Welcome to Festival Zone for July 2013.
We Need To Talk by Groo Lee - Winner Nikon Auckland Photo Day 2013
Festival 2013 thanks
We are currently writing post Festival reports and counting the stats for this year's photographic feast - so with over 3 weeks of Signature and Fringe exhibitions, talks, symposium, events, projections and competitions we are really pleased to announce a minor increase in our overall audience this year across the 94 shows and events, with several venues still to report back, on the information we have all indications are the audience is slightly up on last year. A double gold star to Brian Marsom with Song Of The Whau River who reported that his show was seen by 11,000 over at LynnMall, we have kept this figure to one side in the Festival total as it skews our average. No mean feat with the weather being quite rainy and cool, and the cost of transport and travel being more this year. We think the Festival attendance going up is a great achievement. The number of photographers taking part in this year's Festival was around 900, both in signature exhibitions, annual commission, projections, symposium, portfolio reviews, talks, fringe and includes over 485 participating in our open access public competition Nikon Auckland Photo Day.
Digital engagement
Our digital engagement strategy of encouraging online viewing and voting for the Nikon Auckland Photo Day shortlist was another success with over 101,000 page views on the Peoples Choice pages over 10 days. To end June year on year our website visitation is 16% up on the same period the year before with 65,370 sessions on average of 14 minutes. This year website hits exceeded 6.4 million to end June. Best not mention the only thing going down in complete contrast is our public funding! Lets hope we can turn this around for next year's Festival.
Nikon Auckland Photo Day 2013 - Winner
This year our winner is Groo Lee, from Greenhithe. He spent most of his Saturday 8th June evening at home with his family and what he saw in his own home inspired him to set up his tripod and his Nikon D800 and start shooting his family....and this was take 15, and selected by our judges Gil Hanly, Chris Traill, FNZIPP and Jeremy Andrews, Nikon as the overall winner this year. We love this photograph, it is a contemporary portrait of home life in the age of the personal device and it has superb use of available light. In the photo are Groo's wife and their son lit only by their phones and tablets, and on self timer, Groo popped into frame too. Congratulations! Groo won a Nikon D600 with an FA-S 24-85mm lens plus two hours induction session (though we suspect he might not need this help!).
Peoples Choice 2013 winner
Our Peoples Choice winner was Hyugo Vale, Pukekohe. His insightful photo of a man on the street begging is a gritty black and white portrait of life in modern Auckland which transverses time by taking us back to the days of the last depression where people needed to beg for money to survive. We think that 'Invisible To The World' taken by 18 year old Hyugo it provides a sharp reality check to the warmth and comfort shown in the winning image of the Greenhithe home. A tale of two cities? Hyugo won a compact Nikon P7770 for his photograph.
Other news
If you are experiencing Festival withdrawals and need some more cool shows and things photographic to do in July, then check out our Facebook page which has regular updates. For example Cathy Carter, a Fringe exhibition photographer, has a project that asks you to send in photos of the Waitemata water and these will be used in a wall installation at Auckland Art Gallery, whilst checking out this project, also on at the AAG is the new California Design ticketed exhibition, featuring design photography that fuelled the fantasy of the American Dream. If that’s all far too aestheticly overwhelming for you then take your own photos of the People you see around you and send them into our community blog for July, our People theme is looking for good portraits of contemporary Auckandlers. And then from 19 July is the fabulous annual ticketed Film Festival which has quite a few films on or about photographers and photography so check out these. And just in case you needed one more ticketed exhibition to see, Smith & Caughey are hosting World Press again, which will be great to see but really begs the question about why Auckland has no available photography center to host this show in? We will be pursuing our development of an Auckland Centre For Photography in the coming 12 months, watch this space.....
Asia Pacific Photoforum
Coming up in August is the Biennale of international photography in Ballarat, Australia. Our APP partners across the ditch have succeeded in producing an amazing Festival programme which has plenty to offer including two core exhibitions by Kiwi photographers, Doc Ross and Jackie Ranken. Starts 17th August, get booking your flights now! And for those of you wanting more Festivals to visit once Ballarat ends you can hop on the next flight to China, and the annual Pingyao International Photography Festival which starts on 19th September for 6 days, it's hosting the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Photoforum this year - more on Auckland Festival of Photography's contribution to this in next month's e-news.
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Auckland Festival of Photography is supported by;
MAJOR FUNDER
Public funding from Auckland Council, Creative New Zealand, Creative Communities Regional, Asia NZ Foundation, Lion Foundation, COGS - Auckland, Manukau, Waitakere, Papakura/Franklin.
Sponsored by Nikon and HP. Festival Tuesday vehicles supplied by Unitec.
Media supporters - D Photo (New Zealand), Daylight Books (New York). Wine donated by Sacred Hill.
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