THE PLANET OF POSSIBILITIES: EXHIBITION 2023

Tony Maniaty’s latest exhibition, ‘The Planet of Possibilities’, is showing at Sydney’s Kirribilli Centre Gallery from 18 November to 9 December 2023. Featuring work from his travels in Greece, Turkey, France, Britain and Australia over the past four years, the exhibition explores ideas of beauty and fragility in our current world, and the need for heightened creativity in the face of mounting global problems - or, as one French critic wrote, “the razor’s edge on which we are all dancing these days…” The exhibition is a feature of this year’s Head On Photo Festival in Sydney.

Amid growing concerns about climate change and the environment, what value does art have, and why should we embrace it with passion?

In Tony Maniaty’s view, art has the ability – by bringing together human imagination and intelligence – to create unique works able to reflect the human experience in new ways, and to broaden our thinking about what life on Earth is and can still be. “Creativity,” hes ays, “involves intuitive thinking and making choices from an array of possibilities. Photographs lead us to new ways of seeing, of understanding, and to fresh appreciations of beauty. I see this as photography’s gift to humanity.

Maniaty adds, “I’ve called this exhibition ‘The Planet of Possibilities’ because as a photographer and an individual, I seek out humanity, and because I believe that, by appreciating not only the beauty of our planet but the miracle of our brief human existence on Earth, we might still deserve our place on this tiny speck of rock and water. I’ve tried to message these emotions in my images. Every day we become increasingly aware of how fragile this planet we live on, this Earth, really is. The more we see of beauty, the more we’re inclined to appreciate it, to revere it rather than damage it. We need to open our eyes to the beauty of the planet in order to save it.”

To purchase prints from the exhibition, go to StudioTettix: https://studiotettix.com/

Here’s a short video taster of the exhibition…

‘AMOUR TOUJOURS’: EXHIBITION, ALLIANCE FRANÇAIS

Through February-April 2022, the Alliance Française de Sydney held an exhibition of my Paris photographs on the theme of love. The images were shot in the City of Light in 2020 - I wanted to show not the darker side of the Covid pandemic but the humanity that emerged in the determination, fighting spirit and shared emotions of the Parisians to the crisis. This too was a form of love, where the care shown to others was paramount: every night at precisely eight o’clock, people would appear on their apartment balconies and clap in support of the French health workers who were struggling against immense odds, not without personal danger. I found this extremely moving, a reaffirmation of love and humanity in the face of global anxiety and uncertainty.

The exhibition prints - all monochrome, my preferred medium - are available for purchase from the StudioTettix website.

Some images here from the installation, and a brief video of the work on show at the Alliance Française de Sydney.

‘OUR HEARTS ARE STILL OPEN’: EXHIBITION / PHOTOBOOK

In conjunction with the 2021 Head On Photo Festival, the exhibition of my photographs - ‘Our Hearts Are Still Open: Paris Photo/Reportage’ - was launched at The Kirribilli Centre Gallery in North Sydney by Head On’s Founder and Director, Moshe Rosenzveig OAM, with a warm and generous speech also by the French Consul-General in Sydney, Anne Boillon. The show ran across November/December 2021. The images are included in my photobook Our Hearts Are Still Open / Nos Coeurs Sont Toujours Ouverts, which includes a 5,000 word essay by renowned Australian philosopher Raimond Gaita - ‘Assessing Our Humanity’ - exploring the deeper impacts of the Covid pandemic. The book, published in March 2022 by StudioTettix, documents life in a much-altered City of Light: a Paris sans tourists, sans traffic, a reflective oasis amid a global plague. The exhibition prints in monochrome are available from StudioTettix. Here’s a short video taster of the exhibition…

IMMERSION WRITING WORKSHOP 2019

Australia has a plethora of regional writers’ centers, catering to a variety of genres and experience levels. One of the best is the New England Writers’ Centre (NEWC) in Armidale, chaired by celebrated Australian author and local resident Sophie Masson (below).

The drive north of Sydney takes around six hours, through drought-stricken sheep country to a tidy town of 24,000 souls and many churches. I was there in March 2019 to deliver a one-day workshop on non-fiction immersion writing, based invariably around often traumatic, life-changing experiences. (House rule number one: ‘What’s said in the group stays in the group.’) Typically these sessions open with friendly banter, develop through cross-exchanges of personal experience and end with revelations about the participants’ lives - confirming that writing at this level is not only a process of creativity but also of self-exploration and, at some level, therapy. The passion to ‘get started’ on a book was palpable. Delivering workshops like these is part of the mix of being a writer, along with lectures, book reviews, prize judging, juggling finances and publishers - and, when the muse hits, the ‘closed door’ journey of writing books.  

CANBERRA WRITERS FESTIVAL 2018

Designed by the American architect Walter Burley Griffin in the early 20th century, Canberra is a planned city in which, as Australia’s politicians frequently discover to their dismay, not everything goes to plan. A leafy, sprawling national capital with a population of just 400,000 (a great percentage of those being bureaucrats), its Parliament House has, in recent years, seen more than the usual level of chicanery associated with Australian politics: the nation has burned through five Prime Ministers in the past eight years, and all indications are there’ll be a new leader next year. Plan, what plan?

By contrast, the Canberra Writers Festival in its third year (the second under Artistic Director Jennifer Bott AO) proved to be a well-organized mix of passionate debate, engaging conversations and good literary company. Spread over some great venues, including the imposing National Library of Australia (one of my favorite public buildings), the four-day festival brought together a generous mix of literary stars (action-thriller writer Matthew Reilly flew in from L.A. and Irvine Welsh from Scotland), leading Australian writers/journalists, and various political heavyweights under the theme Power, Politics and Passion.

I had two appearances. Firstly, on a panel discussing the pitfalls of writing novels (aptly titled ‘What Could Possibly Go Wrong’) in which every conceivable blockage to greatness was aired, from mildly-distracting marriage breakups to the serious dangers of collaboration to the ultimate evil of editors slashing perfectly brilliant manuscripts with their heartless, pitiless pens. (The stuff that no aspiring author wants to hear, of course, although the audience was highly attentive and eager to learn…)

Secondly, a terrific interview with author Lisa Portolan, author of Happy As: Why the Quest for Happiness is Making Us Miserable. We explored a wide range of themes around the elusive notion of happiness, not least, as Lisa asks, ‘Why do we devote so much of our lives to attaining such a transient state?’ plus the irony of why humans try so hard to keep up with their social peers when equally they admire the rebels who don’t. The role of social media too: how it brings together communities of interest to positive effect while also allowing users to create ‘polyester identities: completely and utterly fake’. After a fascinating hour we’d barely scraped the surface of what constitutes, for most of us, the ultimate measure of a good life - are we happy or not?

JAIPUR LITERARY FESTIVAL 2018

Billed as 'the greatest literary show on Earth', Jaipur in 2018 didn't disappoint. Covering the five-day event for ABC Radio's 'Book Hub', I caught up with a wide range of authors (more than 200 in attendance this year) including Michael Ondaatje, whose photograph I took for US Publishers Weekly at the Adelaide Festival Writers Week years ago. I had the pleasure of interviewing several Indian authors including UK-based Preti Taneja, whose striking debut novel We That Are Young - a retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear set in modern India - was named one of The Sunday Times 2017 Fiction Books of the Year.

Another wonderful encounter was with the Los Angeles-based novelist Charmaine Craig (below, at book signing), author of the compelling Miss Burma - based on the turbulent history of her mother's family in Burma and the struggles of the Karen minority. I recorded a lengthy interview to coincide with the novel's Australian release later this year. Longlisted for the 2017 US National Book Awards, Miss Burma has great reviews. 'In reimagining the extraordinary lives of her mother and grandparents,' Emma Larkin wrote in The New York Times, 'Craig produces some passages of exquisitely precise description.' It's a terrific novel of human strengths and foibles.

Jaipur was a color riot (it's known as the 'Pink City') but I also went monochrome to capture some of the thousands of faces in the crowd. I was struck by the preponderance of young people - around 60% of those attending the festival were under 25, which bodes well for literature (in India at least!) I've posted some of my mono Jaipur images on the Photography page.

You can listen to my ABC Radio National report on the 2018 Jaipur Literary Festival here.

ABC STORYTELLING WORKSHOPS

Working with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Deborah Fleming AO, former Executive Producer of ABC’s Australian Story, I co-hosted video storytelling workshops during 2017 for news producers around Australia.  Exploring and dissecting what makes a great story is always illuminating, and I enjoyed these workshops immensely. 

For two decades, the award-winning Australian Story has been one of Australia's top-rating programs. In 1995 I helped devise the program along with Deb Fleming and a talented team, and Deb went on to helm the show for 19 years through season after successful season. It’s won countless prizes and nominations and is still going strong.

These one-day workshops drew draw on our long experience and highlighted the key ingredients of a well-told video story, employing techniques from classic cinema, stage drama and literature along with examples from contemporary media. (Everything from Scorsese to Kundera to French TV ads...) The enthusiasm and creativity of the young journalists attending was palpable, and impressive.

Storytelling transcends technology, going back to the beginnings of human communication, but I'm fascinated by how we can use the power of many platforms and outlets - TV, radio, social media - to reach new audiences in new ways. In that sense, I see storytelling not as displaced or diminished but confirming its absolute role in whatever cultures we live and work in.  Our lives are stories - we live and breathe our stories - and, without stories, who are we?