Tracey Moffatt has created an extensive body of work, much of which uses a narrative style of presentation. Moffatt’s work often contains narrative breaks where pieces of the story are missing allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks, interpreting her work to come up with their own story of how the events unfold. These breaks also create a sense of uncertainty and suspense within her works. They show something that is unexpected, maybe to throw the viewer off from what they initially thought; telling a side story to imbue greater depth to the main one being told. “Narrative is a vital aspect of Moffatt’s work. Her many films and ‘photo-narratives’ use images to build non-linear and open-ended stories.”[1] The many narrative series that Moffatt has produced are all vastly different in execution and subject matter. Two of her series Scarred for Life 1 and 2 and Laudanum show just how different her works can be. Scarred for Life 1 and 2 feature a number of photographs which tell stories of traumatic childhood experiences, though each story is different they are brought together by the abject nature of the works created by the stories. Laudanum does not directly tell the viewer the story of what is happening but allows a ghost like story to appear. Moffatt uses foggy and distorted images that reference the drug laudanum but in doing so she also creates images that look like they could be film stills from an old horror movie.
Australian Indigenous artist, Tracey Moffatt, was born in 1960 in Brisbane. As “a member of the first generation to grow up with TV, Moffatt is a lover of all genres of popular culture”[2] as evidenced in the strong influence of these in works, often depicting narratives inspired by certain genres of television. Sherman sees herself as an image maker, creating and composing the photograph. Sherman states, “I like to create my version of reality, the work comes from me, what I know. Things I have seen and experienced, and things I think I have seen and experienced. Maybe it’s just an exaggerated version of my reality. Sources of inspiration come from everywhere.”[3]
In 1982 Moffatt graduated from a visual communications degree at the Queensland College of Arts. During this time she studied photography and film, the two mediums she would become internationally recognized for. Moffatt notes that she had always been interested in photography; “I have always made photographs, and the photographs have always...felt like small films...It’s usually a twisted storyline. Like me”[4]
In 1989 Moffatt was commissioned by the Albury Regional Art Gallery to create one of her most successful series, Something More. She completed this series with local people as cast and crew while she was an artist-in-resident at the gallery.[5] Something More, not unlike her other series, contains a strong narrative sequence of photographs. They depict the dramatic story of a young lady who has hopes for something more than the life she lives. “It is the story of a young woman, of indeterminate racial origins, who dreams of escaping her humdrum existence in the outback of Australia and getting away to the city.”[6] The narrative breaks in the series make it unclear to the viewer exactly why the young lady wishes to leave but allows the viewer to fill in the blanks, possibly with their own experiences.
“Moffatt produces work that is at once metaphorical, allegorical and visceral. While her photographs and films engage with many of the major social issues of the present era – land rights, immigration, mass media, globalization – they also constantly reference and re-imagine her own past as an Aboriginal, born in 1960 and brought up in a foster home in Brisbane.”[7]
The photographs from Moffatt’s series are not created as standalone images; Moffatt states that placing the photographs together brings them closer to being film, telling a story. “I never produced a single photograph and tried to make it stand alone as an artistic statement... For me it is the narrative. It is difficult for me to say anything in one single image. With working in a photographic serial I can expand one idea – give it further possibilities. It makes photography close to film in its possibilities.
Moffatt’s works contain many narrative breaks, building suspense in the works and allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks and create a story unique to each individual when reading the work. A narrative being an account of connected events, or a story; therefore a narrative break would then be a pause in the story allowing it to unfold in certain ways.[8] This is a technique that is used often in writing, television and films; sources of inspiration for Moffatt.
While Moffatt chops and changes how her images are made, whether they are black and white or colour, what format they are displayed in and the production of her images; her use of narrative is what links her works together and gives her a identifiable style. In her series Scarred for Life 1 and 2 and Laudanum these narrative breaks are apparent in her use of story line. Scarred for Life 1 and 2 plays with this method by using a series of short narratives with the same theme, breaking up the story line and whilst also linking it together through use of photography and typed captions. Laudanum makes use of narrative breaks in a slightly different way. This series creates breaks through the drug induced picture quality and haziness of the story because of this. In both these series the viewer is left wondering exactly what happened to the subjects of the photographs and how their future unfolded after the pictured events. By creating her series in frozen stills, “Moffatt brings out the ambiguities, the half-gestures, the unreadable looks and undecided postures that sabotage any attempt at a linear literal synopsis.”[9]
The artfully staged series, Scarred for Life 1 and 2, captures the real memories of her own and of many of Moffatt’s friends and family who passed on their stories to her. This series “dramatises the various indignities that parents (and other adults) can inflict on children: the offhand remark, the put-down, the careless abuse, and insult that ensures that the experience of growing up remains a handful of shameful memories.”[10] While these images are sometimes humorous they also contain a very serious message about the wrongs that have happened in these people’s lives. “Each individual work betrays the persistence of childhood and adolescent trauma lodged within adult memory. Each work is generated from such memory of psychological scarring – of moments in which childhood consciousness is fractured by the abrasive intent of others.”[11] Each photograph is also captioned guiding the viewer as to how to read the image, telling them how the subject had been ‘scarred for life’. Some images contain a caption describing only what is occurring in the images, leaving the viewer to wonder what happened to this person in the future; while others describe an action prior to the image, sometimes sharing a consequence of the shown abusers behavior. For example in Job Hunt, 1976 (see plate 1) the caption states “After three weeks he still couldn’t find a job. His mother said to him, ‘maybe you’re not good enough’.” This caption only tells the viewer what is happening in that particular moment, making the viewer wonder what happened to this boy in the future; did he find a job like he was hoping to? In Heart Attack, 1970 (see plate 2) the caption gives a little bit more away, telling the viewer what happened to both people in the photograph. The caption states, “She glimpsed her father belting the girl from down the street. That day he died of a heart attack.”
Scarred for Life is a two part series by Tracey Moffatt, the first series was created in 1994 containing 9 works and the second in 1999 containing 10 works. Moffatt stated that she created the second series after the popularity of the first became apparent. Viewers felt that they related to this series and wanted to share their own stories of when they had been abused, bullied or wronged in some way.
“I made the Scarred for Life series, which is a series of images about tragic, funny tales of childhood - all true stories, by the way, told to me by friends - the images are just so ordinary, and the artwork itself doesn't even look like art. It looks like pages in a magazine. It became such a smash hit. I couldn't understand why, but I think it's because everyone has a tragic tale to tell. And over the years people have come up to me. They couldn't wait to tell me their tragic story. I thought I could make another series of this work and it could be an ongoing project. In Scarred for Life there's something straight forward and snapshot-ish about the work, it had to feel ordinary, everyday, because that's how incidents happen in our lives.”[12]
This series contains many narrative breaks, or at least narratives that only contain a section of the story. Photographs have the ability to freeze time and allow the audience to understand exactly what is happening at the very moment when the photograph is taken. Within these photographs Moffatt is tricking us into believing that the staged photographs are real events and not recreated memories. These photographs are only created to put one experience from each of these people’s lives on display to the public. In these series “children are beaten, berated or simply ignored by their parents. Boys are caught cross-dressing, or playing with a doll. Siblings and peers taunt each other. A daughter witnesses her naked father abusing a girl from down the street. Other children fear their drunken father. Two sisters are pictured cutting the lawn with scissors as punishment for some unspecified indiscretion.”[13] It really makes the viewer wonder what happened to these people; if they were scarred for life, how do they live their life? How do they cope?
Originally Scarred for Life was designed to be pinned onto the gallery wall, like posters. The series were made to look like he pages from Life magazine and were therefore printed on thin off-white paper. “Moffatt often draws on the story-telling conventions of magazines cinema and other popular forms of visual communication in ways that give her photographs a heightened sense of drama.”[14] She used a process called photolithography to print these works creating the faded colours that you would see in newspapers or old magazines. Photolithography is a complicated method that uses a number of processes to generate these results.
The Laudanum series that Moffatt created in 1998 is a dramatic, black and white series of photographs with a narrative that can be interpreted a number of different ways. The series seems to depict a crime scene where a violent act of homicide is being acted out between two women. It is an uncomfortable series which poses too many questions through the use of narrative breaks. Moffatt teases the audience with images that are fuzzy and distorted making them hard to read, suggesting the effects of the drug laudanum, the woman possibly under its influence. “Laudanum, presents an elegant world simmering on the verge of madness. Like Moffatt’s previous series, Something More (1989) and Up In The Sky (1997), Laudanum’s narrative never quite adds up, with the potential for the viewer to interpret the story any number of ways.“[15]
Laudanum was printed using the photogravure technique, a complicated method that combines black and white photography with etching. Developed in 1840 this technique allows a photograph to be transferred onto a copper plate. There are many steps in this process, the outcome well worth the efforts with the nuances of grey tones that it is able to produce.[16]
The old technique used in this series complements the Victorian house that Moffatt photographed in. Laudanum is “set in a claustrophobic English Victorian interior, apparently drawing it’s inspiration from a mélange of trashy fiction, German expressionist film, erotic and vampire literature and a pictorial style of photography.”[17] The series depicts two women from different cultural backgrounds, one white and one Asian. The viewer can see that while Moffatt draws from all of the above influences she also leaves much up to the imagination and mind of the audience. In this series Moffatt “manages to suggest much more than it discloses. What are these two up to? Is this a simple story of colonial/class repression? Are the women lovers or is there a nonconsensual violence being perpetrated by the main? All that and more.”[18]
The drug laudanum, an extract from opium made into an alcoholic solution, was commonly available in the nineteenth century and was used as a medicine prescribed by doctors for a number of different illnesses. Because it was cheaper than gin, many people became addicted to the drug. The effects of laudanum were often hallucinogenic, which can be seen in Moffatt’s series in the way she has chosen to create the photographs. The use of black and white and the fuzzy, warped feeling of the photographs give the illusion of a drug induced world that Moffatt has created.
This series contains 19 photographs which play with the idea of time and logical sequence. The narrative breaks and order of these images do not necessarily make sense even once the audience has viewed the complete set. In Laudanum #1 (see plate 3) the viewer observes a white mistress descending an elaborate staircase. At the base of the staircase waits an Asian maid, bowed deep in respect, or fear, of her mistress. It seems as though she has stopped her cleaning duties upon hearing her boss approaching. A narrative break occurs between each image. Moving to Laudanum #2, the viewer sees the mistresses face pressed against what looks to be a wall, rope in hand. The viewer is left wondering what she is doing. In Laudanum #3 the mistress is pictured buttoning up her blouse while the maid on the right hand side of the image stoops topless against a wall, a larger imager of her is superimposed on top of her body. The narrative breaks leave the viewer wondering if she is asleep or dead. Jumping to Laudanum #5, the mistress seems to be in some fit of hysteria; is this because of the series namesake drug? Mirrors warp like pools of water, rippling. The maid sits quietly in the corner. Laudanum #6 shows the mistress butchering the maid’s hair; the blur of the image capturing the movement of the clippers. Again more unanswered questions are posed because of the clever use of breaks in the narrative. Laudanum #9 shows the maid with her head down on the table, defeated, her hair lying around her. The mistress is cropped out off the right side of the image with only her arms and scissors shown. The scratch-like marks on the surface of the photograph could allude to nail marks on cell walls or marks keeping count of how many days a prisoner has been locked up. Laudanum #14 displays a topless maid seen through an open doorway. She reaches up, looking as though she is pleading with someone unseen further in the room. This is the first time the maid has shown any form of emotion within the series. Laudanum #18 depicts the mistress with flames growing around her, arms floating by her sides in a way that almost suggests witchcraft. Again the viewer is left to wonder where this tragic story is leading. The final image, Laudanum #19 (see plate 4), shows the same scene as the first image. The story has almost come full circle. The flame summoner mistress crawls up the stairs in the place where she was previously standing in a regal manner. In the place where the maid knelt in the first photograph, there is now a sheet with something tied up inside. Could this be the maid’s body?
Moffatt cleverly plays with narrative breaks and the concept of time throughout this series. The viewer is left to interpret the images and try to figure out the clues to the puzzle of the story, like one would with a crime genre television show or film. Like a crime show these photographs leave the viewer guessing until the very end, and even beyond.
Tracey Moffatt’s body of work throughout her career is built on a narrative style that makes use of narrative breaks. Two of her series Scarred for Life 1 and 2 and Laudanum illustrate how Moffatt makes use of these narrative breaks in her works. In Scarred for Life 1 and 2 Moffatt uses narrative breaks to differentiate between each contributor’s memories. The whole series comes together through the use of the Life magazine-like format and seminaries in the dark, abject themes of the stories. The Laudanum series uses narrative breaks in a different way than Scarred for Life. It creates confusion and intrigue through the breaks in the storyline enabling the viewer to connect with the story in their own way. These breaks create a style that Moffatt has become known for, illustrating part of a story and leaving the rest to the viewer’s imagination. This method of working creates a strong link between then artwork and the audiences allowing them to draw from their own experiences to fill in the gaps. Moffatt’s photographs allow the viewer to delve into another drama-filled world that does not necessarily exist in their own lives. Moffatt works with both photographic and film series, using narrative breaks with great impact in both. Her works over many years have defined her as one of Australia’s best photographers, both internationally and within her home country.
[1]'Tracey Moffatt Narratives: A Monash Gallery Of Art Travelling Exhibtion Education Resource', Monash Gallery of Art, 3 May, 2014 <http://www.wpccdubbo.org.au/documents/TM_EduKit.pdf>, 1.
[2]Tracey Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, (Wellington, NZ : City Gallery Wellington, 2002), 65.
[3] Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, 33.
[4] 'Girls On Film: Tracey Moffatt', Art Gallery of Western Australia, 3 May, 2014 <http://www.artgallery.wa.gov.au/collections/documents/t_moffatt.pdf>
[5] 'Albury Regional Art Gallery', Albury City Council, 6 May, 2014, <http://www.alburycity.nsw.gov.au/leisure-and-culture/albury-regional-art-gallery>
[6] Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, 39.
[7] Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, 7.
[8] Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus: Concise Edition. (Glasgow, Great Britain: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 95 & 562.
[9] Adrian Martin, Moffatt’s Australia: (A Reconnaissance), 27.
[10] Simon Garrett, 'Tracey Moffatťs Exuberant Art', The Lancet 359 (9318): 1706, accessed May 2, 2014, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)08549-5.
[11] Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, 43.
[12] Australian Artist Tracey Moffatt. Michael Cathcart, 28 April, 2014 <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/legacy/programs/atoday/stories/s229128.htm>
[13] Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, 43.
[14] 'Tracey Moffatt Narratives: A Monash Gallery Of Art Travelling Exhibtion Education Resource', Monash Gallery of Art, 3 May, 2014 <http://www.wpccdubbo.org.au/documents/TM_EduKit.pdf>, 4.
[15] 'Tracey Moffatt, Laudanum', Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 3 May, 2014 <http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/news/releases/1999/04/14/190/>
[16] 'Photogravure', Eva Pietzcker, 2 May, 2014 <http://www.druckstelle.info/en/radierung_photogravure.aspx>
[17] Michael Snelling, Tracey Moffatt, (Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art, 1999), 9.
[18] Snelling, Tracey Moffatt, 9.
Australian Indigenous artist, Tracey Moffatt, was born in 1960 in Brisbane. As “a member of the first generation to grow up with TV, Moffatt is a lover of all genres of popular culture”[2] as evidenced in the strong influence of these in works, often depicting narratives inspired by certain genres of television. Sherman sees herself as an image maker, creating and composing the photograph. Sherman states, “I like to create my version of reality, the work comes from me, what I know. Things I have seen and experienced, and things I think I have seen and experienced. Maybe it’s just an exaggerated version of my reality. Sources of inspiration come from everywhere.”[3]
In 1982 Moffatt graduated from a visual communications degree at the Queensland College of Arts. During this time she studied photography and film, the two mediums she would become internationally recognized for. Moffatt notes that she had always been interested in photography; “I have always made photographs, and the photographs have always...felt like small films...It’s usually a twisted storyline. Like me”[4]
In 1989 Moffatt was commissioned by the Albury Regional Art Gallery to create one of her most successful series, Something More. She completed this series with local people as cast and crew while she was an artist-in-resident at the gallery.[5] Something More, not unlike her other series, contains a strong narrative sequence of photographs. They depict the dramatic story of a young lady who has hopes for something more than the life she lives. “It is the story of a young woman, of indeterminate racial origins, who dreams of escaping her humdrum existence in the outback of Australia and getting away to the city.”[6] The narrative breaks in the series make it unclear to the viewer exactly why the young lady wishes to leave but allows the viewer to fill in the blanks, possibly with their own experiences.
“Moffatt produces work that is at once metaphorical, allegorical and visceral. While her photographs and films engage with many of the major social issues of the present era – land rights, immigration, mass media, globalization – they also constantly reference and re-imagine her own past as an Aboriginal, born in 1960 and brought up in a foster home in Brisbane.”[7]
The photographs from Moffatt’s series are not created as standalone images; Moffatt states that placing the photographs together brings them closer to being film, telling a story. “I never produced a single photograph and tried to make it stand alone as an artistic statement... For me it is the narrative. It is difficult for me to say anything in one single image. With working in a photographic serial I can expand one idea – give it further possibilities. It makes photography close to film in its possibilities.
Moffatt’s works contain many narrative breaks, building suspense in the works and allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks and create a story unique to each individual when reading the work. A narrative being an account of connected events, or a story; therefore a narrative break would then be a pause in the story allowing it to unfold in certain ways.[8] This is a technique that is used often in writing, television and films; sources of inspiration for Moffatt.
While Moffatt chops and changes how her images are made, whether they are black and white or colour, what format they are displayed in and the production of her images; her use of narrative is what links her works together and gives her a identifiable style. In her series Scarred for Life 1 and 2 and Laudanum these narrative breaks are apparent in her use of story line. Scarred for Life 1 and 2 plays with this method by using a series of short narratives with the same theme, breaking up the story line and whilst also linking it together through use of photography and typed captions. Laudanum makes use of narrative breaks in a slightly different way. This series creates breaks through the drug induced picture quality and haziness of the story because of this. In both these series the viewer is left wondering exactly what happened to the subjects of the photographs and how their future unfolded after the pictured events. By creating her series in frozen stills, “Moffatt brings out the ambiguities, the half-gestures, the unreadable looks and undecided postures that sabotage any attempt at a linear literal synopsis.”[9]
The artfully staged series, Scarred for Life 1 and 2, captures the real memories of her own and of many of Moffatt’s friends and family who passed on their stories to her. This series “dramatises the various indignities that parents (and other adults) can inflict on children: the offhand remark, the put-down, the careless abuse, and insult that ensures that the experience of growing up remains a handful of shameful memories.”[10] While these images are sometimes humorous they also contain a very serious message about the wrongs that have happened in these people’s lives. “Each individual work betrays the persistence of childhood and adolescent trauma lodged within adult memory. Each work is generated from such memory of psychological scarring – of moments in which childhood consciousness is fractured by the abrasive intent of others.”[11] Each photograph is also captioned guiding the viewer as to how to read the image, telling them how the subject had been ‘scarred for life’. Some images contain a caption describing only what is occurring in the images, leaving the viewer to wonder what happened to this person in the future; while others describe an action prior to the image, sometimes sharing a consequence of the shown abusers behavior. For example in Job Hunt, 1976 (see plate 1) the caption states “After three weeks he still couldn’t find a job. His mother said to him, ‘maybe you’re not good enough’.” This caption only tells the viewer what is happening in that particular moment, making the viewer wonder what happened to this boy in the future; did he find a job like he was hoping to? In Heart Attack, 1970 (see plate 2) the caption gives a little bit more away, telling the viewer what happened to both people in the photograph. The caption states, “She glimpsed her father belting the girl from down the street. That day he died of a heart attack.”
Scarred for Life is a two part series by Tracey Moffatt, the first series was created in 1994 containing 9 works and the second in 1999 containing 10 works. Moffatt stated that she created the second series after the popularity of the first became apparent. Viewers felt that they related to this series and wanted to share their own stories of when they had been abused, bullied or wronged in some way.
“I made the Scarred for Life series, which is a series of images about tragic, funny tales of childhood - all true stories, by the way, told to me by friends - the images are just so ordinary, and the artwork itself doesn't even look like art. It looks like pages in a magazine. It became such a smash hit. I couldn't understand why, but I think it's because everyone has a tragic tale to tell. And over the years people have come up to me. They couldn't wait to tell me their tragic story. I thought I could make another series of this work and it could be an ongoing project. In Scarred for Life there's something straight forward and snapshot-ish about the work, it had to feel ordinary, everyday, because that's how incidents happen in our lives.”[12]
This series contains many narrative breaks, or at least narratives that only contain a section of the story. Photographs have the ability to freeze time and allow the audience to understand exactly what is happening at the very moment when the photograph is taken. Within these photographs Moffatt is tricking us into believing that the staged photographs are real events and not recreated memories. These photographs are only created to put one experience from each of these people’s lives on display to the public. In these series “children are beaten, berated or simply ignored by their parents. Boys are caught cross-dressing, or playing with a doll. Siblings and peers taunt each other. A daughter witnesses her naked father abusing a girl from down the street. Other children fear their drunken father. Two sisters are pictured cutting the lawn with scissors as punishment for some unspecified indiscretion.”[13] It really makes the viewer wonder what happened to these people; if they were scarred for life, how do they live their life? How do they cope?
Originally Scarred for Life was designed to be pinned onto the gallery wall, like posters. The series were made to look like he pages from Life magazine and were therefore printed on thin off-white paper. “Moffatt often draws on the story-telling conventions of magazines cinema and other popular forms of visual communication in ways that give her photographs a heightened sense of drama.”[14] She used a process called photolithography to print these works creating the faded colours that you would see in newspapers or old magazines. Photolithography is a complicated method that uses a number of processes to generate these results.
The Laudanum series that Moffatt created in 1998 is a dramatic, black and white series of photographs with a narrative that can be interpreted a number of different ways. The series seems to depict a crime scene where a violent act of homicide is being acted out between two women. It is an uncomfortable series which poses too many questions through the use of narrative breaks. Moffatt teases the audience with images that are fuzzy and distorted making them hard to read, suggesting the effects of the drug laudanum, the woman possibly under its influence. “Laudanum, presents an elegant world simmering on the verge of madness. Like Moffatt’s previous series, Something More (1989) and Up In The Sky (1997), Laudanum’s narrative never quite adds up, with the potential for the viewer to interpret the story any number of ways.“[15]
Laudanum was printed using the photogravure technique, a complicated method that combines black and white photography with etching. Developed in 1840 this technique allows a photograph to be transferred onto a copper plate. There are many steps in this process, the outcome well worth the efforts with the nuances of grey tones that it is able to produce.[16]
The old technique used in this series complements the Victorian house that Moffatt photographed in. Laudanum is “set in a claustrophobic English Victorian interior, apparently drawing it’s inspiration from a mélange of trashy fiction, German expressionist film, erotic and vampire literature and a pictorial style of photography.”[17] The series depicts two women from different cultural backgrounds, one white and one Asian. The viewer can see that while Moffatt draws from all of the above influences she also leaves much up to the imagination and mind of the audience. In this series Moffatt “manages to suggest much more than it discloses. What are these two up to? Is this a simple story of colonial/class repression? Are the women lovers or is there a nonconsensual violence being perpetrated by the main? All that and more.”[18]
The drug laudanum, an extract from opium made into an alcoholic solution, was commonly available in the nineteenth century and was used as a medicine prescribed by doctors for a number of different illnesses. Because it was cheaper than gin, many people became addicted to the drug. The effects of laudanum were often hallucinogenic, which can be seen in Moffatt’s series in the way she has chosen to create the photographs. The use of black and white and the fuzzy, warped feeling of the photographs give the illusion of a drug induced world that Moffatt has created.
This series contains 19 photographs which play with the idea of time and logical sequence. The narrative breaks and order of these images do not necessarily make sense even once the audience has viewed the complete set. In Laudanum #1 (see plate 3) the viewer observes a white mistress descending an elaborate staircase. At the base of the staircase waits an Asian maid, bowed deep in respect, or fear, of her mistress. It seems as though she has stopped her cleaning duties upon hearing her boss approaching. A narrative break occurs between each image. Moving to Laudanum #2, the viewer sees the mistresses face pressed against what looks to be a wall, rope in hand. The viewer is left wondering what she is doing. In Laudanum #3 the mistress is pictured buttoning up her blouse while the maid on the right hand side of the image stoops topless against a wall, a larger imager of her is superimposed on top of her body. The narrative breaks leave the viewer wondering if she is asleep or dead. Jumping to Laudanum #5, the mistress seems to be in some fit of hysteria; is this because of the series namesake drug? Mirrors warp like pools of water, rippling. The maid sits quietly in the corner. Laudanum #6 shows the mistress butchering the maid’s hair; the blur of the image capturing the movement of the clippers. Again more unanswered questions are posed because of the clever use of breaks in the narrative. Laudanum #9 shows the maid with her head down on the table, defeated, her hair lying around her. The mistress is cropped out off the right side of the image with only her arms and scissors shown. The scratch-like marks on the surface of the photograph could allude to nail marks on cell walls or marks keeping count of how many days a prisoner has been locked up. Laudanum #14 displays a topless maid seen through an open doorway. She reaches up, looking as though she is pleading with someone unseen further in the room. This is the first time the maid has shown any form of emotion within the series. Laudanum #18 depicts the mistress with flames growing around her, arms floating by her sides in a way that almost suggests witchcraft. Again the viewer is left to wonder where this tragic story is leading. The final image, Laudanum #19 (see plate 4), shows the same scene as the first image. The story has almost come full circle. The flame summoner mistress crawls up the stairs in the place where she was previously standing in a regal manner. In the place where the maid knelt in the first photograph, there is now a sheet with something tied up inside. Could this be the maid’s body?
Moffatt cleverly plays with narrative breaks and the concept of time throughout this series. The viewer is left to interpret the images and try to figure out the clues to the puzzle of the story, like one would with a crime genre television show or film. Like a crime show these photographs leave the viewer guessing until the very end, and even beyond.
Tracey Moffatt’s body of work throughout her career is built on a narrative style that makes use of narrative breaks. Two of her series Scarred for Life 1 and 2 and Laudanum illustrate how Moffatt makes use of these narrative breaks in her works. In Scarred for Life 1 and 2 Moffatt uses narrative breaks to differentiate between each contributor’s memories. The whole series comes together through the use of the Life magazine-like format and seminaries in the dark, abject themes of the stories. The Laudanum series uses narrative breaks in a different way than Scarred for Life. It creates confusion and intrigue through the breaks in the storyline enabling the viewer to connect with the story in their own way. These breaks create a style that Moffatt has become known for, illustrating part of a story and leaving the rest to the viewer’s imagination. This method of working creates a strong link between then artwork and the audiences allowing them to draw from their own experiences to fill in the gaps. Moffatt’s photographs allow the viewer to delve into another drama-filled world that does not necessarily exist in their own lives. Moffatt works with both photographic and film series, using narrative breaks with great impact in both. Her works over many years have defined her as one of Australia’s best photographers, both internationally and within her home country.
[1]'Tracey Moffatt Narratives: A Monash Gallery Of Art Travelling Exhibtion Education Resource', Monash Gallery of Art, 3 May, 2014 <http://www.wpccdubbo.org.au/documents/TM_EduKit.pdf>, 1.
[2]Tracey Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, (Wellington, NZ : City Gallery Wellington, 2002), 65.
[3] Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, 33.
[4] 'Girls On Film: Tracey Moffatt', Art Gallery of Western Australia, 3 May, 2014 <http://www.artgallery.wa.gov.au/collections/documents/t_moffatt.pdf>
[5] 'Albury Regional Art Gallery', Albury City Council, 6 May, 2014, <http://www.alburycity.nsw.gov.au/leisure-and-culture/albury-regional-art-gallery>
[6] Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, 39.
[7] Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, 7.
[8] Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus: Concise Edition. (Glasgow, Great Britain: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 95 & 562.
[9] Adrian Martin, Moffatt’s Australia: (A Reconnaissance), 27.
[10] Simon Garrett, 'Tracey Moffatťs Exuberant Art', The Lancet 359 (9318): 1706, accessed May 2, 2014, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)08549-5.
[11] Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, 43.
[12] Australian Artist Tracey Moffatt. Michael Cathcart, 28 April, 2014 <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/legacy/programs/atoday/stories/s229128.htm>
[13] Moffatt, Tracey Moffatt, 43.
[14] 'Tracey Moffatt Narratives: A Monash Gallery Of Art Travelling Exhibtion Education Resource', Monash Gallery of Art, 3 May, 2014 <http://www.wpccdubbo.org.au/documents/TM_EduKit.pdf>, 4.
[15] 'Tracey Moffatt, Laudanum', Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 3 May, 2014 <http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/news/releases/1999/04/14/190/>
[16] 'Photogravure', Eva Pietzcker, 2 May, 2014 <http://www.druckstelle.info/en/radierung_photogravure.aspx>
[17] Michael Snelling, Tracey Moffatt, (Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art, 1999), 9.
[18] Snelling, Tracey Moffatt, 9.