The Xiaomi 14 Ultra isn’t just ‘another camera phone’, it’s the first bleeding-edge camera phone to get a general release in the West. That isn’t to say Samsung Galaxy, Apple iPhone and Google Pixel handsets don’t also have excellent cameras – they do – but they don’t push the envelope when it comes to camera hardware quite this hard.
Packing the newest 1-inch Sony sensor for mobile – also found in the China-only Oppo Find X7 Ultra – on paper, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s main camera has more in common with pro-grade compacts like the Sony RX-100 than some smartphones. This is especially true when you consider its variable aperture, allowing you to control background blur with an adeptness that lacks in so much of the competition.
The 14 Ultra also supports the best camera grip accessory I’ve ever used, complete with a customisable control wheel, a two-stage shutter button, a dedicated video button, and a battery boost. I’ve been using it with the Ultra and can confirm that it transforms the flagship into a quick-fire camera first, and a phone second.
But what a star of a phone that is, even in the face of excellent alternatives like the Honor Magic 6 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. So does that mean you should spend iPhone 15 Pro Max levels of cash on Xiaomi’s latest superphone? For the right owner, yes, as I’ll explain in this Xiaomi 14 Ultra review…
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is ultra-expensive. Available now in Europe and the UK for £1,299, which converts to roughly $1,625 in the US and $2,470 in Australia – where the phone isn’t officially sold – it’s pricey yet a good deal.
Unlike the iPhone, which comes available in multiple storage configurations, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra only ships with 512GB storage, and it actually undercuts Apple’s 512GB iPhone 15 Pro Max with the same capacity in terms of asking price.
If you want to pick up the Photography Kit, which adds a battery boost and camera controls, that will set you back an additional extra £179 (circa $230, AU$370).
(Image credit: Basil Kronfli)
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra isn’t a huge phone thanks to a relatively typical screen size of 6.73-inches, as found in many of the other best phones on the market today. Giving it a smaller footprint than alternatives like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, it isn’t too much of a stretch for thumbs.
At 9.2mm thin, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is chunkier than the key competition, and that doesn’t include that camera bump which adds serious heft. This collection of four cameras is framed by a textured track (reminiscent of a camera’s aperture ring) and a gold accent, making the camera clearly the star of the show here.
From the front, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra has a flat display with a curved screen feel, sort of like an oversized Apple Watch (not an Apple Watch Ultra). The screen slopes into the metal frame, which in turn angles to create substantial, flat sides for a secure grip. This curves into a vegan leather back, and the whole phone feels premium, though with no tapering metal sides it also feels thicker than some curved screen competition.
(Image credit: Basil Kronfli)
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s screen is an OLED panel with 522 pixels in every inch, so it’s relatively expansive and everything looks very sharp. Its peak brightness of 3000 nits shines through in high dynamic range (HDR) mode, and when you’re navigating through your day, you’ll be enjoying nearer 1000 nit brightness – so I certainly didn’t have any trouble viewing It outdoors, even in direct sunlight.
Indoors, visuals get comfortably dim, and with 1,920Hz PWM dimming, Xiaomi is ticking those eye-care boxes. With its adaptive 1-120Hz refresh rate, gliding through menus is a smooth experience, and Amazon, Netflix and YouTube HDR support and 12-bit colour depth mean whether watching your own videos or streaming content on the 14 Ultra, it’s a great experience.
If you aren’t using some of the best headphones, the stereo speakers pump out loud, full sound. When gaming or holding the phone in landscape, they are relatively easy to cover up, but that caveat aside, the screen and speaker mix is excellent.
(Image credit: Basil Kronfli)
Powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 from Qualcomm, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is flagship through and through, and with 16GB RAM and 512GB of storage, whether multitasking or filling it up with 8K video and 30GB+ games like Genshin Impact, it’s made to last and perform very well.
While it can tear through top-tier games respectably, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is not one of the best gaming phones. In standard power mode, it applies a fair bit of throttling when playing demanding titles, which results in lag. You really need to turn on Game Boost (performance mode) to unlock the 8 Gen 3’s potential and, in turn, smooth gameplay.
As mentioned, the speakers are also easy to cover up, and ergonomically the camera bump makes for an unwieldy grip when holding the phone in landscape. So while the 14 Ultra does the job for gaming, you can get more gaming clout for less in phones like the Redmagic 9 Pro, provided you don’t mind taking a huge hit on that camera.
(Image credit: Basil Kronfli)
A couple of other factors hold the Xiaomi 14 Ultra back from being near-flawless. The first is a lack of eSIM support, a feature that’s fast become a staple of flagship phones. Xiaomi’s HyperOS on top of Android 14 is also frustrating in some areas.
The optional Lock Screen Carousel, which displays articles on your lock screen is also opt-out when it comes to advertising. Personally, I don’t want my £1,299 phone serving me ads as I come to unlock it. HyperOS also tries to push Xiaomi’s App Mall over the Google Play Store, and requires you to accept cookies for something as simple as changing a wallpaper.
So, while the Xiaomi 14 Ultra with HyperOS is smooth and stable day to day, Xiaomi undermines what it gets right with overbearing elements.
(Image credit: Basil Kronfli)
With a 5,000mAh battery, on paper the Xiaomi 14 Ultra should last for ages, and it comfortably makes it through a day of typical use. Though I struggled to get through a day with long bouts of either photography or gaming, so this isn’t a battery champion like the Honor Magic 6 Pro.
The 14 Ultra charges at 90W when using the wired charger in the box and takes around 35 minutes to fully charge. If you pick up a compatible Xiaomi wireless charger, you can hit 80W wireless speeds, which is impressively fast.
The 14 Ultra is the first phone to launch in the West with a second-generation 1-inch camera sensor (the LYT-900 from Sony). Xiaomi doesn’t stop there though, including a variable aperture that goes from f/1.63 to f/4.0. Part of a quad-camera system, all four of its rear cameras are 50-megapixel Sony sensors, and this translates to a seriously consistent experience across zoom ranges.
The secondary cameras include an ultra-wide lens at 12mm (0.6x zoom), a telephoto lens at 75mm (3.2x zoom) and a periscope lens at 120mm (5x zoom). All of these are matched with the same Sony IMX858 sensor, and feature wide apertures to deliver consistently competitive performance, whichever camera you’re using.
(Image credit: Basil Kronfli)
All four cameras also focus close to subjects, adding a huge amount of versatility to macro shots and showing up competitor cameras like the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s tetraprism periscope zoom.
Xiaomi’s camera processing builds upon the 14 Ultra’s powerful cameras with the help of Leica tuning. When taking photos, you can choose between Leica Authentic or Vibrant for a zingy or subdued look, and while this was clumsy in the past on phones like the Xiaomi 13T, photo quality from the 14 Ultra is better than anything I’ve ever seen from Xiaomi.
Leica’s processing gives shots a classical look. While the Google Pixel 8 Pro and Vivo X100 Pro capture plenty of shadow detail, the 14 Ultra leans toward contrast while still capturing plenty of texture.
The main camera’s party trick – that variable aperture – creates versatility when shooting in bright and dark scenes, making it the go-to camera in challenging environments. While I expected great things from the primary camera, I was most impressed by the 75mm and 120mm telephoto cameras, both able to take crisp shots of subjects far away and in most lighting conditions.
More than just a stills camera, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s video looks excellent. The rear camera can shoot at up to 8K at 30fps resolution or 4K at 120fps, and the front camera caps out at 4K at 60fps. While the iPhone is still the video winner for anyone who wants to shoot ProRes clips, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s variable aperture, out-of-the-box manual controls, and Log capture all help it compete.
(Image credit: Basil Kronfli)
Priced at £179, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra Photography Kit is expensive, but for a certain kind of photographer, it isn’t hyperbolic to say that it could be priceless, and the difference between capturing a shot and missing it.
On a practical level, the kit adds a 1,500mAh battery, zoom lever, two-stage shutter release, 67mm filter adapter, video button, and a custom dial that can control aperture exposure and other aspects of shooting. There’s also a lanyard which can be looped into the grip portion of the kit.
Oftentimes, while testing the phone, the lanyard would be hanging out of a pocket, and I would loop my hand in it, pull the phone out gripping the camera, press the shutter release and take a shot in moments. It’s so much less fiddly than using a touchscreen.
(Image credit: Basil Kronfli)
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s camera is so much more impressive than anything else available that it’s easy to argue away some of the small gripes found here. The camera spec is simply just so far ahead of the competition, so if photography is your main priority then it’s an obvious choice.
The biggest issues with this phone are a lack of eSIM support and Xiaomi’s overbearing HyperOS, but if neither are deal-breakers for you then the 14 Ultra is a premium, powerful smartphone that has a winning screen, plenty of storage, and delivers day-long battery life.
If you’re after an incredibly capable, versatile camera phone, then nothing can beat it. While it’s certainly expensive, it’s worth every penny.
The obvious alternatives to the Xiaomi 14 Ultra are the iPhone 15 Pro Max for iOS users, and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra or Google Pixel 8 Pro if you’re looking for an Android phone. Out of all three, the Pixel 8 Pro’s camera is most comparable to that of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra when it comes to reliably capturing a great shot time after time.
If you’re looking to save some cash, the excellent OnePlus 12 is another winning alternative thanks to its versatile camera and Hasselblad photo processing. And if you like the look of Xiaomi’s Leica features but don’t want to spend Ultra money, the standard Xiaomi 14 could fit the bill.
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A permanent exhibition at the University of Nebraska State Museum will feature photographer and Nebraska native Joel Sartore’s work to document every species living in the world’s zoos, aquariums and wildlife sanctuaries.
The “National Geographic Photo Ark” exhibition will open to the public April 19. Sartore started the Photo Ark project in his hometown of Lincoln in 2006. Since then, the world-renowned photographer and National Geographic Explorer has traveled the world in his quest to create a photo archive of global biodiversity that ultimately will feature portraits of more than 25,000 species of birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates.
The exhibition, comprising digital displays of Sartore’s photos and videos, will be on Morrill Hall’s first floor. A dedicated seating area will allow visitors to view the images and hear Sartore explain his mission and share behind-the-scenes details such as the challenge of getting animals to stay in one place long enough to photograph them.
It is a unique, long-term relationship with Sartore, whose commitment to wildlife conservation reflects the museum’s mission well, said Susan Weller, the museum’s director.
“It’s incredibly exciting to bring the Photo Ark to Morrill Hall,” Weller said. “Joel’s stunning photographs remind us of the interconnectedness of all life. We are looking forward to bringing this message of conservation to Joel’s hometown.”
The Photo Ark has taken Sartore to zoos, aquariums and wildlife sanctuaries around the world. He has produced several books on the theme and is a regulator contributor to National Geographic magazine. Sartore’s work also has been seen in Audubon magazine, Life, The New York Times and Sports Illustrated. His work has been covered by National Geographic’s Explorer, NBC Nightly News, NPR’s Weekend Edition, Fresh Air with Terry Gross and the PBS documentary series “Rare: Portraits of the Photo Ark.” He also is a regular contributor to the CBS Sunday Morning Show.
Benefactors of the Morrill Hall exhibit of the Photo Ark are Del Lienemann Jr. and his wife, Mary.
The National Geographic Photo Ark is a multiyear effort to raise awareness of and find solutions to some of the most pressing issues affecting wildlife and their habitats. In addition to documenting every species living in the world’s zoos, aquariums and wildlife sanctuaries, the project aims to inspire action through education and help protect wildlife by supporting on-the-ground conservation efforts.
No matter its size, each animal is treated with the same amount of affection and respect. The results are portraits that are not just stunningly beautiful, but intimate and moving.
“It’s the eye contact that moves people,” Sartore said. “It engages their feelings of compassion and a desire to help.”
Sartore holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and lives in Lincoln.
Megan Young and Mikael Daez clearly enjoyed their time doing self-shoot photography!
On Instagram, the Kapuso actress and beauty queen shared a short reel compiling some of their adorable photos taken at a self-shoot studio.
In the photos, Megan wore a white tank top and denim jeans, while Mikael sported an abstract blue shirt and jeans while striking goofy and cute poses in the camera. They might have been in super casual clothes but their photos turned out incredible — as if they were taken by professionals!
“I think I want to have a self-shoot studio again,” Megan wrote in the caption laughing.
In case you’re wondering, self-shoot photography is where individuals take photographs of themselves using a camera or a smartphone. In self-shoot photography, the subject and the photographer are the same person, allowing for self-expression and creative control over the image captured.
This style of photography has become popular over the years with the emergence of self-photography studios in and out of Manila.
Mikael and Megan got married in 2020 in intimate ceremonies. They previously worked together in the GMA shows “Dangwa,” “The Stepdaughters,” and “Royal Blood.”
In January, Megan visited Mikael in Seoul, where he was filming the second season of “Running Man Philippines.” They also celebrated their 13th anniversary as a couple that month.
The couple is currently building a content studio.
— Jade Veronique Yap/LA, GMA Integrated News
This story is featured in CityBeat’s April 17 print edition.
May Pang, former assistant-turned-lover of music legend, Beatle and artist John Lennon, spoke with CityBeat about her life, career and their time together ahead of her appearance at Mason’s Gallery 42 for her exhibit, The Lost Weekend: The Photography of May Pang, held on April 30 and May 1.
May Pang’s name is well known in John Lennon history, but not many know the whole story behind their connection. Pang became a recognizable character in Lennon’s life when she transitioned from assistant to companion and romantic partner in a period that saw Lennon enjoying one of the most fun and productive periods in his life and career.
This period came to be known as “The Lost Weekend,” which actually lasted 18 months from the summer of 1973 through the beginning of 1975 — and Pang was there for all of it. The upcoming photo exhibit, The Lost Weekend: The Photography of May Pang, gives some insight into their world and time spent together.
The period stretches across a pivotal time in Lennon’s life and career — the recording and release of Mind Games, Walls and Bridges and Rock ‘N’ Roll; the release of Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats, produced by Lennon; the dissolution of The Beatles; the reintroduction of Paul McCartney into his life and reconnecting with his son, Julian Lennon. Pang was present and often an active participant during these events, photographing all of it.
The exhibit is a complement to The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, the emotional and telling documentary released late last year on streaming platforms after being named a 2022 Tribeca Film Festival Official Selection. The film details her early life and her time with Lennon during one of the most eventful and historic eras of his life and, in turn, hers as well.
Pang is a New Yorker and her poise and good-natured charm immediately come through with her slight and at times charmingly thick New York accent. She still lives in the city and our talk took place shortly after the unnerving earthquake felt in New York that morning that she recalls with the familiarity of an old friend.
She is lively at times as she recalls memories with a laugh, such as the time she got lost on a walk on Lennon and Ono’s large Tittenhurst Park estate while working as an assistant to the couple. She also recalls with excitement an old notebook she recently found that depicts the level of events at the time. “Reminder to tell John and Yoko that they’re having dinner tonight and they’re sitting at the Secretary General’s table, U Thant,” she reads from one entry. (Thant was Secretary-General of the United Nations at the time).
She also speaks with a tone of seriousness on occasion, such as when she talks about deciding to tell her story with the new documentary, recalling her time as his partner after their history was sometimes diminished, in a way, or when people try to lay claim to Lennon connections of the era she knows aren’t completely true.
“Then when I saw how my storyline was being told you know, I said, ‘Wait a minute, I got to take back my narrative here. This is not the way it happened,’” Pang tells CityBeat.
Pang found her way into the music world through her rare upbringing. She says she felt “ostracized, in a way” being the first in her family born outside of China, “You’re not from there, you’re different. So, I found music.” Also, the family didn’t live in Chinatown like many other Chinese immigrant families, but in Harlem — then Spanish Harlem. “So, there were my roots,” she tells CityBeat as she recalls music in the streets on hot summer days and on TV.
Photo: Scott Segelbaum
May Pang with her photos
“At the time, there’s American Bandstand and you just said, ‘ah,’” she says, still swooning and with an almost invisible exclamation mark. “Music just sort of soothed my soul — it just fed all that went on and it just took me away. It’s like that Carole King song ‘Up On the Roof’ — ‘all your cares go away.’”
In 1970, at age 19, Pang got a job doing clerical work for ABKCO Records, which handled the Apple Records catalog along with The Rolling Stones, the Cameo-Parkway label and much more. Pang says the company moved into new offices and had varying open spots that she was able to fill, gaining experience in different jobs along the way.
By 1971, she worked exclusively for Lennon and Ono, where she helped organize their lives, among other things, between press, work and visits from famous friends like Bob Dylan and George Harrison. She was present for much of their work, such as the making of the iconic video for “Imagine,” with Lennon at the piano in the open white room of Tittenhurst. Pang says, “I remember that day.”
In 1973, at 22, she was approached by Ono to become Lennon’s partner when the couple began having problems.
“I looked at her like, ‘I’m not interested.’” They had been her bosses for the last couple of years, after all. “I knew every aspect of their daily lives, what it was like. I liked going home and just relaxing.” She says the only reason she changed her mind was that Lennon, who was also apprehensive at first, began to pursue her. She resisted still, for a time, before the two fell for each other.
The photos in the exhibit depict their interior life together at this time at home, as a couple on vacations at Disneyland with Julian, out and about with Nilsson and others, or at work in studios or behind the scenes on now-iconic photo shoots.
Lennon continued working and Pang continued working with him but adds, “I was not paid during the time I was living with John. I was with John as a boyfriend/girlfriend situation, not as people would think, as a paid employee or whatever else.”
Lennon was productive, despite initial hard partying with friends like Nilsson, Ringo Starr and Keith Moon, but Pang helped keep things on track.
“He would say, ‘Hey, listen I want to go into the studio, I want to record,’” she tells CityBeat of her role in his work. “I would say, ‘Where do you want to do it? Who do you want to do it with? What musicians do you want?’ And I would do all the prep work and then make sure that everybody got the sheets that they needed for songs, the equipment that John wanted, what musicians that he really wanted to make what songs and, of course, (for) the overdubs, what horn players or what string players and all sorts of things and if one wasn’t available, I had to find another.”
She also added to tracks in more directly recognizable ways like singing backup on the now Christmas classic, “Happy Xmas (War is Over),” and with a memorable, breathy whispered ‘John’ on Lennon’s “#9 Dream” from Walls and Bridges. Pang is credited as production coordinator on Walls and Bridges and later as “Production Co-ordinator and Mother Superior” on Rock ‘N’ Roll.
Featured in the exhibit, Pang also took one of the last photos of Lennon and McCartney together (there’s another from the same day in Beatles roadie and lifelong friend, Mal Evans’ book, Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans with Linda McCartney, Nilsson and Pang also pictured).
She recalls how the photo came to be in 1974 when Lennon and McCartney reconciled after years of silence since The Beatles’ breakup with a random visit to the studio from Paul and Linda McCartney at the end of a session. “I just happened to be facing the door and Paul and Linda walked in and it was like, ‘Oh my god, Paul and Linda.’ I had this look on my face and John heard me say it and he just turned around and he looked at him and he goes, ‘Hello, hey Paul.’ It was like as if they had just seen each other and it wasn’t in years. It was quite interesting.”
She also participated in what would be the last time the two would play music together after the session. The impromptu jam, which Pang calls a “good icebreaker,” also included Stevie Wonder on keyboards with Pang and Evans playing tambourines.
After Pang and Lennon got an apartment in New York, the McCartneys were their first visitors and Pang says they visited “many times” whenever they were in the city. They were also potentially one of the last visitors just before Lennon would eventually go back to Ono in early 1975.
Pang continued work in the music business after her time with Lennon, working behind the scenes at Island Records, ABC Radio and eventually in publishing for United Artists. She would marry another music legend, producer Tony Visconti, and have two children before a divorce in 2000.
Pang says she’s enjoying getting out to different parts of the country for the exhibitions. “You know, you get New York and L.A., but middle America, I wanna see.” She also mentions the fun of talking with people at the galleries.
“I was taking these photos for me and John, just so we could look and see if anything was interesting,” Pang says. “(I) didn’t think 50 years later it was going to be sitting on the wall. I’m glad I can give a different side of John that no one’s seen because these are not posed; they’re very candid home shots. So they can actually see what John was like and not what they read in the papers.”
Gallery 42 in Mason will host The Lost Weekend: The Photography of May Pang on April 30 from noon to 8 p.m. and May 1 from noon to 7 p.m. Pang will be in attendance. More info: artenclave.com/collections/gallery-42.
When you live in an utterly image-saturated culture, it can be all too easy to underestimate the power of the photograph, as well as the skills and processes behind the creation of an impactful image. Add the fact that practically all of us walk around with a device fitted with a camera in our pocket at all times, and the ominously growing prevalence of AI-generated imagery, and this muddies the waters even further. Freshen up your perspective by checking out the 2024 finalists of the National Photography Prize, Australia’s longest-running acquisitive photographic award. Established in 1983 at the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) on Wiradjuri Country, where it is still hosted to this day, the biennial award and exhibition is a snapshot (pardon the pun) of where photography is at as a medium.
From traditional film stills to digital imagery, unassuming smartphone snaps and camera-less imprints – when does a photographic piece count as art? Likewise, what qualifies a photograph as an important piece of documentation? The finalists of the National Photography Prize might just have the answers – these artists are pushing the boundaries of the photographic medium, and challenging existing languages and techniques. MAMA is a fresh and experimental gallery with a strong focus on photography, and Time Out’s Alannah Le Cross (that’s me) headed out there to explore the 2024 National Photography Prize exhibition (showing ‘til September 1 2024, free entry) with some guidance from MAMA’s Senior Curator Nanette Orly. Check out her findings.
Selected from 12 finalists to receive the $30,000 prize, Ellen Dahl’s winning work explores the fastest-warming place on Earth: the peripheral Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. On first impression, it looks like a darker, sort-of sinister doppelgänger of the type of stock landscape imagery you’d find on your new laptop’s home screen. Look closer, and you can start to see why Ellen is regarded as such a talented photographer. The four-part work, which is part of the ongoing project Field Notes from the Edge, presents close-up details of the rugged terrain which is collapsing due to melting permafrost, as a result of ongoing coal mining in the region.
Nanette says that Ellen’s work is so impressive because, even though she has been working with landscape photography for a long time now, she continues to push the development of her practice. This shines through in the presentation of ‘Four Days Before Winter’ – a large, suspended work on fabric is positioned at the centre of the display, hemmed by an illuminated print in a more demure-sized light box, while a perpendicular two-way image presentation protrudes from a wall. The artist is inviting us to look at the world from a new perspective, in more ways than one. The series not only brings into question the devastating effects of climate change, but also considers photography’s intrinsic involvement in how we see and feel about the world around us. Originally from arctic Norway and of Sámi descent, Ellen now lives on Gadigal Land, Sydney.
Olga Svyatova took out the $5000 John and Margaret Baker Fellowship for this sweetly nostalgic entry, which is also the only finalist work that incorporates iPhone photography. ‘Они/They’ is part of an ongoing photographic project that explores multiple connections between time, relationships, and archival images. Originally from Russia, Olga has drawn on their Babushka’s photo collection, discovering striking similarities between images from the family archive and seemingly random snaps from their own smartphone. It all began with a black and white photo of a family picnic in 1962, which looks spookily similar to a snap Olga took of a backyard gathering with their friends in Sydney. Appropriating their own personal experience of differing cultures and histories, Olga invites reflections on the intricate connections that sustain our lives across time and space. There is also something quite heartwarming about seeing a young queer artist simultaneously honouring the lineage of their born family and celebrating their chosen family, presenting both groups as equally important and essential to their being. Moving from Russia, where they grew up, to Thailand, Olga is now based on Gadigal Land (Sydney), where they graduated with Honours in Fine Arts from UNSW Art and Design. Their experience of cultural, geographic, and personal journeying drives their practice.
Showcased against a custom-painted royal blue and gold wall in the airy entrance foyer of MAMA, the alluring twinkle of the 92,000 Swarovski crystals that embellish Nathan Beard’s four-part entry into the National Photography Prize is the first thing that will catch your eye. The next element that draws you in is the eyes: piercing, regal, and knowing stares emanate from these reclaimed portraits. Nathan is a multidisciplinary artist who draws on his Thai-Australian heritage, and ‘A Puzzlement’ showcases four composite photographs drawn from ethnographic and botanical collections, alongside promotional imagery from The King and I. The striking bejewelled layers on these archival collages are painstakingly arranged in ombré patterns of blue, red, and purple – these shades contain Siam in their name: an antiquated term for Thailand now commodified for Western consumption, suggesting an exotic beauty. Nanette describes this project as “a reclamation of Thai-ness”. With an immediately-captivating visual presence and an intriguing historic backstory that challenges Western colonial conceptions, this is hands down our favourite work in the exhibition.
A vibrant and playful utilisation of the still life genre, ‘Joy’ is an ongoing project that explores adolescent fantasy. This is also Narrm/Melbourne-based artist Ali McCann’s ode to The Joy of Photography – a beginner’s guide to the medium published by Eastman Kodak in 1979. McCann deploys vaguely-early-‘80s-inspired aesthetics and various modes of appropriation in order to explore the illusionary, sentimental, and nostalgic tendencies of the photographic medium. You can practically feel the hypothetical vaseline smeared over the camera lens (and I mean that in the best way possible). This project also gets props from me for its similarities with the album art for the recently released debut album from indie pop star Chappell Roan, whose fans have been inspired by her clown-like, hyper feminine aesthetics. Ali is a repeat finalist, who also had work selected for the 2020 edition of the National Photography Prize.
Sammy Hawker’s ephemeral images call to mind the visual echoes of planets, galaxies, and Victorian era ‘aura photography’. The ACT-based artist (Ngunawal/Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country) uses Chromatography, a photographic process invented in 1900 that is primarily used by scientists to understand the chemical makeup of soil. However, Hawker uses the process to create abstract “portraits” from ash or ‘dead’ matter – recording the vibrancy of sources as disparate as drowned caterpillars, a real human placenta, and soil from a grave. Sammy also receives requests from people who wish to memorialise their lost loved ones, and with permission, a Chromatogram created from the ashes of a stillborn baby is included in the body of work displayed at MAMA. Merging the scientific with the emotional and spiritual, ‘Material Resonance [beyond the veil]’ speaks to the energy or memory inscribed within materials; yielding vivid, striking, and eerie results.
The product of a first-time collaboration between these Naarm/Melbourne based artists, this sculptural installation from Alex Walker and Daniel O’Toole might not immediately make sense to you as a photographic work, but lean in. The pair has used industrial methods of fabrication to create objects that illustrate the visual language of lenses and their antithesis – an approach that distorts rather than focuses an image – leading us to question the act of perception. A rather tongue-in-cheek entry, Anti-lens consists of two steel wall sculptures (one mirror-finished and the other black powder coated) as well as curved mirror-finished floor sculpture that refracts a projected video of oscillating in colours and gradients.
Ali Tahayori’s intimate black and white series is pungent with queer longing and the messiness of sexual discovery – as well as that particular universal brand of melancholy that can arise when you revisit the site of a formative moment from your youth, only to be confronted with its ordinariness. ‘IMPOSSIBLE DESIRE’ features a video work and a series of hand-painted photographs (containing a bodily fluid – we’ll let you guess which one) captured inside a public toilet in the artists’ hometown of Shiraz, Iran, where he had his first intimate experience as a teenager. Living and working on Gadigal Land, Sydney, Ali translates the traditional Iranian craft of Āine-Kāri (mirror-works) into a contemporary visual vocabulary. Working with images captured on his behalf by a friend, Ali poignantly combines a discourse about diaspora and displacement with an exploration of same-sex attraction.
Adelaide-born, Sydney-based artist Ioulia Panoutsopoulos’ body of work is an abstracted “inception” of photographic processes and studio practice that embraces both the analogue and digital realms. The works aim for an expanded pictorial nervous system, recording a digital transformation, processed, and captured through an analogue medium. Ioulia was also a finalist in the 2018 National Photography Prize, and she also won the John and Margaret Baker Fellowship for that year. The work she presents here is less about documenting a certain subject or telling a certain story, but rather it is focussed on experimenting with the photographic medium and pushing it in new ways.
Izabela Pluta’s large-scale photographs explore the aesthetic sensibilities of found ephemera lifted and collaged from numerous copies of genre-specific publications by the Reader’s Digest, which includes a 1980’s “Scenic Wonders of the World” book. Izabela is a Polish-born Australian artist based in Sydney, and her work examines the role of photography and the function of images to explore the concept of ‘place’ as informed by her migrant experience. ‘Shadowing’ calls to attention the impermanence and mutability of geographical boundaries and broader considerations of the effects of globalisation on culture, politics, and the environment.
Combining archival images from NSW National Parks and experimentation with 3D spatial modelling software, this work began as a research project concerned with 19th century landscape photography, environmental conservation, and the way they have both served the settler colonialist agenda. With a focus on the conservation ideologies developed in New South Wales and New England (USA), Gadigal/Sydney based artist Kai Wasikowski draws links between spatial modelling’s crude flattening of space to the 19th century Australian colonial photographic agenda, which created a “blankness” of place that implied it was previously uninhabited.
In creating this work, artists Rebecca McCauley and Aaron Claringbold were inspired by road trips between their homes in Victoria and Western Australia. It features a photographic slideshow looping on an old-school projector with accompanying sound work and narration, as well two sculptures fitted with screens to play digital slideshows (embedded into carseat headrests set at the artists’ heights, cute!). The work speaks to the vernacular of contemporary leisure, tourism, and car culture. With a critical lens, ‘Here’s what we know’ goes beyond the well-trodden territory of tourist commercials to question what it means to live in and move through places on a colonised land. This is certainly a work that you could sit with for hours.
This large-scale photographic assemblage by Sydney-based artist Skye Wagner sprawls six-and-a-half-metres wide across the gallery wall, and it aims to confuse your spatial understandings. This loosely curated chaos layers together found and made images, domestic objects, kitchen snacks, cherry pies and strings of pearls. I can’t quite articulate why, but it’s giving “girlhood is a spectrum”. You’ll also notice postage stamps and imprints of packing tape. Why is that? Well, the suite of photographs was produced during a research residency in Rome at the end of 2022, so Skye bundled up and posted over her existing work with some of it on the exterior of the package, so it would collect markings from the journey.
[FYI: The National Photography Prize is showing for free at MAMA, Albury, until September 1. Find out more about the exhibition here. Albury is a 5.5-hour drive from Sydney, and a 4-hour drive from Melbourne. It can also fairly easily be reached by plane or train, and you can score train fare from Melbourne for as little as $8 – a bargain!]
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