Reviews for “Freedom’s Edge” by Victoria Ginn
A powerful study of the psychology of imprisonment, as well as a portrait—in words and images—of Afghanistan in the last days before the Soviet invasion and the rise of the Taleban. read more
The Dominion, March 2001—“Paperbacks” column. Reviewer David Larsen
Freedom’s Edge is Victoria Ginn’s gripping account of what happens when an adventure goes off the rails. read more
North and South Magazine, February 2001. New Zealand Books by Chris Bourke
Spare, vivid, never self-indulgent, Freedom’s Edge is made even more pleasurable for the reader by the inclusion of 68 black-and-white plates printed from the films Ginn was able to recover before she left Afghanistan—at the cost of a friend’s imprisonment. read more
Kennedy Wayne, Signature Magazine Aug/Sept 2001
It’s such a reminder of the days when many people travelled in those wonderfully exotic parts of the world, and freely and easily spent all sorts of time (for all sorts of reasons) in Kabul. read more
Anne MacKenzie, Telefilm Canada—January 26 1998
In my humble opinion, the draft screenplay/outline contains all the ingredients for a riveting feature film... read more
S. Wayne Clarkson, Chairman/CEO, Ontario Film Development Corporation
As I read the Treatment the story was happening on a screen for me... I can see the potential for a really interesting film. read more
Moya Wood, Feature Film Assessor, Australian Film Commission
Reviews for “The Spirited Earth” by Victoria Ginn
Dear Victoria,
your new prints are quite overwhelming and, indeed, appear to have been won by the greatest effort, both psychic and otherwise. There is an even greater intensity and sense of authority in this new work - a sense of having entered an almost mythic or neolithic world where the spirits still walk and where life is surrounded in the mysteries. I am sharing your work with our editors, Steve Dietz and Larry Frascella. Can we begin to conceptualize the work as it might be published? Many thanks for sharing this important achievement with us.
Michael E. Hoffman
Executive Director
Aperture Foundation For Photography and the Visual Arts
Aperture Publication
New York
1987
The Spirited Earth is a stunning display which blends Ginn’s photos with her commentaries on societies which still blend religious tradition and performance.
The Bookwatch, USA
Successfully conveys the essential message of the performance through one moment of photographic stillness...
Photographic Resource Centre, Boston University
Ginn’s photographs catch the grace and energy of the performances...
American Booklist
Enthralling portrayals of performance art.
London Sunday Times
Stunningly beautiful tribute to the exotic.
Dance Magazine New York N.Y.
The work, superbly illustrated is a hymn of love for humanity. This fabulous reportage is unique in its kind.
Var Matin, Paris
A collection of surprising beauty and originality.
Le Dauphine Libere, Paris
In her exquisite book, Ginn shows the diversity of the societies she visited while revealing their shared interest in preserving their traditional cultures.
Publishers Weekly, USA
Visionary sensitive photographs
Stern Magazine Germany
She produces images of great variety which defy any categorisation just as each photograph defies exact referential interpretation. She could be seen as a new element of an important trend in modern photography which is normally seen as “surrealism” but it should be noted that these images are proposing anew approach as they are deeply rooted in eastern mythologies.
Alain Sayag, Curator for Photography, Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris
Not only I, but the few who work with me here, have been immensely impressed by the beauty, the originality and heightened perception of your work. It is a remarkable achievement.
Sir Laurens van der Post
...her photography is not only of the highest quality, but is both imaginative and truly revealing of the marvelous qualities of her subjects...
Michael Hoffman, Executive Director, Silver Mountain Foundation, Incorporating Aperture, New York, New York
...an outstanding photographic record of dance in Asia which will complement and enhance the collections in our dance archive, the premier collection of dance materials in the world.
Dr Robert M Henderson, Chief, Library and Museum of the Performing Arts, New York, New York
This is a book to lie in a pool of sunshine with, a book which sleep will prise from your fingers and whose images dance through your dreams.
Tina Finn, The Dominion. 1991
Reviews for “Figure In The New Zealand Landscape”
“FIGURE IN THE NEW ZEALAND LANDSCAPE” (2005)
128 pages of photographs on 150 gsm matt art paper.
Order your author-dedicated first edition copy now - NZ$45 or US$35 (shipping included)
Please send payment with your order to:
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Foreign rights for sale and distribution are available.
Douglas and Aberhart can be said to work in the aesthetic mainstream. It is not so easy to place Christine Webster or Victoria Ginn, the first photographer to have a one-woman show in the main room of the Wellington City Art Gallery ... Ginn's show is concerned largely with figures in coastal and rural landscapes ... There is a quality in the human arabesques that brings out an answering dynamic in the inanimate shapes but, unlike Douglas, establishes as well a tense contrast between the texture of the human body and that of the land forms.
Of the four photographers Ginn is the most concerned with the resolution of complex thematic problems. There is no attempt to pursue narrative, dramatic or sexually evocative ends. All the values are internal to the picture. There is a gravity about this work already well known to Ginn's admirers, especially in her series of the New Guinea Highlands. She would like to continue this exercise in exploring the powerful visual influence of a pervasive ritual life. One hopes she will have the opportunity.
John Roberts, Listener magazine (NZ). 1981
Victoria Ginn throws down the gauntlet of raw courage challenge with a series of colour works strongly based on a period of pseudo surrealism mixed with impressionism—from the brilliant first print through a strange mixture, artfully photographed, cleverly posed, and technically perfect work.
Auckland Herald, 1981 Reviewer unknown
In this photograph ‘Untitled 1980’ the viewer feels the antithesis of forms with a shiver: a curvaceous naked female form reclines over a jagged rock surrounded by a snow clad mountain in which naked areas of rock protrude.....
Picture of the month, Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Outstanding visual effects are achieved. While in some photographs there is a conscious correlation drawn between human and landscape forms, in other works the emphasis is placed more on establishing a harmonic contrast. The naked girl climbing over a wire fence strikes a humorous, if bizarre note, which is re-echoed in some of the more theatrical works. In many works the costumed figure are used like question marks, accentuating the colour, texture and line of the land forms behind.
Dominion Newspaper, 1981
Stunning...Visually arresting and imaginative, and looked to this layman at least, superb.
Elva Bett, Evening Post Newspaper, 1981
Exceptional and beautiful.
Fiona Kidman. Bookmarks. The N.Z Listener
I found your work interesting for its strangeness, it has not really anything to do with images seen before..... You have to persevere despite your isolation.
Alain Sayag, Curator for Photography. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Photographs of Victoria Ginn (Figure In a N.Z Landscape) are in the collection of the national museum of modern art and will be shown, in temporary display of our permanent collection.
Alain Sayag, Curator for Photography. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
I am reminded of the work of the New York photographer, Diane Arbus. If each took devastating photographs they reveal, finally, in their work, seperate possibilities. Arbus wrote: “I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies...you do approach that stricken feeling where you know you can get killed”. Both women trespass in their photographs psychic limits. Both became casualties to the nightmarish reality they observed on our behalf. But in Victoria Ginn’s recent work (Figure in a Landscape) we have something beyond a combat death. Rather, shots of something hinted at in a poem by James K. Baxter:
To pray for an easy heart is no prayer at all
Because the heart itself is the creaking bridge
On which we cross these Himalayan gorges
....do not rail at
The only gate we have to paradise.
Don Long
Reviews for “Inside Outsiders”
"Photography's claim to being the most popular art form is well supported by the interest being shown in Victoria Ginn's photographs of people, exhibited in the University library ... the most exciting show by a local artist seen in this town in the last couple of years. If it is presumptuous to see this exhibition as an autobiographical statement, it is not so to be aware of a very personal purgatorial vision of the city, balanced by an exuberance, a deep compassion for people and a warmth that is lacking from, say, Ans Westra's work, where the distance between photographer and subject is felt as a yawning gap by the viewer.
One is frequently shocked by the callous detachment of the camera in photographs of human suffering, in this show particularly by the study of the incontinent couple outside the pub ... Similarly disturbing, although for different reasons is the study of the woman with warts. This portrait, in which the subject is carefully groomed and posed, immediately raises the question of the photographer's relationship, and as in the case of the incontinent couple, the motive behind the photograph. Are these pictures deliberately intended to shock, are we being shown the city warts and all, or are they purely gratuitous horrors put in for cheap effect?
Seen in the context, however, with the rest of the exhibition, the stripper, the drag queen, the man who has been bottled, a deeper and more consistent concern is evinced ... Ms Ginn has surprisingly avoided the cliché in this exhibition. She has an originality of talent and vision, and I look forward to seeing more of her work."
Neil Rowe, Salient (Victoria University magazine, 1975)