Abandonment and rescue have been the drivers and foundation of a 30 year relationship with the camera that has enabled and protected me in the exploration of other people in a fruitless search for my own sense of belonging. My practice prioritises the portrait process, which allows for an intimacy that recognises the influence of the photographer as present and influential on the subject and environment. The final images are less a critique of the representation of objective reality but rather a documentation of my own journey and the projection of a unique unconscious ambient anxiety.
Photography as facsimile of reality offers great opportunities to challenge conventional space and my most successful images (in my own mind) destabilise through their existential ambivalence. Purpose and narrative are anathema – my images must not ‘belong’ and in this my work is further autobiographical. I celebrate my subjects, elevating them to the status of allegorical beings relative only to my own failure to make sense of my place. All playfully exist within a mix of documentary and fine art ‘tableau vivant’. Everyone is celebrated as a hero and beauty is defined by complex, visceral emotions between understanding, frozen in time and space that represent survival in the face of a brutal reality.
© Richard Ansett 2024
