Beta issue 09

09 MAY 2014

developments in photography

BETA developments in photography ISSUE 09 editor: Jeff Moorfoot design: Penelope Anne contact: beta@ballaratfoto.org web: beta.org.au All content in this magazine is Š 2014 of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale and participating artists, and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the BIFB. Inc save for fair dealing for the purposes of research, study, criticism, review, reporting news. All other rights are reserved.

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Susan Burnstine ABSENCE OF BEING

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Anthony Scibelli DEFLOWERED

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Keith Horan CHATTEL

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Robert Harding Pittman ANONYMIZATION

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Frank Rothe WHITE NIGHT

I struck a rich mother lode of content for BETA – developments in photography while reviewing folios at the Fotofest ‘Meeting Place’ in Houston Texas last month. Over four days I had the privilege of meeting eighty photographers in one on one meetings that lasted just twenty minutes each, and from these sessions I have at least a dozen bodies of work that will appear in this, or future editions of BETA – developments in photography. Three of those artists appear in this issue – Susan Burnstine from Los Angeles CA, Keith Horan from Seattle WA, and Hamburg, Germany based Robert Harding Pittman.

Burnstine’s dreamlike images take me on a journey into an ethereal world that fuses the real with the unreal that place on the cusp of a dream and its aftermath - that territory where your memory of events pings backwards and forwards from absolute clarity to that fuzzy place where you are not quite sure where you have been or what you have seen.

Harding Pittmann’s contribution is a selection of images from his book ‘Anonymization’ which presents a visual documentation of the urban sprawl across the planet while, Horan’s goat portraits belie the old adage of never working with kids [no pun intended] and animals.

Also in this issue we have Frank Rothe’s ‘Lost in White Nights’ - a truly global collaboration, shot in St Petersburg, processed and printed in Berlin and hand coloured in Kolkata, India. And to round out 09 we present a suite of still lifes by Anthony Scibelli, whom some of you may remember from the Main Program at our very first festival in Daylesford way back in 2005.

And in case you weren’t aware, you can download pdf versions of issues 01 to 09 from our website www.beta. org.au If you prefer to read BETA – developments in photography offline, or perhaps maintain your own BETA

archive. You can also download copies from issuu, but you need to be signed in to do so. [subscribing to issuu is free] And allow me to invite you to head on over to our facebook page and give us a big thumbs up if you like what you see.

And of course we love to have your feedback and we are always looking for content for future editions as well as advertisers.

Jeff Moorfoot Creative Director Ballarat International Foto Biennale

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Absence Of Being SUSAN BURNSTINE 7

Fading Echoes

A plane disappears into the clouds.

We can’t see it, hear it or touch it, but we know it’s there. Our senses can give us no tangible evidence it continues to exist. But still, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt it’s there. We suspend limitations of our senses, and believe.

When a person dies, do they simply cease to exist because they no longer have a physical presence? Or do they

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remain with us through the remnants of the lives they lived? When a building is razed, is it truly obliterated, or does its imprint remain in the collective unconscious?

This ongoing series explores how the past remains with us, if only in shadows. These images capture fleeting memories, spotted from the corner of an eye that vanish the moment we turn to really look. And yet they

Across the Line

remain, for the imprint remains with us.

We are living in the present, but the past reminds us that it is part of us, too, as is the future, and we of them.

With this body of work as with my former series, I captured these visions entirely in-camera using a collection of hand-made film cameras and lenses that are frequently unpredictable and technically challenging. The cameras are primarily made out of plastic,

vintage camera parts and random household objects and the single element lenses are molded out of plastic and rubber. Learning to overcome their extensive limitations has required me to rely on instinct and intuition – the same tools that are key when trusting in the unseen.

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Impasse

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The Long Road Home

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Around the Bend

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Times Square 802am

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Traverse

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As Darkness Meets The Day

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Lost In Mississippi

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Through the Cracks

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In Parting

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Michigan Monroe 642am

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As Above So Below

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Last Harvest

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What Was Then

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Griffith Park 1048am

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Beyond The East River

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In The Midst

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East Broadway 702am BURNSTINE

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Susan Burnstine is an award winning fine art and commercial photographer originally from Chicago now based in Los Angeles. Susan is represented in galleries across the world, widely published throughout the globe and has also written for several photography magazines, including a monthly column for Black and White Photography Magazine (UK).

Burnstine is one of the few photographers today avidly pursuing alternative processes to create an idiosyncratic and deeply personal visual landscape. Initially, Burnstine sought to find a way to portray her dream-like visions entirely in-camera, rather than with post-processing digital manipulations. To achieve this, she has created twenty-one handmade film cameras and lenses that are frequently unpredictable and technically challenging. The cameras are primarily made out of plastic, vintage camera parts, and random household objects, with single-element lenses molded from plastic and rubber. Learning to overcome their extensive optical limitations required Burnstine to rely on instinct and intuition—the same tools that are key when attempting to interpret dreams.

Susan’s first monograph Within Shadows was published by Charta Editions in September 2011, earned PX3’s Gold award for Best Fine Art Photography Book of 2011 and was selected for the Photo Eye best of 2011 book list. website: susanburnstine.com

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Deflowered ANTHONY SCIBELLI 28

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Renunculis

A Wikipedia entry for The Wombat State Forest lists it as a Ruined Forest.

And in sections remains a no-mans land of gold mining and illegal timber cutting.

Endowed with flora and fauna, the artist uses wildflowers he finds around

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his studio. Species are identified, introduced to somewhat fecund studio and photographed.

Exotic species are inexpertly planted in makeshift beds and pots by the artist and then left to their own fates, generally photographic also.

Cherry Blossoms

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Pear & Common Fay

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Pumpkin Glass Poppys

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Memento Mori

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Skeletal Hand

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Iris

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Unidentified Wildflower

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Unidentified Wildflower 2

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Psylosibe & Skull

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Kangaroo Paw & Spotted Swardtail

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Wahlenbergia Stricta

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Fox Paws

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Fringe Lilly

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Medium Kangaroo Paw

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Spotted Orchard & Spotted Swardtail

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A shadowy alchemy unfolds as specimens are brought into this theatrical photo set, where things gradually evolve in the spectral light of his studio. Anthony Scibelli is a photographer based in Wheatsheaf, a forest community near Daylesford in country Victoria. Anthony relocated from New York to Australia at the end of 2000.

Anthony’s artistic career began at the Minneapolis College of Art. His work has been exhibited in Melbourne, New York City, Bridge-Hampton New York State, Albany New York State, Santa Fe New Mexico, Rome and Positano Italy. In 2010 Kyneton, Daylesford, Trentham and Port Fairy’s Galleries have given Anthony an opportunity to show. website: anthonyscibelli.com

Common Fay & Quay

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Chattel KEITH HORAN

If the photographer’s ungulate neighbors came to the studio and asked to have their portraits made, this is what would happen.

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Bennett #1

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Carl #2

Treated as portrait subjects, they seem to have personalities. Perhaps they do, and the photograph allows us to see it. Or perhaps the language of the photo gives us that impression. One wonders if that interplay is any different here than it is in pictures of humans.

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Sherlock #1

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Xantippe #2

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Lizzie #1

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Velvet #2

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Sherlock #2

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Carl #1

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Jake #1

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Xenia #1

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Sherlock #3

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Opie #1

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Sidney #1

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Xantippe #1

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Sidney #2

Kevin Horan is a photographer in based in Langley, Washington, USA. He is working on projects which look at animals as people, people as animals, and the planet as a very small place. His pictures are reality-based, and he enjoys finding the amazing hidden in the ordinary.

A long-time photojournalist, Horan has published his work in National Geographic, Smithsonian, LIFE, U.S. News & World Report, and numerous other magazines. website: kevinhoran.com

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Anonymization ROBERT HARDING PITTMA

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AN

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Morata Farm – future AP-7 Freeway Murcia, Spain

All across the world a uniform, homogeneous model of development, inspired by Los Angeles style urban sprawl – consisting of massive freeways, parking lots, shopping malls and large­­-scale masterplanned communities with golf courses – is being stamped onto the earth’s topography.

With this anonymous type of development comes the destruction of the

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environment, and also a loss of culture and roots, as well as alienation. This globalized model of architecture does not respect or adapt itself to the natural or cultural environment onto which it is implanted. As we have seen in recent history, fervent overdevelopment has led to crises, not only financial, but also environmental and social, and some even say psychological. German-

Tercia Real master-planned community (abandoned) Murcia, Spain

American photographer Robert Harding Pittman began working on ANONYMIZATION in Los Angeles over ten years ago. Since then he has been traveling around the world photographing the spread of “L.A. style development” in Las Vegas, Spain, France, Germany, Greece, Dubai and South Korea. The world was in the midst of a construction boom when the project began. In the meantime most cranes have come to a screeching halt.

“These images--many of them haunting in an arid way--remind us by contrast of how much we long for real places, real texture, real homes, real communities. In many cases they’re the face of the housing bust-but also some much deeper bust, in the way we’ve been thinking (or not) about the world.”

Bill McKibben, author Eaarth

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Real de Faula Golf Club Benidorm, Spain

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Albari master-planned community Dubai, UAE

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Pangyo New Town development Seoul, South Korea

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Master-planned community construction site Dubai, UAE

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Navarino Bay Golf Resort Peloponnese Peninsula, Greece

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Camposol urbanization Murcia, Spain

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Tercia Real master-planned community (abandoned) Murcia, Spain

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Interstate 15 Las Vegas, USA

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Ensanche de Vallecas Madrid, Spain

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Pangyo New Town development Seoul, South Korea

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Santorini, Greece

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Mall of the Emirates Dubai, UAE

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Dubai, UAE

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Arabian Ranches master-planned community Dubai, UAE

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Lake Las Vegas Resort Las Vegas, USA

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Pizza Hut (abandoned) – U.S. Route 70 Alamogordo, New Mexico, USA

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Robert Harding Pittman grew up in Boston and Hamburg, the son of a German mother and American father.

After taking his undergraduate and graduate degrees in environmental engineering (U.C. Berkeley), an area of concern that continues to inform his work, he received an M.F.A. in Photography and Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts). His main interest is how different cultures interact with the environment and how they manage “development�.

He has recently published his first photography book ANONYMIZATION with Kehrer Verlag, compiling his work from various countries from over ten years. The project has been nominated for the Prix Pictet and for the German Photobook Award (Deutscher Fotobuchpreis). His award winning documentaries, which address many of the same issues treated in Anonymization, have been shown at festivals around the world. Currently, together with actor and activist Martin Sheen, he is working with CFF Films in Germany on a new documentary film, From under our feet, about people across the globe being displaced by openpit coal mining. website: rhpimages.com

Westridge master-planned coummunity Los Angeles County, USA

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White Night FRANK ROTHE

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Technically speaking the so-called “White Nights” (Beliye Nochi) are not unique to St Petersburg, but only here the northern nights have received such a poetic acclaim. What could be more romantic than walking along rivers and canals when night is as bright as early evening? It is the worId’s only city where such a phenomenon takes place every summer from mid June to beginning of July. Every year there are days when the downtown St Petersburg is full of people, even at night.

It is a great time for those in love and for those who seeking love or just want to enjoy the endless nights.

In that period of time people don’t sleep as much as they should. Because the day never ends, people become a bit lunatic. Therefore I choose to name my project “Lost In White Nights”.

I also was attracted by the softness of the light during that time. I shot on 6 by 6 negative color film without additional light. After my return to Berlin, I scanned the images. The digital files where desaturated on the computer and transformed into black and white images.

Gothic Girl

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Now the other half of the project had to be done. Beginning of 2008 my beloved grandmother died. A year before she gave me an old photograph. It shows my grandmother as a four or five year old girl, taken around 1920. Its a hand coloured photograph.

At this time it was a norma| way to transform a black and white photograph into a coloured one. From a trip to India I remembered hand coloured images that l’d seen in peoples houses.

Its an almost forgotten art - used a century ago. Through a friend of a friend I got in contact with Mr. Rajesh Roy. At the beginning of December 2008, the same year I shot the images in St. Petersburg, the first print was sent from Kolkata to Berlin. It was shortly after the Mumbai terrorist attack and the print was destroyed because the custom service checked my package roughly. Also crisis hit the world. Luckily my contact in India kept on with his company.

In fact I never met the artist who coloured my work, because Mr. Roy managed the business on my behalf. He actually runs an lnternet company and was only a kind of middleman between me and the artist. Every two or three months some hand colored images where sent to my studio in Berlin.

Luckily nothing was damaged by customs any more.

But it looked like the project would never end because the quality of the images went up and down. But there where also other emails when I wished Happy New Year to Mr. Roy or felt pity for him, when he or one of his family member became ill. The last package should have come at the end of summer 2010. When I opened it and checked the work I knew that I had to sent it back. Some of the images where great, some not.

One print did not have the right size and was smaller then the others. But then by the end of October 2010 everything was fine. The unique moments I captured in St. Petersburg in 2008 were completed as unique art works. The best moment in life of an artist is the one when the idea becomes reality. You see and touch what was only in your head before.

The dream to catch images of a city and its people during a lunatic time with a lunatic light and transforming it into unique master pieces with the disappearing art of hand colouring became a reality.

The Wave

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Loot At The Fingernails

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Troubled Water

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Up The Sky 3

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Red Girl

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Water

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A Bottle In A Limo

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Golden Bridge

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After Concert

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Closed Eyed Girl

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Angel With Trumpet

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Back On Horse

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Hot Pants

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Kiss Kiss

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House

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Night Cafe

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Up The Sky 1

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Travel and the desire to experience new cultures are the foundation of Frank Rothe’s lifestyle. The extensive travelling he did as a child and youngster, led him to become a magazine and newspaper writer at the age of 19. His desire to expand his creative work resulted in him photographing the experiences he was chronicling via writing and using the images to supplement his articles. This decision launched Rothe’s career as a photographer. Over the last decade he has been shooting and exhibiting internationally. He has worked on campaigns and as a staff photographer for international and national publications. His work has been exhibited throughout the world and also published as photographic books.

Frank Rothe speaks fluent English, Russian and German.

Lonely Dog KOPIE

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