The Perfect Exposure Gallery
Artists: Caleb Carter - 'A Glimpse of the Bridge' and
John William Lindt -'Australian Aboriginal portraits 1873'
Photographers showing at The Perfect Exposure Gallery:
Caleb Carter (A Glimpse of the Bridge) and
John William Lindt (Australian Aboriginal portraits from 1873)
The Perfect Exposure Gallery chose to exhibit Caleb Carter's fine art images of the iconic 'Sydney Harbour Bridge', alongside portraits of Australian Aboriginals taken in 1873 by John William Lindt.
In his very first exhibition titled 'A Glimpse of the Bridge', Caleb Carter's photography took him immediately to the top, scoring an astounding commercial and critical success. Carter's classic fine art photographs capture one of Sydney's best-known icons - the Sydney Harbour Bridge, showing the cities famous 'coathanger' from every imaginable obvious, hidden and abstruse angle along the cities Harbour skyline.
Carter's phenomenally successful inaugural exhibition sprang from a 30-year career as a semi-professional photographer. Exhibited in 1997 in Sydney, 'A Glimpse of the Bridge' sold well over 100 prints.
A Sydney born photographer, Carter first picked up a camera in 1968. He began photographing his hometown, ultimately spending six years concentrating solely on documenting the Bridge. The series became an all-consuming passion for Carter, where he did nothing else photographically during that time.
A lot of the locations documented were first spotted whilst Carter was doing his 'day job' - a taxicab driver. "I'd find locations all over Sydney that way. I always keep a look out and remember glimpses of the Bridge from various places, then go back on the weekend to shoot it."
Coming from a background in photojournalism and architectural photography, Carter moved more into fine art photography, now preferring 'straight un-manipulated imagery'.
"My love has always been of black and white photography. Normally I like overcast, cloudy, dull days because I think black and white lends itself better in that sort of European light. This also shows why there are very few people in my photographs, because I go out on days when most people prefer to stay indoors. I think it's also a reaction to carting people around in cabs all day. I've been told that my pictures are that of "people in their absence," explains Carter.
In this exhibition, John William Lindt's 1873 portraits of Australian Aboriginals certainly make up for Carter's determined exclusion of human interference.
"Lindt attempted to record Aboriginal life in natural settings, but finally brought them into his study inorder to create aesthetically pleasing images of Aborigines which featured detailed and clearly delineated information about their indigenous way of life, " writes biographer Shar Jones in 1985.
Born in Germany on New Year's Day 1845, Lindt ran away to sea aged seventeen, and worked his passage on a Dutch ship arriving in Melbourne Australia in 1862. Supporting himself as a piano-tuner he traveled through the outback to Grafton, where he became apprenticed to a local photographer.
In 1870 Lindt took over the business and opened a new studio, specializing in cart-de-visite portraits but also producing landscapes and architectural shots. It was here that Lindt created the Album of Australian Aboriginals. In his studio, Lindt made artificial settings with painted backgrounds of wild mountains, and captured images considered to be "the first successful attempt at representing the native blacks truthfully as well as artistically."
To create these portraits from an anthropological perspective, Lindt took great care in portraying his subjects from childhood, maturity and old age, and clearly tried to show Aborigines as they lived before European contact, however subtle signs of the cultural change that resulted from the confrontation with white civilization are present.
Detailing skin textures and intricate scarification, these portraits capture compelling expressions, often depicted purely in their eyes.
Jones writes" These portraits had immediacy and realism. While the images appear contrived and static now, Lindt believed that he was documenting Aboriginal life without idealizing it, and his 19th Century audience agreed with him. It is only now, with the advantage of hindsight and objectivity, that we can appreciate that Lindt's efforts to construct a compilation of the typical relied dangerously on his own interpretation of native life, and denied spontaneity."
"Like many other important Australian photographers of the 19th Century, Lindt's name has been obscure for many years and only a few of his photographs have been reproduced, usually for their value as historical evidence," says Jones.
The majority of Lindt's photographs are held in institutions such as the State Library's of NSW and Victoria. In 1879, Lindt however submitted several albumen paper prints to the Australian Registrar of Copyright, who stamped them to enter into their official log. Copies were made in 1999 from these prints held at the National Archives of Australia, and one of Sydney's master printers Murray Fredericks, was commissioned to create the limited editioned Silver gelatin prints.
Lindt's photographic skills plus his self-promotional and entrepreneurial spirit earned him acceptance at every available intercolonial and international exhibition of his time. He was acclaimed by fellow photographers as "the outstanding photographer of the 1880s" and was subject to many feature articles by the Australasian Photographic Review magazine. Appointed a councilor of the Royal Geographic Society in 1893, recognition came again in recent years, by former J Paul Getty Museum curator, Weston Naef, who selected Lindt as one of his personal ten favorite photographers.
Caleb Carter's 'A Glimpse of the Bridge' and John William Lindt's 'Australian Aboriginal portraits 1873' opens at The Perfect Exposure Gallery on Thursday, 5th October, 7pm to 9pm. Officially launched by The Hon. Allan Rocher, Australian Consul General.
Address: 3513 W 6th Street, Los Angeles California 90020
Located in the Historic Chapman Park Building, in the Mid-Wilshire District
See Exhibition Schedule for gallery information.
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Exhibit 3: Andrew Dunbar
David Aden Gallery
Artist: Andrew Dunbar , 'Body Piercing'
"Body Piercing" - A book you can judge by it's cover
The old adage of "you can't judge a book by its cover" is often said, but in the case of the Body Piercing photography book by Andrew Dunbar, you can. The ring pierced jacket was infact the impetus for a creative journey by Australian photographer Andrew Dunbar, who has captured body piercing as an artistic form of self-expression.
Through this photography, Dunbar takes piercing from a sub-culture to popular culture, exposing custom made body jewelry designs in a beautiful and often cheeky manner.
Dunbar's October exhibition titled "Body Piercing" is showing at the David Aden Gallery in Venice Beach, Los Angeles as part of the "LA Celebrates Australian Photography" Exposition. The show will consist of a selection of his black and white photographs from the Body Piercing collection as well as Dunbar's latest images inspired by his recent visit to Los Angeles.
Dunbar's unique photographic style has positioned him as a contemporary master in photography. Dunbar's career began in photojournalism prior to studying in the USA and Australia in the mid-eighties. He then moved into the realm of commercial, advertising and fine art photography where he has worked extensively for the past 10 years.
Since 1996 Dunbar has been the recipient of over 40 awards and commendations including the prestigious Ilford Trophy. The Body Piercing book has also won Dunbar three major design awards including Australian Institute of Professional Photography 'Editorial Photograph of the Year' for one of the Body Piercing images, Winner of 1998 Australian Publishers Design Awards for 'Best Designed Book' and 'Best Designed Book Cover'.
In recent years Dunbar's work has been widely exhibited. In the United States his work was shown alongside such luminaries as Annie Leibovitz, Man Ray, Diane Arbus and Paul Outerbridge Jr, where the prestigious G Ray Hawkins Gallery in Los Angeles represents him.
So how do Dunbar's images of body piercing remain credible - or credible enough to exert the influence they do? They remain credible because the images are judged, not by real fulfillment of expectations, but by the relevance of the ideas they create in the mind of the spectator. Its essential appeal is not to reality but to self-expression.
Dunbar says, "I wanted the pictures to be beautiful, that is, beautiful in a photographic sense. I struck away from using people with multiple piercings or with tattoos as well as piercings, not because I had a problem with that, but because I wanted the images to look clean and uncomplicated."
Such an intention has brushed the images with a pure kind of sensuality, sheer, uninhibited curiosity without the vamped-up voyeurism. "My images are more concerned with body piercing than as brutal expressions of rebellion," exerts Dunbar. "The images are to capture what body piercing feels like rather than just what it looks like."
Dunbar explains that part of the aim of the book was to profile the cutting edge jewelry, from eyebrow alien antennae and tongue spider, to a belly plug and a nipple fishhook. At the David Aden Gallery, Dunbar is showing an assembly of some of the more risqué piercings including the septum, ampallang, guiche and labia.
Hailing from Adelaide in South Australia, Dunbar didn't have any trouble finding willing initiates to photograph. His models show people from all walks of life, from a shop assistant to a biologist, a mechanic to a nurse.
"Piercing can be adornment or mutilation" asserts Dunbar, "therefore I wanted my images to embrace piercing as a creative form of self-expression - to seduce rather than to shock. To take piercing away from its connection with subcultures, freaks and fetishes." Many of the images are so beautiful that it takes a couple of seconds to remember to wince.
The Body Piercing Exhibition opens at The David Aden Gallery, Friday 6th October, 6pm to 9pm
Address: 350 Sunset Avenue, Studio 4 @ Fourth Street, Venice Beach
See Exhibition Schedule for further details.
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