When working in a public space Sugimoto chose to use the technology of the camera to shroud the visuals in a blurry mist to see what remained. This is closer to Titarenko's visual capturing of human movement through an area. Both use photographic technology to seek non-obvious forms that are permanent in transient and fluid scapes.

Kenna's work is in contrast to Alexey Titarenko's which are filled with layer upon layer of human movement in a public space. Kenna's work is dominated by the absence of human movement in photographic space and consequently is less ghostly and more serene despite the similarity of the landscapes chosen.

I find Kenna's images quite beautiful and more attractive than Titarenko's despite the latter's being more visually grabbing initially. In graphic design a strong principle is not making the viewers eye 'work'. The purpose of white space is to please and sooth the eye so that it runs automatically through areas. It is the subjective difference between a work being easy or hard to look at.

Kenna's work is very easy on the eye.

As writing was a way to bust magical image thinking, photography can be a means to bust linear thinking for a fresh approach to making sense by using a new kind of images.

Photography for Flusser is more than a tool in the hands of the individual. He thinks in terms of the camera and its user as the ‘apparatus-operator complex’ that is coded by various programs - for instance, that of the photographic industry that programmed the camera; that of the industrial complex that programmed the photographic industry; that of the socio-economic system that programmed the industrial complex; and so on.

What is of interest here is firstly, the notion that a technology is a bearer of forces and drives, is indeed made up of them. Secondly that it is composed by the mutual intermeshing of various other forces that might be technical, aesthetic, economic, chemical: that might have to do with capacities of human bodies as affordances- and which pass between all such bodies and are composed through and amongst them.

dead tree, originally uploaded by poodly.

Too little, too late, and far too slow. That's my judgement on the big plans by the state and commonwealth governments to save the stricken reaches of the lower Murray River. It's mostly talk and little action, isn't it.

Conservationists had previously lost a campaign in the early 1970s to prevent the powerful Hydro Electric Commission flooding Lake Pedder for a power scheme. On July 1, 1983 -- 25 years ago today -- the High Court ruled by a majority of one that the Hawke Government had the power to stop Tasmania building the dam. The Franklin continues to run wild. It was an iconic victory.

Tasmania is not an industrial site, nor can it compete due to its isolation or remoteness. But remoteness is an advantage for wilderness tourism. Therein lies Tasmania's future.

Moving from place to place, the rovers perform on-site geological investigations. Each rover is sort of the mechanical equivalent of a geologist walking the surface of Mars.

The ghostly aspect of the images is impossible to avoid and gives the photos a stark haunting quality. I suspect the use of black and white photography for this is necessary as colour would ruin the uniform nature that grey scale gives to the ghostly apparition of mass movement.

This track is from Shine, her latest album:

Mitchell would have to be the most significant female musician in popular music, even though the music business had worn her down to the point where she couldn’t write and didn’t want to write. There was also little public recognition for her work and none at her record company.

Tyssen’s early photographs were taken in the streets and suburbs of 1970s Australia and America and they depict urban aloneness and isolation mixed with a hint of surrealism. This would now be seen as pretty straight, old school black and white modernist photography.

Basically though, if you are on public property, you can shoot it. However, public property and publicly accessible places are two different things. Train stations and beaches are public property, Westfields and other shopping malls aren't. They are private property. See Andrew Nemeth's excellent account.

The irony is that if you go to a shopping centre, service station, train station, carpark, office block (your office block) then you are probably being photographed. The law would say that once you own land you get to control what goes on there. The basic problem is that so much of our space these days is out of public hands and in control of private enterprise.

My gut feeling--reinforced by these comments---- is that the digital divide has morphed into a cultural divide, which involves not only access to technology, but also access to the money, training, and time that it takes to be a full participant in online work.

The internet has fostered the amateur in opposition to those people who are held to have special talent, and are separated, given special attention, and are seen as professional artists who "serve" society.The obverse is the tendency to denigrate the amateur.

The aim of the official arts bodies appears to be one of bringing more fine art to the Australian people” without encouraging more people to actually create. Amateurs who might like to dabble in photography, for instance, aren’t empowered by our society (or our schools) to do so.

This desire can become a trap. Art as the imago of the unexchangeable leads us to believe that there are things in the world that are not for exchange’ in a commercial culture that corners the market in all appearances of alternativeness. Roses are bought and sold just as much as soap powder in the marketplace.

Beauty cannot be contrasted with the ugliness of an industrial culture because is beauty is utilized to sell clothes in a consumer culture. Consumer culture has wrapped itself in beauty to persuade us to buy commodities on the credit card.

But what exactly does art photography transgress besides a few advertising and design l clichés? Can we seriously, for example, claim that abstract colour photography generates an experience of the sublime? And is it not hyperbole to describe art photography as horrifying or terrorising?

When the act of transgressing becomes ‘hot’ as in the fashion industry, then transgression no longer stands in a critical relation to an affirmative culture.

I had a studio/darkroom in Bowden and I shot in black and white as I explored the decaying life in a rustbucket industrial South Australia, studied philosophy at Flinders University of SA and tried to disengage from photography mirroring the world.

movement in the rustbucket state, originally uploaded by poodly.

Returning there I noticed there were a lot of changes, especially Bowden, which is being transformed into new suburban housing estates. The old Gas Works had gone along with the working class cottages, the street artists had appeared, and there were even street trees.

This return to my roots was part of gaining a perspective to explore, and get to know how the state of play in photography in South Australia was becoming a culture of art photography now that digital photography has become the norm.

Some of the participating photographers have their own portfolio pages on the SALA site eg.,

Janet Leadbeater
John Goodridge
Mandi Whitten

Today some argue that beauty, which can be found in the most unexpected places in every day life, functions as a tacit critique of the slick advertising and crass commercialism in the business districts of the city. Or the contrast would be between those who sell minerals and see only their mercantile value and the artist who sees the beauty of the stones.

Bowden rose, originally uploaded by poodly.

On this account capitalism has, by default, become the primary lens through which we interpret the world. From within the profit-driven perspectives of capitalism, a world-view more widespread than any other in history, all things are squeezed into financial concepts and therefore look like exchangeable commodities.

It is argued that beauty transgresses this world view, as beauty is what is left over when everyday life is squeezed into the market concepts in a world of universal commodification. The remainder to conceptualisation now becomes an enigmatic object of study rather than being denied or ignored.

The claim, which goes back to Kant's Critique of Judgement, is that something could be ultimately meaningful without regard to its instrumental value. or to put in another way things have auratic individuality because of their very particularity. Beauty, on this account, is the doorway to other concepts such as imagination, feeling, sensibility, sublime. The sensuous and particular experience of art now reveals a form of knowledge more complex than the categories of instrumental reason can contain.