Works from the Joy (No Dark Days) series, 2022–25

Ali McCann is a Melbourne/Naarm-based artist exploring the constructed nature of photography. Drawing upon the still-life genre and the history of photography, McCann’s surreal images evoke a sense of nostalgia and illusion.

This series takes inspiration from Eastman Kodak’s 1979 guidebook The Joy of Photography, which offered practical instruction for aspiring photographers. This book was one of McCann’s first encounters with photography in her studies as a teenager. Each picture is captured on colour film using a 1970s medium-format camera. Incorporating a host of analogue and experimental techniques, the pictures are meticulously staged with kitschy props and backdrops that hark back to McCann’s adolescence. The picturesque images adopt a painterly style that has preoccupied generations of photographers. Using Romantic aesthetics such as soft focus and dreamy colour, these images evoke a sense of nostalgia that becomes an antidote to the image-saturation of today.

Through her embrace of sentimentality – a quality that is often dismissed – McCann’s work takes on a psychological charge. The title of the series, which refers to Kodak’s manual, simultaneously acknowledges and denies the presence of “dark days” and by doing so, echoes the tension of comfort and disorientation in the work. In this series, McCann interrogates the medium of photography itself: the potential for emotional affect and the collapse of our ability to “read” images in the age of artificial intelligence. With photography more accessible than ever before, the artist considers the material, optical, and social dimensions of the medium through the joy of the analogue process.

Presented in partnership with the Canada Line Public Art Program – InTransit BC. Sponsored by Downtown Van. Generously supported by Rob Bruno.