2015 Photographic Residencies

The series Resident and Visitor examines two related themes at the heart of Brook Andrew’s work: the question of the identification of the subjects photographed in the colonial period and the complexity of the relationship between the ‘visitor’ — a European photographer — and the ‘native’ model.

For this project, the artist chose to work with the photographic collections of the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac to collect images of Australian Aboriginals during the colonial period, as well as contextual and historical information about these portrayals. As Brook Andrew discovered this extensive collection of historical photographs, his aim quickly broadened and he decided to enlarge his study to include the four continents represented in the museum’s collections.

With the series Resident and Visitor, Brook Andrew has widened his scope of exploration by creating a third level of interpretation. In these metatheatrical scenes, the photographed models — modern-day subjects of multiple origins — compare an image of a ‘resident’ and a ‘visitor’, both having been chosen by Brook Andrew from the selection of photographs in the museum’s collections. The historical photographs are shifted from their status of a witness of colonisation to create an echo of contemporary questions of identity. The artist thus questions our relationship to these old photographs, and updates the question of access to archives, as in many of his works.

Series produced in 2016.