Mirrored Self [Rf Photo of the Day]

Photo © Alex Vaughan

For her ongoing series “In Their Element,” Australian portrait photographer Alex Vaughan says she “explores the more intimate aspects of an artist’s life in a personal setting—usually their home,” and treats the projected 30-year undertaking as “a study in the transition of their lives and the places they inhabit over that time.”

For Vaughan, the session is always a collaboration with the artist subject, such as photographer and installation artist Tamara Dean (pictured here). “I might have an idea of what I’d like to explore with the them before we meet, but this can be vague and can even be something as simple as me identifying a rhythm or emotional quality I feel they have, then photographing to that feel,” she says. “To me, Tamara is calm, warm and open. Her rhythm is steady. She flows. She’s also mysterious. I see this in her work and I feel that in her presence. So that’s what I took with me into our shoot.”

Vaughan shot this portrait of Dean in the artist’s backyard, in the Sydney suburb of Turella. “It was a kind of Wonderland,” Vaughan says, “so huge for an inner city suburban garden. And with the train line running down the side of the house, there was a high wall over which Tamara had draped one of her own images. When I saw it, I knew I wanted to try something within that scene. It was Tamara who posed herself with her cat mirroring her own work. We took a bit of time to get what we wanted, and this was the result.”

Check out more Photos of the Day, and email rangefinder@emeraldexpo.com for submissions.