80 FACES IN A 20 MINUTE LUNCH BREAK

Simon Obarzanek at IMA's satellite gallery

Melbourne photographer Simon Obarzanek’s 80 Faces plays into our fascination with faces. For years he made frontal mugshot portraits of young people, male and female, posed against a grey background. Bare-shouldered or in black T-shirts, there was nothing to distinguish them sociologically, except their hairstyles.

The sitters were not a dispassionate scientific sample – Obarzanek photographed faces he found interesting. Black and white, his prints suppress some aspects of difference (colouration: skin, eyes, hair) to emphasise others (proportions of their features).

Always presented in groups, Obarzanek engages us in comparing-and-contrasting his faces. One face is Aryan, another alien. One refined, another vulgar. One man's lips look rudely pasted on. As we discriminate the classic from the quirky, those we like from the crowd, 80 Faces tells us as much about ourselves, about what resonates with us.

http://www.ima.org.au/