Author copyright, 2009
LIGHT SENSITIVE: CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN PHOTOGRAPHY
One of the important aims of the Auckland Festival of Photography is not only to promote and celebrate what is being created by New Zealand photographers but also to prompt critical discussion about the medium. And, let’s face it, debate is something that seems to accompany photography wherever it goes. In fact, I think it would be fair to say that of all art forms, it is probably photography that continues to have the most contentious and complex reception. Graduating from the ‘bastard child left on the doorstep of art’ (as it was colourfully described in the 1840s) to the darling of the art world over 170 years later, the critical understanding of this quintessentially modern medium is in a constant state of flux and reformulation.
Photography has, in many ways, come of age. Certainly in my home-base of Australia it receives sustained attention and support. We have well-developed networks of commercial galleries that sell work; public galleries that hold regular exhibitions not just of the history of aspects of photography but also as part of mixed media displays; university courses that encourage research into the medium; advocacy organisations (such as the Australian Centre for Photography; the Victorian-based CCP and the QCP); active festivals and programs that promote the medium; and a range of prizes. It is hard to imagine how photography could be more embraced by the art world and the public. And yet, despite this acceptance it is also clear that some major features inherent to the medium since its invention still fuel debate.
The Australian critic Blair French recently wrote, “It may seem that the relationship between photography and the world is transparent, but photography is in fact an opaque medium with its own material qualities ... it is an act of fabrication and construction”. And there it is, in a nutshell, a debate that has hounded the medium: photography as a reflection of the world or photography as a construction. Or, to use a more crude conjunction, document verses art.
Now I’m not going to try and solve this question today – I just want to point out that the sibling rivalry between these two ways of approaching the medium continues unabated. It came to mind for me recently, for instance, when I overhead a number of visitors to our Andreas Gursky exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Looking at Gursky’s spectacular computer manipulated constructions of reality, the most common remark I heard people make was, ‘Is it real’?,‘Is it fake’? Anyone with an eye to criticism will have noted the often fiery backlash against digital or overtly manipulated imagery that pops up regularly in the critical press.
I offer these thoughts by way of introduction to my talk on Australian photography as a way of suggesting that while my survey will be about the work of one country, many of the comments I will make are applicable to all photography irrespective of locality and go the heart of what it means to work with this most real and fabricated of art forms.
But before I begin I think it is fair to ask ‘What does it mean to be an Australian photographer?’ Are there inherent qualities that make an Australian photograph distinctive from that produced anywhere else?’ Probably the first reaction to that question would be to say ‘No’. One of the hallmarks of so much contemporary practice is its internationalism. Like never before, Australian photographers (and the same is true of New Zealanders) are participants on a global stage and their art is invariably connected to international art styles.
On the surface there may be little about most photographs that mark them out as being from a certain place, and yet, spend a bit more time with the work and I believe that, in many instances, it is an engagement with the specifics of an environment; of a cultural and historical landscape; of a ‘place’ that activates the artists imagination. It is these ‘regional characteristics’ that I find especially intriguing and while they do not tell the whole story, it is worth thinking about this engagement with ‘the local’ as one productive way to understanding what constitutes art photography in any given nation.
Australian photography, like that in New Zealand, has undoubtedly undergone an evolution in the last 40 years that is specific to its local situations. The critic Helen Ennis recently wrote, ‘What is thought of as ‘art photography’ is only a few decades old. It was only in the late 60’s and early 70’s that photographers in Australia and New Zealand banded together to create their own opportunities for publishing and exhibiting their work. Theirs was a necessary strategy given that the medium of photography was not taken seriously by the art establishment or the art market at the time’. Ennis also noted, ‘Any chance of engaging with photographs in an art museum of gallery context in the 60s and early 70s were few and far between.’ In other words, a festival such as this one would have seemed a golden impossibility.
By the late 1970s most major Australian public galleries were beginning to collect contemporary photography seriously and the numbers of exhibitions and publications were increasing. The gallery going public were, generally speaking, still rather resistant to photography but they were also becoming more literate both in its theory and practice and gradually, through the heroic efforts of photographers and others, doors were opening for the medium.
One of the things that I think helped this acceptance was the rise, in the 1980s, of postmodernism. I know that postmodernism often gets a bad name and it is true that as its theories and practices swept into town, many traditions that had come to define art photography were abruptly dismissed. But, in many ways, it was also a liberating time as the scale and ambition of work changed dramatically. The long-held enthusiasm for small-scale, finely worked documentary black and white photographs gave way to be replaced by large, colour, ‘stage-managed’, critical and theory driven imagery.
The new look of the medium helped promote the medium as a fine art in a way that had not happened with such success before. The scale of the work and its self-conscious positioning as ‘art’ meant that it was increasing shown in a gallery context. This is not to say that the documentary mode entirely disappeared: documentary photographers continued to work although there is no doubt that their practice was not critically well supported in Australia. It is only recently that this has begun to change and documentary practice has returned to favour in a new way. It is interesting that a direct engagement with reality should happen at a time when digital photography is having such a profound impact on how we consider the medium.
Over the last fifteen years or so, digital imaging has caused a reconsideration of the very foundations of photography. The academic, Geoffrey Batchen summed up one view when he wrote ‘As a practice known to be nothing but fabrication, digitization abandons even the rhetoric of truth that has been such an important part of photography’s cultural success. Digital images are actually closer in spirit to art and fiction than they are to documentation and fact.’
In 1993, Batchen wrote that we were entering a time he called, ‘post-photography’, and over ten years on it may be that, conceptually at least, we have now entered this zone. However, practically speaking, the evidence seems to point to something else. In a world attuned to virtual reality, the Web and artificial intelligence, the fabricated reality that digitisation presents is actually less disruptive than it seemed at first. Photography – in all its manifestations – is not only thriving but is being undertaken with even greater confidence and authority. It seems that the ‘end of the real’ that digitisation seemed to signal was only the end of one way of seeing, and its effect was actually to reanimate photography in unexpected and hybridised ways.
One photograph that exemplifies the sophistication of Australian photography today, and suggests some of the new approaches to the medium, is by Brook Andrew. Andrew is a well-known Wiradjuri artist from Melbourne whose interdisciplinary practice ranges across photography, neon works and printmaking. This photograph titled, Tensio (2002) (a Latin word meaning ‘to stretch’), is a panoramic image of a potent darkness. Out of this rich, satiny background emerge mirror images that show currawongs observing coiled snakes. It is a mysterious and sensual image that is both firmly of its place and time, and also connected to deeper traditions that reflect the totemic symbols important to Andrew’s heritage.
Tensio is a work of fabrication that has special resonance in a gallery setting as the currawongs and snakes are stuffed creatures that we would normally find in natural history museums. Andrews reanimates the birds and reptiles, revealing them as Indigenous totems and placing them back into a dream-world landscape. The mix
of the real and fictional is particularly sophisticated, engaging with colonial narratives in a way that isn’t simplistic or stereotyped. Instead, Andrews draws on his own cultural and personal history to create a work that speaks to us in a direct and powerful poetic way. Tensio is one example of the evolving intellectual and creative depth, not only of Andrew’s own practice but also of the power of much contemporary Australian photography. It also points to the major role that indigenous photographers are playing in the creative photography scene.
What I want to do now is to look at some of the different ways in which Australian photographers are practising their work today. This talk is organised into six short themes. It is not an exhaustive list by any means but certainly each of the areas I will be mentioning represents an energetic area of creative exploration. To do this, I will be drawing on a range of artists many of whom are represented in our collection at the National Gallery of Victoria and whose works were often acquired through the Loti Smorgon Fund for Contemporary Australian Photography. [1]
1: The Everyday
The first group of work that I want to look at concerns itself with ‘the everyday’. Like modern anthropologists, this group of artists cast their discerning eyes towards what is ordinary in our urban landscape seeing these as potent signs and symbols of who and what we are today. The effect of isolating moments of modern life powerfully focuses our attention on those objects and gestures that are often overlooked. It also helps us connect to the complex desires, expectations and fears that modern life can evoke. The results are direct and even seemingly ‘simple’ photographs that are sometimes ironic, sometimes deadpan and detached – but are far from banal.
Cherine Fahd, for instance, extracted a sense of the marvellous from the relatively prosaic in her photographic series, The chosen (2003). Fahd took her photographs while in Paris during a heat wave. As a temporary solution for those suffering the extreme conditions, the Mayor of Paris commissioned ‘Paris Plage’, a fake beach with sand, hammocks, umbrellas and sprinklers set along the banks of the Seine. The women unknowingly photographed by Fahd are shown surrendering themselves to the cool mist of water from a specially constructed sprinkler. Fully dressed, and with their eyes closed and arms often raised in the air, the mannerisms of these ‘chosen’ ones have an ecstatic quality. In the intensity of their surrender to the moment, the women in these photographs might remind us of the stories of Catholic devotees in ‘rapture’ as they ascend to heaven at the end of the world.
Gestures also play a vital role in conveying emotion in David van Royen’s photographs. Unlike Fahd’s work, his studies of young men suggest that, for these subjects at least, the possibility of a modern-day epiphany is remote. Van Royen’s photographs reflect a major creative interest in male identity among Australian photographers. What does it means to be a man in today’s society? How should one act? How do we measure masculinity? The men we see in his work are striving, but rarely meeting, social expectations. The sheer effort to ‘be masculine’ is palpable in his image Paddy Mann (2008). The singer songwriter has adopted an odd pose but it seems symbolic of the exertion involved in ‘making it’ in the world. He looks mightily determined but, let’s face it, he’s not all that effective at raising himself through his own efforts. His limp mannerisms seem to reflect how difficult it can be to live up to social expectations.
Social expectations are a part too of Darren Sylvester’s work. Sylvester is one of a group of Australian photographers who are exploring the interface between the worlds of art and commerce and his photographs use many of the conventions more familiar to advertising. The manufactured gestures and glossy appearance could make this an effective add for the joys of fast food. However, this is a sly image. It can seem, at first glance, that the girls are relating to each other but look a bit closer and you can see that their glances are not actually meeting each others. Ultimately, the girl’s friendships are as fake as the promises of intimacy and fulfilment that the advertising world is driven by.
Sylvester has called his works ‘one liners’ and the title of this work If all we have is each other, that’s OK (2003) suggests that we are looking at a pivotal still from a modern narrative. As he writes of his motivations, ‘It’s about what happens when you buy something and nothing changes. My work shows how a banal object can sometimes hold some great significance on a given occasion.’
Patricia Piccinini’s photograph Social studies (2000) is less about the banal object made important than the extraordinary object made every day. Piccinini has frequently explored the unnerving possibilities of modern-day science both in her sculptures, installations and photography. In her strange and striking photograph we see three young skateboarders kneeling to look at a pink, hairless creature. This computer generated mole is normalised by being placed in an undramatic setting, and after a while its fleshy vulnerability makes it rather lovable.