Sacred Reverence
Raoul Slater
Warrior [detail] 2025
Portrait of Sarah Mayrhofer
Wet-plate Collodion Ambrotype
25 x 20 cm
About the Artwork
Sarah and I work as physios in the Sunshine Coast Health Hospital Service. She guides oncology patients through the course of their acute cancer journey, and I take over when they are released to the community. Sarah is dedicated and extremely knowledgeable, but she also has wide-ranging interests (including drawing and painting), and has sculpted her body into a work of art.
Over a decade, I have collected photographic portraits of 120 of my allied health colleagues, using the wet-plate collodion process over the last three years. Sarah was an obvious choice as a subject, both for her striking appearance and her artistic input. She displayed a forceful warrior presence for the 10 x 8 inch view camera.
About the Artist
Raoul Slater is a wet-plate collodion portrait photographer, working from a studio on the Sunshine Coast. He photographs colleagues, neighbours, and people who lead in the fields of the arts and the environment.
Wet-plate was the dominant photographic technology of the 1880s. Raoul grew up in a Queenslander from this era, houses characterised by coloured windows and pressed timber features, so he sources these vintage materials for his wet-plates and their frames.
Raoul produces work across many genres: wildlife, landscape, sport and portraits. He has won prizes in the Bird Photographer of the Year and the landscape section of the Head On Foundation Prize. He was awarded Australian Photographer of the Year in 2023 with a portfolio of tintype portraits and was a finalist in the 2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize.