Photopoiesis 28°37'30.0"S 153°35'30.0"E

Can a sculpture take a photograph?

Photopoiesis began with this question.

The project emerged while I was questioning the photographer’s position as sole author. Questions of authorship, ownership and copyright led me to ask what might happen if I removed myself from the act of taking the photograph and allowed sculpture, technology, site and elemental forces to participate in making the work.

Photopoiesis is an experiment in distributed authorship set against Belongil Creek on Bundjalung Country. Over two days, my kinetic sculpture made of stone, marble, and mirrored stainless steel was suspended above the water, moving freely with the wind. An infrared sensor linked this motion directly to a camera. Each time the sculpture swung through the beam, it tripped the shutter—effectively allowing the artwork to photograph itself and its environment.

I established the conditions but relinquished control over the exact moment of exposure. The photographic instant was no longer mine alone.

I had intended to remain outside the photographic act. While wading into the creek to wash the sculpture, I left the sensor active, and the camera caught me mid-gesture. The system I had constructed to remove the photographer inadvertently brought my body back into the image. I was no longer standing outside the work as its author. I had become another material within the conditions producing it.

The resulting photographs move between abstraction, landscape and the body. Photopoiesis brings my photographic and kinetic sculptural practices into direct conversation. Rather than positioning landscape as something to be observed or represented, the work asks what happens when site is given an active role in determining the image.

Where does authorship reside when the photographic instant is no longer mine alone?