The aim of his original exhibition was to investigate that urge we humans have to stereotype and prejudice others.
The notion was explored by French philosopher Michel Foucault, who challenged the idea that any given person’s “identity” was fixed. Foucault rejected the idea that we have an inner or fixed “essence” that is our identity. He suggested our identity was fluid, that humans were continually defined and redefined through our shifting communication with others.
Foucault also rejected the notion that some people implicitly hold power, arguing that power was a technique or action in which people engage, and is “exercised” but not possessed.
Those ideas permeate the thinking behind Salt. The title of the exhibition comes from salt as an early traded commodity and symbol of the movement of people and globalisation. It also has connotations of “salt of the earth”, which the artist says is about subverting a historic portrait style reserved for power.
Yeo wanted to undercut the power structures inherent in much portraiture. He talks about “power posing”, which is probably the origin of much of western portraiture, largely because it was the wealthy and powerful who could afford to have portraits painted in the first place. Most of us are familiar with the nobles on horseback or in the stately home gazing out at posterity in their expensive clothes, swords by their sides.
“Historically, photography has been used as a capitalist and colonialist tool,” Yeo says.
He wanted to subvert that notion, and while there are still references to power structures in his portraits, pairing one portrait with another prevents the viewer from instantly judging the “subject”.
“It juxtaposes two individuals and provokes a question as to what’s going on and what are we talking about,” Yeo says.
He is even wary of using the term “subject” for those in his portraits, referring to them as “participants”.
“The idea was that the project became semi-participatory, and all of the subjects/participants were involved.
“Subjective language is such a sensitive issue, and from a photographic perspective it’s not subjugation, it’s not about ‘taking’ a picture.”
He says the participants in his portraits would turn up at his house with objects, and they would work on the picture together.
One had a box of books, a teacup, various taonga, and together they would consider how those objects would work in a portrait.
Yeo cites one picture of a man who used to be in the punk scene, and he is shown with a molotov cocktail and a match, although the match has gone out. That image sits next to one of a gardener with a butterfly over his heart.
Assistant Māori Commissioner for Children Glenis Philip-Barbara appears in another image that at first glance could be a “traditional” portrait, but on closer inspection she is wearing a Māori taonga and holding a book on Black feminist women.
That picture, paired with policeman Carl Neustroski, won Yeo a prestigious international honour when the British Journal of Photography shortlisted and published the diptych in the major international prize Portrait of Humanity — Volume 4.
Yeo shot the portraits during the Covid period — certainly a time for many of us for thinking, reflection and slowing down. Although he has been living in Gisborne for 12 years, the project was also about helping him understand the community more deeply.
Shifting notions of power, colonialism, and even anthropology come into play in his work. Two kinds of field research are conducted: “etic” and “emic”, etic being the perspective of the outside observer, and emic from the viewpoint of the insider — the “subject” or participant.
“So the work has links to anthropology and the doctrine of discovery, which was an etic position, to see or judge from the outside,” he says.
“Mine is more an emic position.”
He says this take on photography is relatively new, but one he has been “propelled” into.
“It’s making sure you are representing others and not being naive, and not just ‘taking’ a photo, as if it’s your right to just ‘take’ a photo.”
Salt, a photographic exhibition by Phil Yeo, is an exploration of our community here in Te Tairawhiti. The portrait series considers our collective and individual identities and was produced during 2020, as the global pandemic changed our world. Tairawhiti Museum, opening tomorrow 5.30pm.
