Thoughtfactory: Leica poetics

Leica, film, snaps, chronicles, cliches

a humble photography

The 1990s and 2000s are routinely identified as an era of deregulation, globalisation and neoliberalism as successive Australian governments have progressively "open up" the Australian economy to international competition, ending industry assistance, eliminating remaining tariffs and encouraging exports.  The neo-liberal  decade of economic growth due to the mining boom in Quarry Australia coupled to an authoritarian nationalism with  its tacit white supremacism,  hostility to cultural difference and  xenophobia  ended with the  global financial crisis in 2008.

This process of internationalisation was seen as restricting Australia's national culture in that it  was in danger of becoming  an add on that existed the margins of the global art culture. Australia's visual culture was not seen as particularly distinctive in global art market terms. The national publishing  industry was also  impacted given the increasing dominance of  multinational conglomerates and that meant fewer photo book opportunities  for contemporary photography given the overseas publications being privileged over Australian ones.  It also meant increasing exposure to the art movement flowing strongly  through  the old  art centers of cities such as London, New York, and Paris; cities that  for centuries, have been the engine rooms of modern art. 

Photography is a niche market in the various  art biennales  of contemporary art held around the world,  especially for the humble photography  that is ‘specific, small-scale and modest’ in contrast to the spectacular works at  the top end of the global art market and in televisual media. 

The Sydney Biennale, for instance, is an exhibitory form that imports into a local artworld contemporary artworks from a variety of other places, works chosen as exemplary, representative and/or of high quality. This survey of contemporary art  offers a wide-ranging themed sampling of  international contemporary art to local audiences.  lt endeavours to overcome  the unequal distributions of power  by giving local artists the sharp shock of competition,  educating local audiences about art being made outside of their community and fosters a sense of global connectedness and comparison.   
  

This kind of art festival  works if you live in Sydney or  go there especially for the Biennale. If not,  then it means very little as most of the work is not online not does it travel around Australia. From this perspective the Biennale is  a part of the overproduction of  contemporary art-as-spectacle, that  relegates the public to the role of spectators-consumers. 

So we are left with a humble photography, dealing with the  ideas or issues of  a specific  regional or particular  city  turns away from the gatekeepers  of art, the collection displays of the traditional art galleries that are  less and less able to engage with present. The turn is  to  exhibiting on line: publishing the work on Flickr, weblogs, or  digital photography magazines. 

This humble  photography that takes on a greater presence with the  2008 global financial crisis  makes  the turn to local values and community building, and develops a  critical alertness to the connectivities between localities and distant power, to power with a global reach.