Susan Fereday


Susan Fereday is an Australian artist, writer, curator and educator. She holds a doctorate from Monash University, Melbourne. She was born in Adelaide, South Australia.

Art practice

Fereday uses a range of media, including digital and analogue photography, installation, video, light and shadow. She is best known for her ‘post-photographic’ installations in which simple materials are employed to invoke the logic of photography without the use of traditional photographic means. She also exhibits found photographs, such as the series Under a Steel Sky, in which her collection of amateur snapshots from the 1950s resembles Robert Frank’s series, The Americans.

Research

Fereday's research and writing is mainly around theories of photography. Her doctoral thesis, Light Out of Darkness: the origin of photography in mystery and melancholy, explored occluded meanings in the early photographs of Nicéphore Niépce and William Henry Fox Talbot.

Collections

Fereday's work is held in the following public collection: