Guerrilla Graffiti September 30, 2009
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Photo and Words Gibson Nolte
If High Art were your showy gold watch, guerrilla art would be that tattoo on your chest – a wink to the knowing, the bird flipped while the boss’s back is turned.
Aside from its obvious visual appeal, what most interests me about street, underground and guerrilla art is the wealth of living and immediate information it delivers. You not only get a read on the social barometric pressure of the time, but a micro snapshot of how the populous views itself thrown into the bargain.
These pieces, found on the streets of Yogyakarta, Indonesia’s cultural capital, are classic examples: Western cultural influences are apparent (interpreted, such as they are, through a local lens), as are strong statements of place in a wider religious and political sense. And yet each piece still offers a private glimpse into the personal and artistic life of the artist.
www.gibsonnolte.com
Le Campement September 24, 2009
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French Gypsies Photo Darren Smith Exhibiting Foto Freo Fringe 2010
Bohemianism is more than a way of life. It’s a state of mind, an atmosphere that absorbs into the creative genius to live uninhibited, creative, and free. I travelled to the South west of France to the fringes of contemporary culture. I found French gypsies who have replaced their caravans with houses and mobile phones, yet continue to live without television or Internet. They grow their own wine, pick the forest for wild mushrooms, and come together in droves to share stories, make music, and to live free.
This is a place that wishes time had stood still. A desolate, yet seductive look at a lifestyle that is disappearing before your eyes. My work stands as a multifaceted series of photographs as a spectator, outsider, and invited guest, all wrapped into one complex and deeply layered work. This is a role I constantly challenged and reinvented in order to capture the atmosphere of this foreign world of contradictions. I look back to think that at one time I had a sense of what it is to truly live as an artist, but now only wonder if I had been chasing ghosts.
LOVE AND HATE IN LONDON September 22, 2009
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LOVE AND HATE IN LONDON Photos Bohdan Warchomij
Palestinians commemorating the annual Al-Quds Day in London were confronted by a vocal group of English Defence League activists in Piccadilly Circus on Sunday 14th September 2009. Police kept the two groups apart as they hurled abuse at each other. Unite against Fascism activists joined the demonstration in Pall Mall in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Street Army
Nick Lowles is the editor of Searchlight, which campaigns against far-right extremists and the EDL. According to a BBC interview he argues “What we are seeing is the formation of a street army, people who will travel around the country to fight,” he says. “Into this mix you can get organisations winding them up – let’s go here or there, here’s some money – giving them some organisational support, that kind of thing.
“But the risk is what happens if they go into areas where there are existing tensions. All those places are potential flashpoints.”
The hatred on the young men’s faces in Piccadilly Circus is transparent. The Palestinians arc up and respond. It takes little to trigger flashpoint.
International al-Quds Day (Persian: روز جهانی قدس or Persian: روز قدس, Quds Day), is an annual event on the last Friday of Ramadan, expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people and opposing Zionism as well as Israel’s control of Jerusalem (both West Jerusalem and occupied-East Jerusalem). Anti-Zionist demonstrations are held on this day in some Muslim and Arab countries and by Muslim and Arab communities around the world, but particularly in Iran, where Ayatollah Khomeini first introduced the event.
IN THE BORDER September 22, 2009
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IN THE BORDER Photo Darren Clayton
Darren Clayton has been making photographic excursions into South-East Asia since 1998. While being well aware of the historically laden ethnographic aesthetic that he works within, his photography seeks to go beyond discourses of power and appropriation. These are images of collaboration. They acknowledge a humanistic ideal.
Clayton visited the thousand-year-old Preah Vihear temple on the disputed northern Cambodia and Thai border three times in 2008. His photographs are to be seen in a diaristic mode, as a narrative, one that tells a story as much about himself as the sitter. They attest to a state of ambiguity, of arbitrary but symbolically potent boundaries, fixed momentarily in the frame.
His dedication is evident in the patience and empathy that these images exude. His persistence in maintaining a relationship with his subject, in trying to converse through the lens and establish recognition in a liminal space, is apparent in every one of the 6×6 frames.
Far from a mechanical eye, Clayton’s waist-level camera becomes a “latent receptacle,” one that ultimately shares this relationship with the viewer. Above all, they tell a story of inclusion and the breaking down of barriers. These photographs dissolve the boundaries between art and photojournalism, between the mythologizing of self and the other; they succeed in transcending the traditions that they address.
MANCA JUVAN September 21, 2009
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Afgan Man Photo Manca Juvan http://www.mancajuvan.com
Afgan Man Photo Manca Juvan http://www.mancajuvan.com
Manca Juvan was born in Slovenia in 1981 and has worked as a freelance photographer since 2000. Currently she is represented by the Corbis Agency and she is working on a project based in Afghanistan called Unordinary Lives. The project examines the lives of ordinary Afghanis coping with extraordinary circumstances.
The initial glimpse of peace and potential prosperity after September 11 as the international community combined in their efforts to make the Taliban irrelevent has been replaced by conflicts of interest, power struggles and corruption. The media has focussed on the ‘war on terror’, preoccupied by the need to convince the West to remain in an Afghanistan that is slipping out of their control. Ordinary Afghans, who are at the forefront of the conflict, have received scant media attention. Their lives as portrayed by Manca Juvan remind us what the real images of war and poverty – of lives far from ordinary – look like.
Welcome to Metaphor Online September 21, 2009
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The Road to Pripyat Ukraine. Photo Bohdan Warchomij
The Road to Pripyat Ukraine. Photo Bohdan Warchomij
Welcome to Metaphor Online, a blog designed to be a resource and asset to promote Australian and International photographers.
Photographer and photo editor Bohdan Warchomij has created Metaphor to feature work by emerging and established photographers working in different genres. Metaphor is a reminder of the power and presence of the image in everyday life. Metaphor will direct readers to photo artists, photo agencies, collectives, publications, and multimedia projects that inspire vision and promote photography.
