April 25, 2014

Friday Round Up - 25 April, 2014

This week on Friday Round Up three very different, but equally wonderful books by photographers at different points in their careers – Australians Paul Blackmore and Kristian Laemmle-Ruff and American Joel Meyerowicz – plus a photo essay on the Bangladesh Rana Plaza Garment Factory disaster victims a year after their lives were irrevocably shattered.

Book:
Paul Blackmore – At Water’s Edge




Shot in black and white, the images in Paul Blackmore’s “At Water’s Edge” create dramatic contrasts of dark and light that undulate across the paper, rippling like water itself, lapping at the edges of thought. Blackmore’s photographs are both lyrical and documentary in their composition. He has shared what he has learned, not only what he has seen, in the thoughtful framing of each scene…(Read the full review here or click on the Book Reviews tab at the top of this blog).

Book Launch:
Kristian Laemmle-Ruff- In The Folds of Hills


Within the covers of this beautifully crafted book live the stories of the inhabitants of a tiny Victorian town – Swanpool. What is so evocative about this publication is not the individual stories themselves, but the way photographer Kristian Laemmle-Ruff has focused on what most would overlook, to capture a way of life that has virtually disappeared. There is such honesty and emotion in the simplicity of life “In the Folds of Hills” that you can’t help, but be swept up in the nostalgia of a time when life was slower, less complicated and perhaps more grounded. While not wanting to romanticise the lives of those depicted in this book, in these stories, told in both words and pictures, can be found the core values that are the hallmark of rural Australia. 








(C) All images Kristian Laemmle-Ruff

Laemmle-Ruff has a clear vision for someone so young. Yet this digital native has not only discovered a way of life that he says “is quietly going unnoticed” but captured it with humility, respect and a generous spirit that celebrates what has gone before with trivialising. His strong black and white images, which are interwoven with interviews conducted by his mother Charlotte Laemmle, transport the reader to another time; an impressive feat given this project was shot from 2009-2013.

Book Launch and Exhibition Opening
Launch: Thursday 1 May 6.00pm
Exhibition: 1 – 8 May
The Compound Interest
15-25 Keele St, Collingwood

For more information visit the website here
Published by Pearce Press, Australia

Book:
Joel Meyerowicz by Colin Westerbeck



“Photographers learn to accept the gifts that come their way because surely life produces moments crazier than we can conceive.” Joel Meyerowitz

In 1962 Joel Meyerowitz was working in New York as an art director when he was given the opportunity to sit in on an advertising photo shoot with Robert Frank. At the time he had no idea who Frank was, but the way the older man worked with his camera seamlessly integrating himself into the scene sparked something in Meyerowitz’s imagination...(Read the full review here or click on the Book Reviews tab at the top of this blog).

Photo Essay:
GMB Akash – Lifelong Scars


(C) Taslima Akhter

Many will remember the photograph above taken by Taslima Akhter, which spoke of the horrific loss of life in the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh on 24 April, 2013.

A year after the disaster photographer GMB Akash has published his photo essay on the victims who are still suffering physical and psychological trauma. In a world where news is in sound-bytes and there are billions of images that "live" in cyber space for seconds only, this is important work. 

Those photojournalists who revisit stories after they have fallen from the media headlines not only remind us of those who are suffering. These photo stories document history as it unfolds, the timeframes of which are not dictated to by mass media priorities.








(C) All images GMB Akash

To see more images and read the stories visit the website here.


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