Explosive Photographs Part of a Cinematic Language

Auckland-based photographer Geoffrey Short’s photographs – on show in Melbourne this month – of high-powered fossil fuel and gunpowder explosions tread a precarious path between terror and the transcendent, Dan Rule writes for the Sydney Morning Herald.

“I like the idea that these explosions are part of a cinematic language – they’re universal cinema standard special effects explosions – and that they’re not actually destroying anything,” says Short, who made his series Towards Another Theory – now showing at Fitzroy’s Colour Factory Gallery – in collaboration with a film pyrotechnic crew.

The photographs trace the aesthetics of violence while diverging from its subject and impact. “I’m not blowing up a building or a vehicle. It’s not an act of destruction towards a specific thing or object – it’s just the explosion,” he says. “Boom.”

Short originally had the idea when on a commercial job shooting stills for a New Zealand television series “which happened to have a lot of explosions in it”.

Short was nominated for the 2010 Lacoste Elysée Photography Prize, and was a finalist in the Photolucida Critical Mass 2011.

Towards Another Theory is at Colour Factory Gallery in Fitzroy until 31 May.

Original article by Dan Rule, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 2, 2014.

Photo by Geoffrey Short.