In this image-one of her most celebrated photographs-she shows a group of young boys fighting on the street. Levitt was fascinated with the behaviour and actions of children on the streets of the city, seeing surreal qualities in their play. Reflecting on Levitt's approach to photography, American writer James Agee noted that 'It would be mistaken to suppose that any of the best photography is come at by intellection it is, like all art, essentially the result of an intuitive process, drawing on all that the artist is rather than on anything he thinks, far less theorises about.' Influenced by her connections to Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans and avant-garde photography and film from Europe and Russia, Levitt developed a style of street photography that captured the uncanny in the everyday. Helen Levitt's photographs are celebrated for their depiction of everyday life in New York in the 1940s and 50s. Collection National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022. Helen Levitt, New York (Boys fighting on a pediment) (c.1940). Helen Levitt, New York (Boys fighting on a pediment) (c. Through his use of archival images, Willis Thomas draws connections between historical moments and contemporary life, leaving little space to remain a dispassionate observer.Ĥ. Willis Thomas' source image, a photograph taken in 1965 by photojournalist James 'Spider' Martin for The Birmingham News, shows civil rights activist Amelia Boynton Robinson being carried by fellow marchers after being teargassed and beaten by state troopers during the protest. In Amelia falling, we bear witness to the shockingly violent incursions into what was intended as a peaceful civil rights protest march in Selma, Alabama. In this uncomfortable yet compelling image, Willis Thomas asks his audience 'not to be passive but to actually think about active participation'. Hank Willis Thomas' photographic prints on mirrors are sometimes difficult to look at, but with the viewer's reflection integrated into the image they are also impossible to ignore. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Collection National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2017. Hank Willis Thomas, Amelia falling (2014). Hank Willis Thomas, Amelia falling (2014) Here in this photograph, this approach is applied to the upward-facing, smiling faces of the masses, suggestive of Sievers' belief in the importance and dignity of work.ģ. Sievers' high vantage point and sharp focus in this image is informed by his rigorous formal training at the Contempora School for Applied Arts in Berlin, where he was exposed to New Objectivity. The human face of industry is captured in Sievers' photograph of the change of shifts at the Melbourne engineering works Kelly & Lewis, where a sea of men and women are shown surging into work. Soon after arriving, he established a successful practice as a photographer and received acclaim for his architectural and industrial photography. Public domain.Īfter leaving Germany in 1938 in the build-up to the Second World War, Wolfgang Sievers settled in Australia, bringing a firmly held belief in the union of art and industry, and the self-declared desire to 'assist this country through my knowledge as thanks for the freedom I can enjoy here.' Collection National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, purchased 1986. Wolfgang Sievers, Shift change at Kelly & Lewis engineering works, Springvale, Melbourne (1949) printed 1986. Wolfgang Sievers, Shift change at Kelly & Lewis engineering works, Springvale, Melbourne (1949) In it Sugimoto captures the magic of photography and cinema, and the nostalgia of the drive-in.Ģ. The resulting photograph contains a concentration of the moving images and projected light of the film into a vivid rectangle of white light. To make a movie, you have to sew single-shot photographic images together. Before the invention of movies was the invention of photography. In a 2016 interview the artist described the images in this series as having 'accumulated the information of many millions of small photographs that a movie consists of. When the film started, Sugimoto would open the lens shutter of his large-format camera, closing it the moment the movie ended. To produce the images, the artist directed his camera at the movie screen, or in the case of Winnetka Drive-In, Paramount (1993), the screen at a suburban drive-in theatre. Light and time are both the means and subject of Hiroshi Sugimoto's 'Drive-In Theaters' series. Collection National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Contemporary Photography, 2009. Hiroshi Sugimoto, Winnetka Drive-In, Paramount (1993).
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