3. A Visit to the Art Gallery
Street Photography
It’s still summer here in New Zealand. As midday approaches, the sun bleaches the facades of buildings, and the shadows retreat. It’s not usually the best time for taking street photos.
I spent Friday morning in the city centre, jostling for position. Two cruise ships had arrived, flooding the centre of Dunedin with busload after busload of camera-toting, phone-holding, selfie-stick-yielding visitors. I could have been mistaken for one of them with my backpack and camera — a tourist in my own town. They would be gone before the end of the business day. However, there would likely be another cruise ship arriving the next day, and another discharge of tourists with a few hours to visit and document the main attractions. I retreated to the Art Gallery.
The Dunedin Public Art Gallery
When I visit art galleries, I often find things to photograph. Signs and exits punctuating pristine interiors, shadows cast on white walls, polished aluminium elevator doors reflecting the light from a video installation — there’s always something. Then, of course, there’s the art. And other gallery visitors.
For me, a good art exhibition is one that wakes me up, stirs my creative energy, and makes me want to go out and do something. Rebecca Baumann’s current show at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Light Interference, inspired me to take some photos without leaving the gallery.
By applying dichroic film to skylights, window panels, and other transparent material, light entering the gallery space is coloured, shifted, and refracted. Her work draws our attention to the chance alignment of light, colour, and objects, and how these relationships change over time and as we move through space.
If we pay attention, we can enjoy similar performances outside the art gallery, when light does its magic — just for a moment, just where we are, and just for us.
Download the photo
The last photo in this post (Seating arrangement) is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand (CC BY 3.0 NZ) license (required attribution: Mark McGuire). You can download the full-resolution original image from here.
What’s next?
I’ve recently been photographing shopfronts, street markings, lone pedestrians, and signs with nothing on them. I plan to publish a post about one of these topics, or something else, next weekend. You can receive the next post by email by subscribing below.
What do you think?
Is there something relating to street photography that you would like me to discuss? Is there something you would like to share (a resource, a technique, or a personal photographic experience)? Please leave a comment at the end of this post. Just say hello if you like.
I love hitting more art galleries when I have the time, or feel uncreative.
Really enjoy the way you caught the colors, and light in play within these frames; been reading about the effects of color on personality. So this was a fun exhibit to see.
Also, love how present you are in your environments.
Marvelous! I saw the installation in person and focused on the panels arrayed on the wall. Your photography has transformed Baumann's installation into another artwork, fusing the interior display of light with the street scenes outside the windows (which I never thought to look through, being caught up in the interior display). I was particularly partial to the self portrait of man with camera ...