View From Bond Street, Auckland, 04.09.1999, 6.45
View From Grafton Road, Auckland, 13.06.1999, 7.45
View From Upper Queen Street, Auckland, 13.06.1999, 7.45
View From Wellington Street, Auckland, 26.09.1999, 6.22
Modern
1999
To avoid the usual narrative bias associated with photography, I focus on the image's execution: I privilege how the photographs are made, rather than what they physically represent: the form is the content. My methodology employs optimum control: there is no chance involved; everything is predetermined. Consistently utilising the same technical specifications (camera, film type, lens, colour temperature, lighting conditions, composition, etc...), I establish a sort of ubiquity between the photographed sites: because of the method used, each image appears the same. This heavy repetition disrupts the conventional way in which viewers read photography: there is no clear narrative to lend the pictures meaning; no story is told.
My work proceeds by means of series, each encompassing a near identical set of photographs of a preplanned single subject. The photographed sites are'culturally' familiar (motorways, parks, speedways, pony clubs), yet they have been emptied of the people who use them. This lack of people and/or remnants of people suggests a constructed frame which evokes and simultaneously dismantles the objective gaze associated with photography. So meaning is derived not from what the picture portrays, but from the relationship between what is and is not visible. The images give virtually nothing away; they say very little about their documented content. Instead my practice speaks of the medium, pointing out photography's relationship to'culture' by highlighting various binaries in play.
By Fiona Amundsen, 1999
Text and images Copyright © 1999 by their respective authors.