SURVEY
ALASDAIR FOSTER
The relationship between the photographic image and the world around us has had an inconstant history. From Fox Talbot's conceptualising of photography as an extension of drawing to Weston's strict specifications for the 'purity' of a truthful photographic image; from Cartier-Bresson's belief in obsession with a 'world of hallucinations', the making and reading of photographic images has been a matter of continuing redefinition.

Matthew Sleeth is very much a man of his age. He deals with the external world, and especially its social constructs, while understanding the tenuous relation between the mechanical tracery of the photograph and the direct perception of experience. "I want my photography to move past the constraints of aspiring to a transparent objectivity; to depart from the traditions of orthodox documentary," he explains. "I want to engage with my times - to make pictures that grapple with social and political ideas."

His visual language is one of dynamic design, uncanny juxtapositions and telling marginal detail. Witt and with a strong sense of style, his apparently relaxed 'snapshots' involve a complex and at times unorthodox visual style. It is always a good idea to check out the very edges of Matthew Sleeth's photographs, because this is often where the key to the image is to be found. In Opfikon, a middle-aged couple passes with steadfast gloom before the camera, oblivious to the glorious evening cloudscape behind them. In the lower left of the picture, barely making it into the frame, pokes a roof. Plain, pitched, isolated it speaks volumes of a life of long winters and short summers, of loneliness and piety.

In Tour of Duty, we see a mighty military helicopter precariously guiding its pendulous payload to the dusty soil of East Timor. On the extreme left, a hand grips a camera, resolutely recording the vent for the media. For this prodigious aerial manoeuvre, while billed as a humanitarian act, is first and foremost, a media performance - defence, aid and even war being simply grist to the mill of mass communication.

What raises Matthew Sleeth's images above the simple interest-value of their subject matter is his willingness to engage with the beautiful - a recently much mistrusted quality. Not the aesthetics of classically beautiful objects and people, but the coaxing of beauty from the chaos of the everyday. In this, he is very much in tune with the new generation of practitioners who, disillusioned with the downward spiral of post-modern intellectualism, seek to engage with the world through the language of popular culture, fashion and, especially, design.

In Red China Sleeth employs the simple graphic device of a linking colour through which to compose a series of images that elegantly comment upon the negotiations between consumerism and communism in contemporary Beijing.

Above all Matthew Sleeth's photographs are about the social, political and cultural landscape and those who inhabit it. 'I am interested in photographing people and places in a way that informs a broader reading of the subject as part of a cultural group and also as an individual", he explains. Cognisant of the limited ability of a photograph to reflect a singular stable truth, but not painting himself into a relativistic corner; embracing the aesthetic language of popular culture and design without becoming trite; spiking his images with wit without sinking into the sardonic; Matthew Sleeth creates images of depth, subtlety and lasting value.

Alasdair Foster is director of the Australian Centre for Photography and managing editor of Photofile magazine.