Whilst I was walking and photographing in the Otway forest during my Melbourne trip I realised that my relationship with the southern Fleurieu Peninsula had changed from visiting to dwelling. I now live in on the coast and belong to this place. That meant my photography of the region had become place based, as it was premised on both taking a walk in the landscape rather than rushing to explore or discover and dwelling in a place.This photography is a recovery of a sense of our embeddedness of place.
Dwelling in a place implies a greater environmental awareness and sensitivity and is usually contrasted with the more instrumental domination of the landscape that is premised on power, control and exploitation. Dwelling implies a capacity to observe, underestand, describe and being attentive to, and caring for, the natural environment of the place where one is living.
There is a tradition of representing the Australian landscape as hostile to its human inhabitants; a tradition that reaches back to the colonist representation of the harshness of the Australian landscape nature. The colonists saw Australia as a land of stance animals and bizarre plants, a land worn out though it were a land left behind by time, as an alien, barren hostile land that had been deserted by God. Their response to the landscape was to trash it in order to dominate it. Continue Reading…