Strange Fruits

“Strange Fruits makes use of black and white photography’s capacity to emphasise tone and isolate form from the reassuring context of colour. While the obvious reference is Edward Weston’s still life studies from the 1930s, the presence of surrealist photography is also evident. The series employs Surrealism’s interest in the photographed object’s ability to signify beyond its own specific objecthood into more subjective and unconscious realms. The inherent ‘strangeness’ of Whitlam’s selection of fruits doubles and transcends literal materiality, becoming fleshy, bodily, uncanny reverberations between the familiar and strange.”