Silk & Memento

Venetian Graffiti

Nisha — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 05:31:34 +0000

Venice produces many surprises.

Barcelona! Catalonian Dreams

Nisha — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:09:21 +0000

Colombo: St Thomas and Royal College

Nisha — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:35:55 +0000

The old schools in Colombo in Sri Lanka are completely fascinating. The architecture, the traditions, the uniforms and the influence they have beyond their sandstone walls are something else. They’re just so historic and colonial- and I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way! During my recent visit to Colombo I visited some of the schools that my parents and my parents’ friends always talk about, including St Thomas in Mount Lavinia, Ladies College and Royal College . Many of the schools that I visited originated in the 19th century and seemed to be copied on Oxford or Cambridge or some other old British college.

I got some good photos in St Thomas as we managed to talk our way inside the school gates but we were not so lucky at the Royal College. Enjoy the photos!

St Thomas in Mount Lavinia

Royal College

L’Amoureuse

Nisha — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:23:43 +0000

Some photos from my trip to France:

Clock at the Musee D’Orsay

Fauchon Chocolatier

Ensor Exhibition at the Musee D’Orsay

Shakespeare & Co Book Store

Arc De Triomphe

Moulin Rouge

Kandyan Dancing

Nisha — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:10:10 +0000

Ok, I have been having way too much fun here and neglecting my blog but thought I would share some pictures of Kandyan dancing and drumming that I took in Kalutara.

Landmark Online Symposium: Seeking Justice – Social Activism through Journalism & Documentary Practice

Nisha — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:06:33 +0000

STARTING TODAY!

Join here

“The Centre for Documentary Practice invites you to logon and join the world’s first online journalism and documentary conference. Register now to be a part of this landmark event where the world of journalism will be connected for one day over three sessions and across all time zones.

Throughout the day you will be able to log on and be inspired by some of the world’s best journalists.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear Paul Fusco, Ed Kashi, Jodi Bieber, Marcus Bleasdale, Shahidul Alam, Gary Knight, Adam Ferguson, Michael Coyne, Masaru Goto, Jack Picone, Megan Lewis, Robin Hammond and others share their stories and experiences, answer your questions and discuss journalism and documentary as social activism”.

Very cool. Get onto it!

Architectural Wonderlands

Nisha — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:17:18 +0000

We drove 2 hours to Ballarat in country Victoria for the Ballarat Foto Biennale. While there were some decent photography exhibitions, it was the buildings in which the photos were being exhibited themselves which were impressive.

Mining exchange

Railway crossing

Gallery Toot Toot (actual name!) at the railway station

Lunch at Daylesford- poor fella wants to have a bite with his hooman.

To see life

Nisha — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:41:25 +0000

picture source unknown

Melbourne Writers Festival 2009

Nisha — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:15:09 +0000

The Melbourne Writers Festival 2009 is on at the moment. There are all these cute stalls in the city related to the festival.

Volunteers at the festival, happy to be snapped, red berets compulsory

Necklace made from books

typewriters!

The other Wino

Nisha — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:05:04 +0000

I asked one of the guys at work today at the gallery whom he would say is the most influential contemporary photographer. After umming and aahing for a little while he listed a number of photographers and then finally settled on the American Garry Winogrand (b.1924-d.1984). Looking through a beautiful coffee-table book on Winogrand’s work, it is easy to see why he is virtually worshipped by street-shooters everywhere- his influence on street photography is unmistakeable (although Winogrand himself thought the term ‘street photographer’ stupid and preferred ‘still photographer’).

Winogrand certainly had personality and grunt. Frank Van Riper of the Washington Post describes him as a ‘street-smart Jewish kid from the Bronx, who considered himself whole only when he held a Leica to his eye, hit the road, savouring and reflecting life through his lens’. He has also been called an ‘an undisciplined mixture of energy, ego, curiosity, ignorance, and street-smart naiveté’. I’m pretty sure we would have gotten along. Friends say he was fearless in the way he approached strangers to take their photograph, although with disarming charm. A good tip to remember, no?

During his lifetime, Winogrand obsessively took photos and had hundreds and thousands of undeveloped rolls of films at the time of his death- basically millions of photos he never even saw himself. From the prints that are available, we can see Winogrand’s appreciation of everyday life, beautiful women, animals, politics and the complex dynamics between these things. There is so much irony and absurdity in his photos, mostly taken with a wide-angle lens, I wonder what others photos are in the undeveloped rolls of film.

Some of Winogrand’s photos from the 1960’s to 1980s, mostly from the hot streets of New York:

New York, 1961.

Hot. Hot. Hot. These three would not be out of place in Garance Dore or The Sartorialist.

Central Park Zoo, New York City, 1967

Series from the Bronx Zoo

Apollo 11 Moon Shot, Cape Kennedy, Florida, 1969

Los Angeles, 1964

Untitled c.1954

Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton c. 1954-55

New York, 1969 or earlier

Untitled. 1950s

World’s Fair, New York City, 1964

“No one moment is most important. Any moment can be something”

“Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts”.

~ Garry Winogrand