George Krause was artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage in Wanganui, New Zealand for six months from October 1997 to April 1998. In March 1998, the Sarjeant Museum exhibited a series of 36 photographic portraits taken by Krause. Of these images he has written: "For many years I have wanted to explore an idea where the face is viewed as one would a landscape, a terrain full of peaks and valleys. It wasn't until I arrived at Tylee Cottage that I found the perfect light for this project. As you climb the stairs you are greeted by a small, strange skylight situated in the middle of the slanted roof. It is this slant and the thickness of the skylight walls with the mid day sun that reveals the sculptural quality of each face in a surprising way. These are the people I've met here in Wanganui. They have placed their trust in me and even though most of the results are not glamorous see all these people and their portraits as beautiful."
Krause's phrase "a terrain full of peaks and valleys" is the key to approaching these sometimes formidable Images. The post-Renaissance tradition of the portrait, representing, as it does, a faith that the head can stand for the whole and even convey the essence of a person, assumes the convention of chiaroscuro, the technical name for the effects of light and shade that define the features and the three-dimensionality of physiognomy. This convention typically assumes that the principal features will be, literally, highlighted, with secondary features in degrees of shadow, and so, the light source must be either from the side or at a 45-degree angle to the full face.
The Tylee Cottage portraits, by contrast, have the light source at the back, producing the strange sfumato effect whereby it is the principal features that are in shadow and the secondary features high-lighted. And such is the intensity of this natural Tylee light box that in most of these portraits the outer limits of the heads have disappeared, so that the unframed features float disturbingly in a suggestive and destabilized space. Conventional portraiture has been subverted in the way that Cindy Sherman's work subverts identity, with the photographer here exchanging the role of portraitist or that of geographer and geologist. These images rivet the viewer in their combination of easy recognition with an uneasy sense of them being nightmarish maquette for additions to Mount Rushmore. That they also simultaneously suggest tenderness and fragility is clear testament to Krause's genius as an image-maker.
Peter Ireland
Wanganui, New Zealand 1998