Interior Disaster

‘Our pleasure in looking at photographs derives in part from the license they give us to stare fixedly and unselfconsciously at something. Although we may be highly alert to graphic structure and tonal nuance, when we look at photographs our primary impulse is to browse, to sweep for content, corner to corner, observing, deducing, actively evaluating evidence…’ Hamworth-Booth, Mark

Due to an interest in criminality and police investigations, my practice has been influenced by the history of photography as a form of investigation, evidence, classification and categorisation. In the essay that accompanied the 1997 exhibition and catalogue Scene of the Crime, Ralph Rugoff addressed art practices bound together by space, representation and crime. The art object is discussed in terms of the ‘forensic aesthetic’ in which the absence of subjects, themes and dramas, suggests some type of criminal action. Without a definable visible style, traces of the art-making activity or event are only revealed, emphasising the role of viewer as detective; forced to reconstruct behaviour, motivation and actions.

Interior Disaster is a medium-format inventory that aligns with conceptual concerns of the forensic aesthetic. Focusing on surface description and visual aftermath, I photographed a decomposing household eleven months after Cyclone Larry destroyed it. Intending to engage the spectator in an exercise of mental re-enactment and investigative interpretation, each scene was photographed as a type of evidence, a visual clue to absent meanings and prior events. Witnessing first-hand the devastation “Larry” caused my family and the Innisfail community, these photographs also address subjective concepts of place, memory and loss.

Francesca Rosa