IMAGES > [Front cover] Michael Kluge, Left Behind #6, 2022, digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
IMAGE > Michael Kluge, Left Behind #7, 2022, digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
My photographic work and heart came together in these images of what Janice left behind.
– Michael Kluge
Left Behind is the latest body of work by St Kilda-based photographer Michael Kluge. Known for his documentation of historical buildings and cultural relics from bygone times, Left Behind marks a new development in Kluge’s photographic practice, as the artist extends his focus towards the subject of memory as observed through the lens of grief.
Left Behind comprises a series of Kluge’s photographs, each image a record of the personal belongings ‘left behind’ following the loss of his partner Janice to cancer in 2019.
Collectively, the pictures present a portrait of absence expressed through objects – traces, that, when placed under Kluge’s studious gaze, become charged with the private significance of the memories that remain.
Upon entering the exhibition, the first photograph we encounter is also the earliest. Captured by Kluge shortly following Janice’s passing in 2019, long before Left Behind was formally conceived as a series, the photograph is representative of the artist’s initial compulsion to portray his partner through picturing the items that Kluge felt embodied the essence of Janice’s personality. The result features three pairs of Janice’s spectacles, resting on a lens cleaning cloth (which she often gifted others).
Right from the beginning, we are introduced to the photographic language of the show. By pairing the content of the object with context of the background, Kluge sets up a structure of symbolic layers whose relation synthesises subtle meanings. In this instance, the glasses carry the connotation of Janice’s vision, offering us the literal lens through which she perceived the world.
Kluge’s metaphorical use of layering extends throughout many of the photographs in Left Behind. In this image, Kluge presents us with two hairbrushes, a hair roller and an envelope inscribed with a name. This is one of the few works in which not all the articles belong to Janice – the small brush was her infant son’s, the second her own, the roller her mother’s, and in the envelope, a lock of her father’s hair.
The ordering is intentional - a chronology of three generations. Familiar remnants of the past are aligned with projections of the future. The image is a prime example of Kluge’s method of inventively using the
organisation of the image’s elements to poetic effect.
Those acquainted with Kluge’s practice will recognise the artist’s signature in Left Behind As with his previous photographic projects, the images are beheld by a flattening of space and centred, measured perspective, implying an objective form of witness reflective of Kluge’s documentary impulse to preserve the ephemeral. Left Behind however differs in that the subject of the work can no longer be preserved. Instead, what we are afforded are eyeglasses, hairbrushes, gloves, shoes… a composite of traces that together signify an absent body, painting an interpretative portrait from memory, narrating the story of a cherished life.
For Kluge, creating a photograph is an act of remembrance, a means of embalming the past from the enduring thaw of time. This is evident in Left Behind, where the photographs serve as memento mori in their spectral, permanent stillness. Here, the title of the work doubles in its meaning, for, in Kluge’s photographs, it is not just his late partner’s possessions, but time itself that is left behind.
Karl Halliday November, 2022
Michael Kluge is a mid-career, St-Kilda based artist working in photography. His work focuses on subjects that occupy a distinct space. Throughout his practice, Michael uses light to amplify his ideas. The marginalised draw his eye. And because Michael values the ordinary and the overlooked, he dresses them up in their best light in the hope that we will also come to notice and value them. The concept of time is central to Michael’s work. He privileges old objects, people and locations that hold history within their image The disappearance of a subject before he has captured it gives him concern. Michael’s regard for the soul of his subjects and his desire to give them presence is manifest in the beauty he conjures in his work.
www.michaelkluge.com.au
https://www.instagram.com/ michaelklugephotographer/
From her perspective, 2019 digital C-type print, 66 x 66cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #3, 2022 digital C-type print, 156 x 106cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #1, 2022 digital C-type print, 156 x 106cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #2, 2022 digital C-type print, 156 x 106cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #4, 2022 digital C-type print, 156 x 106cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #6, 2022 digital C-type print, 156 x 106cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #7, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #5, 2022 digital C-type print, 156 x 106cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #8, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #9, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A. Left Behind #10, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #12, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #15, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #13, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #11, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #14, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #16, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #17, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A.
Left Behind #18, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A. Left Behind #19, 2022 digital C-type print, 66 x 46cm P.O.A.
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