NEW RELEASE:
SLIGHTLY DANGEROUS
The Cyclops Cypher
st
Photography / 1 Edition
Published by Cyclops Press.
Hard Cover
288 pages with over 200 colour and
Black and White photographs
14 (W) x 21 (D) cm. Spine: 33mm.
ISBN: 9780980561937
AUD$49.99 / US$51.80 / €39.53 / £33.45
Author: John Ogden
Foreword: Tim Page
Release Date: April 2013
Slightly Dangerous – The Cyclops Cypher
This new release by Cyclops Press celebrates forty years of photography by renown
filmmaker, photographer, publisher and author John Ogden, and serves as a cypher to better
understand his work. It is important to occasionally look in the rear vision mirror while hurtling
headlong into the future, and Ogden’s thoughtful work reminds us what is lost in the rush.
Ogden’s career began as a photojournalist in Southeast Asia towards the end of the Vietnam
War, later extending his practice to cinematography in multiple genres of filmmaking. His
photographs are often direct yet quietly subversive, choosing not to shy away from political
and social commentary, or provocative dark humour. In 1999 Ogden began Cyclops Press,
an independent publishing house specializing in small edition art books that promote
Australian photography, and has since published many award winning works.
The foreword to Slightly Dangerous is by Tim Page, one of the world’s best-known war
photographers. His career began in 1964, recording the start of the civil war in Laos. By
coincidence, Ogden would find himself in Laos a decade later recording the last days of that
war. Tim’s exploits in Vietnam were inspiration for the Dennis Hopper character in
Apocolypse Now. Amongst other significant photojournalist awards, he is the recipient of the
Robert Capa Award and the American Society of Media Photographers Award. He received a
citation for bravery from a US military division and he was also named a Vietnamese Cultural
Hero of the Revolution. In recent years, Tim has worked as a photographic peace
ambassador for the United Nations in Afghanistan, and currently shoots for the Finnish
Government in Cambodia.
Here is some of what Tim has to say about Slightly Dangerous:
“This is a life well travelled of a baby boomer who surfs an existential path across six
decades, waxing the best of nostalgia against the odds that are self mitigated by the
excesses of those times. It is a heritage of the hippest, most gonzo ‘down-under’ attitudes,
rendered by images we all wish we had snapped. As if Hunter S. Thompson and Richard
Neville shuffled photo cards with Robert Frank’ian images throughout the deck.”
The Eyes are Useless When the Mind is Blind.
Unknown
Cyclops Press began in 1999 with the publication of Australienation. In 2009 Ogden
published Portraits from a Land Without People, the culmination of many years of
research to create what is now regarded as the most comprehensive survey of the
pictorial history of Aboriginal Australia yet produced. Phillip Adams described
Portraits from a Land Without People as “a magnificent book … as important a book
as anything that’s been published in Australia for years”.
Saltwater People of the Broken Bays, released in November 2011, was followed by
the companion book Saltwater People of the Fatal Shore, released in November
2012. These books – looking at Sydney’s coastline – have proved a critical and
commercial success. Ogden has also contributed towards several other books,
including WAR (2010) and Cactus (2010).
Reviews:
Saltwater People: “This stunning collection of black-and-white and colour photographs and
other illustrations, accompanied by a revealing text, is a delight to hold, to read and to absorb.
Those lucky enough to live around the places so vividly chronicled will count their blessings.”
Ross Fitzgerald, emeritus professor of history and politics at Griffith
University, Spectrum review in Sydney Morning Herald.
“Portraits from a Land Without People is a magnificent book … as important a book as
anything that’s been published in Australia for years.”
Phillip Adams
“A book of photographs can sometimes be so well chosen that turning the pages becomes
like reading a poem. Ogden’s black-and-white compilation, Australienation, spanning every
mainland Australian state and the years ‘72-’99, is so exquisitely apt that it achieves this
effect. As intimate as a personal diary and profound as a state-of-the nation address, the
collection speaks volumes.”
Nick Dent, Black and White magazine review.
“If photos really do rack up 1000 words apiece, John Ogden’s stark black-and-white opus,
Australienation: Portrait of a Bi-Cultural Country, says more about this big, brown land in the
years from 1972 to 1999 than all the words in the Hansards combined.“
The Australian Magazine.