{"id":682349,"date":"2026-05-20T05:38:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T05:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/682349\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T05:38:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T05:38:32","slug":"heather-dinass-mothers-table-photographs-the-heart-of-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/682349\/","title":{"rendered":"Heather Dinas’s Mothers Table photographs the heart of home"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new project by photographer Heather Dinas, Mothers Table, looks at our mothers and grandmothers and their kitchen tables \u2014 symbols of home, hearth, family and matriarchal power. Our mother\u2019s table is the symbolic centre of the family: the place where, as migrant families, we congregated with syblings, cousins, uncles, aunties and grandparents. Heather Dinas is creating a testament to those women and the tables around which family life unfolded \u2014 and to the cooking that brought everyone together.<\/p>\n

Three decades behind the camera<\/p>\n

Dinas has sustained a photographic career spanning three decades and has successfuly colonised the space between advertising and art photography \u2014 in fact, she has made a living out of it.<\/p>\n

Dinas as a teenager searched for something \u201cartistic\u201d. She studied Year 12 art and design then completed a BA in Photography and later an MA at RMIT University.<\/p>\n

\"\"The hands of an older woman holding a cup \u2014 a portrait in which the viewer senses the whole person without ever seeing her face. Photo: Heather Dinas<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried different things \u2014 guitar, ceramics and painting, all sorts of things \u2014 but, I remember even framing scenes with my fingers. Sounds corny but it\u2019s true, I didn\u2019t even have a camera and I was framing scenes with my fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The moment she first did photography it became a \u201ccompulsion\u201d it was she says \u201cunstoppable\u201d and had \u201cno clue where it would pan out\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dinas\u2019s studio and website, Mother Studios, is the cave for Dinas. She was a finalist in the National Portrait Prize, the Australian Centre of Photography and the Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award.<\/p>\n

A body of Dinas\u2019s work, The Space Between, was exhibited at the Head On Photo Festival in Sydney and at the International Biennale of the Photo Museum of Thessaloniki in Greece.<\/p>\n

The photographer behind Gourmet Traveller and countless high-end advertising campaigns has found a new hearth as she says has \u201ccome back home\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"The beautiful Nonna Fortunata (aka Tina), in her 90s, is making coffee. Photo: Heather Dinas<\/p>\n

Our mothers and our tables<\/p>\n

In Mothers Table, there is warmth and intimacy; a gentleness of spirit, of knowingness. For example, the hands of an older woman holding a cup, where the viewer is cognisant of the entire person without ever seeing the face.<\/p>\n

Dinas is a storyteller at heart and says, \u201cit\u2019s about telling their [Mothers\u2019s] story, and through Mothers Table [sic], it\u2019s both a portrait and a celebration. I am honouring those women I\u2019m photographing\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dinas did not realise it would be the last time she would capture her mother\u2019s vitality before her health declined once again. Photo: Heather Dinas<\/p>\n

\u201cThe spaces, the things, a picture up on the wall, the wonderful way they had about themselves, just observing them do little things. I photographed the beautiful Nonna Fortunata, (aka Tina), in her 90s as she was making coffees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the little things around it. Her recipe book that was worn and yellowed, written by the heart. That notebook is a story in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"For more than three decades, Heather Dinas has successfully bridged the worlds of advertising and art photography, building a career \u2014 and a living \u2014 in the space between the two. Photo: Heather Dinas<\/p>\n

Maria, her mother in a capsule of memory <\/p>\n

Mothers Table emerged from Dinas\u2019s desire to photograph her own mother after a period of illness and recovery.<\/p>\n

\u201cMum had been unwell, and I was busy photographing commercial campaigns. My partner kept pointing out that it would be a \u2018really good idea to capture your mum\u2019 because her health came back and her vitality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dinas\u2019s mother arrived in Australia at 18, like so many others, and she understands the pangs of pleasure and pain in growing up as the child of migrants. The nostalgia of another time, both good and bad.<\/p>\n

A time when all there was was a black-and-white photo, maybe a saturated Polaroid in the 1970s, but no digital trails.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was at the Hellenic Museum and they had a display with this beautiful big black and white photo of a ship coming into the Melbourne Port and they dubbed it the \u2018bride ship\u2019 and I realised that\u2019s the ship mum actually came on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cI loved capturing her hand, making the filo pastry and the spanakopita,\u201d Dinas said. Photo: Heather Dinas<\/p>\n

Being part of the migration story and telling it through photographs is part of Dinas\u2019s \u201cDNA\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhotography tells a story \u2014 it may sound banal \u2014 but it tells a story without words.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her mother Dinas says was a \u201cdynamic and effervescent woman\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe had a positive spirit, and, she could cook up a storm. So, I photographed her and I didn\u2019t realise that it was a moment in time,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved capturing her handmaking the filo pastry and the spanakopita.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dinas did not realise it would be the last time she would capture her mother\u2019s vitality, as her health declined again.<\/p>\n

\"\"Heather Dinas\u2019s mother arrived in Australia at 18, and like many children of migrants, this photo session became a capsule in time. Photo: Heather Dinas<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a beautiful time capsule of my mum. I look at the photos and my mum doesn\u2019t look like that anymore. I\u2019m grateful that I got it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dinas recalls the \u201cchallenging experience of packing up\u201d her parents\u2019 home.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll those little things that have been amassed over 47 years they lived there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The house becomes a shell. The humanity that once infused it is gone, so photographs become the only trace of the lives once lived there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing is, my mum was the heart of that home, and that\u2019s something I realised,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the last items we took out of the home was the dining table. I just looked at it and I just felt so emotional, and, you know\u2026 all those beautiful times sitting around it\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Dinas\u2019s voice breaks, as a sadness of past and present colliding becomes evident.<\/p>\n

\"\"Nonna Fortunata, (aka Tina), in her 90s. Photo: Heather Dinas<\/p>\n

A gift to migrant women<\/p>\n

She understood \u201cwhat a gift it is\u201d to photograph people in these intimate spaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to gift people, you can actually photograph in these beautiful spaces and with the background that I\u2019ve got.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many ways, she is grafting onto memory itself, creating intimate photographs of people brought here \u2014 and born here \u2014 through migration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am interested in immigrant women, their children, their daughters, and I\u2019m quite fascinated by culture and heritage handed down through the matriarchs.\u201d<\/p>\n

She laughs at the notion of patriarchy and talks of how Greeks, Italians and others know \u201cthe actual power lies with the matriarch\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The nostalgia mirage<\/p>\n

Dinas\u2019s other work like Living in the 70s \u2014 a take on the Skyhooks song \u2014 has a patina of 70s coolness and reflects what she grew up with.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a child of the 70s,\u201d she declares.<\/p>\n

The mirage of nostalgia is played out in burnt oranges, and baby blues \u2014 yet they are not recreations. They are contemporary reflections with a touch of irony.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a reflection but it has contemporary references.\u201d<\/p>\n

She points to a series called Marital Bed, \u201cshot on medium format film\u201d.<\/p>\n

There is a gentle musky eroticism in the series. Hazy, dreamlike 1950s migrants\u2019 bedrooms. A black-and-white wedding photo on the dresser; a woman in a slip doing up her hair in front of the mirror; a man in a white singlet washing his face over a 1950s basin. They are our migrant parents as young, vibrant adults \u2014 not parents. The would we never saw, or maybe just caught an uncomfortable glimse of as childtren.<\/p>\n

\"\"Heather Dinas\u2019s other work, including Living in the 70s \u2014 inspired by the Living in the 70\u2019s by Skyhooks \u2014 carries a distinct 1970s coolness, reflecting the world and culture she grew up with. Photo: Heather Dinas<\/p>\n

A mentor of Dinas\u2019s once said that all photographers have something at the heart of what they do, and that her \u201cwork is threaded by nostalgia, or a sense of nostalgia\u201d.<\/p>\n

A wedding photograph in one of the photos is of her parents, Dinas says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a moment when I was setting up, my head down, moving things around, equipment, whatnot, and for a split second I looked up and I saw mum and dad\u2019s wedding portrait and I looked at the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually forgot what I was doing. I\u2019m like, what\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n

Scenes of past lives, as fictional nostalgia, seep through the series like ghosts on film. They annimate a spaces Dinas\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Creating meaning and coming home<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something sentimental about working with film Dinas says and time has come to create meaning.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhotographers talk about that moment where they develop their first black and white in the dark room, they see the scene they\u2019ve captured by the magic of those lights in the dark room \u2014 it\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thatworld of the darkroom \u2014 an image appearing as if by magic on silver gelatin photographic paper \u2014 is lost to digitisation.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are looking at silver gelatin paper, and there it is, and even the whole notion of how light goes through the lens and is reflected off objects outside. It goes through a lens, it turns upside down in the camera.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Dreamlike 1950s migrant bedrooms: a woman fixing her hair, a man washing at a basin \u2014 our parents as adults in intimate spaces, not as parents. Photo: Heather Dinas<\/p>\n

The camera obscura, a phenomenon used by Renaissance artists, and which, through photography, augments an agency and power in showing truths.<\/p>\n

Mothers Table a departure from the billboards, the glamour magazines loike Gourmet Traveller and campaigns for global brands. Dinas says she has \u201ccome back home\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved doing campaigns, but at the end of the day, I\u2019ve had to ask what I want my work to mean.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dinas is calling on Greek Australians to contact her as she develops Mothers Table. The project will no doubt become a series of exhibitions and books. It is an important project for all of us.<\/p>\n

\"\"Nonna Tina\u2019s recipe book, worn and yellowed, a narrative of its own. Photo: Heather Dinas<\/p>\n

Heather Dinas wants to hear from Greek Australian migrants who may believe their mothers and or grandmothers may be great subjects for the project here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new project by photographer Heather Dinas, Mothers Table, looks at our mothers and grandmothers and their kitchen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-682349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}