Voigtlander 2010

Summary

Alan Constable has had a studio practice at Arts Project Australia for many years. As well as having a drawing and painting practice, in more recent years he has developed ceramic works. These reflect his life-long fascination with old cameras, which began with him making replicas from cardboard cereal boxes as a child. The sculptures are lyrical interpretations of technical instruments made to be handled. In Constable’s glossy, tactile cameras, the artist’s finger marks can be seen clearly on the surface – authentic traces of humanity expressed through an aesthetic that embraces the handmade. Via such traces of the artist, the cameras can be viewed as extensions of the body as much as they are sculptural representations of an object. In 2010, the City of Melbourne commissioned Alan Constable to make this ceramic sculpture, ‘Voigtlander’, which he modelled on the Voigtländer Vito B camera of Alan Bates, who used it to document Melbourne in the 1960s. Many of Bates’ photographs are held in the Art and Heritage Collection and can be found by searching this site using the photographer’s name. Although apparently naïve in style, Alan Constable’s well-crafted sculpture is a sophisticated recreation of the German camera, manufactured between 1952 and 1960; the tactile, hand-crafted quality of Constable’s camera connects the technology to both the photographer the very real human lives it records, and in a nod to intention it even allows one to peer through the viewfinder to frame the world it would capture. The commission was also accompanied by a small suite of working paintings in gouache and ink on paper.