In starting to work on the Fleuriescapes project once again I can now see that it is more about place and homecoming, with the photographic style more in the form of poeticising. The project is about being at home in this particular place, and it is about exploring what that means through poeticising what is familiar and taken-for granted in our everyday, pre-reflective life.
quartz+granite
After we left living in the CBD in Adelaide to shift down to Victor Harbor (ie., sea change) it slowly dawned on us that the southern Fleurieu Peninsula was our home Adelaide is now where we go to do business then leave to return home–it is a world of instrumental value and rushing about. Though we were once comfortably at home in the city’s everydayness and its local neighbourhoods we no longer are at home where we used to live.
We often dip in and out of the consumer society of the city; an urban life that is based on unending economic growth and gaining satisfaction from consumerism. We no longer miss living in the urban world of the city 0f Adelaide, with its coffee shops, entertainment, businesses, art galleries, film labs, corporate universities, people and politics. Our experience of the city is now akin to one of homelessness–a passing away of belonging to a world based on unlimited economic growth.
The southern Fleurieu Peninsula is where we where dwell: our human existence is one of being-in-the-world, to employ the phraseology of Martin Heidegger. This homecoming is a process of coming to an understanding of ourselves in our surroundings or a movement to understanding that earth, things and people are gathered together in an encompassing environment -as a place or a belonging-together.
bush, Heysen Trail, Waitpinga
The photographer establishes this world through images that express our standing in the openness of the presence of this world that assumes an intimacy with the surroundings as well as a sense of belongingness to an earth system. This intimacy discloses the fragility of nature and the way it has been damaged through exploitation to ensure unlimited economic growth.
What emerges is a sense of an ecological crisis
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[…] By Thursday the cold south westerly and easterly winds of the past week had dropped away. In the late afternoon it was very still and warm with cloud cover and soft light. The tide was very low. These were lovely conditions for both a late afternoon walk with Maleko and for me to do a bit of scoping about this place. […]