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1.The lockdown newsletter
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This first Thoughtfactory newsletter in June 2020 comes after the commonwealth government has eased the national Covd-19 lockdown restrictions, and the emergence of a second wave in Melbourne due to various lapses in the hotel quarantine procedures for returning overseas travellers.
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The newsletter is an experimental response to both the Covid-19 lockdown, the growth of Facebook and Instagram killing off the public presence of photography blogs, and Facebook's Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It is an experimental attempt to create some kind of photographic network by linking and sharing my different photographic activities including my postings on Flickr.
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Do subscribe to the newsletter if you think this newsletter is of interest, or recommend it to friends and acquaintances, if you consider the newsletter to be worthy of your support. Your support in helping to find ways to step around, and undercut, Facebook's stranglehold on online photography would be appreciated and welcomed.
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Exhibitions
One worthwhile development that had emerged in response to the Covid-19 lockdown was the Friends of Photography Group's (FOPG) online exhibition of film photographs. These were made by the group's members during the lockdown. The exhibition is entitled Isolation and the work in it is very diverse. FOPG plan to host a second online exhibition of film photography in mid-August.
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The image below is a scoping digital version of the film one I made with a 5x4 Linhof Technika IV camera for FOPG's Isolation exhibition. It is of bushland on the Heysen Trail in Waitpinga (my local area) that I was photographing due to the lockdown placing travelling to work on the Mallee Routes project on hold. I hope to pick up the Mallee Routes project in mid-August. The pink gum photo was made whilst I was on an early poodlewalk.
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A noteworthy consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic is the way that social distancing limitations, which look to be in place until a vaccine is created, is the shift to online exhibitions. This shift to online is significant, since exhibitions in physical galleries rely on local foot traffic, and so they are usually only be seen those living in, or visiting the same city as the art gallery. In contrast, online exhibitions provide opportunities for photographers to show a body of work to audiences living outside the photographer's local area.
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These considerations have led me to set up an online gallery on the Thoughtfactory website to show contemporary photography. It is entitled Encounters Gallery and the first online exhibition is The Covid-19 exhibition. This features some of my medium format film work, which was done during the Covid-19 lockdown in April and May. This body of work supplements, and gives a context to, my pink gum image in FOPG's Isolation exhibition.
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The image below of coastal rocks between Petrel Cove and Kings Beach on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula is from The Covid-19 exhibition:
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Before I worked on the gallery and the exhibition I wrote a post on The Adelaide Art Photographers book launch and exhibition the Royal South Australian Society of Arts (RSASA). Though this had been cut short by the national Covid-19 lockdown the RSASA gallery has put the exhibition online . The book which remains largely unsold due to the Covid-19's restrictions with respect to social distancing and social gatherings
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I have a portfolio in the book and I wrote an essay on aesthetics and photography. This is the front cover of the book.
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Adelaide Art Photographers MI
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Photobooks
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I have been slowly working on a new limited edition book--The Bowden Archives and Other Marginalia. I'm currently pulling material together using a blog format. The book is based on my archival photos that link up with my portfolio in Adelaide Art Photographers book. The Bowden Archives is a mixture of photos and text, and it is divided into three sections: Snapshots, Bowden, Roadtrips.
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The process has been messy and long with a number of false pathways and leads. The next stage is to organise and structure the material in the blog into a book draft.
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From the blogs
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I publish a number of photographic blogs to help me filter my work into low key projects. Some of these go nowhere, whilst others slowly develop a momentum of their own. A project sometimes emerges from the odd one. The pictures below are a selection of recent images from some of the blogs:
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Reading
The Corner Shop
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Another response to the Covid-19 pandemic is setting up an online shop to sell my photobooks and the prints of a selection of photos from my various projects. The corner shop, which is currently under construction, should be up and running sometime in August.
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