Rebecca Ann Hobbs
Rebecca Ann Hobbs explores various forms of physical interaction in her quirky and highly-staged photographs. In her celebrated series, Suck Roar (2001), Hobbs appears in a range of self-portraits in the company of different species of animal including a very large dog, a stuffed fox, snails, possums, a squid and a spider. The old-fashioned clothes that Hobbs wears in each photograph suggest that she is restaging a scientific or psychological experiment on the relationships between the species. However, the nature of those relationships is left open-ended and uncertain. The digitally intensified colours and the curling shutter relay cord that appears at the bottom of each frame highlight Hobbs’ interest in the staged and artificial character of these photographs.
In another series, Photoshoot (2004-2005), Hobbs examines the cinematic language of the Western to further disrupt the boundaries between the real and fiction in photography. The possibilities and limits of the frozen photographic moment are signalled in this series as Hobbs incorporates references to filmic narrative, human movement and the everyday.
