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| Matakana Pictures Exhibitions Artists | Graduated, Bachelor of Arts (in Social Anthropology) from University of Auckland 1996. |
Show Number 9: 13.August - 9.October 2005 Wooden Empty grey photographs of rural pony clubs: compositionally consistent: nothing breaks the monotony of these images. Wooden comes from an interest in critiquing the actual medium of photography, and its supposed role as a neutral copier of reality. In an attempt to avoid the tired narrative forms of documentary photography, Wooden has a systemised approach to both the content and the actual execution of the photographs. In employing a strict methodology – reminiscent of the Becher’s production of serial images – notions of chance are eliminated, consequently challenging the social rhetoric of objectivity attached to the photographic medium. These photographs demonstrate complete compositional control: they all look the same; the horizon line is identically placed in each image. Woodens’ measured photographic approach disrupts common experiences of photography, by excluding information. The signifiers (people) – that give the photographed sites significance – are stripped from these images; viewers are left with a near identical, yet unsettling, trace of reality. Wooden critiques photography’s unique relationship to its referent by challenging what that referent actually is. According to Roland Barthes, photographs must be accurate representations of reality because they depend on the existence of something in the real world to refract light onto the emulsion. Thus, photographs are never separated from the thing (the referent) they represent in the real world. Wooden plays with the referent. Photography’s social role, as an impartial tool to record reality, is twisted because there is nothing to record: no recognisable referent; no action to document: no people to represent. Consequently, narrative forms – associated with documentary photography – become distorted; these images do not offer a clear story. Wooden functions as a series: a suite of images to be viewed collectively. The photographs rely on their relationship to each other and on their place within the series to gain meaning. In short, meaning is derived not from what the picture portrays, but from the relationship between what is and is not visible, and from what is understood to be there. |
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Fiona Amundsen 29. Gordonton Pony Club, Gordonton, 28.06.2002, 7.55 |
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Fiona Amundsen 30. Hamilton East Pony Club, Hamilton, 15.03.2002, 6.55 |
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Fiona Amundsen 31. Hamilton East Pony Club, Hamilton, 22.03.2002, 6.57 |
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