Today’s sharpshooters still stand out in a crowd

Now that everyone is a photographer, serious photographers are challenged. Anyone wanting to make a name for themselves now operates in an environment where just about everything has been shot (and is published on the web), and everyone has a camera which offers functions previously available only to shooters with expensive, specialised equipment.

Serious photography used to be walled behind an arcane welter of darkroom expertise in which rolls of negatives, chemicals, paper types and exposure techniques separated the sheep from the goats.

These days everyone simply uploads to a computer, and post-processing in Photoshop is taught at school. Even the hardcore film-fanatic photographers now truck around with at least two digital cameras on their person.

So what is left for the serious still photographer?

Well, today’s luminaries combine sheer talent in framing a subject, mastery of lenses and camera technique, but most importantly an original idea.

And even in an age that smothers us with images, their work reveals gob-smacking images that tell seminal stories of people, nature or the built environment.

You can be gobsmacked right now by the Head On Photo Festival, headlined by the Portrait Prize exhibition on show at the Australian Centre for Photography until 5 June (where the writer has an image in the rolling slide show of shortlisted works).

Or if you like your photography alive on the big screen with sound, music and short talks by some of our leading shutterbugs, the eighth Cross Projections will run over three days at the Architects’ Institute cinema in Tusculum House, Potts Point.

The event presents today’s documentary photography, a field which in a sense carries on the original unique function that separates photography from traditional art – its ability to visually document a moment in history, each shot telling a thousand words about some aspect of our ever-changing world.

Cross Projections was founded by Kings Cross local Ros Sharpe (who herself teaches documentary photography) and showcases work which is not necessarily of a kind you will see hung in galleries or purchased to decorate your lounge room.

“In 2001 I thought to put on a slideshow called F99, inspired by slide nights run by photographer friends in their backyards and living rooms, and the camaraderie of attending early Reportage screenings,” she says.

The event became part of the Kings Cross Arts Festival for some years but survived on its own merits after the City de-funded the festival for unknown reasons.

Cross Projections 2010 has morphed into a multi-media display of sound, text, still and moving imagery, with its footing firmly embedded in social and historical documentary photography. This year’s program certainly offers a feast of original ideas.

Darlinghurst resident Cassandra French will be showing You’ll be a Woman Soon,
capturing the shared and solitary moments of young girls preparing for their end-of-year ballet concert.

And the ticket price will be worth it to see Ros Sharpe’s work Meet the Masons.

In 1955 there were 130,000 Freemasons in NSW and ACT, today there are 14,000. In response to public perceptions of the brotherhood, the United Grand Lodge has adopted a more open policy, anchored by symbolism and rituals. Ms Sharpe has captured this arcane world.

Maya Newell’s On One Night explores an ongoing theme in photography, the question of self-image and how people present when a camera is pointed at them.

On one night, on one roll of film, at a party in London, in a makeshift bedroom studio, Ms Newell asked 10 guests to take two pictures of themselves. She asked: “How do you think other people perceive you?”

The flip side of this genre captures people who are absorbed by something else and perhaps unaware of the camera.

In this vein, Beryl Feron’s Aquarium captures visitors observing magical underwater scenes.

Other artists among the 17 on show include Sandy Edwards, whose ouvre has been less visible lately than her prolific curatorial work, Fiona Morris, Torsten and Lou Lou Whelan (Google them!).

More info, images and bookings are at crossprojections.com.au. The event runs on June 3, 4 and 5, 6.30pm for 7. There is a matinee on Saturday 5 June at 3pm sharp. The theatre is at 3 Manning Street, Potts Point, tickets $20/$15. Bookings are advised.

by Michael Gormly