Hijacked III @QUAD, Derby

© Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin

Just opened at QUAD Derby, Hijacked III is a "major survey exhibition and publication featuring the best photographic talents from or within Australia and the UK". Known for halting the status quo, arresting the scene and exploding a new perspective on the practices of contemporary photography, this third edition of the biennale Hijacked series explores the world through the eyes and works of 32 international photographers from or within the UK and Australia. The exhibition will be on display simultaneously in QUAD with a partner version at PICA in Perth Australia and events will include live link ups for workshops, artist’s talks. Hijacked III is curated by Louise Clements QUAD & FORMAT International Photography Festival UK, Mark McPherson Big City Press Australia, Leigh Robb PICA Aus.

The featured photographers from Australia are: Tony Albert, Warwick Baker, Bindi Cole, Christopher Day, Tarryn Gill & Pilar Mata Dupont, Toni Greaves, Petrina Hicks, Alin Huma, Katrin Koenning, David Manley, Jesse Marlow, Tracey Moffatt, Justin Spiers, Michelle Tran, Christian Thompson, Michael Ziebarth.

Those representing the UK are: Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Natasha Caruana, Maciej Dakowicz, Melinda Gibson, Leonie Hampton, Rasha Kahil, Seba Kurtis, Trish Morrissey,  Laura Pannack, Sarah Pickering, Zhao Renhui, Simon Roberts, Helen Sear, Luke Stephenson, Wassink & Lundgren, Tereza Zelenkova.

HijackedIII:Contemporary Photography from Australia and the UK will be on display in QUAD until 6 May. Below is a video interview with the curators Louise Clements, Mark McPherson and Leigh Robb, courtesy of Troika Editions, and a version of the exhibition catalogue essay, re-published with permission.

Hijacked is a focused photographic anthology that explores two geographically divorced, historically connected communities. In this instance the United Kingdom and Australia are brought into the spotlight to locate and stimulate conflicting dialogues that that provoke the consideration of cultural specificity and diversity. The participating photographers were sourced via an open and collaborative process by Big City Press, QUAD/FORMAT and PICA, through the use of blogs, social and professional networks thereby expanding the reach and ability of the project to reflect the multiplicity of cultural identities. It is clear throughout the book that the narratives, influences, differences and specificities of the UK and Australia provide rich material for photographers to refer to. From becoming a nun after being proposed to by God via YouTube, to national identity and pride on the battlefield of sport; the appropriation and dissection of the photograph as contemporary art, to the aborigination of objects and the poetics of Welsh nightlife; together with the influence of the pop culture conflicts between Neighbours and Home and Away versus Eastenders and Coronation Street; alongside the fact of having shared Queen.  The project comes with no agenda to answer the questions about whether there is an Australian or UK identity in photography. Instead it creates a framework that invites deconstruction and reflection while showcasing the socially, culturally, politically and aesthetically diverse practices and points of view from a wide selection of photographers who work within and outside the contexts of the two countries.

Certainly no-one solely derives their interpretation of the world purely from the mass media and the internet, we are still unquestionably rooted in local, social, educational and familial landscapes, all of which can be positioned around the world. The idea of nation or a national identity relates to the power and control of communities, based on adopted myths of racial or cultural origin. Asserting and maintaining these identities was a key part of the imperial process and an important feature of much imperial and colonial politics. Instead of seeing the geographic definitions of the United Kingdom and Australia as singular identities, cultural hybridity emphasises their mutual intermingling, reference points and inevitable homogenisation with other international threads. This model of hybridity is based on thousands of influences entering into a form of dialogue through the fluidity of access to digital information, international social communication and global mobility. We understand and live simultaneously amongst multiple languages with their numerous modes of influence and significance, whether conscious of this influence or not. Between these languages we have to negotiate meaning, structure memory and define identity. We have become 'Janus' type figures with one face looking at the past and the other towards the future, whilst living in a post-modern, multi cultural landscape in which we must wrestle for cultural space. Artists have embraced this hybridised position not as a failure or denigration, but as a part of the contestation inherent in the weave of cultures.

In art, hybridity expands the possibilities for experimentation and innovation through the blurring and cross-breeding of traditional definitions between practices. Artists are notorious for their ability to hijack; meaning to stop and hold up, to seize control by use of force in order to divert, or appropriate, a deliberate attempt to action to change direction. Like the Situationist tactic of détournement championed by Guy Debord, it is an intentional action that disrupts and ruptures the habitual, turning it aside from its normal course or purpose.  All cultures can be defined by their ability to assimilate new ideas and adapt to change.  Although we live in an exposed version of remix culture, the phenomenon of remixing is not new. Digital technologies like networking, hypermedia and sampling have significantly accelerated the speed at which cultural material is distributed and made available to be repurposed; the ability to generate and incorporate new combinations of ideas is normal.  Contesting boundaries, breaking rules and creating hybrids occupies much artistic work, however, creating meaning by whatever materials or techniques are employed remains central to artistic practice. Be it the exploration of the sensibility for suburban melancholy, Indigenous culture and gender politics in Australia or the decadent drinking habits, reinterpretation of archives and curious weekend leisure pursuits in the United Kingdom the photographers and writers included in Hijacked3 will take you on a journey into the incredible and extraordinary worlds on opposite sides of the globe.  From surprising perspectives on portraiture and critically engaged collage, to images that map society at its best and worst moments, these conflicting photographic practices question what it means to look, create and construct images in the 21st century. This publication is a major survey contributing to the field and documenting the best photographic talents of today.  Representing the leading, boundary testing, fearless, fringe dwelling artists, whose work is rich with evocative, poetic, confounding and confronting imagery, ready to communicate, offering a transitory and relational view into the life and times of both countries and beyond.

Louise Clements is the Artistic Director and Curator at QUAD and also the Co-founder and Director of FORMAT International Photography Festival, Derby, UK. 

1000 Words Talk: Simon Baker in conversation with Chris Shaw

All images © Chris Shaw

*10.04.12-SOLD OUT*

1000 Words is pleased to present Before and After the Night Porter, a conversation with Simon Baker and Chris Shaw.

Daniel Blau Gallery, London 
11 April 2012, 7pm
£5

During Tokyo Photo Fair 2011, Simon Baker, Curator of Photography and International Art at Tate, presented the work of British photographer, Chris Shaw, together with Japanese post-war, avant-garde photographers of the Provoke movement, Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, Kirkuji Kirwada, Takuma Nakahira, Masahisa Fukase and Ikko Narrahara, who, from a distance, served as a major inspiration to Shaw’s attitude and approach beginning with his celebrated book, Life as a Night Porter. The evening’s discussion will examine Baker and Shaw’s passion for Japanese photography and its influence on his practice.

To book your ticket, click on the Paypal button below:

Chris Shaw began working in London hotels in 1993 and over a ten year period he created what would become Life as a Night Porter which was published in 2006 by Twin Palms. Born in 1967, Shaw studied photography at the West Surrey College of Art and Design at Farnham, graduating in 1989, and has had solo exhibitions at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, GUP Gallery in Amsterdam and 779 Gallery in Paris. Shaw has also been shown as part of Paris Photo and Arles Photography Festival in 2005.  He lives in Paris.

His work was featured in issue 12 of 1000 Words.

Simon Baker is Curator of Photography and International Art at Tate. He is Tate’s first curator of photography and joined in 2009 from the University of Nottingham, where he was Associate-Professor of Art History. He has researched and written widely on surrealism, photography, and contemporary art; and co-curated the exhibitions Undercover Surrealism: Georges Bataille and Documents (Hayward Gallery, London, 2006) and Close-Up: Proximity and defamiliarisation in art, film, and photography (The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2008).

Our talks are open to everyone. We recommend booking early to avoid disappointment. Numbers are limited to 60 people.

Daniel Blau Gallery
51 Hoxton Square
London N1 6BP
+44 (0) 207 831 7998
london@danielblau.com

www.danielblau.com/london

*10.04.12-SOLD OUT*

Hisaji Hara @Michael Hoppen Gallery, London

© Hisaji Hara

A series of beautiful, monochrome portraits by Hisaji Hara who has modelled his photographic compositions upon paintings by Balthus (1908-2001), one of the most revered and controversial artists of the twentieth century, will go on display to the public at Michael Hoppen Gallery this Friday.

In the style of the Modern Master, Hara creates scenes imbued with an unsettling combination of innocence and eroticism. The models have the light, unselfconscious attitudes of playful children and yet their postures invite the eye to see them as sexual young women. Moreover, in reinventing the pictures, Hisaji Hara has chosen to dress his teenage subjects in school uniform, thereby emphasizing the uncomfortable transitional period between child- and adulthood. We feel as if we are the quiet, almost intrusive voyeurs to moments of youthful innocence.

Hisaji Hara is technically brilliant and very meticulous in his preparation for each image. The stage-set for these photographs is the derelict building of a privately run medical clinic used in the 1940s and 50s. In order to emulate the depth and eerie atmosphere found in Balthus' paintings, Hara employs a number of techniques that transcend the use of photographic craft alone in order to mimic the skewed perspective of Balthus' work, including smoke machines, specially commissioned furniture and unseen additions to his subjects’ costumes to create a strange angularity to their dress. Hara's camera skills are evident in the use of multiple exposures and focuses whilst partially blocking the lens to create unusual depths of field which only add to the mystery of the scenes. The exhibition finishes on 31 March 2012.

Photographer's Own: Paper Negatives @Daniel Blau Gallery, London

What we see here are unique paper negatives from the 1850’s by some of the greatest old master photographers, a small but perfectly formed exhibition of which opens today at the London arm of Daniel Blau Gallery. They are the true originals, created by the light reflecting off the photographed subject. For their beauty, Zeitgeist, rarity and provenance they rank amongst the greatest treasures of photography.

The paper negative had its heyday for a brief period in the early days of photography until circa 1860. Because the negative is the plate from which a multitude of positive prints can be made, it normally remained in the photographer’s possession during his lifetime. Only later would it enter into public collections by will of the photo-grapher or the family’s donation. It is rare to find negatives by famous artists such as Le Secq, Nègre, de Beaucorps or de Clercq in private hands.

A negative can be so much more evocative than a positive print. We realise from the blurred movement of the clock’s hand on the picture of the Palazzo Vecchio that it took three minutes of exposure time to take the photo, long enough to empty the square of all the people moving about. Their movements made them invisible to the camera. Only the building remains in its static existence with the guard’s rifles leaning against the wall.

Like a printing plate, the photographic negative has long been regarded as a stage in a working process.  Surrealism and other lessons in art have taught us how to look at the more abstract pictures of the world. We have since begun to appreciate the photographic paper negative with its saturated, ominous dark against the ethereal pale as a work of art in its own mysterious beauty.

This is truly a prized opportunity to see such precious photographs outside of a museum context, some of which are even magically backlit and are sure to transfix the connoisseurs of nineteenth century photography amongst our readers. Photographer's Own: Paper Negatives runs until 31 March.

Deadline reminder for the Roger Ballen workshop in Fez, Morocco

With little over two weeks left to apply for the next 1000 Words Workshop with Roger Ballen in Fez, Morocco (5-9 May 2012), we thought we would bring you up to date with some recent news.

The workshop has managed to attract notable press here on The Daily Telegraph online and here at GUP Magazine, while Roger Ballen has been busy directing his first music video, the oddly engrossing, I Fink U Freeky for Die Antwoord to widespread critical acclaim, receiving more than 1 million viewers on Youtube in less than 24 hours. At the same time, he has been working towards the first major UK exhibition of his photography this spring, at Manchester Art Gallery which will explore three decades of Ballen's career, and be on show from March 30 until May 13. New, previously-unseen work will also be showcased in the forthcoming issue of 1000 Words - Uncertainty - out 3 March.

If you are considering applying but are wondering if this opportunity is really for you, have a read of the testimonial from a previous workshop participant below to get an idea of what you can expect. Whether it be fresh approach to your photography or a desire for new experiences, it's time to challenge conventional thinking and shake things up. With a strong onus on image-making, photographers who have attended our workshops in the past have done so with great success, and, in the process, produced new bodies of work that have since been featured in magazines such as The British Journal of Photography, released in the form of books with publishers including Max Strom or gained them representation from the prestigious Prospekt agency to name just a few.

Here is a Saskia Vredeveld film titled Memento Mori from 2005 about the weird and wonderful world of Roger Ballen that should get those grey cells ticking.

"The workshop in Fez was a mind shaking experience, and for me that was just what I needed! Antoine's repeated question to me was, "but what do you want?" What a simple question it may seem but to truly honestly answer this was one of the hardest things. Antoine struggled with me daily to be truthful to the process of shooting and to my work. Trying to do this as a white woman in a muslim foreign country seemed scary at first. But soon enough this fear pushed me to go farther than I had before. To take more risks and be more bold. In the end, I had allowed myself to befriend men and women who were at first just strangers on the street. My once beautiful but safely intimate portraiture became more real for me, evoking not only the fear of letting myself leap in a strange place but in the process of doing so, being able to see so much more in others.

The workshop venue was such a treat and incredible place to be able to go to every day. A sanctuary to rest and to edit and collect your thoughts. A place to run into your fellow work shoppers and bounce around ideas. The food was more than I had expected and in fact pretty much the best food I ate in Morocco in my three weeks travel. Tim and Michael were so on top of the workshop; they were there managing every detail from accommodations, food, coordinating the class meetings, running film to labs, scanning, and even just being sweet and kind pals to talk with about your day or have a beer with and brainstorm about your project.

All in all, this workshop could not have been better and I feel so lucky to have had such an opportunity. Antoine's phenomenal out of the box thinking and honesty is one of a kind. 1000 Words' workshops fall into the 'do not miss this' category!” Katie White

Click here to apply. The deadline for submissions is 1 March 2012.

FOAM Talent Call 2012

The magnificent FOAM are looking for the world's next photography talent. The winners will get the chance to have their work published in Foam Magazine, a distinctive and highly regarded international photography magazine. Photographers can submit and upload their portfolios simply using this Facebook app on the Foam Magazine Facebook page. 

The sixth edition of Foam Talent Call opened on 30 January and this year photographers can submit their work for the first time via Facebook. With over 800 submissions last year, they are understandably excited to see how many they receive this year via Facebook. It is not necessary to have a Facebook to enter the call. 

The Foam Talent issue is designed to showcase young photographers from all over the world. It is described as "a career building platform, launching aspiring talents into the international photography industry, giving them international acclaim and recognition". A few examples of well known photographers who have been showcased in the Foam Talent issue are: Mayumi Hosokura from issue #28, Benjamin Lowy from issue #24, Alexander Gronsky and Anouk Kruithof from issue #20, and Curis Mann and Pieter Hugo from issue #16. 

The call is open to all photographers aged between 18-35 across the globe. The entrance fee is 35 euro and the competition is fierce, but 15 selected talents will receive an eight page portfolio showcasing their series along with an interview by an esteemed writer. The editorial board will choose the portfolios according to the creative vision and concept of the series presented, amongst other criteria. Submission closes on 16 April 2012. More information can be found here.

Foam Magazine #32 / Talent will be out in September 2012

Akiko Takizawa @Daiwa Foundation, London

© Akiko Takizawa

At the heart of Japanese photographer Akiko Takizawa’s work lies feelings of dislocation, displacement and isolation. Her black and white photographs, unsettling yet peaceful, are imbued with a sense of loss and longing while retaining that vital glimmer of hope. Dim shafts of light creep into dusty, shadow-shrouded interiors or softly illuminate barren landscapes. The images seem suspended between a dreamlike and wakeful state, teetering at the threshold of consciousness. The line between sleep and death, death and life is tantalisingly blurred. 

Her most recent exhibition, Over the Parched Field, on display at Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, London from 18 January to 1 March, showcases a selection of collotype prints of Takizawa's work from the last six years, photographs she describes as "semi-autobiographical". Taken at the shrines of Osorezan (Fear Mountain) and Goshogawara in county Aomori in the north of Japan, they depict holy places that were created to memorialise and heal the spirits of children who have passed away. Stone statues adorn the volcanic landscape, protecting the souls of the deceased, while ‘bridal’ shrines are draped with mementoes, left by parents for their children when they come of age. Takizawa describes it as a place of calm that heightened her sense of solitude.

Loss is obviously a central theme in her work – both personal and the loss of others – although the pictures she takes are very much for her. “I take photographs for my own sake,” remarks Takizawa. “In one way I’m documenting what I see but what appears [in my pictures] has a more dreamlike quality. Sometimes it feels like it’s not completely up to me what appears in the photographs. But I feel a need to communicate what I see.”

Takizawa also says she uses her photography to communicate with relatives who are no longer alive. “I feel that my camera acts as an antenna to receive signals carrying urgent messages from the lost lives and objects that fill the air around us.” She adds: “We think of time as a single line but people talk about there being another time, and that concept interests me. I feel a sense of déja-vu, though not necessarily having lived a past life. Maybe living and dying are on the same line. When I look at photographs of dead people I almost feel that their lives are continuing within the photographs.”

Takizawa describes her work as the embodiment of feeling like a stranger in her own country, and indeed she admits that it was not until she left Japan that she could begin to reflect upon her complex relationship with her background. This distance allowed her to begin to make sense of the photographs she took there. “I had to physically remove myself from Japan in order to work on [the photographs,]” she confesses. “Even though I love Japan, I feel I don’t fit in, although I always want to photograph my country.”

Gemma Padley is the Features Editor at Amateur Photographer Magazine and is currently studying a Masters in the History of Art with Photography at Birkbeck University.