I have come to realise that one of the disadvantages of shifting from the CBD of Adelaide to Victor Harbor on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast is that my photographic subject matter has become rather restricted. It’s mostly landscape territory here as the coastal towns (Victor Harbor, Port Elliot, Middleton and Goolwa) are small, and do not have that much to offer by way of urban photography. I have done little exploration of the coastal urbanity, but its mostly landscapes-ie., the bush or the coast.
Kings Head, Victor Harbor
I did realise that this would be the case before we moved to the coast. My solution at the time was to make day trips to Adelaide to continuing to photograph in and around the CBD and to do more phototrips to Melbourne. I thought that the emphasis would be more on the latter, as I reckon I done enough photographing the CBD of Adelaide.
I have done phototrips to different cities—to Wellington in May, and more recently to Melbourne. In both cases I flew in and out and I had to travel light. I managed to take the 5×4 Linhof to Melbourne and borrow a tripod off Stuart Murdoch to do a shoot along Merri Creek together. But its expensive and the time away is limited.
So I am back to the contemporary art of the local landscape in the context of the integration of autonomous art into the culture industry—eg.,tourism with its new kind of ‘affirmative culture’, since it it is not an outright negation of art’s autonomy by commodification and political rationality.
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