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Untitled : portraits of Australian artists

by Sonia Payes

The Melbourne-based photgrapher, Sonia Payes, has spent two years travelling to 60 contemporary artists' studios and homes - with one notable living as far away as Tuscany!

Accession 9781876832285 ISBN 9781876832285 Publisher Macmillan Art Publishing

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spine_text: UNTITLED.SONIA PAYES PORTRAITS OF AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS

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Topics and Themes

1. **Portrait Photography as Documentary Practice**
Payes spent years travelling across Australia and overseas to photograph 60 artists in their homes and workplaces, producing around 700 images that function as both art and document. The work sits at the intersection of fine art photography and documentary, capturing subjects with candour and directness rather than staging or artifice.

Connect to books about: portrait photography, documentary photography, photographic essays, photo-journalism.

2. **The Artist's Studio as Creative Space**
A central concern of the book is where artists live and work — their studios, homes, and environments. The studio is treated not merely as backdrop but as a revelatory space that illuminates creative process, personal ritual, and artistic identity.

Connect to books about: artist studios, creative workspaces, the geography of making, art and place.

3. **Australian Art & Cultural Identity**
The book profiles 60 significant Australian artists — from John Mawurndjul to Jeffrey Smart to Imants Tillers — forming a sweeping survey of contemporary Australian art at a particular cultural moment. It raises implicit questions about what constitutes an "Australian" artistic identity and how it is expressed across diverse practices.

Connect to books about: Australian art history, national identity in art, contemporary Australian culture, postcolonial art.

4. **The Artist as Subject: Self, Identity & Persona**
By photographing artists rather than their artworks alone, Payes investigates the person behind the practice — their habits, environments, and private lives. This inverts the usual relationship between artist and audience, making the creator the object of scrutiny.

Connect to books about: artistic identity, celebrity and authorship, biography of artists, the self in art.

5. **Artistic Process & the Nature of Creativity**
Each entry, through photograph and essay, asks what drives an artist's imagination. The book is as much about how art is made — the conditions, routines, and inner lives that sustain creative practice — as it is about finished artworks.

Connect to books about: creative process, artistic inspiration, aesthetics, philosophy of art-making.

6. **Photography, Portraiture & the Gaze**
Payes uses the portrait form to probe ideas of individual expression and the relationship between photographer and subject. Her approach — described as capturing the "essence" of subjects with "palpable candour" — raises questions about power, visibility, and how we read a face.

Connect to books about: portrait theory, the photographic gaze, representation and identity, Susan Sontag's *On Photography*.

7. **Critical Writing & the Role of the Art Commentator**
The book incorporates essays by over 50 arts writers, curators, and critics, making it also a document of how Australian art is talked about and interpreted. The interplay between image and critical text foregrounds the role of language in shaping how we understand visual art.

Connect to books about: art criticism, curatorial practice, ekphrasis, art writing and theory.

8. **Art Biennales, Internationalism & the Global Art World**
The book was timed to coincide with the 2007 Venice Biennale and was launched on the deck of the Australian Pavilion, situating Australian art within a global circuit of prestige and exchange. This context raises questions about how national art traditions are framed and marketed internationally.

Connect to books about: Venice Biennale, the global art market, cultural diplomacy, art institutions and exhibition culture.

Untitled : portraits of Australian artists

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Topics and Themes