Entries Tagged 'PHOTOGRAPHY' ↓

Have you noticed how often this is happening? Photographs of photography? Here, on Lisson Gallery’s Fb page, a woman iPhotographs an Ai Weiwei. And so the subject of this photograph is?

I’m writing something on the different ways in which art museums treat the photography of works of art on display, or indeed the internal architecture, or the spatial relationships between works of art and their architectural context. For example, some museums (eg. the NGA) declare that it’s a condition of entry that you do not take photographs inside the building. Others (eg. the AGNSW) have little signs that indicate “no photography” on some works and not others. Others (eg. the NGV) appear to have no restrictions.

So here’s an open question: does the act of taking a photograph constitute an infringement of the copyright that may be inherent in a work that is photographed, or might an infringement only occur when you publish/reproduce it in some way? Or for commercial gain? Or does the very capture of an image constitute an act of reproduction? The Arts Law Centre says:

“You may be infringing copyright if you photograph the whole or a substantial part of a literary, musical, dramatic or artistic work, if the work is still protected by copyright. For further information on copyright, see the Australian Copyright Council information sheets.”

(You can ignore the inherent conundrum here – how you might photograph a musical work?)

At the ACC you will find that there are the possible special exceptions to Copyright provided in relation to research, criticism, review, parody and reporting news, which is referenced under “Fair Dealing” by the ACC here.

But this doesn’t help you if the act of taking a photograph is prohibited. Answers, opinions, anybody?

PS. I won’t even ask whether the photograph and its reproduction is itself intended as a work of art…

PPS. If you want to follow this thread (sideways) into the realm of non-human agency (!) read this at ArtInfo.

As reported in ArtInfo, a listed Russian art investment firm will deal only with photographs. But isn’t the nature of photography such that nobody knows how many copies of a particular photograph exist? So it’s a fluid commodity. No, it’s not run by a man called Ponzi…

Under a ambiguous translation of the term “cai fang” Toronto Star reporter Ben Schiller has received a stern warning from the Chinese authorities. For an insight into how the prohibition of photography is being enforced,  read on here.

Exhibition Opening: Picture Story: Axel Poignant, photographer, the formative years 1929-1942.

Curated by Roslyn Poignant

Talk: by Martin Thomas, on Axel Poignant’s modernism, naturalism and cross-cultural encounters

Date: Saturday 5 Feburary 2011 at 3pm

Venue: The Cross Art Projects
8 Llankelly Place Kings Cross, Sydney 2011 (off Orwell Street)

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About the Speaker: Martin Thomas

Martin Thomas is a cultural historian interested in place, representations of landscape and narratives of cross-cultural encounter especially in photography and the work of early Australian anthropologists. His history, The Artificial Horizon: Imagining the Blue Mountains (Melbourne University Publishing, 2003) won the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. His background is a visual arts writer, oral historian and producer of over 15 documentaries for ABC radio. He is a Research Fellow at the Australian National University.

———

About the Exhibition: Picture Story: Axel Poignant, photographer, the formative years 1929-1942

Axel Poignant (1906-1986) is one of the most influential photographers of Australia’s new documentary movement and, in over 5 decades’ work, proved himself a master of the photographic essay and documentary cinematography. This biographic exhibition surveys this Anglo-Swedish photographer’s formative years in Perth, Western Australia from July 1931 to 1943.

Roslyn Poignant, an acclaimed writer and anthropologist, has written a substantial biographic essay on Axel Poignant’s formative years. She understands this period as a drive to achieve a form of visual representation to express his growing social awareness. Her exhibition is also an account of Poignant’s artistic process and his life-long focus on the arts, experimental viewpoints and his encounter with the bush and indigenous people. This is the first of a two-part exhibition research project.

“The formative years” sets unpublished and unexhibited prints made by Axel Poignant for his commercial studio showcase and original contact prints alongside period exhibition prints, some reprinted for the artist’s first retrospective (Gael Newton, Art Gallery of NSW, 1982.)

Another theme is the sustaining friendships formed in Perth’s small but vital arts community and Axel’s passion for the natural world. This was a period of modest modernist rebellion, captured and defined by the important exhibition Aspects of Perth Modernism, 1929-1942 (Julian Goddard, UWA, 1986) which featured Poignant’s sharply-observed photo-essays.

The leading photographers and friends, Poignant and Hal Missingham, exhibited together in 1941 giving six talks in a two week exhibition period, some practical, some theoretical, on the new documentary movement.

Poignant’s renowned Canning Stock route pictures, taken in July 1942, are his last WA excursion before enlisting in the army. It was on his first journey along the Canning Stock Route that his aesthetics and skills coalesced in a singular directness of vision and a life-changing encounter. Few works from this period were published or exhibited until 1947 when two portraits—of a young Aboriginal mother and baby and a young head stockman—were awarded for their humanity of vision.

After the Second World War Axel Poignant worked first on Harry Watt’s film The Overlanders, then as cinematographer on Namatjira the Painter for the Commonwealth Film Division. His most significant work is a self-generated assignment to photograph the Yolngu community in Arnhem Land (1952). Forty years later, his wife Roslyn returned to the same area with the photographs and published Encounter at Nagalarramba (National Library of Australia, 1996).

For Roslyn Poignant’s catalogue essay, plus images from the exhibition, see here.

In keeping with the nation’s passion for the tourist art category of Big Things (Banana, Pineapple, Merino, Crayfish, Trout etc.), one of the features of the new wing of the National Gallery of Australia is a very large mandjabu (fishtrap). Because the photography of works of art is prohibited inside the NGA, I can’t show you an image of it. Neither can I show you what’s on the website:

All works and information that appear on [the] NGA website do so with the consent of the artist/s or copyright holder. No image or information displayed may be reproduced, transmitted or copied (other than for the purposes of private research and study) without the NGA’s permission. Contravention is an infringement of Australia’s Copyright Act 1968.

In any case, the only image of the big mandjabu I could find on the site is this partial snap on the NGA’s Flickr photostream here, where works of art from the collection are represented in a much less formal manner.

However this artefact is arguably an exception to this prohibition. That is, if it doesn’t have an author in the manner of other works of art, it’s not really a work of art. This gigantic aluminium artefact is suspended in the vault above the shop entrance and the cloak room. From the little the NGA tells you, its origins and authorship are proving to be somewhat mysterious. When the new extension first opened the label attributed authorship to the folks that made it (Urban Art Project Foundry) with the sub-text that it was “based on” an original dated c.1955 in the collection by an “Unknown Artist”.

Clearly a Foundry is not an Artist. Recently, however, new labels have been affixed to the walls which give the attribution in a different way. The “author” is now an “Unknown MAKER” and it is based on an original fishtrap in the collection, now dated c. 1995. The revised date makes more sense, given that the settlement of Maningrida hardly existed in 1955. Presumably the “original” is this one, acquired in 2006. Or there’s another example in the collection, this time with much better provenance. The replica is not listed in the collection database.  So, if it’s not a work of art, it’s something else, which surely poses other problems for the nation’s premier art museum.

Given this evolving ambiguity, I went to the Urban Art Projects site, where you will find plenty of images, plus some words of explanation from the Director, Ron Radford, who tells us:

The fish trap is based on a 1950s Maningrida fish trap and UAP have been able to interpret and enlarge the original woven piece into a stunning 12 metre long intricate metal work. The fish trap is a feature work in the atrium and the shadow pattern it produces is almost as beautiful as the work itself.

By UAP’s own account, the work was “curated by the NGA”. You can even watch its time-lapse construction on YouTube here. Fascinating.

The question remains, who is the author of this feature work? It seems almost inconceivable that if the original fishtrap from Maningrida was made in circa 1995 it could lose the attribution of the artist who made it. Whatever the circumstances of the acquisition of the original, with a little research the problem of authorship could have been easily solved, surely, and permissions for a named (or attributed) replica negotiated. However when you go to the UAP site (but not the NGA site) you find that it was produced in collaboration with the Maningrida artist George Ganyjbala:

The Maningrida fish trap is an important sculptural commission and presents a contemporary interpretation of a traditional woven fish trap from the Maningrida Aboriginal community in Australia’s Northern Territory. Works of art from Maningrida carry a strong reputation and are represented in collections nationally and internationally. UAP’s design team travelled to the Northern Territory to work with George Ganyjbala, Maningrida elder and skilled fish trap maker and his family.

So while there was a UAP “design team” who “interpreted” the “original” in collaboration with George Ganyjbala, the author of the original remains unknown. Who would know?  Maningrida Arts and Culture is one of the most professional art centres in the country, which has paved the way in the attribution of artefacts other than paintings and sculptures as the work of individual artists. In the nineties there were several well-known artists who made mandjabu, among other things, for sale at MAC. As do a number of contemporary artists today. However, surprisingly, MAC is not mentioned anywhere in this thread.

If research, discussion, permission, or commission with the the original artist (or their heirs) was a part of the process of curation, why are they not named or attributed by the NGA? In the absence of such a curatorial process, is it the NGA that is the “author” of this “feature work”, by default? Whose idea was it? Who had carriage of its production? So long as the replica’s authorship remains unresolved, or unrecognised, so does its ambiguous status as a work of art. Not. Which means, among other things, I should have been allowed to photograph it.

Unlike some Australian Museums (best seen with your eyes closed) most of the major international museums have adopted an open-door approach to access to their collections. See here for the blurb on the Google Art Project. Or read this review on ARTINFO.

See these Google Earth selections from Jon Rafman’s site called 9-eyes.com.

You think fear of photography is an issue in Australia? Read this BBC report today.

Buy the chairs, get the car for free – from Eclectic Images (Photography by Tom Cole) on Facebook today (somehow in the recesses of my brainbox wishful thinking became wistful envy became rustful envy…)