A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (History of Art), 2017 / This research was instigated by a collection of uncollected portraits (completed and incomplete), photographs, letters, papers, documents, passbooks, and other materials, left behind when an airbrush portraiture studio, The Aqua Portrait Studio, closed in about 1998 after fifty years of continuous business. The portraits were created by enlarging small original photos – sometimes from two separate sources – and then colouring them with an airbrush and other materials. Because of the nature of the airbrush technique, it was possible to change the original image completely: to clothe the sitters in completely imaginary attire, for example, and pose them together with someone they had possibly never been photographed with. This process gave rise to a genre in which people could re-imagine themselves, enact other personas. Because the fifty years of existence of this studio almost coincided with the years of apartheid (the studio was open from about 1950 to about 1998), it seemed that the collection of uncollected images and notes left behind could be a source of rich information about the people who were the studio's clients, the process of acquiring airbrushed portraits, and the social and historical context in which those involved lived. I start with three fundamental questions: Since this portraiture form grew so exponentially in popularity, especially during the apartheid years, what specific significance and meaning had it taken on for the communities who were buying the portraits? What need was it meeting? What can we learn about these lives from this collection? The research takes two forms. First, it closely interrogates the material objects in the collection; and second, it tracks the routes of clients and salesmen to what were some of the former homelands of the northern part of South Africa. Both these investigations attempt to understand the possible roles and contribution of these pictures to the construction and reconstruction of self-identity under apartheid. / XL2018

Master of Visual Arts / The Dissertation is a meditation on our relationship with this continent and its layered physical and psychological ‘landscapes’. It explores ways in which artists and writers have depicted our ‘thin’ but evolving presence here in the South, and references my own photographic work. The paper weaves together personal tales with fiction writing and cultural, settler and indigenous history. It identifies a uniquely Australian sense of 21st-century disquiet and argues for some modest aesthetic and social antidotes. It discusses in some detail the suppression of focus in photography, and suggests that the technique evokes not only memory, but a recognition of absence, which invites active participation (as the viewer attempts to ‘place’ and complete the picture). In seeking out special essences of place the paper considers the suburban poetics of painter Clarice Beckett, the rigorous focus-free oeuvre of photographer Uta Barth, and the hybrid vistas of artist/gardener Peter Hutchinson and painter Dale Frank. Interwoven are the insights of contemporary authors Gerald Murnane, W G Sebald and Paul Carter. A speculative chapter about the fluidity of landscape, the interconnectedness of land and sea, and Australia’s ‘deep’ geology fuses indigenous spirituality, oceanic imaginings of Australia, the sinuous bush-scapes of Patrick White, and the poetics of surfing. Full immersion is recommended.

Master of Visual Arts / The Dissertation is a meditation on our relationship with this continent and its layered physical and psychological ‘landscapes’. It explores ways in which artists and writers have depicted our ‘thin’ but evolving presence here in the South, and references my own photographic work. The paper weaves together personal tales with fiction writing and cultural, settler and indigenous history. It identifies a uniquely Australian sense of 21st-century disquiet and argues for some modest aesthetic and social antidotes. It discusses in some detail the suppression of focus in photography, and suggests that the technique evokes not only memory, but a recognition of absence, which invites active participation (as the viewer attempts to ‘place’ and complete the picture). In seeking out special essences of place the paper considers the suburban poetics of painter Clarice Beckett, the rigorous focus-free oeuvre of photographer Uta Barth, and the hybrid vistas of artist/gardener Peter Hutchinson and painter Dale Frank. Interwoven are the insights of contemporary authors Gerald Murnane, W G Sebald and Paul Carter. A speculative chapter about the fluidity of landscape, the interconnectedness of land and sea, and Australia’s ‘deep’ geology fuses indigenous spirituality, oceanic imaginings of Australia, the sinuous bush-scapes of Patrick White, and the poetics of surfing. Full immersion is recommended.

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