Australian photographer Claire Martin will make her debut in France with her exhibition Les Déclassés (the Dropouts) opening May 8th as part of this year’s Image Singulières festival in Sète, France.
Martin, who won the Inge Morath Award in 2010 for her photo essays depicting those who live on the margins of society – Downtown East Side Vancouver and Slab City California – has created a new work on the same theme in Nimbin, Australia forming a triptych collection. A combination of 58 photographs from these three bodies of work form the exhibition, Les Déclassés (the Dropouts).
“These three photo essays came together through looking at the culture of stigma and disadvantage in modern society,” said Martin who studied social work before turning her talents to documentary photography.
Each of Martin’s photo essays in this triptych builds on the concept of marginalisation. She said those who live in Vancouver’s east side are suffering from abuse, addiction and isolation and have to deal with fairly overt stigma from the wider community. By contrast California’s Slab City community is removed from society where inhabitants “are not labelled or defined by the norm. Even though they have these chronic disadvantages and problems that are not dissimilar to those living in Downtown Eastside, they are more positive and upbeat because the stigma from the wider community is removed through the creation of their own community ”.
Nimbin, which is in the picturesque Summerland coastal area of New South Wales, Australia, is a village community that is founded on the counterculture that grew out of the sixties. Inhabitants here live in an environment where “drugs are not demonized, but seen as mind expanding, and not participating in the capitalist economy is viewed as positive. A lot of gay, lesbian and transsexual people who escaped the bigotry of the larger cities have made Nimbin their home since the seventies,” said Martin. “Stigma here is seen to be positive,” although Nimbin is not without its own societal problems either.
Martin spent a couple of months in Nimbin teasing out the story before she found the compelling thread she was looking for. “In the end working in Nimbin was really fantastic and through my time there I’ve developed another project which I am excited to work on”..
Alison Stieven-Taylor
Claire Martin – Les Déclassés
From 8 to 26 May 2013
Image Singulières 2013
Sète
France
