Amos Gebhadt is known for large-scale moving image installations and still photographs, often incorporating multiple screens or panels to challenge dominant narratives and explore intersections between culture, resistance and entanglement. Pushing the boundaries of traditional photography for the creation of this work, Gebhardt sourced an x-ray view of a wallaby who died prematurely from a suspected gunshot wound. In a process of meticulous layering, Gebhardt interweaved satellite imaging with long exposure photography of the night sky on Wadawurrung country where the wallaby was found. These layers document different light frequencies that exist beyond human visibility, highlighting Gebhardt’s interest in revealing colonial histories of violence that might be wilfully hidden or erased. Gebhardt knowingly merges these forms to make a unified composition that blends times, spaces and scales of perspective. Hovering like a haunting, the wallaby’s bones glow amidst the starry night sky in what is an exploration of light and time, life and death, trauma, sentience and interconnectedness.
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.
