2005

Transformations

In its own way, each of these five small exhibitions is about photographing people. None of the images could be described as conventional portraiture, however, because the camera subjects all want, need or have been forced to become someone else. In each case, the artists’ images of transformation tell us something different about the social, political and cultural role of photography.

In her exhibition Aesthetic of Politics – Self Portraits as Leni Riefenstahl, Tallulah Brown photographs herself as one of the most controversial 20th century photographers, who produced memorable works in the service of the Third Reich. This, in Brown’s words, ‘raises questions regarding the moral responsibility of an artist’. Riefenstahl’s films and photographs were an essential part of the propaganda machine of the Aryan master race. The ways in which art and architecture could be used as state propaganda made greater advances under Hitler than at any time since Napoleon. Advances in technology made possible many of the war’s most chilling aspects, and also brought still and moving photography to a previously unknown level of sophistication. By creating an ambiguous identity for herself in these photographs, Brown prompts the question, who was Leni Riefenstahl? A Nazi collaborator, or a great artist who simply wanted to be able to do her work?

Duality is also the basis of Feeling Cambodia by Thor Engelstad, a Norwegian photographer now based in Brisbane. He contrasts traditional and contemporary Cambodia with memories of that country during the Pol Pot regime. The Kingdom of Cambodia’s transformation into the Republic of Kampuchea would seem like a nightmare if it were not an historical fact. Even more than the war in Vietnam, this nasty, brutish and short revolution in a little-known South-east Asian country was mainly imprinted on our consciousness not by written commentaries or statistics, but by a few grimly iconic photographs (of mass graves and stacked skulls). The Cambodian people are still struggling to reinvent or restore themselves after that terrible interlude, and Engelstad has looked for ways in which he as a photographer can participate in this process. One way is to give half the income from his sales in this exhibition to children in Cambodia. Another way is to record the past and present and to display them together. His colourful photographs of life in Cambodia today are warmed by a sense of affection and respect, which is heightened by seeing these images beside sinister reminders of recent history.

Dark memories prompted the Dolls Series by Melbourne photographer Emily Guy. The cruelty experienced by children is more of a universal fact of life than the extraordinary trauma to which Cambodia was subjected, but these two essentially unrelated bodies of work by Engelstad and Guy are linked by way they both convey an impression of innocent victims. Guy’s photographic process, using a scanner, gives the intense detail of face-to-face contact combined with velvety tones that dissolve into complete blackness. Her pictures are extremely intimate and at the same time as stark as flashbulb photojournalism. The slightly unpleasant realism of modern latex dolls doesn’t alter the fact that she is photographing objects, not people, yet we respond to these images as if they were human. The subjects are treated very much as objects, which contributes to the meaning of the works. The dolls have been physically handled, bandaged, gagged and put on the scanner, which is a vastly more direct sort of manipulation than even the most intrusive photographer could normally achieve. This corresponds with the manipulation and abuse of children that Guy’s photographs are primarily about.

In terms of helpless suffering, rock stars seem to be at the other end of the scale. Even the title of Peter Milne’s series The Happiest Kingdom of them all: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds on Tour, suggests a degree of hedonistic gratification that for most people would only be available in fantasyland. Yet these pictures of rockers on the road and on stage, driving fans into frenzied ecstasy, create a tantalizing ambiguity about who is manipulating whom. The brooding, introverted character of Nick Cave’s face contributes to this effect, but so does Milne’s compositional trick of keeping him at the periphery of most pictures, sometimes even to the point of distortion, as if Cave were trying to draw back. The singer looks unsure about what to make of all the worshipful young people who invade his room to gather at his feet. When up on stage, he is photographed from an angle that makes him look as though the hands reaching out from the mosh pit are grabbing at him from above while he tries to fend them off. Milne’s pictures capture the celebrity mystique of a private individual forced to become public property.

No rock star is more of a public property than Elvis Presley, and Elvis impersonators have become a subculture that now exists almost independently of the one true King. New Zealand photographer John Savage has observed this phenomenon as something that provides a very inaccurate reflection of the singer who died 30 years ago, but tells us a lot about the U.S.A. today. His series Long live the King illustrates how the term ‘cult figure’, that we use rather loosely for distinctive entertainers, applies literally to Elvis. A semi-religious movement has grown up around his memory, and Savage went to Memphis to study it. Devotees all over the world transform themselves in the image of their spiritual leader, which has provided many photographers with kitschy, campy subject matter. Milne, however, says that he ‘also witnessed how closely Elvis’ memory is tied to the American Dream and all that comes with that cultural package: devotion to God, country and celebrity.’ The need to believe in something during troubled and uncertain times has been the basis of many religious movements. The distinctive aspect of this one is the fact that it has not just been promoted by, but has been generated out of the mass media. Like Nam June Paik’s Buddhas who contemplate their own image on closed-circuit video, popular culture has achieved nirvana by worshipping itself.

Timothy Morrell