The Indifference Engine

I stumbled on a printout of this the other day, and I'm just throwing it out there for the hell of it. GUIDANCE Normally, he would have welcomed any interruption to the daily routine, but instead there was dull, hot resentment. It was what he felt whenever a stranger gave him that fake, “I’m-your-friend-and-I-really-have-your-best-interests-at-heart” smile. He hated the way things were engineered, the implication that what was about to happen was somehow special and could affect the rest of his life. Terry had been in before him, and had whispered what to expect. “He told me I should think about optometry or watchmaking. Why?” When his name was called, he was ready. He opened the door to the storeroom that had been pressed into service for the occasion, and couldn’t help thinking “if this is so important, why is it happening next to the spare chalk?” It was as just as he pictured it. The fake smile, the insincere handshake... There was a name, which he igno...

The penultimate piece in the series first run in The Age, 1997 Five Eyes : The Emmet Tugby Centre for Photography Given the potential of photographic artifice to re-negotiate our perceptions of visual "truth", it is surprising that the old adage "the camera does not lie" has been so persistent. This dictum is only valid in as much as a photographic image exists as an observable phenomenon: the veracity of its content as a record of any aspect of reality is infinitely flexible. This was not lost on pioneering photographer Emmet Tugby, who managed to call the very existence of his subjects into question in his penetrating studies of Edwardian social life. 50 years after his death however, it is debatable that the exhibition now showing at the institution that bears his name does his legacy justice. Even in the most generous assessment, Five Eyes is woefully inconsistent. The photographers represented here exhibit work that ranges from the banal to the ind...