Connecting through the lens
Associate Professor of Visual Communication Cherine Fahd is an expert in photography and visual culture, and one of Australia’s leading photographic artists. Her work centres on the ways in which photography can create intimacy and connection.
Associate Professor Cherine Fahd has been making photographic and video artworks for over 20 years. Photo: Cherine Fahd.
Tell me about your expertise?
I’m interested in how photography operates as both an artistic practice and as a social practice. Everyone takes photographs, everyone looks at photographs and everyone shares photographs, but it is also a specialised artistic field. While I have been making photographic and video artworks for over 20 years, since completing a PhD in 2016 I have also enjoyed writing about photography and photographs. In particular, family photography, social media, arts and culture more broadly.
How long have you been working with photography?
In 1999 I had my first exhibition of photographs, titled ‘Operation nose, nose operation’. The project was undertaken in Beirut, Lebanon and was my first Australia Council funded project. I didn't initially plan for it to be a photographic work; the photographs were intended to be documentation of a social process. I was casting people's noses as a way to explore the idea of Arabic appearance, the nose and western standards of beauty.
The project ‘Operation nose, nose operation’ was inspired by the rise of plastic surgery for Lebanese women who were wanting to westernize their noses. I took photographs to document the process of casting people's noses with plaster. In the end, the photographs were much more interesting than the plaster noses, as they captured something of our interaction and the intimacy of the participatory process.
selected images from Cherine Fahd's 1999-2000 photographic series 'Operation nose nose operation'. Photography: Cherine Fahd.
What excites you about photography?
I’ve always been interested in how photography is used socially. We as humans absorb images in ways that we may not even realize. We are surrounded by images and often believe what we see, attempting to – often unconsciously – fashion ourselves by the standards depicted in those images. Taking photographs can also bring people together. Something as simple as standing together to have a group portrait or having one’s portrait taken is a relational process. The social interaction between photographer and subject is often a behind-the-scenes process that is marginalized and comes secondary to the image outcome.
While I’m somewhat interested in the image outcome, I'm more interested in the interpersonal interactions that achieve that outcome. My intention is to use the image to amplify the social exchange at the heart of making portraits, drawing attention to the trust that is implicitly placed in the photographer when a photograph is taken.
The social interaction between photographer and subject is often a behind-the-scenes process that is marginalized and comes secondary to the image outcome.
Associate Professor Cherine Fahd
Can you talk about a recent project that does this?
A public artwork titled, ‘Being Together: Paramatta Yearbook’ is a good example that used photography as a social practice but also had an artistic outcome. When I pitched for the project, I was given a package from the Museum of Contemporary Art that included information from the Paramatta City Council about a survey they had conducted with citizens. One sentence in the survey stood out to me, talking about residents feeling alienated or lost against the seemingly never-ending development and construction in the area. I thought I could focus on the citizens using urban development as a backdrop: putting the people centre stage and foregrounding the community.
Being Together: Parramatta Yearbook photo wall, Cherine Fahd, 2022. Photo Garry Trinh.
I spent a year working in Parramatta’s CBD. I was a stranger standing in a public space with my photography team and all our gear. We approached people and asked them if they wanted to be part of the project and have their photographs taken with me. Interestingly, 90 per cent of them said yes, and around 50 per cent of those people came over and asked, “What are you doing? Can I be part of it?” So, just having the photographic setup was enough to gain people's trust and curiosity.
The project took place at a unique time, just after the second COVID lockdown. Parramatta was one of the local government areas that had been severely impacted, so to come out of that and to have people agree to be in this work, sharing our COVID experiences, taking off masks and disinfecting our hands together was a rare creative experience.
What first led you to working in academia?
I originally had no ambition to be an academic. I was happily working in a bookshop when someone offered me a sessional teaching role at Sydney University, and then I was also offered sessional teaching at UTS. At first, I was terrified of that responsibility, but with encouragement I decided to give it a go.
In order to teach those classes, I found myself in the library researching for the lectures and it was then that I realised that I absolutely loved it. Researching and working with the students, seeing them go from having an idea in their heads that was quite frustrating, to slowly materializing their work and then seeing the final outcome was a pretty magical experience. I enrolled in a PhD in 2012 and at the same time started working full-time in academia. It’s been fantastic combining my artistic and academic lives over the past decade.
I found myself in the library researching for the lectures and it was then that I realised that I absolutely loved it.
Associate Professor Cherine Fahd
You’ve recently been appointed as co-chair on an advisory group at the Powerhouse Museum. What does that role entail?
The Powerhouse recently acquired the Australian Centre of Photography archive and the remainder of their funds, and they've used this opportunity to launch their own initiative called Powerhouse Photography. The advisory group for this initiative includes photography practitioners from various fields, including science, fashion, art and architecture, along with Powerhouse curators. As it’s the inaugural group we will have the opportunity to collaborate and inform what Powerhouse Photography is and what direction it will take.
What are you currently working on?
I’m currently working on a cross-institutional and cross disciplinary project called ‘CLOAK’ that brings queer scientists together with UTS fashion student designers to reinvent the lab coat as a symbol of queer pride. My role has been to create video and photo works that capture this co-design experiment.
The project was inspired by research that shows that queer scientists and those in STEM disciplines often remain closeted for much of their careers. So, there's a global movement and awareness-building campaign to create visibility for queer people in STEM. It’s been really interesting to watch the fashion designers collaborate with the scientists. In our first workshop, they started to get to know each other, and the students really listened so that they could redesign these lab coats with that person in mind.
Like photography, designing clothes for someone is a really intimate experience. The designer needs to touch the person's body to take accurate measurements, and also have a conversation about their personal style preferences. Making clothes for someone and being dressed by someone reveals acts of giving and receiving. I’m interested in this exchange.
Alice Motion: Good morning. Thanks for having us. We're very excited.
Fauziah Ibrahim: So good to see you both. Okay, so now this project is called Cloak and I love the idea, the concept of it, where it marries art and science together. Alice, tell us a little bit about it.
Alice Motion: This is a project that's been in the works for a couple of years now. It's a collaboration between UTS and the Shark Center at the University of Sydney. Really, the project is about exploring the lab coat as a garment, exploring identity and science, and bringing together interdisciplinary collaborations with people like Cherine, who's a wonderful artist and it's been amazing to work with you, Cherine.
Cherine Fahd: Likewise.
Alice Motion: And really trying to celebrate diversity, identity, and expression in science.
Fauziah Ibrahim: Wow. Cherine, talk to us about your personal involvement in this. What was the process like?
Cherine Fahd: I think the most exciting thing is to see the fashion designers. They range from second year, third year to PhD and alumni students. And to give them a real world brief, which was to get to know these scientists, to take stock of their personal stories and their queer histories, and then to reimagine a lab coat for that person and their unique story that they've shared. The scientists were so generous in sharing those stories with our designers.
And then for me personally, it was to capture that. To capture the interactions between the designers and the scientists, and then to capture their creations and all that comes with that. You can see in the footage that the designers, they're trained to attend to another person's body. And so when you fit a garment onto another person, you have to touch them, it's quite intimate. And so to capture that in the footage was really important. That collaborative process, but also just the sheer transformation of those lab coats. So, you take this very stock standard, white for the most part, uniform.
Johanna Nicholson: Not very fashionable.
Cherine Fahd: Yeah, not fashionable at all. And then you turn it into something completely beyond what we imagined.
Fauziah Ibrahim: Alice, we saw you there in that footage walking down the runway in your fashionable lab coat. What does your lab coat, what is the story behind the lab coat?
Alice Motion: Well, I think there's different aspects of the story. I think in capturing this, [inaudible 00:02:40] has really explored with breaking the form of this lab coat. I'm really sort of thinking about the different ways to wear a piece like this. And the lab coat, it's a really important piece of protective equipment, but it can be a barrier between science and scientists and... Well, between scientists and the public, I think.
There's something about it that adds this degree of formality and not every scientist wears a lab coat. There's people who do all sorts of research. So, playing with this idea of this garment of breaking down barriers, I think that's been really interesting to start conversations about this piece of clothing and to recognize that scientists are more than this uniform identity. We're like everybody else. We have many different aspects to our personalities.
Johanna Nicholson: That must have been a confronting, perhaps, process to have such a personal story that is your own and handing over kind of, I guess it's a collaboration, but in a way giving the creative control to someone else to interpret that story.
Alice Motion: For me, I think rather than confronting, I'd say it was just full of joy. It was really an opportunity to collaborate and to have trust. Trust is so important for all aspects of collaboration. And the artists, the designers trusted the scientists and the scientists felt the same way. I think that's part of what Cherine is so masterful artist is creating this very safe, creative environment.
Fauziah Ibrahim: Yes. Cherine, I was just going to ask actually, when you were capturing all this, what is the one thing that really came to your mind that was a common theme that just kept coming to your mind.
Cherine Fahd: I think generosity, that actually as designers, we can work... The thing we do best is to work in the service of others and that became very apparent very quickly. So, we ran two workshops and they were whole day workshops. As the researchers on the project, we didn't have to do very much. It was really introducing the scientists and the designers and off they went. And we could see that this incredible connection and trust and willingness and openness to share among the scientists and the designers.
The end result for me is always that actually to design an item of clothing for somebody, and especially in this context where you have personal and intimate stories being shared, that yeah, it is fundamentally the most generous thing you can do. It's like a giving and receiving. And actually some of the photos where you see the designer and the scientist interacting, they were part of what was called a giving ceremony that we set up specifically for the designers to share the story of what they designed with their scientists and then to dress them in that. And that was our way of giving back to the scientists for opening up to us.
Johanna Nicholson: It's so brilliant. Well, associate Professor Alice Motion and Associate Professor Cherine Fahd, thank you so much.
Cherine Fahd: Thank you.
Johanna Nicholson: Congratulations.
Cherine Fahd: Thanks.
Alice Motion: Thank you.
Can you tell me about one of your most rewarding career achievements?
It would have to be ‘A Proxy for a Thousand Eyes’, which was a one-day performance at the Sydney Opera House on November 29, 2020. The performance took place with five cameras, one cleaner, a bell ringer and fifty participants. A creative response to social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic, the performance invited physical touch from fifty participants at a time when the human body and stranger intimacy were considered most risky.
It was a once in a lifetime experience because of the timing of it. Everything had been locked down, and out of nowhere, this commission arrives. Because of COVID, there were so many limitations to make the work, and that turned out to be pretty incredible because I learned how to work creatively with some of the strictest limitations.
The performance was part of the Antidote Festival, the first series of events to emerge at the Opera House since it shut in March that year. I think that work could only have been made at that time. It was really special to have so many people come and participate and want to touch through those screens and reflect on the shared experience of the pandemic and social distancing. It was also the first time I have performed live, and it was at the Sydney Opera House. Incredible!
A guest participating with Cherine Fahd (right) in her performance artwork 'A Proxy for a Thousand Eyes' at the Sydney Opera House in November 2020. Photo: Cherine Fahd.
CLOAK: QUEER SCIENCE, FASHION & PHOTOGRAPHY will be on exhibition from 16 February - 5 March 2023. The CLOAK film can be seen on the Broadway Screen at UTS, and photographic portraits of the scientists and designers will be shown in the UTS foyer Building 1.
