film – Page 4 – Thought Factory

a road trip with an 8×10

March 29, 2016

I am planning a large-format road trip to the Coorong where I will work with the 8×10 Cambo monorail, black and white film, and one 300mm normal lens. I will also have a 5×4 field camera with me to use with colour film and for when I am walking through the wetlands. The photo trip is to build material for the second part of the Edgelands project.

I will attend a workshop at Meningie run by the Centre for Culture, Land and Sea on the ecological state of the River Murray and Coorong on Sunday 3rd April. I will then drive to, and base myself at Salt Greek for 3 days. The work from this roadtrip will be part of a group exhibition at the South Coast Regional Arts Centre (in the historic Old Goolwa Police Station building). The exhibition is a part of the Alexandrina Council’s 2016 ‘Just Add Water’ program.

melaleuca, Coorong

Before you think a road trip with an 8×10 monorail is crazy, here is a precedent from the 1980s: then Doug Spowart (using a Sinar P 8×10) and Maris Rusis (he was Queensland’s only committed 10×8 image-making practitioner at the time) did a road trip from Brisbane to Canberra, Kosciuszko and Suggan Buggan in the late 1980’s with 8×10 monorails. Continue Reading…

coastal, colour, film, landscape

Fleurieuscapes Outtake: Petrel Cove

March 2, 2016

The beach region of the Fleurieuscapes had a minimal presence in the exhibition at Magpie Springs. Images, such as the one of Petrel Cove below, did not make the cut with the curators. Petrel Cove is on the south side of Rosetta Head, and it is a picturesque beach with rocky outcrops, which, despite a dangerous rip, is populated during the summer by surfers, recreational fishers, families and photographers.

It represents the pleasurable, freedom and recreation during the summer months without the stench of sewerage, piles of discarded condoms, human faeces, life savers, or racial conflict.

surfers, Petrel Cove

The Petrel Cove beach is usually empty during the late autumn, winter and early springs months apart from the odd surfer, dog walker, photographer, or lone fisherman. The place has a history of its rip regularly claiming the lives of those people who ignore the warning signs that signify the potential dangers. So Petrel Cove is not an unspoiled place that has a spiritual significance. Continue Reading…

colour, film, history, landscape

Traumatic history

January 25, 2016

This picture made in the Namadgi National Park is from the dark landscapes projected it is of a traumatic event–the Canberra bush fire. It is also a place of collective memory of the Canberra bushfire of 2003, which was the first confirmed case of a fire tornado in Australia, in which 4 people died, 490 were injured, over 500 homes destroyed, and 164,000 hectares burnt. That burnt area was close to 70% of the Territories total area.

burnt tree, Namadgi National Park

It is a site of traumatic history, and it is a photograph made of a place at which the bushfire event occurred over a decade before. As a photographer I came late to the scene and what is photographed is the remaining traces of the bush fire in the landscape. It is a photograph that was taken in a return to a location or site in the Namadgi National Park after the bush fire has happened, and it is made in response to the traces of this event in the landscape. Continue Reading…

film, landscape

gloomy landscapes

January 10, 2016

This was my first attempt at a dark landscape. It is roadside vegetation in Waitpinga on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula on a no through road that I would often walk down with the standard poodles. It was made in 2013, and I didn’t really know what I was doing apart from not photographing the beautiful.

I wasn’t photographing the tree per se that is the grotesque or formlessness as a way to explore alternative modes of expression to that of the beautiful, pastoral landscapes that celebrate the dominion of mankind over nature, and the picturesque. I was more attracted by the gloominess of what was left of the native scrub or bush in relation to the field for the grazing cattle. If the field represented the “mastering” and “possessing” of wild nature, then the roadside vegetation was all that left of the bush. It was to be brooding. That’s about it.

gloomy landscape 1

I hadn’t connected this first take at gloomy landscapes to Australian photographers working in the Gothic tradition, or those who recognised the Gothic nature of the Australian landscape. I must have felt I was doing something different that was worth exploring as I did black and white interpretations, and then I went back and did some large format versions in both colour (5×4) and black and white (8×10). It was vaguely something to do with Romanticism and the sublime; vaguely because the roadside vegetation in Australian today was a long, long way from Casper David Friedrich’s 1818 painting of the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog and Kant’s subject affirming concept of the sublime. Continue Reading…

architecture, film, topographics, urban

Fleurieuscapes: Outtake 2

January 4, 2016

This image is an outtake from the 15 images that I have selected for my forthcoming Fleurieuscapes exhibition at the Magpie Springs Gallery in January 2016. A previous outtake from the exhibition can be seen on this post on the Encounter Studio blog.

Elephants trunk, Victor Harbor

Although I was quite partial to it, my friends who were kindly acting as de facto curators for the exhibition rejected it. I am sentimentally attached to the image as my architectural representations of Victor Harbor are few and far between. There isn’t that much to work with in this coastal township, architecturally speaking, and I thought it was a good way to explore the people, place, space theme of the exhibition. Continue Reading…

Older Posts

Newer Posts