Area of Research Expertise

Photography

Research Profile

My main area of research in recent years has been an investigation into photographic representations of diseased and damaged bodies. The area of research covers photographic self-portraiture and representations of ill health. Although primarily concerned with the HIV/AIDS body the research does also include investigation into artists who use representations of their own diseased or damaged body to explore various issues of ill health, identity and subjectivity.

The most recent series of photographs continue a body of work referencing the medical institution and medical imaging. A desire to reveal what is known to be hidden - the disease, the internal body, the workings of the institution, power/knowledge relations - yet every surface able to be torn reveals yet another surface, another plane of intensity for investigation.

Many of the images have overt references to the medical in terms of images (anatomical posters, x-rays) and objects (stethoscope, hospital gown, bandages) placed within the picture frame. At times the work is intentionally ambiguous in location, conflating the domestic space with the institutional. There is a question here of authority and appropriateness when the subject appears to be in control of the medical paraphernalia. This conflating of medical/institutional and domestic space is used to emphasise the direct effect that medical and scientific discourse has on our relationship to our own bodies.

My research proposes the possibility of photographic self-portraits of illness, that have shifted from an era of mourning and militancy associated with early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the West, as the management of the disease has shifted from an acute to a chronic illness, and offers alternative representation strategies that situate themselves between the alien or other and some 'natural' self or social structure, between recovery and discovery, visually between portraiture and performance.