Denise Ferris
“I started making photographs in England at workshops led by Paul Hill in the late seventies. My work has always included ‘street photographs’, some from where I live on the Monaro are in the National Library’s collection and others from a stay in South Africa are in the District 6 Museum, Cape Town. When I lived in Perisher Valley I also made landscape photographs usually with reference to human occupation of the land. I will always be interested in the world’s appearance, in looking and seeing, however I have had an interest in the material presence of the photograph since art school, and used various supports and paper types with UV light to produce cyanotypes, van dykes, kallitypes and most recently casein prints. I have researched the casein emulsion, to print beige and white, counter to its usual sepia tone.
In recent years I have been concerned with issues of maternalism for example Home Decorum (a series on the status quo) my ironic take on the way the domestic sphere works and The Madonna Myth blueprints which question the veracity of the construction of the passive Madonna icon.
Recently I again assumed the role of the flâneur, over three months making hundreds of photographs on the streets and from the windows of buildings and trains in Switzerland. Rather than full circle my practice runs parallel, many of my recent street photographs are similar to the milky tones of casein.”
(Denise Ferris 2006)
