Shae Detar’s beautiful hand painted photographs are hard to resist, they jump out of the screen with their exuberant femininity, 60s psychedelic clothing and re-appropriation of a traditional photographic technique that harks back to the early days of the 20th century.
Detar is a fashionista; she modelled, studied fashion and opened a vintage shop before finding her calling as a photographer, as an artist who cleverly rooted her work in her passion for clothes, style and an otherworldly aesthetic that lies somewhere between psychedelia and the Victorian period. Here’s what she said about her influences in Aritzia magazine:
I had wanted to be an actress until I was 18, all through my childhood and teen years, I would dress up in 1800’s clothing in my room and act all by myself. I was homeschooled from 13 years old onwards, which is probably why I never cared what people thought of me. I didn’t have to worry about school bullies or being made fun of for being different, so I was very free and happy.
The process Detar uses is known as the bromoil printing process which was popular with the Pictorialists at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century. Like them Detar looks to project an emotion into the picture through the use of colour and a variety of brushstrokes; thickly textured swirls, drips, blocks, each photograph enhancing her subject to create a hyper impressionism that feeds our preconceptions and opens up a window into a dreamlike reality.
This Detar world has much in common with other young West coast photographers – such as Amanda Charchian and Claire Oring – who have also eschewed the digital era in favour of an analogue universe that is more tactile, allows for more experimentation and the possibility of learning through accident or as Paul Auster calls it, the music of chance.