Fototazo guest post

I have just done a short guest post over on the fototazo blog. fototazo has asked a group of 50 curators, gallery owners, blog writers, photographers, academics and others actively engaged in photography to pick two photographers that deserve (more) recognition - the underknown, the under-respected as well as not-appreciated-enough favorites. For my guest post, I selected Marie Quéau and Erik van der Weijde. Check out the post here.

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Linus Bill / Erik van der Weijde: Linus’ family in Switzerland and Erik's family in Brazil.

Eikoh Hosoe: Theatre of Memory @ AGNSW

I've just come back from a ridiculously short trip to Australia for the opening of Eikoh Hosoe: Theatre of Memory at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This is Hosoe's first solo show in Australia and his first trip there. In addition to having the master himself present, he came accompanied by Yoshito Ohno, the butoh dancer and son of Kazuo Ohno, the co-founder of butoh who passed away last year at the age of 103. Here's a quick behind the scenes glimpse at the opening week of the show.

Yoshito Ohno performed at the opening of the exhibition. You can see a video of one part of the performance here. There's also another video of Ohno's puppet performance at Zen Foto in Tokyo last year (note the Elvis Presley tune which is crucial to the tone of this performance). After the opening Hosoe and Ohno gave a fantastic artist talk in the exhibition space where they spoke about how butoh developed and how Ohno and Hijikata collaborated with Hosoe over the years.

Beg, borrow or steal.

Hosoe's next project? Butoh as embodied in Australia's native trees.

The connoisseur, the prankster, the outsider, the lovable rascals and co.

Wired's Raw File has just posted a list of their favorite photobloggers and eyecurious was lucky enough to make the cut. Pete Brook of Prison Photography, was behind this; he more than deserves his position on this list but was noble enough not to 'favorite' himself. This is a great selection which definitely doesn't just pick the most popular blogs; I'll confess to not knowing a number of the picks and I'm looking forward to trying to jam more bloggers into my poor RSS reader and heading down some off-the-beaten path information backroads rather than sticking to the 'superhighway'. The characterisations of the different blogs are spot on and the full cast of characters reads like the line-up for a vaudeville act. Aside from this list, it's worth keeping an eye on Raw File for "photojournalism, industry issues and cultural output (books, shows, etc)"... hopefully they can help us to look a little beyond the usual horizons of the online photo world.

November Photo Madness in Paris

November has always been THE big photographic month in Paris, but this year is looking like it will be a record breaker. Here's a list of some of the big events happening in Paris this month. I don't know how I'm going to make my way to all of these, let alone blog about all of them, but hopefully I'll manage something.

• Mois de la Photo. The month of photography kicks off today with 50 exhibitions around the city (including a contribution by yours truly, an Eikoh Hosoe exhibition at the Photo4 gallery on the left bank). This year is the Month's 30th anniversary and the theme is the MEP collection (yawn), but there are some good exhibitions to look out for in there.
• Mois de la Photo Off. These days it seems you can't have a festival without their being a side event and with twice as many exhibitions as the Mois de la Photo itself the 'Off' will be giving the main event a run for its money.
• Fotofest Paris. The good people behind Lens Culture are organising the first edition of this portfolio review event, in collaboration with the renowned Houston Fotofest (yours truly will be be making an appearance here too as a portfolio reviewer).
• Paris Photo (18-21 Nov.): One of the best attended photo art-fairs in the world, this has become a passage obligé for most of the photoworld. Expect too many people, lots of moody black and white images (this year's spotlight is on the Central European photo scene), no natural light, too much looking over shoulders, too many parties with too many cigarettes, WAY too many photographs... and yet you wouldn't want to miss it.
• Offprint Paris (18-21 Nov.): In parallel to Paris Photo, this will be the first edition of Paris's very own photobook fair, which is an interesting reflection of the current growing excitement around photobooks. While we're on the topic of photobooks there's an interesting exhibition opening next week at La Monnaie de Paris on the photobook svengali, Gerhard Steidl, which looks like it'll be worth a look.

If you love photography and you weren't planning to be in Paris this November... what were you thinking?

New on eyecurious: Book of the week

As you can see from the above image, there is a steadily growing pile of books sitting in the corner of my living room. Short of actually getting around to getting some more shelving or moving flats, I have decided to at least throw a little spotlight on one book each week. These won't be book reviews, but a brief look at a book that has been getting some page-turning action that week. Also check out eyecurious books etc. for more photobook-related posts.