Raggett EMA 442 Project Upload 4

EMA442 Sharyn Raggett Project Upload 4

Following on from upload 3... I’m going to use photography as the medium, take inspiration from abstract photography and early photographic darkroom processes, and artists such as Justine Varga, to explore the theme of biography, or ‘how to tell the story of a life’ - in this case the life of Elizabeth Chifley.

So ... I’ve continued to investigate the work of Justine Varga, particularly in relation to the concept of ‘slow photography’ – a term I think she coined. Slow photography, much like slow food, takes time and persistence. It’s in the simmering that the alchemy happens, and for me, the final works evolved from misunderstandings and mistakes. Slow photography is a renewed interest in alternative photographic techniques, perhaps as a reaction to the speed offered by digital image making. In the end I chose to use the best of both worlds.

If you close your eyes and imagine a loved one, I can almost guarantee that the impression you will find won’t be crisp and clear; it will be muffled and somewhat muted, just a memory of a gesture or the sound of a laugh; yet somehow you know it is them.

(Varga, http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/maternal-line/) 2

I am seeking to evoke this kind of sensation in my work.

I continued to photograph the traces of cake batter left behind in a mixing bowl. In my mind these images were going to be otherworldly and intriguing, but in truth they didn’t excite me.

I continued with the process of making cakes from Elizabeth’s collection of recipes on the Chifley website. I continued to document my efforts in the hope that the process itself would yield up some kind of divine intervention ... or at least some happy accidents. Kristie-Lee described my process as like divining tea leaves for meaning - this was the perfect metaphor. I was waiting for the answer to reveal itself.

And, with persistence, I think it did.

What I think was missing was some sort of human presence in the images I was making. As luck would have it, once I’d washed up the mixing bowls I started to become intrigued not so much by the traces of cake batter, as by the deeper scratches left by the act of using the hand crank beater. I started to photograph the clean bowl. Being stainless steel, it was also highly reflective, and it was impossible not to include my own partial reflection in each image.

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In my mind these images were going to be otherworldly and intriguing, but in truth they didn’t excite me.

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I continued to document my efforts in the hope that the process itself would yield up some kind of divine intervention ... or at least some happy accidents.

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I abandon the high-end DSLR camera and start shooting on iPhones and iPads, and processing to replicate the look of early tintypes. I’m happy that this is a step in the right direction... >

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At this point I think I’m going quite mad, and start documenting the washing up (because there’squite a bit of it)!

There is method in my madness though - if I hadn’t done the washing up, I wouldn’t have noticed that the clean mixing bowl is now covered in scratches from the hand beater - and that in itself is quite intrigiung...

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... what’s more intrigiung is that it’s really hard to document these scratches on stainless steel without appearing in the image yourself. It suddenly dawns on me that a human presence is what’s been missing from earlier images...

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... so it’s a mistake, but I’m running with it...

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At this point I think I’m going quite mad, and start documenting the washing up (because there’s quite a bit of it)!

There is method in my madness though - if I hadn’t done the washing up, I wouldn’t have noticed that the clean mixing bowl is now covered in scratches from the hand beater - and that in itself is quite intriguing...

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I start photographing and realise that I’m in shot whether I like it or not. Photography 101 would probably advise on all sorts of tricks to avoid getting your reflection in shot (I know the tricks as I worked as a commercial photographer’s assistant many years ago), but I’m enjoying this accident.

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Final works

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And finally, my bio and artist statement...

Bio Sharyn Raggett holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Photomedia) from UNSW Art & Design, and an Advanced Certificate in Graphic Design from the Sydney Graphics College. With 20 years’ experience as a graphic designer and illustrator, her work has also been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Primavera, First Draft Gallery and Annandale Galleries.

From scratch Digital C-Type prints on metallic paper

Artist Statement If you close your eyes and imagine a loved one, I can almost guarantee that the impression you will find won’t be crisp and clear; it will be muffled and somewhat muted, just a memory of a gesture or the sound of a laugh; yet somehow you know it is them.

Justine Varga

From scratch takes a subjective and structural approach to exploring the concept of biography and memory, or how to tell 18

the story of a life – in this case the life of Elizabeth Chifley. I’m interested in what we choose to commemorate, but even more so in what we choose to leave out. The gaps inherent in piecing together an understanding of Elizabeth Chifley are what intrigue me most.

I saw parallels in the lives of Mrs Chifley and my own grandmother, and sought to evoke the sensation of muffled and muted memories by retracing the footsteps of these women – in baking from scratch.

My chosen object was the hand-cranked eggbeater, which I used to systematically make cakes and biscuits from Elizabeth Chifley’s recipe collection. I documented the traces left by the beaters in the mixing bowl – the build-up of scratches and inevitable reflections – then processed the images as digital tin-types, replicating the early photographic process. This technique blurs the line between portraiture and abstraction by further removing the images from their original context. It makes the ordinary extraordinary, which is in turn a metaphor for the way I’ve come to think of Elizabeth Chifley.

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