Photofile 83 - The Erotic Imagination

Editor: Ashley Crawford

Regulars:

• Third Degree: The new director of the Monash Gallery of Art Jason Smith is brought in for questioning.
• Previews: a critical appraisal of some of the upcoming events nationally and internationally
• Debut: discover Joan Cameron-Smith's Houses of Thought
• Profile: The adventurous approach of the Queensland Centre for Photography
• Interview: Charles Green & Lyndell Brown in the war zone.
• Points of View: Four perspectives on Hari Ho's White Cross Black Land
• Rant: Darren Tofts gets cranky with the digerati

Features:

• BABELSWARM: Kirsten Rann goes into Second Life
• Prizes, prizes, prizes: Martin Jolly investigates the plethora of photography prizes across Australia

Portfolios:

• Lips & Lashes: Peta Clancy by Ashley Crawford
• The Presence of Absence: Ben Cauchi by Erika Wolf
• Visceral Voyeur: Helen Pynor by Ashley Crawford
• The Erotic Imagination: Kristian Burford by Jan Tumlir
• Behind the Masks: Jacqui Stockdale by Lesley Chow

Exhibition Reviews:

• A Century in Focus: South Australian Photography 1840s-1940s at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
• Motion Pictures at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth
• Christian Marclay at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
• Paris Photo at the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris
• Salvatore Panatteri; Untitled (to Dan Flavin) at H29, Brussels
• Generation C at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney
• Brisbane Sound at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane

Book Reviews:

• Helen Ennis: Photography and Australia
• Craig Golding Surf Club
• Laurence Aberhart: Aberhart
• Matt Hoyle: Encounters with the strange and unexplained

The body haunts this issue of Photofile. At times, as in the works of Helen Pynor, Peta Clancy, Ben Cauchi, Jacqui Stockdale and Kristian Burford, it is there in all its visceral, and sometimes gory, glory. At times it is morphing into a strange technological presence in Second Life as seen in the works of BABELSWARM. Elsewhere it is hauntingly absent; in a place where the body, and all too often bodies, are an ever-present factor - the realm of war.

There was an eerie co-incidence in the collation of articles in this issue - that of Babel - both the place and the meaning. Babylon was, in the times of the Bible, referred to as Babel and was located at a place we now call Iraq. Indeed the Tower of Babel looms large in the following pages; there is the babel in the language of war and the babel of technology. It is literally one of the key inspirations for Justin Clemens, Chris Dodds and Adam Nash, known in Second Life by their avatar names S1 Gausman, Mashup Islander and Adam Ramona respectively. It is also literally the subject of the work of Australian war artists Charles Green and Lyndell Brown. Given their options in Iraq, they chose the camera as their weapon of choice. The results highlight the extraordinary waste that all wars create, while they also capture the fascinating contrast between an ancient ziggurat and contemporary military technology.

IMAGE © Kristian Burford Kathryn 2001