« [REVIEW—CANON EOS 1000D camera] | Main | [REVIEW—NIKON D700 camera] »
September 05, 2008
[ PHOTOGRAPHIC ART DECO ]
If you have ever wondered what it was that the black burlesque dancer, Josephine Baker, did in her act that made her famous in 30s Paris then wonder no longer. It seems that she bounced around, shirtless, like a demented marionette with tangled strings, all the while crossing her eyes in pantomime fashion. Decidedly un-erotic.
You can see for yourself at the great Art Deco exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, where there is film of La Baker in performance. Mind you, that is not why Imaging went to the Gallery. It was an unexpected bonus.
We went to look at the small photographic content on show. There are prints by Cecil Beaton and Man Ray (one of Mlle Baker) and, from closer to home, a few of Harold Cazneaux’s pictorials of the Sydney Harbour Bridge under construction. It is interesting to see how photographers integrated their art into the prevailing graphic style of the time. Cazneaux was influenced by the British school of pictorial photography and that led him into making photographs of Sydney as a place of soft mists and shadows. It’s a gorgeous look, but it looks more like Manchester on a foggy winter’s day than Sydney at any time.
Photography is verboten in the exhibition itself, but it’s still worth taking a camera. In the central courtyard, standing in magnificent isolation, is a red 1936 Mercedes straight eight, supercharged convertible. And you can snap away at this photogenic motorcar to your heart’s content.
Melbourne city itself is significant gallery of art deco works. There are a number of buildings built in the thirties, several with the characteristic feature of the “crown” on top – a short tower that doesn’t seem to serve any purpose except decoration.
There is one vital word of advice for photographers wandering around Melbourne in search of a subject: Look up! Melbourne at street level is dire in its drabness, but up above the cantilevered awnings, where no attempt has been made to modernise, the original architectural vision is, in most cases, intact.
There is a photographic catalogue of Melbourne’s art deco buildings at www.artdecoworld.com/melbcity1.htm and ~/melbcity2.htm This is a handy walker’s guide, but be warned. The names of some of the buildings have changed and you need to be old enough to remember that Buckley and Nunn’s is now David Jones.
Look for the details in these edifices. The little bits of sculpture and the geometric patterns in the windows and the mosaic at the old Newspaper House in Collins street are an important part of the style. And the typography also marks a building as art deco when it is boldly chiselled, sans serif lettering, often compressed.
This is another occasion on which we went out kitted with the Olympus E-520 and two lenses, covering a film equivalent range of 28–300mm between them. We love these small, light lenses which are so sharp and fast in focus, and the camera gives us the advantage of its truly effective image stabilisation system. (A full camera review is on the way.)
NOTE: Recently Imaging compared the price of a Canon iP100 portable printer in Australia with the American price, and we wondered why we pay almost double. The answer, we are told, is that the Australian package contains a battery, which in the American package is an option for an extra US $100.
*
Posted by terry at September 5, 2008 01:27 AM
Worth Checking Out
Digital Cameras SydneyTrackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://bleedingedge.com.au/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1601