Thursday, February 17, 2011

Polixeni Papapetrou: " Between Worlds "

It was in discovering a work of Diane Arbus that Australian photographer Polixeni Papapetrou felt her first great emotion in photography. Inspired by childhood and by her own childhood in Melbourne where she was born and lives now, Papapetrou draws us into a poetic world, surreal and dreamlike. A world where the influence of literature, with the inclusion of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, reinforces her contentions in the matter of childhood. Childhood, adolescence, the passage between the world of childhood to maturity is at the heart of her photographs. It reminds us that children and adults do not live in the same imaginary worlds.

In her 2009 series " Between Worlds," Polixeni Papapetrou has photographed children acting as animals in the landscape. The children wear animal masks, allowing them to inhabit an intermediary position that separates them from adults and human from animal. In performances dramatized by costumes and masks, and in breathtaking landscapes, the children as animals dance upon their own liminal world between fantasy and theatre, mythology and reality, archetype and free play, male and female, child and adult, and last animal and human.


The Debutants

The Ambassadors

The Harvesters


The Pastoralists


The Players


The Reader


The Loners


The Wanderer


The Caretaker


The Provider


The Watcher


The Digger



Courtesy Polixeni Papapetrou
"Between Worlds" is currently on view at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney

This post is also featured on The Daily Beast


4 comments:

  1. Thank you for the post.. I have seen her art before and although it is not anything like my own, I enjoy the whimsy and appreciate the thought process that went into it. She has both sides of photography ( science & art) at a very high level
    Started following you
    http://jpweddingphotograpy.blogspot.com/2011/02/aarons-journey-living-with-leukemia-my.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is wonderful to see such inspiring images by the artist. It is also very uplifting to see someone like yourself gathering the magic for others to see. thankyou

    ReplyDelete

Thanks everyone for your nice comments! Keep checking this blog, cool posts everyday except on weekends..... Cheers!