When artists and partners Hossein and Angela Valamanesh were travelling through the remote mountains of Iran, Hossein's country of birth, they came across a group of refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan whose chief livelihood lay in making pinhole camera portraits. The couple sat for a portrait and when they returned to Australia, they digitally manipulated the image to make this double portrait. The mirrored image, which honours the fragility of the photographic object, poetically suggests an unstable balance between image and reality, inviting the idea of ghost or shadow selves into the frame.
Hossein and Angela met at the South Australian School of Art. For almost 50 years they shared a personal and creative life and often made work together. This double portrait reflects a number of their ongoing preoccupations – states of being together and alone; Angela's interest in symmetry in nature; the duality of Hossein's Persian heritage and Australian identity; and the physical material quality of the work of art.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2004
© Hossein Valamanesh and Angela Valamanesh
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