Martyn
Jolly
Martyn Jolly is an artist and a writer.
As an artist he reconsiders, re-contextualises and re-frames
details from photographs found either in archives or in the
mass media. In 2000 he exhibited the series The Sports
Pages, in the major exhibition Sporting Life
at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. In 2001 he undertook
a three month residency at the Australia Council London Studio.
This resulted in the exhibition Faces of the Living Dead
which was exhibited at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space
and the Scott Donovan Gallery. The exhibition was accompanied
by an artist’s book which told and illustrated the story
of Mrs Ada Emma Deane, a spirit photographer of the 1920s.
He has recently completed a PhD at Sydney University. The
thesis, titled Fake Photographs: Making Truths in Photography,
dealt with issues of the 'true' and the 'fake' in early twentieth
century reportage and propaganda photography and their relationship
to recent technological changes in the image; spirit photography
in the early twentieth century and its relationship to recent
discussions of photography and memory; and contemporary Australian
Aboriginal photography and its incorporation of the historical
photographic artefact. He has published articles on these
topics in The History of Photography journal, and
given papers at conferences at UK and Australian universities
as well as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National
Gallery of Australia, and the Centre for Contemporary Photography.
Abstracts
of recent talks
"Frank Hurley and Charles Bean argue over photography in
Flanders Fields"
On the afternoon of September 26 1917, just a few miles behind
the lines during the battle of Third Ypres, Frank Hurley,
one of Australia's official war photographers, had a heated
argument with Charles Bean, Australia's official war correspondent.
The argument was over Hurley's right to make composite tableau
photographs of the fighting. It revealed that both men, although
having much in common ideologically, had profoundly different
attitudes to photography as a medium and the status of the
photograph as an artefact. Hurley eventually made six large
composite battle tableau photographs and went on to a long
career as Australia's most famous adventurer-showman photographer.
Bean went on to shape the Anzac myth and found the Australian
War Memorial. Their respective attitudes to photography have
always problematised its role as a historical medium.
"Why
do so many contemporary urban Australian Aboriginal photographers
re-use old photographs in their work?"
In the last few years urban Aboriginal photography has taken
off and become a favourite of curators. By and large these
artists are seeking to change our perception of the past.
With few exceptions they re-use old photographs, or old photographic
styles. Even some urban Aboriginal painters incorporate photographic
references. Museum archives are mined, family photographs
are reconsidered, remembered styles are recreated. Parody,
pastiche, and bricolage are used to evoke and comment on personal
memory and collective history. Is this just an incidental
part of a more general phenomena, that of photographs being
increasingly used to stand in for the past, both in the mass
media and in other areas of the visual arts (for instance
those artists commenting on the migrant experience)? Or do
aboriginal artists have a particular relationship to old photographs?
How does this cast light on the current mnemonic status of
the old photograph?
"Photography's
false memory syndrome" (Still in preparation)
The early twentieth century saw photography undergo major
technological changes and the beginnings of the mass dissemination
of the photographic image. It say photography increasingly
take on the role of 'eyewitness' within the mass media. It
also saw a revival of spirit photography in which the status
of the medium as objective indexical recorder was invoked.
Both spirit photography and reportage have been 'haunted'
by the fake, and predict the effects of contemporary manipulation
of digital photography.
Link
to Martyn Jolly's full CV
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