As "Image" they are not Allen Fells ACCC, Mark Burrows Barrington Brothers, Bob Muscat Fairfax, Elizabeth Bryan Axiom, David Clarke Macquarie Bank, Ron Ferguson Bankers Trust and John Atanaskovic Atanaskovic & Hartnell but "Power Elite" monumental, enlightened, indefatigable, endowed with all the historical attributes of authority and ownership. Simultaneously they are undermined as individuals by their collectivity, bemusing as an image of "life at the top" with satiric swift-like overtones. As a fixed image they are subject to use and misuse, able to be read as potent or impotent, signs of a cultural wealth or poverty.

The process of transforming subjects into pictures involves (historically, culturally, conceptually) a kind of "battle" between artist and subject. At interview Young and Mocnik recounted in very practical terms such negotiation of power as a matter of due course, each describing incidents in which they tested the extent of the subjects' compliance with direction in the name of art (or more specifically in the name of their own transformation into "Art" via the camera and their posing).

The moment of posing is one of dislocation from the subject -centeredness - a severance of subject from self, in pursuit of self-as- image, the ultimate legacy of the artist, who demands and systematically receives the severance/acquiesance of the portrait subject in posing before them, believing for an instant in their own immortalization and sacrificing momentary control in its pursuit. Ironically it is that very loaded (political) moment which is fixed and prolonged. Furthermore a successful photograph cannot simply refer to a subject - it must also require a secondary 'action' of knowledge or of reflection (Roland Barther, Camera Lucida UK 1976). The picture must contain elements which can be read as triggers or symbols by the viewer. The subjects as 3D individuals cannot do this - flattened out to the 2D picture plane, they can.

The Status of "the photograph" itself, engages the subject in this instance, in a process of universalization - of transformation from particular to signifier. It also engages the viewer in a semantic struggle to read beyond two eyes, nose, mouth, suit, board-room (structural) to "Power Elite" (semantic) etc, dependent largely on the memories, experiences and imagination of the individual viewer. For this to hapspen, the subject must be available to the viewer as "picture". As such the original subject secures a place in the viewer's visual imagination - a powerful space to occupy, but simultaneously is "lost to the surface".

This exhibition brings to the viewer a vast collection of photographs produced for the Australian Financial Review - itself a stayer of Australian culture and a site of potent interplays between media, corporate culture and public readership and consumption. The works are dynamic and intriguing on a purely visual level and offer a multi-layered depth of field for the more interrogative viewer. Young and Mocnik have made an original and exciting contribution to the cross disciplinary field of photography and are particularly intriguing in light of the vial space they have created for self reflective, critique-style photography in industry applications.