Neil Duncan: Art Imagery

The exhibition at the Balmain Watch House, 179 Darling st. Balmain is open between August 17 and 4pm on Sunday 25th.

Neil Duncan, who has produced world-class photography over four decades, presents 27 pictures for The Last Dry Dock exhibition from his Balmain Shipyard portfolio. Also included are 6 historical pictures. and 13 of Steve Leadenham's superb paintings.

Neil captures the dry dock’s modern environment through the precision skills of its engineers and tradesmen, who share a proud place in Balmain history. They are the living link to a workforce that has been active on Sydney Harbour since well before the shipyard opened 158 years ago. Neil’s previous Balmain heritage projects include his acclaimed photo essay on the old Colgate Palmolive factory during the decommissioning of that industrial landmark.

All of the photographs are for sale, please contact Neil.

With different coloured light trails and overlapping impressionistic fragments of moons, stars and harbour lights the colour photographs seem intrinsically musical. Neil Duncan embraces uncertainty to the point where he almost seems to be playing his camera as an accompaniment to the dark mass of the sea.

Duncan's vision for this exhibition was forged during a voyage he made from a yacht. Effortessly guided by satellite navigation, and with only the light of the moon over the Arafura Sea and occasional passing ships. Duncan eased the boredom of his night watch by taking photographs. The idea behind Neil Duncan's Ships In The Night photographs seems less then promising. Making long-time exposures from the deck of a yacht at night suggests unsharp images at best but Duncan's elegant pictures however, show what can be acheieved when a photographer deliberately chacnes their eye against time.

Neil Duncan, defies easy definition as a photographer. Obviously an accomplished newspaper photojournalist, Duncan is also one of the few photographers capable of making photographs (pictured) that seamlessly evoke music. Using long exposures to observe moving highlights and reflections in water these poetic images instantly suggest music, especially the free forms of jazz. Duncan is also showing his documentation of workers from the once active Colgate Palmolive factory, several nudes and four decades of newspaper photojournalism. Nothing succeeds like excess!

Neil Duncan brings Impressionism to photographing sports

Photographer Neil Duncan is nothing if not prolific - and inventive. After his recent, successful exhibition "The Works" at the Watchhouse Gallery, Balmain Duncan was invited to participate in the first Head On Photo Festival, this time showing "Hey Sport!" his impressionistic images of sport, shot at slow shutter speeds. This is a theme to which photographers serially return, after dissatisfaction with merely capturing, in razor-sharp detail, those familiar, peak moments that sport provides. Both David Potts and David Moore experimented with these techniques in London in the 1950's and Neil Duncan now brings his preoccupation with the fluid, undefined moment to the surface with this selection at Airport North Gallery.