The sitter or subject for Tim Wagg’s Youth Portrait (2022) is Jadyn Dixon, a young Pākehā realtor working in Tāmaki Makaurau. Whatever beliefs a viewer may hold about realtors, it is unlikely for Jadyn to fulfil these, not because he is such an uncommonly singular subject, but because Tim has chosen to portray him as an individual, not a realtor. Throughout the video’s 20-minute run time, we follow Jadyn as he navigates his work day. He arrives at his Glenfield office when the sky is still tinged dawn pink, and we arrive with him. We enter his office, a small glass-walled room furnished in shades of grey, a framed map of the world hanging behind a clean desk, Aotearoa tucked in the bottom left. We see him taking calls, working on his database, sending emails from his phone, driving through the suburbs, shooting video for a new listing. At one point, the camera zooms in on an object on Jadyn’s desk, a mounted gold credit card engraved with the maxim: YOUTHFUL TENACITY HAS ITS REWARDS.
—excerpt from Lucinda Bennett, 'All this could be ours: On Tim Wagg’s Youth Portrait', McCahon House, 2023
