Vanessa Harper-Mathews is an Australian photographic and visual artist whose practice moves across the thresholds of myth and modernity, matter and perception. Her work explores how reality appears rather than what it depicts, investigating how archetypal forms and mythic consciousness—embedded within ancient collective memory—persist, fracture, or re-emerge within contemporary, digital, and urban environments.
Working across digital and organic subjects, Harper-Mathews approaches photography as a participatory act of emergence. Light, time, and observation converge to briefly stabilise otherwise fluid states of being. Drawing intuitively on ideas aligned with quantum physics—particularly observation, probability, and collapse—her images are conceived not as documents of fixed moments, but as threshold events: points where multiple possibilities resolve into a singular presence before dissolving again.
Through long-form engagement with social, urban, and natural landscapes, she traces the subtle choreography of human and non-human presences—gestures, rituals, atmospheres—that hint at the sacred beneath the surface of the everyday. Light, reflection, and movement act as agents of transformation, charting the entropic drift between presence and absence, the material and the immaterial, the analogue and the digital.
These concerns underpin her current (ongoing) bodies of work including Persephone’s Flowers and Digital Kami. Persephone’s Flowers explores cyclical time, becoming, and mortality through botanical form, while Digital Kami extends her inquiry into the virtual and technological realm, investigating emergent presences within digital systems. This work interrogates digital colonialism as a contemporary mythology of power and perception—one that replicates ancient hierarchies through data, image, and algorithm—while drawing parallels between modern technology and ancestral notions of situational spirit.
Merging documentary realism with a poetic, liminal gaze, Harper-Mathews transforms streets, interiors, and landscapes into portals where unseen forces flicker. Her photographs become acts of invocation rather than mere representation—ritualised gestures of witnessing that resist erasure and search for residual traces of spirit, ancestry, and imagination within a hyper-mediated world.
Vanessa Harper-Mathews holds six university degrees, including a Master’s in Documentary Photography and a Graduate Diploma in Art History. Her expertise in historical photographic printing methods, combined with contemporary digital and analogue practices, forms the foundation of her distinctive visual language. Her work has been awarded and exhibited internationally and is held in private collections and institutional archives.
After a distinguished 35+ years career as a senior corporate risk executive, leadership development coach/mentor and Board governance advisor, she is currently focusing on the development of her artistic practice full-time at her atelier, alongside her coaching and mentoring business and running retreats at her Byron Bay Hinterland property.
Vanessa is also available for the following: assignments- photojournalism, documentary, travel, editorial commissions, & collaborations, 1:1 Coaching & mentoring in photography (digital and analogue, & historical photographic printing processes) workshops/retreats and creative practices.
Portfolios are available upon request.
Photographic archival prints are also available by request.
BIO
EDUCATION
2017 Master of Science, Coaching Psychology, Sydney University, Australia
2013 Graduate Diploma in Art History, University of Adelaide, SA, Australia
2010 Master of Documentary Photography Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney University, Australia
2006 Master Business Administration (MBA), Charles Sturt University, Australia
2001 Graduate Certificate Safety/Risk Sciences, University of NSW, Australia
2000 Bachelor Adult Education, University Western Sydney
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS/ RESIDENCIES/ WORKSHOPS
2025 Masterclass Magnum Photos & Fujifilm Masterclass in Contemporary Image Making, Tokyo, Japan
2024 Masterclass Magnum Photos & Fujifilm Masterclass in Contemporary Image Making, Seoul, South Korea
2023 Residency The Scuola Internazionale di Grafica di Venezia, Venice, Italy
2019 Residency Chateau Orquevaux (recipient of the Denis Diderot Grant), Orquevaux, France
2021 Group Exhibition Birds, Gallery 3, Byron Bay, NSW
2018 Solo Exhibition Bella Venezia Gold Street Studios, Trentham, Victoria, Australia
2017 Group Exhibition Another Possibility, Dali International Photography Exhibition, Dali, China
2017 Group Exhibition Maggie Diaz Photographic Award for Women Finalist Exhibition Space galleries,
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
2016 Group Exhibition Shades of Blue Contemporary Cyanotypes, Potter Gallery, Missouri Western State University
2012 Group Exhibition State of Art Gallery, Hong Kong
2012 Group Exhibition International Art Festival, Museum of Russian Art, Jersey City, NJ, USA
2012 Group Exhibition Pro'jekt LA, MOPLA, (Month of Photography Los Angeles) Chop House, California, USA
2012 Solo Exhibition All Roads Lead to Isis & Beautiful Carnival, Brunswick Street Galleries, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
2012 Solo Exhibition Beautiful Carnival, ArtHouse, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2011 Group Exhibition SCA, Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery, NSW, Australia
2010 Group Exhibition Graduate Exhibition Sydney College of Arts, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
AWARDS / PRIZES
2025 Anthology Magazine Shortlisted & Awarded Honourable Mention for the Anthology International Poetry Prize
2024. Vienna International Photo Awards 2024 Honourable Mention, 'Our World’
2024 The Australian Photography Landscape Awards 5 Individual Awards - Highly Commended/Commended
2024 The Australian Photography Mono Awards Commended, “People” Category
2018 Fleurieu Biennale Art Prize Finalist
2017 Maggie Diaz Photographic Award for Women 1st place, Finalist (across multiple categories)
2013 5th Edition Julia Margaret Cameron Awards Finalist, (Cityscape & Street Photography)
2013 5th Pollux Awards 1st place, 3rd place & finalist, Alternative, 2nd place, finalist, Still Life
2012 International Art Festival 1st place + finalist, Alternative Photography
2012 Creative Asia Photography Awards Gold Award, Illustrative
2012 2nd International Donkey Art Prize Finalist, Photography & Digital Media
2012 Pro'jekt LA, MOPLA, Finalist
2011 The International Loupe Awards Bronze, Abstract / Illustrative Category
2011 The International Loupe Awards Bronze, People & Portrait Category
2009 Silvershotz International Journal of Contemporary Photography,2009, International Folio Finalist
PUBLICATIONS (SELECTED)
2019 Art Edit Magazine #22
2018 The Hand Magazine
2017 The Hand Magazine
2016 The Hand Magazine
2011 Exposure
2010 Photofile Issue 90
2010 Photofile Issue 91
2010 Broadsheet Contemporary Visual Arts & Culture Vol 39.3 September 2011
2009 Silvershotz International Journal of Contemporary Photography
I respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land where I live, work and create, the Arakwal People of the Bundjalung Nation and pay my respects to Elders past, present.
May we tread lightly as we walk together in this sacred land, guided by the wisdom and teachings of the Bundjalung people, as we strive to capture and share the beauty of this Country through our photography.