Photography can be more than just a surface for memory.

Introduction

Anne Zahalka is one of Australia’s best known photographic artists whose prolific practice has spanned five decades. It is not easy to maintain a successful creative career over such a period. Times change. People too. Cultural, social and, indeed, existential perspectives refocus. The artist themself evolves with the very process of living. How to maintain one’s creative balance on such shifting ground? Some artists find a formula and anchor themselves there, but the danger is self-mimesis and eventual stagnation. Others change like a chameleon with the surrounding socio-cultural landscape, following trends in a way that can attenuate any sense of a unique ‘voice’. Avoiding these paths, Anne Zahalka has taken a more complex, interwoven approach, returning to projects begun maybe decades before to reconsider those ideas and modalities in the light of the contemporary zeitgeist. To revisit and reinterpret the past from the vantage of the present in order to reflect upon the future.

Certain conceptual threads wind in and out of her artmaking giving it its substance and cohesion. For example, the playful use of historical and art-historical reference to position the present at a tangent, speaking of latter-day life through the visual vocabulary of painting or recontextualising an earlier project in the light of current sensibility. Themes recur: diversity and community; the external manifestation of an internal life; humanity’s increasingly misaligned relationship with Nature. And that elusive strand that runs through all artmaking: the way in which the imagination can reach beyond rational empiricism; the way illusion can be more meaningful than simple depiction; a lie that makes us realise truth (to borrow Picasso’s description of art). Like the plaiting of hair to establish filial connection – a behaviour proposed by the ethologist Ellen Dissanayake as one of the earliest forms of artistic expression – Anne Zahalka’s artmaking braids time to bind her concerns, both personal and collective, interior and of the world, into a familial whole. That whole is extensive, its strands diverse. And so, in this interview we focus on just a handful of projects through which to suggest the achievements of her wider artistic practice.

In 2023, a major retrospective was presented by the Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh) in Victoria. Entitled ‘Zahalkaworld – an artist’s archive’, it brought together many aspects of her work through the trope of the studio–archive. A place of making, of keeping, of returning. A place where the past and present rub shoulders on the shelves, cohabit in Solander and shoe boxes, and spawn new creative life in the computer. At the time of writing, this exhibition is showing at the National Art School Galleries in Sydney. It is an ambitious exhibition that weaves back and forth through the artist’s archive with the same incisive playfulness that characterises the work itself.

Alasdair Foster

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Interview

What is the underlying ethos of your work?

I’m interested in the diverse ways life and the world are represented, and subsequently viewed. I am motivated by the way one can capture a scene – a moment, a place – and materialise it as an image with all its magic, strangeness, darkness, or beauty. Looking through the lens of art and history has proved an endless source of inspiration. Their layered accounting of time has allowed me to reflect upon – and critique – changing notions of equality, representation, and the devastating impact of the Anthropocene on our planet.

What qualities of the medium attracted you to photography?

I was drawn by its ability to inscribe the physical world onto the photographic plane and came to realise that a photograph can be more than just a surface for memory, you can manipulate the image. It can be factual as well as fake with all the grey zones in between: conceptual, documentary, abstract, illusory, magical, nuanced… Complex.

[Left] © Anne Zahalka ‘The Veterinary (Thomas Ravenbourg – vet)’ 1987 from the series ‘Resemblance’
[Right] © Anne Zahalka ‘The Cook (Michael Schmidt – architect, cook)’ 1987 from the series ‘Resemblance’

‘Resemblance’ is probably the work that first brought you to wide public attention. How did it begin?

This work evolved during a one-year residency [1986–87] at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in what was, then, West Berlin. It was an incredible time for me, the most formative in my career. I spent my early days exploring the city’s museums, especially the Gamëldegalerie, which houses one of the most important collections of European painting from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries. While immersing myself in European culture, I was reading the contemporary art theory of Hal Foster and Martha Rosler; looking at the work of Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman. Appropriation, quotation, pastiche, and irony were all new ways of reframing history and art. And this informed the work I was beginning to make.

In what way?

I wanted to evoke and explore the visual language of traditional European painting, reframing it though the contemporary medium of photography. I developed a series of portraits of friends and colleagues that incorporate the tropes and symbolism of the Old Masters to speak of the work those friends and colleagues did, their interests, how they looked… and to do it in a way that resembled those paintings. This appropriation was both homage and critique. Photography’s verisimilitude proved remarkably effective in rendering the textures of velvet, silk, fur and lace, the grain of wood and the veining of marble we associate with European Renaissance art. Interestingly, and somewhat annoyingly, viewers often referred to my photographs as paintings!

[Left] © Anne Zahalka ‘The Reader (Silke Leverkühne – painter)’ 1987 from the series ‘Resemblance’
[Right] © Anne Zahalka ‘Marriage of Convenience (Graham Budgett and Jane Mulfinger – artists)’ 1987 from the series ‘Resemblance’

At the time they were made, Postmodernism was at its height, setting a particular context for reading this work. Do you think that reading has changed thirty-five years later?

This is a difficult question to answer as I’m not an art historian, but I think ‘Resemblance’ is representative of a period in art when artists were critically reflecting on truth and fiction in image-making. They were calling into question the nature and influence of cultural traditions through mimesis, quotation, and parody. In some ways, we understand and interpret these postmodern works of the eighties though the history of photography itself. So that viewers today can make associations between people, objects, and places by reflecting in the present moment on how these pasts – these two historical frames: renaissance painting and postmodern photography – have portrayed those ideas.

In 1995 you made ‘Open House’, which drew on the visual language of art history but set the portraits in a wholly contemporary environment.

I have always had an interest in the things we collect and the way we arrange them in our homes. Back in Australia, I wanted to apply the compositions and conventions of seventeenth-century Northern European painting to depict my friends in their homes – the way they lived – through the small rituals of daily life. Although the scenes are carefully staged, the interiors are real – a kind of ready-made set in which the sitters present and perform themselves.

[Left] © Anne Zahalka ‘Monday 11.48am 1995’ from the series ‘Open House’
[Right] © Anne Zahalka ‘Thursday 8.33pm 1995’ from the series ‘Open House’

The simple acts of pouring milk, reading the newspaper, gazing out of a window, playing music, making dinner are re-enacted, revealing much about the inhabitants and the objects with which they surrounded themselves. These intimate domestic scenes reflect on their relationships and living situations in a period before they had settled down, defined their careers, or become families. So, while they are staged, the photographs offer a record of these individuals at that moment in time. Indeed, time plays a critical role, something I emphasised in the title of each work. I wanted to draw not only on art history, but also on the languages of documentary photography, advertising, and domestic sitcoms. To parody these genres in an ironic and critical manner.

Seeing these images today, I am reminded affectionately of the way we looked, the clothes we wore, the records we played, and the interiors we decorated. It was such an analogue world… all captured on celluloid and displayed in light boxes!

[Left] © Anne Zahalka ‘The Council Workers’ 1989 from the series ‘Bondi: Playground of the Pacific’
[Right] © Anne Zahalka ‘The Surfers’ 1989 from the series ‘Bondi: Playground of the Pacific’

Over the years, you have made a number of works about the culture and depiction of Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach. How has that work evolved over time?

The beach work grew out of another residency – this time at Bondi – which was to explore the mythologies and representations of beach culture. It followed my return from Berlin. That distance and time away from Australia had given me a new perspective. Living in this very special beachside neighbourhood had provided insights into its community. It was this that I wanted to represent by employing a formally constructed approach that again drew upon historical sources. In this case, my references were to Australian paintings, images from popular culture, and early studio portraits. I used a painted backdrop and the kind of props and beach tropes used in early photo-studio portraiture and invited participants into this open studio to perform themselves or recreate a figure from an iconic beach painting. While these works continued my play with ideas of truth and fiction, they also became a documentary record of these individuals themselves and the demographic of the beach at that time.

[Left] © Anne Zahalka ‘The Bathers’ 1989 from the series ‘Bondi: Playground of the Pacific’
[Right] © Anne Zahalka ‘The New Bathers’ 2013 from the series ‘Playground of the Pacific’

The two versions of ‘The Bathers’ illustrates this well, I think.

The initial version, made in 1989, was poking fun at Charles Meere’s painting ‘Australian Beach Pattern’ [1940] by recognising the change in attitude towards cultural diversity. At the time I had, like many, understood Meere’s painting as perpetuating an ‘idealised’ image of Australians at the beach. I later learned that Meere was actually being subversive, referencing the propagandist imagery coming out of Nazi Germany at that time.

Revisiting my original image a quarter of a century later, I wanted to reflect subsequent changes in the cultural diversity of contemporary Australia. While there are still some disturbing attitudes about who ‘belongs’ in this country and racial tension remains, my ‘The New Bathers’ [2013] is a celebration of our multicultural community.

[Left] © Anne Zahalka ‘Down on His Luck’ 1983 from the series ‘The Landscape Re-Presented’
[Right] © Anne Zahalka ‘Down on His Luck’ 2017 from the series ‘The Landscape Revisited’

In ‘Landscapes Revisited’ you explored the traditions of Australian colonialist painting, disrupting the mythologising embedded in the originals. How did this work begin?

This series was made in 2017, but it evolved from one of my earliest bodies of work, ‘The Landscape Re-presented’, made in 1983, which rewrote the narratives of early colonial paintings. That earlier work was based on reproductions from of the Heidelberg School [a style of late-nineteenth century Australian impressionism] and earlier artists such as Conrad Martens [1801–78]. I then created interventions through collage by inserting other contemporary figures, including my own family, in order to disrupt this romantic view of the landscape and its settlers.

In the later work, I placed real figures in real landscapes that resembled those depicted in the colonial paintings referenced before. In restaging these works nearly forty years on, I sought to explore issues of national identity, stereotypes, diversity, and difference within Australian society in order to address the exclusion of certain groups of people from that history. I could retell the stories of those excluded from the traditional settler narrative, speak about their place in this landscape, and give Australian identity a more human and culturally diverse complexity.

Your interest in landscape has extended to include the dioramas once common in natural history museums…

After finishing art school in 1981, I took a road trip across the US with a friend. We ended up in New York where I stayed for a few months. It was here that I saw Cindy Sherman’s work for the first time. I also visited the American Natural History Museum. This was a place I’d read about in my high school text, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’. The novel’s troubled protagonist, Holden Caulfield, liked to go there to see the dioramas. He found comfort in the fact that nothing in them would ever change… everything would remain the same… the only thing that would be different was you. I found this poignant but also sad.

In the museum, I was struck by how surreal the habitats on display appeared – animals and birds frozen in motion set against beautifully rendered panoramic landscapes. At the time of my first visit to the museum there were no restrictions on photographing these displays and I was able to take in my tripod and camera. Like [Hiroshi] Sugimoto before me, I found that when you closed one eye and looked through the camera lens, the dioramas became more believably real. While Sugimoto used black and white film to accentuate his documentary approach, I chose to photograph them in ‘living’ colour. But once I’d processed all the films, I didn’t know what to do with them. It felt wrong to just print them as documentary images, particularly given that Sugimoto had already done that. So, I just archived them.

[Left] © Anne Zahalka ‘Alpine Scene’ 2006 from the series ‘Wild Life’
[Right] © Anne Zahalka ‘Game Park’ 2008 from the series ‘Wild Life’

When did they see the light of day?

It wasn’t until a quarter century later that I found a way to use them. By then, I had created a number of series exploring our peculiar relationship with the natural world. ‘Leisureland’, ‘Natural Wonders’, and ‘Wonderland’. These series considered natural and artificial environments through the lens of tourism, leisure, and extreme adventure tours, latterly involving digital montage to add elements to hyperreal effect. In making this work, I had found that I could offer alternative ways of seeing nature that exposed human beings’ way of controlling it, harming it, and turning it into an object of spectacle and, in this way, revealing our culturally distorted ideas about it.

Once I understood that, I could use those early images of the museum dioramas to further play with these ideas. The result was ‘Wild Life’ [2006–07] where I made digital interventions into diorama displays by superimposing images collected from the internet and my archive to consider – through a blended juxtaposition of two different points in time – what was happening to these habitats today.

[Left] © Anne Zahalka ‘Falling Angels’ 2018 from the series ‘Wild Life in the Age of the Anthropocene’
[Right] © Anne Zahalka ‘There will be no more rumble in the jungle’ 2018 from the series ‘Wild Life in the Age of the Anthropocene’

You returned to this work ten years later. How had your ideas evolved over that time?

In 2017, I began revisiting some of the original ‘Wild Life’ images to reflect on further changes that may have taken place in these environments. Based on current science and climate forecasts, I was able to bring these images up to the present day by digitally montaging contemporary elements into the photographs originally made thirty-five years before.

In the five years since then, I’ve become more interested in working with museum photographic archives and material collected by their scientists, naturalists, artists, and environmentalists in the field – both historically and in the present day. This is a complex process technically because most of those images are in black and white. So, while my practice still involves the digital montaging of contemporary elements into the historic photographic record of an actual diorama, that base image must first be sepia toned and then hand coloured. Given that virtually all the dioramas have now been removed from public display, my reimaging and reconstructing of them photographically has, in effect, brought them back to life.

[Left] ‘Zahalkaworld – an artist’s archive’ installation view, MAPh, 2023 (photo: J Forsyth)
[Right] ‘Zahalkaworld – an artist’s archive’ installation view, National Art School, 2024 (photo: Jacquie Manning)

How did the Covid pandemic impact your approach to art making?

I wanted to step away from making art. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to continue or if I even did. I felt exhausted by all the projects I’d produced and felt burdened by having to house them and look after them. Covid gave me time to sort through all this stuff and put it in some sort of order.

‘Zahalkaworld – an artist’s archive’ was a major retrospective presented last year at the Museum of Australian Photography [MAPh] in Victoria. How did you conceive this exhibition?

When the museum approached me to create an exhibition for their Luminary program, the director Anouska Phizacklea asked me what I was currently working on. I explained that I wasn’t working on anything, but I had been thinking about what would happen to my archive, and those of other photographers of my generation. (I had imagined a utopian site that would repurpose shipping containers to house photographers’ archives. They would be temperature controlled and accessible to the public for research and study.) I suggested that perhaps something might come out of this process of reviewing my archive and Anouska Phizacklea encouraged me to see where that might lead.

[Left] ‘Zahalkaworld – an artist’s archive’ installation view, National Art School, 2024 (photo: Tim Connolly)
[Right] ‘Zahalkaworld – an artist’s archive’ installation view, MAPh, 2023 (photo: J Forsyth)

At the core of this exhibition was a room installation that replicated your studio–workspace photographically at life-size. How did visitors respond to this intimate look behind the scenes?

People were intrigued and surprised. This installation, which came out of the shipping container idea, was positioned between two gallery spaces. It was like a maze; you had to go through the studio to get to the rest of the exhibition. The trompe l’oeil effect was so believable that visitors found themselves touching the shelves lined with boxes of prints, negatives, and ephemera to see if they were real. There was also some furniture, along with physical folders, books, and a pin board with preparatory sketches and reference materials. It was quite hard to tell what was real and what was not.

If Zahalkaworld was a place, how would you describe it in the tourist brochure?

It is a world of fabrication and documentation, artifice and reality, parody and pathos. It is created of many places, borrowing from many pasts. It revisits the present, reminds us where we’ve come from, and looks to possible futures. It encompasses a range of approaches to the photographic medium from the analogue to AI. In recent years it has created a new sculptural form of photographic facades that returns to my love of realism and illusion, which lies at the very heart of Zahalkaworld.

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photo: Tawfik Elgazzar

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‘Zahalkaworld – an artist’s archive’ is showing at the National Art School Galleries, Sydney, until 19 October 2024.

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This interview is a Talking Pictures original.

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