Kim Guthrie

Artist Statement

‘My vanishing act’

I’ve always been drawn to the margins of society and lived there. I feel a brotherhood with the disenfranchised, the people regularly overlooked by the mainstream (and let’s face it they are mostly always more interesting). I'm paying my camera's attention to the value I see inherent in the everyman. The question I'm most often asked about my work is how I convince people to let me take their photograph? I'm not really sure, I try to treat everyone the same and be honest; most respond favourably some refuse. But I have had a fairly adventurous life and would like to think I’m street wise, which I think helps; I’m not spooked easily.

Annette Hughes notes in her foreword ‘Amazing Grace’ to my book ‘extraordinary’ photographs by Kim Guthrie:

“He tells you he is an artist, so the very fact that your gaze fixes on the lens proclaims your permission, but do you fully realize it will ultimately stare directly into the eye of an unknown viewer? In that fleeting instant, with only a condensed time frame for artistic decision-making about light, exposure, focus, background and composition, Guthrie clicks, captures you in a moment of unflinching self-possession, and confers on you a state of grace.

This is what I find so remarkable and beguiling about Guthrie’s work. In a sense Guthrie, as artist, manages to disappear from the transaction between subject and viewer. He uses no props, no lighting or makeup, no contrivance of any description to create his striking and often disturbing images which dig into the reality of the people….”

I'm exploring Australian-ness from my perspective trying to get to the essence of us. My work is a warts and all antithesis to the superficial and faked images that are pumped out by the popular media and the over-Photoshopped and sanitized imagery sometimes presented in this digital age.

It’s my purposely-considered approach to be unmistakably Australian, as it’s my belief we are exotic to the rest of the world and thus interesting, I’m addressing head-on our cultural cringe. This is people as I’ve encountered them, it’s a selection of some that have had the particular “magic” to attract my attention enough to approach them and ask if I could photograph them. It’s the reality of my experience, presented for viewing. In ‘My vanishing act’ the subjects are all looking at me; but I’m not there.

Kim Guthrie 2012

Art Forms