developments in photography

15JUNE 2015

Office AddressUpstairs, Mining exchange12 Lydiard street North,Ballarat Vic 3350

BETA developments in photographyISSUE 15editor: Jeff Moorfootdesign: Penelope Annecontact: beta@ballaratfoto.org

All content in this magazine is 2015 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.

MeMBer fesTiVAL

POsTAL AddressPO Box 41,Ballarat Vic 3353Australia

T +61 3 5331 4833e info@ballaratfoto.orgW www.ballaratfoto.org

Assn No A0045714LABN 70496228247

08Simon Harsent

INTO THE ABYSS

26Jan Caga

THE MuSEuM WOrkErS

52Vsevolod Vlasenko

OdESSA : VANISHINg CITY

74Chang He

glASS BOx

4AL rAWi Basil #4AsfAr Hoda #2BAcON KidWeLL Angela #5BArKer Mandy #13Bird Leon #11BLAcKWOOd christa #10BLANcH Alice #5BOdiN John #10BOGUe Terence stewart #6BONANNO simona #7BUrNsTiNe susan #9cArLiLe Brad #12cArTier f & d #10cAsH Neil #1cATO John #6cONrOY Juliette #10crAVer Neil #8cresPO carlos #11crisPiN Judith #1dAWsON Alec #10de MAAr Marrigje #6decYK slavo #1

diAZ francisco #6diNiZ Jose #4dOBsON susan #13dUNPHY Peter #4dYAcHYsHYN Yurko #4eLMs Greg #5fAHreNKeMPer claudia #6fOUrNeT Annette #14GOLdfiNcH Karena #1GOLLiNGs John #1Gries Patrick #3GriffiTH Tim #1HArdiNG PiTTMAN robert #9HAY John #12HeWiTT Tony #6HOLLOWAY craig #7HOPe Tim #3HOrAN Keith #9JAcKsON Tony #8JOreN Gerard #1JOsLiN russell #6KeArNeY Tony #2

Beta Alumni

5KirKPATricK Bear #12KOZHANOVA Mariya #11KrUGH Kent #12KUrLAT Galina #4LecHNer Jurgen #13LiPsKY clay #3MAcAK sonia #6MAcrAe sheena #6MALeONN #1 & #5MArciN Ben #3MArsHALL steve #8MAsTers Michael #8MiLLer Nathan #7MOrAN robert #14NOrTON Michael #1OsHeA Meredith #6PAGe colin #1PereTTi Viviana #2rANKeN Jackie #6rAsMANis Kara #1 & #6rOGers PriTZL Michelle #13rOPP William #14

rOss doc #6rOTHe frank #9rUOTed robert #5scHAffer rod #2scHeUrWATer Hester #6sciBeLLi Anthony #9sHAYeN Vikk #2 & #6sHePPArd Gary #7sHerrOd Judy f #5sHiM Jai Yon #2siMONUTTi Lauren #1sTeVeNs s Gayle #5sTONeMAN emma #7TAdrOs ingetje #14VANWALLeGHeM frederick #3VersTeeG Greer #11ViNciGUerrA Guy #6VUKOBrATOVic rina #4WAddiNGTON rod #5WerTHeiM Andres #13WiTMAN deanna #3ZeiLON elisabeth #6

Beta Alumni view back issues at issuu.com/ballarat_foto_biennale/

BeTA developments in photography purposely shies away from verbose explanations and wordy artist state- ments. in fact, quite often i feel myself hoist on my own petard with my open- ing essay for each issue as my writing skills are probably more suited to those of the advertising copywriter or the newspaper sub editor, or perhaps even a comedic ghost writer, than an art critic. And so i encourage our BeTA contributors to keep it short and sweet. leave the flowery intellectual stuff to the novelists! if the work needs a lengthy explanation for validation then it probably misses the point! Of course this is not always the case. Life is never that simple. But increasingly i see the work of artists who, to my way of think- ing, seem better suited to a literary career than that of an image maker.

Looking back through the BeTA history i was quite amazed to see that we have presented folios from 88 photo- graphic artists from around the world since our first issue back in October 2012. The list of BeTA alumni and the issue in which they featured appears elsewhere in 15 and this acknowledge- ment will be updated in each issue into the future.

This is the fifteenth edition of BeTA developments in photography [have we been going that long?... my, how time flies when youre having fun!] and again we take pleasure in presenting four folios from all corners of the planet, which in itself is a bit of a conundrum, our planet being a spherical form! Nonetheless we present works from Vsevoldo Vlasenko from russia, the czech republics Jan caga, whose work i came across via the Photolucida [Portland Oregon] critical Mass online portfolio reviews, chang He, who i met at the shanghai Photo festival in china last October, and simon Harsent, UK born but a bit of a global warrior work- ing in the high pressure advertising world both here in sydney and in New York. Once again i take delight in the diversity of our art and our craft, and offer for your enjoyment four folios that demonstrate the potential that photogr- aphy affords the creative mind matched with the technical skills to communicate a feeling, a mood, an idea.

suitable for future editions of BeTA. You can email Mike at 1000words@ballaratfoto.org with your critical essays, reviews and writings on photography for considera- tion of being published in a future issue.

Thanks for reading. see you again in the pages of BeTA developments in photography 16.

Jeff Moorfoot BifB creative director BeTA editor

And while on the subject of future issues, BeTA developments in photo- graphy number 16 will be published just prior to the opening of the 2015 Ballarat international foto Biennale, which runs from August 22nd to sept- ember 20th, and will present over 200 events at eighty venues in and around Ballarat over the festival month. The 16th issue will present mini folios from most of the artists who comprise the core exhibition Program at the festival. The work wont be what they are show- ing at BifB15 youll have to make the trip to Ballarat to experience that, inst- ead it will be alternate work from each artist, designed to whet your appetite for the experiences that will unfold across Ballarat from August 22nd.

Just by the by, if you enjoy words about photography as much as you enjoy reading images, the fourth issue of the sister publication to BeTA ONeTHOUsANd WOrds [about photography] has just been released. editor Mike Lim is as interested in hear- ing from writers on photography as i am interested in seeing folios that may

8Simon HarsentInto The Abyss A little deeper and shell lose the light. At first the surface is just touchable - shadows that might be clouds or birds in flight She sets her face to the skim

to get the last of the world she came from, some slight sense of voices fading as she slips from almost-day to almost-night, grey-green shading

first to blue, then more than blue, then to a blue never seen by anyone but her, and that slow drift into darkness set to sever all that she owned or wanted, all she had ever been.

David Harsent

9This series of images by simon Harsent was photographed for the inaugural exhibition and subsequent publication by The Pool collective titled Blow up.

founded in 2008, The collective is a group of likeminded photographers working across both commercial and fine art disciplines. One of the aims of the group is to publish and exhibit as a group, each photographer was required to explore a new body of work to show in the exhibition that was held over three days at fleet steps on sydneys foreshore. Harsent collabor- ated with his father Poet david Harsent who penned a poem in response to the series of photographs. The subsequent poem is featured in david Harsents award winning collection of poems titled fire songs under the title dive.

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

simon Harsent was born in england in 1965, where he studied photography at Watford college. in 1987 he moved to sydney and then to New York, where he is based today, in 1997. Harsent was selected in Australian creatives Power 20 issue in 2011 as one of the most influential people in advertising photography. His first monograph, Melt: Portrait of an iceberg, published late 2009 to critical acclaim, reinforced by its inclusion in the Photo district News [PdN] yearly Best Of Annual and the prestigious d&Ad Annual. He was also featured in canons web based interview series seconds with where he talked about his journey in creating the book Melt.

website: simonharsent.com

26

Jan Caga

Museum Workers

The

27

The museum was, is and always will be the living memory of each country. The Temple of knowledge and education. The lighthouse in difficult uncertain times. The oasis of warm friendliness. its a fascinating place, mysterious, impressive and exclusive, proud of its history and open to all contemporaries. it reveals the ancient as well as the yesterday, targeting both the small and the monumental. The museum is a microcosm. but it is a microcosm of the extremely rich, and the unanticipated, carefully constructed, to each its own.

This project records the portraits of czech Moravian museum workers both staged or during their normal working operations. These are the people who are behind the public fac- ade - fascinating, headstrong, eccentric, sometimes dogged, but also kind, mercurial, quarrelsome and taciturn. At first glance they are a very diverse group of people, but one important thing they have in common. is that they really love their museums.

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

Jan caga was born in a small industrial town of Hodonin, czechoslovakia in 1976. After graduating from university in Art design he began working as a free- lance magazine/journal photographer. Later he started to work on long-term projects exploring the state of conte- mporary society. Because life is such a rich and still open book and the world is constantly changing. its not just wars, social problems and riots as intentionally presented in the media. Naturalness, pleasures, sorrows and subtle nuances that differentiate one man from another, and of course inter- action between beings. Man creates and transforms the world in his image in attempting to do the best he can.

caga has received numerous awards including several prizes in the czech Press Photo contest, Award of excellence in the Pictures of the Year international competition, Grand Prize Photoespana OjodePez Award of Human Values, PX3 Prix de la photography, Photo Annual Awards, New York Photo Awards etc.

He now lives in Brno, czech republic, with his wife Veronika and two sons, Jachym and Matej.

website: caga.cz

50

51

52

Vsevolod Vlasenko

Odessa: Vanishing City

53

Eagle and Villa

This is a story about silent ruins of magnificent houses and calm and time- less old yards where you dont feel the pressure of modern life, where time stops. Unfortunately those places are like snow in spring, melting from the heat of progress. Odessa was a pearl in russian empire before the revolution. A city where cultures and religions collided in a most peculiar mixture. Hard times came after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. The days after the revolution are well described by ivan Bunin in his book cursed days. even now after many years we still see the signs of the cursed days...

54

Doors

55

Fontain

56

Typical backyard in Odessa

57

Princess

58

House where I. Bunin lived during revolution days

59

Stairs

60

Winter time

61

Old market

62

Somewhere in Odessa

63

Old villa and soviet sculpture

64

Backyard

65

Someone

66

Life in old backyard

67

Stairs and windows

68

Abandoned

69

Old fountain and ghost in the window

70

Masonic house in ruins

71

House

72

Abandoned villa in Arcadia

Vsevoldo Vlasenko was born in Moscow, russia in 1981. He graduated from Moscow University of Art and crafts, named after s.G. stroganov, in 2005 and worked in Letterhead design studio (2004-2012).

Amongst his many awards are Hasselblad Masters 2008 semi-finalist,

international Photography Awards 2008 1st place,category non-professional special micro

international Photography Awards 2008 9 Honorable mentionsin categories non-professional Nature,

People, Architecture, Travel/Tourism.

Photographers forum Magazine 29th Annual spring Photography contest finalist

Photographers forum magazines 31st Annual spring Photography contest finalist

international Photography Awards 2010 Honorable mentions: fine Art: Landscape, People: family

international Photography Awards 2011 Honorable mentions: Nature: Landscapes.

international Photography Awards 2012 Honorable mentions: Architecture: Historic, fine Art: Abstract,

editorial: Political.

international Photography Awards 2013 Honorable mentions: People, Travel/Tourism, sports

2012 Professional Photographer of the Year by professionalphotographer.co.uk | finalist, Medium format

website: vsevolodvlasenko.com

73

74

Chang He Glass Box

75

i was born in the year after the cultural revolution, and although i never exper- ienced all of chinas most turbulent era of subversion, i have experienced chinas fastest-growth period for decades, growing up in small town and observing in a generation the development of a changing china. My life, my beliefs and my ways of thinking were affected as i shot the first group of photos. The Glass Box show pictures the underlying chinese sex workers in their workplace. i use a variety of tools to observe the details of the times in which i live and desire. i hope i can show the pain of this era from the outside.

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

chang he was born in 1977, shanxi Province, china. He is currently living in shanghai. His recent recent exhibitions include 2015 Allergies in china Lianzhou international Photography festival, 2013 Allergies, Bottega Veneta, china shanghai Gallery, 2012 The Value of chinese civilization, Xishuangbanna Photography festival, 2011 5 china, Pingyao international Photography festival, 2012 The Values of civilization, incheon Art festival, 2010 Glass Box, china shanghai Obviously Gallery, 2009 chinese zoo, Liu Hai su Art Museum, shanghai, china, 2006 Glass Box china, Lianzhou international Photography festival

in 2007 he won the china Zoo World Press Photo contest prize category Nature

website: changhephoto.com

113