Part of a series titled The Landscape Re-presented, Anne Zahalka’s postmodern re-working of Frederick McCubbin’s ‘Down on his Luck’ (1986) collages together multiple clichés of dress, lifestyle and landscape to challenge ideas of Australian identity. For the series Zahalka brought commercial reproductions of iconic Australian paintings by colonial artists into clever collision with figures and fragments cut from contemporary magazines. Zahalka’s satire destabilises the notion of an Australianness that is based upon a sense of belonging to a natural landscape, throwing its contradiction with urban life into relief. Some 30 years later in 2017 the artist returned to the theme with her series, The landscape revisited.
(2019)
Chromogenic prints are printed on paper that has at least three emulsion layers containing invisible dyes and silver salts. Each emulsion layer is sensitive to a different primary colour of light (red, green or blue). The development process converts the hidden dyes to visible colour depending on the amount of light it was exposed to. This type of paper is commonly used to print from colour negatives or digital files to produce a full-colour image. It can also be used to print black-and-white images, giving softer grain and less contrast than gelatin silver prints. Commonly known as c-type prints, chromogenic processing was developed in the 1940s and widely used for colour printing, including for domestic snapshots. While recent years have seen this process accompanied by ink-jet and digital printing technologies, chromogenic printing still remains in use to this day.
