Contemporary Australia: Women

119 photography. Abbott thought that the ‘terrible plague’ of pictorialism, which swept American photography in the early twentieth century, resulted in images of saccharine sentiment, manipulated ‘after the fact’ with analogue techniques creating dramatic shadows and auratic haloes. For Abbott, this meant that ‘the inherent genius and dignity of the human subject was denied’. 6 In the 70-odd years since Abbott wrote her article, we have arguably passed through at least two, if not three, more ‘major cycles’ of photography. Therese Ritchie’s work belongs to the latest, which perhaps started around the turn of this century, in which the manipulations afforded by digital technology no longer sit in self-conscious opposition to the ‘truth’ value of the photograph. Documentary intentions sit comfortably alongside the pictorial flourishes and aesthetic refinements offered by computer software in the post-production of the image. Both artist and subject now understand that the truth the work of art offers its audience is greater than that ostensibly offered by the ‘objective’, unadulterated analogue snapshot. Its temporality is tenuous and uncertain, but nonetheless it transcends the instant. Miranda Wallace the curve of her cheek; even the sheen on her fingernails is re-worked with virtual brushstrokes. We see this in Donald , in Pamela and in numerous other works: these ‘brushstrokes’ burnish and caress the contours of both the landscape and the people within it. Ritchie’s photographs raise complex issues that go to the heart of the documentary photographic tradition. Who are these photographs for? Are they intended for a broad — and consequently indefinable — art gallery audience? Or are they for the people they depict, the individual whose portrait is created, or the communities from which these individuals come from? For Ritchie, the portraits are both ‘for and of’ the subject photographed. 5 By formally seeking the permission of her sitters to take their photograph, Ritchie devolves some of her authority as the creator of the images. In some senses, she seems to want the images to be self-portraits — that is, to encourage the sitter to be the author of their own image, with Ritchie serving as mediator and enabler. The portraits may be intended for their subjects, but they are also destined for audiences far from where they originate. Both audiences are inevitably on borrowed time. Once the people caught in Ritchie’s lens have passed away, Aboriginal tradition demands that their photographed image not be shown. For this reason, some of Ritchie’s works may be removed from this exhibition. Our experience as the audience of these works is thus doubly privileged. In 1951, American photographer Berenice Abbott claimed that photography was at ‘its own crossroads of history, possibly at the end of its first major cycle’. The first cycle had seen a tension between aestheticised pictorialism and documentary realism, based on what Abbott and her contemporary Walker Evans understood as ‘straight’ Donald, Coles, Alice Springs 2011 Inkjet print 50 x 134cm Opposite Jeannie Kandiwirri, Church Camp (from ‘You know me’ series) 2011 Inkjet print 50 x 140cm Kathleen and Nancy 2011 Inkjet print 40 x 140cm Policeman’s eye 2011 Inkjet print 40 x 140cm Therese Ritchie