Kim Guthrie's Professional Portfolio

Australia

Primarily I’m interested in fine art photography from the 20th century to now and identify myself within this tradition, having completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. I now reside in the hinterland of the Noosa Shire, in Queensland. I show my work regularly. Most recently Ordinary Madness at the Museum of Brisbane, June 15 – August 12, 2007 and prior to that Living in Paradise at the Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide May 31 – June 25, 2006. A book of my photographs The Beautiful People + Love The World with a foreword by the playwright David Williamson was published in 2005.

The late U.K. radio personality John Peel famously said of Manchester band The Fall:

"Always different, always the same"

That's pretty close to what I'm trying to document with my photographs.

I personally dislike the current trend in photography toward digitally constructed imagery and consciously go for the straightforward approach, relying on the honesty of the subject rather than Photoshop gimmickry, studio effects, lighting and make-up. I’m a street photographer and I celebrate the ordinary. I explore the commonplace, the outsiders of society, kitsch, archetypes and stereotypes, the uniqueness of the Australian culture, the constructs of fashion & celebrity both intrigue and bore me. Oscar Wilde put it beautifully when he said:

“There is nothing worse than being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly”

I take my camera everywhere with me; I took it to hospital in an ambulance with a pulse rate of 200 b.p.m. and photographed the emergency room for two days while stuck there but the pictures were pretty limited, confined to bed and hooked up to an ECG. One of the things I find most intoxicating about photography is the interaction with my subject. The way I work is intuitive and what I like to refer to as stalking; it’s relatively easy when I find a subject that’s static, because it doesn’t protest. People are different; it’s all about persuasion and honesty I hardly ever photograph a person without their permission and if I do, I feel as though I’ve cheated. I love people and I also talk a lot, so it suits my personality, it’s amazing what you find out about people. Some are hesitant and need to be coerced, surprisingly few flatly refuse, most won’t allow you much time, so you have to be ready to work quickly in a condensed period of artistic decision making, light, exposure, focus, background, composition. Like most photographers I get a lot of dud images but the ones that work make it worth the effort and I love it! I think of my work as impartial critical observation of the world, frozen with a camera. I get great personal satisfaction from the interaction photography allows me with otherwise total strangers and alien to me situations. In this age of limitless hype and phony celebrity I think it’s good to remind yourself that you only have to scratch the surface of the image most people present to the world, to discover we are all one on a very fundamental level.

In the majority of cases the camera acts like a magic key that unlocks gates to people and places innermost worlds.

Kim Guthrie's Images

 

 

Is this your portfolio? Ask us about how to add pictures