Tamara Dean
Tamara Dean's photography-based art practice is explored to greater depths in her new monograph, published by Thames & Hudson.
Words: Emma-Kate Wilson | Photography: Tamara Dean
‘I am an introvert and quite a private person. This book reveals some particularly personal anecdotes and aspects of my life which are not widely known.’ Pictured: Fleeting by Tamara Dean. Main Image: Endangered by Tamara Dean.
‘The environment and climate change is front of mind in all of the work I make today.’ Pictured: Understory by Tamara Dean
Featuring scenes of environmental vastness, Tamara Dean's practice uses photography to capture moments that transcend a worldly appearance. Instead, they oscillate between realities — Tamara's and a call for greater eco-awareness.
From deep dives into water to immersive scenes of foliage, the artist links our world with the natural one. The series In Our Nature, set in the Adelaide Botanic Garden and Mount Lofty Garden, SA, for the 2018 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art best displays this connection to nature.
'I spent over a year revisiting the gardens each season, spending countless days and hours wandering through the gardens and photographing people from two to eighty years old as well as dancers from the Australian Dance Theatre,' says Tamara.
'It was an exciting series to work on and I had many people volunteering to be in the shoots; representing people across such a diverse range of ages was a wonderful challenge,' she continues. 'I often played music through the shoots to encourage my models to dance and move their bodies fluidly through the environment.'
Turning the humans in her work into subjects, they become one with the landscape, akin to animals in National Geographic or a David Attenborough documentary. Tamara invites us to hold a deeper connection and in turn, we might save it before the ecology is lost forever.
'The symbol I lean most heavily on now is water, says the artist. 'Water as a life sustaining element, with its restorative and calming effect; and its potential as a destructive force due to human influence resulting in the changing climate i.e. rising sea levels, floods, landslips.'
‘It’s quite an intuitive process. I tend to let ideas percolate in my mind for a few months, sometimes years, and then when I lock onto a clear vision for the work the conceptual framework and aesthetic decisions start taking shape.’ Pictured: I Wrap My Face in Her Cloak of Petals and Breathe Deeply by Tamara Dean
“My work often reflects my life—there are deeply personal formative experiences represented which can be observed through the concepts and images which I have created. I wanted to bring these stories out, to illuminate some of the motivations for making certain works/series.”
‘I have made a concerted effort to photograph both boys/men and girls/women since my 2013-2015 series The Edge, but I think that regardless of the gender of my models, there remains a sense of softness and subtlety in my works which may come across as female or feminine. Pictured: Introversion by Tamara Dean
For the artist, capturing the transient quality of water has become a passion—even creating an underwater studio on her property to allow her to stage shoots in a controlled setting. She hopes her work will remind us to consider the importance of clean and life-giving waterways.
Describing her practice as intuitive, the shoots often take shape spontaneously after thinking of concepts and aesthetics—sometimes for years. The artist allows her subjects to take direction from the environment; actions and gestures reveal themselves through the process.
Tamara Dean: A Monograph, published by Thames & Hudson, allows her audience a closer look into her practice and how her collections work together. Revealing her style and personal insights, the monograph offers a perspective on Tamara's creative motivations.
'I wanted to show the evolution and trajectory of my work,' says Tamara. 'The influence of crucial skills I learnt as a photojournalist on my development as an artist —largely the way I interact and work with people— and how this gives my work an easily recognisable identity.'
The artist adds the book offers 'a better sense of me, and of my own narratives held within the photographs.' Tamara concludes, 'I hope that this book offers some context to the evolution of who I am as a person and as an artist.'
