Dark landscapes

The Dark Landscapes  project works in the tradition  that recognises the Gothic nature of the Australian landscape. The Australian Gothic  is the focal point of all that is dark and menacing in Australian photography. It suggests the terror latent in the Australian landscape. Often the work  in the this tradition is melancholy, ghostly, dismal, fear inspiring and gloomy. It expresses the uncanny in the familiar.

Our history is one in which  we have largely destroyed landscapes that have existed for about 70 million years, which is many times longer than the eurocentric ideal of a northern European fields, conifers and weeds of the colonisers. European civilisation rests upon the colonisers   driving the indigenous peoples of their country,  torturing their souls, and destroying their culture.

And this is why we are brooding. The darkened bush of the remnants of nature  simply reminds us of this horror. It is a place of trauma that draws on the tension between seeing and not seeing events and places of trauma and memory. Some of the photographs  are taken in  the act of a return to a location after something has happened, and in response to traces  of events in the landscape. It is a late photography.

 

2 Comments

  • Reply Fleurieuscapes: Outtake 3 - Thought FactoryThought Factory January 15, 2016 at 11:04 am

    […] forever-long summer days of   Joel Meyerowitz’s  1979 book Cape Light or  the  gloomy landscapes of the Gothic […]

  • Reply Traumatic history - Thought FactoryThought Factory January 25, 2016 at 12:03 pm

    […] 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 memory […]

  • Leave a Reply to Fleurieuscapes: Outtake 3 - Thought FactoryThought Factory Cancel Reply

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