SURF PHOTOGRAPHER
Born in Sydney of Korean and European heritage, Fran Miller now lives and works on Queensland’s Gold Coast. A self-taught photographer Fran kicked-off her career in commercial and editorial photography which culminated in working with international brands and publications in the surf industry.
In 2016 Fran had her first solo exhibition at the New York Women’s Surf Film Festival which was the catalyst for developing her practice in an art context. Her photography explores issues of identity and belonging as an Australian and how that is formed and fractured by the dominant discourse and taken-for-granted ideological frameworks present in her environment, in the past and the present.
Fran has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Bleach Festival, Horizons Festival, BLA! and the United Nations International Marine Debris Conference. Fran’s work is held in the collections of Ralph Lauren New York, Wyndam Hotels Australia and private collections in New York, Paris, Los Angeles and Sydney. In 2019 Fran worked with international book publisher Gestalten to showcase her photographs in their to-be-released global women’s surf book due to be released in May 2020.
Fran will be presenting ‘The Politics in Surfing’ in a panel discussion with Rebecca Olive:
Surfing is never just surfing is it?
When we pull up to the beach and we’re looking at the lineup, whether at our local break or at a place in the corners of remote Indonesia, our decision to paddle out and how we’ll be when we’re out there is shaped by who we are and what we represent.
In a panel discussion with Fran Miller and Rebecca Olive, we will unpack the political underpinnings of placemaking, gender and colonialism in surfing. This is a chance to hear about Fran Miller’s recent work in documenting life in the Pacific and Indonesia and exploring both her own identity as a Korean Australian woman and the way colonialism continues to impact the lives of people in some of the most remote parts of the world.
