Ponch Hawkes is not just a lady with a cool name; she’s also a Melbourne-based photographer with a show at the Brisbane Powerhouse this month, called More Seeing Is Not Understanding. It’s a series of photos that act as a permanent record for fleeting moments – moments that leave your periphery before they’ve truly entered. Hawkes calls this ‘the realm of glimpsing’, and for More Seeing she’s drawn on memories and reconstructed them in print. These aren’t grainy images captured on a hastily whipped out iPhone, but clear and rich in colour as if you were seeing the situations play out through your own eyes.
There’s a wide range of situations to absorb – a man skipping rope at a drive-through bottle, a couple ballroom dancing in a deserted arcade. The pieces beg for an accompanying narrative – a who, when, where, why and how – but Hawkes prefers to keep the viewer guessing.
In the fast-paced nature of urban sprawl, you don’t always get a second glance at the things happening around you. More Seeing is an opportunity to do just that.