Big City Press is an independent publishing house, specialising in progressive books within the realms of photography, contemporary art, design and more. Based in Mosman Park, Western Australia.
Scheduled Publications:
Hijacked 1 - Australia & America (2008) *Released
Hijacked 2 - Australia & Germany (2010) *Release date June 2010.
Hijacked 3 - Australia & UK (2012) TBA
Hijacked is published Biennially.
Mark McPherson Editor
Mark McPherson is a 35 year old artist and art-photography entrepreneur. He is the founder of Big City Press, the independent West Australian-based publisher of the Hijacked photographic book series. Hijacked is a collaborative cross-cultural ensemble publication that surveys new photography from Australia, presenting it in contrast with work from a different country in each edition (USA in Volume One; Germany in Volume Two).
As a passionate curator, publisher and editor, McPherson is currently collaborating with emerging and established artists, curators, writers and photographers for future volumes of Hijacked. This unconventional project engages with alternative cultural and artistic networks of exchange and dialogue between contemporary Australian and international photographers.
McPherson is interested in the international state of photography, and its impact, integration and intersection with art photography practice and book publishing in Australia. He has already established an international reputation:
Hijacked Volume 1 was presented in the Book Award at the celebrated Rencontres d’Arles festival in France (2009) and received the Photo Book-Award of the Kasseler Fotoforum, Germany in the same year.
Hijacked Volume 1 was presented in the Book Award at the celebrated Rencontres d’Arles festival in France (2009) and received the Photo Book-Award of the Kasseler Fotoforum, Germany in the same year.
He is a nominator for the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2010 (UK).
He will present a workshop on photographic online communities at the Rhubarb-Rhubarb International Summer School (UK 2010).
He has been invited to join by Charles Fréger to establish POC Australia. (POC ‘Piece of Cake’ was created in Rouen in 2002 at the initiative of French photographer Charles Fréger. With a focus on photomedia, the group’s raison d’être is to enable young photomedia artists to interact via web-based media as they create, produce and distribute their works.)
pocproject.com
He will edit the inaugural Carte Blanche - Australia book with Maryann Camilleri, Magenta Foundation (Canada 2012). (Carte Blanche is a substantial and highly successful compendium of Canadian photographic artists, which is now moving onto the international stage by publishing national compendia for other countries.)
He will curate a survey of Australian Contemporary Photography for FotoFreo 2012.
He will curate the first FotoFreo Book Prize, 2012 in conjunction with the State Library of Western Australia.
Mark McPherson is married with two children. He works as a waterfront stevedore for Fremantle Ports and is an Adjunct Lecturer, School of Communications and Arts at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia.
Ute Noll Hijacked 2 Co-Editor
Ute Noll is known for publishing and exhibiting cutting-edge, fine art, documentary and emerging photography. She has been working in the field for many years. From 1999 to 2007 she was picture editor of the weekend supplement the major German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau.
In 2006 she founded the agency On Photography & Illustration and, in 2007, she opened the Uno Art Space in Stuttgart, where she regularly shows international photo exhibitions and holds lectures and workshops and coaches photographers.
Every month Ute Noll contributes articles about photographers, emerging talent, exhibitions and photo festivals in the German magazine Photographie as well as a number of other publications. Since 2004, Ms. Noll has been a team-curator and jury member of the annual international photo festival Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie. In 2010 the festival will award the 5000 Euro international ‘Merck-Award of the Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie’ for the third time.
Ms. Noll also works as a part-time lecturer on picture editing at two of the major German photo schools: the University of Applied Arts and Design in Dortmund and the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld.
She has been a member of several international juries over the years and is regularly invited to international photo-festivals around the world.
Ms. Noll was guest editor of issue 15 of the Spanish documentary magazine Ojodepez creating an issue entitled ‘I Want to Be Happy’ with projects by eight international photographers. She also showed the work in an exhibition at the Uno Art Space gallery in Stuttgart.
Markus Schaden Hijacked 2 Co-Editor
Markus Schaden was born in 1965 and lives and works in Cologne. He has been a book seller since 1985 and, in 1998, he opened the Schaden photo and design bookstore in Cologne. Since then, it has ranked among the best addresses for people interested in photography.
In 1995 he founded the Schaden publishing house, which publishes limited photography editions and special releases. In 2009 he won the Red Dot Design Award (an international design prize awarded by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, Germany, which honours outstanding design quality and trendsetters).
Since 2006, this acknowledged expert on photography books has worked as an editorial journalist for the international photographic magazine Foam, which is published quarterly by the Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam. He also writes the Bookmarks column for Photonews and his online portal regularly presents information on new photo publications.
Previously Markus Shaden was Vice President of German Society of Photography. He has served on the juries of photography festivals in Mannheim, Arles, Paris, Cracow and Los Angeles.
Fabio Ongarato Design Hijacked 2 Designers
Collaboration and experimentation are key to our creative process. We pursue a sophisticated process of extensive research coupled with intense design development that allows us to develop truly distinctive ideas.
Our designers are worldly, skeptical, inquisitive people with an exceptional eye for detail. Regardless of their training or the countries they come from, they have to wear many hats: designer, editor, curator, art director and craftsperson. They understand design as an experiential process; part intuition and part chance. Each is able to think beyond themselves and has the mental and emotional breadth to find inspiration from a whole range of influences and the maturity to accept that the solution might lie beyond the core competencies of the collective studio.
We push ourselves to look for solutions outside of conventional disciplines, sometimes bringing into the mix practitioners who normally wouldn't be regarded as having a place in design: where, for example, the exploration of contemporary art practice might bring a whole new dimension to a fashion campaign, or some other unexpected dimension to re-orient our interpretation of a subject.
We aspire to transcend established modes and genres, creating the kinds of outcomes that go beyond one's own intuition and comfort zone. This opens up new possibilities and perspectives for our own work - and ultimately must benefit our clients by satisfying their objectives - and at the same time bring a heightened sensuality into the equation.
We believe fundamentally that all design is about problem solving. But it's also about provoking consciousness, stimulating an aesthetic response and creating a sense of personal engagement.
fabioongaratodesign.com.au
Tom Muller Hijacked 1 Designer
Tom Muller is an artist and designer. He has issued worldwide passports online (World Passport, 2000 -), released a limited edition of 24 carat credit cards complete with instructions for melting (Gold Card, 2006), and opened a supermarket for limited edition works (Supermart, 2004). He currently is the designer for the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and Big City Press.
tom-muller.com