Vanessa Harper-Mathews is an Australian photographer & visual artist. Through the fluid use of documentary & conceptual photography she explores liminal space within the architectures of contemporary life, the layered invisible relationships & intersections between place, memory, time & human experience, & the unseen threads that connect people to their environments.
Vanessa holds 6 university degrees, including a Master’s of Documentary Photography and a Graduate Diploma in Art History. Her deep expertise in historical photographic printing methods & traditions, combined with contemporary digital & analogue practices, forms the foundation of her distinctive visual language. Her work has been awarded& exhibited globally, and is held in private collections & institutional archives.
Vanessa’s practice traverses the thresholds between myth & modernity. and investigates how the archetypes & mythic consciousness of ancient social collective memory persist — or re-emerge — within the architectures of contemporary life. Through long-form engagement with urban, social, and natural environments, she traces the subtle choreography of human & non-human presences — gestures, rituals, & atmospheres that hint at the sacred beneath the surface of the everyday. Light, reflection, & movement act as agents of transformation, charting the entropic drift between presence and absence, the material and the digital.
Her recent work extends these inquiries into the virtual & technological realm, interrogating digital colonialism as a new mythology of power & perception — a system replicating ancient hierarchies through data, image, & algorithm. Within this terrain, Harper-Mathews searches for the residual traces of spirit & ancestry, the fragments of human imagination that persist amid the entropy of a hyper-mediated world.
Through a practice that is both meditative and investigative, she invites viewers into a state of pause — to sense the thresholds of liminal space where myth continues to breathe through contemporary existence. Her photographs become not mere documents but acts of invocation: gestures that resist erasure, illuminating how the sacred endures within the restless surfaces of the modern age.
Alongside her fine arts practice, Vanessa is a freelance photographer available for documentary, travel, and editorial commissions, and collaborations with a particular focus on luxury travel, cultural storytelling, and visual asset development. Commercial 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
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.