Inspiration through Photography with Helen Hagemann

Inspiration through Photography will focus on several photographers including Juno Gemes (AU), Deidi von Schaewen (DE), and famous aperture photographers, Berenice Abbott (US), Walker Evans (US) and Eugène Atget (FR).
Friday, 19th May, 1pm-3pm. Instead of readings we will look at the various artists' works choosing certain photographs to write about. Writers may choose to bring a favourite snap or photo album as a desired alternative.
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Paint Studio, however check at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $20 - NON-OOTA $25 (ask for membership form to save.For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

Eugène Atget photographed the city of Paris and its environs obsessively for almost thirty years. He discovered a market for documentary photographs of Old Paris, which were bought by artists as source material for their canvases. But for Atget, the production of photographs about old French culture was also an occasion for making art.
   His photographs are unparalleled in their lucid realism and their lyrical response to the living pulse of the city and to artifacts that speak of human life in almost every social class. His images of parks, lakes, shop windows, vendors, prostitutes, buildings, sculptures, and street scenes of Paris go beyond mere documentation to a poetic version of a time gone by. Atget created some of the most beautifully articulated images of light and space ever made with a camera-an imaginary world. 

                                                                       

Walker Evans, more than any other photographer in the thirties and forties, defined the documentary aesthetic. For over four decades he used his camera precisely and lucidly to record the American experience. He is generally acknowledged as America's finest documentary photographer of this century.
   He attempted to show both the beauty of his subjects and the horror of the social conditions in which they lived. During the Depression, from 1935 to 1937, Evans took part in the most extensive photographic project ever carried out in the United States - the pictorial survey of the Farm Security Administration. The now-legendary collaboration with James Agee that resulted in the masterpiece Let us Now Praise Famous Men documents his dedication to photographing the country he knew. Evans's talented eye and sensitive heart make him one of the great photographers of this century.