Doubletake 2

Head On Photo Festival 2012

Suellen Symons

event-detail-person-vertical — Suellen Symons

This event has concluded

Dates: 04 May 2012 - 30 May 2012

Location: Archetype Gallery, Level 2, Chauvel Cinema Level 2, Paddington Town Hall, Cnr Oxford St & Oatley Rd Sydney NSW 2021 Australia

Hours: Mon-Sun 10am-10pm

Entry Fee: Free

Exhibition Event:

Official Opening 12/05/2012 8:00 am

A series of photographs depicting various sets of twins.

Slowly the implicit ingredients start to reveal themselves.

Within the category of ‘twins’, other human characteristics represent as well – race, gender, age, shapes and sizes all function as subplots to the conceit behind the pictures.

The very specific binding force with this series became the distinction and similarity between human beings in general, the sense of belonging and not belonging to each other.

These photographs also belong somewhere between different genres of photography, namely those of the uncanny ‘freaky’ American style pioneered by Model and Arbus coupled with the ‘new objectivity’ of the Germans, the Bechers, Struth and Ruff.

The strange stylistic complicity with vernacular photography, such as commercial and documentary photography, also lend an atmosphere of surrealism to the series.

The work is both strange and thought provoking in that there are two of not quite the same person. Everyone within the twins series Doubletake has a relationship to someone who either looks just like him or her or doesn’t but who has shared a life of intensity.

Thanks to Matthys Gerber for the writing.