2008

The portrait is a familiar and established subject matter that photographic artists have explored since photography’s invention. It could be argued that no matter who we are or what we do from one day to the next, we all share a common interest, which is of other people. People we are attracted to, people we hate, admire, or simply pass in the street. Peter Wilson’s images show us a fearless presentation of other people, we are presented with an image that contains the dust and scratches of the photograph, along with the beautiful, intricate imperfections of the human face. What we don’t see is what makes these portraits so interesting, these people are extracted from their possessions, style, and clothing, and by cropping tightly in on their faces we are able to minutely observe these people as we normally wouldn’t be able too. The personality, character and emotion of these individuals are transmitted simply and with conviction through these photographs, adding to the claim that less is more, much more.

Heidi Stevens’ compositions examine the dynamic between photography and crafts. By scourging for objects, mementos, items and pieces of clothing, from Op shops, relatives homes’ and flea markets, Stevens’ assembles miniature domestic narratives.

These scenarios are not constructed for the camera, instead they imply narrative by the pairing and combination of two or more distinctive objects that one may not imagine belonging together. The ‘oddness’ that the assemblages produce goes further in suggesting that these scenarios have always existed and have been photographed as they have been found.

Stevens goes a step further with these assembled combinations of craft based domestic aesthetics by altering the photographic material that they are printed on. Commonly, the printed photograph is the last stage of the photographic production line. But Stevens’ continues to create conceptual elements and meaning by slicing, sticking, scratching, and collaging different elements on certain photographs within the folio of work. This allows the viewer to investigate these images not only as photographic images but also as crafted objects.

The photographic collective Order of Magnitude utilizes cameras and image taking gadgets that we have all become familiar with over the last decade or so. The phrase ‘To take a photograph’ seems to be quite different than it would of been one hundred years ago, since photographic digital technology has changed photography so drastically we no longer need glass plate negatives, wooden tripods, or seven minute exposures to capture an image of a place or friend. What is so wonderful in this day and age is if we wish to use these old processes we still can, since photography’s changes and progressions are not linear, but rather spread out over several options of both new and old. Photography’s technologic era we are now entering into is not meant to be an improvement of the methods the medium was created with, but simply a new alternative that a photographer may choose. What has shifted with new technology is the photographer’s intention with which the image has been captured. When images are captured on a mobile phone it is very unlikely that they will be printed onto photographic paper, let alone being exhibited in a gallery. This is what is so interesting with the work of Order of Magnitude, their photographs have been captured on mobile phones and old digital cameras with the sole purpose of being presented in a gallery context as standard exhibition size photographs. The aesthetic result of this process shows a clash of standard styles and image quality that viewers are familiar with when visiting a photographic exhibit. Digital photography seems to adhere to an unwritten law of ‘perfection’ or a loss of control and certain standards concerning the manipulation of negatives and chemical processes. The images presented here are digital photography’s ‘dust and scratches’ and imperfections.

We must question the intentions of our photographs such as; do I need this image to exist in my phone as an invisible photograph? Or, am I using the right equipment? And as digital cameras are created with higher megapixels, with billions more bits of colours, that store more images than the previous models, we must remember that the first, one mega-pixel digital camera will always be there in the canon of photographic equipment as a suitable choice for image making.

In contrast to the technical pixelation of Order of Magnitude’s photographic style, the work of Benjamin Ong contains dark, gothic aesthetics that are produced with classical techniques and styles. The photographs seem to correspond to a newly discovered Edgar Allen Poe short story, which is classical yet haunting in vision and mood. Ong’s work utilizes a scratching aesthetic that seems to illustrate another layer embedded within the photographic medium. We are used to viewing photographs as a seamless pane, or window that allows us a view into a different vision. By disrupting this pane with scratches, and other techniques that one may associate with the damaging of the ‘precious’ image or negative, Ong inserts an element of mood and realism into his work that would not be as powerful without.

In general, the idea of slicing, scratching, tearing, pixealating or damaging photographic artworks is not usually considered to be an option for lens based image making, but rather what photographers try to avoid. These artists confirm that these applications can further develop ideas and concepts with photographic aesthetics, and allows us to consider that the photograph is an object that can be manipulated with.