Sarah Rhodes

In A Surrounded Beauty, Tasmanian-based photographer Sarah Rhodes investigates the capacity of photographic portraiture to explore concepts of place. Using the camera to reveal what is not easily seen with the eye, Rhodes seeks to capture each subject’s aura to reflect the atmosphere of Tasmania’s ‘islandness’.

 

Inspired by German philosopher Gernot Bohme’s concept of atmosphere as the ‘in-between’, that which ‘relates objective factors and constellations of the environment to bodily feeling in that environment’, Rhodes sees the camera lens as a link between the interior of a person and that of a place. Her works emerge through collaborations between sitters and artist, producing stories that meditate on the relationship between self, vulnerability, and landscape.

 

For Rhodes, ‘My works tell stories that heighten our awareness of place and how the atmosphere of place shapes who we are. They explore how atmosphere can be traced through the use of narrative when atmosphere is dependent on sensory rather than cognitive perception’.