Artist statement: With faces come inspiration. In the wake of the recent arrival of refugees and asylum seekers by boat to Australia, I realised these people are often portrayed as a mass of faceless people; ‘boat people’ rather than individuals. Through my work with Australian migrants,I try to draw attention to all the diverse faces of Australia. I seek to shatter the impersonal by showing my subjects to be real people, all with different dreams, different stories.
The desire to celebrate cultural diversity comes from my personal experience as a migrant. It is through photography that I attempt to locate the deeper aspects of life, and through the process of capturing images, I arrive at an overwhelming sense of belonging.
The image is part of my current project titled My Australia, my journey.
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.
