It’s surprising to Craig Atkinson that a decade has passed since he took this photograph. His eldest son Oscar stands to the left of the frame, his niece Emily to the right. Back then, they were five and four, excited young children preparing for the day’s festivities.

“We were at a Chinese wedding at Tatton Hall in Cheshire; it was early autumn and Oscar and my other son, Hugo, two, who is in the centre, looking at his iPad, were pageboys. Hugo is standing with my sister-in-law, Jade. It makes me feel nostalgic and sentimental.”

Atkinson says he rarely plans his photographs; alongside his work as a fine art lecturer and publisher of the Café Royal Books photography magazines, he mostly takes pictures of his family. “We have a couple of those screens around the house that display a random selection of photos of the kids; it’s a great conversation starter.”

Seven years ago, Atkinson set himself a challenge to use only a phone to take photos. “It meant no lenses, no SD cards, no wires and no heavy bags. I stuck to it and haven’t owned a camera for many years. I enjoy the freedom of not having all the kit and the decision-making that goes with it. I don’t try to take epic, highly edited single images, astro shots or sports. I’m more interested in the day, the story, the event.

“The eye contact is one of my favourite parts of this shot,” he says. “Along with their pride, and the innocence.”

In an effort to express the feelings of memory, affirmation and longing, the artistic vision of Gae Polisner and the photography of Rick Kopstein has culminated in a gallery of art that Long Islanders get to witness.

Collages made by Polisner using pictures taken by Kopstein are on full display in their art exhibit titled “PHOTO pOP” which runs through April 2 at Industry Lounge & Gallery at 344 New York Ave.

Huntington resident Polisner, an award-winning author of young adult and middle-grade books, began collaging during the pandemic in an attempt to discover something new and keep her mind at ease. It began as a hobby, but soon snowballed into a new profession after gaining inspiration from Kopstein’s
work.

Kopstein, of Huntington Station, had a show at Industry in October 2022 for the release of his book, “Made in New York,” a collection of photographs he took in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Having been friends with Kopstein for years, Polisner attended the show, and a new idea sprung as she was flipping through the pages.

“When I got in the car, I said to my husband, ‘Do you think he’d get mad at me if I cut his book up?,’” Polisner said. “Every image I see, if it’s an image that I love, I want to put it into my art.”

When Polisner got home, she called Kopstein and asked him if it was alright for her to cut images out of the copy of his book that she had bought, but he had a better idea in mind. He had the proofs for all of the images that he used and sent her those instead so she could use them in whatever ways she wante to.

Over the course of a year and a half, Polisner has made dozens of collages using photos that Kopstein has taken over the years. It has become a routine of Kopstein sending Polisner images that she could use, even putting his two cents into the artistic process.

“As time went on, she just got more experienced in collages and more creative,” Kopstein said. She was “getting pictures from me, even up until … a couple of weeks before the show, I would say, ‘Hey, how about this one?’ ”

After getting confirmation from Industry that the show was set to occur, Kopstein proposed the idea of putting the original photos he took next to the collages made by Polisner  to show how the images were reimagined.

The display is described by Polisner as “an exhibit of memory, affirmation and longing,” three adjectives that all stand on their own. The “memory” represents the nostalgia and history tied to Kopstein’s photos, and the memories that come along with them. “Affirmation” refers to the empowerment of women and tropes of feminism tied into most of her pieces, and “longing” alludes to
the yearning for easier times incited by the collages.

Polisner described her piece “She Huffed and She Puffed (Winter Tutu)” as representing “affirmation of power, the good kind of power as opposed to the evil kind of power.”

The title “Bardo” refers to the Buddhism term that means “the in-between state that we occupy between death, and whatever the next state of reincarnation is,” according to Polisner. The mostly-white canvas is meant to lack contrast on the white wall, as if it “almost disappears.”

Her collage titled “Off the Grid” included two plastic containers on the wall below it, each filled with small images that attendees could attach to the piece with Velcro. The interactive piece was altered throughout the night as people walked by and stuck a new image to it, some with purpose and others haphazardly.

All of Polisner and Kopstein’s work is for sale. Both contributors will be popping in regularly at the gallery to greet attendees and take pictures.

Photo of artists by Ken Farrell

Remaining photos by Kenny Spurell

#gallery-1 {
margin: auto;
}
#gallery-1 .gallery-item {
float: left;
margin-top: 10px;
text-align: center;
width: 33%;
}
#gallery-1 img {
border: 2px solid #cfcfcf;
}
#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {
margin-left: 0;
}
/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Kenny Spurrell is a reporter with The SBU Media Group, part of Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism’s Working Newsroom program for students and local media.

Shelf Life: Gae Polisner Perseveres at Storytelling

Arriving in the first batch of fixtures from this international break, our latest Framed instalment saw us taking in Italy’s first trip Stateside in almost 20 years. Their opponents were Venezuela, who weren’t at the Chase Stadium to role over on ceremony. Italy had a game on their hands…

Ellen Dahl, a Sydney-based artist from Arctic Norway, has won the $30,000 National Photography Prize from the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA), for her work exploring climate change in the Arctic.

Dahl’s work was chosen from a field of 12 finalists, including Sammy Hawker, Nathan Beard and Ali Tahayori. It’s a series of four prints, titled Four Days Before Winter, and part of the artist’s larger project Field Notes from the Edge, which explores peripheral spaces including Svalbard in Norway and Tasmania.

The photographs, taken on a trip to Norway in September 2019, depict the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard — the fastest-warming place on earth, which is also the site of more than 100 years of coal mining. In late 2023, the Norwegian government mandated the closure of the last coal mine in Svalbard within two years.

Running since 1983, the National Photography Prize is a biennial, acquisitive prize. At the opening event on Saturday, Sydney-based Russian artist Olga Svyatova also won the $5,000 fellowship for an emerging photographer, for their work They/Они, which features family photographs from the 60s paired with photos taken in the present-day.

‘Barren and raw’

Dahl wanted to capture the Norwegian landscape at its most “beautiful and melancholic”, she says.

“I knew that I was pushing my luck going up in mid–late September because it’s right at the cusp of winter.

Nici Cumpston, judge of the National Photography Prize, and curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the Art Gallery of South Australia, says she awarded the prize to Dahl because of the beauty and intimacy of her photographs, and the thoughtfulness and innovation in the way they are displayed.

One large image from Dahl’s series, Collapse, is a close-up of a collapsed terrain caused by melting permafrost. It’s printed on fabric and hangs from the gallery ceiling, moving slightly.

Three photographs in the series were taken in the abandoned Soviet mining town of Pyramiden. For Two Sides of the Same Place, a black mountain, once the site of coal mining, is presented on one side of a piece of fabric and a nearby shrinking glacier on the other. The work is mounted at 90 degrees from the wall.

The other photograph taken in Pyramiden is Arctic Coal Diptych, two framed images of a piece of arctic coal — one the original image and the other inverted digitally, turning the coal a shade of glacial blue.

The last photograph, titled Here/Now, depicts a mountain shrouded in fog and is displayed in a light box designed to mimic the soft light of the Arctic.

“It’s such a contradicting concept to have coal mining in the most vulnerable area of the world when it comes to climate change. Climate change is happening incredibly fast up there,” says Dahl.

Not a documentary

Dahl is descended from the Sámi, the Indigenous peoples of the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. She grew up in Hammerfest, in the north of mainland Norway, and studied photography in California before she moved to Australia at the age of 29, where she later received her masters of Fine Arts at the University of Sydney.

Now working across photography, video, sound and installation, Dahl made her start in advertising and editorial photography, and in 2006 her portrait of model Megan Gale was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. She is currently working on her PhD at University of Tasmania.

Dahl doesn’t see herself as a landscape photographer. Instead she’s interested in her photography being a reflection of place, belonging and identity. Her work is not an act of documentary either, but instead is trying to inspire connection between the viewer and Svalbard as a place — at a time when people may feel numb to hearing the facts about climate change.

“I hope people see it maybe from a slightly different perspective and different light and feel something,” she says.

Cumpston says it’s important to listen to First Nations artists like Dahl who are highlighting the threat of climate change.

“It’s important for all of us globally to know what’s happening on that international scale, because of course these same effects are happening within our country,” she says.

“But to be able to relate it internationally helps raise a deeper awareness. And it’s really important for the education of the next generation of people coming through, so they actively do something about it.”

The National Photography Prize is at Murray Art Museum Albury until September 1.​

A new book, The Package Holiday 1968 – 1985, published by Hoxton Mini Press (available from Amazon), taps into 1970s Brits’ love of sun, sea and teensy weensy Speedos.

In 1960s Britain, jetting ‘abroad’ was a pursuit associated with sophisticated socialites like Aristotle and Jacqueline Onassis, characters such as James Bond and working-class superstars the Beatles. It was only the late 1950s that British European Airways set up its ‘package holiday’ deals to Spain, incorporating short flights, hotel, all-day board, and lashings of family-friendly fun, with Valencia being the first destination. The deals were a hit, and the White Coast region got a canny rebrand as ‘Costa Blanca’ soon after. 

Package Holiday: a very British love affair in pictures

By the 1970s, many Britons, accustomed to their nation’s short or often rain-drenched summers, were thirsty for a taste of the White Coast and its exotic promise of tans, al fresco dining, and bourgeois sports such as table tennis. The chance to slip into something more comfortable by way of Speedos, bikinis and super-short shorts was an added, and most obviously welcome, extra.

None of this new-found Technicolor fun was lost on the London Royal Air Force-trained photographer Trevor Clark, an Eastender who, having set up a studio in Soho, had become the go-to photographer in 1960s Swinging London, documenting the exploits of bands such as the Beatles and The Rolling Stones while he was at it.

Clark fancied a few rays himself and spotted a gap in the market photographing the wave of newly established resorts in the Balearics, and Mallorca in particular. His images, now collected in a book by his son Jake Clark, not only captured the glamour of the location – those saturated colours would have seemed like a window into another universe on the brochure stands of high-street travel agents back in Blighty – but reflected the ambitions of a generation eager to escape the social and economic restraints of life in a rapidly de-industrialising Britain. Two weeks in Magaluf were, then, an exercise in aspiration acted out in the new style of nylon leisure suits and, a dream that was accessible in the way that Carnaby Street’s delights of the previous decade simply weren’t.

The Package Holiday 1968 – 1985, by Jake Clark with photography by Trevor Clark, at hoxtonminipress.com, also available at Amazon