99Photographs by Heather Milne
Concerns, Large & Small
(above)HEATHERMILNEEarthquakeBaby 2017
Digitalphotograph
The concerned photographer finds much in the present
unacceptable which [s]he tries to alter... [and] let the world also
know why it is unacceptable.
Cornell Capa, photojournalist (1918–2008)
Christchurch-based Heather Milne says photography
facilitates and amplifies her delight in details—seeing
them as part of a unitive yet ever-changing whole. Her
fascination with details and pattern wasn’t always
supported by others. But photography, she says, has
liberated her ways of seeing and being—as a wife, mother
and photographer.
A graduate of Southern Institute of Technology, within
less than a decade Milne’s documentary-style work, largely
unposed and unaltered digitals, has demonstrated an
awareness of the power of representation to validate—or
not—diversity and inclusiveness, and to influence change.
In Earthquake Baby (2017), a child (with her back to the
camera) stands in front of Shigeru Ban’s Christchurch
cardboard cathedral, surrounded by a melange of white
chairs, an installation by Peter Majendie commemorating
victims of the February 2011 earthquake. Different
but companionable, both works concern absence and
recuperation and, potentially, offer Milne’s representative
child a regenerative forum. To this singularly evocative
image (adopted by the 2018 Doc Edge Film Festival for
their promotional brochures) Milne incrementally added
other reflections of loss and renewal in the ironically titled
portfolio Pretty Bad (2017–18). Detailing Christchurch’s
physical and emotional devastation, these portrayals of
brave and faltering pulses captured wide attention.
Milne further explores issues of representation,
specifically stereotyping, with In Their Place (2017–18). She
liaised with her subjects: ‘Choose your costumes and be
yourselves.’ Attired in imagination-cum-activities, a series of
young girls stare directly at us from amongst an assortment
of locations and props. They are...? Refractory? Reserved?
They are intriguing but ultimately unambiguous: people
should feel free to wear what they want without fear of
prescriptive labelling. ‘The costumes are what people expect
girls to dress up in and become,’ Milne comments, ‘but I want
to press that instead of clothes changing the personalities,
the subjects—with or without frills or other paraphernalia
—can become whatever they want. With support they can be
themselves, find their own place.’
Milne exercises the power of representation to influence
beliefs, behaviours and, ultimately, society. She challenges
oppressive stereotyping and clichéd tropes—the notion
that girls, or any child, should be soft, submissive, inactive,
even weak. In Their Place asserts that preferences of clothing
or activities do not determine character or gender—or the
opposite. Milne asks—why can’t we just let children grow,
wear and play with whatever they want?
CASSANDRA FUSCO