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Anne Zahalka
19
Zahalka works with digital photography. She usually works in series. Some series are ongoing, as evident in her reworking of her iconinc 'The Bathers' (1989) during the making of the documentary The Art of Australia (we will talk about this in detail later)
Zahalka has a long-standing interest in tableau photography and portraiture and draws her imagery from a variety of settings, people and objects.
Zahalka uses both studio and outdoor spaces.
Anne Zahalka is one of Australia's best-known photomedia artists. She comes from an immigrant background, with Jewish Viennese and Catholic Heritage. Growing up in Australia at a time when immigration was increasing and Australians were becoming more aware of diverse cultural groups has greatly influenced her work, in particular with themes that reflect on multiculturalism, identity and the nature of representation.
'Bondi: Playground of the Pacific' Series
In this series shes focuses on national mythologies and stereotypical representations of identity, using humor and parody as a means of subverting existing myths and stereotypes. Most of the photographs in this series were staged in the studio. They depict beach users of all ages, backgrounds and body types against a painted background. In this series Zahalka responds to and questions existing art historical representations of the beach.
Who is she???
Artistic Practice
In Bondi: Playground of the pacific (1989), Zahalka continues her interest in appropriating, referencing and restaging art historical images.
In The Bathers (1989) (top right) Zahalka takes as her inspiration Charles Meere's idealised image of Australian Beach Culture, Australian Beach Patter (1940)(top left). Whilst Zahalka loosely mimics the poses of Meere's original painting, in place of his idealised subjects she inserts a more representative range of body types and cultural backgrounds to reflect contemporary Australian Society.
Sunbather, 1937, Max Dupain
Sunbather #2, 1989, Anne Zahalka
Max Dupain's photograph of a muscular and tanned sunbather, Sunbaker (1937), an iconic representation of Australian culture, is referenced in Zahalka's The Sunbather #2. Zahalka questions the veracity of Dupain's representation through the re-staging of Dupain's sunbather as a pale, slight and freckle-skinned redhead.