AIPP ON THE LOUNGE: SQIT Toowoomba April 11, 2012
- AIPP – On the lounge SQIT, Website invite
On this evening the SQIT Photoimaging team hosted two events for visiting AIPP members and invited guests. The visit began with a ‘High Tea’ catered for by the SQIT Hospitality team – sumptuous treats were accompanied by tea and coffee. Those attending settled down to conversation with each other in the convivial atmosphere of the ‘Futures’ Restaurant. Coffee Shop
At 5.30 stage two of the visit began with the open of an exhibition of photobooks and artists’ books made by SQIT Photo students over the last 5 years. The show was opened by Queensland Division President Jan Ramsay, who as a past student of an art photography unit, and also part of the end-of-year professional assessment team at SQIT, had experienced the Toowoomba TAFE Photo team at work.
Doug thanks Jan Ramsay for opening the ‘Brought to Book’ show
The books on show ranged from Shanea Rossiter’s ‘Inspiring Women’ book of portraits to Cathy Smith’s book ‘Junked’, a documentary comment on our disposable society and Lorraine Seipel’s political message in the book ‘Song for the future’. The exhibition was curated by Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart for the Queensland Festival of Photography.
‘Brought to Book’ opening @ Futures Gallery SQIT Toowoomba
The third stage of the program included presentations by the three full-time staff of the photo team – Rachel Susa, Alison Ahlhaus and Doug Spowart. Each spoke of their connection with photography from both the personal and professional context. Doug spoke of the 20-year history of the photo Diploma and Certificate courses at SQIT and the Photoimaging teaching methodology.
The session concluded with a PowerPoint show presenting a selection of images and comments from past students. It was interesting to hear of the experiences of these past students about studying at SQT as well as their achievement in photography. The past students included: AIPP Chairman of the Board Alice Bennett, Nicola Poole, Katie Finn, Lisa Mattiazzi – National Gallery of Australia imaging specialist, Lydia Shaw who works in many areas including photography and teaching in Dubai, nationally acclaimed commercial photographer Damien Bredberg, Sue Lewis – APPA Team Manager and recent graduate Shanea Rossiter who is establishing a business in Warwick.
The Past Students PowerPoint show (PPS) can be downloaded from the www.cooperandspowart.com.au website – It’s a 30.9 mb download but presents an interesting overview of where SQIT students go to and the amazing achievements that they have. CLICK <http://www.cooperandspowart.com.au/2_PLACES/OtherBooks/index.html> Then select the PowerPoint AIPP OTL picture.
The evening concluded with the video fusion show “Dance-on’ by 2011 SQIT Diploma Student of the Year. “Lindsey’s video represents the future of photography” said Doug, and added, “that the stilled image is dead!” The point was not debated, but in the context of an industry that has gone from wet darkrooms to light rooms and digital output in the last ten years everyone left knowing that anything is possible.
Cheers Doug
Judging professional photography: MSIT, Brisbane, March 24&25
The 2012 AIPP Queensland Professional Photography Awards.
Queensland AIPP Professional Photography Awards judging
I’m sitting on judging panels for the landscape and documentary panels of the 2012 AIPP Queensland PPY Awards. The work is challenging and diverse and the judging panel capable and opinionated. My mind wanders to thoughts about photography, its assessment and critique.
The social scientist Pierre Bourdieu wrote many things about photography. Many photographers would take particular exception to his essay on ‘Photography: A Middle-Brow Art.’ But some of what he says bears a strong and salient connection with the way photographer’s debate, discuss and judge their work. Bourdieu states,
” It is no accident that passionate photographers are always obliged to develop the aesthetic theory of their practice, to justify their existence as photographers by justifying the existence of photography as a true art.” (Bourdieu 1996:98)
Whilst his statement may relate to all kinds of photography from the camera club to the teaching institution it connects, to my mind, most directly to professional photography. Shortly after the time he wrote the original French text (early 1990s) I was not only a fervent participant in all kinds of photography competitions but also the chairperson of the AIPP Australian Professional Photography Awards. I witnessed and perhaps even guided the transition of the APPA, as it became known as, into the form that it now takes.
Founded in 1977 The AIPP National Print Awards were judged with an interest in the work being suitable and relevant to professional products for clients. Prints were glorious colour, 16”x20” flush mounted and were a celebration of technique as well as saleability. Each year 300~500 prints would be judged by the doyens of the industry and a few rising stars. In 1984 I sat on one of these judging panels alongside the big names of professional photography at the time – I felt quite small.
By the end of the 1980s new influences were invading the professional scene. John Whitfield-King and others of his persuasion were creating a space for documentary approaches to wedding photography informed by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliott Erwitt. Areas of photographic practice such as illustrative and landscape were emerging and along with them was a recognition of art photography from the American scene by practitioners like Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, Arnold Newman et al. Black and white prints with Leica-esque full-frame black fuzzy borders became the emergent trend and prints became small and fine on white mount boards. Along with Paul Griggs, Jeff Moorfoot, Lyn Whitfield-King, Peter Adams and Robert Billington, I also was also one of this new guard.
Photographers began to present images from their own personal photographic exploration – subjects that excited and invigorated their practice. These were photographs made by photographers – for photographers. The judges were excited by this work as well and awards were made that celebrated inspirational photography. Each year new work became more and more detached from the previous client-based assessment, and the new paradigm became the engine room for photographers to experiment and push ideas about what professional photography could be and also what clients may want. All this change was not without its detractors. The photo press and newsletters published the laments by some about the loss of industry and the self-indulgence of those engaged in it.
Despite this, professional photographers did embrace the awards process with such enthusiasm that larger entries necessitated extra judging rooms, days of judging and an army of judges and event team volunteers. Early in my chairmanship I undertook a national judge training program with the intension of filling the judging ranks with new judges, and in particular, evening up the gender balance of such panels. The term ‘judge training’ implies some kind of conditioning process where the participant is shown how to spot and reward certain standards. This was not the route that I chose. My philosophy was related to the recognition that all candidates start with a significant understanding of photography and that what they needed was to (1) understand the APPA judging system of team-based scoring and debates, (2) come to know and practice discussion and debate techniques, and (3) grow through the process accepting it as not only one which is about making judgements, but also its educative nature for the judge and the entrant alike.
In time we achieved much of what we set out to do. The judging team became more representative of membership – gender balanced, younger, from the regions as well as the city. APPA as a system during my time as chair cautiously welcomed-in digital output, imaging and image enhancement – something we take for granted now but an area of significant consternation in the mid 1990s. Not to mention each year’s crop of award winners that are celebrated in the prestigious form of the Awards Book. Additionally we should not forget that the APPAs were originally, and still are an accreditation system to recognise and reward the professional photography skills of AIPP members through the awarding of APPA Associate, Master and Grand Master honours. At one time you could count the number of APPA Masters on the fingers of two hand – they were a rare-breed indeed. Now the AIPP is replete with masters and Grand Masters may need more than two hands to count. In my opinion what it takes to be a Master is no less now than it was 20 years ago – it’s just that the general standard of professional photography as an innovative and expressive form of communication has grown exponentially.
Over time the APPAs have grown beyond our imaginings of the 1990s into the mega event it is today. States such as Queensland have their local awards judgings that have entry numbers exceeding the national entry only 20 years ago. Professional photography practitioners from this country have, for over ten years, won every major international award, had top ten listings in numerous disciplines and travel extensively as guest speakers and leaders of the industry internationally. Some of this acclaim comes from the spark that was set by the team that was APPAs in the 1990s. Most of the names and contribution that these people made have now gone. I think of David Puddefoot, Mike Woods, Ian Hawthorne, the ‘godfather’ Ian McKenzie, Malcolm Mathieson, Jeff Moorfoot, Ruby Spowart, Victoria Cooper and the current Chair David Paterson. We owe these individuals and a host of other committee members of that era including Paul Griggs, Robyn Hills, William Long, Ian Poole, for the foundation that they helped make so that APPA, and the state events could be what they are today.
It has been some time since I have judged at an APPA style event. As I sat on the judging panel I reflected on the history that has brought us to this moment. It felt good – and I was able to contribute to great discussion about some amazing imagery. Photographers have embraced the theory and aesthetics of their art and justify it through the most interesting and informative processes.
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Doug Spowart
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Bourdieu, P 1996, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, Stanford University Press.
DIGGERS BEACH DOING REFERENCING VERIFICATION
Cross-checking references to ensure that they are current and hyperlinked in the ePrint (online version) of my PhD ‘thesis’ took most of the day. Books and print journals are marvellous things in that they exist in a physical world—not so URLs. They move, are deleted, lost and are sometimes hidden in the ‘member access’ areas of online journal content management agencies.
Anyway, that’s done now …
OTHER PhD topics on this blog include:
http://wotwedid.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/easter-wooli-study-and-research-centre/
http://wotwedid.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/1-october-picking-up-some-thesis-help/
http://wotwedid.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/1-july-diggers-rest-for-lunch/
http://wotwedid.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/march-1-the-day-the-examiners-report-arrived/
CHARLIE SNOOK: HIS LIKENESS RETURNS AS A PHOTO
Charlie Snook + portrait by Doug Spowart
I first met Charlie Snook in 1977 when he and I were among the guest lecturer team for the Binna Burra Photo School in Lamington National Park near the Gold Coast. The weeklong event was an inspirational live-in experience for keen photographers. Day and night workshop sessions were augmented by bushwalk forays into the surrounding National Park. Darkrooms for black and white processing and even colour work were set up to provide a complete experience of ‘learn and do’ in just about everything photographic.
Other members of the lecture team included Rob Heyman, Rob Bannerman, Alec Fraser (recently departed for the big darkroom in the sky), Ansett photographer Gary Lewis and of course Tony Groom traveller and photographer the son of the founder Arthur Groom. Someone was always up to something—whether it was photography, experiencing nature or telling tall stories of travel or life or just plain joking around. Over time great photographers like Steve Parish presented workshops and added to the yearly event’s reputation.
Charlie and I struck up a friendship that connected us with the love of photography and the natural environment. Apart from the annual Photo School adventures that included the Coomera Crevice, the Shipstern decent and the Ballanjui Falls abseil, Charlie and I, assisted by his two son’s-in-law canoed the Mann and Clarence Rivers from Nymboida to Jackadgery. Later when my mother and I began of offer photo tours around Australia as part of our Imagery Gallery business activities Charlie became a regular traveller.
In 1987 photographer Maris Rusis and I made a 10”x8” photographer’s journey along the east coast of Australia. We spent some time with Charlie helping to fix plasterboard panels to the ceiling of a house he was building at Minnie Waters near Grafton. A plumber by trade Charlie had worked in a variety of amazing projects including The Blue Cow tunnel in the Snowy Mountains, massive holiday resorts in Yamba and as a volunteer for the Catholic Church missions in the islands of the Pacific building community infrastructure.
In July 2011 Vicky and I visited Charlie and I made a portrait of him in front of his photo gallery. He stood proudly before his cherished image by Frank Hurley of the ship the Endurance trapped in ice in Antarctica, images from his travels and of family and friends.
Today we revisited Charlie to return his image as a black and white print—he was chuffed!!
Cheers Charlie.
EASTER @ The Wooli Study and Research Centre
Easter holidays, (if you can call time working on a PhD ‘holidays’), and we are at the beach at Wooli. While Vicky slogs her way thru Haraway, Latour and the non/more than-human I’m preparing the digital files for the electronic version of my thesis. Sometimes I just feel in-the-moment so much that a camera nearby gets in the act – it compels me to photograph!
An auto-portrait - A montage of montages
SEE EXAMPLES OF WOOLI STUDY AND RESEARCH OUTPUTS Here…
http://www.cooperandspowart.com.au/2_PLACES/WOOLIflipBOOKS/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IupUzMv9Js0 DIGGERS BEACH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk4vnbzTqOU&feature=channel WOOLI PINHOLE VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hldyc_p__g&feature=relmfu WOOLI – WINDY DAY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo1IiDDVcoc&feature=related WOOLI BEACH FUN
COOPER+SPOWART: ‘Contact Zone’ exhibition
Featuring the photo-based artist’s books and photobooks of Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart
March 21 ~ April 5
Cooper and Spowart are influenced by the context and the consequences of living within a constantly changing relationship with the landscape. Contact Zone connects the viewer/reader with “place” relationships through the photobook, both physically and metaphorically.
Contact Zone installation - Cooper+Spowart @ Futures Gallery, Toowoomba
Part of the 2012 QCP Queensland Festival of Photography
TIM MOSELY: An Eskimo climbing to a plateau
Make like an Eskimo - Invite
Tim Mosely is a PhD candidate at the Queensland College of Art. He is working through the research processes that students engage in to position their academic imprimatur on some aspect of human knowledge. Mosely over the years has developed a significant international practice in artists’ books, handmade paper and the book experience as one in which the tactile senses are evoked.
Tim Mosely - Make Like An Eskimo. POP Gallery Brisbane
Make like An Eskimo, at first appears as a mixed exhibition originating from many individual artists as each body of work teases out an idea, a gesture, a memory – blurred, or a theme. These are experiments, the research level is PhD so we do expect something that presents a challenge, or expresses a cathartic moment or even a line of questioning that leads … nowhere. This work does not leave this viewer wanting. The stones have been turned over and what has emerged are things that show Mosely’s Inuit traverse of the smooth white space where he has drawn on his intimate knowledge of printmaking medium, of his personal semiotics and his dreams.
Tim Mosely - 'imagining mt giluwe' a multi-sheet linocut
One monumental piece explodes from the wall – imagining mt giluwe. It’s a multi-sheet linocut – dark and brooding with markings made by Mosely’s tools that resemble some kind of tribal scarification. The wild landscape overpowers the smooth white gallery wall and entices the viewer to move in close. There is a hidden map implied by the transecting vertical and horizontal lines of the individual printed sheets. Is it a map of the physical, the metaphysical or is it just mere tactile experience – for touching with the eyes? There is a movement through the monochrome surface and a red rectangle of paper overlays a part of the image – is this order implied over chaos? Colonial blood over Nature? Or could it hide a didactic code with its intention to perplex the viewer – or maybe it is there to just hide the fact that no code exists?
Tim Mosely - Make Like An Eskimo books
Another work, a series of books attempts to contain the big lino imagining mt giluwe. It is in fact, books made from pages of the large work. Once again there is a calling to explore and this time it is easier as the dividing and sectioning of the work into book form creates a path through the act of page turning. Some pages have been slashed and red paper shows through the jagged shapes implying similar questions as the red rectangle in the larger work. I am comfortable with this work, and perhaps Mosely is as well, as it is derivative of the language that he has employed in the past.
As I reflect on the experience of the POP Gallery I can confirm that Mosely is interrogating his practice, his experience of life and what it means to be an artist. What stands out is his haptic encounter in the making of his artworks and the profound need that he has for that vital energy to be infused into the art. And in that I think he is not alone – the materials seem to respond to his interaction. Here I am reminded of a discussion that Barbara Bolt has about a mode of thinking informed by Martin Heidegger’s techne and Paul Carter’s ‘material thinking’, where she states,
‘In the place of an instrumentalist understanding of our tools and material, this mode of thinking suggests that in the artistic process, objects have agency and it is through the establishing conjunctions with other contributing elements in the art that humans are co-responsible for letting art emerge.’ (Bolt 2007:1)
Time Mosely in the exhibition Make Like An Eskimo
Mosely’s work and the materials in his work do emerge to present the viewer with communiqués that are enriched not only by what is embedded in them but also what they invoke in the mind of those who encounter them. We wish him well in the ascent to his academic plateau.
Doug Spowart
GIRRAWEEN National Park: A sunny weekend
Shadow fun @ Bald Rock Creek crossing
A few days away at Girraween celebrated a moment of clear sunny weather between weeks of inclement rainy and particularly miserable weekends. With water everywhere it was hard not to be compelled to image its flow and pattern. We shared this weekend with Felicity and relaxed in Nature’s place with fine foods punctuated by bouts of photography and drawing.
MARCH 1: THE DAY THE EXAMINER’S REPORT ARRIVED
Late morning on March 1st an email arrived from the Post Graduate School from James Cook University advising the examiners had responded to my PhD exegesis (thesis). I was told that only a few minor corrections, mainly typos were required. I found it hard to concentrate on work – 7 years of part-time study came down to a moment of quiet reflection out of the window beyond the computer screen.
I had an extended lunch in the park with Vicky and I lay back …
SOCIAL MEDIA: A photographer’s new anxiety
A long-long time ago all a photographer needed to successfully market their business was develop an excellent reputation that could be carried by word of mouth, they needed to have a studio in a prominent location and a big listing Yellow Pages. It all changed with the Internet and websites – the stylish splash page, web image galleries and even music became the norm. A website, the best ones done by professional webmasters, could be out there for years and become, for the photographer, something to ‘tick-off’ on their marketing plan. You could feel comfortable that when people searched, or ‘Googled’ you, up would pop your site. You could direct enquiries to view your work through their home – or perhaps more often, the work computer and those that did stumble upon your site could give you a call to follow through with an enquiry. The website became an extension of convention marketing, essentially to people who knew of you. It was not necessarily about finding new business.
The emergence of social media tools like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr has changed that comfortable marketing strategy. The general public was transformed or, perhaps even they themselves transformed, the norms of marketing. They now seek information about anything by using online search technologies to filter info sources or service providers and then make decisions about what they want to know or purchase.
Most critical to this seek-find-and-buy online paradigm is what search engines give in their result lists. Crucially, in recent times, there has been the move by the big Google corporation to seek results from content that has currency. The static website is relegated to the back result pages – whereas web presences that are, by the currency of their content, about today, now will rate higher. Photographers who Google themselves or their industry area only to find they rate on the results back pages now suffer the anxiety of how to get to #1.
Katie+Matt's Website, June 2011
In mid 2011 I encountered a sign that indicated a view of the static website’s future in the website of Toowoomba photographers Katie Finn and Matt Ebenezer. The splash page bore the message ‘websites are so old school … Check out our blogsite’. The blog was interactive and wedding photography albums were replete with comments and posts by the subjects pictured as well as by visitors to the blog – these were instant testimonials. What is more important is that this interactive component constitutes a constantly being ‘added to’ web presence and that is the stuff that Google likes.
To help bolster rankings SEO (search engine optimisation) has become the buzzword and every conference, seminar and workshop has the speaker on the topic. And what a topic it is – there is an underworld, a kind of labyrinth to navigate to achieve what you think you need. Two recent events I have attended, Matt Adams at the Queensland AIPP Hair of the Dog Conference and a Skillpath Social Media Marketing Conference have certainly inspired my interest and fascination for this emerging and pervasive technology. Somewhere along the line I’ve picked up a saying that goes something like, ‘there are two types of people in social media – those that are embracing it and those who will be left behind.’
Mel Campbell @ Skillspath Social Media Marketing Conference - A great presenter!
I’m in the former cohort. In January 2011, on an invitation from AIPP and Ballarat International Foto Biennale guru Jeff Moorfoot, I signed up to Linkedin. I dutifully populated my profile, linked with acquaintances, friends and people I’ve done business with and I integrated Linkedin/blogs/folio sites into my teaching practice. In February 2011 Victoria and I started this WordPress blog, our website was updated around the same time. We’ve added-in YouTube, Behance Creative Portfolios and Twitter to our suite of Internet presence strategies. Over 12 months the comparative analytics has overwhelmingly indicated the blog outdoes the website 20:1 and a search engine test places Linkedin, the blog and its many posts much higher than the static website. Our online presence has been viewed by thousands of people and our images, videos and posts clicked on all over the world.
Has social media made a difference for us? In some ways it is hard to tell – our presence is not about selling anything, it is more about the expression of ideas, commentary about activities, events and experiences that do not get published elsewhere. And just by the way search terms pick up those unusual postings, images and videos someone out there is looking and connecting.
Maybe the website is dead. Now, and what is ‘now’ is all that counts in our society so all that you need to do is jump-in and be active in social media – otherwise you will be left behind!
Doug
PS I could go on for hours about this topic – there will be future posts.
