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September 20, 2011
One of the exhibitions in the core programme of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale I did see when I was in Ballarat on the week end was Les Horvat's Momentum of the River’s Flow’: An Australian’s View of Vietnam’s Long Journey.
Les Horvat, untitled, from Momentum of the River’s Flow’
The emphasis of this work is on digital imaging to interpret or make sense of a landscape that is set up in opposition to thge ‘rhetoric of photographic documentation’. Horvat says of this body of work:
These images are photographic outcomes derived from a series of multiple visits to Vietnam over the past three years. They are however, not simply photographically captured moments in time but are often constructions of visual encounters, repositioned within the frame of the still image. Post-production techniques and manipulations, along with a contextual re-interpretation of the view seen through the camera's lens, are used to express narratives and perceptions, observed over time and framed by place
The post production is quite extensive.
The issues that concern him are: Firstly, what is the role of memory in our understandings of landscape and through the landscape our understandings of lived experience? And second, how can a photographic interpretation of the landscape further that understanding? His argument is that photography has an important role to play in bringing meaning to cultural history, not only by recording place as an historical marker, but through the interpretation of memory, and its relationship to landscape.
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