Rebecca Shanahan – Bio

The images in Rebecca Shanahan's body of work, near breath (2005) exhibit a quiet tension between interior and exterior, foreground and background, light and dark. The series describes people and spaces with a sensibility that merges the cinematic with the documentary.

Shanahan is interested in the photographic representation of time and space and how photographic presence suggests absence. For her, the desire to document always points to the transient nature of our lives.

The images in near breath are taken at night and feature the many hues of artificial light. The relationships between figures and their surroundings are unexplained; narrative remains only a possibility.

In Eclipse (2003) Shanahan's meticulous and finely detailed prints describe a mood - a feeling of loss, a sense of unease. Tiles in an empty swimming pool, tracts of grass in an open field or the corner of a room become meditations on absence. We are removed from the obvious subject matter of the image by the veil of a limited tonal range and precise compositions. What is depicted is surpassed or eclipsed by what is suggested. The title of the series, eclipse, alludes to that strange quality of time and light during solar eclipses, which is echoed in these images. It also suggests a connection with that moment of arrested time that is characteristic of photography.

Rebecca Shanahan is currently head of photography at the National Art School in Sydney. She has exhibited widely throughout Australia. One of the images from near breath was highly commended in the Citigroup Photographic Portrait Prize at the AGNSW in 2004.

These images are a selection from the artist's portfolio. More images are available for viewing in the gallery's Print Room.