Welcome to Festival Zone for February 2022.
Auckland Festival of Photography - Gideon Mendel
Delighted to announce as part of our exclusive exhibitions for the 'Disruption' theme
We are so excited to bring to Auckland, for an exclusive season at Queen’s Wharf, the work of Gideon Mendel. ‘Submerged Portraits” is a provocation of the global conscience.
We have curated, in collaboration with the artist a series of these exceptional portraits on Auckland’s waterfront fence for the “Disruption’ theme.
“This set of intimate portraits of flood victims is at the core of the Drowning World project. Mendel’s subjects address the camera looking out from their devastated environments and inundated homes. The poses may seem conventional but their confrontational gazes challenge us to consider their context of catastrophe across cultures and time. Coming from disparate parts of the world they reveal their shared vulnerability and linked exposure to climate change despite vast differences in lives and circumstances.”
Since 2007, using stills and video, Mendel has been working on Drowning World; an art and advocacy project about flooding that is his personal response to our climate crisis. His work has been widely published in magazines and newspapers including National Geographic, Geo and the Guardian Weekend. His images have been used in climate protests while his photographs; installations and video pieces are increasingly seen in gallery and museum contexts.
Mendel has received the inaugural Jackson Pollock Prize for Creativity and the Greenpeace Photo Award. Shortlisted for the Prix Pictet in 2015 and 2019, he has also received the Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, the Amnesty International Media Award, and six World Press awards. More recently he won the Head On Portrait Prize 2021. Mendel has recently developed some new projects addressing the Covid-19 crisis and has extended his work on global warming to include the element of fire.
Images above - João Pereira de Araújo, Taquari Districta, Rio Branco, Brazil, March 2015 & Carl Coleman and his stepson Cody Lamb, Rolling Ridge Drive, Longs, South Carolina, September 2018
Opens late May 2022. Free. Outdoors - ‘to see is to believe’.
2022 Festival Call for Submissions – nomad programming
Our open call for submissions for the Festival is now seeking submissions, deadline 30th March 2022. Your participation can be ‘in Venue’ ‘Online’ or ‘Outdoors’.
As the pandemic rolls on, sticking to our established June timeframe presents us with the potential to innovate and be more flexible with lead activities before the June dates. See our Taking Part page.
A key benefit of taking part as a photographer includes the Festival's donation of one native NZ tree to be planted per exhibition to help mitigate climate change.
Plus being part of the longest running photography experience in Australasia, and by sharing your work you will also be invited to submit entries to our 3rd Late Harvest Award for NZ based exhibiting artists. Late Harvest is an award for any and all NZ photographers participating in the 2022 Festival. Late Harvest is the theme for the award, and is wide open to many interpretations purposefully. Late Harvest can be literal or metaphysical.
In wine making, Late Harvest wines are made from grapes that are left on the vine longer before gathering. These grapes have reached a richer sweetness. Late Harvest, then, might suggest aging and maturity in any and all things. The autumnal. The cycle of the seasons like the cycle of life. Harvesting is the reaping of what has been sown. The result of careful planning. The bounty grown from initial desires. The gathering of the plenty.
1st prize of $1500 cash and 2nd cash prize, $750. Opens for submissions 15th May 2022.
Disruption - NZ series
In contrast to the international series above, we revisit a New Zealand fine art series, Cases Studies South, this series which seeks to highlight the introduction of non native fauna and flora in the early colonial settlement years and the subsequent disruption to the landscape with these introduced plants.
Cases Studies South, by Mark Smith & Felicity Jones will be shown on the Karanga Plaza, on the waterfront on lightboxes, alongside a selection of black and white work by Chris Leskovsek, that speaks to the Disruption theme.
On show lit up every day and night until midnight. From late May. Free.
Dr Ward’s Case #1, Te Henga, 2018, Import . (From Case Studies - 2019)
Brian Murphy; Practice Room, Headless Chickens
Delighted to announce our 2nd annual Aotearoa Music Photography Award | Whakaahua Puoro Toa, we will be accepting entries from the start of April.
This award is presented by Image Auckland [tāmaki makaurau]. Last year $1500 in prize money was Awarded to support music photography in NZ through this. 2022 Award boasts a 1st prize of $1500 cash plus the Festival is adding a 2nd cash prize, $750 to encourage and support the sector.
The live gig sector, concerts, Festivals and community parks programmes have been recognised as being heavily impacted by Covid 19, and we aim to support a small part of the photography work done in the last 2 years with the 2nd annual Aotearoa Music Photography Award | Whakaahua Puoro Toa.
So get ready to get your music groove on. The 2022 Aotearoa Music Photography Award | Whakaahua Puoro Toa will open from April. Full details on prizes and how to enter will be available in late February 2022. We invite you to LIKE the new Facebook page to stay up to date.
Free exhibitions at Silo Park - May 2022
The exhibitions of the 2021 Aotearoa Music Photography Award | Whakaahua Puoro Toa winners and runners up, and a selection of great music photography will be on show during May, as part of NZ Music Month and Image Auckland lead in activities to the announcement of the 2022 Award which will take place in Auckland in May.
Photobook Friday – June 2022
We are delighted to announce our new programming partnership with Photoforum NZ for the 6th annual Photobook Friday. We look forwards to Photoforum presentation with a super line up of contemporary speakers and projects that define the current photobook scene in New Zealand. Full details in late April.
Photoforum NZ are the organisers of the annual Photobook NZ event in Wellington, re-scheduled for August 2022 this year.
Outdoor exhibitions on now
Celebration of Auckland and its Culture.
Takapuna is proud to be hosting an outdoor street photography exhibition by the Auckland Festival of Photography, presented by Image Auckland and I Love Takapuna. The exhibition is a selection of the best images from Auckland Photo Day, which celebrate Auckland and its culture. Since the re-opening before the Christmas/New Year break literally thousands of people have seen the works as they stroll through the town. Extended now through February 2022.
And adjacent at Shore City shopping centre, the Como Street entrance way, is the pop up indoor walk way of photos which feature an exciting extra 15 of our favourites from the entries over the last decade. Go see this soon. Image above Shore City installation.
