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Hoda Afsha

Hoda Afshar is a very inspiring and powerful woman. She was born in the middle of war between Iran and Iraq which lasted 8 years. Afshar’s whole childhood began with the tension of danger and the unknown. 

She was born when the Islamic government of Iran took over trying to transform the country from a secular westernised place to an Islamic institution. Her first long term project ‘Scene’ 2004-2005 plays a huge role in this transformation. The series documents her friends being photographed in underground secret parties in Tehran that are banned. Afshar noticed that having the element of the camera included, people had a specific mode of representing themselves and started acting differently. However, Afshar thought this performative quality was something to embrace. Instead of the traditional documentary photography, having it more objective allows the subject to perform their own narrative to the camera and the way they want to be seen. Her work is collaborative and strives to share the subjects or her own story to raise awareness on many issues. Her own struggle as a migrant or identity, the fight for Islamic women rights or even the propaganda systems from the government. 

In 2016, Ashfar did a series called ‘Behold’ which consists of young homosexual men that told her of this secret bath house that existed where homosexual men can explore their sexuality in an open way. Essentially, it is a public space that is also private. It shows incredibly strong images of the way the men want to be perceived. The performative quality that Afshar mentioned expresses that these men want to be seen as vulnerable, needed and supported by each other which is shown by their body language. 

Ashfar spoke of her transition from Iran to Australia and the major culture shock that impacted her life. Politics was something that she grew up caring about and being in Australia she felt that she didn’t connect and understand the minor breaking news that was being shown in this country. However, she’s come to realise she could use this platform or place to express her own thoughts on struggles that many or even herself go through. She states “there's a strong presence in the mind of the western viewers, a majority still read it in the same lens. In Australia we’re all still trying to fight against the same image but in different ways.” Moving to a different country and feeling this way is something that I understand and that moment in the lecture really spoke to me. Having to understand that western viewers don’t have the same upbringing and may not care about the same political issues as you do but you could try your best to raise awareness and understand that people are all fighting against the same image but just in a different way, as Hoda Ashfar said. This is something I am currently struggling with and seeing her work definitely inspired me. 

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Leyla Stevens

Leyla Stevens is an Australian Balinese artist and researcher who predominantly works with moving image and photography. Her practice is framed around the oppressed history of places.The lecture revolves around a recent project of Stevens’ that is based around the landscapes in South Bali and the sites where the genocide and political exiles occurred in 1965. As South Bali is a part of Steven’s childhood and family stories, this project is close to her as the trauma of these killings today is that there seems to be no official recognition, state justice or form of reconciliation. She described this as a silenced part of history. However, through these instigated geographical starting points, mass tourism and early surfing history in the 70s has impacted the landscape and changed it tremendously that made it become the land that it is today. Stevens focused on how an area that was without power, made Bali become touristed through its natural formation in the land. The impact of its colonial legacy. Bali is now known as a peaceful paradise with its surfing culture, however Steven focuses on what that looks like in parallel with the killings and violence of those places. Through these places, she recalled the material fragments as archives or history and created the video work “Witness” 2016, which revolves around the morning activity unfolding around the bunion tree that was stated as one of the instigated places. 

I really admire Leyla Steven’s work and history or world issues is definitely something that people should talk about more. Her work is definitely something I relate or connect to, as an Asian background. I know of the sites and places of my childhood that are known to be somewhere of trauma in the past such as mass killing or during war, but now it's become a market or a children’s playground which is a big comparison. Previously in Emma Phillip’s lecture, she raised the question “What is the form trying to communicate in relation to the content?” And I think that is very clear in Steven’s work and very straightforward. Whereas in Phillip’s work its based on self development and the pursuit of aesthetics and working with others. I see a big difference in both their works but both do communicate well in their content. 

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Emma Phillips

Emma Phillips’ lecture was quite different from the other artists previously. However, I feel as if Phillip’s work is a lot more relatable to many photographers or art and design students, leading to a very informative lecture. She talked about her early works studying in her Masters and studying overseas and the development of her work being inspired by various artists and photographers. 

Phillips started her practice using a Mamiya 7, medium format camera to interact with strangers as subjects. She used this fleeting interaction to photograph strangers in semi rural and semi urban areas where the subject seems to feel comfortable in a place that they are familiar with. However through this process, Phillips felt distant and a coldness in her images and expressed dissatisfaction from the series. Through this realisation, Phillips mentioned 3 main photographers that inspired her and changed the way she viewed photography. William Eggleston was a photographer she was not fond of at first, however after reading his work and his book, she came to understand more about his photography and how it opened up a lot more opportunities. Eggleston’s images shows the uncanny feeling of the everyday life and has the intimacy and allure in a snapshot. He describes his photography as using the perspective of a family dog and angles of it to capture his images which was very interesting to both Emma Phillips and me as a photographer. Phillips also mentioned Dorothea Lange’s images on how the subject matter was straight to the point and related very well to the caption, as well as Walker Evan’s documentary style of photographs. Phillips emphasised that she is not similar to him but looking through photographers she was dissatisfied with or did not understand made her find her own art style. As a photographer, this is something I tend to relate to and I know of many others who do too. It was incredibly inspiring to see a well known successful photographer to go through the same path as many of us are currently. 

“What is the form trying to communicate in relation to the content?” is a question that Phillips brought up during the lecture. She stated that for her, it was to play with a snapshot aesthetic and have the viewer create their own narrative with her specific chosen aesthetic. I feel that this question is very important for photographers or artists to think about. The content and the way they want to communicate with the viewer. Without this, why even photograph? 

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Lucas Davidson

Australian artist and photographer, Lucas Davidson has a very diverse looking range of art pieces. What interests me from his lecture is that it all connects with the concept of ephemerality and temporality. His work is very constant and continuously developing and changing. At the start of Davidson’s practice he experimented with family members to create portraits using prints and emulsions. His early works give off a sense of disembodiment as the viewer can see how the portraits are layered or where it gets cut off. With development, Davidson started creating self portraits with the style of early photographic sequencing and describes this as being inspired by Muybridge. I definitely do see a similarity to what Davidson was mentioning with his work of ‘Body Emulsion Detachment’, especially with Muybridge’s Animal Locomotive work and the sequencing of movement. As the development of Muybridge’s work had a major effect on the start of moving image, I see Davidson’s work as a continuous stage of the conception of ‘this moment of attention’. Using still images to create a narrative or a constant stage of change, Davidson described this as the viewer requiring more attention in the trance of the fragmented body. 

Davidson also experimented with self portraits in the darkroom named ‘Untitled’. This work heavily reminded me of an earlier artist guest lecture, Yvette Hamilton. Through developing the portraits, the images did not register, but Davidson still considers it as a portrait of himself. He was interested in the unpredictable nature of the medium, where a portrait could be so abstract that it includes lines and shape without a distinct shape of a human face or body. Davidson expresses that it moves away from the body but still looks organic and suggested as a body. In Yvette Hamilton’s work, she creates portraits using the idea of light and shadow rather than the human body itself, creating portraits that's not normally recognised as portraits. I see a connection with this theme in both Davidson and Hamiltons work in the use of darkroom and using emulsion to create portraits. Internal and external landscapes and yet it's a self portrait. 

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Gerwyn Davies

Gerwyn Davies is a photographic artist and costume maker based in Sydney. His research is based on the strategies of camp may be deployed through performative image-making to intervene upon representational and crystalised new queer selves on the stage of the digital image. Davies describes his performative photographic practice as an inventory of selves. His inspiration comes from a variety of artists that uses crafts and materials to assemble large scale sets or repurposed objects. He borrows these ideas to create domestic arts and drafts and apply them to his own scene. For example, Claes Oldenburg futile work or art pieces made out of odd materials to play with juxtaposition. Brian Jungen creating cultural objects from sporting equipment, using the concept of deconstruction and reconstruction to mimic antiquity. Or Thomas Demand that builds large scale paper construction from sites he sees from the news, documents with a camera to preserve the fiction the destroys the construction so the only evidence of its existence is a photograph. Through these influences, Davies has a passion for using materials and reconstructing them. His work started out as using materials to create a sinister scene and using thread as symbolic meaning. His practice then led to a more fashion-based vision. Davies’ work became about obscuring and reconstructing the body through materials. He creates costumes knowing that looking at the dressed body, the body can be a platform of a suggestion on how can distort shape and emotions. It is a typology of characters. Although his artwork is mainly through the process of materials, Davies mainly uses the camera as documentation of something that has been constructed. 

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Salote Tawale

Tawale’s work explores the identity of the individual within collective systems. Inspired from her Indigenous background and Australian heritage, her self performance draws on personal experiences of rights, class, ethnicities and gender which was formed by growing up in suburban Australia. “My culture identity is a constant focus in my artwork I explore from being from a mixed heritage that simultaneously includes and exclude me from the dominant culture. That is colonial Australian society.”

As an Indigenous Fijian woman that comes from an Australian settler-colonial heritage, she describes her youth as a ‘position of constant dislocation’ or ‘a state of translocation’. Essentially, a woman of colour in a female body living in this economy. This is based on the attitude of the define analysis of colonial structures and narratives that persists in contemporary society. Being influenced by suburban Australia that she grew up in, there was never media representation of people of colour. If so, there were always poorly portrayed; always evil or shown as a poor character. Media was a dominant colonial narrative. Through this, Tawale took initiative took include representation in her work. In the lecture, she displayed a video called ‘Super Super’ from 2003. It had humorous and aggressive features that most importantly was used as a way to control their own bodies and representations on the screen.

Salote Tawale’s work truly inspired me as a form of self-representation. Being also a woman of colour, with a mixed heritage background having just moved to Australia. Growing up, I constantly felt a position of constant dislocation, being excluded from both heritages just from the way I was born. 

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Samuel Hodge

Samuel Hodge based his lecture on the making of the elements of the exhibition and shows. He describes his work as queering an archive and finding a linear perspective. It’s quite fascinating to see Hodge’s studio process as he manipulates an art piece but keeping it connected. Through Hodge’s works, he tends to look back to his archives for renewal and reimagination. Looking back at his failures has allowed him to recreate new work and gave him the ability to adapt towards working with materials that have worked the way Hodge himself has planned for before. In ‘Assembling the Archive’, Hodge used the pieces to print and delicately hand dye them, resulting in multiple outcomes, effects and patterns. Through this change and manipulation, it re-narrates the obscured past. This process gave Hodge a closer and deeper connection to the handworks of his art pieces. 

In September 2019, Hodge viewed a series by David Wojnarowicz of “The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated”. He then did an attempt of recreating the series. However, he considered the series to be a massive failure as something did not connect with him. He reviewed back to his previous works from the failed archives and learnt to turn over the images. He used the masks shown in the images and turned it around to find the oil stains from the models face. He began another process by obscuring the image, adding dye and digitally manipulating it until it connected with him. Hodge’s processes of trial and error allowed for new development. This allowed me to understand that no matter how frustrated I get with the work I create there will always be another way. No matter how many artists blocks I encounter, I can always go back and do something new that connects with me. 

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Yvette Hamilton

Yvette Hamilton’s work follows the line of what can or can’t be seen in the form and the visual metaphors of light. Hamilton starts with an introduction on the basis of how her photographic practice is of the emanation of light or the absence of it. She expressed a prominent interest in the photography of the massive black hole of M87. The whole concept of how it is essentially a photograph of the distinct absence of light. The black hole is a representation of a specific region, space and time which heavily resembles how photography came to be. It was a turning point where Hamilton herself can understand the medium of photography. Hamilton explains “The black hole isn’t actually a hole, its an area of space and time that is so dense, so massive that nothing can escape it and not even light”. She proceeds to express how the idea of the utter absence of light astonishes her and that it has lead her work to the investigation of vision, “Photography outside of photography.”

Through Hamilton’s practice, she has used the visual metaphors of light, aperture and mirror. In her work ‘Echo’, ‘Are You There’, ‘Where Are You’, or ‘Survey and Blind Survey’ etc, it expresses the mode of revealing and concealing through the passage of light. Playing on pushing boundaries of what is known to be a ‘portraiture’, Hamilton continues to connect portraiture with the emanation of light and the connection or likeness of seeing and being seen, as shown in her work of ‘Echo’ and ‘Where Are You’. As well as in the works of ‘Survey and Blind Survey, it shows the photographic movement of the process on the light-sensitive emulsion and the exposure to the film, leading to the image taking on a life of its own.