FotoFreo e-Newsletter
Issue 7: 2 April 2008
Dear Subscriber
A reminder that the official opening of FotoFreo 2008 will be this coming Friday night at the Fremantle Arts Centre commencing at 6:30pm and everyone is welcome to attend. Of course we always appreciate being advised of people’s intentions to come along but everyone is most welcome. Guests will be welcomed by our Mayor, Peter Tagliaferri, and the festival opened by Robert Pledge.
We have now created an information page with a link from the FotoFreo home page to keep you posted about any new information relating to the festival or any last minute changes to the programme. The page is entitled Latest News & Programme Updates. Check it out.
We are also pleased to advise, even at this late stage, that another substantial sponsor, the Community Newspaper Group, has come on board with FotoFreo for the 2008 festival. We are particularly pleased to have Community News join with FotoFreo as they were one of the original sponsors in the first festival, FotoFreo 2002.
Our first international guests, Denis Darzacq and Christophe Bourguedieu, both from France, have arrived and there have been 4 exhibition openings and two workshops already!
Since FotoFreo 2004, our festival has established a strong link with the French photographic community through the generous support of the French Government and a number of agencies including Alliance Française and CultureFrance. This year we have two quite remarkable visiting French photographers, Denis Darzacq and Christophe Bourguedieu, exhibiting as core events. Darzacq is showing at the Perth Centre for Photography and Bourguedieu at the Fremantle Arts Centre.
Bourguedieu is no stranger to Perth. He had a major show at the Maritime Museum on Victoria Quay in the FotoFreo 2004 festival. This resulted in many return visits to Perth over the next few years and the development of a body of work entitled, The Passengers, and it is this work that will be on show at the FAC and as noted in our last newsletter. However, there is also another nice connection. During the 2004 festival, well known Western Australian writer Joan London fell in love with one of the images from Christophe’s show. Subsequently, Joan wrote a novel entitled, The Good Parents, and as it turns out the book, published by Random House, will be released this week. With Christophe’s agreement, the cover of Joan's book will utilise his image.
Editor
Untitled image by Denis Darzacq
Denis Darzacq
According to Denis Darzacq, “The place of the individual in society has been a driving theme in my photographic work of the last few years. I explore this through a staged approach but also through documentary images.
“In my two latest series exhibited at the FotoFreo festival, Hyper and Casqués, my questioning is articulated on a visual opposition. The opposition between body and decor as it is shown in Hyper, or between body and ornament in Casqués. All my photographs are the result of a shared collaboration with the models and the images are not digitally manipulated in any way.
“For Hyper I asked young dancers and sportsmen to jump for the camera, inspiring themselves from the aggressive setting of the hypermarket as well as the body language found in mannerist paintings, unreal and exaggerated, futile. A form of resistance against an increasingly rampant consumer society.
“Casqués was shot in a small provincial French town. Living on the fringes of our globalised modern world, the youth of this town have nevertheless developed the urge to be part of the bigger picture. They have invented a very unique helmet culture, oscillating between protection and ornament, sheltering their shyness behind an aggressive and bright design – a culture in equilibrium between their reality and their desires.”
Read more about Denis Darzacq at the Perth Centre for Photography
The official opening of this exhibition at the Perth Centre for Photography will be this coming Saturday the 5th of April at 1pm
Untitled image from Un dimanche en famille
by Christophe Canato
That French Connection - Again
Still with the French Connection, Perth based French photographers Christophe Canato and Florence Allain will be exhibiting at the Alliance Française headquarters in Nedlands during FotoFreo 2008. Their exhibitions, entitled Colimaçon by Florence Allain and Un dimanche en famille (a family Sunday)
by Christophe Canato, reveal their sense of France as a response to their expatriation.
Alliance Française is located 75 Broadway, Nedlands. The exhibition runs from April 4 - May 4
Launch: Sat 12th April, 5 pm
Open: Mon-Fri: 9am- 7:30 pm, Sat: 8:30am-1 pm.
Special Tours and Seminars - The State Library of Western Australia
The State Library has agreed to run a number of special tours during FotoFreo 2008. These tours will provide an insight into the work done by the Library in regard to historical records and the development of its major photographic archive.
The Historical Records Rescue Consortium (HRRC) tours
This 45 minute behind-the-scenes walking tour will show you some of the fascinating work undertaken at the State Library for the Historical Records Rescue Consortium, from sorting and management through physical conservation and digitizing.
Digital Asset Management (DAM) Seminars
Digital Asset Management is a blanket term used to refer to systems, strategies and tasks for acquiring, renaming, annotating, rating, grouping, optimizing, backing up, exporting, cataloguing, archiving, storage and retrieval of digital assets e.g. digital photographs, animations, videos, music and other digital media. This seminar acts as an introduction to concepts, challenges, computer software and/or hardware systems required for effective implementation of a DAM system.
End Note
For the last month or so we have been bragging about our Perth weather and in fact it has been quite beautiful. However, two days ago we had a blast from the south pole reminding us how changeable the weather can be these days. So, if you are coming from interstate or overseas do pack something warm (just in case)!
Some people might have noticed that the FotoFreo website was ‘down’ last week for about 24 hours. Scary stuff - at the time being only 10 days out from the festival’s official opening on Friday the 4th of April. It is a reminder of how important the website is for an event such as FotoFreo and the dissemination of information in a timely and cost effective way.
To stay in touch, subscribe to the FotoFreo e-mail newsletter and we will keep you up to date with everything that is going on.
080402
