Statement
In need of creative resource during the restless depths of lockdown, I installed a makeshift photography studio in my home shed where I practiced staging a series of self-portraits. Deprived of my usual muses at a time when photoshoots were outlawed, I inverted the camera towards myself. After all, as Francesca Woodman plainly remarked when asked why she always pictures herself, "It's a matter of convenience, I'm always available."
One exercise in preservation prompted by another.
[Shot on Mamiya 645 / Kodak TMAX 400 filmstock, developed at home]
Karl Halliday is an emerging art photographer, curator and writer based between Naarm (Melbourne) and Boorloo (Perth). Inspired as a child foraging through an archive of photo prints from his parent’s youth, Karl saw in photography an opportunity to critically make sense of what he observed to be the complex exchange of influence images shared with memory and time. Born from his distrust in the documentary status of photography, Karl’s artistic practice exploits photographic illusion as an instrument for separating fact from belief through the invention of images. Under the scrutiny of his camera’s suspicious gaze, Karl’s images of familiar domestic scenes become loaded with an uncanny sense of awareness suggestive of the possibility of concurrent and even contradictory truths, echoing the artist’s religious upbringing in his pursuit of personal myth.