Windows - Looking in & looking out

Brian Rope | Photography

Windows - Looking in & looking out | Susan Henderson

Manning Clark House | 13 May to 8 June

Opening hours: Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays 11.00 am to 2.00pm

Canberra photographer Susan Henderson is exhibiting a selection of her work over the last two decades. It follows her interest in light and the camera’s capacity to capture a composition moment in time where light reflected or refracted, or a subject through a window creates a mood or memory. The selection of work comes from a wide geography. Some places are iconic and immediately identifiable, others recall the spirit of the moment.

What is a window? Is it that transparent panel on an envelope containing a bill? Is it a framed area on a display screen? Is it an opening in our home or office wall or our car? Are windows necessarily fitted with glass so we can see through them? Or should they be open so that we can hear sounds through them or feel the breeze? What difference, if any, does it make if there is a curtain or some other covering?

In her explorations here, Henderson is sometimes looking out through the glass of a window and other times showing us reflections. Some images are quite composed, others emphasise the shattering effect COVID had. A couple of double exposures record the atmosphere in Canberra City during COVID lockdown, emphasising chaos and disruption.

Some of the locations portrayed are immediately recognisable - the entrance to the National Gallery of Victoria, and New York’s One World Trade Center. Others are less recognisable, depending how well the viewer knows cities such as Paris and Madrid. You may not even recognise some Canberra locations because what is included provides no real clues.

This a modest selection of Henderson’s large body work during the years from 2006 to 2022. Early works are, perhaps, more straight forward. Later ones reveal that her interest has evolved from the directly representational to exploration of how the camera can capture unique moments in time.

In 2012, she visited Madrid and captured an image through a window of its citizens in the central area.  Bus shelters wait for passengers. Some pedestrians cross a road whilst others just stand around. The colours are subdued – in large part almost sepia. There is much to ponder.

5 p.m. Paseo del Prado – 2012 © Susan Henderson 

In 2018, the window was closer – Melbourne’s much-loved glass panel where water flows over its surface creating a magnet for children (and many adults) to touch and peer into – and, of course, to photograph. Observing a young child passing the other side of the window, Henderson saw a metaphor for fleeting youth.

Fleeting Youth – 2016 © Susan Henderson

In 2018, she was again overseas. She visited the memorial plaza in Lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center twin towers once stood. The new tower, One World Trade, had just been completed and soared majestically above the precinct. Looking at the reflections in the glass towers she saw a haunting vision of New York. 

New York, New York – 2018 © Susan Henderson

Then came COVID. Like various other photographers, me included, Henderson wandered through deserted streets and shuttered businesses seeing and creating images. Finding some inverted stools in a closed business, she saw them as emblematic - a traditional distress signal in a flag and representational of the deserted restaurant. This is what photography is about – not just looking but seeing.

Lockdown - Canberra City 2020 © Susan Henderson

As Sydney emerged from its final COVID lockdown, Henderson was there and saw, in some “unbalanced” reflections, a symbolic representation of the impact the lockdown had had on that city. Looking at her capture later, she realised there was no human presence whatsoever.

Beyond Covid , Sydney 2022 © Susan Henderson

Henderson says she likes her images to speak for themselves and also to leave details that the viewer can explore and return to over time. That they most certainly do, so she is delivering what she has said.

This review was first published by The Canberra Times on page 11 of Panorama on 20/5/23. It is also available on the author's blog here.

 

Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize 2022

Photography Review | Brian Rope

Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize 2022 | Various artists

Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre | 9 July – 27 August 2022

For the third year in succession, a Canberran has won the MCPP. After Judy Parker won in 2020 and Ian Skinner in 2021, this year the first prize of $15,000 went to Sammy Hawker.

In his magazine Inside Imaging here, Will Shipton said “There must be something in the water around Canberra that feeds the conceptual photographic mind, as three of the four winners are from the relatively small capital city” and “The fourth MCPP is organised by the Australian Photographic Society (APS), an umbrella organisation for Australian camera clubs. The grand prize won by Hawker is an impressive $15,000 cash, making the MCPP a major Australian photo contest.”

I’ve previously reviewed two of Hawker’s recent exhibitions here and here. She works predominantly with film, often in close association with traditional custodians, and challenges the notion that a photograph constitutes the moment a camera shutter is released.

Sammy Hawker - Mount Gulaga, 2021

Hawker’s concept statement reads “This work was captured on 4x5 film looking out towards Mount Gulaga from the Wallaga Lake headland. I processed the negative with ocean water collected from site. When processing film with salt water the corrosive properties lifts the silver emulsion and the representational image is rendered vague. However an essence of the site is introduced to the frame as the vibrant matter paints its way onto the negative. A ghost of Gulaga looms behind the abstraction ~ felt rather than seen.”

Other Canberran finalists this year were Lyndall Gerlach, with two of her works, and Susan Henderson. Gerlach says, “For me, a good photographic image must always engage the viewer either emotionally or intellectually.” You can read more about Gerlach in another of my pieces here.

Lyndall Gerlach - Night City-ness #1, 2021

 

Lyndall Gerlach - Contemporary Lifestyle, 2021

This is Henderson’s first time as a finalist. Henderson believes photography is mostly about capturing the real and the now. She is “fascinated by the conjuncture of the two, the transient opportunity to record the light rather than the subject, to take advantage of nature and the built environment to photograph.”

Susan Henderson - Rain 2, 2021

At the opening, adjudicator Bill Bachman said “we were instinctively looking for images with a strong or original concept and superior execution, that in some way challenged our notions of normal. Happily, there were ideas, techniques and processes galore.”

Julie Williams had two works selected as finalists. Of them, Moth was given one of three HMs. The first word to enter my thoughts when I saw it was “bushranger”. Then I learned it is a reinterpretation of the life of the Lady Bushranger Jessie Hickman (1890-1936).

Julie Williams - Moth, 2022

The other HMs were works by Claire Conroy and Ben Blick-Hodge.

 

Claire Conroy - 35mm slide recovered in Lismore floods 2022

Ben Blick-Hodge - Soup's up! 2022

At the opening I met two first time finalists Sue Gordon and Michael Shirley, both of whom were thrilled to have had their works selected. In his artist statement relating to his work, Rain, Shirley speaks of rain coming to take you, your life, your house, your possessions, your friends. The black and white artwork shows numerous people under umbrellas, almost obliterated by rain which he has deliberately exaggerated.

Michael Shirley - Rain, 2021

Gordon’s work is a self-portrait titled What’s hidden in shadows. It is a powerful bruised depiction of physical abuse once experienced, but no more hidden or excused.

 

Sue Gordon - What's Hidden in Shadows, 2022

It was also great to see the work by Vicky Cooper and Doug Spowart – a concertina photo book – displayed on a shelf. This was the first year that anything other than 2 dimensional prints could be entered, so it was excellent that this work was a finalist.

 

Victoria Cooper & Doug Spowart - Desire Paths, 2022

All the finalists in the 2022 MCPP exhibition can be seen in a virtual gallery here.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.