Julie Rrap, Self-portrait with mouche, 2013, pigment ink-jet print on cotton paper, 127 x 105 cm
JULIE RRAP has been selected as a Finalist for the 2014 Bowness Photography Prize. Established in 2006 to promote excellence in photography, the Bowness is one of the country's most coveted photography prizes.
JULIE RRAP’s playful photograph, Self-portrait with mouche, 2013, has been short-listed and the winner will be announced on Thursday, 4 September 2014. JULIE RRAP says of the work:
"I am interested in images that arouse our curiosity and play with our expectations. Our imaginations are what free us from the mundane and return us to the magical. ‘Self-portrait with mouche’ was created in response to a fleeting image I had seen in a documentary on immigrants arriving in Australia in the early 20th century. One image stood out of a young man with a very noticeable facial mole whose position echoed that of the artificial beauty spot made famous by Marilyn Monroe. The blowfly became my muse in the process of cross- fertilizing these two contrasting images of the natural and the contrived; the beautiful and the grotesque, to create a new hybrid. Like a metaphor for photography itself, Self-portrait with mouche suggests both the fragility of presence and the stillness of death. Serendipitously, I discovered that the word for artificial beauty spot is the French word for fly; mouche."