INTERNATIONAL: We are social creatures, but it is a characteristic with many aspects. Talking Pictures asked twelve photographic artists from around the world to consider the nature of human connection. The images they selected are as nuanced as they are diverse.
Community
AUSTRALIA: An artist painting with light to create richly coloured and emotionally intensified images of the natural and human worlds.
USA: Kirk Crippens explores the tension between the American Dream of home and increasing precarity – gentrification, downsizing and foreclosure – but also the haven of the unorthodox.
IRAN / AUSTRALIA: Poetically perceptive imagery that engages the layers of displacement, difference and marginality that define what it means to be ‘other’.
UNITED KINGDOM: A photographer drawn to older members of the community, those with a life lived – eventful, however ordinary. The Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers born to decades of deprivation and opportunity.
AUSTRALIA: a remarkable synthesis of timeless Aboriginal wisdom and radically innovative printmaking that creates pictures of intense poetic beauty and philosophical depth.
AUSTRALIA: Alasdair Foster, a curator, researcher, and writer who draws on an array of experiences from around the world, offers his perspective on photography – and where it’s going next. Interview by Alexander Strecker.
ITALY: Elena Givone uses photography and storytelling to help young refugees imagine a better future – images to inspire hope in the child and compassion in the viewer.
USA: Meryl Meisler’s photographs capture New York City in the transformative decades of the late twentieth century, offering a rare glimpse into her extended Jewish family, the vibrant Brooklyn disco scene before gentrification, and the evolving LGBTQ+ community in the post-Stonewall era.
CHINA: A fusion of theatre and photography that, with an eccentric magic, weaves together the light and dark of the human condition.
ICELAND: Picturing the resilient lives and enduring landscapes of a small farming community in the East of Iceland caught between harsh reality and timeless myth.
VENEZUELA: Images evoking the powerful mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the southern Americas that emphasise the interdependence of humankind and Nature.
COLOMBIA: In addressing the trauma resulting from the ongoing multilateral armed conflict in her country, Erika Diettes focuses not on violence but on bearing witness to the grief of survivors.
ITALY: Spending extended periods with poor and itinerant families, Ciro Battiloro discovers, beneath the domestic discomfort and social neglect, a tenacious humanity and a love that turns “despair into delicate sweetness”.
MEXICO: Dulce Pinzón creates latter-day visual fables that address real social issues: racial prejudice, low-paid workers, environmental damage.
AUSTRALIA: Documenting the dysfunctional, the dispossessed, and the dogged hope that lingers amid the ashes of failure.
CANADA: A fifteen-year project that may well be the most extensive photographic documentation of Hutterite culture ever produced.
USA: Spanning six decades, Mariette Pathy Allen’s sensitive portraits have chronicled the transgender and non-binary community.
UNITED KINGDOM: Portraits exploring the transition from child to adult as it is expressed through modes of dress, social behaviour and body image.
INTERNATIONAL: Eleven artists and one archivist each select a photograph that speaks to them about the significance of family in its many ways of being and being understood.
BULGARIA: In-depth documentary projects exploring the lives of people who live outside of the modern urban sphere and the connection between fathers and sons.
BANGLADESH: A photographer with a strong social conscience and a deep concern for the welfare of the marginalised members of her society.
CONGO: Eccentric, impromptu performances set in the warlord-controlled villages of the Democratic Republic of Congo that challenge the established conventions of humanitarian representation.
SOUTH AFRICA: a remarkable synthesis of structure, texture, and authenticity exploring the triangular relationship between history, memory, and community storytelling.
INTERNATIONAL: Eleven artists reflect on what they learned during the pandemic, picking just one thing they would reimagine for the better in the future.
POLAND: Atmospheric images of a social, political, and economic landscape that has changed radically over the past sixty years.
BANGLADESH: A humanitarian photographer who not only documents injustice and inequity in the world, but also explores his own imperfection with poignant honesty.
UNITED KINGDOM: an insider’s sensitive depiction of a group of south London fighters who find self-discipline, confidence, and connectedness through martial arts.
USA: One woman’s experience of the stifling control of a patriarchal religious fundamentalism and the processes of artmaking that helped her escape.
BRAZIL: Turning a compassionate eye on rural and remote medicine to capture the kindness, dedication, and empathy of healthcare workers as they transcend the most challenging circumstances.
UNITED KINGDOM: Going beyond the clichés and prejudices about homelessness by facilitating each participant to create their own self-portrait.
USA: Past and present converse in an archive of American life shot from a refreshingly tangential perspective.
CHINA: Documentary images highlighting communities that, while they may seem outside of the mainstream in China, are in fact simply some of its constituents.
MEXICO: The fluidity of domestic intimacy explored through the lens of childhood imagination and transformational community ritual.
INTERNATIONAL: Nine photographic artists from across five continents reflect on what motivates them to create photographs.
AUSTRALIA: A contemporary story-teller who combines photography and words to synthesis rich and complex narratives of family, community and sexuality.
ROMANIA: a community of homeless people come together to find companionship, shelter and a degree of mutual sustainability in a network of tunnels under the city of Bucharest.
RUSSIA: Gently observed portraits of the people of Bryansk that touch on the mystery of everyday life.
SOUTH AFRICA: Capturing the spirit of a new creative generation, fighting for gender equality and exposing the continuing plight of the working poor.
INTERNATIONAL: Impressions of Christmas and the New Year through the kaleidoscopic lens of artists from Asia, the Americas, Europe and Oceania.
NEW ZEALAND: Ilan Wittenberg’s extensive catalogue of Auckland men captures the uniqueness and imperfection that lays bare the inhumanity of commercially idealised masculinity.
CHINA: Reflections on the meanings and value of family photo archives in traditional homes in Shanxi Province.
USA: Few recent cultural initiatives have had more impact in the world of photography than Houston FotoFest, with its multi-layered approach to the medium as a means to an end and not just an end in itself.
BANGLADESH: Asia’s longest-running photo festival, founded on a powerful vision of social justice and driven by a tenacious dynamism, it forms one arm of a tripartite structure including a news picture agency and a media school.
RUSSIA: A festival that engages the viewer in a rich visual dialogue made vibrant by its openhearted warmth, aesthetic vigour, and intelligent enthusiasm for the medium.
BRAZIL: a festival pioneering the use of screen-based technologies to reach out from the metropolitan art institutions to connect with communities in the poorest districts of the urban margins: to engage, to educate and to empower.
CAMBODIA: With a focus on discovery, education and sharing, this festival and workshop program provides a generous and egalitarian environment in which to learn new skills, exchange ideas and establish new friendships.
NEW ZEALAND: Located on the rim of the Pacific, this is a festival of and by the people: stimulating creativity, encouraging participation, and celebrating the many and diverse expressions of human imagination.
AUSTRALIA: In a world that all too often seeks to segregate professionals from amateurs, celebrities from ordinary people, Head On provides an alternative based on mutual respect and a passion for photographic creativity.
THAILAND: With a focus on Asian documentary practice, this festival maintained its independence by building not only the event but also a new photography centre through the work and solidarity of photographers themselves.
ARGENTINA: One of the world’s longest running photographic festivals, Festival de la Luz it is both a celebration of photography as a means of enlightenment and an egalitarian meeting of diverse people and cultures.
UNITED KINGDOM: A festival that celebrates its sense of place and community while engaging the leading edge of technological possibility and international innovation.