Life through a queer lens

Photographer Alison Bennett’s Families of Choice data-projection coming up nightly in Northcote brings Melbourne’s queer culture to life.

Alison, there used to be a strict divide between butch/femme. What are the divisions now?
Oh! Now there’s a paradox! What interests me about queer culture and the queer social agenda is the attempt to refuse labels and categories. What I love about it is the complexity and ambiguity of queer identities. At its heart, I think it is a social space that seeks to empower us to be and love as we choose, an alternative to hetero-normative social expectations. Whilst I think many of the groups that I am aware of would resist being given a label or a name, I could perhaps point to groups like ‘Some of My Best Friends are Femme’ and the transman visibility emerging through groups such as the guys behind Dude zine. 

How did you get into photography? Whose work do you admire?
As a teenager in Canberra I would regularly visit the National Gallery of Australia. At every visit I would stand in front of Carol Jerrems’ ‘Vale Street’ photographs, a masterpiece of 1970 counterculture. I don’t think I understood it at the time but maybe it spoke to me on a personal level because it reflected aspects of my cultural background and it was affirming to see that represented as important by the national gallery.

As a teenager you don’t think these things through, but I now think it was this experience that prompted me to major in photography at art school in the 1980s. When I moved to Sydney, I discovered the work of William Yang’s ‘Sydney Diary’ and it affirmed for me that photography was an extraordinary thing. I also feel a great affinity for the work of Charles Bayliss, an Australian photographer working in the 1870s.

However, most of my work in photography has not been in that social documentary style – my visual arts practice is more abstract and austere, as you can see from my portfolio on my website! I did not return to this social documentary impulse until around 2006, when a friend invited me to photograph an Upstart Alley event.

Which photo/shoot are you most proud of?
This commission from the City of Darebin was a wonderful opportunity to sit down and review my archive of 10,000+ images. I became quite nostalgic remembering so many great parties and events, many of which are no longer with us, like UpStart Alley, Gay Shame, Tuff Muff, King Victoria and All Dragged up with Nowhere to Show. I also loved photographing Orlando, Transitory, the fabulous OutBlack parties, Crass Happening and book launches at Hares & Hyenas such as Banquet, Tom Cho and Dude.

Of the photographs included in the Families of Choice data-projections, my favourite at the moment is the one of Sam and Justin embracing – such genuine, gentle and unaffected affection. I’m so grateful to have their trust – that they allowed me to take this photo and to publish it.

‘Photography is anthropology’... discuss!
Photography can be so many things – anthropology is just one model of operation/practice that could be used to understand aspects of my approach in this project. It’s about trying to understand a culture, to report and communicate what one finds.

What does a project like this one involve in terms of production?
Photography has become ‘dematerialised’ in recent years. When I trained in the 1980s, a photograph was always a print. Now we mostly encounter photographs in their ephemeral digital form.

Preparing images for the web and data-projection involves optimising the pixel dimensions to look their best via this technology – for example, the data-projector at Northcote has an XGA resolution – which is 1024 x 768 pixels. But for a high quality print you need many more pixels to look good!

Where can people see more of your work?
Queer Skin at 69 Smith Street Gallery during Midsumma. The Families of Choice data-projection will be live every night throughout Midsumma on the outside of the Northcote Town Hall. alisonbennett.com.au

To get to Northcote Town Hall take Tram 86 to Stop 31.