photography: Real & Imagined on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia from October 13 2023 – February 4 2024. Photo: Lillie Thompson.

I felt that there was a perceived need to somehow organise the material, and the broad thematic structure allows the viewer to develop some sort of mega-narrative for the show.

There is also evident a desire to create an international context within which to display the work of Australian photographers.

It is indeed a very rich cross-section of Australian photographers assembled in this exhibition. This is not an Anglo-American construct of the history of photography; Australian photographers are presented together with New Zealanders and their Asian contemporaries.

Installation view of Photography: Real & Imagined on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia from October 13 2023 – February 4 2024. Photo: Lillie Thompson.

Although the NGV boasts of having the first curatorial department of photography in any gallery in Australia, in the department’s 55-year history there remain serious lacunae in the collection.

For example, Russian constructivist photographers, including Aleksandr Rodchenko, who, as far as I am aware, in the NGV collection is represented by a single small booklet , but looms large in any account of the history of photography as presented by the British, European and American museums. Eastern European photographers are also generally underrepresented.

Read more: Friday essay: 10 photography exhibitions that defined Australia

Key moments, and surprises

This exhibition combines the iconic with the new and the unexpected.

The expected key moments in the history of photography are generally all present with the roll-call of names including Dora Maar, Man Ray, André Kertész, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Eadweard Muybridge, Bill Brandt, Lee Miller and László Moholy-Nagy.

They are all included in the exhibition and are represented through their iconic pieces.

Henri Cartier Bresson, Juvisy, France 1938; printed 1990s. Gelatin silver photograph 29.1 x 43.9 cm (image). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased NGV Foundation, 2015. © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos. Photo: Nicholas Umek / NGV.

Henri Cartier Bresson’s Juvisy (1938), colloquially known as Sunday on the banks of the Marne, is an intentionally subversive image by this left-wing radical photographer.

This image, made at the height of the Great Depression, shows a victory by France’s popular left-wing government that legislated in 1936 the entitlement for French workers to have two weeks of paid vacation. Here the working class is enjoying a picnic at Juvisy, just to the south of Paris.

Dorothea Lange, Towards Los Angeles, California 1936; printed c. 1975. Gelatin silver photograph 39.6 x 39.1 cm (image); 40.8 x 50.5 cm (sheet). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased, 1975 © Library of Congress, FSA Collection. Photo: Predrag Cancar / NGV.

At about the same time, Dorothea Lange’s Towards Los Angeles, California (1936) contrasts the anguish of the unemployed trekking in search of work and a billboard advertising the comforts of train travel. An aphorism ascribed to her sums us much of her work:

Man Ray’s Kiki with African mask (1926) is one of the most famous photographs in the world, also known as Noire et blanche (Black and White). The surrealist artist juxtaposes the elongated face of his Muse and mistress, Kiki (Alice Prin), with her eyes closed with that of a black African ceremonial mask.

Man Ray, Kiki with African mask, 1926. Gelatin silver photograph 21.1 x 27.6 cm (image); 22.1 x 28.5 cm (sheet). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of Miss Flora MacDonald Anderson and Mrs Ethel Elizabeth Ogilvy Lumsden, Founder Benefactors, 1983. © MAN RAY TRUST / ADAGP, Paris. Licensed by Copyright Agency, Australia. Photo: Helen Oliver-Skuse / NGV.

The photograph was controversial when it was first published and continues to be controversial to the present day.

There are also numerous modern classics in the exhibition, including Pat Brassington’s Rosa (2014), Polly Borlan’s Untitled (2018), from MORPH series 2018 and Robyn Stacey’s Nothing to see here (2019), that can all be viewed as edging into the realm of the uncanny. Beyond the façade of the familiar, we are invited to enter an unexpected world.

Installation view of Polly Borland’s Untitled 2018 from MORPH series 2018 on display in Photography: Real & Imagined at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia from October 13 2023 – February 4 2024. Photo: Lillie Thompson. Reinterpreting our world

Photography’s reputation of creating a trustworthy facsimile of the real had long been eroded, even before the creation of digital software. There is an old adage,“paintings sometimes deceive, but photographs always lie” – precisely because there was a perception that they could not lie.

One of the most intriguing works in the exhibition is by the New Zealand-born photographer Patrick Pound, titled Pictures of people who look dead, but (probably) aren’t (2011–14). It is a sprawling installation of mainly found photographs where the audience is invited to create a life and death narrative.

Photography: Real and Imagined reexamines our thinking about the art of photography and explores photography’s ability to recreate and reinterpret our world.

Photography: Real and Imagined is at the Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, until February 4 2024.

Read more: Can a photograph change the world?

The Conversation

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Dazzling exhibitions from Auckland Festival of Photography 2023 speak to fragility and beauty of nature

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Innovation, initiative and challenging the status quo. These are principles to live by at any point, but particularly right now. The Auckland Festival of Photography 2023 has launched with a theme of resistance/ātete, and included are dazzling and arresting exhibitions that speak to the fragility and beauty of nature.

Infra Moana - Aquamarine from Cathy Carter's exhibition "Planet Ocean" at Time Out and Novel Bookstores and Spaces, 17th Floor Commercial Bay.
Infra Moana – Aquamarine from Cathy Carter’s exhibition “Planet Ocean” at Time Out and Novel Bookstores and Spaces, 17th Floor Commercial Bay.

Deep Reflection - Irene Middleton from the exhibition "NZ Wildlife Photographers" at Skar Image Lab, 1 New Bond St, Kingsland.
Deep Reflection – Irene Middleton from the exhibition “NZ Wildlife Photographers” at Skar Image Lab, 1 New Bond St, Kingsland.

Is this my good side? - ngirungiru by Kelly Chapman from the exhibition "NZ Wildlife Photographers" at Skar Image Lab, 1 New Bond St, Kingsland.
Is this my good side? – ngirungiru by Kelly Chapman from the exhibition “NZ Wildlife Photographers” at Skar Image Lab, 1 New Bond St, Kingsland.

The Process of Fruit Growth - Masumi Shiohara - in the outdoor lightboxes on Freyberg Place, Auckland CBD.
The Process of Fruit Growth – Masumi Shiohara – in the outdoor lightboxes on Freyberg Place, Auckland CBD.

Flamingoes - Desiree Hirner - from the exhibition "Wild Fuchsia" at Little Rosie, 76 Gladstone Rd, Parnell.
Flamingoes – Desiree Hirner – from the exhibition “Wild Fuchsia” at Little Rosie, 76 Gladstone Rd,
Parnell.

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Watch: Rare Comet Spotted Whizzing Across Dubai Sky

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(MENAFN- Khaleej Times)

Published: Wed 25 Jan 2023, 1:25 PM

Last updated: Wed 25 Jan 2023, 2:28 PM

A comet that is passing by the Earth for the first time in 50,000 years has been photographed by the Dubai Astronomy group. The once in a lifetime Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was captured at Al Thuraya Astronomy Center on January 20.

Captured between 4am and 6am, the dust tail and ionic tail are clearly seen in the images captured by the astronomy group.

Photo: Twitter

The group also captured a video of the comet’s movement across the sky:

UAE residents will get an opportunity to see the comet in the next few weeks. It is expected to pass closest to Earth on February 1, 2023, at a distance of around 26 million miles. It will be equally visible till the 5th of Feb.

According to the CEO of Dubai Astronomy Group Hasan Al Hariri, although comet brightness can be difficult to predict, the celestial body can be easily spotted using binoculars and small telescopes around January and early February.

Viewing

Dubai Astronomy Group will host a special ticketed event on February 4, 2023, at the Al Qudra desert in Dubai from 6.30pm to 9.30pm that will spot deep sky objects like the comet, moon, Mars and Jupiter among others. The trip will also include astrophotography sessions, sky mapping and more.

Dubai residents can also spot the comet from their homes or open grounds using special equipment.“The best tools to observe the comet are binoculars,” said Hasan Al Hariri.“It has a wide-angle field of view of the sky so hunting down the comet becomes much easier than using a telescope because that has a narrow-angle field of view which makes it harder to locate the comet.”

The comet

Comets are icy bodies of frozen gases, rocks, and dust left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. But when they approach the sun and heat up, they become powerful cosmic objects, spewing gases and dust in a way that forms their iconic shape: a glowing core and flame-like tail that can stretch on for millions of miles.

Comets are named according to how and when they were originally observed. This particular comet’s name encodes such information:

● The letter C means the comet is not periodic (it will only pass through the Solar System once or may take more than 200 years to orbit the Sun);

● 2022 E3 indicates that the comet was spotted in early March 2022 and was the 3rd such object discovered in the same period;

● ZTF means the discovery was made using telescopes of the Zwicky Transient Facility.

ALSO READ:

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‘Photography Passion Helps Understanding Western Tragopan H…

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(MENAFN- IANS) By Vishal Gulati

Kullu (Himachal Pradesh), Jan 11 (IANS) For him wildlife photography in the western Himalayas is a passion that helped understanding the habitat of the brilliantly coloured western tragopan, an elusive bird listed in the Red Data Book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a compendium of species facing extinction.

He’s Vinay Kumar Singh, posted in the Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP) in Himachal Pradesh’s Kullu district, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as a forest guard.

His two extensive documentaries on western tragopans shot in the GHNP are assisting park authorities and scientists in determining where this species is found, how they interact with their surroundings and potential threats to them.

‘The documentation can help researchers to improve knowledge about this elusive species that is hard to see as they reside in the higher elevations of the Himalayas,’ Kumar, who loves filming wild animals while performing the duty, told IANS.

He trekked rugged and inaccessible areas of the Sainj Valley several times by remaining separated from home and family for weeks for wildlife photography.

One of his documentaries, ‘Story of the Western Tragopan’, was made to jury selection last month in the Nature in Focus Films Award under the Emerging Talent (Natural History) category.

Kumar said he was getting the chance to visit the Sainj Valley, the habitat of the western tragopan, and some unexplored areas of the GHNP continuously for the past few years.

‘During my duty, I got the opportunity to come across some rare creatures. Some of them I manage to capture on my camera.’

The park, known for its significant size of 1,171 sq. km, is untouched by a road network and has four valleys — Tirthan, Sainj, Jiwa Nal and Parvati.

For him, seeing them in their natural habitat is a life-time experience.

‘Due to extreme tough topography, it is not easy to spot the wildlife in nature as the habitat of some of the mammals is high rocky cliffs, while some are found in dense forests. I keep on trekking in the interiors of the GHNP along with Khem Raj, who lives in the eco-zone of the national park and has interest in seeing the wildlife in forests. In this way, together we were able to spot many species in the GHNP,’ an elated Kumar told IANS.

Both Kumar and Khem Raj have photographed about 150 of the 209 bird species found in the GHNP.

The bird that attracted their attention most was the western tragopan, which was the least studied bird in the world owing to the tough topography of its habitat and being a shy bird.

Kumar said spotting the western tragopan in nature is not easy as its population is naturally less compared to other bird species.

‘You can see Himalayan monal flying here and there. Other pheasant species like koklass, white-crested kalij and cheer can also be heard and seen in the forest, but not the western tragopan that lives in a special habitat compared to all these. We have to locate special places where it lives,’ he said.

Human disturbances during the western tragopan breeding season are one of the main threats to the western tragopan, identified by their black plumage with white spots and a colourful head.

In the local language, the western tragopan is called Jujurana or king of birds. It is the state bird of Himachal Pradesh and belongs to the family Phasianidae, which also includes the peafowl and the red jungle fowl.

Wildlife experts attribute the downfall of the western tragopan to habitat degradation, hunting and extensive grazing of the forest by livestock.

The Daranghati Wildlife Sanctuary, located in Sarahan in Shimla district, and the Great Himalayan National Park are the potential western tragopan habitats.

According to the 2022 survey conducted by the national park authorities, the population of the western tragopan is on the rise.

They are annually surveying the GHNP during its breeding season (April-May).

It inhabits upper temperate forests between 2,400 and 3,600 m during summer, and in winter, dense coniferous and broad-leaved forest between 2,000 to 2,800 m elevations.

Call counts and line transects are used to assess current abundances and gather information on the characteristics of this species in the wild. Tragopan males began their breeding calls in late April and continued through May.

Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Nishant Mandhotra, who is in-charge of GHNP, told IANS that the presence of the western tragopan could now be felt more clearly in the national park with its numbers multiplying, and so has its sightings.

He said the density of the western tragopan in the park was four birds per station in last year’s census. Eighteen stations in the Tirthan, Sainj and Jiwa Nal ranges were shortlisted for recording call counts.

The GHNP, notified in 1999, is home to 209 bird species.

One of the richest biodiversity sites in the western Himalayas, the park supports the snow leopard, the Tibetan wolf, the Himalayan brown and black bear, the Himalayan blue sheep, the Asiatic ibex, the red fox, the weasel and the yellow throated marten.

The small mammals include the grey shrew, a small mouse-like mammal with a long snout, royal mountain vole, Indian pika, giant Indian flying squirrel, porcupine and the Himalayan palm civet, besides nine amphibians and 125 insects.

(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at )

–IANS

vg/sha

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