Anne Zahalka

Contemporary Australian photographer Anne Zahalka was born in Sydney in 1957. Her formal training has taken course across the city's three major art departments; she commenced study in 1976 at the former East Sydney Technical College, going on to complete her BVA and postgraduate diploma at Sydney College of the Arts, and MFA at the University of NSW, College of Fine Arts. She is known for staged, high key images that blur fantasy and reality; carefully constructed renditions of every day scenes, printed in hyper real colour, where the obviously constructed elements make us see their real life counterparts in a new light.

Her practice, concerned with questioning dominant myths and cultural constructs and all manner of human-interest subjects, has produced a body of imagery that is undoubtedly iconic in scope. She has exhibited extensively both in Australia and overseas for more than twenty years; with her first solo show 'The Wanderer upon an Castle came...' held at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany in 1986.

In 2007, the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne, mounted a major retrospective of her work, 'Hall of Mirrors: Anne Zahalka Portraits 1987-2007', which toured to the Warrnambool Art Gallery, Victoria; Ipswich Art Gallery in Queensland, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra to 2008.

Zahalka has been the recipient of numerous awards and commissions, including the Leopold Godowsky Photography Award, Boston, 2005 and the Sydney Airport commission, 'Welcome to Sydney', 2003. Anne Zahalka is represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and Arc One Gallery, Melbourne. Her works are held in most major public collections in Australia as well as numerous private and corporate collections in Australia and overseas.