The Thousands

Hipster photography – sometimes I feel like I’ve seen it all. Teens sucking home-made bongs, emaciated girls, androgynous boys, friends playing naked in the forest/mountains/beach, dangling legs in sparkly tights, endless summers, suburban share house backyards filled with crumpled old Macca’s bags, Lomo, lofi, whatever.

Kat Botten owes something to that whole schtick, but she’s got something of her own. Kat collages photographs taken with disposable cameras into doubles, sometimes triples – repeating and rotating the original image and then reprinting them. What I like best about her images is the way she makes the original subject of the photo – a dilapidated building,  a cliff face, some hipster, their messy bedroom – disappear. I mean, it doesn’t actually disappear, it’s still there and you can make it out if you turn your head and squint, but the image becomes kind of abstract, reduced to textures, patterns and colours. Like a lot of young people taking photos Botten’s images are a documentation of her life, her friends, the places she goes. But instead of romanticising her own youth and affecting a narrative of emotional disorientation, she makes pictures that disorient you.

Anyway, maybe I’m over-analysing. Go see the show – it’s one night only.