For Associate Professor Cherine Fahd, photography is about capturing singular moments to create a collective sense of belonging.
Chrine Fahd (left) and a Parramatta resident pose together for a Parramatta Yearbook photo. Photo Cherine Fahd.
If you’ve ever had your portrait taken, you’ll know there’s something uniquely uncomfortable about the experience.
According to UTS academic and artist Associate Professor Cherine Fahd, there’s a reason for that. As a creative practice, portrait photography is brimming with power imbalances between the photographer, an active observer who holds all the creative power, and the subject, also called the ‘passive observed’.
A photographer and videographer with over 20 years’ experience, Associate Professor Fahd is the creator of Being With. This creative methodology subverts the power imbalance by transforming portrait photography and videography into tools to build social connection.
During COVID-19, Fahd used Being With to produce two major works — A Proxy for a Thousand Eyes and Parramatta Yearbook —that brought strangers together during an era of social distancing.
Bringing the photographer into the frame
Fahd (foreground) and audience member interact through a COVID-safe screen during Proxy for a Thousand Eyes. Photo Pamela Pirovic
In traditional portrait photography, the photographer stands behind the camera, instructing the subject on how to move and pose in order to create an image.
By contrast, Being With draws Associate Professor Fahd out from behind the lens and — often — into the photographic frame with her subject.
In this shared space, photographer and subject engage in a collective experience that redistributes the power between them.
By co-creating and negotiating the image they want to produce, they become collaborators striving for connection.
"It’s about being able to work very closely with people in a one-on-one intimate context and be able to really attend to each individual’s needs, perspectives and stories in front of the camera," says Associate Professor Fahd.
The Being With methodology sits at the heart of Proxy, a videographic project focused on capturing loneliness of the pandemic, and Yearbook, a series of community portraits shot over a six-month period in western Sydney.
In Proxy, a one-day performance at the Sydney Opera House in 2020, 50 members of the public were invited to engage with Fahd while separated by a series of COVID-safe screens.
By silently mirroring her gestures, participants captured the intimacy and loneliness of the pandemic.
By contrast, Yearbook was an attempt to document community history, culture and identity by establishing a photography studio on the streets of Parramatta — a concession to ongoing pandemic restrictions that prevented people from congregating indoors.
More than 500 members of Parramatta’s diverse community sat for group and individual outdoor portraits in which Fahd often appeared alongside them.
The resulting images, both moving and still, showcase the power of Being With to foster social and community connections.
“It brings people together in the shared vulnerability of being seen,” Associate Professor Fahd says.
Parramatta Yearbook on display. Photo Gary Trinh
Being With in the wider world
Being With also shapes the way that audiences experience Fahd’s work. Proxy was exhibited at the Opera House, while Yearbook was displayed in Parramatta’s Centenary Square and later at the Maitland City Gallery.
Collectively, the two projects received thousands of visitors, inviting them to experience the connection and interaction of Being With.
Through the act of observing the images, which capture a moment in time and continue through time, audience members can experience the interpersonal nature of the methodology long after the shutter has closed.
Being With continues to foster meaningful relationships and audience experiences both within and beyond Sydney. Recently, Fahd worked with the University of Sydney’s Hunt-Simes Institute of Sexuality Studies to photograph queer researchers.
Later this year, Being With will be the focus of a new project called Living Memory, which seeks to build long-term community resilience in post-flood Lismore.
“It’s a kind of social provocation; a trigger for bringing people to you and to each other,” Associate Professor Fahd says.
“The conversation that ensues is about negotiating a way of that portrait having meaning beyond just that moment in time.”