Category Archives: art

Being totally presumptous …

Posted on by

Last night I discovered that I had stood in almost the same places as Frank Hurley to take photographs at Petra, and was fascinated by how little the place had changed between our visits. If making a comparison between my images and Hurley’s was cheeky (and indeed it was!) then this is even more outrageous.

Interesting, though, to see that some things about Paris haven’t changed a great deal in 60 years: people still sit on the embankment of the River Seine, canal boats still moor by the Pont Neuf, and the skyline behind Ile de la Cite has gained only one tall building.

Although it’s possible to stand where the great man stood, and to point a camera at the same things he saw, it is totally impossible to replicate digitally the fabulous film grain and misty light in Cartier-Bresson’s image. And that, I think, is a very good thing.

 

Ile de la Cite, Paris, gelatin silver print by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1952

Ile de la Cite, Paris, digital image by me, 2011. (Black and white conversion and “film grain” added in Capture NX2 and Photoshop Elements.)

 

 

Same place, different time

Posted on by

A friend posted a new photo to his Facebook page tonight. It was taken a few years ago at Derwentwater in the UK, down on the edge of the lake where the row boats pull up on the shore. It prompted me to look for my own photo taken there in 1992, and to compare them … same place, different time, and the boats hadn’t changed at all!

Later in the evening I was reading the news about the journey of the Aurora Australis to Antarctica to mark the centenary of Douglas Mawson’s 1912 expedition. The internet being the wonderful place that it is, I was soon following links to photographs taken by Frank Hurley on that expedition, then photographs taken by him in France during the First World War, and then photographs taken in the Middle East during the Second World War.

I knew of Hurley’s work in Antarctica, and also of his war photography, but didn’t know that he also visited and photographed Petra sometime around 1943. So I started playing spot-the-difference again, comparing Hurley’s photographs with my own from October last year. How presumptuous!

I discovered that Petra hasn’t changed all that much in nearly 70 years. Except perhaps in the ease of travel. Hurley’s note on his photograph of Ad-Deir says this: “Situated to the s. e. of the Dead Sea. Practically impossible to reach today.” For air-conditioned buses, I am very, very thankful.

 

Rock Tombs at Petra, silver gelatin photograph by Frank Hurley, c.1943

Rock tombs at Petra, digital image by me, 2011.

Glimpse of Petra Valley, silver gelatin photograph by Frank Hurley, c.1943

Glimpse of Petra Valley, digital image by me, 2011

Huge temple cut in one piece from the mountain, Petra, Jordan, silver gelatin photograph by Frank Hurley, c. 1943

Ad-Deir (The Monastery), digital image by me, 2011

How does your garden grow?

Posted on by

In some places, on brick walls. Somehow I don’t think this would look quite as good if I tried it on my colourbond.

Urban art found at St Peters railway station in Sydney.

Photographed with a Nikon D7000 and 20mm f/2.8 lens, 1/200 sec at f/5, ISO 100.

Israel: Not more mosaics!

Posted on by

Two things we saw a lot of on our journey: big rocks that used to hold up buildings, and little rocks arranged into pretty pictures. Both are equally impressive!

In this post I’ve brought together the most interesting of the little rocks: the mosaics that once decorated the floors of great Roman or Byzantine buildings, and a couple of modern mosaic walls from modern times. The Byzantine mosaics here include:

… The Constantine Mosaic under the existing floor of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (early 4th century)

… The mosaics on the floor of the Byzantine church on the mount of Masada (5th-7th centuries)

… The mosaic floor of the synagogue at Beit Alfa (6th Century). This is particularly interesting for the way the people are “drawn” in a naive style, and for the zodiac in the centre panel. Human images and a zodiac in a synagogue? How did they get there?

… The mosaic map floor of the Church of St George in Madaba (around AD 560). Around 2 million tesserae were used to make this map showing the location of 150 towns and cities that a traveller would pass through on the way from Syria to Egypt. The map shows remarkable geographical accuracy, if not in scale certainly in relative position of the towns, and includes possibly the oldest map of Jerusalem. Amazing!

The Roman mosaics at Sepphoris date to the 3rd century, and include the “Mona Lisa of Galilee”, part of a mosaic that was made of an estimated 1.5 million stones in 28 colours.

I am rather pleased with these mosaic images, as they were often difficult to photograph. Many were indoors, or protected under cover from the weather, and so capturing the images required shooting at high ISO (not good for noise), wide aperture (not great for depth of field) or slow shutter speeds (not great for camera shake). The Beit Alfa mosaic was shot using the 50mm f/1.8 lens (at 800 ISO, and 1/60th second to allow an aperture of f/5) so that I could capture as much detail as possible shooting across the floor. The Constantine mosaic in Bethlehem was also indoors, in a very dimly lit church, and was shot at the same ISO and shutter speed but with an aperture of f/2.8, the maximum on the 20mm lens. I am very impressed with the ability of the Nikon D7000 to minimise noise at high ISO, and also with the live view function (which made it so much easier to get better framing by stretching my arm out over the mosaics). I don’t know why I spent so long vacillating over whether or not to buy it!

Anyway, have a look at these wonderful mosaics. They are historically important, and beautiful as well.

Art, Paris

Posted on by

Paris has so many art galleries and museums that it would take weeks to visit them all. During our short stay we were able to visit just four: the Musee d’Orsay, the Musee du Louvre, the Centre Pompidou and the Musee de l’Orangerie. We also enjoyed looking in the windows of private galleries in St-Germain, and browsing in the printmaker’s market in the square outside Saint Sulpice.

I’m still not sure what to make of the Musee du Louvre. The Louvre is a big, beautiful building and it holds some of the most famous, instantly recognised pieces of art in the world. But it’s also crowded and noisy, and there are very few places to sit and enjoy that famous art. In the Italian painters’ gallery, everyone seemed to be in a big hurry to join the crowd in front of La Joconde,  apparently barely interested in the other amazing works on the walls nearby. Now I’m not averse to taking home my own photograph of a beautiful art work if gallery rules permit, but the crush in front of da Vinci’s masterpiece and the jostling to get a picture of “and here’s me in front of the Mona Lisa” was just ridiculous. I did make it to the front of the crowd, more by accident than design, and was permitted a minute or two in front of the painting before a gallery attendant asked – no, told – me to move on. A bit disappointing. So I did take a photograph to enjoy at home. Perhaps that’s why everyone else was doing the same thing.

Despite the crowds and the noise, I did enjoy our visit to the Louvre. So too the Musee d’Orsay, though we visited while the van Gogh room was being renovated and some of his work was not on exhibit. It was quite something to see, in real life rather than books, the paintings and sculptures I had studied in high school Art class or read about in later years.

The Musee de l’Orangerie is a much smaller gallery holding French Impressionist works, including a set of large – and I mean large! – scale Waterlilies by Monet. These breathtaking paintings are hung in two purpose-built oval rooms lit by skylights, and there are seats in the centre of each room – hooray! Monet wanted to have his works hung in a place that would be a welcome haven from the bustle of the city. And it was.

The final Paris gallery we visited was the Centre Pompidou, a showcase for art from about 1900 to today. I could have quite happily spent all day on Level 5.

The French are fortunate to have so much of the world’s great art from across the centuries. I’m glad we were able to share it for a few days.

Hidden @ Rookwood (part 2)

Posted on by

Following up on yesterday’s post about my morning spent at Rookwood Cemetery photographing some of the Hidden sculptures, here are a few images of some of the child-angels that mark burial sites in the older sections of the cemetery. They make quite a contrast to the contemporary art in the sculpture exhibit.

All photographs taken with a Nikon D80 and Nikkor 20mm f/2.8. Loving this lens!

 

Hidden @ Rookwood

Posted on by

I spent some time today at Rookwood Cemetery, following the paths of the Hidden Sculpture Walk and enjoying Sydney’s wonderful autumn sunshine.

This year the exhibition of 36 works is installed amongst the graves around All Souls’ Anglican Chapel. Some, such as Dillon MacEwan’s scrap metal creation, tower over the viewer. Others, like Sue Roberts’ trapped river stones, are well and truly hidden from view, to be found only with the aid of the free iPhone app. All of the sculptures are inspired by ideas associated with death: loss, grief, memory, ceremony and spirituality.

The exhibition is free and open each day (during Cemetery hours, sunrise to sunset) until May 8th, 2011. Get along if you can.

Below are images of the works that I found most interesting. I gathered a few more images of traditional monumental masonry, too, and hope to post some of them tomorrow.

 

“Watching”, sculpture in scrap metal, by Dillon MacEwan:

“Trapped”, sculpture in mirrored stainless steel and river stones, by Sue Roberts:

“The Last Dance II”, sculpture in wire, glue and plaster, by Linda Galbraith:

“significance”, sculpture in cast white cement, by Will Coles:

“Departures I”, sculpture in wood, perspex and paper, by Nerine Martini:

“Ashes I”, sculpture in glazed porcelain and earthenware set on a fireplace, by Serena Horton:

All photographs taken with a Nikon D80 and Nikkor 20mm f/2.8.

Sydney Morning Herald Photos 1440 exhibition, July-August 2010

Posted on by

This promises to be one of the best homegrown photographic exhibitions in Sydney this year and it’s showing at the State Library of NSW on Macquarie Street, Sydney in conjunction with World Press Photo 2010, the touring exhibition of the winners of this year’s World Press Photo Contest.

World Press Photo 2010 is on until July 25th, and Photos 1440 until August 1st. Admission to both exhibitions is free.

Follow the link below for a preview of Photos 1440 with commentary from the photographers … inspirational stuff!

Sydney Morning Herald Photos 1440 exhibition, July-August 2010.

Oldie, but goodie

Posted on by

Ah. Gary Larson. Creator of some of the funniest cartoons I’ve ever seen, the kind of jokes that if you didn’t get it, well, you just didn’t get it. But if you got it, you’d laugh till you cried. He had a knack for the bizarre – aliens and bears and cats and dogs in the strangest situations. We have a fat book of his work, but it’s nice to know the cartoons are also out there on the web, making another generation reach for the tissues. Maybe I’ll post some more another day.

This was always one of my favourites, published sometime in the 1980s. Would it work as well with a Sandisk memory card? I don’t think so.