Issue 3 2009

How does the artist make their way in the world, what decisions drive them and how does the reception of their work inform, or even shape their output? Does a photographic practice have particular rules of engagement?

There is no denying the urgent politics that drive Maynard’s photographs, and his decision to work within the tradition of documentary photography. Maynard, it is clear, is out to change the world, one photograph at a time.

The ghost of Lye, like an eternal grinning Cheshire cat, is still tempting and daring us to do him justice.

It is these interior echoes, the ones that resound within the frame of the photographic image, that most successfully capture the uncanny quality present in the whole of Burton’s body of work.

I really like the constraints of film. The slowness of setting up. The focus, concentration, looking, as one may only have a few frames to do the job at hand.

Like a glowing iron brand taken from the red hot coals of a day old fire, I have been marked, marketed, packaged and sold as an Indigenous man. I wear this mark with pride, but this is just one component of my identity.

In Kalgoorlie, Dwyer’s photographs have become the anonymous historic background to contemporary life in a place that locates itself simultaneously in its ‘golden past’ as well as its slightly less heroic present.

Local photomedia artist Tara Gilbee spends a wet day in September exploring the Ballarat International Foto Biennale.