What does an artist do when the subject is a disease as much as a person, and when the disease then subsumes the person – to the point where he can’t recognize his own son?
Cherine Fahd, University of Technology Sydney et Sara Oscar, University of Technology Sydney
From Madonna and child to fierce matriarch, mothers have appeared in frame since photography began – even it sometimes they are just part of the furniture.
Photographic works drawn from the Art Gallery of New South Wales collection explore fakery, mirrors and tricks of the light. But Shadow Catchers stops short of today’s digital doppelgangers.
Where once we subjected friends to post-holiday slideshows, now we share travel selfies live with a remote audience. This study teased out the tension between snapping and experiencing the trip.
Cherine Fahd, University of Technology Sydney et Sara Oscar, University of Technology Sydney
Instagram bushfire images cut through our news fatigue. This developing brand of photojournalism brings authenticity and a different sense of proximity.
An archive project is restoring the secret history of Namibia’s resistance music culture from the 1950s to the late 1980s – suppressed and censored during apartheid but now touring the world.
30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, covert surveillance images offer us an unparalleled look at the lives of people trying to escape from the east to the west.
Kate Flint, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Images of wildfires are powerful, but can make climate catastrophe seem like something spectacular and distant. So some artists are focusing on the plants and bugs in our immediate surroundings.
In the days before scuba technology, the celebrated photographer sought to capture the beauty of the reef by placing corals in an aquarium and shooting them. But under stress, they released algae.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne