Julian Tennant - Photography

26/12/2024

Come on... the guy's not Steve McCurry who staged, photoshopped and manipulated the f%*k out of photographs whilst pontificating about the 'ethics' of photojournalism. De Keyser was up front about what he was doing, but

“There were a lot of negative comments on my Insta post, like 600 in two hours. I was not used to that. I always had great reactions to my posts … but this time the box exploded ... Some said that they were my biggest fans before but not anymore. AI still provokes automatic disgust, whatever the approach or progress made.”
.. and yet, I have no doubt that some of De Keyzer's critics have no qualms with 'photoshopping' an image to within an inch of it's life. To the point where it barely resembles the truth of the subject but that's ok, that's 'pre-visualisation' or 'fine art' or some such other bu****it.

When Russia's invasion of Ukraine stymied his travel plans, photographer Carl De Keyzer decided to take a virtual trip instead, creating a series of AI-generated images. He was unprepared for the consequences.

21/07/2024

Matt Dunne from Australian photo book publisher, Tall Poppy Press, is returning to Perth in September and will be holding another photography book making workshop at P*P. Details in link.

I did his course last time (the picture is a couple of the pieces that I made during the workshop) and highly recommend it.
I've got a couple of book projects bubbling away and creating mock-ups are a great opportunity to sharpen focus and direction. This is definitely a workshop worth considering.

https://events.humanitix.com/photobook-creation-with-matt-dunne

24/05/2024

Vale Rosemary Laing (1959-2024).

It is with great sadness to note the passing of internationally renowned photographer Rosemary Laing after a short illness.

Her photographs explored the cultural consciousness, researching the crucial issues of our times including the politics of place, natural environment and human rights.

The photograph featured is "welcome to Australia"
from the series "to walk on a sea of salt 2004" and as can be seen, her works were often cinematic, vast in scale and filled with disquiet and unsettling beauty.

This image depicts the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre, the official title of an infamous detention centre remotely located in the South Australian Simpson Desert that operated from 1999 to 2003 to incarcerate asylum seekers and refugees who arrived in Australia by boat without valid visas. The so-called ‘unauthorised arrivals’ held at Woomera, the majority of which were ultimately found to be legitimate refugees, were subjected to prolonged, indeterminate and cruel periods of detention until they were granted visas, or deported, under a punitive policy of ‘mandatory detention’.

A major survey of her work was held at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in 2005 and travelled to Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik in Denmark in 2006, while Tarrawarra Museum of Art in Victoria presented a major survey in 2018. Her most recent solo exhibition in Melbourne earlier this year, entitled Swansongs, derived its name from the area in Swanhaven on the NSW coast where she has a home.

Rosemary was born in Brisbane and studied in Hobart, Brisbane and Sydney. Her work has been presented Biennales in Sydney, Venice, Busan and Istanbul. Her work is in major collections in Australia, Spain, the US, Japan and Switzerland.

07/05/2024

The aestheticisation of tragedy

WPP winner demonstrates Palestinian grief is only acceptable to the West if it is sanitised and devoid of context.

03/01/2024

‘The Plague Doctors’.
This is a Cyanotype print that I made from a digital negative that I created using Midjourney AI software as one of my experiments into the world of camera-less photography and alternative photo printmaking.

After writing the prompts into Midjourney, the resulting AI image was printed on inkjet transparency film on my Canon home office printer, the only ‘trick’ being to create an appropriate adjustment curve for the printer in photoshop to facilitate the full tonal range gradation.

To expose the image, I left it on the pre-coated watercolour paper in the sun for 12 minutes, then washed it in running water to remove the unexposed chemistry. When creating the picture I wanted it have the feel of a collodion glass negative print. So, to alter the cyan colour, I briefly dunked the print into a very-very dilute bath of White King household bleach, washed it and then toned the image using 5 teabags of Liptons Black Tea. The tannic acid has a chemical reaction with iron in the Cyanotype and in doing so changes the colour and increasing its archival properties. Then hang the print out to dry on the washing line and voila…

It’s actually a very cheap and easy process and now that I am no longer tied to the college where I used to work, I’m thinking about developing this as a workshop for people interested in learning how to combine this 19th Century photographic printing process with 21st Century AI image creation technology to create unique hand crafted prints at home.

Planning is in its early stages and looking for collaborators to host the workshop, but comment and let me know if you’re interested

31/12/2023

‘The Plague Doctors’.
Washing a Cyanotype print that I made using today’s summer sun and a negative that I created using AI image generating software. It's a cheap and simple process that can be easily done at home.

So, I’m thinking about developing a workshop for people interested in learning how to combine this 19th Century photographic printing process with 21st Century AI image creation technology to create unique hand crafted prints. The planning is in its early stages, but comment and let me know if you’re interested

11/12/2023

Head of Photography & Media Arts in the School of Art & Design at the Australian National University, Katrina Sluis talks about the future of photography under AI as part of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale.

Where once photography gave us images of the world as seen by machines, photography under AI gives us images of machine images… seen by machines. Major global companies including Bing and Adobe are heavily investing in generative image models to produce the next AI advance in photography. But in t...

09/09/2023

Some of the films on offer in the shops in Budapest. But, the thing that I have noticed on this trip is how few tourists are carrying traditional cameras of any kind. Yesterday I counted seven.

EVERYONE shoots with their phones these days and the world of photography has definitely changed

04/09/2023

"For once we are not looking for the images to ‘speak’ to a viewing audience and change lives, we are looking at the determination to continue this project itself which is changing lives. Extraordinary."