This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – Magnet Galleries in Melbourne hosts a fundraising exhibition for the people of Myanmar. Plus Japanese Australian artist Mayu Kanamori’s interactive exhibition UNTITLED.SHOWA.
Exhibition & Fundraiser
Yangon Echoes – Tim Webster
Fisherman leaving for work, Gwa Ywar Ma village, Gwa, Myanmar. Tim Webster/ Rakhine Fishing Laws Reform Consultation Process, Pyoe Pin, June 2014
Melbourne photographer Tim Webster has collaborated with MAGNET Galleries to create this exhibition – Yangon Echoes – to raise funds that will support a group of young people in Myanmar who are fighting against the military coup.
According to the Magnet website, Webster, who lived in Yangon, has documented the “now-crumbling colonial buildings of the city and the lives of the people who have lived in them – sometimes for all their lives. As the buildings are now being demolished for redevelopment this collection of photographs reminds us both of Burma’s British colonial past and the fact that so many people are losing their life-long homes.”
Ma Shwe Yi Win and baby Aung Paung Kar outside their family home, In Bin Thar village, Lewe, Myanmar. Tim Webster/Rural Teak Farmhouses Project, World Monuments Fund, September 2017
Photogrammetry of Zan Thit temple, Bagan, Myanmar. Tim Webster/Bagan Conservation Project, Getty Conservation Institute, Feb 2020
There is also a Heritage and Social Justice Forum on Saturday 17 April at 2.30pm and the book Yangon Echoes is available for purchase via the gallery.
The exhibition is on until May 2. To find out more visit MAGNET.
Interactive Exhibition
UNTITLED.SHOWA
Untitled.Showa is an online portal “for solving a mystery and making new meanings through found photographs.”
In 2015, Japanese Australian artist Mayu Kanamori discovered a collection of photographs in a market in Daylesford, in country Victoria. These pictures of Japanese people taken in Japan between 1930 and 1960 sparked Kanamori’s imagination. Who were these people, why were their photographs in a market in a foreign country, had they been discarded or perhaps lost? The questions seemed endless. All the market stall holder could tell her was that the collection was part of a deceased estate from Geelong in Victoria.
In seeking answers to this puzzle, or to perhaps write a new history, Kanamori has created an interactive website “to collectively find ways to (re)unite the original prints to the people in the photographs, their family, the copyright holder/s or to an appropriate archive, and in real time, participate in the unfolding of a contemporary story.“
The first public exhibition of Untitled.Showa opens on 15 April at Level Up by 107 Projects, Level 2 Central Park, Broadway, Sydney. In July the show will move to the Geelong Regional Gallery in Victoria.
There are also interactive workshops. To find out more click here.
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