Jane Long is a Brisbane based photographer whose dreamlike, surrealist photography plays with the lines of reality and fantasy and has a strong emotional connection.
Jane Long
“One of the things I strive for is ambiguity,” Jane described. “Ambiguity in a sense that you are not quite sure whether the character is good or bad or whether your first impression was right or not. I love the idea of the viewer having to look again and perhaps change their mind.”
Jane’s work does not follow the definition of what is normal, and she thrives in this. “I have settled for the word ‘odd’ to best describe my work. I like producing images that are a little bit odd and strange, not normal. I like things to be beautiful, but there are always dark elements in the composition. I look for the unexpected, but I also like to be quite gentle, not too ‘in your face.”
Jane created her career in image production. She started working with Photoshop in the early 1990’s. She soon found out that working with already existing images did not satisfy her creativity, nor did it allow her to achieve her desired results. “For a couple of years, my work was more traditional. That took the fun out of it. I wanted to use more of my own creativity!”
Jane shoots her photography in series and often works on several series at once. Many of the series revolves around a female figure to allow for a specific vulnerability in the work.
“I like to imagine what that person would be like, how their life is,” she described. “I quite often want to create a better life for the person and add a little bit of humour for them as well as for the viewer.”
Production processes can be quite complex and lengthy from the sketching, design and scheduling of the pre-production through to the editing of the post-production stage.
“Despite all the planning, I am often faced with such questions as how to keep the same light and lighting conditions throughout the shoot. It is important to have consistent lighting, but when we use handheld lights at different conditions, the simplest task can cause big issues.”
“The nature of my work makes me dependent on others and their schedules. Overlapping production cycles also create challenges as post-production for one series might take place at the same time as shooting would for another series,” Jane told. “The current series has been in production for a couple of years now.”
“Nothing in life is straightforward; there are always hidden elements and unexpected surprises,” Jane said about life and her art.
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