lynn smith's photostream  

I'm an artist based in Sydney, Australia. I compose in the viewfinder, rarely crop, use a medium format film camera, fixed focal length lenses and work with available light.

I tutor courses two courses via the University of Sydney's short course division, the Centre for Continuing Education.
* Creative Street Photography: Fundamentals
* Creative Street Photography: Advanced
Details on the CCE website.

* Solo show of b&w street images at Sydney's Bondi Pavilion in September 2006 titled "blues for the eyes".

* Created a show and a book on derelict buildings for a Master of Documentary Photography degree at Sydney College of the Arts (SCA). Awarded this degree in 2008.

* Due to complete a Master of Fine Arts degree at SCA early 2012.

* Participated in a group show titled "Out of the Darkness" at the Meyer Gallery, Darlinghurst, Sydney April 2009.

* Finalist, Sony World Photography Awards, Cannes, France, April 2009

* Shortlisted for "Head On" an Australia-wide portrait competition 2009.

* Participated in group show entitled "NEXUS" at Global Gallery Paddington, Sydney April/May 2010. Curator: Sandy Edwards.

* Finalist, "Sydney Life" 2010

* Participated in the SCA postgrad show, June 2011.

* Solo show of urban nightscapes entitled "Echoes of Myself", MRA Gallery Alexandria, Nov/Dec 2011

* Art video Noir Streets now on YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB5Th4CSUwo

* 106 page book NOIR STREETS can be previewed and purchased at blurb.com www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/2912800

* Participated in group show Kitsch and Cliche at NG Gallery, Chippendale. Feb 2012.

* Signed, limited edition prints on archival paper available from the gallery which represents me... arthere.com.au


Talking about the medium... I happen to think Henri Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment" was essentially a marketing ploy by a wealthy man with lots of free time (HCB's family owned a chain of department stores). OK.. split second things that happen on the street can be interesting. But so are a million other scenarios out there. The split second candid thing is a single strand in one of photography's many genres.

Bresson's mantra screwed up two generations of representational photographers who convinced themselves their work was crap because they did not find enough "decisive moments". Now... in a 360 degree departure from Bresson's mandatories... "decisive moments" are being created in the studio and on film sets by some of the most well known practitioners in the medium like Jeff Wall and Gregory Crewdson.

And what about sub genres within the field of representational photography? Where's the "decisive moment" in a landscape? A portrait? A nude? A still life? Where's the "decisive moment" in constructed images such as those created by Andreas Gursky, Bill Henson, Cindy Sherman, Julie Rapp and Joel Peter Witkin?

Obviously this is not meant to denigrate HCB's importance in the development of representational photography through his own body of work and his role as co-founder of Magnum. It's just that his summation of the medium is too glib: a glibness which has unfortunately been seen as some kind of absolute truth by B grade arts journalists, many of whom judge photographs solely on the basis of whether they contain a "decisive moment" or not.

I find Vilem Flusser ("Towards a Philosophy of Photography") and Roland Barthes ("Camera Lucida") to be the most interesting commentators on our medium.

My images are inspired by the works of (in no particular order) Rut Blees Luxemburg, Lee Friedlander, Bill Henson, William Eggleston, Josef Koudelka, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Richard Misrach, Franscesa Woodman, Dianne Arbus, Edward Burtynsky and Liu Bolin.

I treat flickr as a workshop, not a gallery. Some of the images in my stream have had post production work done on them by two of the best artists in Australia: Sandy Barnard and Nick Greenwich. The remainder are straight scans from transparencies. I put 'em up so I can keep track of what I'm doing and, hopefully, get into discussions with other photographers and fans of serious photography...

I shoot what I'm driven to shoot by emotional forces operating in my life. I'm NOT out there hunting pictures. I'm out there allowing pictures to hunt me. Metaphors for our feelings are everywhere: we just need to be open to them.