SOME photographs arrive as declarations. Others murmur from the edges, unsettling us not with spectacle but with silence. The work of Melbourne-based artist Anna Kiparis belongs to the latter—built on the hushed tension of the suburban everyday, on the shadows of windows, the flattening of time, and the quiet charge of a space just before or after something happens.
Born in Melbourne’s western suburbs to parents from northern Greece, Kiparis has spent much of her life photographing the familiar without romanticising it. Her images resist both nostalgia and irony, instead inhabiting a poetics of domestic space where emotional memory clings to surfaces: a hallway washed in harsh light, a garden glimpsed from behind a fence, a figure stilled in thought.
Since completing her Master of Photography at RMIT in 2023, Kiparis has cultivated a deliberate, tactile practice—rooted in analogue technique, shaped by film and shadow, attuned to the slow passage of lived experience. Her work has been exhibited widely and held in public collections across Victoria. Yet it is with Strange Air, her latest solo exhibition opening this July at Montsalvat’s Wood Workshop Gallery, that she enters more haunted territory.
There was never an intention or urge to exhibit anything related to the pandemic, until now.
Composed of photographs taken during Melbourne’s extended COVID-19 lockdowns—and then forgotten, left untouched for nearly five years—Strange Air is a series that emerged not from intention, but from afterthought. The images were not made with a project in mind. They were not part of a visual diary or pandemic chronicle. They were left to sleep, and only recently did Kiparis return to them—finding not just a lost archive, but a new body of work with an eerie clarity all its own.
What results is not documentation but disorientation. Strange Air doesn’t offer an account of the pandemic. It drifts through its atmosphere—the emotional humidity of that time, the texture of stillness, the odd elasticity of memory when days became indistinguishable and suburban skies seemed to hold their breath.
In the conversation that follows, Kiparis reflects on the formation of this series, her long-standing relationship with suburban Melbourne, the act of revisiting forgotten images, and the role of photography as a vessel for emotional aftershock. Her insights place Strange Air within a photographic tradition that finds meaning in stillness and the everyday.
At the beginning of the year, I started reflecting on the pandemic… I realised that perhaps it was time to explore their existence, and bring them out for some air. – Anna Kiparis
Kiparis’s relationship with photography began not as an ambition, but as a school elective. Yet within the simple mechanics of film and development, something clicked—an early sense of magic that would anchor her creative life.
“Photography began for me as an elective in Year 9 of high school. Students were encouraged to borrow the two Pentax K1000 SLR cameras that were available to the class over the weekends. Recalling the excitement and anticipation of seeing the negatives after development the following week is one of my fondest memories.”
That excitement was never replaced. Instead, it deepened. For Kiparis, the beauty of photography lies in its inexhaustibility: a medium that forever invites return and reinvention.
“There are many areas to explore within photography. Knowing that I will never learn everything there is to know is what continues to fascinate me about the medium. There is always a new rabbit hole to go down when creating work, and there’s so much room for growth and experimentation.”
The energy behind Strange Air—its quiet experimentation, its emotional palette—emerges from this openness. It is the work of an artist not trying to master a moment, but to notice what memory has left behind.
Suburbia has a lot of stories worthy of being told, and Melbourne is a wonderful backdrop for these stories.
The Poetics of Suburbia
Much of Kiparis’s work draws on the environment that shaped her: Melbourne’s western suburbs. But this isn’t documentary photography in the traditional sense. Her interest lies not in reporting what happens, but in listening for what often goes unnoticed.
“I’m inspired by the suburban environment I grew up in, so a lot of my work focuses on the western suburbs of Melbourne. Domesticity, banality, and the everyday lives of people is interesting to me, because it is how the majority exist. Suburbia has a lot of stories worthy of being told, and Melbourne is a wonderful backdrop for these stories.”
Her photographs do not attempt to elevate the ordinary through nostalgia or romanticism. Instead, they treat the domestic landscape—the facade of a house, the light across a footpath—as a site of lived complexity. In Strange Air, suburbia is not merely a setting but a character: withdrawn, watchful, a little out of step with time.
The Forgotten Files
One of the most powerful aspects of Strange Air is that it wasn’t planned. Kiparis didn’t set out to document lockdown, nor to archive its emotional terrain. The photographs that make up the series were forgotten for nearly half a decade—until something shifted.
“At the beginning of the year, I started reflecting on the pandemic. It feels absurd that five years had passed since it began. I still feel like I am finding my footing, and the whole experience seems like a blur. Once I began revisiting some of my photographs, I realised that perhaps it was time to explore their existence, and bring them out for some air.”
In rediscovering these images, Kiparis did not return to a project—but to a sensation. The act of re-seeing the work brought disorientation and, eventually, catharsis.
“It was strange and disorientating. Looking back at the images, I was surprised that a series emerged from it. There was never an intention or urge to exhibit anything related to the pandemic, until now. In fact, I barely recall picking up my camera during those two years, which made the experience even more surreal. These moments from the past decided to resurface, so it’s also been a journey of catharsis. I am technically reworking images; however, it also feels like it is the first time I am seeing them.”
The result is work that feels untethered from chronology. These are not diary entries. They are fragments of a dream we all half-remember, cast now in different light.
The tones of the show are shaped around jarring colours and extreme contrasts, which is frequently how I felt emotionally during the pandemic.
Atmosphere Over Narrative
Kiparis doesn’t approach photography as a tool for clarity or explanation. In Strange Air, the goal was not to tell the story of lockdown, but to recreate its emotional weather.
“Isolation, surrealism, and a fractured sense of normalcy. The tones of the show are shaped around jarring colours and extreme contrasts, which is frequently how I felt emotionally during the pandemic.”
In the absence of figures or overt symbolism, her images create tension through mood: disquieting colour palettes, skewed framing, the emotional geometry of architectural shadows. The surrealism is never loud—but it is constant. The stillness is heavy, but also strangely tender.
A Space for Shared Memory
What Kiparis ultimately offers is not a portrait of her own lockdown, but an invitation to reflect on our shared experience. The exhibition asks viewers not to remember the facts of what happened, but how it felt to inhabit a world paused.
“I’d like viewers to consider the emotional texture of that time, and perhaps take away a renewed sense of what we collectively endured during the pandemic. Reflecting on how our local environment and natural landscapes reshaped our understanding of connection and resilience.”
Strange Air does not seek to resolve or explain. It doesn’t dramatise the pandemic or rehash its trauma. It instead gives space to memory’s slow return—the ways that overlooked places, once emptied of routine, became charged with silence, light, and the strange presence of absence.
A Stillness That Remains
Strange Air is not a story. It is a reverberation. These photographs do not seek closure. They hold space for something quieter—the emotional residue of stillness, the suburban afterglow of a collective pause, the unremarkable angles where memory pooled.
In letting the images sleep for five years, Kiparis granted them distance. In returning, she found something not just personal, but oddly universal: the truth that memory doesn’t always need clarity—it sometimes just needs time.
In a world rushing back to routine, Strange Air invites us to slow down again, to reinhabit the unspoken weight of that long quiet, and to ask ourselves not what happened—but what stayed behind.
Exhibition Details
Strange Air
Photographs by Anna Kiparis
Preview Session: Friday, 1 August 2025, 1–3 pm (via Eventbrite)
Opening Night: Friday, 1 August, 6–8 pm (via Eventbrite)
Exhibition: 30 July – 24 August 2025
Venue: Montsalvat Arts Centre, Wood Workshop Gallery, 7 Hillcrest Ave, Eltham VIC 3095
All images courtesy of Anna Kiparis.
For more information, visit Anna Kiparis’s website: annakiparis.com
