Christine Mathieson

This black and white photograph of Christine Mathieson was taken by Peter Peryer in 1977. In the portrait, Mathieson, a friend of the artist, stands against a stucco wall, the black mass of her hair and blouse contrasting with the light-textured surface behind her. Peryer has created an image of high contrasts, rejecting mid-tones and producing a print that emphasises the mass of black that surrounds Mathieson's face.

Portraits
Portraiture dominated Peryer's work in the 1970s. He produced self-portraits, as well as an important series of images of his wife, Erika, and close friends. Many of these portraits reflect the same issues that Peryer is tackling in Christine Mathieson - a concentration on an individual in an isolated space, with high contrast effects creating a charged emotional environment. This photograph was used as the image advertising the Dowse Art Museum's 1977 exhibition 'Peter Peryer: An Introduction', which suggests its ability to represent a period of Peryer's photography.

A sort of injury
The dramatic contrasts of light and dark persuade the viewer to find this image emotional - Mathieson's eyes and face lost in the dark halo of hair suggest distress or unease. Jim Barr raised this point with Peryer in an interview in Photoforum Supplement in 1977: 'Now this photo of Christine. It appears to me when I look at it that you have done this woman some sort of injury.' Peryer replied: 'Well, for a start she's up against a wall. One might think of an execution.' Barr went on to say: 'When I met Christine I was surprised to see how your image of her was at such variance to what she seemed to be to me. . . . The image of Christine becomes your Christine . . . maybe this is what I mean by injury. You seem to strip away anything you don't want and use what's left.'