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California, sometime in the early 1970s. It’s hot, light pulsates. The air hums with a sexy, sun-soaked transcendence—blissed out and tripping on its own sense of freedom… Christine Godden ...is attending the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) and living in Larkspur, Marin County, outside San Francisco, a ferry or a Golden Gate Bridge car trip away. …It’s hip. Janis Joplin had lived up the road. Californian culture might be dismissed by the buttoned-up European-facing East Coast as hedonistic and all surface with no substance, but who cares: with that comes freedom, and from freedom possibility. It’s a time and a place to be young, idealistic. Godden leans in.

This extract from Anne O’Hehir’s introduction to her essay in Light Touch captures perfectly the atmosphere of Christine Godden’s images in M.33’s latest publication.  

A milestone in Australian photographic publishing, this exceptionally printed hard cover book brings together Godden’s timeless images made almost 50 years ago. Collected by major Australian institutions late in the 20th century, many of these evocative and often gently erotic images have – with some notable exceptions – largely disappeared from general circulation, no doubt as a result of Godden stepping away from her photographic practice in the mid 1980s.

Light Touch is an opportunity to engage with these often fragmentary yet intimate and beautifully photographed images of people, animals, and domestic objects – all treated with the same curiosity and tenderness.

Christine Godden’s images in Light Touch are complemented by essays from Helen Ennis and Anne O’Hehir which together offer an historical context for Godden’s work and also highlight her unique contribution to feminist art making, her historical significance as a photographer and her continuing relevance.

116 pages, 24 x 24 cm, hardcover
Published by M.33
ISBN: 9780645694796