Anne Ferran

Anne Ferran (born 1949) is an Australian photographer.

Background Anne Ferran was born on 10 May 1949 in Sydney, New South Wales. Ferran began exhibiting her photographic work in the early 1980s.

In 1986 she relocated to Europe after being awarded a Visual Arts Board travel grant from an Australian committee. Ferran returned from overseas to Sydney to complete her Masters of Fine Arts, but then shifted to Melbourne in 1995 only a year after graduating. In 2003 she received a residency in London from the Australian Council. Ferran currently lives in Sydney. She recently retired from her role as an associate professor at the University of Sydney.

Notable works

Scenes on the Death of Nature (1986)

Scenes on the Death of Nature was first exhibited at The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in South Bank, from 19 March 1987 until 19 April 1987. The series was included in an exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1993 entitled ‘Points of view: Australian Photography 1985-95’. The exhibition consisted of five large (148.5 cm x 109.5 cm) The women were dressed in long flowing plain white garments with stony facial expressions in order to recreate the appearance of a neoclassical sculpture. Her work, Scenes on the Death of Nature I, 1986 was featured in Part I of the Know My Name exhibition of Australian women artists in 2020-21 at the National Gallery of Australia.

Carnal Knowledge 1984

Ferran used her own daughter and friends as subjects in this project in an attempt to add a maternal component to the photographs.

While the series of 13 images are sexualised, the images do not contain any nudity. The images are close ups of emotionless faces, which have been given the effect of stone to create the appearance of the passing of time. One female factory was located in Hobart, the other was situated in the centre of Tasmanian on the border of the small town of Ross; onto sheets of aluminium and set up so that when viewers move around the gallery observing the photographs, the reflections from the aluminium give the images an element of blurred motion. Ferran uses the large empty field to find elegance through the stillness in this series of visually confronting images, the series is symbolic of a fragmented past.

Other exhibitions

Box Of Birds Female House Of Correction Birds Of Darlinghurst Rydalmere Vertical Songbirds Are Everywhere Soft Caps Lost To Worlds 2008 Scenes On The Death Of Nature Backwater Untitled Photograms Twice Removed Insula 1-38