Suellen Symons

Privileged Mortals 1986

What is a crypt? No crypt presents itself. The grounds are so disposed as to disguise and to hide something, always a body in some way. But also, to disguise the act of hiding and to hide the disguise: the crypt hides as it holds. Carved out of nature, sometimes making use of the probability of facts, these grounds are not natural The crypt is thus not a natural place, but the striking history of an artifice, an architec­ture, an artefact: of a place comprehended within another but rigorously separate from it, isolated from general space by partitions, an enclosure, an enclave. 

Isolated by framing, these photographs also hide and disguise events whilst ·purporting to represent their reinterpretation. Their subject is passion, with the emphasis on female representation. The author, or in this case, photographer, reinterprets the roles of iconographic personages through her obsession with historical events shaped by heightened emotional circumstances. The key that lifts the lid of the crypt would be found after sublimating oneself into the role of actress/ actor in the scene of the play against the backdrop. The backdrop sets the clues statically and presents the cover to be opened, wandered through with the gaze, searching underneath the surface for human contact and the expression of passion. Thus, the long-deceased representatives of historical mythologies are resurrected for their roles in PRIVILEGED MORTALS.  

Suellen Symons.