Text by Tony Maniaty accompanying the photographic exhibition, ‘The Planet of Possibilities’, at the Kirribilli Centre Gallery, Sydney, 18 November - 9 December 2023.
Freud’s Garden, Hampstead, London © Tony Maniaty 2022
It seems odd in these uncertain times to talk of an appreciation of beauty, but perhaps that’s our only hope of survival. The current interplay of economics, technology and politics is not sufficient to ensure our long-term future on planet Earth: war, poverty and inequality remain constants, and the planet itself is suffering terrible environmental damage. Anxiety is rising about how these problems can be reversed in whatever time we have left.
I’ve called this photographic series ‘The Planet of Possibilities’ because I believe humanity will survive only if we open our eyes to the various forms of beauty that exist around us, including our complex interactions with each other, and in the possibilities that come with heightened creativity. The architect Jørn Utzon, designer of the Sydney Opera House, spoke of working and thinking ‘at the edge of the possible’: of having the vision to explore ideas beyond the obvious. And reflecting on the ancient Greeks (distant ancestors on my father’s side), English writer Adam Nicholson ascribed their genius to ‘the harbour mind’; spaces both real and abstract that generated advanced levels of creativity. “Possibility and inquiry,” Nicholson wrote, “the effects of suggestion and implication, rather than unconsidered belief or blank assertion, were the seedbed for the new ideas.”
This curiosity, a willingness to stop and consider alternatives, an awareness and openness to possibilities - these drive my photography, by attempting to capture time and space in ways that are both temporal and timeless, without boundaries, juxtaposing the natural and human worlds through the ever-mysterious prism of sunlight and shadows. Can photography save humanity? Hardly, but it can point us in directions that may not be obvious, towards solutions emerging from our collective, creative imaginations. I recognise within my own work a kind of alchemy that links one photograph to the next, a river of imagination that may lead to a revelation or at least a clearer understanding of where I’m going - even if it’s a river without banks, because the answers we need will certainly be found away from conventional paths.
The images in ‘The Planet of Possibilities’ are mainly black-and-white. In the words of arguably the most influential photographer of the last century, Robert Frank, ‘Black and white are the colours of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.’ Hope, born out of despair; isn’t that what the world needs now? Monochrome reveals a level of truth that colour often hides. (It’s no accident that we say ‘to see things in black-and-white’, meaning to see them very clearly.) Perhaps the greatest influence on my photographic eye are the great paintings of Goya and Caravaggio, which - for all their blood-rich colour - are loaded with deep black zones. The key factors guiding my photographic intuition are composition and shadows, the power found in negative spaces. Again, hope arising out of extreme darkness.
A sense of beauty can be immediate or arise from a captured image over time. A sunset might have instant appeal, but a photograph of a girl in a Greek church may carry far more meaning and richness to us the longer we spend time with it. The intersection of human and natural beauty all around us is immeasurable, and unique - the possibilities of what we might find beautiful, and what we can do with that discovery, are endless. That’s why we continue to make art in these troubled times, why we embrace it: to broaden our imagination about what life on Earth is, and still can be, on this tiny speck of rock and water. Those who, under all the pressures that besiege us, have abandoned art, have in some way abandoned life.
To capture these moments is photography’s gift to the world, to this fragile planet we live on. The more we see of beauty, the more we’re inclined to appreciate it, to revere rather than damage it. We need to open our eyes to the beauty of the planet in order to save it. I’ve tried to message these emotions in my images.
© Tony Maniaty 2023
First published in L’Œil de la Photographie / The Eye of Photography, Paris, 28 November 2023