Breathing

This series of portraits is early works shot on 35 mm film. I had recently seen Richard Avedon’s In The American West series, and was very much inspired.

All of the people in these images are my friends. They all have stories.

The work has specific parameters asking the subjects to wear a white T-shirt, and stand against the white screen I’d installed in my backyard.

The idea was to create raw images of faces. In setting clear parameters – in this case of sameness – ironically draws our attention to the differences of each individual.  I was as much concerned with what is happening  outside of the frame, what is unseen, as with what is happening within the frame.

One of my friends arrived at the shoot directly  after being discharged from the  John Kade unit of Royal Melbourne Hospital. The surgical bandages still tightly bound on both wrists.   The John Kade Unit is the psychiatric quarter of the hospital.  Another friend here, a very close family member to the person in bandages,  desperately pleaded they still come to the shoot.  Having witnessed and consoled them through the trauma of self harm, they felt the photo shoot would be a perfect distraction from the events that where still very raw.

What I’ve revealed here is a very moving and evocative tale. It is understandable that we as an audience, will attempt to guess who the story relates to – can we read who has suffered this recent ordeal?

And off course there are  always other stories that are left untold,

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