Bryan Stewart
Janne Reuss
Eliza Moore
Daphne Boxill
Gerald Pisarzowski
Sean Barker
Tim Mickleborough
Ross Stockwell
Shaney Herrmann
Ryan Jakubek
In the days of analogue photography, the results of human error during the making of an image were often discarded without a second glance.. Every blink was a flaw in time; a light leak, a mechanical error, an unfixed image left to erode into nothingness.
As photographers, we strive to collect, collate and create visual records of moments we believe are worthy of immortalizing. As Susan Sontag wrote, “to take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability.” Yet, are we able to capture the transient nature of ourselves from behind the camera? This collection of images deals with questions of impermanence in photography, capturing the beauty of the imperfect, ephemeral, bodies and spaces in transition. Each artist presents work that either accepts and plays with the futility of the photograph to truly capture a single moment, or harnesses the permanent nature of the image to the fullest extent while turning their camera toward the most fleeting of moments.
Buddhism holds impermanence as one of its essential doctrines that posits, 'Everything changes and nothing lasts forever.' Everything; from our emotions to our thoughts and feelings, from the cells in our bodies to the plants around us, is changing and decaying continuously. The human body is burdened by its own impermanence. Photography and impermanence have always been deeply entangled. We use photographs to fix a moment in time, which upon a deeper look is a hopelessly futile endeavour. Impermanence of images has always been related to in-between moments, moments of transition.
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In Janne Reuss’ images we grapple with grief and loss as trees represent living spaces for memories, the passage of time and the impermanence of life. In a constant state of transition, Shaney Herrmann’s depiction of water bodies paired with images from her personal archive expand beyond the physical frame, an expansion that questions whether images can hold the weight of our memories. In Daphne Faye Boxill’s abstract portraits in bodies of water, refractions break down the visual signifiers of the artist as subject and we are left with a meditation on movement, shapes and colours melding into each-other.
In Hutchison Road, Ross Stockwell presents four images as a visual poem. Digital infrared images evoke an analogue aesthetic, pointing to the encroachment of modernization and human artefacts on the natural world highlighting man made interventions to the natural landscape.
While some works in the show capture the ephemeral qualities of nature—capturing moments in transition—others project an impermanence that brings us closer to our own mortality.
Seemingly in opposition with the concept of impermanence, artists Gerald Pisarzowski and Sean Barker work in the archival palladium process, deliberately immortalizing a moment of change with an intent of permanence. Pisarzowski’s photograph of sunflowers capture a state of change and decay that is fixed in time with the archival palladium process, balancing forever between permanence and impermanence.
Fascinated with thoughts of purpose, renewal and rejection paired with concepts of impermanence, Sean Barker uses an archival printing process and repurposed technology, to amalgamate movement and intention with memories and emotions, all within the extended depth of tones and interpretive brushwork achieved through the platinum palladium hand coating process.
Eliza Moore and Ryan Jakubek both overlay multiple images to reveal complex narratives that challenge the relationship of photography and reality. Does this layering of moments obscure or illuminate? Is this a construction or deconstruction of the image?
Finally, Bryan Stewart has created portraits of all the participating artists leading up to the exhibition, capturing this unique and fleeting moment in time when the group were brought together to learn, experiment and create this exhibition.
Text by Ananna Rafa
