merry christmas and happy new year

The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League 1936-1951

Marvin E. Newman's “Halloween, South Side,” from 1951

One of many artistic casualties of the McCarthy-era blacklists was the Photo League, a New York school and salon for amateur and professional photographers. Progressive in its politics and uncompromising in its aesthetics, the league was the place to be if you had a hand-held 35-millimeter camera and a left-leaning social conscience — and particularly if you believed, to borrow a bit of contemporary parlance, that photography was fine art for the 99 percent.

Its members — among them Berenice Abbott, Aaron Siskind and Weegee — are now reunited in “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League 1936-1951” at the Jewish Museum. This stirring show traces the group’s history through some 145 vintage photographs.

A collaboration between the Jewish Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art, which both have extensive holdings of Photo League work, “Radical Camera” was organized by the team of Mason Klein (from the Jewish Museum) and Catherine Evans (from the Columbus Museum).

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SMH 23 December 2011

Thuso Lekwape has always been bold.

As a four-year-old in Johannesburg, he knocked on the door of Australian journalists Sharon Davis and Geoff Parish and asked, ''Can I come in?''

In drama classes at International Grammar School in Ultimo, he was ''always willing to take risks'', his head of drama, Rita Morabito, said.

And at his NIDA audition this month, the institute's acting tutor, Jennifer Hagan, said the 19-year-old showed great power and passion. ''He was fearless, but that was coupled with great intelligence,'' Hagan said. ''I just thought, 'Here's an actor' - as simple as that.''

Lekwape not only beat almost 2000 hopefuls to get in to NIDA, he was also offered places in the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and the Victorian College of Arts.

He made the list of distinguished achievers in HSC drama and will appear in February in OnSTAGE, a presentation of performances and projects by outstanding HSC drama students.
Lekwape, who has lived in Australia for four years, modestly puts his achievements down to ''pure luck''. Hagan credits his talent, saying: ''He's already a great natural.''

But Davis, who, with Parish, acts as Lekwape's guardian, said drive and hard work were behind his success.

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Melbourne at night

Melbourne

St Andrew’s Cross Spider --- Argiope keyserlingii

yellow flower

tree flower

yellow door

Melbourne lace

Hindsight: William Cuffay

ABC Hindsight Tuesday 20 December 2011 2:00PM

William Cuffay in Newgate Gaol 1848

In 1848 William Cuffay, the son of a freed slave, was arrested and transported to Van Diemen's Land by a government fearful of revolution that was sweeping through Europe. Aged 60 Cuffay, a tailor and leader of the London Chartists, was campaigning for the right to vote as part of the first mass working class movement in the world. His transportation to Australia didn't end his political activity. He continued to organise and agitate for democratic rights in Tasmania for another 20 years until his death in 1870, at the age of 82.

Cuffay's Chartist legacy is today enshrined in parliaments in Britain and Australia. His lifelong political activism remains an inspiration to those who believe in workers rights, human rights and democracy. Although Cuffay died a pauper, newspapers in three states -- Tasmania, NSW and Victoria -- published obituaries. One observed that his grave had been 'marked', should a memorial to him be built at some future time. The memorial never transpired, and Cuffay was forgotten in Australia and Britain. But now there's a move to build one -- or perhaps even a statue!

see also
'Cuffay, William (1778–1870)', Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2011

Katoomba

Sydney Morning Herald today

Sydney Morning Herald 30 November 2011

large exhibition of small works ... opens tuesday 29 november 2011

Deus: Car and Caravan

Friday 2 December 2011 - Deus Cafe - 8pm

Potts Point

Katoomba spring

Katoomba [via graynomad]

See http://maarla.blogspot.com/

Potts Point

Tango protest

Ismael Ludman and Maria Mondino

On the 14th of April 2011 Ismael Ludman and Maria Mondino two tango dancers from Argentina arrived in Glasgow. They had been invited to give a tango performance and workshops in small venues throughout Scotland something they do all over the world. They were detained by the UK Border Agency and questioned for some hours

(e)scapes

Evening cityscape from Potts Point

Dinner at Pan Roma

Artisans in the Gardens 2011

Saturday 8 October to Sunday 16 October at Lion Gate Lodge and its own cottage garden, Mrs Macquaries Road, inside the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney. The exhibition is open from 10 am to 4 pm daily. Entry is free. All works are for sale with proceeds going to support the work of the Friends of the Botanic Gardens and the Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust.
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Across the Western Suburbs

From Politics in the Pub see http://bmuc.blogspot.com/2011/10/politics-in-pub-humphrey-mcqueen.html

antenna: international documentary film festival

Opera House: Slavoj Žižek -Demand the Impossible

In the late 90's, political theorists, economists and politicians were talking confidently about the end of history and the undisputed triumph of liberal "democratic" capitalism. Communism was written off as dead and buried. But after 9/11, the GFC, the Arab Spring, and the protests spreading over Europe, the ideological gloss of capitalism may be beginning to fade. If the alternative is Putin's muscular Tsarism or China's authoritarian capitalism, then renovating the idea of communism may matter profoundly. For philosophical rock star and brilliant iconoclast Slavoj Žižek, it is something that we should demand, no matter how impossible it seems. The only true utopia today is that things can go on indefinitely the way they are.

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist and author working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and psychoanalysis.