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Writer's pictureJihyeon Lee

Photographs from Tamara Dean

Updated: Sep 9, 2021


Tamara Dean is an Australian photographer. Dean's photographs show individuals interacting with the environment in personal and emotional ways. Tamara Dean demonstrates what nature is in a wide sense, and that nothing is more enthralling and harmonic than humans connecting with it in a calm and innovative manner. The photographs that Dean took explore the beauty and fragility of the natural world and its link with people, the connection between flora and fauna, and conscious and subconscious (Khitrina, 2018). The series In Our Nature was taken in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens and acknowledges that human is not superior nor distinct from nature, but rather a part of it. Dean catches bodies gliding smoothly through woods, limbs peeping out from a lotus-filled swamp, and children hiding their faces in a field of grass. The seasons in which she took the photos - children in the spring, an elderly couple in the winter - are symbolically linked to the phases of her subjects' lives, a lyrical allusion to how our lives are inextricably tied to the natural world. “I have wanted to be in nature for as long as I can remember,” says the artist. “It gives me a sense of belonging when I enter a forest. My life and creative practise are informed by my great love of nature.” (Barba-court, 2018).

With Dean’s photograph Endangered, she won second place in the iCanvas Photography Award as part of the 2020 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize. Dean expresses her dissatisfaction with our natural world and the desire to fix it. It submerges us in a spiritual sea where we are at the mercy of the depths. Dean’s photography frequently depicts nature's splendour in ethereal tones, from lush green swampland to ancient deserts. Humans frequently hide in the shelters that were created by humans, which encourages us to tear down barriers and uncover the wilds that surround us. Tamara Dean believes that living in the current present might feel like living in a conservatory, with a window view of the natural world to which humans no longer appear to belong. We are living in a state of estrangement from Mother Earth. It has driven us to overlook the damage we have brought to lands and oceans that do not belong to us but to all living things. Her photographs aim to help to repair the relationship with nature by generating a sense of harmony and reintroducing to the hinterland nude, a sight of pure, healing surrender (Kovacic, 2021). In Dean's art, the nudity that is a recurrent subject has a symbolic function. "The human body is stripped back into an animal sense, a creature, a mammal. It requires all that we put together to create, I suppose, a barrier in our minds; a deception which allows us to believe that we are distinct from nature." For Dean, nudity implies physically removing clothes, but also removing the emotional boundaries between humans and environmental responsibilities (Capture, 2020).



In Our Nature- Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) in Spring, 2017 by Tamara Dean


My thoughts...

Photographs by Tamara Dean immerse me in the relationship between nature and human; I can explore what both resemble and share, and how humans can blend into each other. Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) in Spring suggests to me that children are like young plants that have just sprouted from seeds, still young and vulnerable. Half of their bodies are covered with grass, and they hide their faces with their hands, which suggests that they are vulnerable and need to be protected. Who protects children and who protects nature? Nearly all of nature has been touched by human beings. A carer of plants and trees in the wild would be another nature; wind, rain, soil, and the sun. On the other hand, who is the main carer of children? Who is wind, rain, soil, and the sun for them? The photograph makes we consider the role of another nature for children, regarding growth.


In Our Nature- Dusty Miller (Senecio viravira) western wild garden, Winter, 2017 by Tamara Dean



Endangered 3, 2018 by Tamara Dean



Endangered 8, 2019 by Tamara Dean

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