View from the Ranges

Mr. Foster is the Director of the Australian Center for Photography, and apart from making a living, I believe he is attempting to make a point, and that is HIS understanding of photography is the exemplorary one, and that his legacy to us, and indeed his whole reputation is to be found in the shaping and nurturing of Australian photography.
I am here at the moment to contest this and explain how OFF the mark he remains.
Consider my argument to him (last Tuesday) that both Magnum and the Salgado shows at the AGNSW were incredibly popular. Foster’s rejoiner…? Pornography is the most popular thing on the internet!!?????
How flacid is the comparrison…a large number of the public vote with their feet to visit the aforementioned exhibitions, compared to inumerable closeted voyeurs addicted to images of sex. Does Mr. Foster hate any photography with such universal and popular appeal?..Probably.
Another point…as Mr. Foster was clutching his latest Fotofile. Only the writers get paid!! One can only speculate that perhaps the whole tenet of Fotofile specifically, and the ACP in general, is an institution of texts and words, where quasi intellectuals and well paid academics get to write verbose and alienating “essays” on works that NEED EXPLAINING, due to their inheritant lack of visual communication. How sad and unfortunate that Herr Director continues to define photography in terms of the intellect and “artspeak”, whose value, both financially and morally, is MORE than the mostly nauseasating images that are printed on Fotofile’s quality paper.Get yer hand off it Alisdair.

TO COME!!! An intimate report on that doyen of taste, the laird of the lens, Mr. Alisdair Foster, DIRECTOR? of the Scotish Centre for Photography (situated behind a post modernist eatery in Oxford St.Paddington AUSTRALIA)

Congrats to my old friend and older mentor Greg Weight for his winning the inaugral Citigroup/AGNSW Portrait prize, which he received with much dignity and grace last Tuesday nite at the Art Gallery. There celebrating was Jim Conway the subject of Greg’s portrait, and many friends from the Sydney photography community.The week before saw the opening of the POL magazine exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery as well as Lewis Morely’s wonderfull work.It’s been a heady few weeks for photography.

And what DID my “dealer representive” say?? In essence a WARNING..SHUT UP! and BACK OFF! that the Senior Curator had enough on her plate without the lack of proper etiquette demonstrated by yours truely.UNBELIEVABLE but true…and this goes for a warning for all of you out there.DO NOT APPROACH THE SENIOR CURATOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY WITH AN IDEA OF NATIONAL EMOTIONAL IMPORTANCE,or try and make a living for oneself. So here I am “gagged” for my lack of etiquette and wondering if we still live in a democracy? The sample photo was returned damaged, and I am to remain SILENCED? Think again MIZ BEAN.(Check out The Saint on my site “Lombok, Bali and Beyond”)

AND THE REPLY…( 2ND LETTER
Dear Mr. Lewis,
Thank you for sending me a “sample” print of work made in Bali in the 1980s
Our Senior Curator of Photography, Gael Newton,has been in touch directly with your dealer representative Stills Gallery in Sydney, and I know that they will be in touch with you.
With kind regards.
Yours Sincerely,
Brian Kennedy

A TALE OF TWO LETTERS..(1st to Brian Kennedy-DirectorNational Gallery of Australia
1)Dear Mr.Kennedy,
Please find enclosed “sample” print of work made in Bali in the 80’s.`I was thinking that a large print of this work (80×100cm) would be apt for the gallery right now,as a sort of “observence”, or homage to that island, its people and culture,and to those who died there recently. I don’t believe this photograph needs any text or explanation. The title is “The Saint-Sayan-Bali”
I know that the post modern and conceptual photographers are almost exclusively collected now, however a slice of real time in these troubled times, should be considered by us all to have much relevence, power and meaning.
Please let me know of your feeling on the gallery purchasing and displaying this image .I am (somewhere) in the collection already and have been exhibiting since 1974.
Yours Sincerely,
Jon Lewis