About

STORY

Brian Condron was born in Toronto, Canada in 1949

Brian Condron was born in Toronto, Canada in 1949. He picked up a camera at the age of eighteen after seeing a touring National Film Board exhibition ‘Call Them Canadians’. From that time on, photography has been his passion and his professional life.

After graduating from Sheridan College (Applied Photography) in 1971 and from York University (BFA, Visual Arts) in 1976, Condron pursued an interest in black & white social landscape photography. He exhibited widely during this time; surviving through part-time teaching, photo sales and the generosity of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

In the mid 1980s Condron was offered a part-time newspaper job in Toronto at The Financial Post. This position led him to become a newspaper/magazine photographer, albeit an unusual one, always with a small Leica in his kit.

In 1990, Condron immigrated to Australia where he worked for The Australian newspaper and for BRW magazine. Although he found photojournalism interesting, it was never a passion and the nagging compulsion to take candid pictures on the street remained.

These days, Brian Condron lives just outside Brisbane with Desley, his wife. He continues taking pictures and has recently returned to exhibiting. And he still carries that Leica.

AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

Recent CV

RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2017 ‘Street Seen’ - University of Southern Queensland
2016 ‘Street Seen’ - Queensland Academy for Creative Industries

RECENT GROUP SHOWS

2019 Fluke, Murze Magazine, UK
2019 The Decisive Moment, Praxis Gallery, Minneapolis, USA
2016 UrbanPhotoFest, Tate Gallery, London, UK
2016 Monochrome Award, London, UK
2016 Bowness Photography Awards, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne
2016 ‘Connect’, University of Central Oklahoma, USA

PUBLICATIONS

2019 Fluke, Murze Magazine (Feature), Issue 4, Feb.2019, UK
2017 Toowoomba Chronicle, 25 August, Review, S. Pottinger
1996 Thank You, Robert Frank, Scalo, Berlin

COLLECTIONS

National Gallery of Canada
National Photographic Collection, Public Archives, Canada
University of Western Ontario, Canada
Art Bank, Canada Council
Private collectors

IN THE MEDIA

Interview with Murze Magazine, 2019

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF, YOUR BACKGROUND AND YOUR WORK.

I grew up in Toronto, where I began taking street photographs as a teenager. I’d been trained as a commercial photographer and I worked as a newspaper and magazine photographer in Canada and in Australia, where I migrated in 1990. Accommodating my vision to the commercial format was always a source of frustration, at odds with the nagging compulsion to take candid photographs on the street.

WHAT FIRST GOT YOU INTERESTED IN PHOTOGRAPHY?

The National Film Board of Canada had a still photography division whose job it was to collect and exhibit photographs. In my teenage years I encountered one of their travelling, black and white exhibitions. I’ve never forgotten the impression the candid photographs, in particular, made on me.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR APPROACH TO PHOTOGRAPHY?

On the street, for a few hours, I am able to shed my day-to-day concerns. I have no fixed notions other than to say I’m looking for uncommonness in the everyday. I am drawn to juxtapositions and small gestures. By putting my frame around these moments I can sometimes give them new meaning, rendering tragedy as comedy or the mundane as absurd.

WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS THE MOST CHALLENGING THING ABOUT BEING A PHOTOGRAPHER?

For a photographer, finding a personal vision can be difficult. The goal is to determine which parts of one’s photographs are personal and unique, and to nourish that point of view.

TELL US WHAT GEAR YOU USE, WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE EQUIPMENT TO USE?

I use a Leica M7 with a 35mm lens to make my black & white photographs. This combination allows me to be unobtrusive. It’s important for me to be close to a scene, yet still be an observer. I deliberately avoid using a digital camera for my work. Drawing a distinct line between my analogue photographs and the digital pictures I took to support my family has helped me separate my personal work from commercial interests.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU HAVE FOR OTHER PHOTOGRAPHERS?

Photographers, like any other creatives, can suffer from a lack of self-belief. Positive feedback will come and go. Being naturally stubborn can help when outside support is lacking. The only ‘expert’ on the subject of your work is you.

APPROACH

Condron's Photography Style

These photographs are a response to the nagging compulsion to go out into the jumble of life and look at ordinary events in an unordinary way. Timing, framing and juxtaposition are used to bring meaning to passing situations.

What you see is the product of a wry point of view. The jokes are affectionate, the cynicism gentle, the confronting moments few.

And in the end, when novelty and humour are spent, these frozen fractions of time will break your heart.

WHAT THEY SAY

Reviews

His strolling humour focuses for a moment on a costume, a poster, a gesture, a pause in the garish crowd. Then as quickly he passes on, never belabouring his visual remarks and leaving us to smile unresentfully at ourselves in the shade of our steel-constructed palm tree.

LILLY KOLTUN

Condron is a master of the candid. With the astute eye of the flaneur, he captures individuals abandoned to solitude in the midst of the city. The camera bears witness to silent narratives, the dramas of everyday life...