Adelaide to rest
Andrew Cowen is a crime scene photographer of a different kind
The abandoned former bank in Snowtown, South Australia, where the bodies in the barrels were stored
Adelaide-born photographer Cowen was never interested in crime. That changed when he was commissioned to do a project about his home town, and decided to explore the spate of brutal murders that the city seems to attract. He set out to study some of the landmarks associated with them; producing melancholy, disquieting landscapes. Adelaide 1966-1999, an exhibition and book that spans the abduction of the Beaumont Children up until the infamous Snowtown "Bodies in Barrels" murders. He spoke to Time Out's Richard Cooke.
Why do you think there is a strong association with place and crimes, especially in Adelaide? It's not uncommon when there has been a gruesome or famous crime for street names to be changed, or houses to be knocked down. "I don't know", is the simple answer to that. You're absolutely right, there is a huge contributing factor. The events in Adelaide... you can look at them two ways. There is an evil lurking in the air or the water, which is creating a perfect environment for bad activities; or, these things happen all over the place, but they're more prominent in Adelaide. If those things happened in a city like London, or New York or any big city, it wouldn't be significant, but Adelaide has a small population. It has a million people, and these things become the defining events. Adelaide per capita does not have a high murder rate than anywhere, and in fact it isn't the highest in Australia, but it has gotten this reputation of being dangerous - and it feels dangerous as well.
What does art contribute to the examination of these crimes? They've all been documented as a part of police files, in the media - what is the significance of going back, and trying to document it in this different way? That's a difficult one, because there is obviously something driving me to do this, but it is extremely difficult to articulate what that exact thing is. It sounds really clumsy, but in some way in revisiting these events - I didn't want this to exaggerate or sensationalise the crimes - but I think these events needed to be re-looked at in a different way. I hope it's not hurtful, I'm not trying to sell papers or advertising space, but I'm trying to in some sense create an environment or a feeling about place. What do you think about it?
There is a famous quote from the sentencing in the Moors Murders trial, where the judge described them as "wicked beyond belief". When crimes, beyond comprehensions, beyond belief occur, there are elements of them that are beyond expression, but not creative expression. In a police report, or in a newspaper story, there is nothing to explain why things happen beyond the rational level, but in an art work, but there is some clue.
I heard something the other day, where John Brack said, you know in regards to painting, "if you can articulate it in a different way, then the painting is irrelevant". So for me, I can articulate something about a picture that I can't in a different way.
They seem sort of sterile, or almost mundane, you would not know from seeing those types of images with no words next to them what happened in those places. In a purely visual sense, when I was beginning this project, I wanted there to be these beautiful environments, landscape pictures as it were. Treat them individually and they still have to work as pictures, and then as you get into it, the trick is, or the paradox is that they record events that are pretty gruesome in most cases. But I think that it's important to convey a sense of melancholy, that type of feel. And I think that expresses the sentiment of the project more meaningfully than kind of " razzle dazzle". This happened here, this crime scene, you stand back... it's contemplative.
What were your feelings like going to those places? If I was a bit spooked, information I had in my mind was contributing to that. They weren't frightening in themselves. It was a combination of knowledge and deliberate kind of style that builds up in the pictures. In reality you'd be standing up on the hills, and thinking "God, it's nice up here isn't it!", and as I talk about in the introduction and in the catalogue of the show, I had my dad with me. He's pretty big guy, and so I may have felt differently about standing in a suburban street in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, photographing a house which people had found some bodies relating to the Snowtown case were found. If I was standing in the street by myself - the thing about Adelaide is that if you stand in a suburban street and there's no one around, and then someone in a car drives up towards you, in the back of your mind, anyone from Adelaide will tell you, somewhere maybe, the person in the car is going to fuck you up!
So embarking on this work is a bit of a way to resolve or reconcile the element of danger that you found in Adelaide growing up. Yeah, and also to express it, and look at the idea that people do have that knee jerk reaction when you say "Adelaide". You get that ghoulish horror, and that's not how I see it. But there is a feeling there is something wrong there. People who are sensitive to these things agree, that there is something wrong with the place.
Andrew Cowen's photos show at Monster Children gallery until 30 May.