Australian photographer Matthew Sleeth is a consummate observer, exploring the world around him with an acute and often humorous eye. His latest project, Ten Series/106 Photographs, emphasizes how the sequencing of images as an essential part of creating photographic meaning, a conceit with precedents in the work of Ed Ruscha and others. Sleeth's playfulness, wry sensibility, and unorthodox visual style, however, also recall practicing photographers like Lars Tunbjork and Lee Friedlander. With its range of typologies, Ten Series/106 Photographs is varied and eclectic. Topics include Japanese women in uniform, tagged trees and plants in an arboretum, Red China, and Mount Fuji, inspired by old Japanese prints but with each image taken from a modern vantage point. Through its casual exploration of these disparate themes, Ten Series/106 Photographs offers a view of a contemporary world that is structured on somewhat arbitrary types, categories, and systems of classification, all the while making allusions to the role that photography has played in this process.
