Hello Photographers, Artists and Writers
I would like to invite you to submit photographs for Hijacked 2. New Australian and German Photography. The submission period for Hijacked Volume 2 - Australia and Germany has already commenced in a light manner. The contribution period officially opens on January 1st, 2009. and will continue until June 2009. The deadline for foto submissions is scheduled for June 1st 2009. This invitation is expressed to you and to anyone you think this might appeal to... (recommendations - people with amazing photographs???) Submit and send up to 20 fotos. (jpegs is fine for now) email info@bigcitypress.com.au
Please send me any queries, questions, feedback. Submission, does not guarantee that you will be published. There is an editing process. So if you are selected, we will be requesting high resolution files later in 2009. This will be a great photography book project. Book launches and exhibitions are scheduled for 2010 in Australia and Germany. kind regards and thanks for your time and patience. Mark McPherson
Lets get physical...Hijacked Volume 1 - Australia and America is now distributed in the mighty USA by San Francisco's legendary Last Gasp:
Last Gasp
777 Florida Street
San Francisco CA 94110
p:415-824-6636
f:415-824-1836
www.lastgasp.com/blog/
Last Gasp's Upcoming Shows
Frankfurt Book Fair, Oct 15-19, Hall 4.1, Stand Q135
Alternative Press Expo (APE), Nov 1 & 2
Michel Gondry loved the book sooo much, that he convinced some of New Yorks finest book stores - Dashwood Books, ICP - International Center of Photography and Reed Space to all stock the book. Love you New York!
Fotos by: Ed Zipco.
Our friends at Flakphoto, also made some murmurs and tremors in the blog world. Check out the chit chat, blah blah, blog , blog at some of the finest locations:
Hijacked via Cigarettes and Purity
Untitled via From This Moment
Flak Photo features selected contemporary photography from USA and Australia via Exposure Compensation
Hijacked, Volume One: Australia and America via The Exposure Project
Flak Photo & Hijacked, Volume One via Sonja ThomsenHijacked by Greta Anderson and Flak Photo via Shoot! the Blog
Hijacked @ Flak Photo via Have You Seen My Dynamite
Its all good...
Not sure if you're familiar with Flak Photo or if you've heard of Flak Photo, but I've got some cool news. I'm pleased to announce that 25 Hijacked Photographers work has been selected to run on flakphoto.com, a daily photography blogzine featuring distinctive work from an international community of contributors. Flak Photo promotes interesting visual approaches to seeing the world and celebrates the art of exhibiting quality photography online.
Flak Photo is teaming up with Big City Press and each of you to feature a series of images from Hijacked, Volume One: Australia and America. In support of the project, Flak Photo be publishing a selection of 25 photographs weekdays from September 1 – October 3, 2008.
Flak Photo / Features showcases images from "group show" photography projects - the section highlights work from new series, book projects and gallery exhibitions. In recent months, Flak Photo has published work from Jen Bekman Gallery's A New American Portrait, the Minnesota Center for Photography's PhotoBravo, the Magenta Foundation's Flash Forward / Emerging Photographer's 2007, 3030 Press' New Photography in China, Humble Arts Foundation's 31 Under 31: Young Women in Art Photography, Hamburger Eyes Photo Magazine's Inside Burgerworld, the Photographic Resource Center's EXPOSURE: The PRC Annual Juried Exhibition and most recently, Center's Review Santa Fe 2008.
Flak Photo is dedicated to exhibiting quality photography online as well as introducing its contributors' work to an international audience. The blog is read by many photographers, galleries, publishers and photo editors, so it's a great way to view work and engage with the online photography community, most of whom are savvy, web-oriented creatives.
Fotos by Mark McPherson © 2008.
The Hijacked Photography book is now available from AbeBooks. Get your signed copy today.
Hijacked, FotoFreo 2008
Artsource (Old Customs House) Fremantle
April 5 – May 4
Review by Thelma John for Artlink
FotoFreo 2008 was another inspiring photo immersion, spreading way beyond the Fremantle boundary this year. Amongst the 30 odd exhibitions, major shows by big shots Roger Ballen (South Africa) and Edward Burtynsky (Canada) sat harmoniously alongside wonderful surprises like Fig (by young London artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin) and San Xia (by Chen Yong, staged images of those made homeless by, but required to work upon, China’s Three Gorges Dam project). Of the Australian content, a number of solo shows attracted enthusiastic responses (especially Brook Andrew, Marian Drew and Stephen Dupont) and Megan Lewis’ Conversations With The Mob oozed authenticity. However it was a group show of Australian and American talent that caught my eye amongst the abundance of evocative imagery that bombarded us, over the month of May.
Hijacked is an exhibition and a book, put together by local photographer/curator/publisher Mark McPherson and his mentor Max Pam, (who is an inspiration for the realisation of this international festival of photography that graces the village Fremantle biennially). The venue for Hijacked was the cramped and labyrinth-like hallways and office walls of Artsource, the representative body for visual artists in WA and the site of our largest clutch of artist studios. Not a great venue (despite the great work that goes on in this building), yet the crush of other viewers and prints nudging each other added a sympathy to the sense of unease that came across so strongly in the work.
It is good to be close up and personal with a photograph. These modest images in frames are personal, often unassuming. They work very well as a collection, almost as a narrative. The project developed from a history of zine production and the 44 photographers are mostly emerging, although that is stretching it for some. The converging perspectives of a bleak vision from both the American and Australian contributors is no surprise but the tenderness and humour that comes through the images leaves me with a sense of hope. A sad mother and daughter in a car, piles of dirt, scarred and unsightly naked bodies, a girl wearing a bunny head with a gun, another with a rifle aiming at something from her idyllic perch in a perfect jungle garden setting (unspoiled nature) leads to lots of images of strange human animal friendships, odd pets, odd pairings, crumbling rooms, crumbling nature, disturbing suburbia, the Mall, wild parties, innocents in their school uniforms, tattooed bulges, lots of breasts, girl urinating, boy sleeping, the desolation goes on and it feels like it is seen through the eyes of the young, slightly damaged, fascinated, appalled, accepting. It’s a celebration of freaky normal people and I can feel the breath of Diane Arbus’s caressing my shoulder.
The wild is tamed or tolerated; the elements work hard to deconstruct the constructed world. But the people are the focus and so many of them have an up-front attitude - it pervades the show. Perhaps the minimal viewing distance dictated by of Artsource’s corridors makes for an extra intimacy. I am hoping it was just as good to view in a more salubrious venue such as the Australian Centre For Photography where it was on show in July. The book (available online from
www.keithandlottie.com/view/Hijacked+Vol.1/1110/
www.tmp.acp.org.au/catalogue
www.idnworld.com
www.bildschoene-buecher.de
maintains this integrity as books do, since you sit with them and give them your attention, in a kind of bubble.
I see the value in exhibitions which place works by outstanding Perth artists in a bigger arena with like-minded souls from other parts of the world. I like these young fellows who stick their necks out to publish a book on borrowed money and even more I like the images selected and the way they sit together to remind us of the universality and joy of our experience of growing up, of our bodies, our homes, our public selves, of street culture and more than one coyote eking out a kind of life on the edge of ours, where coyotes don’t belong.
All photographs courtesy of Cheyne Tillier-Daly © 2008.
Cheyne Tillier-Daly's Photographs of the original Hijacked books launch and exhibition at Old Customs House, Fremantle, during the 2008 City of Fremantle Photography Festival are fantastic. Many thanks to Michelle Taylor and Cheyne Tillier-Daly for getting some amazing photographs. Now I want to share them all with you. A bit belated, better late than never, these photographs show the youthful enthusiasm for the show. The exhibition opened on April 5 and ran until May 4th, 2008. All photographs courtesy of Cheyne Tillier-Daly © 2008.
Our new Hijacked Advert is in Photofile Magazine no. #84, is designed by the maverick Tom Müller and the photograph, Trasheaters is by the lovely Amy Stein.
Hijacked is available to purchase online at:
Australia & New Zealand (& the rest of the world)
http://tmp.acp.org.au/catalogues/
Asia
http://www.idnworld.com/
Europe
http://www.bildschoene-buecher.de
A few months ago Jack Pam from Map Films invited photographers Toni Wilkinson, Ben Sullivan and myself to contribute a photograph to his project - Potential of Space - a live artistic collaboration between photographers and artists. The collaborating artists Meredith Earls, Creepy, Trevor Richards and Sean Morris hit the large scale printed photographs with their own styles of painting and illustration. After several hours in the late autumn sun and into the night, the artists brought new life, vigour and fresh interpretation to the original photographs. As part of the fotofreo festival 2008, I believe this was one of the most interesting events and typified the relaxed Fremantle zeitgeist. It was great to see some fresh and vital atmosphere injected into the Festival program. Punters were treated to live art paintings and illustrations, whilst relaxing in the sun,pleasantly drinking cool beverages, and surveying the process of artistic creation, with the Indian Ocean cast as the appropriate backdrop. Good times.
I have attached the process and hope you can dig it as much as I did. It is very reminiscent of a project I did in 2004 called Isolated - Funkstörung Tiple Media.
All photographs by Max Kordyl.
Tod Seelie's exhibition, Slow Dancing To Slayer, will open at Cinders Gallery on July 17th and run until August 9th, 2008. Tod is pretty excited about this, as the show will feature work from different series (OfQuiet.com and EveryDayILive.com) that he has been working on for years. Check it out!
Also keep your eyes peeled for a photo feature from his travels on the Mississippi River in the next issue of Death & Taxes Magazine.Word! -ref: Tod Seelie -
This Sunday, July 13th on ABC TV - Sunday Arts is featuring Hijacked. The program is on at 5pm, and Hijacked has an 11 minute feature. Thanks to Emma Watts for believing in the project. For those people abroad, the show can also be downloaded from the ABC Website. For those in Australia, check out channel 2, Sunday 5pm, July 13th. It is also scheduled to be broadcast at different times on ABC 1 & 2 for the next two years. Hopefully by then you might have seen it, or be sick of seeing it. The short feature doco looks at the project retrospectively and from a multitude of perspectives. Enjoy!
Photo: Mark McPherson & Max Pam, Courtesy of Jack Pam from Map Films.
Hijacked (ACP) Opening Night June 12th 2008 Its quarter to six and I’m standing in the middle of Oxford Street on an island refuge which barely shelters me from the onslaught of peak hour motorists. There is a hot pink sheen over Sydney tonight and I begin to understand what people mean when they say Sydney sparkles. It’s the Hijacked exhibition launch tonight at The Australian Centre for Photography and I am staring directly opposite the gallery space and I have to merge into traffic or sort of make the leap of faith through the cars, bags of freezing ice cutting into my hands. I think about the transformation the ACP has undergone to get this exhibition up and running. Over the past few days we have had every volunteer in Sydney come through the place to lend a hand, every sized ladder has been erected and art works have come up and come down, and all of this process brings us to here, quarter to six on the opening night of Hijacked. Inside the gallery is already starting to fill with eager beavers, early comers pushing their way into the fresh space, desperate to feast their eyes on the latest offering. I look around at some of the artists and then to the program coordinator, I can see a crease burrow his brow and then, instantly, it’s gone. We are about to start. Mark McPherson runs his hands down his jacket to smooth an invisible line. Maybe it’s them or maybe it’s me but there is defiantly a sharp air of anticipation about the place. Opening nights can often go ‘either way’ - like a rare house cat or a professional football player. I’m anxious. I want this to be great. I want my friends to come and love the Hijacked work. I want Mark McPherson to say ‘yeah’. I want the artists to see the crowds of visitors loving/hating their work in equal measure and most importantly, I want the ABC arts program to film me looking intelligent and sexy. As the plastic bags of cold ice in my hand cut a little deeper I walk behind the bar and fill the troughs with an endless supply of cheap white wine. Note to self, one should never underestimate the general public’s insatiable thirst for free alcohol. To counter this desire galleries all over the world supply their patrons with what I commonly refer to as Art Gallery Wine, its free, it’s disgusting and always packs a killer hang over. After three attempts at locating the ABC camera crew who are mysteriously lost in an alley somewhere the producer of the show assembles the fresh faced Hijacked artists at the entrance of the gallery because ‘we didn’t realize it would be dark so early’ for the group shot. The camera pans in and then widens as the twenty or so artists walk toward the camera and despite the obvious cliché most of the artists have an enormous sense of pride and respect for their work and a real sense of achievement. Pangs of jealous wave through me and I have to fight an impulse to just run in front of them. Front of house already has a bad reputation for attention seeking behaviour and refrainment is preferred. I guess I’m just excited for them. As the night progresses we move through speeches and the business end of the evening, Alasdair Foster talks about contemporary photography and tells us the meaning of life and lastly mentions something that will not be forgotten. The sheer volume of work he sees and the obvious delight at coming across something as special and unique as Hijacked. I’m in agreement. Just as speeches are wrapping up someone grabs me and says I should jump in front of some work and talk about what I like about it. I panic. It’s my moment. I look around at all the super keen first year art students gushing over their favorite works talking directly into the camera, smiling, laughing, representing. Someone tugs on my shirt and says again, ‘you’ll love this, its your opportunity, its your chance’ I go to walk towards the camera, a head full of things to say about what I love about Hijacked, but my feet wont, cant don’t move. Like lead. I’m stuck. How could I possibly critique this exhibition? Who do I think I am? The person tugging on my shirt finally leaves in search of another young enthusiastic person actually willing to discuss the Hijacked work on the arts program. All around me I can hear snippets of typical opening night conversations, ‘what is a zine?’ How do you pronounce it? It’s sort of like to help the starving kids in Africa… or India. I heard she’s got a chic habit. Why don’t you just blog yourself into celebrity? He’s really up and coming but I will never buy his work etc etc. I love these nights and I never tire of the bullshit because I love the work, the freshness of it, the newness of it and the occasional danger in it. Later that night I’m alone in the gallery, I have a secret love affair with this time and consider the intimacy a privilege. This is my chance to take in the work and to commune with it. It’s an eerie feeling to replace a gallery with over 450 people in it with just one. Me. Here, sudden intricacies and the subtle details make themselves known and pan into a common thread and I think about the collective subconscious and I smile to myself and think about how much I would love the ABC arts program to film me right now, thinking intelligent things and then I sigh and remember that its all about the collective subconscious and we are kind of all connected anyway and my thoughts were probably conveyed subliminally to the hosts of the show and I laugh and think about how much I love this show, the dynamic energy and the dynamic conflict. Hijacked.
Nicolas Hose, New Century Modern Man, Actor, Writer and Art Critic.
All photos courtesy of Emmanuel Giraud © 2008.
One Video Still by Duncan Barnes © 2008.
