Adelaide, archives, black + white, critical writing, photography, publishing

Adelaide Art Photographers 1970-2000

October 23, 2019

Whilst I was working on the Mallee Routes photobook for the December exhibition at the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery I was also working with Adam Dutkiewicz to complete the Adelaide Art Photographers book –forementioned in blog posts here and here–for Moon Arrow Press. The book is nearly finished. Adam and I visited the printers —Openbook Howden— in Adelaide yesterday to sort out some technical details, obtain a quote, and have a sample print of the cover made to check the blacks and the appearance of the font.

There is still some fine tuning to be done, but we expect the pdf to be sent to the printers towards mid-November, with the book printed by Xmas. It will be launched in early March 2020 at an exhibition of photos in the book at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts in Adelaide. Copies can be purchased earlier through Moon Arrow Press.

This is the revised front cover of Adelaide Art Photographers with its referencing the 35mm Kodak film strips of the 20th century without its flap:

front cover

The book is a companion volume to the previously published Abstract Photography (2017) by Moon Arrow Press in 2017. The Adelaide Art Photographers book is around 180 pages. There are 20 photographers who have 6 pages for their portfolios and 1 page for their profiles. There is also an essay on aesthetics, which is understood in terms of a critical philosophy of art in the cultural context of the anti-aesthetic. The latter understood aesthetics to mean judgements of taste about the formal beauty of art; with the modernist autonomy of art being understood as a (negative) freedom of art from social determination in a capitalist society.

The anti-aesthetic movement in this period was reacting against Greenberg’s modernist reinterpretation of aesthetic autonomy into the task of medium self-definition through purification. This was via the transposition of the concept of aesthetic autonomy into a linguistic register in literary modernism–with T. S. Elliot being the main influence on Greenberg here. This modernism rejects the past, established art forms and their typical ways of being practiced in favour of some new manner of art making; it affirm this new manner as the uniquely appropriate way, of practicing a kind of art expressive of the modern world.

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6 Comments

  • Reply Lars October 25, 2019 at 9:57 am

    anti aesthetic ?!
    great that pull all those questions into the open Gary – up to a dialogue
    what is art ?
    photography ?
    aesthetic ?
    anti ? as in not bad !
    let’s have a chat about it
    Thank you Gary
    what a inside- and meaning full contribution you are giving, to society and us humans

  • Reply Erosion - Poodle Walks December 15, 2019 at 10:53 am

    […] photo below was made on my last poodlewalk with Kayla. It was just after the Adelaide Art Photographers 1970-2000 book had been published and before I had plastic surgery on my leg to remove a basal cell carcinoma. […]

  • Reply Absent history – Our Waters Our Country December 23, 2019 at 11:28 am

    […] on this project has been on hold  whilst I helped to complete the Adelaide Art Photographers 1970-2000  book and finalise the collaborative Mallee Routes exhibition at the Murray Bridge Regional […]

  • Reply Mt Arapiles: photos - Thought Factory January 16, 2020 at 1:33 pm

    […] Lightroom. I have yet to develop and scan the black and white photos that I made on the trip. The Adelaide Art Photographers 1970-2000 book and the Mallee Routes exhibition have taken up all my […]

  • Reply Adelaide Art Photographers 1970-2000 - Thought Factory April 13, 2020 at 11:01 am

    […] I was absent from the book launch and exhibition opening of Adelaide Art Photographers c1970-2000 at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts in Adelaide took place just after Australia put in place the Covid-19 restrictions for social distancing and social gatherings. I was absent from the book launch and exhibition opening as I was in New Zealand at the time trying to return to Australia before New Zealand closed its borders. Then I was in the 14 day mandatory quarantine. So I haven’t seen the exhibition. The background to the project is here. […]

  • Reply Light paths - Thought Factory October 1, 2020 at 10:56 am

    […] Adelaide Art Photographers 1970-2000 […]

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