Lumina Collective is currently showing a freshly curated version of our launch exhibition, including a selection of unseen works, at SUNSTUDIOS in Alexandria, Sydney from November 3 to November, 20, 2017 .
Featuring the work of Aletheia Casey, Donna Bailey, Chloe Bartram, Jessie Boylan, Anna Maria Antoinette D'Addario, Lyndal Irons, Morganna Magee and Sarah Rhodes. Curated by Anna Maria Antoinette D'Addario
I am currently exhibiting work as part of a group show at Contact Sheet Gallery in Sydney. ‘Who is He?’ explores our perceptions of masculinity through the different visions of 21 emerging and established artists.
Open from 15 October to November 11, 2017
Lumina Collective Exhibition and Launch
Lumina is a new Australian collective of award winning photographic artists intent on breaking ground in visual storytelling and dissemination.
Founded by eight women who are leading practitioners in the documentary genre, Lumina marks a unique voice among Australian collectives.
Launching officially June 8, 2017 we are excited to announce our debut, self-titled exhibition opening the same day 6-8pm at Black Eye Gallery, Darlinghurst in Sydney.
To be opened by Claire Monneraye , Curator for the Australian Centre for Photography.
Opening Night:
JUNE 8, 2017
6-8pm
Refreshments provided by Young Henrys
www.blackeyegallery.com.au/future-shows/
Lumina Collective founding members are: Donna Bailey, Jessie Boylan, Chloe Bartram, Aletheia Casey, Anna Maria Antoinette D'Addario, Lyndal Irons, Morgann
Image copyright, Anna Maria Antoinette D'Addario Ladakh India 2013
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Shantih shantih shantih
(T.S Eliot 'What the Thunder Said' from The Wasted Land)
Photo by Sergio Larrain
'I try to do only work that I really care for. It is the only way for keeping me alive photographically, and I take as much time as I need. I keep myself in a slow peace, with much time for myself and doing other things, and see how photography develops…if it continues to develop… I do what I want the way I want, I feel that the rushing of journalism – being ready to jump on any story, all the time – destroy my love and concentration for work...'
'Good photography, or any other manifestation in man, comes from a state of grace. Grace comes when you are delivered from conventions, obligations, convenience, competition, and you are free, like a child in his first discovery of reality. You walk around in surprise, seeing reality as if it is for the first time….'
That is why people that do creative work have to isolate themselves, they are all hermits, one way or another….'
'The art is to live in happiness, with love, with truth, with purity, not swallowed by mechanization…'
- Sergio Larrain
(From various letters, text sourced from Little Brown Mushroom Blog)
Andre' Kerte'sz
"I am an amateur and intend to remain one my whole life long. I attribute to photography the task of recording the real nature of things, their interior, their life. The photographer’s art is a continuous discovery which requires patience and time. A photograph draws its beauty from the truth with which it’s marked." Andre' Kerte'sz
Andre' Kerte'sz was a hungarian born photographer active from the late 1800's until the mid eighties. The major percentage of his work and creative career was pursued in the United States and for a smaller period in Paris, France.
Ke'rte'sz captured with his camera minutes aspects of the world, from the banal to the highly intriguing, highlighting and showing that every detail of daily life could be photographed with an artistic eye... setting things apart, rendering them elegant... noteworthy... memorable.
Introversive by character Kerte'sz sought out the precious stillness of an instant in everyday life dedicating himself to that flux rather than seeking to document great events or movements. In doing this he enriched previously formed conceptions of street photography and with the strong use of portraiture in his work he extended Reportage to link with the portrait.
By 1925 when Kerte'sz was 31 he transferred to Paris where other important characters in the avant- guard were gathered; such as Many Ray and Robert Capa.
The year 1927 saw Kerte'sz's first photographic exhibition at the gallery
Au Sacre du Printemps
... His exhibition was opened by dadaist poet Paul Dermee' who is quoted mnetioning Kertesz' work and he stated;
"No rearranging, no posing, no gimmicks, nor fakery. Your technique is as honest, as incorruptible, as your vision. In our home for the blind, Kertész is 'Brother Seeing-Eye. "
In 1928 Kerte'sz obtained his first Leica and started to work together with Henri- Cartier Bresson for the magazine VU.
Still in Paris in 1929 he participated at the first ever independent photographic exhibition
Il Salon de L'escalier
with the likes of Euge'ne Atget, Man Ray, Nadar and Berenice Abbot amongst others.
Seven years later in 1936 he moved to New York, originally only intending to stay for a year he remained there until his death on September 28, 1985.
When Kerte'sz arrived in New York his work was not well received amongst the standardised American photojournalism of the time; he was told by LIFE Magazine that his photographs said 'too much'...
Andre' Kerte'sz is survived by more than 100,000 negatives and the recognition of being one of the founding figures in the history of photography and photojournalism.
"The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me, Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see." Andre' Kerte'sz
" The most valuable things in a life are a man's memories. And they are priceless" Andre' Kerte'sz
Anna Maria Antoinette D'Addario
Francesca Woodman is renowned for her surrealist black and white photography of which for the major part, she herself is the protagonist and subject of the work.
Irrefutably one of the finest female photographers of the century, Woodman's work gained international recognition in the years after her death. In January 1981 Francesca Woodman at the age of 22 committed suicide by throwing herself out of the window of a New York city loft to the street below.
She has been perceived as a tragic figure and a large portion of her work does explore death and her relationship to it, yet simultaneously in doing this Woodman also explored her relationship to life; its spaces and realities.
Perhaps it is difficult to detach oneself from the history of her suicide when examining her work, yet considering it subjectively, one could determine that Woodman's work and death are simply examples of a highly sensitive, creative and brilliant mind rebelling against effects of the harsh objective realties of life.
Her work explores this concept in depth, rebelling in and exploring her physical relation to objects and spaces, to her creative relation and connection with her mind and the physical restraints of her body.
Born to two well known American artists, George and Betty Woodman, Francesca grew up partially in Boulder Colorado, and for a term in Italy, passing summers in the Florentine countryside.
She studied in Rome from 1977- 1978, where she made acquaintances with a number of intellectuals and artists from the Roman school.
Woodman's work consists of around 10,000 negatives and around 800 prints, with only about 120 of these circulated and exhibited. She completed a number of books yet only one was published, shortly before her death, this was 'Some Disordered Interior Geometrics'. Other titles include 'Portrait of a Reputation', 'Quaderno dei Dettati e dei Temi (Notebook of Dictations and Compositions)' and 'Angels, Calender Notebook'.
Anna Maria Antoinette D'Addario
"The sea has never been friendly to man... At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness."
Joseph Conrad
copyright 2011 Anna Maria Antoinette D'Addario
The Winning photographs for The Worldwide Photography Gala Awards (WPGA) Interregional Competition in which I was awarded a first honorable mention representing Australia, have been published on the Gala
WPGA runs the competition annually to build a showcase of creative and photographic trends worldwide.
The Images will be published in a book later this year.
Also awarded with an honorable mention is a photographer of fine art that I admire, Nathalie Daoust; her site is currently down however you can read about her work
The photograph posted above is the awarded work of the concours...
A video I put together as a tribute to the work of photographer Joel Peter Witkin
Joel Peter Witkin's photographic creativity was formed by an accident he was witness to as a small child... A car accident in front of his residence resulted in the decapitation of a small girl...
he is quoted as saying;
"It happened on a Sunday when my mother was escorting my twin brother and me down the steps of the tenement where we lived. We were going to church. While walking down the hallway to the entrance of the building, we heard an incredible crash mixed with screaming and cries for help. The accident involved three cars, all with families in them. Somehow, in the confusion, I was no longer holding my mother's hand. At the place where I stood at the curb, I could see something rolling from one of the overturned cars. It stopped at the curb where I stood. It was the head of a little girl. I bent down to touch the face, to speak to it -- but before I could touch it someone carried me away".
his photographs reveal in their element of the grotesque portraits of the human condition which he dares to portray in diverse visions that breach the lines of our conceptions of decency and normality. His subjects are the outcasts of human society and his use of corpses in his photographic compositions have led to controversy.
He often references the fine arts in his works; amongst artists such as Picasso, Miro', de Chirico , Bosch, Goya and Botticelli... notable influences have been references to early daguerreotypes and the work of photographer E.J. Bellocq.
In 1961- 1964 he worked as a war photographer in the Vietnam War; after '74 he gained a master in Fine Arts at the University of Albuquerque, New Mexico where he currently resides.
HIs images are strong and at times may be hard to digest; yet his photographic genius stands out amongst the carnage and this same feeling of repulsion and attraction his photographs ignite in the viewer mirror the sensations evoked in confrontation with the darker aspects of human character.
Anna Maria Antoinette D'Addario
Music in video: 'Marla' by Grizzly Bear
John Ernest Joseph Bellocq is famous for his portraits of prostitutes taken in New Orleans at the beginning of the 20th century... The portraits were not known until many years after his death and his activites photographing the opium dens and the red light district of Storyville were known only to a select group of friends. After his death much of his work was destroyed; however glass negatives of the storyville portraits were found and made public, printed by photographer Lee Friedlander
Many of the negatives were damaged... mostly with intent... and this caused quite a deal of speculation; women in some wore masks and others posed as if in accordance with a mysterious unknown narrative... despite the motivation and character of Bellocq... no one can deny the elegance and poignancy of the collection...
