TALKING PICTURES Austn Fischer

Austn Fischer is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the nuances of identity, satire, and performance. His ongoing work delves into folklore and the stories that shape our lives, seeking to understand the performance of identity and the human condition.

This Talking Pictures feature focuses on Austn’s three-part project, Gaze, which draws inspiration from Roland Barthes’ book, Camera Lucida, and his concepts of the "studium" and "punctum".

The studium refers to the initial, intellectual interest or commitment a viewer has towards a photograph. It encompasses the cultural, historical, and contextual elements that contribute to the overall meaning of the image.

The Punctum is not universal or shared by all viewers; it's what resonates with an individual's personal history, emotions, and experiences.

He decided to travel to his hometown of Wisconsin and speak with people in the street, collecting authentic, subjective responses to his work. He didn't disclose that he was the artist...

PLAY THE AUDIO TO HEAR THE VIEWER RESPONSES 

Pam in her new skin. An exploration of material and texture. Here, we place new and mature skin side by side — Pam wears a synthetic skin dress, a material engineered in a lab, destined to remain unchanged for the duration of its existence. I want you to consider skin. I want you to question it. What is skin? Does it carry meaning? I want you to consider how skin evolves, how it weathers and ages — while some, like this one, remain untouched by time.

This image is from Chapter 2 of Gaze, titled “Lost Boys.” I exclusively found subjects through dating apps like Tinder, Grindr, and Hinge. This chapter explores how we curate our online personas to attract others, often blurring the line between authenticity and performance in the digital age.

Karim is wearing the neck piece of a jousting uniform. We initially dressed him in full armour, removing one piece at a time—a symbolic act reflecting themes of battle and protection.

This image is from Chapter 2 of Gaze, titled ‘Lost Boys’. Here, Griffin is portrayed as a goose. Since I was banned from Hinge, I’ve felt a strange sense of exclusion. It made me question the quiet power these platforms hold over our access to intimacy and connection. Maybe turning Griffin into a goose is a bit of a ‘fuck you’. Maybe it’s about him embodying a part of society I’ve been locked out of.

This image delves into the intricate layers of meaning within portrait photography. 

Susan Sontag’s writing forms a critical foundation for Gaze — particularly her insights into the ethics of looking and the power dynamics inherent in photography. In her book, On Photography, Sontag argues that every photograph is an act of appropriation — a means of turning people into objects to be possessed. Gaze builds on this tension, exploring how the camera simultaneously reveals and distorts, creating a space where subjects navigate visibility, vulnerability and agency.

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