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Archived FotoFreo 2006 webpage. See also the FotoFreo 2008 website.
PUBLIC LECTURES
FotoFreo 2006 Festival Event
Current Directions in Contemporary
Australian Photography
Encountering India through Australian Eyes
Contemporary Australian Photography 1980 to the Present
Current Directions in Contemporary Australian
Photography
Monday 27th March
By Robert McFarlane
This will be the Keynote Address for the festival.
 In his keynote address, supported by projected images, noted Australian
photographer and critic Robert McFarlane will examine two dynamic (and conflicting)
streams in Australian photography today.
He will outline and discuss the direction of many contemporary Australian photographers
who have shown their passionate commitment to applying a poetic approach to the narrative
documentary tradition (Narelle Autio, Trent Parke, Tamara Dean, David Dare Parker and Dean
Sewell). McFarlane will contrast this with the more manufactured, situational tableaux
approach, concerned with character creation, role playing and photographic installation.
This has been an arena in which women artists (such as Anne Ferran, Tracey Moffatt,
Polixeni Papapetrou and Anne Zahalka) have traditionally flourished.
In his more than 40 year career in photography, Robert McFarlane has concerned himself
primarily with social issues, with a long, but intermittent involvement with the
Aboriginal community and the disabled. McFarlane has also extensively documented the world
of performance in Australian Film and Theatre since 1980.
McFarlane's approach has consistently used the grammar of photojournalism to get as close
as possible to his subject - intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and, where
necessary, physically. His objective is to achieve an intimate level of understanding of
the images he creates. W. Eugene Smith once stated, in a 1973 NY interview with McFarlane,
that "he doubted any objective truth in his pictures," adding a phrase with
which McFarlane agrees, that "photographs (can) provide a paper-thin evidence of a
fragment of the truth."
Venue and time: Theatrette, Western Australian Maritime Museum,
Victoria Quay and after the opening of the exhibitions. 8pm FREE
Encountering India through Australian Eyes
Tuesday 28th March
by Anne O’Hehir
The new acquisition policy of the National Gallery is one that emphasises the
importance of bringing work into the collection from Asia. Anne O’Hehir, Assistant
Curator of Photography, visited India recently where she was fortunate to meet a number of
unique and fascinating photographers. These included Homai Vyarawalla, now aged 93 and the
first (and only) woman photojournalist in India who worked from the 1920s to 1970
documenting a turbulent era. She also met Dashrath Patel, a photographer who showed
Cartier-Bresson around India and spent a year with him photographing Japan. Meeting these
photographers and others made her realise that a passion and love for the medium allows
for genuine exchange. In this presentation, and as a result of these encounters, Anne will
outline and discuss the issues and sometimes difficult questions around acquiring work
from a country with such a complicated and rich history of intersections with the west.
Anne O’Hehir is Assistant Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of
Australia. She has studied art history, specialising in 12th century Italian
architecture, travelled in Europe, came back and hosted a radio program on the arts and
has had her own photographs included in a number of exhibitions. She has written articles
on photography and curated exhibitions at the NGA, most recently a survey show around WH
Fox Talbot’s Pencil of Nature. She has just been on a trip to India where she
researched photography with the aim of building the collection in that area, as well as
working on a project with photographer Robyn Beeche in Vrindavan.
Venue: Kulcha club at 2pm. FREE
Contemporary Australian Photography 1980
to the Present
Tuesday 28th March
By Professor Anne Marsh
Anne is currently writing a book on Contemporary Australian Photography that will be
accompanied by a website and in this presentation she will discuss the research being
undertaken to achieve this goal. The period Anne is researching represents the key decades
of postmodernism and its subsequent demise at the turn of the century. It is a period that
is rich in terms of theoretical and conceptual analysis, and a period in which art
photography comes to prominence in major exhibitions both nationally and internationally.
Dr. Anne Marsh is Associate Professor in Theory of Art & Design in the Faculty of
Art & Design at Monash University. Her research areas include: photography,
performance art, feminism, postmodernism and psychoanalysis. She is author of Body and
Self: Performance Art in Australian, 1969-1992 (Oxford University Press, 1993), The
Darkroom: Photography and the Theatre of Desire (Macmillan, 2003) and numerous
articles and exhibition catalogue essays on contemporary Australian art and photography.
Her essays have been translated into French, German and Spanish.
Venue: Kulcha club at 4pm. FREE
051213
Archived FotoFreo 2006 webpage. See also the FotoFreo 2008 website.
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